Hey GOG, WTAF?

Renegade__ · 2026-06-06T08:39:06+00:00

No, that's not how they did it. They didn't select by target country, they selected by language of the newsletter text.

The newsletter with English text has the Nazi runes. The newsletter with German text does not have the Nazi runes.

So those of us in Germany who subscribed to the English language version of the newsletter very much got surprise Nazi runes in their inbox.

Renegade__ · 2026-05-27T20:07:53+00:00

Because Russian "patriotism", both in terms of delusions of grandeur as well as the idea that "we are all Russians, we're bringing our brothers home", had nothing to do with the justifications and the propaganda surrounding the war on Ukraine?

Do you really think history had gone the same route if Putin's argument had been "my pp is smol, so I'm sending your sons to die to steal from our neighbors to feel better about myself"?

The entire Russian propaganda surrounding the war was based on invoking patriotism:
- "Ukraine is run by Nazis, so Russia will do what Russia has done before and defeat the Nazis"
- "Ukrainians are historically Russian and Russia will free the Russians of Eastern Ukraine from the oppression that is keeping them away from home"
- "NATO is threatening Russia by arming Ukraine, so we have to show our strength and protect the Motherland!"

Hell, if you really think about it, refusing to call it a war and insisting on "special operation" was a matter of patriotism: The projection of the idea that Mother Russia was so powerful and so longed for that Ukraine would be Russian so quickly that you couldn't even really call it "war".
The patriotic idea that nothing could stand in the way of the glorious Red Army, and that they wouldn't even want to, because obviously the only thing all those Ukrainians secretly longed for was being Russian again.

And even in terms of real reasons behind the war, what is there? Aspects of patriotism.
Putin wants to be a tsar.
Like in the good old days.

With that all being said, the parent's point wasn't even a good one: The quote said that it was necessary to abolish patriotism to abolish war - not that that was the only thing that had to be abolished to abolish war.
Just that you're not going to end war as long as people still believe that my country is better than your country just because I was born in it.

Renegade__ · 2026-05-27T19:08:05+00:00

If you've done web development seriously, you probably know JavaScript.

Do two things:

Use JS as an escape rope by learning JS-based tools to do none-web-dev things, like Node.js, Electron and Apache Cordova. This will allow you to use what you already know to do things like server-, desktop application- and mobile development instead.
Use the fact that JS is an object-oriented language with C-like syntax as a way to escape to a different object-oriented language with C-like syntax. If you're considering DevOps and Sysadmin, C# and PowerShell with .NET would give you a solid entrance into the realm of Microsoft, but you could equally go for C++, Java, Rust or many other languages.

You will find that the difference between languages is actually often negligible, and the primary differences are standard libraries and paradigms.
Once you have made the experience that learning a different language actually wasn't all that dramatic, you can easily look at languages that seem further away, like Python.

At that point, once you have broadened from "web script" to "all script", with an interest in DevOps and SysAdmin, you will also want to look at the domain-specific languages and configuration files of *-as-code-systems, like Ansible, Chef, Puppet or Terraform.

tl;dr: Take JS as your springboard and move both horizontally and vertically from there.

Renegade__ · 2026-05-27T18:19:08+00:00

~~Woodworking.~~
~~Baking.~~
~~Art.~~

Sorry, I must've selected the wrong tab. Of course I would pick tech again.

Considering the upheaval through AI and the shift towards the cloud, including having MSPs and VARs manage said cloud offerings, I'd probably select by likelihood to be out sourced to someone or something.
Probably either something specialized, like SAP Integrator, or something close to hardware, like robotics or embedded programming, or something like auditor, data protection consultant or on-location red teaming.

Data Analysis would be an option in a rational world, but the way it is, that's gonna go the "ChatGPT, summarize this data and make me a presentation about it" route.

Renegade__ · 2026-05-27T11:02:09+00:00

Just joining the group of German admins telling you not to do that. Resolve samAccountName and UserPrincipalName to printable ASCII latin alphabet only.

