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Except nobody at all was suggesting that the US is a more repressive state than China, that's just Bruce being his disingenous self. Not being fine with giving our Corporate Overlords the ability to assume direct control over our computers (which is what Zoraptor expressed, in part) has nothing to do with approving repressive policies or genocide. Here's the one time the slippery slope argument makes sense, and nobody's using it because "China way worse" - which is really true, but by far and large also irrelevant to criticisms of US espionage and security equipment compromising backdoors. Like I said, I don't want Microsoft to be able to restrict what I can do on my computers. I also don't want to live in China, and I don't approve of their politics. These are not mutually exclusive. Also, wat, how are you of all people not concerned about the government's ability to spy on you willy nilly, or dicate what you can or cannot do on any electronic device you have? Do you trust them to not abuse the ability to do so? Bruce sure does. I don't... nobody should. Unless I misread you, then I apologize in advance.

Does anyone else think that Hoonding is really just JESawyer's burner account?

The funny thing is that Xiaomi probably does have residual censorship software on it, since it is a requirement for them being sold in China. But that's to prevent Chinese people doing things like compare Xi to a chubby fictional ursine or sharing pictures of tank man, not to delete a Lithuanian's A A Milne collection and it's pretty much certain that they simply cannot do that outside of China. They've got plenty of utterly counterproductive wumao shouty men to complain about the Winnie the Pooh comparisons in the western internet instead. That's both low practical effect and extremely low exposure compared to all the backdoors US companies have in them. You can barely buy a chip without a built in NSA backdoor now- eg IME/ PSP for Intel/ AMD- nor networking gear, and pretty much the sole reason for Windows 11 existing is to force default adoption of the thoroughly compromised TPM in the name of 'security'. OK, that last one is also largely to give MS the ability to vet everything on your computer which has a commercial purpose too, but you can readily guess who will be piggybacking that capability and it won't be PLA Unit 61398. Until they inevitably hack either the NSA (as the Russians did, and for which you can thank most of the spate of ransomware attacks that use filched NSA tools) or the backdoors directly, at least, and assuming they haven't already.

Oh I wasn’t commenting about anything in particular that has been discussed. Just responding to Bruce in general. I have heard a lot of stupid stuff said about the United States here and elsewhere. I’ve even said a few of them myself.

Yeah, you just beat me to it. I was just going to say that nobody said or suggested the US is more repressive than China and even if they did the fact that you can say that publicly means that it's not true.

You guys work on interesting stuff. I'm working with an application still using TLS 1. The long term plan is to use https for our web portals! Guess should be glad we have a 64-bit version...

Normally I hold of booze until after 9, but I guess 10am will have to do.

After 19 years Metroid 5 is almost here.

Orville returns March 10th almost 3 years after the last episode aired

We talked about getting together again last night. Maybe next week. Have to work out the details. I’m up for another car ride.

I'm not more concerned about an NSA backdoor than I am about a Chinese one. From an outsider's point of view, there is no difference at all.

I don't know how all this works but I'd like to see butterflies added in and being able to use the wings for stained glass windows. With the lighting in the game it'd be awesome to see that inside the house in the early morning hours or evening.

So, base game has strengthened bond working correctly. First version of yours made double strengthened bond on the pet. Or adds a new strengthened bond that stacked with defensive bond maybe ? New version let the old strengthened bond but have a new item that only exists to remove defensive bond. Just to be sure I got it. Edit : anyway, it works. Version 1.5.0 is on the way. Edit edit : Version 1.5.0 is live. It only merges the content of Highest priority package into Buffs package, which removes the special loading instructions. Deadfire Balance Polishing Mod at Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) Thanks @Noqn

Yeah, no, my bad. I thought Nestlé bought Ferrero, but that was only an offer, and Nestlé ended up selling part of their portfolio to Ferrero. Well, then it's only owned by a company running a massive marketing campaign making chocolate and sugar appear to be a healthy diet for children, and not a company actively killing African babies. That's a major improvement, but ultimately still not... ideal. Peanuts, hazelnuts, raisins and almonds are most common, but other varieties exist too. Dipped in Belgian chocolate and coated with shellac (both for protection and the glazy look, like with jelly beans). They look something like that: Kind of like M&Ms, only, uhm, good. On on topic news, I watched the first episode of Steins;Gate. I have on idea what the hell is going on. I don't think I've ever been as confused about what's going on in an anime, and that includes Revoltionary Girl Utena. And they microwave bananas.

