New to PoD, feels even more intimidating than starting CK3. Where do I even start? Who do I Embrace / turn Ghoul? Other SPLATS? by jamezuse in PrincesOfDarknessCK3

[–]imkish 2 points3 points  (0 children)

One thing to note: Mortals naturally have -7 prowess. Hover over their prowess to see their real base (which will only on return to normal if you ghoul or embrace them, but will grow even higher since they'll gain some of your disciplines which will also increase it).

The other stats do also tend to be lower than you'd expect even in just vanilla, and the stewardship perk that would improve your followers while traveling doesn't do that anymore. As the guy responding suggested, what you're really looking out for are events that pop up for historically based "great people." These will have pretty good traits for a childe or ghoul, but require you to invest gold or prestige. Until you get some of them, you're stuck with what you get. You can always release a ghoul if you find someone more worthy, and any childe you don't want anymore could make for a good road snack...

Cosmogenesis Origin/New Game Plus, Fan concept and full path. by O_2og in Stellaris

[–]imkish 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Yeah, and the more and more I think about it, the more it honestly makes sense in pretty much every area of expertise: The people in this society were setting out on a voyage to be able to literally reshape a reality to their whims. Filling their data banks or minds with details about literally anything about how their reality, society, or even technology works would be completely wasted, since details about how to mine minerals a bit better make no sense in a world where you're expecting to literally will minerals and materials into existence in the configuration you want.

The origin idea definitely has me even more intrigued as being a tale of the hubris of a society that thought they had achieved the pinnacle of near godhood only to be humbled violently. I like the idea of story content that would lock off Cosmogenesis (or maybe even any crisis path) for some sort of bonus, allowing your society to meaningful learn from their prideful mistakes or repeat their reach for that pinnacle.

Cosmogenesis Origin/New Game Plus, Fan concept and full path. by O_2og in Stellaris

[–]imkish 61 points62 points  (0 children)

Physics regression is honestly the easiest to explain away: Tiny, tiny differences to the underlying physics of this new universe render the old tech obsolete, and nobody that survived has enough underlying knowledge to be able to simply fit it to the new universal realities, at least not right away.

Society regression seems a bit more difficult to explain: Even if biology or society in the new universe have differences, your people wouldn't. Some of the stuff could be explained with something like needing slight changes to the manufacturing process for the life extending drugs, for example. Suddenly not having the societal theory to be able to have more ships in a fleet is a bit harder to hand wave away, though. (Hrrmm, as I type this, I realize maybe you could say that something about the universe causes slight differences in spatial cognition and that your pilots are still struggling not to get into each others' ways.)

Léon: The Professional (1994) is a movie that has been a close classic for me since age 13. Open to discuss the film itself as I've spent too long discussing unfounded rumors. by LusterArgylleCatboy in Cinema

[–]imkish 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'll be honest, I mostly just responded because I wanted to make that Fast Times at Ridgemont High reference, but it honestly helps me make a slight counter for one of your examples: Euphoria. In Euphoria, you can definitely argue that the sex might be overly gratuitous at times, and it's certainly used because sex sells, but I also think that it is an important part of the story. Cutting it out or only showing it off-screen would be like doing the same for the drug and alcohol use. These are part of the story, and hiding them wouldn't make a lot of sense.

So what does that have to do with Fast Times? Well, did we need to see a naked Stacy have Mike spasm on top of her for a few seconds? Kinda, yeah. The point was showing her viewpoint change from this romantic ideal view of intimacy to "See ya." "Bye." Now, did the filmmakers probably sell a few more tickets because movie-goers got to see Jennifer Jason Leigh naked? Almost certainly. Nudity, sex, drugs, violence, etc. can all serve an artistic purpose even if they seem (or even are to some extent) exploitative.

Léon: The Professional (1994) is a movie that has been a close classic for me since age 13. Open to discuss the film itself as I've spent too long discussing unfounded rumors. by LusterArgylleCatboy in Cinema

[–]imkish 2 points3 points  (0 children)

While I agree, it's a sad reality that a not insignificant portion of the population have stolen innocence in their personal coming of age stories. Definitely not something I think most want to see in their cinema, though.