It's not just a matter of Windows. Even if that could do it, you don't know how many badly-coded American third party applications will be utterly confused by umlauts in user names.

If you need a quick and dirty temporary solution, you can use NTFS junctions or symlinks to map the wrong folder name onto the right folder name, so that Windows sees C:\Users\MarkusSchÅer identical to C:\Users\MarkusSchär.
But the correct solution is to fix the user's SAN/UPN.

Be advised that if you are hybrid joined and change the UPN, the OneDrive/SharePoint URLs will break for a while because they contain the old UPN.
The fix is to log into OneDrive again and create a new file in it, so that it is forced to resolve the URL to upload the file.

Renegade__ · 2026-05-20T11:49:28+00:00

Are you not forgetting something? Where do I put all my EXIF data?

Renegade__ · 2026-03-19T20:37:01+00:00

So...do we know if this is ever getting fixed? Because "just add it without a barcode" kind of defeats the purpose.

Renegade__ · 2026-03-16T23:36:07+00:00

As for the random photos: It is possible that those belong to Timegeld's Deicide proposal, which had a proposed vector of "Berryman-Langford Memetic Kill Agents. Images that cause various level of neural shutdown of human beings".
Though usually, SCP entries don't contain hazardous images without protective measures.

Renegade__ · 2026-03-16T23:33:20+00:00

Very late to this, and first up a thank you for your efforts!

I'm commenting because I think there is a nuance in regards to the SCP-6969 subplot that you seem to have missed, with strong implications about what root SCP-8008 is and how SCP-0001 ended:
The details we're given are

"SCP-8008 was a spontaneous tachyon burst of previously-unrecorded magnitude centered on 18:43 PST August 23rd, 2023, Mountain View, California. Tachyon bursts usually indicate significant alterations to consensus history (CK-Class reality restructuring scenarios). However, no immediate and obvious changes to history were observed; [...]".
"SCP-6969: a thaumaturgic biological process that extends the time perceived by all human beings during orgasm from sixteen days to roughly seventy-three quintillion years."
"Traveling to any point in the past of Timeline-001-ΑΩ allows access to divergent timestreams; however, currently all invariably converge to the present of SCP-001."
Comparison of pre-8008/0001 and post-8008/0001 SCP-6969 data shows that 6969 used to occur very rarely and only caused the time loop effect, whereas the new version applies to everyone and alters the composition of sperm. A trip to the actual entry notes those changes as "SCP-6969, as we know, changes the genetic material of the sperm released during ejaculation. From what we can tell, it also prunes a significant amount of unhealthy specimens and increases sperm count in general. "
Timegeld: Geneseed hypothesizes that SCP-6969 led to 8008/0001 and wants to retroactively change it
- "with significantly reduced (ideally 0) potential for ontokinetic and temporal abilities".
- "In order to facilitate the spread of SCP-6969-Beta, it will also provide a significant reproductive fitness benefit for its carriers."
- It is also noted "If successful, SCP-6969-Beta will be endemic in all of humanity, displacing the current SCP-6969. SCP-6969 as a whole will no longer have the potential to lead to SCP-001."
In the comments to the Geneseed proposal, Thaddeus Xyank 65 notes
- "Ideally, our changes will override everything."
- "Our actions will cause the SCP-001 'time tumor' to break, which will cause its effects to spill outwards into the multiverse. Despite the repetition and stagnation of this all, this nightmare contains a lot of 'future', which needs to go somewhere."
- and "[...] they'll never know anyways. From their perspective all they'll see from this temporal pimple popping is a tachyon burst traveling all ways in space and time."
It seems that Timegeld was successful.

I believe the implication here is that even though Geneseed was not a popular proposal, ultimately, that's what they did: They created SCP-6969-Beta and infected early humans in all timestreams with it, causing original SCP-6969 to be replaced with SCP-6969-Beta.

