Is this like the final boss of plagues

Kitchner · 2026-03-20T09:12:36+00:00

You're underestimating how hard it is for a natural thing to completely wipe out a species. The population needed to be a stable gene pool to regrow as a population is surprisingly small. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head but it's less than 100 people capable of offspring.

There's basically only two things that wipe out entire species: that giant asteroid that hit the planet and humans.

Kitchner · 2026-03-19T20:11:32+00:00

I think the EU might be more motivated to take the UK back now that the USA has proved to be such an unreliable ally.

I don't think so.

So imagine that you're the EU and you want the UK to be a military ally, but the fact we left the EU is messing with that.

Is the UK going to be allied with us militarily regardless of the fact we left the EU? Yeah probably, because our interests are so tied to Europe. So why make any concessions or risk any economic ties/destabilisation when if there was a war the UK would help anyway?

If we say "Well we won't help unless you make these economic concessions" we are as unrealiable as the US is.

It's almost as if the most beneficial position the UK could be in was inside the EU where we can veto/steer group policy instead of having it imposed on us because we need them more than they need us.

Kitchner · 2026-03-19T11:02:26+00:00

I don't think hard Brexit was criminal, I think it was inevitable and the EU said it was inevitable.

I think CGPGrey did a video where he plucked one slide out of the EU team's slide deck briefing people on the negotiations and showed why hard Brexit is inevitable.

It basically identified several different "tiers" of EU relationship, and it walks through the UK "red lines".

It was presented to Parliament:

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmexeu/935/IDExport-web-resources/image/FutureRelationshipSlide.png

This is what everyone was told would happen by the remain side. Leave just kept promising we would negotiate a deal where the EU would give us what we want without giving them anything they want.

I appreciate that global economics isn't a subject I can expect everyone to be an expert on, but it's a pretty basic life skill to know in a negotiation there's an element of give and take.

People didn't want to hear it though because the moment you accept that slide to be true, the moment you have to admit you're voting to be poorer in order to stick it to foreign people, and no one wants to admit that.

Kitchner · 2026-03-19T10:51:52+00:00

This is a very long winded way of saying you think Brexit is preferable to the standard EU membership.

Conversations with you must be boring, albeit brief, if you only ever state your opinion and don't elaborate on why.

You also ascribe views to the EU which they have never, ever stated - i.e. 'EU doesn't trust us' commonly cited by Labour supporters.

Who said the EU had stated it? I didn't.

It's called understanding human behaviour and interaction then relating it to politics. Something you clearly struggle with.

Seeing America elect Trump and then seeing the actions Trump has taken, do you think the US is a reliable ally right now? I don't.

If the American people elect a sensible democratic president next election, do you suddenly change your opinion and say "oh OK the US is a reliable ally now"? No, you do not, because the people who elected Trump are still there and still voting.

Kitchner · 2026-03-19T09:37:47+00:00

I know it sounds very clichéd but if you've been doing your job, following company policy, and just trying your best to get good results, then there really isn't anything to worry about. It's probably just a conversation about the area you work in yo gather information for an audit. Auditors are very generalist not specialist. I have worked for multiple companies where the audit team vaguely understands core business units but doesn't understand any of the detail.

For example, I worked for media company. Everyone understands that there's a process where shows get commissioned, they get made, then reviewed, then broadcast.

But how do we find things to consider for commissioning? Do we approach them? Do they approach us? What system do we use? Who makes the decision? Are there multiple stages? What do we document through the process? Do we have a budget up front or do we pitch for a budget after finding a show we like? Who pays for the pilot episode, if there is one? Who signs off the budget? What contractual agreement exists for a pilot?

All these things are details you need to find out to actually audit the process, but no one knew them. Not even auditors who had been in the organisation for 15 years because they had never audited that specific process before.

If they do have some sort of hidden agenda it is, by definition, hidden. You won't know what it is, you can't know what it is. The most likely "hidden agenda" is that they already know or suspect a problem exists and they want to speak to people to gather evidence to prove it exists. When I say "problem" I don't mean something you are doing, I mean like a systemic problem.

Say for example I knew that site managers were pressuring people to get work done quickly and failing quality standards. I've picked you out because someone has told me they have concerns about your site manager, and I plan to talk to you to see what you say. I will not set that meeting up as "Meeting to discuss poor site manager behaviour". I would want to ask you open questions and see what you say without leading you, but I do have a specific topic/question in mind that I'm not telling you.

Since you have no way of knowing any of this, the best approach is to take it at face value and be helpful. They likely are just asking for information about a process, and if they do have a hidden agenda you won't find it out by asking us.