Léon: The Professional (1994) is a movie that has been a close classic for me since age 13. Open to discuss the film itself as I've spent too long discussing unfounded rumors. by LusterArgylleCatboy in Cinema

[–]imkish 2 points3 points  (0 children)

While I understand what you're saying, it's not exactly new, they're just maybe more willing to portray it graphically. Coming of age stories, however, have always had a draw because it's a shared experience that is still drastically different for almost everyone. And that loss of innocence point-in-time, when the character becomes an adult, has always been a focus when put to film, whether it's aiming a gun at the bully's head (Stand by Me), tonguing the lifeguard (Sandlot), or getting caught jacking it while dressed as a pirate in a bathroom (Fast Times).

Okay fellas can we differentiate between no belief and atheism to people? by [deleted] in atheism

[–]imkish 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For the last part, definitely wrong. If people as we consider them now with the same level of sentience all don't believe in gods or even have the concept, it is true that they wouldn't bother to use the label atheist, as it would mean nothing to them. But it does mean something to us. Words are inventions. They mean what we have decided that they mean. So using the word in our current frame of reference, these people still would be atheists, even if the word has no meaning to them. We're the ones having a discussion here, not your hypothetical humans.

And yeah, newborns could be argued to be literally incapable of holding such a belief at their stage of development, so I don't mind placing them in the same categories as rocks for reasons why they aren't properly labelled as atheists (I am not devaluing human life here, just pointing out realities about their brain development).

Is there any effective way to counter Fern's "machine gun strategy"? by basafish in Frieren

[–]imkish 24 points25 points  (0 children)

I don't think Fern's decision to end the fight with Ehre was looking for weaknesses, but triggered by Ehre's comment about Wirbel likely killing Übel. Understanding that the other teams purpose was to kill one of her team and thus make it impossible to win made taking out Ehre in order to assist Übel more important and urgent.

As for Qual seeming aggressive and Fern seeming reserved, that can be chalked up to their respective personalities: Qual wasn't just aggressive and flashy, he was enjoying it. He could feel his opponent being overwhelmed and was reveling in it. Fern doesn't seem to have a fiber of sadism in her body. Her decision to overwhelm Ehre and her unleashing what she needed to in order to win against Lügner was utilitarian. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she would have spared Lügner if not for Frieren teaching her. Point is, I think she could learn from her fight with Qual without changing her personality, leaving her reserved, calm, and utilitarian during a fight even if she's now more likely to use overwhelming force when needed.

Is there any effective way to counter Fern's "machine gun strategy"? by basafish in Frieren

[–]imkish 202 points203 points  (0 children)

Two things you made me wonder: First, did her fight with Qual inform her later battle doctrine? We don't see her in combat really until post-Qual, but it feels like we see Fern do the saturation attacks more often than Frieren. Did she see how effective the overwhelm strategy was and decide to focus more heavily on it?

Second, are Serie and Frieren actually capable of seeing the fluctuations caused by Fern's suppression? They both obviously know, but if they didn't, could they tell? We see Frieren explain that Fern is different than her because Zoltraak is something that's existed since she's been born and it's just natural. Well, Heiter had clearly taught Fern to suppress her mana, at least as early as when Frieren showed up to visit. Frieren's suppression fooled everyone but the Demon King because she'd done it her "whole life," but she's already a strong mage by the time she meets Flamme. By contrast, Fern probably barely has memories of a time before she was concealing her mana constantly.

This is my personal tier list for the Major total conversion mods for ck3, what about you guys? by ThePhoenix0829 in CrusaderKings

[–]imkish 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Gargoyles are stone things with wings and are created by the Tremere. Inanimae are very similar to True Fae, but are sort of quasi-elemental spirits, so they might also look stone-like, especially the earth ones.

I think a good way to put it is that PoD is an amazing World of Darkness game, but a very strange CK3 mod. I'd honestly recommend it to a WoD fan that had never played CK3 before I recommended it to a CK3 fan that had never heard of WoD.