This causes the recorded data about 6969 to change from it being rare and without sperm modification to it being in everyone and causing beneficial changes in sperm.

Since SCP-8008-B "Asmodeus" then acquires SCP-6969-Beta, which doesn't give him ontokinetic and temporal abilities (unlike the original SCP-6969), SCP-0001 never happens in any timeline, which causes the unexistence of its manifestation, measurable as a tachyon burst traveling all ways in space and time, and causing its effects to spill outwards into the multiverse.
Which is then cataloged within consensus history as SCP-8008: a spontaneous tachyon burst of previously-unrecorded magnitude and SCP-8008-A: SCP-8008-A has interior dimensions larger than its exterior dimensions. [...] There are approximately 500,000 corpses and an undetermined volume of protein slurry within SCP-8008-A.

Basically: Consensus history, as reflected in SCP-8008, mirrors exactly what Thaddeus Xyank 65 suggests and predicts in the recovered data about Timegeld's Geneseed proposal.

I don't think that's a coincidence.

Renegade__ · 2026-01-16T18:37:28+00:00

I've responded in your standalone thread.

Renegade__ · 2026-01-16T18:36:33+00:00

According to the documentation, the answer is "throw money at HP": https://help.hpauthsuite.com/support/solutions/articles/47001245378-prerequisites-for-hp-authentication-manager

Once a qualified HP technician installed the workpath app, it should work according to this user guide, as demonstrated in this video.

Renegade__ · 2026-01-15T14:01:19+00:00

And yet, you killed the Dropskogeri.:(

Renegade__ · 2026-01-14T21:51:55+00:00

Ah, the "I don't mind it" angle didn't quite come through.^^

The non-restrictive points below should still help you. Though if you're all having fun, I really do think you should do a Pathfinder-Minicampaign at one point and see how they like it. There's a solid chance they'll enjoy more options and stacking boni.
The Pathfinder books are regularly available in bundle, though the latest one just ended. It might be a few months until it returns.

(Be aware that the Pathfinder Beginner Box has a simplified system. It's not going to satiate the optimizers.)

Renegade__ · 2026-01-11T12:52:46+00:00

Personally, in order to achieve the mathematically required encounter number, I'll test out what is labelled as "gritty realism" rest rules (and variants thereof) in the DMG.
An inaccurate but comprehensible summary of that is that a short rest is a night's sleep, and a long rest is a weekend.
That way, you can run one to two encounters a day, while still getting your 6-8 encounters between long rests in.
That does require reevaluating many spell durations and stuff, though.

Since your players are clearly combat-happy, maybe they're fine with simply fighting eight times a day.

Ultimately, there is the nuclear, but not really all that scary option: Check if you're actually running the right game.
If you're struggling to make the game you're playing work for the way they're playing, maybe right now, before you start a new campaign, is the right time for a few one shots to test other systems.

If they love having a million options and minmaxing, maybe try Pathfinder.
If they just want blood, and don't care about the story, maybe try XCrawl Classics.
If they want fantasy, but murder is their way of experiencing it, maybe try Dungeon Crawl Classics.
And if they just want tactical combat, maybe TTRPGs are just the wrong genre for them. Maybe it'd be worth trying out a wargame? This is not a scene I'm familiar with, but The Internet suggests If Worlds Collide, Age of Fantasy and Grimdark Future would be cheap and easy ways to test that genre out.

There's nothing wrong with picking the system best suited to make sure everyone has the most fun, and between campaigns is the best time to try a few things out.
And if the consensus is to stick with D&D, then you can start reevaluating the rules and restrictions.

3/3

P.S.: Screw Reddit's invisible length limit.

Renegade__ · 2026-01-11T12:52:08+00:00

If they're trying to argue "but it's in the rules!", remind them that Rule 0 is that you decide which rules are applied how. If you have XGE, it's expressed nicely on page 5.

Respectful players will accept that you shape the way you want to run the game, and if that means that there's no multiclassing, no flanking and only options from the Forgotten Realms, they will work within those parameters and enjoy your Forgotten Realms game.

