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tomtoiseon Corrupted Blood Incident

I remember in Vanilla as a mage you could make yourself completely immune to the damage that Air Elementals caused in the Blackrock Mountain area (I think? I don't remember specifics, this was a good 9 years ago or so), and so could farm highly sought after crafting mats in bulk. Nobody got banned AFAIK, blizz just quietly patched it and moved on. I agree that some of the most fun things in WoW were unintended (Twinking, exploration, GM Island etc), it's a shame they're so much more against it these days.

tomtoiseon Corrupted Blood Incident

Oh I absolutely concur, I came back for WoD.

LFR, LFG, bonus loot rolls, facebook minigame of garrison management, Bind on Account for all pets, mounts and Heirlooms.. Heirlooms themselves.

It is definitely far more casual than it used to be. I'm not going to whine, I understand the game needs to play to the market and I'm not going to pretend I enjoyed having to find a group in a chat channel, run to the actual instance and then grind away about an hour for resurrecting and loot squabbles that existed before LFG and Personal Loot, some of the changes are great. I suppose I'm also older and 'wiser' now (At least busier, with a 9-5 and whatnot), so this new style of WoW suits me, I can't just stay up all night playing like I used to.

tomtoiseon Corrupted Blood Incident

I was around for this. It was amazing fun. It really made the world (of warcraft) feel more.. alive somehow. You'd do everything you could to avoid infected players, I'd only play on an alt since my main was parked in Stormwind when the epidemic broke. I just stayed hidden away in the more obscure levelling zones and survived. It's a shame stuff like this doesn't occur more often, it really adds flavour to the game.

tomtoiseon Surveillance forces journalists to think and act like spies

So much hyperbole. Really can't stand the Sun.

Bit ironic too that this was one of the papers caught up in the phone hacking scandal and they are now preaching about security.

tomtoiseon Why we are leaving Dropbox

I instinctively shied away from using Dropbox and have instead found a cheap alternative.

I have a dedicated Linux server from Kimsufi which runs any testing I need to do for my work and also has a BitTorrent Sync client installed. I have Sync installed on my phone, laptop and work computer, so anything I need to share I can, easily and quickly.

tomtoiseon Ask HN: Do We exist?

I think that I have not taken enough LSD for questions like this. Also I had my annual existential crisis last week, so I am determined to not have another one until next year.

tomtoiseon US Navy develops cannon-launched 'swarming' drones

This was also my first thought. I loved that book, it gave me chills. Same as his Darknet series.

I guess this whole droneswarm idea is just a natural continuation of older drone tech really.

tomtoiseon 4Q: the final archive format

Offtopic, but is XKCD's SLL Cert broken? Just noticed a big angry red 'X' in chrome through the icon.

tomtoiseon French National Assembly approved Internet traffic monitoring system (French)

"False Flag" is quite an assertion to be making.

Do you have proof..?

tomtoiseon Idea for a piece of software – What now?

It's a piece of software for large offices. Working in IT for an office of 170+ users over two floors has given me the idea. Our hard-coded (Names, user profile pictures) visio-based floor-plans are constantly out of date as users leave, move desks, join etc.

I was thinking this piece of software would scrape the Active Directory for names, feed it into an SQL database and then through SharePoint (I only say SharePoint because that's what our Intranet is based on), you could host static Visio-based floor plans of just the desk-spaces.

You could then link the SQL database to the live Visio floorplans and then move the users around as needed on the page, making them up to date for the whole office as soon as one person updates it, rather than having to email the whole office with the updated document, wasting time and effort, as as soon as any personnel changes are made, the document has to be manually re-edited with names and whatnot from scratch.

tomtoiseon Show HN: Find tech jobs that come with a visa

+1 from me. They're hard as hell to get hold of due to businesses buying them up as soon as they become available, but if you set up a simple autorefresh extension on their product page and leave it running on a second monitor, you might get lucky.

tomtoiseon Show HN: Discover what songs were used in YouTube videos

Until you posted this clarification, my first thought was - What makes it different from Shazam?

Thanks for clearing that up, good luck with your site!

tomtoiseon Ancient Nimrud Ruins 'bulldozed' in Iraq

I always though the reason I found this more enraging than the beheadings was because human life, at risk of sounding callous, is 'expendable' in that there are billions of us, with new humans being born every second, but these artifacts are literally irreplacable.

I had a conversation with my SO with regards to the destruction without mentioning my view on why it affects us so much more and she pretty much came to the same conclusion.

tomtoiseon [dead]

Attempted to import my Linkedin information, it only grabbed my last company worked for, name and email address.

I like the idea, bit wary about trusting a random website with my personal history (Linkedin took me long enough to join), but without full functionality I didn't spend more than a minute playing around with this.

tomtoiseon Google's AI Masters Space Invaders (But It Still Stinks at Pac-Man)

I thought Pac Man had been 'solved'? As in, the Ghosts always follow explicit paths. I'm curious to know that if they increased the 'learning' to more than the last 4 frames, would the AI figure this out itself.

tomtoiseon How is Stephen Hawking still alive?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/24...

