Nick (allegedly)

Unfortunately, Marathon is really fun.

This is, notably, only criticism about the gameplay loop. The writing and atmosphere of Larian games stand untouched, and I really enjoy every part of the story (which makes it even more frustrating if I have to decide between missing a story arc or reloading).

I can’t tell you how boring it is to me to decide not to go to the camp because I’m curious about the story, and then having to click “Fireball” basically every turn because my spell slots are used up.

Similarly, every time in a battle I wonder if I can use my strong spells because I’ll use up my spell slots, and being basically ripped out of the story to go to the camp between every fight can’t be the solution.

This works for pen-and-paper DnD because the DM can still tell a story that entertains everyone, but if I get blocked off from an entire story arc with really good writing just because I rolled a 1, I’m just going to reload.

To say something maybe controversial: I dislike Baldur’s Gate 3’s changes when compared to its spiritual predecessor Divinity: Original Sin 2. Action Points and turn cooldowns being replaced by one action per turn plus spell slots, and stories being at the mercy of a dice roll is just not fun.

And of course, “how do I actually generate a hash” is a question you might ask. Since it’s such a widely-used operation, you can simply search “SHA256 generator” and use whatever website you like. For example, I used emn178.github.io/online-tools...

Another example is files: If you want to check whether the file you have and the file a friend has are the same, you don’t need both files. Both of you can just generate the hash of your respective file, and when the hashes match, the files are the same.

For example, websites store a hash of your password. When you try to log in later, it generates the hash of the password you are trying to log in with and compares it to the saved password hash. If a hacker gets access to the website data, he will just have the hash, and will not know your password.

For non-tech people reading this: “Hashing” is generating a value from something (for example your guess) without a way to “decrypt” that value. It’s one-way. It’s used when you don’t need to know the value, just whether the value is the same. Guess → Hash works, but Hash → Guess is impossible.

I recommend SHA256 as the standard instead of SHA-1, but I had to keep the character limit of my skeet in mind. Also, if your guess is short, add a random element to it so it cannot be brute-forced, e.g. add an UUID like `c1652f8e-6759-47bc-8f46-839cafafa1be the butler is the killer`.

A neat trick when I want to make guesses is posting the hash of my guess. For example, if I think “the butler is the killer” I can post `SHA1:09b13342e3e9e9815018e241d711a76dba46d038`. Then later I can say “I guessed ‘the butler is the killer’ earlier” and one can verify by generating the hash.

A screenshot of the Calendar Permissions page of an iOS app. The available options for the app’s access to the user’s calendar are “None”, “Add Events Only”, and “Full Access”.

I’ve always wondered why Apple doesn’t have a “read-only” mode for calendars and photos. I have more than one app that’s just responsible for *displaying* calendar events and none of these settings make sense.

The times I’ve had my iOS 26 iPhone respring on me in the past weeks is higher than the total amount of (unintentional) resprings I’ve seen in the past >decade of owning Apple devices. It’s really quite impressive. Can’t help but wonder about people who encounter their first respring this way.

Learned the basics of cloud-init these past days. Now I wonder what other obvious cool features of the tech world I’ve been ignoring for too long.

A screenshot of Destiny Rising gameplay, with the player character standing out of bounds on top of the level.

I'm happy to report that this version of Destiny also has random holes in the world.

Modified meme template to say “Installed Dev Beta 1 on a daily driver again award”. The original template said “Fell for it again award”.

Having to hand out a lot of these today. You’d think people would learn at some point.

Every time I watch another police interrogation video I’m surprised at people’s reactions to being read their rights (they just nod and keep talking)… but then again, people who truly understand their implications are probably not featured in these videos because they were smart and took a lawyer.

I canceled my Adobe subscription just a week ago and bought the Affinity Suite. It’s different, but I’m no longer “renting” a software.

If I want to be optimistic, the universe is now paying me $60 per month to learn Affinity Designer. =)

Hoping this will prove helpful for some people, since I couldn't find a single forum post with the solution.

My Thunderbird connected to my ProtonMail Bridge locally but silently just abandoned the attempt after connecting.

After hours I found the reason: Bridge updated its certs, Thunderbird rejected the new ones.

The solution: Settings -> Security -> Manage Certificates and re-add the exceptions.

I use Obsidian both at work and privately to map my thoughts and tasks. Can highly recommend. And, just like Caly said, the add-ons are worth a look if you do decide to try it.

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

I was excited for the change until I saw it was just smaller icons on a taskbar of the same size =(

I just finished Divinity: Original Sin 2 last week, and I can highly recommend it. Truly a game that understood the value of building a universe and making you experience an adventure within it. I can’t wait to replay it, potentially with new people as well.

I’m just glad they named Apple Stores early on, or we’d be going to Apple Experience Hubs now

Screenshot from a pack opening in Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, showing the stack of cards including a rare card waiting to be revealed.

Screenshot from the same pack opening in Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, revealing the rare card to be Probopass ex.

Excitement → Despair

right now really feels like starting a lot of sentences and not knowing how to finish them

Thanks for the hint, it should be up and running again! Keep in mind that the site was mostly a fun experiment for me to code and Discord's ANSI color map is less than ideal, so for acceptable results you want bright images with a clear structure.

I wish they would revert the mobile change. The TikTok-like layout actually reduced my mobile Twitch use to zero unless I click specific stream notifications.