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soverance

282 karma · joined October 22, 2014

Indie game developer. Founder of Soverance Studios. Creator of Ethereal Legends, an action RPG for Steam, PS4, and Xbox One.
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soverance··on CISA broke into a US federal agency, and no one noticed for a full 5 months
The company I work for (high profile private sector U.S. defense contractor) has security people (FSOs and such) that are constantly concerned about being held legally responsible for actions (or inactions) related to theirs and other's work (specifically those with personal or facility security clearances). They regularly claim that they can be held responsible for the failures of others.

Their hesitation leads me to believe these legal repercussions happen more often than not. Would be interesting to see some data on the claims. My guess is the people being held responsible for these things aren't your average developer taking down prod.

soverance··on Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones
They've had this problem for at least a few years, dating all the way back to the OG Pixel 1. I filed an FCC complaint about it four years ago. Not much has changed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectFi/comments/9ijq9p/911_probl...

soverance··on Ask HN: Why don't games allow you to automate some gameplay via programming?
The biggest example I can think of that (unofficially) supported Lua Final Fantasy XI.

Because FFXI was released as a PS2 game, it had a ton of limitations, most notably around gear swaps. In the game, you had 16 gear slots on your character, but hundreds of pieces you could equip in there that would improve various actions, abilities, or spells. The built-in macro system had to be PS2 compliant, so it was only capable of swapping so many gear pieces with any given button press (basically like five pieces, when you really might want to swap all 16).

While not supported on the PS2 versions, third-party tools such as Windower allowed folks to install extensions that were Lua programmed that brought a ton of additional functionality to those playing on PC. One of those was the "Gearswap" extension, which allowed you to finally swap all 16 pieces of gear simultaneously, and even do so based on actions that weren't button presses (such as say, if I'm poisoned, equip gear that enhances regen effects).

This sort of thing was such a game-changer (literally) that you basically couldn't play the game effectively without it. Square-Enix even sort of turned a blind eye to it, despite breaking their ToS rules against third party tools, simply because most players had started doing it and they knew they weren't able to program around the PS2 limitations.

It was definitely my first intro to Lua within FFXI, and it helped foster a great love of programming that I turned into a career. I believe more games should make this sort of thing officially available, it's just plain awesome.

soverance··on Blink-182 tickets are so expensive because Ticketmaster is a monopoly
Yeah I hated Ticketmaster for many years, but this is the primary reason I didn't care too much, because I could just print the ticket and not deal with any of their tech gimmicks. Printing concert tickets was basically the only thing I still used a printer for, because a printed ticket was still the most reliable means of getting into the show.

Ever got down to a venue and had shitty mobile service? Ever had your phone die or crash at an inconvenient time? Ever lost data?

Even worse, turns out if you don't have Chrome set as the default browser app on your mobile device then the app is completely worthless and loads no pages (tested on Surface Duo 2). The same problem exists with their website when viewed from Edge on Android: you can't load your account page or tickets at all. Chrome only. Don't worry, there's zero mention of this anywhere on the app store so if you're trying to figure this out while in line at a venue, well fuck you.

So now we have to deal with all this bullshit simply because we can no longer print my tickets.

soverance··on PowerShell Inventor Jeffrey Snover Interview
Have you tried reading the docs? A full list of approved verbs is available, and describes in detail when you should use them and what synonyms they should replace. It makes sense for anyone willing to spend a moment investigating why it's designed that way.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/develo...

soverance··on DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight
Check out Hermeus, working on building a reusable hypersonic aircraft. The engine they're using is a proprietary TBCC engine based on the GE J85.
soverance··on A Look into CBL-Mariner, Microsoft’s Internal Linux Distribution
You no longer have to be a member of the Windows Insider Program. There's a simplified installation method if you are, but if you're not, you can install WSL2 manually.
soverance··on Permission.site
Yup, this exact timeline of degraded experience on Facebook led me to disable my account. I haven't reactivated it in over a year, and I'm happier for it.
soverance··on Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows
Check out Binary Fortress' FileSeek
soverance··on Red Dead Redemption 2 DRM still has not been cracked (316 days)
There's two ways you can get rid of the friends list chat windows...

1. Create a shortcut for Steam that includes the "-nofriendsui" parameter in it's target.

2. Stop having friends.

soverance··on Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account
Being an informal process that they are not bound to listen to, "online outrage" isn't exactly the best solution. A vote is much more powerful than a voice.
soverance··on Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?
Bank of America only added 2FA as an opt-in option starting in 2017. It is most definitely not required... Law or not.

I'm pretty certain it's the same way with every other major US bank.

soverance··on How to find and delete data Google keeps about you
Oh, so they just sell ACCESS to data. Got it.
soverance··on Azure has an edge over AWS at big companies, Goldman Sachs survey says
Man the amount of opinions and misinformation in this thread is staggering.
soverance··on Ask HN: Solo devs, how do you plan your development?
As a solo game dev, I've tried a number of various project management tools that I use in my DevOps day job... from Trello to Planner to Jira to Azure DevOps. I like Azure DevOps work items the best, but the reality is that for a solo developer, I've found all of these tools create far too much overhead (so that I spend more time managing the project rather than making actual progress on it).

