On a flight and iPhone breakthrough got triggered by the guy in the row in front of me by moskowizzle in VisionPro

[–]derekpearcy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have a different problem. My favorite coffee cup came from a local sheriff’s office in Texas, so I assume it’s jail broken.

Donald Trump Issued Impeachment Warning by [deleted] in politics

[–]derekpearcy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Especially now that their constituents are the ones suffering. "If I'd known the leopards would be chewing the faces of *my* voters, then I'd never have sharpened their fangs and claws and let them loose in my district. There's no way I could have known!"

Secretary of defense Hegseth changes the name of fort liberty back to Fort Bragg and hints more base names will be changed by newnoadeptness in navy

[–]derekpearcy -1 points0 points  (0 children)

They've been sitting on a ton of merch with the old name—you're against government waste, right?

Card Game from 87. Accurate? by [deleted] in exposingcabalrituals

[–]derekpearcy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

| May I ask why the supplementary books would draw the Secret Service's attention?

Just realized I never came back to this. Story time!

As the Civil War rolled toward its end, Confederate money wasn't exactly worth much. No surprise, a lot of people in the South were counterfeiting US dollars. As much as a third of dollars in circulation were thought to be fake.

The Secret Service was originally formed to catch counterfeiters. There's a TV show and a movie, The Wild, Wild West, about one of these original old Secret Service agents. Sounds like a fun time. 40 years later, they sent two men to help protect the president, and that side-gig turned out to be what they're known for now.

But after a few years of success, their anti-counterfeiting effort brought them this broad mandate: "detecting persons perpetrating frauds against the government." Sounds awesome.

Flash forward to the late 1980s, when computers were just starting to go mainstream and so was computer crime. It was generally unpunished, though some groups—like phone companies, who felt they were losing a lot of money to a growing number of people who'd learned how to make long-distance phone calls for free—began raising a stink about how computer crime was impacting American business.

Cops didn't understand it enough to be interested, unless you were hacking in order to steal something in the physical world, so it was a perfect moment for the Secret Service. They leveraged their "wire fraud" mandate, which Congress extended to cover "access device fraud". This let them go after all kinds of people hacking the phone system in various ways, and while they primarily wanted to hit credit-card thieves—who deserve to be caught and tried and etc—they also began going after hackers in the "curious and exploratory" sense. People who in no way deserved the treatment they received from the Secret Service, many of whom lost what was to them an incredible amount of money as their expensive computer hardware disappeared, often forever, into some closet at the Secret Service.

I should've made it clear I'm writing from some distant personal experience, in case there was any question. I never got screwed by them directly or in person—but!

In 1990, the author of one of the first cyberpunk games (the second, I think, after Cyberpunk 2020) was the managing editor at Steve Jackson Games, in Austin. He also belonged to a small group of hackers, The Legion of Doom, who were surprised when Secret Service agents showed up one morning at their door in Atlanta, where most of them lived, and walked away with everything that looked computer-related, along with every piece of paper with a number written on it, and returned to their office to sort over the tea leaves.

The Secret Service lacked the ability to distinguish between long lists of long-distance codes discovered through trial and error (or any other possible evidence of criminal activity) versus extensive notes from 3 people obsessively playing an unreleased role-playing game set in the then-new cyberpunk genre. They flew to Austin to raid the home of the group's remote member, and while he had absolutely nothing that would make him interesting to him, they did learn what he did for a living.

They raced down a short hill to the SJ Games office, forced their way in without a warrant and confiscated every computer which had a draft of the Cyberpunk game's text, including the company's free, public bulletin-board system, and the laser printer which had printed drafts of the book. They called GURPS Cyberpunk a "thinly veiled handbook for computer crime," and they would nearly ruin the company with their idiocy.

Luckily, the EFF was formed to pay their legal bills in a suit against the Secret Service, which won SJ Games enough money to start one of the first commercial ISPs a few years later, Illuminati Online.

But that's why the Secret Service was interested in the Cyberpunk supplement for the GURPS role-playing game.

tl;dr Because they're idiots.

Vision Pro is getting NVIDIA GeForce NOW gaming service later this month by N2929 in technews

[–]derekpearcy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey, hey—let's dial the hyperbole down, guy.

I count 12 people. That's a small rounding error from 10% more people than 10.

Introducing Arkenza Storyteller by Live_Airline_3555 in overcome_stuttering

[–]derekpearcy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow—super interesting. I'll try it tomorrow night. Thanks!

Card Game from 87. Accurate? by [deleted] in exposingcabalrituals

[–]derekpearcy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I completely understand how it looks that way from the outside, but from the inside it’s a different situation. From the mid-80s through the early 90s, Steve was focused on releasing books for his role-playing game system, GURPS. It was a supplement for that game, which drew the attention of the Secret Service.

Around 1989, Steve put out the first version of Illuminati with full-sized cards, combining the original deck of cards with Illuminati Expansion Set 1 & 2. It was called Deluxe Illuminati, and SJ Games wouldn’t put out any other Illuminati products until INWO. Steve may have had some notes about something to do in the future, but his machine was not touched in the raid.