I would love to see this!!! I'm personally more partial to a Kusarijitte, but that's just because it's a bit more realistic to use IRL than the version with a kama. In game however, bring it on!

add some kusarigama in the game, and they might work as climbing picks and weapons.

Exactly. I only need to cast Frenzy once. I used Tempered Fury. It was quite nice for the part of the game where I had no Blood Thirst yet. Because of the skeletons it triggers all the time. Edit: eh - I just realized that Temper does exactly the same but with the deflection penalty. Heh - as a Brute my deflection isn't superbad (also have Refreshing Defense) - so I guess Tempered Fury is worth the enchantment costs maybe.

To each their own. Are those like chocolate covered almonds or filled things? My search results show candy coated chocolate. Man, I just went down the rabbit hole to see if Nutela was owned by Nestlé. Lmao. Anyways chocolate ice creams are definitely in the top tier for me, along with caramel, bourbon, strawberry, or cherry.

Crunchy is probably the wrong way to describe it, but I mean, cracking the outer chocolate layer that's kind of hard, only to get to a chewy gummy bear is... not an appealing idea. Oh... hmmm. Belgian chocolate dragees are to die for. They're also really on the upper end of empty calories... I avoid going near them, like, all the time. Heh. I like all sorts of ice cream, but chocolate is up there with my other favorites. Like mango and, uhm, nutella flavored ice. Which is... angelic. Really. Too bad its made with a product from the absolute worst of companies. Meh. Although, I'm guessing most "nutella" ice cream never saw any nutella, that's way too expensive.

Well.. we have versions that use TLS 1.2, that counts right ? It's our clients that suck. Yes.

Finished Ticket To Earth. It was fun enough as a match 3 turn based light rpg. The writing wasn't all that great though. Started Deity Quest again. Decided to name my followers based on forum people here. Then Marelooke died pretty much right out of the tutorial and I felt bad, so started over and not naming followers based on you lot.

Yeah, she keeps on shonen on... heh. I won't get better before the director change, I think, and it's unclear if it does afterwards. I'm always open to be surprised, of course. Yes, that's me grasping at straws here, 32 episodes left. Are you sure you didn't mix up worst and best here? It sure reads like you're a man of indistinguished taste, and that can't possibly be it. I don't know, I somehow expect chocolate covered gummy bears to be crunchy on the outside and chewy gummy on the inside, and that just... feels unpleasant in my mouth before even trying it. Taste might really be okay, not sure about the experience of eating it. What I also like is chocolate filled with fruit flavored sugar creme (marshmellowish fillings), like these: https://heindl.co.at/produkt/suesse-fruchtis/ - and yes, that's really very different from biting into a gummy bear, but eh, if I ever come across chocolate covered ones, I'll be sure to try them. Eh... but eating regular chocolate or stuff that's mostly chocolate, yeah, no. That's just not for me.

I put it in my guide, but there are so few that I can just try listing them off the top fo my head (there are so few that it almost just seems like a bug that these were all applyovertime instead of applyontick) priest cleansing flame cipher disintegrate rogue deep wounds ranger wounding shot edit: whoops, forgot about druid taste of the hunt

The application language is the same, C/AL. But the old, weird development environment has long since been replaced with Visual Studio Code (with a real debugger and Intellisense ftw.) and source control is done via Azure DevOps (edit: and Git) There is a bit of history behind the name C/AL. Navision was one of several Danish ERP systems competing for the domestic market back then. Commodore and Admiral were two other ones, besides Damgaard's offerings (which were named completely different, like Xal, C5, Axapta etc.). But Navision has a lot of fun with all kinds of sea side related names. C/AL being a pun on Sea and Application Language, the online licensing system was C/CAPS, the currency you bought modules and granules for a customers license were known as C/SHELLS, the old proprietary database system (call C/SIDE) had a C/ODBC interface and so on and so on.

So close, and yet so far apart. I deal with the other ERP system Microsoft bought with the same company Gorth is talking about. Not sure if I want to talk about it (there's a rant about it from a year and a half ago, somewhere on this forum). Suffice it to say that some of the things it ships with out of the box are, and that's being nice, an insult. Some are downright insane. Although I can't reallly speak for the new 365'ed cloud version because we're not using that yet. @GorthDoes the new cloud version still use the same weirdo Pascalesque code the older versions did?

