Hello ladies, gays, enbys, and other pots-and-pans enthusiasts and welcome to the 2019 Hyperpop Rate! I'm your host, quenched, and am here to guide you through this month's rate full of boundary-pushing, experimental, over-the-top bubblegum bass, or as it is more commonly called, hyperpop. The genre has come a long way since it's humble PC Music beginnings and has grown to boast a large cult fanbase, majority of which is made of members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Here are the cling clang bitches we will be rating:
In case you're impatient like me and already know the drill...
HERE is the link to the Spotify playlist
HERE is the link to submit scores

Slayyyter - Slayyyter

Up first, we have Slayyyter, queen of high-budget-sounding-but-actually-low-budget Grindrcore music, with her self-titled debut mixtape. After releasing a string of singles starting in 2018 with BFF, featuring hyperpop legend Ayesha Erotica, she has held the attention of gays and hyperpop fans everywhere, propelled by her dominating stan-like presence on social media. While not every loose single made the cut for her mixtape, she still has a versatile discography with zero misses, whether making filthy, horny bangers on songs like "Candy" and "Daddy AF", braggadocious bops "Cha Ching" and "Celebrity", or glittery bubblegum pop such as fan-favorite "Mine". Warning: you will become slightly gayer upon album completion.

Tracklist:

100 gecs - 1000 gecs

This rate marks the first time in Popheads rate history we have cut an album from a rate and replaced it with another. LIZ's album "Planet Y2K" was supposed to be in the rate initially, but it came to my attention that she is a transphobic Trump supporter with NO apology or backtrack ever given. So, I posted this comment one day in a Daily Discussion post, and after 72 votes, 65% of you wanted LIZ to be replaced with 100 gecs (which honestly is better anyways musically speaking).
100 gecs are definitely one of the more well known hyperpop acts. The critically acclaimed duo are one of the few hyperpop acts to reach well beyond the LGBTQ+ audience. Consisting of Dylan Brady and Laura Les (who is trans!!!), the duo's debut album, especially money machine, has gone semi-viral within the music sphere and TikTok alike. If you can say one thing about this album, it's that you never know what to expect or what crazy sounds you're going to hear next! They also released a phenomenal remix album called "1000 gecs and The Tree of Clues", reimagining every song on this album and featuring many Popheads favorites such as Charli XCX and Kero Kero Bonito.
gecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgec

Tracklist:

Dorian Electra - Flamboyant

Challenging heteronormativity and the gender binary, Dorian exploded onto the scene with many loose singles, beginning with Clitopia in 2016. These singles led up to Flamboyant, an abrasive, electropop album that doesn't have a single skip! The album also features some production by Dylan Brady, who is one-half of 100 gecs, also present in this rate. Beyond the songs themselves all being bangers, lyrically Dorian explores different aspects of their sexuality and masculinity in songs such as "Emasculate", "Flamboyant", and Adam & Steve, a song which is sure to resonate which any religious gays participating in the rate. Dorian has already released their second album "My Agenda", which I also definitely recommend everyone streams after doing the rate!
Note: Dorian uses they/them pronouns so I'm gonna be mad if I get any ballots using anything otherwise!

Tracklist:

Hannah Diamond - Reflections

Lastly we have Hannah Diamond, who has been around the longest of the artists in this rate, releasing her first song in 2013. She was one of the first names in PC Music, taking her until 2019 to release her debut album (giving Sky Ferreira a run for her money as far as album waits go). Featuring A.G. Cook production and dreamy vocals from Hannah, this album was definitely worth the long wait!

Tracklist:

BONUS RATE

Unfortunately for this rate, we couldn't include the queen of hyperpop, Emily Montes, as she did not debut until 2020, therefore not fitting the rate theme. At only 5 years old, she is already receiving fairly decent critical reception. She has two projects on Spotify, the self-titled debut album, Emily Montes and the also self-titled EP, Emily. Featuring experimental production, lyrics that touch on serious topics such as COVID-19 and BLM, and never-before-seen insight into a 5 year old's life, both projects are masterpieces. Despite the seemingly large amount of songs, the bonus rate only lasts 7 minutes and 47 seconds so I definitely recommend setting aside this short amount of time to participate and experience a true visionary.
This part is completely optional and is just for fun. You may rate as many or as few songs as you'd like. No 0's or 11's, and and no minimum artist average. Here are the songs for the bonus rate:

Emily Montes:

Emily:

The Rules

Listen to EVERY SINGLE SONG in the main rate! Any ballots missing scores will not be accepted.
Scores should be between 1-10, with only one decimal place if desired. Anymore will crash the program!! (i.e. 5.5 is accepted, 5.55 is not)
You may give ONE song an 11, and ONE song a 0. Reserve these scores for your favorite and least favorite songs in the rate, respectively.
Submit scores via the prepared link at the bottom of this post.
If you let some of the songs marinate and end up wanting to change up your scores throughout the rate period, feel free to PM me at any time!
Scores will probably be due sometime early to mid-December, but try and have them in by the end of the month if you can!
Sabotage is NOT allowed, so leave the stan twitter mindset at the door! I reserve the right to question any seemingly over-the-top low or high averages.
Here is the only format accepted for scores and comments (you may also leave comments for the albums as a whole if you'd like):

Mine: 1 oh me oh my this song is shit
Album: 1000 gecs: the lil piss babies did THAT

Any other format for scores/comments is incorrect!

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

SUBMISSION LINK

(Just in case the preprepared link doesn't work, here is a pastebin of the submission format. Just copy and paste it to me via DM with your scores and comments)
Happy rating!

It's been 4 Days since my Spouse Came Out as MTF - Here are Some Random Thoughts I've had!

I (cis-f, 33) have been a bit of a hot mess the past week and my mind has been all over the place. Because this is so new (and subject to change), we aren't telling anyone else at the moment, so I don't have a sounding board, so thank you, internet, for giving me an outlet to talk about my feelings thoughts. I am sorry if any of this is triggering. I'm new and still learning what this means.

My spouse told me that it would be easier to buy them a Christmas gift this year (more options!). "Do you want Bath and Body Works Products? - That was like *the* default "girl" gift that I received when people started getting gifts when I was becoming a 'woman'." -- They said that they would be into that.
If we stay together and they go through a full social-transition, I was thinking that it would be exciting to do a renewal of vows, like a small thing with both of us in dresses, with like a small beach ceremony and just super supportive people around us (I know I am WAY ahead of myself).
1. This was immediately followed by fear about them being "prettier" than me and getting so many compliments and me being the ugly one. I am also really not interested in being masculine in any way and I have this weird insecurity about not being seen as feminine or "good enough" at being a girl.
2. My spouse is good at a HUGE range of things. They are really remarkable in that regard and I am afraid that the more feminine they express, the more competition I will feel with them and they will beat me because they are going to be better at those things.
"Maybe you should try one of my bras, it's not like *I've* worn one since the beginning of this quarantine." Haha
1. I am a little insecure that we are similar size width-wise (they are definitely taller) but I've been struggling with my weight, so they can wear some of my dresses, for example, but they may be a little short. I wish I was small enough that we couldn't just interchange clothes so easily, but I guess we could both share double the wardrobe.
2. It is nice that they can try on clothes that they don't have to buy right away. Definitely cheaper.
My in-laws already hate me for other unrelated reasons and I just *know* that they will blame this situation on me. I am unsure how my parents would respond, but they have definitely expressed low-level homophobia. They are in the "I don't want to see it" camp. I am also fairly certain my mom will believe that this is a "mental health illness" and means that my spouse is a sexual deviant.
1. This viewpoint scares me because it resonates with my internalized transphobia. That being "born in the wrong body" is an illness or some sick and twisted sexual fetish. If anyone has any ways to combat this initial reaction to this, I would love to know how to de-condition myself. Unfortunately, I associate transgenders as being a bit "weird" and now I'm having cognitive dissonance because I don't want to believe that my spouse is a weird sexual deviant.
2. I also know that I have a hard time with emotional boundaries and self-doubt, so if someone comes at me with a strong opinion, I have a hard time not letting that get to me. Plus I'm a people-pleaser and I'm sure we will meet with some awful people along this journey.
3. I'm afraid that this will reflect "poorly" on me and it gives me a sense of shame -- then I feel shame about the shame in a shame-spiral.
4. If my in-laws disown them, I wonder if my spouse will change their last name. Should I change my last name? Should we pick a whole new name together? -- I do not feel "non-conformist" enough to do this.
It's only been 4 days since they came out to me and they have already just skipped over the non-binary phase. Weirdly my spouse has expressed discomfort in the "in-between" space and has gone right to the feminine.
I was super stressed about the election a week ago and now it is barely on my radar. The nice thing is I can hide my volatile emotions in election-stress, but for how long?
1. I am like the worst secret-keeper in the world and this is definitely the biggest secret I have ever been asked to keep. I feel like it is written all over my face and I just hate it so much. I do NOT want to out them, but I am so scared I will CRACK under this pressure.
2. This is interesting in that I have been working on healing an eating disorder. Today my nutritional coach called and asked how I was doing and that was hard for me. I don't want to completely derail my progress or really get into "this" with her, but I'd be lying if I said I haven't eaten/drank irresponsibly during the last week because of my strong emotions.
Will *I* be accepted into the LGBTQ community? What IS my sexuality? I haven't really had to think about it before. Can I be a "real" bisexual/lesbian? Would I ever be viewed that way?
Are we moving too fast? My spouse is like in a dress, one of my padded bras, makeup, and shaved their legs/chest already. They seem so happy. I feel happy that they are happy. I actually feel honored that they feel safe enough with me to explore so fully so quickly. It makes me feel like our marriage is stronger than I thought.
1. They used some body spray and women's deodorant and now they smell different and that is unexpectedly disorienting for me.
I don't like the rhetoric of "dead" name because I don't want to believe my spouse is "dead" -- their current name is one of those names that is generally used for a boy, but every once in a while is used for a girl (which is weirdly cool and hot and edgy to me). They aren't sure they want to actually change their first name, but I think I need something to call them so I can get more into the space of mentally viewing them the way they are presenting.
I have this weird fear that when people find out they will be more upset about it than me. I haven't cried for example, but I just know someone else will, even though it won't affect them as much as it will affect me. That's weird and gate-keeping, I know, but I just feel like if I can "keep it together" so can they.
1. I have some issues with emotions/emotional expression (especially sadness) and maybe this triggers me because it sometimes feels like I have "robot" feelings and that if I don't cry/mourn then "I don't care" as much. Believe me. I care. This intimately affects me.
If they go on hormones will their sexuality change? Is that a common thing? If they start on hormones, how would that change their personality? They are one of the most chilled-out, contented, calm people I've ever met, but will hormones make them overly emotional?
When I first thought about my sexuality, I thought/believed that the reason I could never be a lesbian would be 1) I want to be unequivocal 'the girl' and I was afraid of sharing that role and 2) I wouldn't want to deal with the over-emotionality of women. I have believed that I could probably be sexually attracted to women, but would be hesitant to be in a romantic relationship with them because it seems harder to be with a woman (both socially in society) and I am much more aligned with the "receiver" / the one who is cared for rather than the "provider" / the one who cares for the other. <-- I don't even know HOW to do that effectively.
1. Let me clarify, I care for my spouse but it's generally the emotional care, not the "let me get rid of this spider" type of care. I can hold space for them to explore themselves, but I'm not gonna be able to protect them from a violent predator. I still want them to hold me.

