2733

I don’t have that version. Is it better than Risk: Europe or 2210 A.D.?

2734

Oh, I was responding to

and just pointing out that there’s no vendor that can always prevent bad ads, and if the (perfectly understandable) response is to block ads as soon as you see one bad one, the entire business model falls apart. But it’s true that some ad distributors care less than others about the bad stuff.

Sadly, there probably isn’t anything you can do. (Though I doubt the NewEgg thing is their fault.) If they actually care, and if you notice when it happens and can give them the URL and time that the ad got served on, that might be enough to help them find it, but it probably doesn’t help them enough in terms of preventing it in the future.

2735

Oh I was specifically thinking about malware for the most part. There were two sites, Deviantart and forget what the other one is because I don’t think they’re around anymore, but they had straight up pop-ups, click here or crash out kind of malware stuff. They supposedly changed their vendor or work with them or something, and I don’t see the you’ve one some bogus gift card or the you’re infected click here to clean your computer kind of “ads” that were a lot more common years ago. That piece seems to be cleaner… now.

See this isn’t okay with me. I don’t understand why sites think I will turn off my ad-blocker only to deal with this crap. I have Hulu, with commercials. I don’t have an issue watching ads as long as they’re not straight up lies, unnaturally interfere with my viewing habits or like take over my stuff. There are several sites where i have turned it off and their ads are on the sides. Heck places like CNN and MSN, some of their ads are disguised as articles which makes me mad too. And that Newegg thing. The add is 100 dollars or more off. It makes me resent both NewEgg and AdChoices.

2736

More than you probably wanted to know: Google had malware problems with Flash also. So when someone wanted to run a Flash ad, they would upload it to our servers and we could take a couple of approaches to vetting it. We could try to decompile it, and that worked for a lot of stuff but not everything because there were always ways to obfuscate it that the commonly available decompilers would get confused by. We could also run it in a sandbox and just see what it did, but there are a lot of ways to beat that - add some logic in the Flash code that only does bad things when the ad is hosted on a particular site, or at a particular time of day, or after a particular date, or on certain types of machines, or some combination of those, or or or… And all of those reduce how much benefit the bad guys get from doing their thing in return for making it harder to catch. As I said, we just decided it wasn’t worth the headache and moved on. A lot of risk mitigation ends up just being doing a good enough job that they go bother someone else - if we caught enough of the bad guys that they decided they could make enough money by running their malware-laden ads on some third-tier platform that meant we were doing a good job, even if the really competent people could get past us.

Basically, because if you don’t the site might go away, which is where the RPS post at the beginning of this thread came from. It sucks that the bad guys have gotten embedded in a decent business model to the extent that it’s unusable, but that’s kind of where we are now. I know Google Chrome is doing some of its own blocking now (https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/14/17011266/google-chrome-ad-blocker-features) and maybe that’ll be good enough eventually. There’s also https://contributor.google.com/v/beta which is more like a way to enable the pay-for-access model.

So yeah, it sucks. Nothing good lasts forever.

2737

I just realized I’ve had my ad blocker turned off at RPS for a while now. I guess I have nothing to be upset about…?

2738

No. That is interesting, at least from someone who didn’t really know. I think it was DeviantArt’s problem that even caused me to do Adblocker in the first place. It was either use that or wind up in pop-up hell. And it didn’t help their team refused to believe it was on their side and not everyone else’s computer being infected.

It seems like there should be a better way.

I feel like they might have done some appeal some time ago. I don’t run it on their site now either. I approach it as an opt-in. I turn it off for a few pages, and if that doesn’t cause a problem, try the whole site. If they ask enough times, i give them a chance. If they fail that chance, then well… There’s not even a good way to tell them why.

2739

This article drives me crazy. It starts with this head line…

Blizzard hoses down Diablo 4 reveal rumors, unlikely to appear at BlizzCon

But then the first two paragraphs (emphasis mine):

For the last two years, the lead up to BlizzCon has ushered in a new round of Diablo 4 announcement rumors. And the rumors are back in earnest this year, of course, but this time they’ve been prompted by some pretty compelling evidence: the release of the BlizzCon showroom floor map.

In contrast to the 2017 BlizzCon layout, Diablo is set to occupy a large and central area of the convention centre this year. Meanwhile, shortly after the opening ceremony, a panel dedicated to the future of Diablo is scheduled.

What the hell? The article starts with a headline declaring there won’t likely be a Diablo 4 reveal and then immediately talks about how there is compelling evidence of a Diablo 4 announcement?

It then goes on to explain about a blog post that does indicate strongly we won’t get any Diablo 4 news, sure, but why have those first two paragraphs even in this news piece?

2740

It is a basic variant, where you can do the normal die roll thing or you click on the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.

2741

What does the map show? All I see is a Diablo 3 demo area.

2742

That’s a great question, I have no idea, and you get nothing from that nonsense article.

2743

Future got rid of anyone with experience, or really anyone above the bottom tier, a long time ago to cut costs. Or staffers figured it out and left on their own for greener pastures. Their sites haven’t been worth my time in a while.

2744

In other Future news . . .

2745

I’m surprised they were still going. Did they have an online presence? I don’t remember ever seeing it, even though I occasionally got those magazine (two decades ago) and so would be familiar with the branding.

2746

A great feature on the history of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. I knew the game had a troubled development, but hearing it included multiple publishers and substantial design changes, it’s remarkable the game’s strongest moments (particularly the early, heavily scripted sequences like the hotel chase) were so well executed. I think it will always be regarded as a flawed gem, but you could tell it had the potential to be something really special. The combat and stealth sequences can be quite frustrating, but the atmosphere creeps me out in a way that very few horror games have managed.

2747

I listened to this last night on my drive home. I’m so not looking forward to policing my son’s internet use and gaming chat channels, etc.

2748

I heard teenagers pass a “rebellion” phase where they will probably pick a nazi or communist flag or smoke “diablo grass”. Or whatever.

Is something new that has never happened before. Parents be warned, always have your childrens monitored with cameras implanted directly on their eyes.

2749

Careful teiman, you’re turning into a crank.

2750

This doesn’t surprise me much although I suspect it’s not really true that there weren’t red flags so much as John didn’t recognize them for what they are. Gaming communities and online games are full of toxic hate, often directed at women and minorities; it’s prime real estate for Nazis and white supremacy groups to recruit because so many people are worried about being too politically correct to actually try and curb this behavior that they just give it a pass until some catalyst brings it to the forefront and suddenly the hand-wring and the oh no, how could this happen stuff starts showing up.

Of course NPR ends with coddle the kids, help them see what they’re missing and spends almost no time, pretty much literally zero time on mentioning that while these little Nazis are in training, they are targeting people but I guess their experiences matter. That kid they mentioned, the one they’re trying to save, how many other kids did that kid target?

2751
2752

As long as parents do it only to their own kids instead of outsourcing the ‘governance’ of their kids to the government, it at least reduces the harmful impact such short-sighted “wont anyone think of the children” measures have.