Split off from the politics thread, as it has very little to do with politics... @BruceVC Most of my working life has been with what was originally a Danish product, known as 'Navision' in the 1990's... It was the first IT job I got after university. I say IT job, because I had some really oddball jobs after finishing university in order to pay rent etc. nobody wants to hire people with no work experience. Eventually I got a lucky break and through a friend, got a lead to a company looking for somebody like me. Not too expensive and with a knack for programming. Did that for 5 years. While I was doing that, Microsoft bought the software and it became a Microsoft product. Thanks to that and me approaching terminal boredom in Denmark, decided to move abroad. The one good thing about Microsoft is, their products are sold all over the world and I had by then years of experience (always a selling point, trumping most other things). I did other things too, like building bespoke web applications, Windows CE (the precursor for handheld devices), but it was the ERP part that was my bread and butter. I still work with the same product 25+ years later, but it's now known as Microsoft Business Central and they push very heavily for people to join "The Cloud". I used to work ridiculous hours, like 60-80 hour work weeks for close to all of the first 20 years, being at times technical manager, developer team lead (for 8 years) and got noticeable grey hair before turning 30. One day I realized it wasn't worth it and I started aiming for positions that would give me a better work/life balance, like only working 40 hours a week. Something I should have done a long time ago. As for what I've actually done with all those ERP implementations over the years... oh dear. From implementations for small 5 person family companies to multinational corporations where we rolled out the software in 18 European countries (our teams being on site in all those countries). From weird, bespoke warehouse management systems over manufacturing, import systems (that was when I was living in England) for companies doing imports from the far east (goods costing, customs handling, container tracking etc.), supply chain management, CRM, e-commerce, freight forwarding and IVF (In vitro fertilization) solutions to a completely custom built solution for the wine industry (grape growing, processing/manufacturing, bonded warehouse handling for the high % stuff, bottling, sales, distribution and weird Aussie tax rules). I've probably left out approx. 9 out of every 10 projects, as they are either similar to the above or I simply forgot them

The Many-Lives Skeletons have <50 health (won't scale) which means that Riven Gore one-shots them - which leads to this absurd chain of on-kill effects including Cleaving. Usually I don't put Amra on the top of my weapons' list because on-crit effects are not very effective when it really counts (against tough enemies). But since you will crit the skeletons all the time you will also trigger Riven Gore all the time - even if the actual enemy is tough as nails. Also all the killing triggers Tempered Fury very quickly - which stacks with Frenzy (yay). The funny thing is that even slash-immune enemies die pretty quickly because all the Carnage that originates from the Skeletons you kill will bring them down. I wondered why Greater Earth Blights lasted longer than the other enemies (but died eventually) - I just forgot they were immune to slash damage. I think for this "special" build it's among the best weapons. Engoliero and Sungrazer (nearly always get killed with a crit when cleaves get them, triggering the powerful AoE) are also very good though. Basically everything that has an AoE component (even St. Drogga's Skull!) will be pretty great as long as it doesn't hit you as well. Engoliero's Ghost Blades will hit you - but at the same time heal you so that's no problem. I thought Sungrazer's AoE should hit me as well but I somehow survived the tests with it... But Battle Axes are particularly useful in combination with Blood Thirst and the skeletons because Bleeding Cuts are such an enormous dmg increase while you have no downside anymore (long recovery gets skipped) - so it's not only great against mobs but also melts away bosses in no time. By the way: I'm not using Abraham anymore but a pet that does +20 health on kill instead of Abraham's +10 (forgot the name, white cat). Blood Thirst makes Abraham's primary effect (reduced armor penalty) unnecessary.

It wouldn't work for this build. You wouldn't want to use LDV while confused, for if you did you'd be hit as well by the AOE lightning bursts. With Amra, you'd damage everyone around you (but not yourself) with both carnage and riven gore, and if you're surrounded by skeletons you'll often kill them, triggering bloodthirst, bloodlust and various on kill effects, such as healing from the Abraham pet.

The downside of working only 40 hour work weeks, too much time to read news related stuff and watch youtube Edit: This is from '60 Minutes' (Australia)

Tales of Arise: ---story from the start/for some long hours...predictable but serviceable as a container, but I wasn't loving the overall writing style and it wasn't making me feel anything or curious about anyone/thing, really. ---then suddenly ... wham. That took a bit of a turn. Still predictable, mind. But some good sequences helped a lot. I'm now invested! Well, more than before anyway. And at least am now much more curious about a few things. ---some of the skits are returning to humor and amusing characterization stuff. Not a lot, still mostly repetition or lore dumping, but that also helps. ---it was nice to leave the brown and blue/white of desert/snow behind.

Dual wielding axes and daggers makes me want climbing gear. Think taking some ice axes to the wolf spiders and mosquitos

In the winter months I don’t have an electric bill. If I had a regular power company I would actually be selling power to them. Unfortunately it’s a co-op so no check for me. The only thing that sucks is dealing with the batteries. But it really depends on how far you want to go down the rabbit hole. I went pretty deep.

