@tekniklr thank you for gifting us with the phrase “loot goblin sociopath”

Muppet Lord of the Rings, keep Ian McKellen

@microwavenby don’t forget to mention the same copy pasta abandoned facilities with the same corpse, loot, and slate locations spread across the galaxy

@tekniklr Not to give glib gamepinions, but I feel like loot goblin sociopaths have steadily become Bethesda’s core market. Which I’ve always thought was so weird, because the loot isn’t even that good!

@pizzapatch exactly! It’s just rng with the hopes of getting more rng to no other end! the rng loot doesn’t even reliably get better than the previous rng loot you already had!

ALSO, anyone who gave the advice to rush through #Starfield to the ending and NG+ is a loot goblin sociopath

That’s TERRIBLE advice if you approach Bethesda games as I do- from an RP/exploratory angle. As this thread has shown, NG+ retroactively made everything in an otherwise enjoyable game feel trite and pointless to me

But, you do you, I guess

@zenhob I think I might be a bit older than you so got a different story- also, my grandfather (who was in WWII) was mostly Belarusian (which at the time was part of the USSR/“Russia”)

@zenhob they taught me in elementary school that Russia was originally allied with Germany but switched sides; is that not what happened?

Cleaning up after the Tump administration is going slowly, but at least it's going.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/fcc-details-plan-to-restore-the-net-neutrality-rules-repealed-by-ajit-pai/

I am shocked that this video game is so nihilistic- absolutely nothing matters in any universe because you can always just say "fuck it" and leave to a new one.

What is the point?????

On the bright side, after yeeting myself to a new universe my game crashes infinitely less often.

Guess that implies it was crashing because Bethesda was keeping track of every state change I made on every pointless planet I pointlessly visited in my original universe!

The NG+ progression in #Starfield only makes narrative sense (if you are playing a character who has bonded with companions) if your primary companion/romantic interest is dead.

Why would a happy person who has found love deliberately and permanently ensure they would never see their loved one again?

If their partner has died though, hopping universes in the hopes to meet another version of them makes total sense.

It feels like typical Bethesda heavy handedness.

The Former Guy is out with a rant accusing networks like NBC and MSNBC of “country threatening treason.” And yet the media continues to act like he is some kind of normal candidate, and that there is an equivalence between his 91 criminal counts and 4 indictments and Biden’s age—which is just three years more than his own. It’s time for media to stop making this about a horse race and start making it about our democracy and our civil liberties. /1

In the U.S., you can order four free COVID tests here starting today: https://special.usps.com/testkits (which also has info on updated expiration dates for older tests)

As always...

thanks Sony for this very cursed captcha

We are currently witnessing the fallout from monopolization in the browser space. Back in 2007, Internet Explorer received much criticism for its phishing protection mechanism which transmitted all visited websites to Microsoft servers. Mozilla paired up with Google and designed a different system which performed most checks locally and preserved users’ privacy. That’s what healthy competition looks like.

Fast forward to 2023. Almost all web browsers in use are either Chrome or based on the Chromium browser engine. With the competition pretty much eliminated, Google is now pushing its “Enhanced Safe Browsing” down everyone’s throats – which is a nice sounding name for “every website you visit is sent to our servers.” The Internet Explorer approach from 2007 all over again, only that now it’s Google getting all this data. And they certainly won’t do anything evil with it. Yeah, sure.

Reminder: Firefox and Safari are the only remaining browsers worth noting which are not using Google’s browser engine.

#Chrome #Google #Mozilla #privacy

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-is-enabling-chrome-real-time-phishing-protection-for-everyone/

BREAKING: wind

That’s it, that’s the toot.

today a woman complimented my tattoos, and after I thanked her she added "that was a bold choice!" I guess to clarify that the first compliment, wasn't.

#Starfield has sweet rolls, ripe for stealing

Starfield showing off some shockingly apposite emergent simulation behavior here: my current crewmate, seeing me spending easily the next five minutes wandering around picking up everything not nailed down in this random facility, has just decided to sit the fuck down

Personally I'm ok with X getting a banking license because society would be much safer if Elon Musk stans didn't have any money left.

Everybody go update your iPhones.

The new 0-click vuln exploited by NSO Group is sent via a malicious image in iMessage.

https://citizenlab.ca/2023/09/blastpass-nso-group-iphone-zero-click-zero-day-exploit-captured-in-the-wild/

@raccoon I only understand some of this explanation but the faster than light travel being possible but faster than light communication not being possible instantly made sense to me when it was dropped in game; like a spaceship can go through a bespoke wormhole, but that doesn't make sense for light beams or radio waves

did my original post make it sound like I thought it was weird for there to be faster than light travel but not faster than light communication?

So an interesting bit of #Starfield lore I found out in game yesterday is that humanity has discovered faster than light travel but NOT faster than light communication.

Which both gives plenty of opportunities for questing hither and yon; and raises interesting sci-fi questions of how that might be true in physics, and also how humanity would try to work around it with like a space drone pony express or something.

what fool called it fetlife instead of kinkedin

A future where a silenced shotgun makes sense
#starfield

today I broke someone's brain by pointing out that candy corn made from high fructose corn syrup is literally candy corn

Anyway, I am really appreciating how much #Starfield feels like #the_outer_worlds in small ways, and like #no_mans_sky in big ways

I just thought of a mnemonic to keep The Outer Worlds and Outer Wilds straight -

The Outer W*o*rlds - made by *O*bsidian

Outer W*i*lds - *I*ndie

Hope that helps

#the_outer_worlds #outer_wilds

In general Starfield does a good job with character creation and gender/pronoun options, BUT while your character isn’t voiced as such the pitch of the vocalizations you make (punches, grunts, coughs, etc) seems to be entirely based on pronoun.

I was wondering why my macho beardy muscle thembo was coughing and punching like Minnie Mouse, and this is why!

Luckily, you can re-enter the character creator and change all the options at a shop (Enhance!) in town.

#starfield

Clearly this is what the Shapiros and Rowlings of the world and their associated lampreys mean by “go woke, go broke”.

Excuse me?
Google now moderates your synched bookmarks? The hell?

To clarify: this is a Google Save Collection, which is one of the mechanisms Google syncs bookmarks via. They're not the default in Chrome (but accessible), but they are the only bookmark facility in the Google Search app, using the standard bookmark icon.

lol, my cat cared naught for the thunder but when the rain started dumping buckets he did a double take at the window and fled across the apartment 😂

Biking to work this morning I saw someone commuting on a tall bike, which used to be a pretty common sight in Portland like ten years ago but isn't something I've seen in years.

Love to see it.

Every #NYT story lately.

I have no idea where this image originated and take no credit.

"At first we believed that programmers were latently sexist/transphobic, and due to their demographics had never thought about the fact that minoritized communities might need to change their name or gender marker. However with further research, we discovered the problem was larger: Programmers have never thought about anything, at all"

The abandoned Packard Plant in Detroit

Gallery: https://www.abandonedamerica.us/packard-motor-car-company

@matt remember to shut down your computer on or before December 31

lol