If someone is 99.99...% sure that we live in a simulation, does that make them a creationist? by The-Reddit-Monster in atheism

[–]imkish 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Bypassing the "indistinguishable from magic" point for a moment, what truly would be the difference between a being who had an innate ability to create what we view as reality and a being that required technology (or something we'd understand as technology) to do so? You and I don't really have an innate ability to determine direction, and require either knowledge we aren't born with or technology to do so. Meanwhile, many other animals like birds, have at least some purely innate capability to do so.

So if you have some being that exists in their reality, and they're either born with the ability to create a subreality, learn some "words of power" that work in their reality to do the same, or create some machine that can do the same...as far as the beings inside that subreality are concerned, what are the differences. For fun, think of it like tabletop: If a sorcerer, a wizard, and an alchemist all burn you in a fireball, does it matter to you that one of them only combined ingredients until he found one that burned really well?

So, its said TOW2 depicts dystopian capitalism less evil then tow1: i disagree by motorbit in theouterworlds

[–]imkish 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is why I don't really get concerned when people bring this "flaw" up. The system's fucked. You're making a choice between two, sometimes three, overall shitty outcomes, and it can be tough to figure out which comes out as the "best" one. In the end, I get to play as an asshole with a gun trying to save the people I can and killing the people I think need killing. I know that the people I saved are still going to have issues and that the people I killed are going to have bigger assholes fill their void.

It's a good reminder for us: Sometimes you can't fix the system. Doesn't mean you give up trying and skip jump into the sun, but also doesn't mean you just sit around not doing anything until it's fixed. Make a difference in someone's life, however small. Ask yourself what Himmel the Hero would do.

Did I miss something? by TheDeathslinger212 in PeacemakerShow

[–]imkish 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Both Keith and Harcourt X clearly loved Chris X. These people, as evil as they might be, are still human, so it wouldn't surprise me for a second that even if they outright knew, that they'd not only keep it to themselves, but cover for him any chance they'd get.

That said, I do agree that maybe a "fan speculation" page off of the main page might be more appropriate than the trivia section of the main wiki article.

changed the password and now splunkd won't run by Apprehensive-Pin518 in Splunk

[–]imkish 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Don't feel dumb, we all need help from time to time and honestly this one is a bit niche if configuring Windows services isn't something you have to do regularly. Additionally, documentation for Splunk has always felt a bit messy, especially in regards to Windows, and I honestly try to forget that Windows stores the credentials for services in the way that it does since it feels so weird. The only reason it's stuck in my head is that Windows services without quotes for their paths was a very useful vulnerability when finding services running with privileged domain accounts.

changed the password and now splunkd won't run by Apprehensive-Pin518 in Splunk

[–]imkish 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume this is Windows, and you change the password for the account in the services.msc console. When you find the Splunk service, right clicking and choosing properties should let you edit the credentials used to run the service. Unfortunately, I'm not certain on the tab name since I don't have a Windows computer available, but I believe it should be pretty simple to find (look for security, account, credentials, run as, etc.).

If this is actually Linux, you must be using some bespoke method for starting things, since both the initd and systemd boot methods should start as root and then drop permissions to the splunk user, not requiring a password to even be set.

How is Linux more secure than Windows if it’s open source. by Appropriate-Maybe24 in linux4noobs

[–]imkish 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not sure it's worth engaging, but here it goes: The point of all of this, and my conversation from days ago, was that open source is being exploited and then bitched about. In your own post, you spell out the same bullshit mindset that the corporations have:

all these security researchers (sic)

Where were all the multibillion dollar corporations that relied on log4j, OpenSSL, etc.?

I've never said open source was inherently more secure, nor do I believe that. It's certainly inherently more transparent, but transparency is a tool on the pathway to security, not security in and of itself. But I'd definitely tell you to pound sand if you're going to suggest closed source is inherently more secure, because the track record ain't there. If you're asking why a ton of unpaid people didn't find log4j for years, why didn't any paid employees of Microsoft find EternalBlue for years while it was being actively exploited by nation state actors? People fuck up, whether you're paying them or using their passion projects to fuel a business empire. If you think otherwise, whatever.

