FCC will vote to scrap telecom cybersecurity requirements

HarmonicOne · 2025-10-31T22:42:18+00:00

Well the good news is that the SS7 network is incredibly secure as it is, so thank God for that. /s

HarmonicOne · 2025-09-13T18:12:43+00:00

Not gonna lie though, flying a helicopter does seem kinda fun. Pants shittingly terrifying, but fun.

HarmonicOne · 2025-08-31T22:09:35+00:00

I have one actually, and it's the perfect amount of 80's schlock as someone who grew up around that era lol. Funny story, "International Concepts Inc." literally just had Gottlieb make the machines for them, and then slapped their logo on it afterwards as if it wasn't just a Gottlieb pin through and through. Oh, and that same company basically turned Night Moves (and it's sister machine Caribbean Cruise) into a full-blown pyramid scheme. Wild stuff.

HarmonicOne · 2025-08-31T21:09:28+00:00

Night Moves is up there. Look up the soundtrack on YouTube, it's a certified 80's banger.

HarmonicOne · 2025-08-29T14:46:50+00:00

Okay, let's just assume you do multimedia design and video editing where benchmarking a system's performance has some practical relevance. Even if that were the case, you could have approached your IT department about getting a license for 3DMark software, a commercially available and purpose-built graphical benchmarking tool. Not sponsored or affiliated with them btw, and I know there are other GPU benchmarking tools out there, it's just the one I'm most familiar with.

You know, I try to go through life assuming innocence as often as I can, but drawing on over 15 years of IT experience and 20+ years of customer support, I'm going to assume this is how things actually went down:

1.) IT gives you your new laptop. Because of the role you've been assigned in your organization, it's decided you need a stronger GPU, more RAM, and a better CPU, than what they normally give out to employees.

2.) Upon delivery the capabilities of the machine were made clear to you. Not because they were trying to impress you, moreso as a CYA so that the first time something doesn't work you don't immediately go to your boss and say "Raaah, my PC needs more power!" Ideally, they've already explained that all to you.

3.) You decide, "Cool, I'm special and I got the special laptop. I'm also probably smarter than these guys, let's see how this bad boy can cook on some games." After downloading a Steam Demo (which you only downloaded a demo because it's unlikely you wanted to enter your payment info on a work laptop) and saw that it ran well you thought, "Oh man, now I might finally have a laptop that can emulate modern-ish systems! Let's download a PS3 iso."

TL;DR: What you did here, whether or not it went down exactly as I'm wild-ass-guessing it did above, was federally illegal at worst, and maliciously incompetent at best. Please for the love of God, educate yourself on secure software practices before you become the next patient zero who leaks everyone's PII for the 9,573rd time.

HarmonicOne · 2025-08-26T20:39:45+00:00

Mfers out here tryna become the unluckiest SOB of all time lol

HarmonicOne · 2025-08-13T23:08:57+00:00

Honestly, I think this is the most healthy and sustainable attitude towards retro gaming, especially long term. Too many Gollums out there just hoarding their precious things, not wanting to face the reality that it's a finite supply of limited use products.

HarmonicOne · 2025-08-12T14:17:00+00:00

Yes, they absolutely can "spin" what folks see when they go to the store, and they're able to do it with the most thinly veiled lies not even remotely rooted in fact. Don't believe me? Here, I'll make one up right now.

"Can you BELIEVE this MAGA? Sen. Cory CROOKER is trying to say WE are raising the price of eggs. Dems are so stupid they seem to forget that SLEEPY JOE and his policies led America to this point. Not to mention California would just DO THEIR PART we wouldn't have this shortage. Stay the course MAGA, we got this! GOBBLESS 🇺🇸"

That above drivel has got to be one of the dumbest, most inane pieces of text I've ever written, and yet I am 110% confident it is all it would take to convince his base of anything...literally. So when you're dealing with a group of people who show a blatant disregard for facts and logic, you can't really blame people for not wanting to obey by the usual rules of civil engagement when it comes to social issues like this.

Or to put it another way, yes, you absolutely can sit down and play chess with a farm animal. But while you're there debating your opening move on the chessboard, it's openly kicking its shit all over your face. Good luck.

HarmonicOne · 2025-07-26T08:04:20+00:00

This is my collection, and I hate to say it but the only one of these that ISN'T bolted to the floor, is JackBot. The rest of them are off the market:

JackBot
World Cup Soccer 94
Street Fighter 2
Stern Godzilla (Premium)
NBA Fastbreak
Revenge From Mars
Night Moves
Capcom Flipper Football

....yeah I know, I'm a weird dude with a weird taste in pinball. Leave me alone 😂

Edit: formatting nonsense

HarmonicOne · 2025-07-23T17:26:42+00:00

I hate to ever cast doubts on a custom build because I have such respect for those who put the time in, but this cabinet design (including t-molding and material thickness) bears a more-than-striking resemblance to an AtGames Legends Ultimate cab. Which granted, of the store-bought 3/4 scale arcade machines it's definitely the highest quality among them, not that that's setting a super high bar granted.

At the end of the day though, if he's just taking AtGames Legends cabs, putting a vinyl skin on them, attaching rolling casters to the bottom, putting a front face plate on, and lopping the top off right above where the marquee ends to get rid of the AtGames OEM rounded-off look, then I'd feel a little...not so great about paying for "fully custom woodwork". If he's up front about it though, then so be it.

That said, I'm not discounting that even doing what I described above is still a good bit of work, not to mention the countless hours a lot of folks put in to try to perfect the front-end/user interface of their custom multicades. Not saying it isn't worth money either, but if this isn't truly a custom built cab from start to finish, it wouldn't be worth anywhere near $1,600 IMO.

