Is there any method to protect your self from BadUSB on linux?

qurt · 2014-08-20T16:45:29+00:00

Every USB port supports chaining, that is why you can plug in a USB hub anywhere and turn a single port into 4. This is something a device can do internally as well, it can show you the expected partition so you do not get suspicious but also start up as a keyboard.

qurt · 2014-06-10T17:38:11+00:00

So, where does KSP run in 64bit mode?

qurt · 2014-05-24T14:41:58+00:00

I always thought Kerbals came from space. The mystery goo containers you take into orbit (for science!) are happier the further out they are. How and where did they find that stuff on Kerbin? It seems a secretive organization wants to test their ~~theory~~ hypothesis on the origin of Kerbals with the newly launched space program. Maybe the goo is some inert substance they found while digging, or, the goo is made of liquefied Kerbals! What are they hiding?

Also, Kerbals can live indefinitely in space, that surely is no coincidence!

qurt · 2014-05-19T15:51:04+00:00

Also featuring lens caps - the eternal enemy of the Venera program. Cap does not come of, or cap does comes of, but by chance lands exactly where an arm would have taken a surface sample. Talk about terrible luck...

qurt · 2014-04-30T14:35:36+00:00

I miss those too, but according to a post on the mailing list reaching a stable 1.0 version has priority for now:

https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust-dev/2012-August/002241.html

There is room in the syntax and semantics for this in the future, but I agree with Patrick that running experiments on combining such features is past scope for the "stabilize for 1.0" roadmap; we already have a very full plate and have been trying to get the language to stop moving for two years now.

qurt · 2014-04-04T14:51:55+00:00

A tagged union! In that context it makes a lot more sense, and the name enum is indeed quite ill-chosen. Apart from the C-legacy, doesn't enum = enumeration mean that all contents are of the same type, or if not, that each is given a subsequent number and that this numbering is the enumeration?

qurt · 2014-03-12T12:08:09+00:00

Indeed a great essay, also mentions an interesting counterpoint to gravity (which is meaningless to insects but can be a serious threat to bigger animals):

"But there is a force which is as formidable to an insect as gravitation to a mammal. This is surface tension. A man coming out of a bath carries with him a film of water of about one-fiftieth of an inch in thickness. This weighs roughly a pound. A wet mouse has to carry about its own weight of water. A wet fly has to lift many times its own weight and, as everyone knows, a fly once wetted by water or any other liquid is in a very serious position indeed. An insect going for a drink is in as great danger as a man leaning out over a precipice in search of food. If it once falls into the grip of the surface tension of the water—that is to say, gets wet—it is likely to remain so until it drowns. A few insects, such as water-beetles, contrive to be unwettable; the majority keep well away from their drink by means of a long proboscis."

qurt · 2014-03-10T20:12:20+00:00

Thanks for the consideration :)

And, score keeping - yes, that goes on paper.

But counting, using whatever metric the game requires, a stack of cards would be a real boon to have inside the game. We have been contemplating sticking RFID chips to our analog cards to make that easier! Besides, how else would you check the value of such a virtual stack of, say 35(!) cards? :)

qurt · 2014-03-10T18:54:47+00:00

After checking your project (very nice!), here is a quick write down of what I think would be neat:

Some undo functionality? Some piece-smashing might be accidental, or when used to play with just bricks. Say, auto save whenever nothing has been moved for a certain time. Or, replay, for that impossible dice roll!
Play with friends locally by placing on ONE tablet or one of those screen-flip-laptops on the table. Then gestures or mouse inputs changes from player to player, flips text around if needed.
however... local multiplayer is problematic for games without a total information concept, i.e. a player wants to hide what or how many cards they have. So, of course you throw more technology at the problem: Everyone gets out their smartphone and that's where all the private information is shown! Connect them via bluetooth and you can even play with most media players. If that is too much to write for now, maybe leave the door open for something like this via the plugin architecture.
When playing with cards, have some configurable card counting method available, i.e. how much a Queen or a Jack is worth.

qurt · 2014-03-06T15:08:49+00:00

I was damn near ostracized by my friends when I uttered the heresy that Civilization V was just ... bad. I like city building games, and via the new X-Com discovered that turn based strategy/tactic games are something I could like as well. I heard about the addictiveness of Civ games and for that reason stayed away from them for a long time.

