Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 6:25 pm

I'm more surprised that we have 224 actual members who each have over 300 posts.

Post by **fbmf** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 7:02 pm

Josh_Kablack wrote:I'm more surprised that we have 224 actual members who each have over 300 posts.

The Gaming Den, counting our time on BBBOY, turns twelve next month. We've been around long enough to have 224 members post 300 times each.

At a guess, (meaning wild speculation without even looking at the list) only 10% of those are still active.

Game On,
fbmf

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 9:36 pm

That reminds me... I was looking at some of really old threads in the About the Den forum, and I saw this thread.

We've come so far.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 9:34 am

So, are we just going to discover another regular here is a blatant racist every month now?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 10:53 am

Prak wrote:So, are we just going to discover another regular here is a blatant racist every month now?

Probably. Okay not that often, but whatever. Also depending on your definition of regular.

Right now, pop culture egalitarianism is... well, it's pretty blatantly corrupt. It's insular and tribal and profit-driven clickbait. They champion legitimate causes, but whether the industry (as a whole) is earnest about it - or even competent enough to do so well - is an open question that probably doesn't have a single, simple answer. It's certainly trivial to find examples of them doing more harm than good, and I for one would love to have a better crop of people as the face of modern egalitarianism (and let's be honest, internet journoblogging is going to be the public face for the foreseeable future).

A lot of decent, well-meaning people are turned off by this, which gives them common ground with other people who are not nearly so decent or well-meaning. And to be frank, no one's filters are as good as they think they are. You're going to absorb some of that shit by osmosis and then it's just a question of whether or not you catch it before you make too big of an ass of yourself to publicly admit "oopsies."

But not FatR. Turns out he's just straight up fucking racist. So that's a thing.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 10:15 pm

Prak wrote:So, are we just going to discover another regular here is a blatant racist every month now?

No.

We're more likely to get a large batch of horribleness self-outing in specific target threads and then months of quiet and then another batch and then another period of quiet and then another batch.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 10:24 pm

Gimme time, I'm working on another book that isn't going to sell, and I expect that one to actually whip up some controversy and accusations!

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:00 pm

Ancient History wrote:Gimme time, I'm working on another book that isn't going to sell, and I expect that one to actually whip up some controversy and accusations!

Publish a compilation of favorite Unpublishables, I say! Throw in a several new shorts and you're solid.

Stahlseele and me would buy, I reckon (yes, I'm committing you too, Stahls).
I'm embarrassed to admit that I fell off the wagon and haven't been following for a while, so this would redeem me.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:14 pm

Nah, those are terrible. I'm working on a sort of sequel to SEX & THE CTHULHU MYTHOS.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:15 pm

Yeah, i'd buy the unpublishable stuff.
I love the star wars and warhammer fantasy stuff.
Some of the other stuff was good, but for the most part i probably just did not understand them . .

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:31 pm

Harrumph. I liked a lot of em. You sayin' we'got terrible taste? Huh, wise guy?

I'm not a fan of prolonged reading on computers, which is why I fell off the wagon in the first place. The backlighting makes my eyes sad. Think of my poor eyes. My poor aging eyes.

Will I never be redeemed?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:35 pm

You could probably publish the Eclipse Phase stuff too. I'm not sure what kind of licensing they have, but if it comes to it, you might be able to IP scrub it as a generic Post-Transhumanism Game Hook thing.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:40 pm

erik wrote:Harrumph. I liked a lot of em. You sayin' we'got terrible taste? Huh, wise guy?

I'm not a fan of prolonged reading on computers, which is why I fell off the wagon in the first place. The backlighting makes my eyes sad. Think of my poor eyes. My poor aging eyes.

Will I never be redeemed?

Your eyes are full of shit. It is easier to read white text on a black screen than black text on a white screen. The only reason you think differently is fucking bad habits.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:43 pm

I just have a shitty attention span in general. I need to start going to the gym more regularly just because being on a treadmill encourages me to actually read something, to hell with the physical benefits.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Nov 04, 2015 12:10 am

Ancient History wrote:Your eyes are full of shit. It is easier to read white text on a black screen than black text on a white screen. The only reason you think differently is fucking bad habits.

Oh, I don't think that at all. Having black background is way easier on the eyes, as you say, but even white text on a black screen is not as kind on my eyes as black text on white paper.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Wed Nov 04, 2015 12:31 am

Supposedly black on light blue is the easiest to read.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Wed Nov 04, 2015 10:27 am

erik wrote:
Ancient History wrote:Your eyes are full of shit. It is easier to read white text on a black screen than black text on a white screen. The only reason you think differently is fucking bad habits.
Oh, I don't think that at all. Having black background is way easier on the eyes, as you say, but even white text on a black screen is not as kind on my eyes as black text on white paper.

eInk Reader? no backlight...