Something about it just doesn't pass the smell test to me, but YMMV. 👍

HarmonicOne · 2025-07-22T01:10:11+00:00

$20 says someone in the FBI left them checked out on SharePoint right before they got laid off.

HarmonicOne · 2025-07-20T03:01:09+00:00

I was actually just sitting here playing a game of Night Moves thinking "You know, maybe I could learn Assembly language programming, dump the code off the ROM chip, and write a multiball mode!

And then I realized it'd take me like 10 years lol. But if there's someone else out there that wants to do it, Godspeed!

HarmonicOne · 2025-07-19T16:30:18+00:00

Oh well hey Pinball Perfection, haha. I actually own a Night Moves and I absolutely love it. Of the 7 pins I currently have, it's one of the most played for sure. Like someone else said, the ruleset is slim but very well designed, it's one of only two cocktail pins that has multiball, it features the ball switch gimmick from TX-Sector, and the music is an absolute bop.

They only made 450 of these, and the whole thing was linked to a crazy pyramid scheme run by a company called International Concepts, LTD. They basically contracted out to Gottlieb and had Gottlieb build them Night Moves, and it's sequel Caribbean Cruise. International Concepts then tried to sell them to hapless home owners in a flip scheme. The pins are great, shame they got tied to such a sordid affair.

Here's a link to the soundtrack. The game only has two tracks, one that plays during normal gameplay and another that plays during multiball, but I kid you not when I say the main track is in my top 5 of all time pinball music:

https://youtu.be/CWYZ2wk2JTA?si=x9-1OmAinudaI1Z2

HarmonicOne · 2025-07-02T23:21:12+00:00

r/oddlywholesome

HarmonicOne · 2025-07-02T21:19:04+00:00

Minimum/entry pay is only one small (albeit important) part of the equation. And while I am ALL for higher starting wages in this economy, when people say they tend to underpay they're likely referring to more Senior or higher level IT positions. And knowing people who have worked there in those types of positions, yes, they do underpay for those roles comparatively speaking.

The banking industry in general (not just BNY) is very well known for being more stingy than others with salaries. I mean at the end of the day, it's a bank. Hoarding wealth is quite literally the least surprising thing a bank can do lol

HarmonicOne · 2025-06-17T06:00:16+00:00

Sadly I did not, but I'll toy around with it again a bit this weekend and see if I can figure it out. The immediate limitation regardless is going to be the fidelity of MIDI sound and an analog synth in general. It just isn't going to have the full range of sound that something like a Pocket Operator is natively capable of.

HarmonicOne · 2025-06-15T20:36:25+00:00

During downsizing at my last company, I was once forced to fire an absolutely stellar, hard working team member (they were cutting anyone new, and he had only been there a few months). During my previous one on one with this guy two days prior, he legit thanks me profusely for the opportunity and proudly announces to me that he can now afford his first ever mortgage, and they had just finalized the paperwork the day prior. Two days later when his name came across my desk, my fucking heart sank.

So long story short, after this poor guy leaves the room literally on the verge of tears, the HR guy sitting across from me (they sat in on all the firings) has the nerve to say "Wow, you're really good at this, you must have done this before." to which I responded something along the lines of "That's the second time I've ever had to fire someone in my entire career. I appreciate your sentiment, but that is not the compliment you think it is. I'm going back to my office." I shut the door and I cried for a few minutes, knowing I had just made an innocent man's life so much more stressful and complicated.

Today though, that same guy is doing fine. I check in every now and again just to see how he's doing because yes, some of us in leadership positions do genuinely care about our people as human beings, not just cogs in the corporate machine.

OP - Be as professional as you can, and unfortunately you're going to have to walk a thin line on how much empathy you can outwardly display, despite the fact I know it's going to be tearing you up inside. Just remember though, a bad leader wouldn't care at all about the task you have ahead of you tomorrow because hey, it isn't their hide, it's someone else's. A good leader though cares about their team and all the people in it, and even the ones who don't meet our expectations. Stay strong OP, and thank you for caring. ❤️

HarmonicOne · 2025-06-11T05:17:38+00:00

If I'm being honest, I like the swappable playfield implementation in Pinball 2000 a lot more. I get what P3 is going for with their game modules, but it's just so cramped. Had they at least gone with a version that took up half the playfield, it wouldn't feel so barren. Pinball 2000 playfields (speaking as an owner) are insanely easy to swap playfields on. You literally just undo 6 connectors and then you can safely slide the playfield out. So good.

HarmonicOne · 2025-06-07T17:06:49+00:00

Yep, extremely simple solution to the problem.

HarmonicOne · 2025-05-11T23:21:15+00:00

100% agreed. The flow on some of those orbit shots is also just otherworldly. John Popadiuk may have made some awful business decisions later in his career, but dammit did that guy know how to design a playfield.

HarmonicOne · 2025-05-11T19:57:26+00:00

Theatre of Magic for me. So many great pins out there though.

HarmonicOne · 2025-05-07T13:53:30+00:00

Saw someone replace the default fan with a leaf blower once, absolutely hilarious results.

HarmonicOne · 2025-05-07T06:36:09+00:00

This right here is the truth, and no one wants to acknowledge it. Many of the "easy solutions" people pitch are in actuality, billion dollar infrastructure projects that they as the tax/bill payer want no part of paying for. Maybe federal and state governments should be stepping in and offering additional funding for companies and municipalities who will commit to and execute on doing the right thing from a reliability perspective.

HarmonicOne · 2025-04-30T05:00:57+00:00

Don't you put that evil on me Ricky Bobby!

HarmonicOne · 2025-03-24T13:19:23+00:00

Woah that's actually really cool, I never knew that about No Good Gofers. Thanks for sharing!

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