So yeah, that's all pretty random. I'm very "heady" and just think a million-times a minute, so this is just the things that have been standing out to me. Thank you for listening.

No gods, no kings, only NOPE - or divining the future with options flows. [Part 2: A Random Walk and Price Decoherence]

tl;dr -
1) Stock prices move continuously because different market participants end up having different ideas of the future value of a stock.
2) This difference in valuations is part of the reason we have volatility.
3) IV crush happens as a consequence of future possibilities being extinguished at a binary catalyst like earnings very rapidly, as opposed to the normal slow way.
I promise I'm getting to the good parts, but I'm also writing these as a guidebook which I can use later so people never have to talk to me again.
In this part I'm going to start veering a bit into the speculation territory (e.g. ideas I believe or have investigated, but aren't necessary well known) but I'm going to make sure those sections are properly marked as speculative (and you can feel free to ignore/dismiss them). Marked as [Lily's Speculation].
As some commenters have pointed out in prior posts, I do not have formal training in mathematical finance/finance (my background is computer science, discrete math, and biology), so often times I may use terms that I've invented which have analogous/existing terms (e.g. the law of surprise is actually the first law of asset pricing applied to derivatives under risk neutral measure, but I didn't know that until I read the papers later). If I mention something wrong, please do feel free to either PM me (not chat) or post a comment, and we can discuss/I can correct it! As always, buyer beware.
This is the first section also where you do need to be familiar with the topics I've previously discussed, which I'll add links to shortly (my previous posts:
1) https://www.reddit.com/thecorporation/comments/jck2q6/no_gods_no_kings_only_nope_or_divining_the_future/
2) https://www.reddit.com/thecorporation/comments/jbzzq4/why_options_trading_sucks_or_the_law_of_surprise/
---
A Random Walk Down Bankruptcy
A lot of us have probably seen the term random walk, maybe in the context of A Random Walk Down Wall Street, which seems like a great book I'll add to my list of things to read once I figure out how to control my ADD. It seems obvious, then, what a random walk means - when something is moving, it basically means that the next move is random. So if my stock price is $1 and I can move in $0.01 increments, if the stock price is truly randomly walking, there should be roughly a 50% chance it moves up in the next second (to $1.01) or down (to $0.99).
If you've traded for more than a hot minute, this concept should seem obvious, because especially on the intraday, it usually isn't clear why price moves the way it does (despite what chartists want to believe, and I'm sure a ton of people in the comments will tell me why fettucini lines and Batman doji tell them things). For a simple example, we can look at SPY's chart from Friday, Oct 16, 2020:

https://preview.redd.it/jgg3kup9dpt51.png?width=1368&format=png&auto=webp&s=bf8e08402ccef20832c96203126b60c23277ccc2
I'm sure again 7 different people can tell me 7 different things about why the chart shape looks the way it does, or how if I delve deeply enough into it I can find out which man I'm going to marry in 2024, but to a rationalist it isn't exactly apparent at why SPY's price declined from 349 to ~348.5 at around 12:30 PM, or why it picked up until about 3 PM and then went into precipitous decline (although I do have theories why it declined EOD, but that's for another post).
An extremely clever or bored reader from my previous posts could say, "Is this the price formation you mentioned in the law of surprise post?" and the answer is yes. If we relate it back to the individual buyer or seller, we can explain the concept of a stock price's random walk as such:

Most market participants have an idea of an asset's true value (an idealized concept of what an asset is actually worth), which they can derive using models or possibly enough brain damage. However, an asset's value at any given time is not worth one value (usually*), but a spectrum of possible values, usually representing what the asset should be worth in the future. A naive way we can represent this without delving into to much math (because let's face it, most of us fucking hate math) is:
Current value of an asset = sum over all (future possible value multiplied by the likelihood of that value)

In actuality, most models aren't that simple, but it does generalize to a ton of more complicated models which you need more than 7th grade math to understand (Black-Scholes, DCF, blah blah blah).
While in many cases the first term - future possible value - is well defined (Tesla is worth exactly $420.69 billion in 2021, and maybe we all can agree on that by looking at car sales and Musk tweets), where it gets more interesting is the second term - the likelihood of that value occurring. [In actuality, the price of a stock for instance is way more complicated, because a stock can be sold at any point in the future (versus in my example, just the value in 2021), and needs to account for all values of Tesla at any given point in the future.]
How do we estimate the second term - the likelihood of that value occurring? For this class, it actually doesn't matter, because the key concept is this idea: even with all market participants having the same information, we do anticipate that every participant will have a slightly different view of future likelihoods. Why is that? There's many reasons. Some participants may undervalue risk (aka WSB FD/yolos) and therefore weight probabilities of gaining lots of money much more heavily than going bankrupt. Some participants may have alternative data which improves their understanding of what the future values should be, therefore letting them see opportunity. Some participants might overvalue liquidity, and just want to GTFO and thereby accept a haircut on their asset's value to quickly unload it (especially in markets with low liquidity). Some participants may just be yoloing and not even know what Fastly does before putting their account all in weekly puts (god bless you).
In the end, it doesn't matter either the why, but the what: because of these diverging interpretations, over time, we can expect the price of an asset to drift from the current value even with no new information added. In most cases, the calculations that market participants use (which I will, as a Lily-ism, call the future expected payoff function, or FEPF) ends up being quite similar in aggregate, and this is why asset prices likely tend to move slightly up and down for no reason (or rather, this is one interpretation of why).
At this point, I expect the 20% of you who know what I'm talking about or have a finance background to say, "Oh but blah blah efficient market hypothesis contradicts random walk blah blah blah" and you're correct, but it also legitimately doesn't matter here. In the long run, stock prices are clearly not a random walk, because a stock's value is obviously tied to the company's fundamentals (knock on wood I don't regret saying this in the 2020s). However, intraday, in the absence of new, public information, it becomes a close enough approximation.
Also, some of you might wonder what happens when the future expected payoff function (FEPF) I mentioned before ends up wildly diverging for a stock between participants. This could happen because all of us try to short Nikola because it's quite obviously a joke (so our FEPF for Nikola could, let's say, be 0), while the 20 or so remaining bagholders at NikolaCorporation decide that their FEPF of Nikola is $10,000,000 a share). One of the interesting things which intuitively makes sense, is for nearly all stocks, the amount of divergence among market participants in their FEPF increases substantially as you get farther into the future.
This intuitively makes sense, even if you've already quit trying to understand what I'm saying. It's quite easy to say, if at 12:51 PM SPY is worth 350.21 that likely at 12:52 PM SPY will be worth 350.10 or 350.30 in all likelihood. Obviously there are cases this doesn't hold, but more likely than not, prices tend to follow each other, and don't gap up/down hard intraday. However, what if I asked you - given SPY is worth 350.21 at 12:51 PM today, what will it be worth in 2022?
Many people will then try to half ass some DD about interest rates and Trump fleeing to Ecuador to value SPY at 150, while others will assume bull markets will continue indefinitely and SPY will obviously be 7000 by then. The truth is -- no one actually knows, because if you did, you wouldn't be reading a reddit post on this at 2 AM in your jammies.
In fact, if you could somehow figure out the FEPF of all market participants at any given time, assuming no new information occurs, you should be able to roughly predict the true value of an asset infinitely far into the future (hint: this doesn't exactly hold, but again don't @ me).
Now if you do have a finance background, I expect gears will have clicked for some of you, and you may see strong analogies between the FEPF divergence I mentioned, and a concept we're all at least partially familiar with - volatility.
Volatility and Price Decoherence ("IV Crush")
Volatility, just like the Greeks, isn't exactly a real thing. Most of us have some familiarity with implied volatility on options, mostly when we get IV crushed the first time and realize we just lost $3000 on Tesla calls.
If we assume that the current price should represent the weighted likelihoods of all future prices (the random walk), volatility implies the following two things:

Volatility reflects the uncertainty of the current price
Volatility reflects the uncertainty of the future price for every point in the future where the asset has value (up to expiry for options)

[Ignore this section if you aren't pedantic] There's obviously more complex mathematics, because I'm sure some of you will argue in the comments that IV doesn't go up monotonically as option expiry date goes longer and longer into the future, and you're correct (this is because asset pricing reflects drift rate and other factors, as well as certain assets like the VIX end up having cost of carry).
Volatility in options is interesting as well, because in actuality, it isn't something that can be exactly computed -- it arises as a plug between the idealized value of an option (the modeled price) and the real, market value of an option (the spot price). Additionally, because the makeup of market participants in an asset's market changes over time, and new information also comes in (thereby increasing likelihood of some possibilities and reducing it for others), volatility does not remain constant over time, either.
Conceptually, volatility also is pretty easy to understand. But what about our friend, IV crush? I'm sure some of you have bought options to play events, the most common one being earnings reports, which happen quarterly for every company due to regulations. For the more savvy, you might know of expected move, which is a calculation that uses the volatility (and therefore price) increase of at-the-money options about a month out to calculate how much the options market forecasts the underlying stock price to move as a response to ER.
Binary Catalyst Events and Price Decoherence
Remember what I said about price formation being a gradual, continuous process? In the face of special circumstances, in particularly binary catalyst events - events where the outcome is one of two choices, good (1) or bad (0) - the gradual part gets thrown out the window. Earnings in particular is a common and notable case of a binary event, because the price will go down (assuming the company did not meet the market's expectations) or up (assuming the company exceeded the market's expectations) (it will rarely stay flat, so I'm not going to address that case).
Earnings especially is interesting, because unlike other catalytic events, they're pre-scheduled (so the whole market expects them at a certain date/time) and usually have publicly released pre-estimations (guidance, analyst predictions). This separates them from other binary catalysts (e.g. FSLY dipping 30% on guidance update) because the market has ample time to anticipate the event, and participants therefore have time to speculate and hedge on the event.
In most binary catalyst events, we see rapid fluctuations in price, usually called a gap up or gap down, which is caused by participants rapidly intaking new information and changing their FEPF accordingly. This is for the most part an anticipated adjustment to the FEPF based on the expectation that earnings is a Very Big Deal (TM), and is the reason why volatility and therefore option premiums increase so dramatically before earnings.
What makes earnings so interesting in particular is the dramatic effect it can have on all market participants FEPF, as opposed to let's say a Trump tweet, or more people dying of coronavirus. In lots of cases, especially the FEPF of the short term (3-6 months) rapidly changes in response to updated guidance about a company, causing large portions of the future possibility spectrum to rapidly and spectacularly go to zero. In an instant, your Tesla 10/30 800Cs go from "some value" to "not worth the electrons they're printed on".
[Lily's Speculation] This phenomena, I like to call price decoherence, mostly as an analogy to quantum mechanical processes which produce similar results (the collapse of a wavefunction on observation). Price decoherence occurs at a widespread but minor scale continuously, which we normally call price formation (and explains portions of the random walk derivation explained above), but hits a special limit in the face of binary catalyst events, as in an instant rapid portions of the future expected payoff function are extinguished, versus a more gradual process which occurs over time (as an option nears expiration).
Price decoherence, mathematically, ends up being a more generalizable case of the phenomenon we all love to hate - IV crush. Price decoherence during earnings collapses the future expected payoff function of a ticker, leading large portions of the option chain to be effectively worthless (IV crush). It has interesting implications, especially in the case of hedged option sellers, our dear Market Makers. This is because given the expectation that they maintain delta-gamma neutral, and now many of the options they have written are now worthless and have 0 delta, what do they now have to do?
They have to unwind.
[/Lily's Speculation]
- Lily

Over-Optimizing for Performance

Recently on the csharp subreddit, the post C# 9.0 records: immutable classes linked to a surprisingly controversial article discussing how C# 9.0's records are, underneath it all, immutable classes. The comments are full of back-&-forth over whether one should use records for ease or structs for performance. The pro-struct argument revolved around the belief that performance should always be a developer's #1 priority, and anything less was the realm of the laggard.
Here is a real-world example that shows with stark clarity why that kind of thinking is wrong.
Consider the following scenario:

1

You're working on a game with dozens, maybe hundreds of people on the team; you don't know because when you were cross with facilities about them removing all the fluorescents, you got accused of being against the new energy saving initiative. Now you swim in a malevolent ocean of darkness that on some very late nights alone in the office, you swear is actively trying to consume you.

2

The team that preceded you inherited an engine that is older than OOP, when source repositories were stacks of 8-inch floppies, and it looked as if Jefferson Starship was going to take over the world. One year ago they bequeathed upon the company this nightmare of broken, undocumented GOTO spaghetti & anti-patterns. You're convinced this was their sadistic revenge for all getting fired post-acquisition.

3

Management denied your request to get headcount for an additional technical artist, but helpfully supplied you with an overly nervous intern. After several weeks working alongside them, you're beginning to suspect they're pursuing something other than a liberal arts degree.

4

Despite the many getting started guides you spent countless evenings writing, the endless brownbags nobody attended, and the daily dozen emails you forward to oppressively inquisitive artists comprised of a single passive-aggressive sentence suggesting they scroll down to the part that begins FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: RE: WE BROKE TOOL NEED WORKAROUND ASAP ...

...yes, despite all of that, the engineering team still spent days tracking down why the game kept crashing with Error 107221: У вас ошибка after re-re-re-re-re-throwing an ex_exception when it couldn't (and should never even try to) load a 16K-textured floor mat.

5

Despite your many attempts to politely excuse yourself, one blissfully unaware artist exhausts 48 minutes of your lunch break explaining how the Pitchfork review for the latest "dope slab" of this TikTok-Instagram-naphouse artist you never heard of was just sooooo unfair.

And then in their hurry to finish up & catch the 2:30 PM bus home, they forget to toggle Compress To CXIFF (Custom Extended Interchange File Format), set the Compression slider 5/6ths of the way between -3 & -2, look to their left, look to their right, click Export As .MA 0.9.3alpha7, and make absolutely, positively, 100% SURE not to be working in prod. And THAT is how the game explodicated.

6

You know better than anyone the intermediate file format the main game loop passes to Game.dll, memory mapping it as a reverse top-middle Endian binary structure.

You know for 381 of the parameter fields what their 2-7 character names probably mean.

YOU know which 147 fields always have to be included, but with a null value, and that the field ah_xlut must ALWAYS be set to 0 unless it's Thursday, in which case that blackbox from hell requires its internal string equivalent: TRUE.

YOU know that the two tech artists & one rapidly aging intern that report to you would totally overhaul tooling so artists would never "happen" again, but there just aren't enough winters, springs, summers, falls, July 4ths, Christmas breaks, Presidents Days, and wedding anniversaries in a year to properly do so.

7

If you could just find the time between morning standups, after lunch standups, watersprint post-mortems, Milbert's daily wasting of an hour at your desk trying to convince you engineering should just rebuild the engine from the ground up in JavaScript & React, & HR's mandatory EKG Monitor job satisfaction surveys, you might be able to get at least some desperately-needed tooling done.

And so somehow you do. A blurry evening or two here. A 3:00 AM there. Sometimes just a solitary lunch hour.

Your dog no longer recognizes you.

You miss your wife calling to say she's finally cleaning out the hall closet and if you want to keep this box of old cards & something in plastic that says Underground Sea Beta 9.8 Grade, you better call her back immediately.

And your Aunt Midge, who doesn't understand how SMS works, bombards you one evening:
your father is...
no longer with us...
they found him...
1 week ago...
in an abandoned Piggly Wiggly...
by an old culvert...
split up...
he was then...
laid down to rest...
sent to St. Peter's...
and your father...
he's in a better place now...
don't worry...
it's totally okay...
we decided we will all go...
up to the mountain

You call your sister in a panic and, after a tidal wave of confusion & soul-rending anxiety, learn it was just Hoboken Wireless sending the messages out of order. This causes you to rapidly cycle.

8

On your bipolar's upswing, you find yourself more productive than you've ever been. Your mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention. It's like your brain is on 200mg of pure grade Adderall.

Your fingers ablaze with records, clean inheritance, beautiful pattern matching, bountiful expression syntax, aircraft carriers of green text that generate the most outstanding CHM for an internal tool the world has ever seen. Readable. PERFECTLY SOLID.

After much effort, you gaze upon the completed GUI of your magnum opus with the kind of pride you imagine one would feel if they hadn't missed the birth of their son. Clean, customer-grade WPF; tooltips for every control; sanity checks left & right; support for plugins & light scripting. It's even integrated with source control!

THOSE GODDAMNED ARTISTS CAN'T FAIL. YOUR PIPELINE TOOL WON'T LET THEM.

All they have to do is drag content into the application window, select an options template or use the one your tool suggests after content analysis, change a few options, click Export, and wait for 3-5 minutes to generate Game.dll-compatible binary.

Your optimism shines through the commit summary, your test plan giddy & carefree. With great anticipation, you await code review.

