It's interesting to me

[67456d05df8c8fox]

I think it has to do with some hardcoded human behaviour patterns - we are never satisfied with what we have for long, always wanting something better or different. Old hats and all. It's helping us to make "progress" but it makes  sitting back and actually enjoying things quite hard for us.

I feel that the increasing amount of possibilities and complexity adds an element of mental overload to it that can result in disorientation or numbness - or some flip-flopping between that and enthusiasm.

[67456d05dfa6bicemann]

Yup. Stupid human emotions. Making us attracted to other women when we're already in happy marriages / relationships. Grrr. Or the 80/20 thing.

[67456d05dfbeafox]

Microsoft (re-)released the source code for MS-DOS v1.25 and v2.0. Could be interesting for educational purposes, I guess.

heise.de: "Aus der Betriebssystem-Gruft: Microsoft stellt DOS-Quellcode auf GitHub bereit"

[67456d05dfdc9Kolya]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZelwg-iVok

Creator's website: http://www.future-punk.com/

[67456d05dff61Kolya]

"Corporations" by Kenze Wee Hon Ming, digital, 2018

Found here.
As someone in the thread mentions the image prominently features the logo of Basic Attention Token

[67456d05e006dfox]

RPS: "TH3 W0R5T35T W0R5T H4CK1NG M1N1G4M35 3V3R"

[67456d05e0177Kolya]

Good thing they didn't mention SS1's connect-the-wires puzzle. I mean technically they should have. But we won't stand for that.

[67456d05e08e7RocketMan]

I mean technically they should have.

You didn't like the wire puzzles?   

[67456d05e0ac9fox]

It's about time someone really gets these right. IMO, they all should take notice from Zachtronics various creations. You probably all know about TIS, Shenzhen IO and Exapunks (or Opus Magnum for your Steampunk needs) but here's a really cool and free one of his early games:

http://www.zachtronics.com/ruckingenur-ii/

I could totally see something like that in games like Deus Ex. Quadliteral Cowboy would also be a nice source for inspiration.

[67456d05e0f2fKolya]

You didn't like the wire puzzles?   

Not really, no. I couldn't solve some of them. Mostly due to the fluctuating meter I think. Also because I'm not very good at puzzles.

[67456d05e1067RocketMan]

I'm not sure how sophisticated the coding was but sometimes I would make a wire change that would appear to be wrong but if I sat there and watched the meter flutter around for 5 seconds it would spike up and touch the threshold and open up.  That was pretty awesome.  Just like real life!

And if you can't solve it, which happens, logic probe

[67456d05e12c1JDoran]

I don't know why Deus Ex: Human Revolution's hacking mini-game was on that list. I thought it was pretty good, being enjoyable without being too complicated or overly-long. It was annoying when the random factor forced you to repeatedly cancel the hack and restart before you were detected, but since the game has the standard PC first person shooter save-and-load-anytime save system, then failing a hack meant you could just reload the save you'd made before you started to hack the lock. And when you did complete the hack, it did feel like you'd achieved something. On the minus side, since the game was skewed towards you hacking everything (as otherwise you didn't get nearly so many XP points, which you used to buy/upgrade your cybernetic abailities)

And Bioshock 1's hacking mini-game, a rip of of the 1990s' game Pipes, was sort of OK. It wasn't a lot of fun, and became tedious later on when you'd done it seemingly dozens of time, but it wasn't too bad judged on it's length or level of enjoyability. Or rather, it would have been OK, except for the fact that sometimes the randomly generated board (or grid, or whatever you call the playing area) was impossible to complete as there was no legitimate way through the alarm panels and other obstacles. On the plus side, since it was random, then the next time was probably OK, but it was really annoying.

[67456d05e1591fox]

The problem with all these is that they just feel like gimmicky mini-arcade games instead of knowledge based logic puzzles and out of the box thinking. Solving them, didn't feel rewarding - just like overcoming a minor hurdle between you and where the game devs obviously want you to go. IMO, a game designed to offer several approaches to a problem, like Deus Ex or System Shock, shouldn't hesitate to make the players who choose the hacker playstyle come up with solutions in a more (techno)logical sound way instead of randomized mini-games that merely test your reflexes and/or patience.

[67456d05e172cKolya]

They break with the main game's universe by being too simple for it. It seems unlikely to open a box and rewire some cables to open a locked door on a commercial spacestation.
However I feel this is another case of "realism" vs gameplay. A mini game that's internally consistent with the game world would usually have to be much more involved, but from a gameplay perspective it shouldn't keep you from playing the main game more than a few minutes. So how involved can it be?

[67456d05e187efox]

I know that it would change the pace a bit but think there's a sweet spot like the easy levels of the games I referenced or to add another one: Bomb Squad Academy. People who don't like that playstyle, still have their usual alternatives like buying/finding/social engineering keycodes or finding different paths (aka conveniently oversized vent pipes) or brute force.

I'm not saying it's easy to make it work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjLi4ggIdvQ

[67456d05e19a1Kolya]

Well, I'm downloading the demo of that. For science.

[67456d05e1abcKolya]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNLnXNADMwc

http://www.titanichg.com/demo/

[67456d05e1bc0fox]

Should Terri Brosius ever be unavailable for new SHODAN recordings, get Grace Jones, I say:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jtBX6y1U0c

[67456d05e1dfbKolya]

That's one of my favourite music videos. It came out in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. A real masterpiece, better than Slave to the Rhythm.

Rio Reiser made a thematically similar song much earlier: Menschenfresser, which he still wrote with Ton Steine Scherben.
And more recently and lightheartedly: Guz - Ted Kaczynski War Ein Freund Von Mir.

[67456d05e1f86fox]

On "Menschenfresser" Rio Reiser sounded quite a bite like Blixa Bargeld of Einstürzende Neubauten.

[67456d05e215eKolya]

What I like about Reiser's song is that he acknowledges the conviction and sentimentality of corporate "cannibals", their failure as human beings. They can still be loving dads, and cry about the tough fate of the world. But they refuse any responsibility for it. He makes them relatable.
Jones emphasizes their hubris and predatory nature very effectively, the inhumanity of regarding people as resources and commodities. And she has some great wordplay and that hypnotic serpent talk going. Her cannibal is definitely devilish, right from the start: Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name.   

[67456d05e22ecfox]

Listening to "Menschenfresser" while reading this (German) news article. It's a perfect match.

[67456d05e24b1Kolya]

An Eye-Scanning Lie Detector Is Forging a Dystopian Future
https://www.wired.com/story/eye-scanning-lie-detector-polygraph-forging-a-dystopian-future/

[67456d05e2707Kolya]

I finished watching the first season of True Detective yesterday. It was a mixed bag with great performances by the two leads but the story promised a lot more than it managed to achieve in the end. Because it turned into a who-dunnit that was shamelessly stuffed up with every American nightmare fuel: satanism, pedophile retards, drugs, motorcycle gangs and very dirty living conditions...

And the cop who also has his weaknesses (like beating up his daughter's friends with weighted gloves in their prison cell and fucking young but legal girls who somehow throw themselves at him) eventually comes around and embraces his conservative family dream. And even his nihilistic partner believes that the light side wins in the end. Top it off with a lot of bromance and action pieces that have nothing to do with the story whatsoever and make it all very dark and grimy. And there you have a hailed crime series.