Blemgo

Even earlier than that there was the killbind. Nothing beats your teammate or opponent finding you in an unfortunate or unexpected moment, taunting as you killbind shortly before they killbind themselves.

That's why I enjoyed TF2 for such a long time. While teamwork will always give you an advantage in matches, you will nearly never find it on public matches and people just do their own thing, and occasionally see a push forming and join in to get further. It also helps that the TTK in TF2 is much longer than in other team based multiplayer games, and you spawn back into it within 10 seconds or so.

Sadly there are so few games that follow that formula of goofy fun and rather just try to make games that are "strategic" or "competitive", which sucks majorly.

I'm not sure about the Proton thing, but yeah, Mailbox sets up PGP for you at server-level, which means they are still unencrypted on the server but will always be sent encrypted.

The initial mode is that they will try to negotiate whether PGP is supported by the other side, with you having the option to always use it for the price of the opposite side having to encrypt them.

You can even enforce it on a case by case basis by adding "secure." To the mailbox.org domain, however I don't know if that is also possible when using your own domain.

A big difference (for some) is that the mailbox is not fully encrypted. However I only see that as a requirement if there is an actual potential threat against you (like as a journalist).

Also, Mailbox has app passwords, so you can control which applications can access it and a simple revocation will end it. Connecting directly is not possible for security reasons.

They also offer 25 free aliases, 50 additional ones if you use your own domain. And they do make it rather easy to set up the necessary records to send via your domain. Plus throwaway addresses (which will only exist for 90 days each and can only receive emails).

My first introduction to winget as a sysadmin was horrible. Why Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided to make winget reliant on the user environment still baffles me. Why on earth would they require admin rights for some commands if you need to have logged into the system once?! Even the user created for LAPS does not have that requirement!

Even getting it to run through a service on system level requires you to find the nondescript directory of the executable (which may or may not he the same on other devices!) To get basic functionality going. But even with the --ignore-unknown flag (because it is not able to determine the version of packages when run through a service) winget will refuse to update without a user environment.

Not to be a smartass, but wouldn't the answer to the question be either 'yes' or 'no'? It was the following question after all.

I've read a lot that this generally puts a strain on things.

If you ever consider getting back into it, maybe suggest making DM'ing a rotating role? After all, it pays off to understand the role of the DM as a player too, and premade adventures can serve as a good way to ease into the role by taking the strain of world building from budding DMs. And even then, you could still play a supportive role for them at first so they can get the hang of things.

And if your players refuse to do that, then simply ask them to look for another DM. Your role as a DM is scarce, so you have all of the bargaining power. And why should you respect players that don't respect your role?

Were you a "forever DM"?

Well, piracy increases sales of a good game. Same as demos, though demos may misrepresent the actual gameplay if done poorly.

That is true. However, 2 things have to be considered here:

1. LLMs are easily manipulatable. So if the LLM says some advice, the person can easily spin it in a way where the LLM believes that its own advice doesn't apply even when it does. And admitting problems in oneself exist is harder in some people.
2. LLMs can talk like a person, but will miss out on details about the other, making their advice rather boilerplate, which can be very hit or miss.

In contrast, people can overcome both hindrances. They can either try to make the other realize the issues they are denying are going on, or coerce the other to still try the advice. Generally, our gift of reading little aspects of how the other talks/behaves helps us communicate with the other a lot more than we think.

Overall, not really, since with a competent talking partner you also would get ways to improve your situation, and help with pressing matters. It might be good in the short term, but there needs to be more to be good in the long run.

My guess would be the same phenomenon that existed with ELIZA. People want to be heard, especially lonely people, and LLMs are pretty good at that, asking questions and acting supportive, by design.

This whole situation reminds me of that fact that some people hire escorts to just have someone to talk to.