9

A week goes by. Then two. Then three. Nothing. The repeated pinging of engineers, unanswered.

Two months in you've begun to lose hope. Three months, the pangs of defeat. Four months, you write a blog post about how fatalism isn't an emotion or outlook, but the TRANSCENDENCE of their sum. Two years pass by. You are become apathy, destroyer of wills.

10

December 23rd, 2022: the annual Winter Holidays 2-hour work event. The bar is open, the Kokanee & Schmidt's flowing (max: 2 drink tickets). The mood a year-high ambivalent; the social distancing: acceptable. They even have Pabst Blue Ribbon, a beer so good it won an award once.

Standing beside you are your direct reports, Dave "Macroman" Thorgletop and wide-eyed The Intern, the 3 of you forming a triumvirate of who gives a shit. Dave is droning on & on about a recent family trip to Myrtle Beach. You pick up something something "can you believe that's when my daughter Beth scooped up a dead jellyfish? Ain't that something? A dead jellyfish," and "they even had a Ron Jons!"

You barely hear him, lost as you are in thought: "I wish I had 2 days of vacation." You stare down ruefully at your tallboy.

From the corner of your eye you spot Milbert, index finger pointed upward, face a look of pure excitement.

"Did I tell you about my OpenWinamp project? It's up on SourceForge", he says as he strides over. It's unsettling how fast this man is.

"JAVASCRIPT IS JUST A SUBSET OF JAVA!" you yell behind you, tossing the words at him like a German potato masher as you power walk away. It does its job, stopping Milbert dead in his tracks.

Dave snickers. The Intern keeps staring wide-eyed. You position yourself somewhat close to the studio's 3 young receptionists, hoping they serve as a kind of ritual circle of protection.

It works... kind of. Milbert is now standing uncomfortably close to The Intern, Dave nowhere to be seen.

From across the room you distinctly hear "Think about it, the 1st-person UI could be Lua-driven Electron."

The Intern clearly understands that words are being spoken to them, but does not comprehend their meaning.

You briefly feel sorry for the sacrificial lamb.

11

You slide across the wall, putting even more distance between you & boredom made man. That's when you spot him, arrogantly aloof in the corner: Glen Glengerry. Core engineering's most senior developer.

Working his way up from a 16-year old game tester making $4.35 an hour plus free Dr. Shasta, to pulling in a cool $120K just 27-years later, plus benefits & Topo Chicos. His coding style guides catechism, his Slack pronouncements ex cathedra; he might as well be CTO.

You feel lucky your team is embedded with the artists. You may have sat through their meetings wondering why the hell you should care about color theory, artistic consistency, & debates about whether HSL or CMYK was the superior color space (spoiler: it's HSL), you were independent and to them, a fucking code wizard, man.

And there he stands, this pseudo-legend, so close you could throw a stapler at him. Thinning grey-blonde tendrils hanging down from his CodeWarrior hat, white tee with This Guy VIMs on the back, tucked into light blue jeans. He's staring out into the lobby at everything and yet... nothing all at.

12

Maybe it's the 4.8% ABV. Maybe it's the years of crushing down anger into a singularity, waiting for it to undergo rapid fiery expansion, a Big Bang of righteous fury. Maybe it's those sandals with white socks. Maybe it's all three. But whatever it is, it's as if God himself compels you to march over & give him a piece of your mind, seniority be damned.

"Listen, you big dumb bastard..."

That... is maybe a little too aggressive. But Glen Glengerry barely reacts. Pulling a flask out of his back pocket, he doesn't look over as he passes it to you.

Ugh. Apple Pucker.

13

"I thought bringing in your own alcohol was against company policy", wiping sticky green sludge from your lips. He turns with a look of pure disdain & snorts.

"You think they're going to tell ME what I can & can't bring in?" He grabs the flask back, taking a big swig.

For what feels like an eternity, you both stand in silence. You swallow, speaking softly. "None of you even looked at my code. I worked very, very hard on that. My performance review for that year simply read 'recommend performance improvement plan." The words need no further context.

"I know", Glen² replies. "That was me."

14

Now you're not a weak man, and maybe in some other circumstance you would have punched him in the goddamn lip. But you feel nothing, just a hollowness inside. "Why?", you ask, wondering if the answer would even matter.

"Because you don't use Bulgarian notation. Because your method names aren't lower camel case. Because good code doesn't require comments. Because you use classes & records over more performant structs, pointlessly burdening the heapstack. BECAUSE. YOUR CODE. IS. SHIT."

You clinch your fists so tightly the knuckles whiten.

15

He looks away from you, taking another sip of green goo. "You're not a coder. You're an artist masquerading as one" he speaks, as if it were fact.

The only thing artistic about you is the ability to create user-friendly internal tooling using nothing but a UI framework, broken down garbage nobody wants to touch, & sheer willpower. If your son's life depended on you getting accepted into art instruction school, you couldn't even draw a turtle.

He doesn't pause. "I'll champion ruthless micro-optimization until the day I die. But buddy, I'm going to let you in on a little secret: you aren't here to improve workflow. You're here to LOOK like you're doing something NOBODY else can."

He goes on. "What do you think those artists are going to do when they have to stare at a progress bar for 4, 5 minutes? They're going to complain your tool is slow."

"Sure, it may take them 20, 30 minutes to do it the old way, there'll be an error, and either they'll stare at it for 30 minutes before adding that missing semi-colon or they'll come get you. And you'll fix it. And 1 week later, they won't remember how. And you'll stay employed. And every. Body. Wins."

16

A little bit of the pride, the caring, wells back up inside from somewhere long forgotten.

"You don't think we should care about rapid application development & KISS, quickly getting things out that help our team, instead devoting ourselves to shaving off ticks here & there? What do you think artists are going to do with those 4 minutes you talk about?

You don't stop. "I'll tell you what they'll do. They'll 9GAG for 20 minutes straight. They'll listen to podcasts about dialectical materialism vis-a-vis the neo-feudalism that is a natural extension of the modern world's capitalist prison. They'll Reddit."

His silence gives you the bravery to push the limits.

"Christ, man. Are you only in it for the $120K..."

He corrects you: "...$123K."

"...only in it for the $123K/year? The free snacks from the microkitchen? The adulation? Have you no sense of comraderie?? No desire to push us to something better?! No integrity?!!!"

His eyes sharply narrow, face creases in anger. You clearly have overstepped your bounds.

17

"You think I don't have integrity? No sense of teamwork? I'm only in it for the cold cash? You think I don't care about you all?", he roars.

A light volley of small green flecks land on your face.

"Why do you think they made a 16-year old tester the lead developer of a 1993 Doom clone?! Because my code was clean & painless to work with?! Because I made coding look easy?! No! IT WAS BECAUSE I WAS A GOD TO THEM.

And from a God, a PANTHEON. We built monuments to over-engineering! We crafted that of 7 weeks onboarding, that of immortal bugs, demonic hosts spawned by legion from the very loins of a fix. It took 2 years before a developer could BEGIN to feel confident they knew what they were doing. And by that time, they were one of US!

You think the team we laid off November '19 was fired because they were bad at their jobs? NO! It was because they worked themselves out of one. They didn't leave us a broken pipeline. They left an internal Wiki, a wealth of tools & example projects, and a completely transparent code base.

We couldn't have THAT, now could we? No, we couldn't. So we got rid of it. ALL OF IT. Poof. Gone. Just like that. Before anyone even knew a THING."

He leans forward, so close his psoriasis almost touches yours.
With an intensity that borders on frightening, he whispers "You think they left us Game.dll? I fucking *MADE** Game.dll."*

The words hit hard like a freight train.

18

And without another word, he turns & leaves. You're left there, alone, coworkers milling about, with only one thought.

Were one to get a hobby, should it be cocaine?

In Conclusion

It's these kinds of situations that make me believe there are far more important considerations than a ruthless dedication to performance, even in the game industry as my real-world scenario so clearly demonstrates.

Like, records are cool & shit.