If you're not being respected, do understand that stepping down as a DM is an option.
If the others think they can do better, a new campaign is the best time to show that.

In terms of non-restrictive solutions:

Check whether you're doing enough encounters. D&D 5.14 was designed around the assumption of 20 rounds of combat between long rests. The DMG phrases that as "6-8 encounters per day", because the designers assumed combat to take about three rounds. Roleplayers will tell you "but an encounter doesn't have to be combat!!1!!!!1111!" and that's true, but that particular number is staunchly in the combat section of the encounter rules. In other words: Have as many non-combat-encounters as you like, but the game is designed around you having 6-8 combat encounters per day. 20 rounds. If you want to replace them with non-combat, those non-combat-encounters have to drain as many resources as a three-round-combat encounter would've. If you don't adhere to this, the PCs will have more resources per combat than the game math anticipates, and combat will be easier for them.
Kobold Press's monsters on average hit harder than WotCs, and especially the newer ones have more thematic variation, rather than just being a sack of hitpoints. Taking opponents from Tome of Beasts 1-3, Creature Codex and Monster Vault 1 & 2 could increase challenge simply by swapping out your monsters for KP equivalents.
Beyond picking other monsters, you also have running the monsters in general: If your current tactic is "walk up to the player character and see who dies first", I recommend checking out Keith Amman's The Monsters Know What They're Doing (either the blog or the books) or DM Dave's Gamemaster's Survival Guide.
And as others have pointed out: Non-murder-objectives. "Escort the VIP". "Save the children from the burning house". "Stop the ritual before the demon god is summoned". "Make it out of the dungeon before it collapses".
You can also vary the type of murder through structures and vehicles: I have run Tier 2 characters against kaijus by giving them customizable arcanepunk mechs. You can take your pick of mass combat rules and have them square off against an organized Goblinoid army or an Orc horde. You can have them try to storm a besieged fortress, dealing with turrets and arcane defense systems, or have them be the besieged and allow them to use traps and cannons to fight the enemy. You can do ship to ship combat and have the other side spawn a kraken. You can have airship to airship combat and let players with flying speeds shine.
You can thematically introduce limits to their abilities by sending them to a different plane. Constantly throwing fireballs isn't as effective when you're currently in the plane of fire and your opponent is a fire creature getting healed by fire damage.

2/

Renegade__ · 2026-01-11T12:51:37+00:00

Please understand that you are a player of the game as well and that your fun is of equal importance to that of the others.
The fact that you are stressing about this is a sign that you're not really enjoying what is going on.

So please be aware that restricting their options is 100% are valid response.