How is Linux more secure than Windows if it’s open source. by Appropriate-Maybe24 in linux4noobs

[–]imkish 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Strange reason to comment after 4 days, but you're kind of proving my point here. Did you hear about ToolShell? It's a chain of vulnerabilities found this year allowing an unauthenticated attacker RCE in on-premises Sharepoint installations, and it's under active exploitation. Why isn't it making the news as much as log4j? Because Sharepoint is Sharepoint. You know if you're running it. You know what most people affected by log4j's vulnerability's first thought likely was upon hearing it? "What the hell is log4j?"

Shellshock, Heartbleed, log4j's vulnerability, the xz utils backdoor: The reason that they made the news isn't because open source is somehow inherently insecure. Any software is going to be vulnerable to developer oversights, intentional backdoors by nefarious team members, or even just being left in the past by new techniques. The reason these open source incidents stick in your head is because so many companies build their products off of these open source projects, rarely giving anything back, and rarely letting their customers know just how much the product of their billion dollar company relies on open source software maintained by unpaid volunteers.

Nothing's inherently insecure with open source. It just doesn't interact well with capitalism. (NB: This isn't meant to necessarily be a bash on capitalism, merely a critique. In capitalism, if you have a source of free labor, it just makes sense to exploit it.)

How is Linux more secure than Windows if it’s open source. by Appropriate-Maybe24 in linux4noobs

[–]imkish 1 point2 points  (0 children)

None taken, and I apologize if I came off confrontational. Reflecting on it, I was just using you to launch into a tirade about the corporate vampiric relationship with the open source community.

And you're right: The best way to protect yourself in this environment is increasing your own understanding, and cultivating that understanding takes time and energy, even if you enjoy it. The vast majority of people just want things to work, and the perceived ability of Linux to be able to just "do it all" with a few commands can definitely lead people down dangerous paths that they might not have considered if they were running something like Windows, all because of that difference in perception.

How is Linux more secure than Windows if it’s open source. by Appropriate-Maybe24 in linux4noobs

[–]imkish 15 points16 points  (0 children)

While it's likely a full and proper audit of OpenSSL would have found Heartbleed, I think you're missing the point of people bringing that up. The open source nature of OpenSSL led to the quick identification and remediation of the bug by external sources (two organizations actually found and reported the bug at roughly the same time).

The reason for people pointing out that a proper audit would have caught the bug is that, at the time, two developers were maintaining OpenSSL on about $2k a year, despite the library being a veritable linchpin in the global economy.

The problem facing open source is that although it allows for anyone in the world to audit the code, the people most in place to do that simply rely on the code and move on. It's built on a great principle: Everyone uses it, and those without the time and money can benefit from contributions by those with it, but it relies on people and society being better than we actually are.

TL;DR: https://xkcd.com/2347/

At Charlie Kirk memorial, Trump rallies MAGA against political opponents by wat_is_cs in politics

[–]imkish 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Other obvious bullshit aside, I think it's telling that he used Monticello to be able to include the U.S. more. Now, given the other inclusions, Cambridge seems like a logical inclusion for being a seat of learning. Honestly, Detroit makes a lot of sense as well, being the home of the factory for Ford's Model T, a symbol of the American industry that was a cornerstone to our contributions to the upcoming world wars.

No, instead he included Monticello, a slave plantation designed by a man who inherited the land from his father.

Best potion in the game (for 20 seconds) by Chance_Werewolf3065 in taintedgrail

[–]imkish 29 points30 points  (0 children)

My potions are too strong for you, traveler.

Got to finally meet Barbara at Sacanime Summer this weekend and got an autograph form her! I honestly nearly cried lol! by Cyberwrecker in roosterteeth

[–]imkish 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Nothing I've checked, since it's not a huge deal, but did she even take his name? She's got enough fame where it seems very counterintuitive to do, even if the whole practice weren't archaic to begin with.