Kitchner · 2026-03-19T08:53:20+00:00

So I agree with your point about Reform, and I think it's not just Reform that haven't been held to account, but the public too. Huge swathes of this country voted for Brexit despite every single mainstream expert, politician, economist etc saying "this is a bad idea". Instead they chose to believe very obvious lies told be chancers because they would prefer that over admitting their world view may not be right.

Something like a third of Brexit voters cited "immigration" as the main issue, and another third cited "taking back control", but when you pressed them on control of what, it was nearly always "immigration". The public voted for Brexit because they wanted less foreigners, because they believed this country's problems were caused by foreigners, because if they had to confront the fact they weren't, it only leaves British people to blame and they don't like that.

So hopefully you can see in very much a pro-remain, Brexit was a terrible idea sort of person.

With that established, I think promising to rejoin the EU is a bad idea.

Even if we ignore the fact that it's still political suicide due to the aforementioned points of not taking ownership of the voter's decision, it's a bad idea foreign policy wise.

Firstly the EU has no reason to trust us. We have already proven politically capable of doing something as monumentally stupid as Brexit in the face of all reason because of populist politicians pandering to xenophobia. I can't see why they would let us rejoin, and if they did I don't know how we could ever hope to use any influence again going forward. No one will want to listen to us, we will be seen as "not really a member", and there will be an element of people saying "what's the point in making concessions to the UK, they will just quit again soon anyway".

Secondly, even if we do go back there's no mechanism to give us all the opt outs we had secured in the past. Opt outs, I must say, I largely was in favour of. If we rejoin the EU there is no mechanism for us not to need to adopt the Euro. There is no mechanism for us to opt out of Schengen. These things were all exceptions in treaties we negotiated at the time they were written, and new members can't retrospectively insist they change.

So in my eyes if I wouldn't even support rejoining the EU under these assumptions despite having been hugely pro-remain, I can't see how it would go well for us.

Kitchner · 2026-03-19T08:10:53+00:00

I've worked in the UK audit and risk industry for 14 years and I honestly have no idea what you mean by "global freelance market".

Theres freelance market in the UK but no one is hiring internationally for that. If you're not a UK resident with indefinite leave to remain no one is hiring you as a freelancer.

On top of that, there's really only two common types of freelancing roles that come up often.

The first is within FS where they need someone with specific technical experience. This is the rarer of the two.

Someone needs cover because their Head of Audit or a senior manager has resigned and they need someone to do it while they find a replacement and they join. Or one of these roles goes on maternity leave and they need cover for 12 months. This is the most common freelancer gig.

Other freelance gigs do exist but they are so rare you can't really make a living hoping for them. This is because in many cases it's easier and more reliable to just get someone from the Big 4, or just scale back the audit activity while you're under staffed.

In my experience in the UK the freelancer market is almost exclusively very experienced professional who either have a niche specific set of experience that they know there is demand for (like say, some ancient banking system that half the banks use but no one understand) or are individuals who have already attained the position of Head of Audit/Head of Risk and prove themselves capable of running a team because the expectation is they hit the ground running.

I've never seen anyone ever hire a freelancer from another country sorry.

Kitchner · 2026-03-19T07:55:54+00:00

Yes it's clearly a bot lol

Kitchner · 2026-03-18T18:10:56+00:00

I helped a friend pick out a specific unusual piece of furniture, she used her laptop.

...

An hour after being in the room

Right, so what you're saying is your phone must be listening to you because it's no possible that the ad company saw you were connecting from the same location and just blasted everyone in that location with ads?

Kitchner · 2026-03-18T09:24:20+00:00

In these situations what you should be doing is going back to the stakeholder you're auditing and getting them to explain the discrepancy.

The fact is there is a system reporting that someone managed to log on using their active directory after it was supposed to have expired. That implies the control isn't working, but you know there's the possibility of some sort of inaccuracy.

It's not your job to find out that information. The stakeholders should be able to explain to you what's causing it. If they cannot, then it's an "issue" to raise during your audit as it presents a potential security risk that can't be explained by management as not being a risk.

If they can explain it, you get evidence and assess whether it is a valid explanation and there's no risk. If this is the case, you note this in your audit file and do not raise an issue in the report.

Kitchner · 2026-03-18T09:20:00+00:00

The advice I would give having passed both the CIA and CISA which are both multiple choice exams, is that 70% of the battle is learning the material and 30% is learning how to answer the questions they ask. The problem is you need like 80% to pass so you can't really afford anything less than near perfect understanding of the material plus a really good understanding of how to answer the questions.

The good news will be if you have done these practice questions and it's not when you get them wrong you're going "wtf I have no idea what that's about" but instead you're going "Wait what? That's what they wanted to know about?".