Hot Tub Hawk And The Pissed Off Colonel

Well! Here we are again. Everyone is sitting around this internet campfire, anxiously awaiting another Hawk story. Some of you are making S'mores. Others have crammed a stick into a hotdog and are now roasting it. I "Cope" with life and have a fat dip in. The only person I don't see is Hawk. Wait. There he is, and he keeps sticking his fingers into the fire to, "make sure it's still hot." I wonder if there is still a need to detail how mentally deficient or completely oblivious Hawk is? I strongly encourage you to read my previous stories if you have not been formally introduced to Hawk. I suspect you will continue to read anyways, so I offer you this: Hawk is the type of guy that gets into a spelling argument with his tattoo artist and walks out proud of his two-inch sized font forehead tattoo that reads "No Regerts."
We were in beautiful Iraq, a charming vacation destination for thousands of Americans. The vacation was all inclusive. The local women dressed like Pac-Man ghosts or ninjas, and countryside smelled like raw sewage and regret. Most of the locals were very hospitable, but some of the locals had a very strong desire to shout, "Praise Allah" while simultaneously trying to kill us. I am not bothered by much. Every human is entitled to their beliefs. We are also entitled to our own opinions. For example, I don't personally feel "man-dresses" and flip-flops are suitable combat attire, but who am I too judge? The only time I have an issue with people is when they are actively trying to kill me. I don't know why, but it really pisses me off. That and grape jelly.
We worked out of two different locations during this deployment. The majority of my Battalion worked out of a medium-sized Forward Operating Base (FOB), but we also operated out of a smaller FOB. We typically stayed at this other location for about ten days, and would rotate with another Platoon. The location was not horrible, but I personally hated the transient lifestyle. We lived out of our ruck-sacks, and had to find ways to occupy our time when we were not conducting raids or other missions. We didn't have the luxuries we had at "home." There were no gaming systems or large televisions. We simply had find ways to occupy ourselves.
Football was the game of choice for a couple weeks, then it got blacklisted. It had nothing to do with the ball being pigskin either. It was mostly due to poor mission analysis. Football was one of the few things we could all do and actually enjoyed, until it was too dark to play. We had a brilliant and genius idea. We fucking "own the night" with our Night Vision Goggle (NVGs), so why don't we rent it for a couple hours to finish the game? Game on Garth! We thought of everything. We drenched that infidel ball in Infrared (IR) chemlight (Glow Stick) juice. The depth perception problem was immediately evident. House took a fucking laser beam pass to the to the face. Two black eyes builds character though.
We can work through it though. His NVGs were still Fully Mission Capable (FMC), and we all realized that we needed to be a bit quicker. The fourth play from scrimmage was undoubtedly the best, and worst football play in the history of Iraq football. Fuck punting. We were going for it. It would have been easy to confuse Tony, our quarterback for Michael Vick from the shotgun. Tony was a Michael Vick with NVGs, and without the dog fighting felony. Tony evaded numerous rushers and then superbly delivered a fifty yard completion to Ryan. It was beautiful to watch, until it wasn't. NVG's are great, but they don't offer the same Field of View (FOV) your eye-nuggets offer. Ryan thought he was all alone and started a leisurely stroll to the end-zone. The he got fucking nuked from the top and bottom, in fucking reverse directions. Sure, Ryan broke a finger and required "some" stitches. Oh and they broke three sets of NVGs in one play, but damn that was a glorious fucking hit. It was first-and-ten, but our Platoon Sergeant was less than happy. Game off Wayne!
We were now bored again. There was another unit on the FOB with us, but they were not fans of us. The only real interaction we had was when their full-bird Colonel told us to, "stay the fuck away from his Soldiers." I don't know if one of the other Platoons ruined it for us, but the guy was just a complete prick to us.
We did our best to keep our reverse schedule, but it was just so boring during the evenings we were not working. The majority of us resorted to playing Spades or Echure, and others read. Hawk and a handful of others would take nightly showers and then seemed to vanish. "Knowledge is power" and I knew Hawk was utterly powerless. I knew better than to ever let that retarded bird spread his wings and fly solo. I didn't see any reason to worry though. The other people Hawk was with were far smarter than Hawk woud ever be. Furthermore, with football now off the table, there was really no way for anyone to get in trouble at this FOB.
Imagine Hawk in a cattle chute. If I put a box labeled "commonsense" on the opposite end, Hawk would never fucking find it. In a place he literally has no option but to find it, he would NOT FIND IT. EVER. However, if I had a box labeled "worst decision ever" and dropped it in the ocean, Hawk would fucking somehow stumble upon the lost city of Atlantis. I had never really got my ass chewed before I became Hawk's leader, but that trend went out the window when I inherited him.
We lived on the second floor, and my bunk was closest to the door that rotation. Thankfully too. I was woken up when I heard, "I want to talk to one of your leaders." I didn't know "who" was in trouble, but I had Hawk so I knew it was best to simply put my shoes on and assume I was in trouble by proxy. I didn't even wait to see if I would get to sit on the Green Army Weenie, I just spit in my hand and readied my o-ring for maximal insertion. It was too early for the sun to even be out, and I was already willingly walking to my execution. My how things had changed so quickly.
I walk outside and I see five Soldiers, one Hawk, and a fucking pissed of Colonel (COL).
COL: Are you their leader?
OP: I am one of them. How can I help you Sir?
COL: Do you know where I caught them?
This is where I would typically say something stupid, but this guy didn't look happy, and I didn't want to give him a reason to wake up someone who "may" have gave a shit as to why he was irate.
OP: No Sir. I don't.
COL: Above MY SHOWER?
I was now pissed. There was a large shower tent in the middle of large open courtyard. One half was male and the other was female. These fucking morons were spying on naked females? I want to kill them for listening to Hawk. Well, I assumed it was a Hawk idea. Like Hawk's brain, I was putting the cart before the horse. I assume it was Hawk, but I had questions.
OP: How in the fuck did you guys get on top the shower tent?
I was working myself into a frenzy. My brain does not operate like normal people brains. I was pretty pissed considering they violated the privacy of the beautiful ladies at the FOB, but I was actually more pissed they got on top of a fucking tent. They seemingly forgot everything about military tactics and got caught; that was the foremost reason for my anger. The spying on deployment 1's (binary thingy) was second. Considerably a far worse offense, but second at the point in time.
COL: NO. Not the shower tent. On my personal shower.
What? This guy was so special, he had a personal shower. What, he was too good to use the pallet floored showers like the rest of us? So maybe the Romanians (We think anyways) occasionally shit on the pallets and waffle-stomped the poop through the pallets, but the water pressure was phenomenal.
OP: You have a personal shower Sir, and they were on top?
COL: YES. I caught them in my water tank.
Well, back to being puzzled. I don't judge. I personally don't care if penis gazing is your hobby, but there are five of you? Why don't you just unleash your hogs and stare at each others? Anyways, how in the fuck did they all fit into the water tank? What the fuck did they do when they got inside? My god, my brain was running wild with unsightly pictures.
OP: My apologies Sir, but how did they all fit into your water tank?
COL: Come with my Sergeant; so you understand what I am talking about.
OP: You mother fuckers can wait for me in, the front-leaning-rest (Push-up position).
I still wasn't certain I entirely cared, but I thought this would may demonstrate that I showed concern about his fucking one-person shower. COL Prick then lead me around the side of the building and showed me his water tank. It was fucking huge. It was one of the typical hard plastic tanks, but the entire top had been cut off. God knows why, not like it was ever dusty in Iraq, but the top was no-more. It all made sense now. They weren't gay; they were chilling in a makeshift hot tub! Well, the gayness thing is up in the air, but I guess they were too loud while he was showering!?! I apologized profusely, but COL Prick had me locked up at the position of attention for at least ten minutes just dressing me down. I was a "really poor leader, and you're not going to go anywhere in the Army." Jokes on him, they haven't kicked me out yet.
COL: This is why nobody likes "cool guys." Words, words, words. You'd better do something about this, words, words, words. My penis is too small to shower with the big boys, words, words, words. NOW GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SIGHT.
I returned to the Soldiers, whom were still all in the front-leaning-rest. I screamed, "GET ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BUILDING. I DON'T WANT TO GO TO JAIL AFTER PEOPLE SEE ME SMOKE THE FUCKING LIFE FROM YOUR BODY. NOW FUCKING RUN." They fucking scurry, and I stroll to the other side of the building. Out of sight and out of mind.
(I will use "Group" unless Hawk is the person talking. Too many useless names otherwise.)
OP: That fucking dickhead has his own fucking shower! What the fuck?
GROUP: I know right?
OP: What the fuck were you guys thinking? I would expect this from at least one of you, but I won't point elbows. (I then just fucking stare at Hawk.)
GROUP: We didn't think anyone used it. We had never seen anyone go into the room, and the room looked empty. We saw the water tank on top, and just figured we would check it out.
OP: How the fuck did you even get up there?
GROUP: You can walk to it if you exit any second floor window on our building. Well, the courtyard side.
OP: So you guys just sneak out and hang out in this guys shower water?
GROUP: Yes, but we seriously thought nobody used it. We would not have used it otherwise.
OP:You fucking dip-shits think this was just a randomly placed unused water tank? You fucking idiots just stand in this guys shower water for hours?
HAWK: No. We are not dumb Sergeant. We sit on MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) boxes.
OP: HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON?
GROUP: (LaughteGiggles) Every night!?!
OP: We have been here for five days now! NO FUCKING MORE! I will fucking kill you if I get yelled at again over this. The only thing that makes me smile is the fact that he is showering with your ball funk.
Hawk: I have some excellent news then Sergeant
OP: Really? Whats Hawk?
Hawk: (Smirk) We made a promise that, "nobody pisses in the hot tub"...
OP: This is why your mother should have swallowed you Hawk. Why the fuck would that make me happy?
Hawk: (Laughing) Because I broke that rule every night. Most nights more than once!
GROUP: What the fuck Hawk! We have been lounging in your piss? What the fuck dude!
Hawk: I know. (Smiles.) I lied to you though! Cheer up Sergeant. I peed on him for you!
For the record, Hawk did not find the hot tub. He just peed in it, a lot. I don't think any of us paid attention because they came back from wet and with towels. I merely assumed they went to the showers. I suppose I should have kept better track of time. Also, I apologize if this was not as funny as the other Hawk tales. I realized it when I reread it, but it was certainly funny being on-the-ground and witnessing it. Can't laugh at them all I suppose. Remember, next week, "Hawk Walks Home: In Iraq." I don't think it is feasibly possible to not make that one funny. Lastly, some of my stories are a result of me being in the military, but not military. Those stories and others will/are posted at FuckeryUniveristy. I am not ever going to compete with this page, but I do need a place to post other stories and have little fear they will be taken down. The mod may be a huge prick, but at least I know the guy. Man...huge prick!
Cheers!