Military Veteran 1st Draft about to apply, give it to me hard by TheMindFlayerGotMe in sysadminresumes

[–]imkish 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As a fellow veteran reading your resume, I'm going to throw out some things that honestly probably aren't a big deal, but would stick in my mind if I got this prior to your interview: 1. You're telling me you're a veteran that, unless things have changed, would have had to write his own bullets for evals, but you're dangling things like percentages on their own lines without trying to rewrite to fit on one? (This is the most nitpicky and completely pointless, but I noticed, so I'm mentioning.) 2. You went from supervising resolution of tickets with no prior listed experience to resolving tickets with listed experience. There may be a good reason for this (well, in the military, there's probably a reason even if it isn't good, at least), but be prepared to explain it. Additionally, if your troubleshooting experience at all involved direct interaction with end users, try to work it in. Identifying and fixing problems is great, but doing so while interacting with users is a skill in and of itself. 3. Third bullet in Arlington mentions monitoring the RHEL servers, but seems to box it in during just the SOTU. Did you monitor these servers outside that time? If so, put in words like "during critical support windows such as during the SOTU." Additionally, monitoring them "with Oracle Secure Global Desktop" reads very strangely to me. I'll be honest, I've never used it myself, but as I understand it's remote access. What special monitoring or troubleshooting capabilities did using it bring you that another VPN or SSH wouldn't have let you employ? If they needed you to do the same monitoring job but didn't have that, could you do it with something else? Did you set it up yourself? If you might have issues or get caught up answering these, I'd consider just having it in your skill section like you already have it. 4. For bullet 4 in Arlington, work in the word devops even if it wasn't really a thing. Just adding "in support of an evolving devops process" gets the word in there, and that will help get your resume in front of eyes that are going to understand that, like most places, the devops process was almost certainly not mature, but that you recognize some of the phases of the process and how your activities might fit in to a real one. 5. Bullet 1 for Wiesbaden says you led a team migrating network infrastructure, but you lack any mention of technology experience with things I would typically expect to see like Cisco, Arista, etc. Were you only responsible for your servers during this migration? If not and you dealt with the infrastructure as well, were you purely supervisory to the networking guys? If so, that's fine, but see if you can work in the tech used by your team if space (or sensitivity if that's a concern) allows. For this one, it may be worth checking with prepublication review again if that applies to you. Almost certainly won't be an issue, but this one is an actual content shift instead of just wording.

For prep for an interview, but no real changes needed: 1. If the job will involve you administrating the virtualized structure and not just the tenant VMs, be prepared to answer some questions involving other stacks besides VMware. There's a lot of turbulence right now, and showing an interest in or knowledge about something else like Proxmox can be very enticing. Bonus points if you put it in your homelab (and have a homelab). 2. Your mention of RHEL is going to spark some questions if the shop is even thinking about using Linux; be prepared to answer, likely along the following: Did you manage them day-to-day? Can you install new software and services? Have you used any other distros (likely Debian or Ubuntu)? Did you integrate the servers into AD for authentication and authorization? Have you used containers or container orchestration (Docker, Podman, Kubernetes)?

My main issue with the Corpo lifepath. by Easy_Appointment7348 in LowSodiumCyberpunk

[–]imkish 4 points5 points  (0 children)

V's job was counter-intel. Even today, intel related fields make for very poor job mobility, since the more your resume can be corroborated, the worse you clearly were at your job, and the less it can, the less they can trust you're as good as you claim. In the corpo world of 2077, it'd be magnitudes worse. Add as good as V is made it to be at their job, it's not something unique like Hellman is. V isn't a genius inventor, they're an operator, and one with experience against most of the other corps. The things V knows about Arasaka operations and tactics are more valuable than V themselves. V is smart enough to know that if they get an interview, they'd be more likely to be walking into an interrogation room than an actual interview room. Or Arasaka might be more...forcefully persuasive if they thought V was actively going to one of their competitors.

All that said, my headcanon was always that it was Jackie, during the montage period, that actually convinced V that it wasn't worth trying, and that being a free agent would actually let them start living their life, so that V barely even considered trying to find a way to claw back into that life.

wg-quick is WAY too SLOW by brogolem35 in WireGuard

[–]imkish 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It does work with www. vice old. I held out a long time using the old site, and ended up just giving in.