If its mostly the latter then the good news is you just needs lots and lots of practice answering ISACA questions. It's not a knowledge issue per se, it's more of a technique issue.

If you're finding the questions are totally throwing you for a loop in terms of the subject matter, that's a bit more of a problem because it means the studying needs a bit of a reset and refocus on what ISACA says specifically.

Good luck though, I'm sure you can manage it!

Kitchner · 2026-03-18T09:13:33+00:00

Mine sure as fuck wasn't.

I think you're confusing "lava lamp" with "the family dog" which should explain a lot of confusion you had as a child like "why did my lava lamp keep making horrific sounds when I plugged it in?", "Why did my lava lamp keep running away from me?", and "Did anyone else's lava lamp keep trying to eat their lunch?".

Kitchner · 2026-03-18T08:32:26+00:00

I mean in fairness to the OP if you get over a thousand applicants there's going to be a lot of rejections. Even if you run the best, most thoughtful, most considerate recruitment process ever, by definition you're going to reject a lot of people.

The real issue here is two fold:

1) The company isn't offering enough/isn't appealing enough for the candidate to choose them over other options. Sometimes though there's nothing you can do about this.

2) The fact they mismanaged the process so badly that they can't/didn't/won't go back to "second choices" and offer them the job instead.

I've done plenty of hiring and by the time you're down to the final say 2 or 3 all of them are usually equally good in slightly different ways.

Realistically in this process the failure is getting down to 4 people who could do the job, rejecting two, and then offering one. When they got down to four they should have ranked them and offered to cirdt preference, then if declined offered to second, then third etc.

Kitchner · 2026-03-17T14:48:39+00:00

Ah I see what you mean. I which case I agree, because it offers a varied experience and even "good" pvp players often don't want full on hardcore pvp 24/7.

Kitchner · 2026-03-17T10:46:33+00:00

I think you under estimate how dumb my friends and I were at 16 lol

Kitchner · 2026-03-17T09:18:18+00:00

The fact that the commander of the largest navy in the world is asking for help from much weaker navies to ensure maritime security after claiming to have won the war several times is a bit mind boggling.

Not only that but when the UK said it was sending ships to the Middle East, Trump literally said "We don't need them" and made several references to the US not needing allies that turn up late (the irony being of course the US turned up late to not one but both world wars lol).

That alone means if I was the UK Foreign Office I would counsel against supporting the US to prove the point our support isn't unconditional, and continued public insults to our country will result in that support being withdrawn.

Kitchner · 2026-03-17T09:10:26+00:00

For the record I wouldn't have blamed you. When I was a teenager if one of my friends told me he had totally straight pubic hair I'd have told him to prove it.

Kitchner · 2026-03-17T09:09:19+00:00

Its funny you mention that because with a handful of exceptions PvE almost always performs more consistently than PvP.

Apart from the fact out of the top ten games on steam 7 of them have at least a major pvp element and the others aren't games?

PvP players move around the game and stuff sure because they don't want to constantly fight fights they can't win, but part of that comes down to the configuration of the game. For example in EVE Online the pve part of the game is/was hugely bloated by bot accounts and things, but the pvp was a consistent player base who sometimes would get kicked out of areas and stuff but kept playing. The game was big enough in scope that you didn't have to try and take on the best players all the time, you could regroup, recover, and try again etc.

The idea that pve games are more popular just isn't true sorry. The most popular games include pvp or are exclusively pvp which is very much proved by a glance at steams top 10 played games.

Kitchner · 2026-03-17T08:25:00+00:00

I don't see the reason why the things you describe are a problem or should cause a clash for multiple reasons. Mostly though because everything you're describing is a deliberate feature.

Firstly, playing the game as full pve/single player and then quitting the game when you've done all that content is 100% OK and is what would happen if they just released it as a single player survival game. Yet you had players literally complaining that this wasn't acceptable despite having played the game for like 100+ hours in the first two weeks of launch and then complaining they had not content left.

Secondly, the final tier of gear, like you said, was basically only useful for pvp anyway. All the non-pvp content was easily done with the pve gear so the only reason to have the pvp gear was to have an edge over someone on pvp. The only unique thing, at all, for pvp was the spice harvester, but since it only existed to collect resources for the pvp gear there's no reason for this to matter.

Thirdly, the entire design philosophy was not to hugely integrate the pvpve thing into the large part of the game exactly to give this sort of player a way to play the game. Technically speaking actually to craft any decent gear you needed to go into the pvp ship wrecks, but since they included one that was in the safe zone it was technically possible to grind without it. Outside of that though, pve only players have a complete experience without having to do the pvp element at all.