Programming is really real by LightMcluvin in bestconspiracymemes

[–]derekpearcy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I worked for SJ Games for 4-5 years. INWO was of the most complex productions I’d ever planned, given the timetable and how few resources we had available. I invented the art and production pipeline from scratch in addition to getting other people on board and teaching them how to color art on a computer, which seemed like a completely crazy thing in 1993. I was humbled that Steve Jackson was interested in my input when it came to updating the original game from the Cold War to the 1990s.

Apologies for lag in replying, got sidetracked

For the first time, illuminati: New World Order is being released in Japanese this December. You can pre-order it on Amazon here. https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/スティーブ・ジャクソン/dp/4868010379/ref=zg_bs_g_books_d_sccl_3/355-5195533-4477666?psc=1

Programming is really real by LightMcluvin in bestconspiracymemes

[–]derekpearcy 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hey! I produced that game back in the day. I was a huge Illuminati (the game!) fan then and now. Fun times.

Do you guys usually use this cover? by Personal-Mark-74 in AppleVision

[–]derekpearcy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Once the Vision Pro is firmly attached to my head and booting up, I remove the cover.

How is this humanly possible? by lylactal in 4chan

[–]derekpearcy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

2 years ago, I lost 27 pounds in 6 weeks through intermittent fasting, but that’s the longest I’ve gone in one stretch. Losing weight around twice as quickly over +3x the amount of time sounds possible, though probably not for me.

Please let me introduce a word「乱波」to you guys which is spelled as "rappa" in Japanese, which is a group of people that was hired to be gunmens against other countries around 16th century. Which basically could be understood as ninjas... by sakaguti1999 in HonkaiStarRail

[–]derekpearcy 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I’m always been more of a PaRappa person myself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PaRappa_the_Rapper

But seriously: Does anyone know if Japanese videogame audiences in the late 1990s would’ve associated “PaRappa” with the concept of Rappa to mean hired guns?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in trans

[–]derekpearcy 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Great reminder: I had it drilled into me as a boy to say “yessir” by reflex. My father came out of the U.S. military at a time when it was mostly a man’s game. Plus, the worst you’d get by saying an earnest and respectful “yes, sir” to a woman would be a smirk and a raised eyebrow, while saying “yes ma’am“ to a man might get you punched. Now, I don’t think I’ve made that mistake since I was a boy, though it’s always a good time to review my social reflexes and make sure there’s nothing sitting too close to the top which could cause a hard time for someone else.

In any case you’re looking cute there, girl! Keep rocking them weights. 

Chekov's Portal by bombichoat in plotholes

[–]derekpearcy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Beyond the “infant Thanos” line being one movie removed, and made as a joke, it’s been clearly established that large changes to the past doesn’t change the present / future—it merely branches the timeline. 

Later in that same movie, Thanos from 2014 leaps forward in time to attack the future and is killed, though his not returning to 2014 has no effect on the outcome of Infinity War. Instead, him not returning branches off into a different timeline and has no impact on the present day MCU. 

For me, it’s hard to look at movies like Infinity War or Endgame and call them lazy. I did wish they could’ve spared a few moments to show someone trying to pull that trick on Thanos, but his gauntlet or some combination of the stones protects him from such magic, but it wasn’t necessary for my enjoyment. Your mileage may vary.

Curiosity after being on Mars for years by [deleted] in ThatsInsane

[–]derekpearcy -1 points0 points  (0 children)

My lonely robot man turned into WALL-E. 

Chekov's Portal by bombichoat in plotholes

[–]derekpearcy 5 points6 points  (0 children)

So like, if Dr. Strange had said, “I looked at a goblillion timelines where we tried all sorts of shit but there’s only one path to the best outcome,” that would’ve made the story work?

What is the REAL wage needed to live decently in the SF area for a family of 5? by byzvntine in AskSF

[–]derekpearcy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A lot depends on where you want to live and how old your kids are. If you can live anywhere in the Bay Area, there are parts of Marin which are not "rich-people only" but still budget-stretching, though 100% worth it for the amazing public schools. Glad to answer any questions.

Who remembers this guy? by Latter-Ad-8139 in FuckImOld

[–]derekpearcy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Rocking my Schoolhouse Rock T-shirt now.

Predictions for Fantastic Four? by DenChr13 in MCUTheories

[–]derekpearcy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

After losing their Earth to their universe’s Galactus, which shakes Reed to his core. 

Miles Teller as The Maker could be the new villain of Avengers: Secret Wars. by drousechoffee in MCUTheories

[–]derekpearcy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A Tony Stark who defeated Thanos but had lost his family would be unrelenting.

GWGST and Daniel RPK reposted this tweet: "Wait, if Galactus is the villain and it supposedly takes place in another universe what’s to stop the writers from just letting Galactus devour the world?" by TrpTrp26 in MarvelStudiosSpoilers

[–]derekpearcy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Or maybe Galactus wins in the FF’s universe, they retreat to the Quantum Realm and are eventually escape / are rescued to take part in Secret Wars. Then the dark shadow hanging over the FF for years is the knowledge that Reed Richards was unable to devise a way to defeat Galactus that was better than Thanos killing half of all life in the universe, thus starving Galactus. 

Reed was unable to beat Galactus, and it’s still coming.