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Nov 04, 2015 11:48 am

Korwin wrote:
erik wrote:
Ancient History wrote:Your eyes are full of shit. It is easier to read white text on a black screen than black text on a white screen. The only reason you think differently is fucking bad habits.
Oh, I don't think that at all. Having black background is way easier on the eyes, as you say, but even white text on a black screen is not as kind on my eyes as black text on white paper.
eInk Reader? no backlight...

Do those work as decent web browsers? I'm okay if they can browse in b/w.

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Wed Nov 04, 2015 1:31 pm

Last e-ink reader I had had a low refresh rate, so scrolling wasn't very smooth but it was definitely usable (and it could be hacked to get a better refresh rate). I guess they got better since then.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Wed Nov 04, 2015 1:32 pm

erik wrote:
Korwin wrote:
erik wrote:
Oh, I don't think that at all. Having black background is way easier on the eyes, as you say, but even white text on a black screen is not as kind on my eyes as black text on white paper.
eInk Reader? no backlight...
Do those work as decent web browsers? I'm okay if they can browse in b/w.

Well, the ones I have. No. (Because no touch screen and navigating without one, would be frustrating)
Don't know, if e-ink touch screen eReader would be useable as Webbrowser.

Looking at the Kindle Touch site, there is an "Beta, WebKit-Browser" Feature listed. So it's at least possible.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Wed Nov 04, 2015 9:08 pm

Occluded Sun wrote:Supposedly black on light blue is the easiest to read.

For me, this is the case. That's why I usually highlight everything while reading.

I've seen the argument for white text, black background, but it doesn't work at all for me - ghost images whenever I look away from it. Maximum contrast is not always a good thing.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Nov 05, 2015 7:42 pm

How hard would it be to make a virus that infected someone's computer, and then whenever they started playing a youtube video it would play an audio clip that said "Last Time on Dragonball Z!"

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Nov 05, 2015 8:32 pm

erik wrote:
Korwin wrote:
erik wrote:
Oh, I don't think that at all. Having black background is way easier on the eyes, as you say, but even white text on a black screen is not as kind on my eyes as black text on white paper.
eInk Reader? no backlight...
Do those work as decent web browsers? I'm okay if they can browse in b/w.

The best e-ink tablet on the market right now is the Inkbook, either the Onyx or the Obsidian . It's a full android tablet with a 212 dpi carta screen, a front light, 8 gigs of NAND, dual core processor, half a gig of RAM, and a microSD port. Basically all the best features from every other E-reader on the market put toether in one package.

The difference between the two is that the Onxy has page turn buttons while the Obsidian just has the touch screen and a much smaller bezel.

Unfortunately it's made by a polish company and only sold on their web site.

https://onyx-boox.com/product-category/e-readers/

It's not something that you want to watch video on, but it's functional for things like wikipedia.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Nov 06, 2015 12:50 am

Kaelik wrote:How hard would it be to make a virus that infected someone's computer, and then whenever they started playing a youtube video it would play an audio clip that said "Last Time on Dragonball Z!"

If you have physical access then no virus needed. Which is nice since the virus part of it gets you into legal snafus.

You'd want to get a script on their browser (with something like Greasemonkey to run the script). And have the script perform the deed by embedding that audio file to play whenever the browser shows "youtube.com/*"

This might help.

Eikre · Post by **Eikre** » Sat Nov 07, 2015 12:25 am

The difficulty of making a viable computer virus is independent of the difficulty of assigning it a function. Finding new exploits through which your program can insinuate itself is difficult work; on the other hand, the list of potentially unpatched exploits that are already common knowledge grows all the time. Most computers getting shit pushed through the internet are probably getting it from fucking Java plugins, so that would be the first place you would go, and the best way to elicit exposure would be through ownership of a popular webpage or its ad-space. You can also get good results by leaving a USB drive with an autoplay exploit in a parking lot somewhere and building your virus to perpetuate itself onto other drives and network locations, and by distributing seeming benign executables via spoofed email addresses, though that would require a modicum of social engineering. No reason you can't do all three.

For the functionality you'd want a man-in-the-middle attack. An Apache reverse-proxy server running as a headless service could just sit there, silently intercepting TCP and passing almost all of it along, sole exception being data streamed by the Youtube player, to which it would append your desired audio. You could also just fuck with DNS settings and point at a server you control, upside being that you could conceivably intercept any of your targets' traffic, downside being swift attention from federal law enforcement.