My computer freezes except when i am monitoring it

Hey, guys, sorry to bother you with this. I usually try to check if there are similar posts, or guides, but o boi. I will try to be detailed, not sure what matters or not, so sorry about that as well. The story is: I bought a computer for gaming last year. No problems at all for the whole time, except up until a month ago. I was playing Sekiro, and sometimes, it would randomly freeze the screen and sometimes continue or distort the audio. The computer freezes until restart. At the 3rd/4th attempt it would run normally as if nothing ever happened. Beat the game while this issue was going, np. After that, i decided to play amnesia: rebirth. Then my pc decided to go all out Johnny Sins on me and would crash every 2 minutes in, no escape. Since I usually try to pirate/configure a thing or two i thought it could be a malware. So I ran every single option of windows defender and malware bytes. One came up from a random game. Deleted it. Tried to repair windows. Followed several guides as for system restoration and scans. Checked for drivers and so on. Problem persisted. Eventually I was working from home and in the middle of it the problem decides to happen again. Crashing the whole computer, but not being able to turn it on correctly until the third reset. Oh, so that was how my journey was going. Windows bitchslaping me out of nowhere. So i slapped back and restored Windows. First saving the files and deleting programs. My computer gave zero fucks about it and the problem persisted. So I summoned my asshat mode and did a full restore. Reinstall windows, delete absolutely everything, clean all units, and pray for our lord and savior Shaggy to overlook the process. Since I am an atheist it didn't work. I installed just the geforce drivers and thought maybe it would run now. Also decided to download a newer version of the game. Guess what? Bingo bango bongo. The computer crashed within two minutes of game. Also crashed on spelunky 2 since I was trying to get angry at something else. Because why not.
By process of elimination I thought it could be the absolute only thing that I installed that was guilty: GeForce Experience and the drivers. Also looked several posts here and elsewhere and it appeared as a possibility. First turned off the grid, but kept it. Game lasted a little longer, still to no avail. Tried alternatively deleting it. Still crashed, but the noise on the computer changed for some reason. The coolers went randomly more active. The same after uninstalling anything related to nvidia. Same mockery from satan. I thought maybe i fucked up by even installing it, so yeap, you guessed it. System restoration again. I could almost listen to Steve Jobs laughing for not buying a mac for 20x the price. Damn you Steve. So i tried just running the game without any new drivers and see whats up. Dlls were missing, manually downloaded them. Still crashing. The random crashes using normal programs stopped after the restorations, so I thought it was something.
I tried checking for logs, crash reports, couldn't find any. So I downloaded a program that would actually look for any valid logs to analyze in case it was even more from my blunt incompetence. I didn't find anything. Even after the computer freezing and crashing with it on. I checked possibilities about bios. Looked up about firmwares, about anything else related to a solution or reason for these events. I ordered some things to actually clean the hardware, as it could be due to dust, or even my tears at this point in time. I am still waiting for it to arrive. Even if it is not the problem I am still in an abusive relationship with my computer and care about it.
Nothing seemed to be working. One possible issue could be overheating for some reason. But since the computer would crash in less then two minutes it seemed very unlikely. All coolers are working in good conditions. But welp. My hope was almost lost. If the cleaning didn't work, something about the hardware may be faulty, despite the computer's age. So i decided to simply go to the task manager. See if anything out of the ordinary was running. Nothing. As I wondered what in tarnation was going on with my life, i said fuck it and tried installing and updating every single driver. Also I decided to dual screen and while I played Amnesia, i would look at the machine's status in the task manager itself. At least the basics: CPU, memory, SSD, GPU, temperature. Also opened the resource monitoring from there. I was at this point looking for a technician, as sheer fucking stupidity and persistence seemed to not be bearing the best fruits.
And then. Just out of fucking nowhere, as a flaming humongous dick coming from the sky straight to my ass. It worked. For absolutely no fucking reason I managed to play for 45 minutes straight with absolutely no problems whatsoever. Was I dreaming? Was this the real life? What was life? I knew no more. But it worked. I slowly walked away hoping that nothing would change until the next day. Maybe if I don't look at it for too long it would smell my fear. Next day, worked normally, watched my classes, sucked at spelunky with zero problems. I was still not trusting this new reality. Something was off. Turned on amnesia. First plank out and my computer went to Neverland. I could almost hear the binary laugh from this little mf. It crashed several times for no reason whatsoever. Then I remembered my glimpse of hope the day before. It was one thousand percent bullshit, but hey, I have no dignity at this point in time. Turned on task manager and resource monitoring. It worked as if nothing wrong ever happened to society.
I was legit going to look for a technician and beg for money at the streets to pay for the repairs. But now it's just past this point. It's a matter of honor. Of values. Of dignity. So I came here to beg all of you good doers to assist me on my quest to understand this fucking bullshit in my life. This just can't be serious. I can't see a single reason why of all things this specific action would cause it to work normally, And I have no clue what else to do.
Thank you very much for your attention.
TL:DR _Computer is less then a year old and I take good care of it _Sometimes pirate programs, but try to look for the safest options very carefully _Computer froze and crashed while playing games (Sekiro, Amnesia: Rebirth, Spelunky 2 [more rarely] _Started crashing on regular programs such as Chrome _Restored the system _Erased every single file and cleaned the disk _Checked for virus (Windows defender, Malware bytes [all options available]) _Checked for issues with the driver itself and Ge force Experience _Crash noise changes after deleting mentioned program and drivers, but still crashes. _Checked bios and firmware versions _Tried with no new drivers, only manually installing missing dlls _Decided to update absolutely every single driver and windows to their latest versions _Downloaded a newer version of the game _Checked for logs _Downloaded a program to check for crashes, which found nothing even while on during a crash _Nothing weird on task manager _No new programs after the recovery (Exceptions: Chrome, Firefox, qBittorrent, Daemon tools lite, DS4 Windows) At none of those instances the problem would be solved _Open task manager to see info on CPU, SSD, GPU and temperature. Also open the Resource monitor The game suddenly works and never crashes again. Problem persists if those windows are closed or only opened during gameplay.
TL:DR of the TL:DR I am in pain, pls help
System configurations:
https://ibb.co/Qd6pst5 System: Windows 10 Pro - 20H2 - x64 Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.31.0
P.S. I really don't know too much as I don't work with IT, so please, if you need any more info, or have any suggestions, I will try to answer as fast as possible. Sorry to cause any bother, and again, thank you for the attention.

A thorough evaluation of the 9/18 PTS update and base changes, as well as almost everything else coming up.