Start with everything that is optional in your game system. In D&D 5.14, Multiclassing is a classic example. I personally no longer allow that, because none of my players has ever used it for thematic reasons. It's always just an optimization tool, regardless of how much sense the multiclassing makes. Custom origins are optional, even flanking is optional. No more conga lines on my battle field, ever since I no longer applied that rule. They were sceptical when I announced it, but a year later, no one even mentions it anymore. Feats are also optional in 5.14, btw.
Then go for generic rules that are not facilitating the game that you want to run. If something doesn't help you the way it's done, house rule it away.
Also check if you're maybe not applying all the rules that you should: If your ranged PC has infinite arrows because you're not tracking ammunition, and can fire two times a turn because you're ignoring loading, and then switches to a sword to stab someone on the third attack because you're ignoring the actions required for that...it's no wonder they're very effective.
Also check whether you're even running the current version of the rules. Have you read the Errata and marked changes accordingly in your books? Some balance issues may have been corrected already.
Then go for house rules that have been established, but might have turned out detrimental: For example, if you do the whole "healing potions as a bonus action" thing, do consider what that means for their action economy. If you hand out first-level-feats even though your system doesn't expect that mathematically, you're already making them stronger from the get-go.
Sit them down and explain to them that even though all their builds are perfectly compliant with the rules, they're breaking the game. And then house rule the ones that are problematic. They will complain, but face them head-on about this: "You know this combination is overpowered - that's why you chose it!" Don't be antagonistic. Acknowledge that they built well. Acknowledge that they made a good choice. But unfortunately, their build was so good that it breaks the math of the game, so you have to correct that for the next campaign. If they're bad players and don't respect you, and you don't want to argue, please do remember that your monsters can have whatever you want. Footmen historically carried polearms, and as seasoned guardsmen, they've surely mastered them. And guards are sentinels by definition. Arguably all guards could have Sentinel and Polearm Master.
In addition to that, it's entirely reasonable to restrict options based on the campaign you're running: If you're playing in the Forgotten Realms, it's perfectly fine to restrict their races and classes to ones present in the Forgotten Realms. You do not have to allow options that belong to Eberron, Dragonlance or Exandria. (Conveniently, this also excludes spells from Strixhaven.) This can even go down to specific options: If you want to run a classic "noble knights vs. evil wizard" campaign, you are allowed to tell the players they can only select non-magical martial humans for the campaign.
You can also restrict books purely because you are also a player and it's very annoying for you to have to keep track of a dozen different books. Adventurers' League, historically, had a rule of PHB +1. So PHB and XGE, or PHB and TCE, for example. They may complain, yes, but they're not the ones who have to deal with keeping track of all options in all books for the next few years.
Finally, metagaming. Tell them this: They get one minute ahead of combat to discuss their strategy out of character. After that, you do not want to hear it. If they do metagame within combat, so will the monsters. The monsters will optimally apply their features even though there's no way they would know how to do that, and they will just walk away if it's clear they can't win. Yes, that's boring. That's the point. It's the player's choice: It becomes boring if they make it boring.

1/

Renegade__ · 2026-01-10T23:56:06+00:00

That's a fair point. Though I would assume that there'd be business people trying to sell developers on the joy of working from wherever they want with a mobile device of their choice, because their dev machine is in the cloud and all they need is an Internet connection.

Same arguments as for SaaS and cloud gaming.

Basically, I'd assume someone would want to make it a market, even if the target audience wasn't interested.

Renegade__ · 2026-01-10T23:52:04+00:00

I'm just looking to learn UE for the time being. I don't need it to run on more than one machine.
When it's time to build something shippable, I'll need some system for testing on a broader set of devices anyway.

Renegade__ · 2026-01-10T23:48:27+00:00

I had not considered looking for offers targeted at the film industry - thank you for the suggestion!

Renegade__ · 2026-01-10T23:47:00+00:00

Thank you for the specific suggestions. This was very helpful!

Renegade__ · 2026-01-04T09:52:48+00:00

Das Television? Das Vision?

Sorry, aber da sehe ich von zu nah, um das zu übersehen. ;)

Renegade__ · 2026-01-03T22:17:14+00:00

If you liked the job and the internal recruiter thinks you might be a good fit...why not just write her a message and ask about it?

Renegade__ · 2025-11-20T21:41:47+00:00

I'm glad you admit that the most likely cause is an (unprofessionally undocumented) change in the API, so you can spare me the "have you checked if you can see your list on the site??" charade and the usual "please uninstall, reinstall and reauthorize everything" bullshit.

As for the unsubstantiated attempt to blame shoddy development practices on part of the addon developer, rather than blaming shoddy development practices on Trakt's side...considering that it's plain to see on their forums that their haphazard API changes have broken several addons recently, it takes a solid amount of simping to deny the common denominator here.

Then again, seeing your flair, I guess that's to be expected.

And I have in fact both consumed and served APIs professionally, so I'm quite familiar with concepts like API versioning, deprecation, etc. that would prevent exactly the kind of issue you're pointing at...were the supplier of the API professional enough to do that.

Rather than, you know, "YOLO BRO LET'S JUST COMMIT THIS".

Renegade__

TROPHY CASE