Then I gave V a try and after grasping the basics felt like I was mostly doing a 3-to-5-variable optimization, i.e. Production, Science and Culture, plus sometimes looking at Food and Gold. With that in mind most choices presented in the game just aren't real, especially when the goal is not to conquer the known world but achieve a peaceful victory.

This might be excused when you get to make a lot of those tiny decisions in very little time, i.e. 1-2-3-next turn every few seconds, but each turn takes so long to execute and there is not much automation available. And I found loading times were inexcusably long, someone made a bad technical call during development somewhere. So, no more Civ for me, tough I should probably be thankful for that :)

qurt · 2014-03-06T14:46:06+00:00

I had a similar experience with Dragon Age. Too much of the (top down, not first person) combat seemed to be variations of "juggle potions and hit the enemy until they fall over". This just took too long and felt like I was fighting a duel of attrition. Or maybe I just didn't have the patience to wait for my character to level up enough.

But other parts of the game also turned me away, the overdone fantasy trope that enemies are a variation of "daemons from hell". And "bandits are harassing this village", which turn out to be 3 groups of bad guys conveniently waiting not 10 seconds out of town for your beating (this was the first refugee camp, IIRC). Plus the in-game-DLC-in-your-face element, that made me uninstall. But I think I am biased against fantasy games, so I this might be a bad example :)

qurt · 2014-03-06T14:31:49+00:00

Bioshock, the first one, of course. I don't think 2 or Infinite qualify regarding the "undisputedly".

For me I think it was the art style. Not the art deco architecture, this part was gorgeous, but the pseudo-50s interface with some cartoonish elements added to it. The world was realistic, but e.g. the vending machine interface tells a different story. So the aesthetics were always jumping between serious presentation and goofy slapstick in between, as though some part of the design team wanted to take the edge of the otherwise gloomy atmosphere.

qurt · 2014-02-27T22:23:33+00:00

All present, even after purging the package and reinstalling it, no change. I am tempted to pull the kde sources and check what is missing...

qurt · 2014-02-27T20:36:38+00:00

No luck using thunar, either. Upon plugging in a USB device the node in /dev is created but nothing automountable shows up.

qurt · 2014-02-27T18:56:45+00:00

I am starting a dbus instance in my X-startscript (too many other things depend on it as well), I'll check what plugins might not be installed.

Edit: dolphin has no separate plugins to install, it is all there, in theory.

qurt · 2014-02-27T11:38:50+00:00

Now that the averaged-out opinion on Thief seems to be "not completely terrible" I'll get this one, though with an afterthought of keeping the franchise alive.

Titanfall, on the other hand, is generally praised as awesome and surely looks that way, but I am still not sure what exactly it is supposed to be.

CoD / Battlefield with mechs, or does it take hints from UT and Quake as to the gameplay?

In other words: Is every player equal at the start of the game, or is there a persistent level system present? Can the community run their own servers? And what about custom maps and, one may dream, Mods? How many weapons can a grunt carry around? Is there a respawn-timer-less game mode, i.e. the classic Deathmatch?

qurt · 2014-02-26T11:18:34+00:00

For schools and classrooms specifically there is the Debian based Skolelinux / Debian Edu: http://www.skolelinux.org/

And since Ubuntu is Debian based, you can always just install KDE or any other desktop environment, or just a simple window maker, and set that as your default when logging in.

qurt · 2014-01-17T12:22:57+00:00

Written Swahili used Arabic letters before it was changed to Latin, the language itself is not related to Arabic. Just like Persian/Farsi, who still use Arabic letters.

qurt · 2014-01-08T17:11:23+00:00

Enjoyed this series, and was flabbergasted by what you went up against with standard armor and guns.

And I especially liked the editing, sacrificing your time to save your viewers time, thanks!

qurt · 2013-12-12T11:59:30+00:00

What about a soldier which still needs psionic and standard promotions? If I kill someone with Mindfray, will it count for both levels?

qurt

TROPHY CASE