^ Clickthrough to the actual article.

tomtoiseon [dead]

Unplug your computer from any networks. Then call someone who knows a bit more about infections and may be able to help.

tomtoiseon An IoT dashboard

http://i.imgur.com/ZKbUnKO.png

God Damnit Hugo, Get your shit together!

tomtoiseon How Google determined our right to be forgotten

I hear Mein Kampf is a really good read. Edit: Wow. Downvote flurry. What I mean is that to take an article without the context of author is ridiculous. Perhaps I was a little bit too snide.

tomtoiseon Ask HN: What to do when CloudFlare is on an Adult block list

A lot of people get technicians in to install the hardware, their default mode is to just next,next finish until the router is ready. Chances are it's the technicians themselves turning on the blocking. Not in a malicious or tinfoil hat way, just out of a desire to get the job done quickly

tomtoiseon Voat.co – open source Reddit-type website with free speech as it's #1 priority

I'd imagine it was more "I can silence and harass whomever I like, and expect to be silenced and harassed in return".

Kinda the basic principle behind FOS as I understand it.

tomtoiseon What open source solution powers your entertainment media center?

I personally use an old desktop machine next to the router with Plex Server installed on it, 2 2tb drives of films and TV shows and a Chromecast, with the plex app on my android phone which links up the two.

I just browse the plex app for stuff I wanna watch, click cast and then voila! On demand TV and films, wirelessly, without having to move my arse off the couch.

What a time to be alive.

tomtoiseon Unreal Paris

As a guy who works in an Architectural office, I know people who are pushing for this, however in my office specifically we still have quite a few directors who still refuse to use Revit / Autocad and still design with pencil and paper, so there is very strong push-back.

I'm actually downloading UE4 as I type this, I'm going to have a play around with importing AutoCad maps and then demo to the Directors, in an effort to show them how visually impressive UE4 could be as opposed to dry meetings with clients showing them floor plans. It's quite a rare skill to be able to properly visualize projects in 3d from floor plans, and I've often seen clients going cross eyed in attempts to hold all the info in their head at once.

tomtoiseon WhatsApp and Apple need to agree how to share data with British spies

It still blows my mind they're pushing for stuff like this when it's been admitted already that the Paris terrorists, Lee Rigby's killer and other such perpetrators were already under surveillance by intelligence agencies. They already had all the data they needed, they just didn't leverage it correctly.

There's just no legitimate reason to increase surveillance powers even more. This is a weak, weak argument.

tomtoiseon Lords Sneak UK Internet Snooping Law into Bill

Oh great. A new way to waste my time at work.

Ontopic though, this could actually be a good way to educate people on the dangers of sharing. Only 5 mins in myself so far though.

tomtoiseon Lords Sneak UK Internet Snooping Law into Bill

You're dealing with 'could' and 'what if'.

For example, you state that handing over data about Chilean users may result in them being murdered. I could just as easily argue that if you didn't hand over the data, Chilean users may be murdered. I'm not saying they will be or anything like that, obviously.

Compared to your last point, which is rooted in solid fact (They were both monitored, it did nothing to prevent the attack) and can't be argued with, the other two are a bit.. flimsy.

All I'm saying is if I was arguing against you (Which I'm not), it'd be easy to call you hysterical when you go on about murder and the Chinese.

For clarity, ignored your first point because not US and second point is sound, so I left that out as well :)

tomtoiseon Run a script when police raid your house

Not sure which country you hail from, but I know that there are laws compelling you to hand over keys generally worldwide[1]. So I guess it depends if the crime you're guilty of (Otherwise why would you even need to hide everything) outweighs the punishment for withholding keys.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingd...

tomtoiseon Lords Sneak UK Internet Snooping Law into Bill

The last point is the strongest in this context.

The others are a bit too straw-man (Do you support Chinese interception against their adversaries? Are you happy to turn over your entire email history on entering a country?)

Not that I'm saying you're wrong, you're completely right. It's just that we need non-emotive and cool heads when we argue this.

tomtoiseon Lords Sneak UK Internet Snooping Law into Bill

Your obtrusive and underhanded domestic spying law gets shot down by a democratic procedure? No problem! Just tack it onto a bill already being considered by the House of Lords and sidestep the whole pesky review process.

tomtoiseon UK government 'most transparent' in the world

Lifted from the comments section: "My frosted glass bathroom window is also transparent".

I think it sums this up quite well. Just dumping data and statistics doesn't make a government transparent. Being open and answering direct questions with direct answers (MP expenses, Iraq Dossier, Rochdale scandal, Allegations of a Westminster Paedophile ring etc), rather than half-answering or outright delaying reports and inquiries until people forget about them or the general election has passed and the current government are safe in their seats for another 4 years would make them transparent.