Hello, here’s another round of Esamir Rework reviews. I’ll also cover the Indar base changes, the storm, vehicle balance changes and new infantry gear. I’m not going to touch on outfit resource changes here, since this post is long enough already. I’d like to give shoutouts to aln-isolator , [NWYT]Praefectus, the pilots of [SACA] and everyone else who helped give feedback.
Here’s the image gallery. This time around the bases listed in the document match the order in which they appear in the gallery. https://imgur.com/a/5pd5VFj
Esamir has a new skybox which is much less bright. I can now see vehicle weapon tracers when shooting. This is a long asked for change.
Andvari: 3 points now, 12 min cap with 2 points, 4 mins with 3 points. Consider adjusting the timers.
Ymir: No changes to terrain that I can see. It’s a 12 minute cap with two points owned, and 4 minutes with 3 points. Might consider reducing those slightly.
Apex Genetics has had its wall adjusted somewhat, as well as the rocks surrounding the triple stack. There are now more routes for infantry to enter the base.
Aurora Materials: Sunderer garage and surrounding terrain seem to have been lowered slightly. Also, there’s now a rock at the end of the garage, which reduces the possible angles the bus inside can be shelled from. The slope between the crescent building and the road has had some paths added for infantry. Overall, good changes. However, there’s still one issue here, and that’s the possibility of shelling the triple stack balcony from the ridge NW of the base. Additional purple spikes from the cluster behind the spawn room could be positioned to block this firing angle.
Eastwake Harborage: Point has received a new structure above it. It’s now on the bottom floor of a triple stack that has an expanded balcony around its second floor. This gives point holders a lot of additional cover, but the problems with this base still exist. There’s still a ridiculous distance between spawn room and the point with minimal cover from vehicles/bolters/LAs- a literal Death Valley. The area immediately around point is still extremely harasser friendly and could use some props to obstruct harasser movement. In its current position, the teleporter room is useless since infantry leaving it must still advance through Death Valley. Sundy positions are a bit sketchy, too. Fortunately, I’ve had a long discussion and now believe this base could be fixed with a couple tweaks. Consider replacing the AI turret outside the spawn room with an AV gun. This would discourage excessively aggressive vehicles from camping Death Valley. Likewise, replacing the light vehicle pull with an MBT pull gives defenders a bit more potential firepower, and increases the area attacking vehicles must cover to protect their own vulnerable spawns. This base would also benefit from the moving of primary teleporter room to a point higher up the hill and closer to the point, as shown by squad waypoint in this image: https://i.imgur.com/TuEee9F.png. A second teleporter here at hearts waypoint https://i.imgur.com/JUbXklc.png gives defenders another route into the point without going through Death Valley. At these two locations sunderer garages could be built to create safer spawn points for attackers.https://i.imgur.com/QWblfz4.png https://i.imgur.com/w4HR05n.png
Echo valley: Rocks have been added on the exterior side of the vehicle terminal to give it some cover. However, they aren’t close enough to each other to prevent me from driving through with a Kobalt bus, nor is there anything stopping me from hacking the terminal or using a GSD to get through the shield and then start driving around the base. Placement of a couple rocks in very specific spots would stop this. Secondly, a crate has been placed between bridges to give infantry another path into the point building. It’s a cool concept, but it needs some form of obstruction to prevent me from driving harassers or possibly larger vehicles onto the two bridges and blasting point directly. Thirdly, consider some form of sight blockers on the west wall to reduce the potential for LAs to spawn camp.
Excavion DS-01E: Cover has been placed over both tunnels, which is an excellent change. MBT pulls have been added to this base, though they could stand to be moved slightly closer to the spawn room to deter attackers from hacking them and flooding the base with AI vehicles. A point is located in a long narrow building near the eastern tunnel exit. B is in a triple stack on the south side. C is located immediately west of the drill site. Capture timer is 4 minutes with two points and 1 minute with all 3.
This base is mostly fine, but could do with some small tweaks for increased cover. At A point the point holders have few options for cover inside. There are two small smokestack structures (pictures in gallery) that could be replaced with actual buildings to provide more cover from aircraft for players moving around inside the base. Timers could probably be increased slightly. Overall though it’s in a decent state.
Genudine Gardens: Some props have been added throughout the base that’ll prevent harassers from turboing around like maniacs, but the gigantic hole in the wall in one corner needs to be closed off somewhat to prevent vehicle entry or at least make it more difficult. This base would be fine if that hole were sealed or obstructed better.
Grey Heron: Additional cover has been placed on the side of the staircase leading from spawn to B/C point. The secondary route for defenders has been fleshed out- the door now is high enough to get under, and there is a hole in the floor that allows defenders to drop down to the lower level. Cover has been added on the B side of this base.
For improvements, I still think a roof is needed over the stairs from defender spawn to the lower level. A wall alone won’t stop tanks from shelling it. C could use a bit of cover, but I’m concerned that adding too much will turn it into a fortress. You can enter this base with harassers, so some bollards should be added to each entrance to prevent that.
Jaegers’ fist: Sunderer garage has been added, and the trench has been improved. This base has some odd issues from an infantry perspective, namely that attackers and defenders have the exact same routes to the point, as shown in the gallery. I have no ideas for how this could be improved. I still believe the point needs some kind of roof to block HESH spam and A2G, preferably a solid one to deter LAs from doing C4 bombing.
BL-4 Recovery and Vidar Observation Post both have spawn rooms and light vehicle terminals. This is a pretty good change, allowing closer vehicle pulls and a shorter sundy reinforcement distance for attacks on the surrounding facilities.
Jord Amp Station: More cover has been added around C point. This is a good change, but doesn’t change the fact that A is still inside the station.
Mani Lake: This one has undergone the most terrain edits, and consequently has become a lot less vehicle friendly. The two trenches leading into the base have had barricades installed, allowing infantry to move through but not vehicles. The hills surrounding the base have had their exterior faces steepened significantly, preventing treaded vehicles from driving up them. This change is excellent, but needs a bit of tuning. The Western Ridge’s southern tip has a shallow enough slope that tanks can still drive up it. On the large mountain to the West on the far side of the road, there’s a small protrusion that should also be levelled. Once these two spots are taken care of, this base will be fine. Overall, the changes are very good here.
Mattherson’s Triumph: The Sunderer NDZ has been reduced in radius, which allows the defenders to deploy inside the south tower for a safer position. This is a good change. The ridgeline to the NE has had its northern face steepened significantly, preventing tanks from driving up that side. However, the SW face has become easier to traverse, so the ridge is still usable for bombardment of the catwalks and A point. If this goes live in this state, it’s not a total disaster since tanks driving up that will be very exposed to AV fire from the tower, but it still could stand to be addressed. Likewise, there’s still a nice spur sticking out of the north end from the NW ridge that allows tanks to easily shell defender spawn and A point. The fix here is simple- flatten the spur completely.
A point needs additional work. At minimum, the windows on each tower in the room where A point/SCU would normally go should be sealed off to reduce the angles point holders must watch. There’s very little cover on the ground, especially when you consider all the angles A can be shot at from. I believe the point could be enclosed in the same type of building used at Chimney Rock’s point on Amerish. The bridges are a mixed bag. They’re identical copies with one rotated 180 degrees, which means that crate placement favors the attackers on B side and the defenders on the C side. Picking one crate pattern for all 4 bridge ends is one possible fix. I’m still not sold on the idea of both points being on bridges. They’re very exposed to A2G spam and bolters. Overall, at the very least the terrain edits are a nice start, and the sunderer NDZ change is very welcome.
Nott Communications: This base is now entirely underground. Attackers enter by overloading a shielded gate, and then drop down into an amp station interior. These gravity lifts are one way, but please consider adding an up lift to replace one of the drop pads. A point is in the position where A points usually are in amp stations. B and C are in the room where SCU would be normally positioned. At the end of this room where the tunnels and back door would normally be is a one-way teleporter, which is the only way for anyone to get out of this base right now. Defenders spawn underground and there’s a one-way shield leading to where the vehicle bay normally is. To improve this base, I’d make the one-way shield a two way shield, and reverse one of the grav lifts. I could not test the cap timer since I did not feel like ghost capping half a continent.
Pale Canyon: Some cover has been adjusted by the big yellow tanks on the SE side. A new route has been placed through the rocks at the NW corner of the base. This is an interesting change, but I don’t know how that’ll play out on live since currently I can park a bus inside the base at the same location.
The Rink: The ground texture at A point is now ice, so it’s actually an ice rink. Too bad you don’t slide around here.
Saerro Listening Post: Trees added to A point to break LOS between attacking vehicles and the tower. The wall between A and B has had some new gaps placed in it to allow infantry to get in. Interesting changes for sure, but I don’t know how they’ll play out.
The Traverse: The bridge has been resurrected, although it’s in a heavily damaged state. It’s now an infantry only playground, unless you’re a bold harasser or magrider driver. Because the storm was here, I really couldn’t stick around and take a long look at this. Lastly, the bottom of the pit has been raised a bit and paths to the bottom have been defined more clearly.
There also have been some changes to roads around the continent, but nothing major.
Indar:
TI Alloys: The removal of the bridge is a failure to understand why TI Alloys is such a difficult base to attack. On live servers, TI currently suffers from horrific sunderer placement options which combine with its central location to create a base that’s easy to defend. From the North, attackers must park their bus and attack up a hill through narrow ravines into entrenched defenders backed up by AI harassers, sunderers, ANTs, lightnings and even occasional MBTs. From the South, attackers have two bus spots: One is placed to the south-east, below the point. The other is placed directly south of the spawn room on the far side of the road. Both of these options are suboptimal- on the south east spawn the bus can easily be sniped by vehicles shelling from the Crown, driving down from the Crown, or by vehicles streaming out of the vehicle pull. The south bus on the far side of the road is also not ideal, since infantry have to cross the road and deal with a flood of vehicles as well as an angry AI turret. The only decent spawn location is at the end of the rock bridge, since that one’s reasonably safe from enemy vehicles and doesn’t involve attacking from the low ground. However, this position’s impeded by the fact that attackers from the north inevitably gravitate to the eastern side of the base since that’s safer from the defenders, forcing a three way that never ends. The result is a base that can’t be broken except by routers.
The removal of the rock bridge changes none of this, but instead creates more problems. The safe sundy position on the bridge is gone entirely. Further, the bridge’s removal allows tanks to bombard Ti from the Crown once more, since it served as a line-of-sight blocker. The new attacker foot path to the north east is extremely vulnerable to bombardment from the Crown.
As far as the base interior goes, a new wall has been added to the interior of the point room structure. This might give attackers a better chance to get to the point, but at the same time it might make things easier for the defenders should they conduct an organized push since there are fewer angles to set up a crossfire from.