So for practical use... I tend to write my ToDo list on a whiteboard near my workstation.

When I complete items from the whiteboard, I move them into an Excel spreadsheet where I can add greater detail about the resolution/solution.

When I'm ready to release a version update, I take the notes scribbled into that Excel sheet and turn them into properly formatted update notes.

soverance··on Juul Shipped At Least 1M Contaminated Pods, New Lawsuit Says
So you're saying we should put Go-Fund-Me bounties on malicious executives?
soverance··on Preserving Laptop Stickers on MacBooks
Barcoded and company-branded stickers for internal inventory tracking.
soverance··on Being Bored Is Good
> For a majority of people, their greatest and most satisfying achievement will be their children.

This sentiment is grossly nauseating, to me. Having children is not an achievement. It may be satisfying and fulfilling, but it is in no way an "achievement".

If your greatest contribution to the world is birthing a child, you have failed as a person.

soverance··on Jony Ive is departing Apple, but he started leaving years ago
It's absolutely ridiculous. The very fact that the tech community can't even come to a full consensus on who the device actually is for... it's very telling that it's really for no one.
soverance··on Brave Improves Its Ad-Blocker Performance with New Engine in Rust
I would pay buckets of money every month for a computing experience devoid of advertising.
soverance··on Consumers Are Becoming Wise to Your Nudge
For real. I am always amazed to hear about such fraud, because it means somewhere, a programmer with zero ethics decided he didn't care what he was doing as long as the paycheck cleared.

Gross.

soverance··on I just had over a thousand Euros stolen and Revolut is siding with the thief
Choosing to lock things down when you're not certain of the side effects... that's the sort of thing that will, at worst, cause outages due to protocol access or authentication (which are both easily fixable). It's a smart move... and helps initiate the "Canary in the coalmine" built-in feature.

The "move fast and break things" crowd are generally the same people that will choose to open things up in the name of "getting shit done". They'll drop firewalls, expose services publicly, and generally go out of their way to avoid security because they see it as a hurdle to achieving their primary goal. In my experience, this lack of foresight almost always causes cascading problems in the future that grow exponentially worse the longer they're left unchecked.

soverance··on Boeing employee: I would not put my family on a Max plane
That's just a more wordy way to say "ignorance is bliss".

But I totally agree, and I do not think you're wrong..

soverance··on Google Calendar Is Down
At the very least, if you had your Google Calendar synced to your mobile device (with the Calendar app) you can still view your meetings offline. You just can't add new ones.
soverance··on Introducing a new HTML element – welcome <clippy>
I never knew how much I wanted a <clippy> tag to put on websites until now... and I'm super disappointed this blog was a ruse.
soverance··on Google Photos will stop syncing to Drive
For what it's worth, Microsoft now has their own apps integrated with Windows 10 that make it a breeze to sync photos from your phone to your computer. Check out the "Your Phone Companion" app (on iOS and Android).
soverance··on Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B
Yeah as the defacto Tableau Server administrator in my org, I am not happy with Tableau. Despite it's power and ability to let less-technical people generate insights from data, the administration experience as a whole is a total nightmare; purchasing/applying licensing to all installations is a disaster. Maintenance upgrades and backup procedures are also sort of wonky. For the data visualization piece, I personally feel like the software is difficult to use because it uses custom "branded" terminology for many things, so the knowledge you gain using Tableau can't often help you outside of Tableau... and then they place many features in locations that are not intuitive and thus difficult to find without documentation or prior experience.

We're a Microsoft-heavy shop, and I've been trying to get them to move to Power Bi simply because it's far more fully featured, easier to use if you're familiar with the "Windows way" of working, and has streamlined administration/installation/licensing/configuration in Windows environments.

soverance··on Block Fingerprinting with Firefox
> Also right now many adtech companies are going bankrupt.

As someone currently working in IT for an adtech company, I can at least provide one data point in that the company I work for is slowly (but surely) dying.

soverance··on Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users
Also agreed. I've already long since pulled almost everything I use away from Google, with the exception of my cell phone (I'm a Fi subscriber).

Now I'm beginning to look into alternative cell phone plans, simply because Google's insistence on advertising doesn't sit well with me.

I currently work at an advertising agency (doing IT stuff), and I'm in the process of job hunting for this exact reason. I can't justify spending my time helping people who are insistent on finding new, increasingly intrusive ways to advertise.

soverance··on Google Fiber to pay nearly $4M to Louisville in exit deal
haha Google seems to do this with a ton of projects. Make it half way and give up. They do it so publicly so often there's a whole Wikipedia page for every project they've started and killed.

Just got another one to add to the list.

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