Posts made by Arkandel

@roz said in General Video Game Thread:

Wasn't programming originally thought of as "women's work" way back in the day? And then that shifted when people realized the incredible power and potential of it, and so it became a "man's field" and that's why the rates of female programmers a couple decades ago were higher?

I've heard about this, but at an 80s kid I do know I met waaaay more boys who even had access to/owned a computer than girls.

These days that's surely a non-factor since the financial investment is computers are far more common and online resources are so much more accessible (so a young girl can just go and look at tutorials online as opposed to having to gather the courage to walk up to a grizzled neckbeard and ask questions) that perhaps things are changing.

@faraday Again with the anecdotal reply from me, but although I've encountered (of course) far fewer women than men in IT, on average they were noticeably better at their jobs.

I've given this some thought, and the explanation seems clear. It's not so much that magically female programmers, sysadmins etc are better than their male counterparts; it's simply that in order to make it in the field they need to be better than average or motivated enough to invest in themselves and push through.

@tyche I only have anecdotal evidence here, but for example at my company's 'IT floor' we have something like 80-100 people working... every one of them male.

When I talked to our recruiters about that, who are people I know and trust to be impartial, they simply said we get very few female applicants in the first place and those who were interviewed just happened to not meet our (objectively high) standards.

The other facet of it is that it would be kind of awkward - and I'm probably underestimating the effect - to be the only woman in the entire floor surrounded by nerds. So that should be considered too.

But, as I said... anecdotal.

World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth's pre-expansion patch is coming this Tuesday, a month before the main act launches.

Lok'tar ogar!

@thenomain Future MUSH historians will thank you!

@faraday said in General Video Game Thread:

Nevertheless I believe that "don't ever say something dumb that makes the company look bad or we'll fire you on your first offense" is an idiotic company policy. Counsel her, make her apologize if she's wrong, tell her to stop even vaguely representing the company on twitter... there are any number of reasonable approaches short of the "off with their head!" that the internet clamors for these days.

I must agree that firing someone on a first offense would be a real knee-jerk reaction for sure. Worst case scenario just tell her to stop twitting anything work-related; that'd be well within their prerogative. But as everyone has noted, we don't know what was really happening within that workspace.

@faraday said in General Video Game Thread:

There has to be some separation between personal and professional lives.

In general I agree with you, but in this case it was her responsibility as well to separate those two aspects of her lives, and she didn't manage it very well.

It'd be quite inappropriate for example if I got fired because of comments I made on my Facebook feed about politics in general; it's not my employer's business to regulate what I do outside of work hours when it entails non-work stuff.

However if on my FB feed I was engaging customers and referring to the products I'm working on as part of my job then in many ways I am representing the company - or it could very easily, not to be mentioned fairly, taken that way.

@auspice said in Random links:

@arkandel said in Random links:

@auspice You had me at Alyson Hannigan.

"...no matter how hard you work or how good you think you are, there will always be an asian who takes it to the next level."
(Calling all @Ganymede s)

There's an Asian, superior version of Alyson Hannigan?

@auspice You had me at Alyson Hannigan.

@faraday said in Preferred App Process For Comic Game:

(Of course - I'm no longer a fan of having PCs in enforced RP-leader positions for this and other reasons, but I understand I'm in a minority there.)

Leadership positions are only as good as the player occupying them. Put a great one in and you'll get great results; if they're inactive the effect will be anywhere from invisible ("I didn't even know we had a Tony Stark!") to being a bottleneck ("I've been trying to get a scene with Reed Richards for days to warn the FF about the secret Skrull invasion"). And obviously if you choose a bad one, well...

This isn't specific to comics. The same applies to high-end nobility in L&L, to Prince or Primogen in a Vampire sphere, etc.

For me the worst part of having these positions filled by PCs isn't really the risk factor of picking an 'incorrect' player. It's the OOC issues from not being picked to play one, the dancing chairs effect in a bunch of people desperately trying to land that kind of position on day 1, the envy over who did get to play a covered roster spot, etc.

In comparison an inactive person is almost a non-issue.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44783779

Lindsay Durdle died on May 31 aged 37. She had been first diagnosed with breast cancer about a year-and-a-half earlier. The disease had later spread to her lungs and brain. PayPal was informed of Mrs Durdle's death three weeks ago by her husband Howard Durdle. He provided the online payments service with copies of her death certificate, her will and his ID, as requested. He has now received a letter addressed in her name, sent to his home in Bucklebury, West Berkshire. It was headlined: "Important: You should read this notice carefully." It said that Mrs Durdle owed the company about 3,200 pounds (~$4,200) and went on to say: "You are in breach of condition 15.4(c) of your agreement with PayPal Credit as we have received notice that you are deceased... this breach is not capable of remedy."

Google Chrome's 'new tab' recommendations are pretty decent on average, and I like how it gives me fresh personalized links to go through on a regular basis, but damn do they need to work on better exclude filters.

For example I don't care about hockey. So when it suggests an Oilers story it lets me exclude either this very specific item in particular ("Oilers") or the news source it came from in general ("ESPN"). That makes little sense.

@taika said in Descent Reboot:

Plug pulled. Will not be reviving again.

Thank you for running this game, @taika!

@thenomain said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Hey Steam, about your suggestions:

Fallout 3

Since you recently played Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition

Really?

Is it really better than Netflix' suggestions?

"Since you watched Daredevil you might want to watch Daredevil!"

Genius algorithm guessing what I like there, guys.

@thenomain said in A (Mildly Complete) List of Current Games:

Would a Wiki devoted to this be useful?

Sorry, I haven't been following this conversation very closely.

Are we talking about a wiki for current games or a wiki in general? (And should we have a separate thread to discuss the specifics?).

From a logistics point of view I can set up anything, we got lots of space and cycles on this machine to run more stuff. What I don't want is have another thing to administrate, so ideally someone else would be doing the gruntwork while I just oversee from afar and take full credit just like I do for MSB.

Any of you contact lenses-wearing folks feel your eyes are getting way more dry in the summer time?

Like, the ones I'm wearing at the moment came from literally the same box of monthlies as before, and I've only been using these ones for about 15 days, but they feel like wallpaper in my eyes. I haven't changed anything else, including the cleaning solution.

I can't tell if it's the warmer weather, the AC in the office or something else but argh.

@thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

It might even be hilarious to have a man reading your anti-mansplaining script.

In the industry we call that pulling a @surreality.

@tnp said in New Games and Feature Characters...:

The advantage is having first choice of FCs. Naturally, this applies only to games that actually have FCs such as comics games and those with roster characters.

Think of it as hosts at a party setting out a buffet of chocolates but they and their friends eat all the caramels and nut clusters and leave only the icky raspberry cremes.

Any game that has a pure FIFO approach to important/critical FCs is asking for trouble. If you're running a DC game then having Superman shouldn't be a function of who gets to type +request FC=I WANT SUPES!!11 faster than everyone else, not if the character is expected to have the canonical impact he would in the comics.

The principle applies to everything else. Imagine if L&L handed the King out to whoever happened to throw in a +job. Madness.

Perhaps this will interest people: https://games.slashdot.org/story/18/07/08/0150207/game-company-fires-two-employees-who-complained-about-mansplaining-on-twitter

@ixokai said in New Games and Feature Characters...:

You, as staff, are fundamentally advantaged. The moment it opens you are first past the post, guaranteed. No one else can claim that advantage.

What kind of advantage is that? What does it put you in position to do?

Nevermind I can hardly imagine the kind of nightmare a game would be where being ahead of others by three days conveys tangible gains. What happens when I decide to take a weekend off?