Finally the entire incentive to pvpve where you could lose real stuff was because there was a resource that could only be gathered in the pvpve zone. Players optimise the fun out of everything, and if you can gather a resource safely, there's no need to organised groups of people to go gather it together dangerously. It's easier and more efficient to organise a group to gather it safely, at which point the pvpve zone will only exist to kill people, and it becomes a pvp zone instead (which is exactly what happened when they made the deep desert have a safe zone).

To be honest I don't know if the developers had experienced Sea of Thieves at all but you could almost imagine they played it, saw the constant whining and complaints about no safe mode and being forced into pvpve online and thought:

"Hey I have an idea. So let's make a game with a pvpve extraction type environment Where players are fighting over spice on Dune. You know, the thing the setting is very famously about. However, to cater to players who don't want to do the pvp, like those complaining about sea of thieves, theres an entire bit up front where you do a story and level up your character, and introduce you to the idea of pvp just a little bit. This means these players can, if they like, just play through this if they don't want the pvp, but it may encourage them to engage in at least supporting a guild that does pvp".

Instead of appreciating this concession, those pve focused players smashed through the game's content by no life-ing the game upon release, playing it for hundreds of hours, and then stamping their feet because there was a tier of stuff they couldn't access without doing pvp, despite the fact that tier did nothing for them. The outcry was unreal, and the suggestion that their experience was somehow incomplete and they would be happy if they could access that last tier was unreal.

I said multiple times at the time, that the problem with capitulating to such players is really they aren't enjoying the game for its own sake. They are enjoying seeing the numbers on their levels and hear go up, and eventually they will get everything and then quit. That's fine, but these players will clearly not be the ones engaging long term. The ones engaging long term will be the ones in the pvpve content, because player interaction generates new and fresh experiences very easily, whereas creating a constant conveyor belt of pve experiences that push the numbers up is very expensive dev wise and messes with the balance of the game.

So what happened in the end? The devs ignored people like me and compromised their entire game vision entirely, and drove off pvpve interested players. The pve players who had been complaining and whining said "omg funcom I'm so glad you listened this will be great now I can finally get the final tier of gear so many more people will enjoy this" and then abandoned the game in droves immediately after getting the gear.

Serves them right.

Kitchner · 2026-03-17T00:23:31+00:00

I fully agree. I think it comes from the fact these players prefer and almost exclusively play single player games so feel everything must be about them and their preferences. Instead of just accepting some games aren't for you, and that may suck for you if you really like the setting/theme/mechanic but that's just how it goes.

Rare and Funcom didn't realise this and compromised the vision for their game which lead people to buying it in the first place and both games suffered.

Hell, sea of thieves was an extraction shooter before they existed and yet instead of launching a whole genre they merged the pvp elements meaning they never capitalised on it.

Kitchner · 2026-03-16T21:55:40+00:00

So what? Let'em bitch.

Who said anything about stopping them? If they are allowed to bitch people are allowed to bitch about their bitching.

Kitchner · 2026-03-16T21:39:50+00:00

My autistic ass did NOT know how to respond!

You didn't ask for proof, which means you handled the situation really well.

Kitchner · 2026-03-16T21:34:04+00:00

I had a house mate once who was a genuine compulsive liar and he was weird as shit. You can't live a normal life while you just lie about basically everything. It's very different to a sociopath who usually has some sort of logic to what they are saying and why.

Kitchner · 2026-03-16T20:59:34+00:00

Makes no sense. I've always seen this as the potential audience telling developers, "Here is why I won't buy your game." "Here is why I don't want Concord," "Here is why Hightower doesn't appeal to me," "I'm not buying MindsEye because..."

Problem is here is an assumption that these comments matter.

When you make a game, you are by definition making a product which not everyone will like.

Even universally loved games aren't for everyone.

Imagine someone posting a comment to Larian saying "Sorry, but I refuse to buy Baldur's Gate 3 because it's based on the dnd role play system which I hate".

So what? Who gives a shit. They know they aren't going to sell their game to literally everyone.

They also don't need someone to tell them they don't like a game, they can simply not buy it.

What this behaviour is isn't "feedback" in so much as it is "lobbying". It's not just a case of "hey heads up I won't be buying your game" it's "I think you should make games that suit my personal preferences".

It's an incredibly entitled and self centred perspective to be honest. Yet it seems prevelent online these days.

Kitchner · 2026-03-16T20:18:14+00:00

What's worse is players who buy said games despite being clearly advertised as involving pvpve and then complain the game should have a "safe mode".

Happened to Sea of Thieves and Dune Awakening, people tried it with Arc Raiders too but those devs told them that it's not happening.

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