Posts made by Arkandel

People: Please stop snarking at each other in my goddamn thread. Take it elsewhere.

@miss-demeanor

This has to be the year the Raptors make it to the Finals - at least.

There will be no better chance. Cleveland is at its most vulnerable right now, and next year Philly will be more experienced and deeper, Boston will have Hayward back and Brown/Tatum a year better, the Bucks will have the full version of Jabari Parker to couple with Giannis while neither Lowry nor DeRozan are getting any younger.

Having said that, the number of national televised games for the Eastern Conference leaders is farcically low.

But I mean! From the scenarios described in the Fermi Paradox (the OP link!) which one would you say is closest to what you subscribe to?

I kind of like the ant-hill theory; you have ants living next to a super highway. How would the ants know to recognize it for what it is or figure out the reasons for which it had to be built? Even if the ones who're building it wanted to communicate, how would they? What would there be to talk about?

Ants!

@faraday said in What's your identity worth to you?:

But I don't see that changing any time...ever, really. I looked into supporting SSL connections with Ares. The game code is trivial, but the steps involved in enabling it server-side were hideous for anyone who isn't an experienced server admin.

To be honest when I considered it I was busy with migrating MSB from the old to the new server so I had my hands full, and it seemed like an unnecessary detail to worry about.

Now I have more time and I could do it, but I'm not sure there's a use case for it. If there was a strong enough request, sure, but... why? We're sharing cat memes and chat about a hobby no one cares about, which is all public anyway, so unless people are reusing passwords (don't do it!) that might get stolen and authenticate attackers on other sites or sharing sensitive information in private chats...

But yeah. The future is an encrypted one. I also always loved the idea of coding a MUSH that somehow generates private keys for each user then signs everything that gets said or posed, so there's no chance something might be faked or altered in pasting without being able to know for sure.

Fuck it, I spent my lunch reading through this post.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-fermi-paradox-624520141

Let's have an aliens! do they exist! thread.

TOR exit nodes are publicly known, although of course that won't tell you much about where they are actually from.

For instance this page - https://www.dan.me.uk/torlist/ is updated every 30 minutes. Blocking TOR wouldn't be too hard, they are after anonymity and not accessibility.

@ghost said in What's your identity worth to you?:

I thought some MUs blocked proxy services, or was that just one or two sites that got blacklisted?

Other than for case-by-case banning it's pretty unlikely MU* will have the resources to block anything but TOR. One of proxy services' biggest profits come from Netflix masking (so non-USA residents get the benefit of a USA subscription) so it's in their interests to continue adding new addresses to their rotation... which probably makes it too hard for anyone other than dedicated professionals to keep up with that.

Oh - double post, but you'll notice MSB isn't using (and hasn't ever even before I took over) SSL.

I suppose I could have it do so but frankly you'd be well served not sending anything through this forum which constitutes 'sensitive information' of any sort. It's a gaming forum. Don't trust it.

@sunny Nearly everything @Ghost mentioned applies to just about everything online, and people do need to be careful. There are ways to do that though, and for example:

• Don't reuse passwords. Ever. You don't know who has access to them, how they are stored or if they get stolen regularly. There are plenty of services - LastPass is online, KeePassX uses files stored on your machine/phone - that can help you keep separate, distinct authentication for everything you use.

• Have a throwaway e-mail account and use it for everything that's remotely sketchy. MUSH and games in general absolutely fall into that category - don't set your real name on it, just keep it as a mailbox you don't ever intend to check unless you need a password reset on the spot.

• If you are downloading torrents or such it's always a good idea to have a proxy service. Mine costs something stupidly low like $15/year and the provider keeps no logs, but they mask your IP completely. Sure, if the NSA is after you they could probably work something out but Joe Asshole who runs the MUSH you pissed him off on will look at the IP you logged on from and see something from Miami or Florida when you've been to neither of those States in years.

• Finally, and this goes without saying or it should... does anyone who visit MSB not understand there are simply people who don't like each other? Or that there are jerks among us - and I don't just mean "folks I don't like to RP with". Don't distribute your photos, address or identifiable information unless you want them to have it. I'm pretty confident that goes twice for female gamers but it's a good policy in general.

Just some ideas.

@nemesis said in What's your identity worth to you?:

Not because it's shady or a privacy concern but because I won't know until I've looked at the +news and recent bboards (or how recent the last bbpost is anywhere) if the game is worth creating an address for or clumping in with half a dozen others or if it's just a waste.

Hrm, so even using an on-demand e-mail address like mailinator is too large an investment in time? I'm not trying to criticize you, I just want to understand since it literally takes 5 seconds to switch to the web browser and get the activation URL from its mailbox, which you'd never need to use again.

The reason I don't understand it is that, as you said, it takes considerably more time afterwards to figure out if the MU* is any good, or even active.

I've had some staffers seriously lose their shit as if I was being vocally and viciously against email reg when I said something like, "Hey, can I just skip the email reg part?"

Well, there are lots of whackjobs out there staffing, there's no arguing that.

Could this be the year the San Antonio Spurs finally miss the playoffs?

@ixokai said in What's your identity worth to you?:

@arkandel I disagree. The 'I wont give you an email' crowd is nothing at all like a silent minority, from what I've seen/remembered. They'll vocally and viciously not give you their email more often then not.

The reason I was asking wasn't to judge the sentiment (even though I kinda do), it's that there's zero need to give anyone your e-mail or for that matter, to even create one.

For example I can send an e-mail right now to weirdpeoplewhodontlikeemailaccounts@mailinator.com without taking any other action first - not even to create an account. Then I can go to mailinator.com and yep, the e-mail will be waiting there for weirdpeoplewhodontlikeemailaccounts .

I would like to understand the moral qualm about this, that's all.

@rnmissionrun Iiiii am aware, yep.

@auspice Our people are everywhere.

@faraday I think it's also a step beyond that; there is a type of player who doesn't make a fuss, who won't go to staff and complain first or even leave an "I don't like this policy, I'm out" note upon leaving. They just leave.

Those are arguably people no game should want to lose regardless of size, not because they care about the playerbase or even because they'd consider altering the policy in question, but because they never have the chance to examine it first.

These are just lost players, a silent minority alienated by one cog you - as staff - are never given the chance to question whether it belongs, or if it can be removed or... what. Maybe the cog belongs there. Maybe you haven't given it a moment's thought in your life and never realized it'd be offensive to anyone.

Reddit and the struggle to detoxify the internet.

Peak moment: "“This rule is stupid and suppresses our rights,” u/penisfuckermcgee commented."

@icanbeyourmuse said in What's your identity worth to you?:

Yup, I know people who will not join Arx because of the email thing. I just use a throw away email for Arx

Double post, but do you know why? I mean, what's the reason they won't use mailinator or something for this? Is it technical know-how or a moral clause of some sort?

@thenomain said in What's your identity worth to you?:

There is nothing you can ask for from us that we can't easily fake, unless you're asking for a mailing address or phone number in which case you're going to lose a lot of people.

I am far less concerned with people whose technical familiarity allows them to easily maneuver around trivial limitations without much trouble and more with those who are skeptical about participating in the community here in the first place, and for whom having that extra step of providing a 'real' e-mail account to register might be what decides it for them.

In other words I want to make life a little harder for trolls, but not at the expense of legitimate, casual newcomers.

@thenomain I hate ham I don't know why.