Tales of Arise: Well, that 2nd big bad was that ramp up I was expecting. I mean, sure, if you've largely mastered the button-mashing/timing/speed/evading and visual/noise chaos of "wtf is happening?!" and all of that I'm sure it's not the worst, so don't get me wrong here. But if you're a lazy fart like me...haha. Huge sponges, one-shotting - typical battle of mega-attrition, consumable use (AI likes to eat all those up if you let them, btw) etc. That said, still liking the general game. Maybe I just like collecting things/finding all the lootz. ---there are cats in the gameworld, and somewhat prominent at one point. This makes the game score in my head automatically go up by at least half a point. ---so far most the side-quests are no better than the ones in FFXV. "Kill things threatening my farm," very simple things. But at least you often get skill points or recipes or outfit recolors for doing them. ---said side quests can pop up in previous areas later, so check those maps for the icons occasionally. ---some things are poorly explained, like accessory crafting/upgrading. I had to look it up. And for some reason I didn't realize herb affects were permanent until I read it somewhere. I guess I should use those, then >.>

So then only the political elites care? That would actually fit my own professional interpretation, which is what I said to a Spanish newspaper that interviewed me about it.

People ask me if I sleep late. I wake up at 7:30 in Skyrim, so I am up before the kids wake up at 8:00...

Thank you Thank you Thank you I love this picture

I've found these in my folder.

Would any talented soul be able to watercolour this lovely portrait for me? I'd be very obliged! I've been trying to do it myself but I'm such an inept clown in terms of graphics.

I think you could utilize ActivationPrerequisites and DeactivationPrerequisites properties of the GenericAbilityComponent to implement this, together with the IsClassPowerPoolCount conditional. Using Brute Force as a passive ability example, something like this? [825817d4-1fb0-4e5c-bf84-473743ad98de] = Barbarian Class ID

For the moon godlike fans!

Here!

In my last tthread. I went over how the Sleight of Hand skill works mechanically. My main reason for this is because I saw a couple of posts about how "Loaded Pockets" works. All of the information I'm presenting is pulled from items.gamedatabundle. I would normally post the actual code, but there is quite a bit, so I'll just summarize below. So, Loaded Pockets adds an item from a unique loot list in the pool of items that appears in a creature's inventory. When a creature is loaded into the world (when you load into a map) it's loot tables are weighed against one another, and one of them is loaded to the creatures inventory. This only happens once. The specific loot tables affected with the chance of the Loaded Pockets item being added (rounded up) is as follows: "Loot_Default_Pickpocket" = 1/11 = 9.09% "Loot_Default_Pickpocket_Picker" = 1/24 = 4.17% "Loot_Default_Pickpocket_Huana" = 1/11 = 9.09% "Loot_Default_Pickpocket_Picker_Huana" = 1/24 = 4.17% "Loot_Default_Pickpocket_Rauataian" = 1/11 = 9.09% "Loot_Default_Pickpocket_Picker_Rauataian" = 1/24 = 4.17% "Loot_Default_Pickpocket_Vailian" = 1/11 = 9.09% "Loot_Default_Pickpocket_Picker_Vailian" = 1/24 = 4.17% This means that Loaded Pockets generally affects humanoid creatures like faction NPCs, Shopkeepers, or random NPCs. Loaded Pockets will on average have a 6.63% chance of spawning one of the 25 items in it's loot list to the creatures inventory. The loot list of 25 Items it can generate are: Stone of Power Cloak of Protection Gauntlets of Discipline Mortification Bindings Healing Hands Ring of Unshackling Ring of Overseeing Stormturner Cloak Nature's Embrace Shorewalker Sandals Swordsman's Bracers Gauntlets of Reliability Missile Gloves Killer's Gloves Rotward Amulet Necklace of Fireballs Cloak of Deflection Physicker's Belt Blunting Belt Trollhide Belt Amulet of Health Torc of Intellect Token of Faith* Ring of Minor Deflection Ring of Minor Protection *This is the only way to get Token of Faith without console commands. It's important to note that a creature's pick-pocketable inventory is included in the inventory it drops when it dies. So you'll likely run into these items when you do faction bounties or get trigger happy at a faction's headquarters. So yeah. That's pretty much it. For a Berath's Blessing, it's actually pretty balanced. You'll still find plenty of instances of these items spawning, but not so much that you have piles and piles of the items from only a couple of excursions.