So how can Ti be improved? I’d start by bringing the bridge back, or at least a small section of it to allow for a safe sunderer position at the east side. For the south, consider a tunnel leading under the road. This allows infantry to get to the base safely. I’d also consider adding in more props to restrict the passage of vehicles through the spawn room area to the northern side of the base. Removing the Kobalt bus fiesta there will make it easier for attackers to push in from the north. Lastly, if the bridge is not restored, consider creating a rock wall at the north east section of crown to prevent tanks from raining hell on anyone fighting at Ti.
Crown: The removal of D point is honestly a good thing. It wasn’t fun for anyone to attack since it’s open ground and below a cliff which enables C4 spam against vehicles and requires attackers push against entrenched infantry. Since Crown becomes a three point again, now the base cannot be stuck in a perpetual stalemate. I’m not a fan of where A point was moved to, either. I think if the rock bridge were kept then Crown would be mostly fine. With the three non-vehicle points it has on live. The issue with A being on that southern bridge is that if the attackers set up sunderers to control B, then they get A almost for free and can contest C as well. B point has been moved farther towards the center of the mountain and the tunnel system lengthened a bit, and a lot of cover has been removed at the initial entrance room that exists on live.The extra tunnel into B is an interesting idea and gives a better chance of an attack from the North succeeding, but at the same time it’s just another tunnel choke point to for aoe spam to create nasty farms. C is also problematic if it’s supposed to be the easy point for defenders to contest. It’s a fair distance from the tower, and it’s also open ground which is prime for A2G farming. I’d suggest moving this one into one of the nearby buildings if A must stay in the position it’s at on PTS. I’m not convinced the base needed any point position changes apart from the removal of D point. The current point layout on PTS favors an attack from the SE very heavily, and attacks from the East or North are far more difficult. While old A was very close to the tower, at least it provided a convenient point for attacks from the East. None of the changes really address the problem of poor bus location options, and with the current terrain there really aren’t many good potential spawn options. At most some garages could be added.
Ceres Hydroponics: Defenders now have a slightly shorter path to the point when pushing from the NE side of the base. The point itself has much less cover. I’m not going to make judgements on this without seeing how it plays out.
The Esamir storm: I’m not sure what this thing is supposed to do. The entire point of the game is large scale battles, yet this thing rolls around the map destroying the biggest fights. There’s nowhere safe from it. Sunderers will get destroyed even if put in garages. When outdoors infantry can be instagibbed by lightning for staying outside too long, and even when indoors their shielding takes frequent chip damage from environmental effects. The shield damage consistently drops players down about 150 shield points that constantly recharge, but this is enough to start messing with TTKs. For example, a commissioner can consistently OHK players. Since the shield damage is not synchronized across all players, it’s possible to be forced into gunfights where you have no hope of winning not because you were in a bad spot or outplayed, but simply because the game decided it’s your time to die. This applies doubly for lightning bolts which will randomly strike you down. There’s a text warning, of course, but random OHK mechanics really shouldn’t be a thing. You cannot use steel rain in the storm.
For vehicles this is obnoxious too. Ground vehicles lose most of their mobility, which will punish new players with poorly certed vehicles even more. Aircraft are even worse off, losing most of their vertical thrust. At times I felt like even afterburning upward was barely enough to keep the aircraft airborne. Vehicles kept in the storm for too long will simply be instagibbed, which cripples sunderers as spawns. The storm also destroys base turrets and terminals.
There are counters to the storm, though. Infantry can deploy lightning rods bought with merit that allow them to fight outside, but it doesn’t stop shield chip damage, and can equip an insulated armor suit at the cost of flak armor, nanoweave, or shield capacitor. This suit slot appears to be bugged and doesn’t actually reduce the chip damage taken by your shields. Carapace seems to be immune to this chip damage. Vehicles can equip insulated armor in the defense slot. This mitigates the performance hit to vehicles, reduces the damage taken by lightning, and prevents the storm from instagibbing your vehicle. Now, this is less of a problem in the first place for aircraft and tanks, but it screws over sunderers. Sunderers are already fragile enough even with deployment shield equipped, but forcing spawn buses to use this module and rely on their low hull HP is a very bad idea when paired with random lightning strikes and the severe lack of garages Esamir has.
With all that out of the way, the question I have to ask is why is the storm designed like this? It seems like a band-aid fix for zerging and actively punishes trying to create large fights. It cripples the vehicle game, negatively affects the infantry game, creates inconsistent TTKs, and only adds frustrating game mechanics. If the center of the map ends up with stalemates, it’ll circle around there endlessly preventing any kind of progress through the pile of three point bases. Why this, when there’s a lot more interesting concepts that could be used? For example, maybe the storm could reduce the rate at which players can spawn at a base/sunderers/routers. Maybe it could jam radaprevent Q spotting. Consider reducing shield chip damage to 50 shields instead of 150 to reduce TTK variance. There’s a lot more interesting ways it could change the game without being the anti-fun mechanic that it’s currently set up as.
Infantry gear:
Lightning grenade: Cool, you can launch a targeted lightning strike when in the storm. More instagibs is what the game needed.
Lightning rod: This temporarily redirects lightning strikes near you. This is a solution to an obnoxious problem that doesn’t need to exist.
Condensate grenade: Reduces movement speed and ROF by 20% for six seconds. This is a terrible idea in an FPS game. This doesn’t create interesting gameplay situations. Instead of being outplayed, players hit by this just lose since the game’s punishing them for playing. Keep this in RPGs and RTS games. Now, we do have status grenades already, but do we need one that’s as powerful as this one is?
BEC grenade: Similar to Condensate Grenades, this is a horrible addition to the game. Anything that hurts player mobility/damage output is a bad idea.
Neutralizer Device: Campaign reward that allows players to acquire abandoned vehicles, and apparently strip ability energy from players too. I like the idea of vehicle acquisition, but I don’t know if we’ll ever see the second use of this tool.
Abandoned vehicles: Around the continent are the hulks of abandoned tanks, sunderers and aircraft. They come with a special ability that I haven’t really tested, HEAT cannons and the first generation ES top gun. For the sake of loadout parity for all 3 abandoned MBTs I’d like to suggest the Prowler get a Gatekeeper instead of the Vulcan.
Vehicle changes: Havoc missiles: Are these things still necessary, with the liberator nerfs? These things seem redundant now, and they’ll punish rep gal balls unnecessarily hard while valkyries with rep monkeys can probably still dodge these things easily.
Phalanx AA turret range increase: This doesn’t fix any of the problems with the current AA setup. Instead, it’s going to just annoy A2A players who are flying along at high altitude and getting plinked by base AA guns, which is the reason the things got their range capped to begin with! Honestly I think these things should be replaced by weapons like Bastion CIWS guns. Those things are nasty at close range but their damage output falls off heavily at range.
Liberator: -500 HP and ESF nosegun resist from 85 to 80. While the liberator needed some changes regarding its durability and repair tanking in particular, this change spectacularly misses the mark on many levels. This change skews ESF vs Liberator combat too far in favor of ESFs. When paired with air locks this brings down the TTK to incredibly fast levels (around 9 seconds, which isn’t even enough for three dalton shots) In this post, mystoganofedolas https://www.reddit.com/Planetside/comments/ivjg8t/rock_paper_scissor_balance/ explains in great detail the liberator issues- it’s a blatant hard counter to ground vehicles, and gets brutally hard countered by ESFs on PTS. Hard counter mechanics are terrible in an FPS game. In this sort of rock-paper-scissors gameplay, things boil down less to individual ability and more towards who has an exact counter to something, which is extremely boring. There’s no skill in using A2A missiles, just as there’s minimal skill in hovering over tanks and daltoning them. In this post here https://www.reddit.com/Planetside/comments/ivsssx/did_some_basic_math_regarding_the_upcoming/, taltharius demonstrates that -500 HP barely changes anything in the case of liberators eating multiple AP shells before hitting fire suppression and flying off. Skilled gunnery should be rewarded, and sloppy flying should be punished.
So how can this be improved? Consider reducing vulnerability to ESF noseguns slightly. Adjusting Liberator resistance against tank shells, light anti-vehicle, gatling guns, and infantry rockets will increase the damage libs take from ground fire and punish poor flying/reward skilled aim. Possibly consider increasing MBT main gun elevation angles slightly, to reduce the ability of liberators to hover over tanks with minimal counterplay.
Harasser: Nanite cost to 300. Oh boy this one misses the mark completely. The problem with harassers has never really been cost related, but rather one that got introduced with CAI. The harasser itself is not overpowered and its efficiency in combat drops off hard at higher levels of gameplay. Only when harasser numbers become overwhelming (3 or more harassers vs 1 MBT) do the harassers stand a chance of defeating the best tank crews, and even then the tank usually can take 2-3 harassers with it. Harasser vs tank gameplay is extremely boring and very binary. If the harasser has a CQ AV gun it’s forced to fight at point blank which means I delete it easily. If it uses halberd or ES long range AV we both enter a boring poke fight where neither one does significant damage to the other. Even if the harasser opens up with rear hits the MBT still has an overwhelming advantage in firepower and hit points. With tanks, the problem since CAI has been poor muzzle velocity of HEAT shells which makes hitting difficult and what most players will have equipped, pathetic Basilisk DPS against everything (Kobalt kills stock harassers 4 seconds faster), Skyguards being helpless against every ground vehicle, and the Viper not having the accuracy to deal with small moving fast targets. Small changes to these three weapons will reduce harasser vs tank complaints.
Harasser vs Harasser is broken, for a different reason. Harassers have a weakness to gatling guns, which means that the Vulcan and Aphelion rip through harassers while the Mjolnir specializes in fighting heavy vehicles. In practice, this means that for low/average skilled car crews, vulcans are disproportionately powerful since less skilled players won’t know to keep outside minimum damage range. At higher levels an Aphelion car is very hard to fight. Toning back harasser weaknesses to gatling guns might improve this situation, but at the same time it might nerf the Aphelion too much. At the very least this’d probably reduce vulcan whine somewhat.
Overall, I have mixed impressions. The base changes are mostly for the better, but the storm, infantry gear, and vehicle changes are mostly bad or miss the mark completely.

Passed OSCP - My Experience

Originally, I was leaning against doing an obligatory post-OSCP Reddit post because I didn’t want to come across as another “look at me - I passed OSCP!!” cringeworthy OSCP Oscar speech, but I decided to go ahead and do one because my experience was perhaps a little unique and answers the much-asked question “can I do OSCP without experience?”.
A quick background to add context…
I’m 31 years old and my employment history is a mixture of sales, graphics, and media-related job roles. I felt discontented for a long time earning (barely) living wage in job roles I had little passion for. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I decided to quit my latest sales job in November last year (2019) to pursue a career in cybersecurity/infosec. I didn’t know what ‘TCP’ or ‘UDP’ was, and I’d never heard of ‘Kali’ or how to run a VM, but I was convinced that this would be the career path for me.
Anyway, I went through Security+ and C|EH from November to March and, just as I was going to start applying for Security Analyst type job roles, our friendly neighbourhood Coronavirus came along and shut down the economy. Even though I had no intention of doing OSCP for another year or two, I thought it was a better option than twiddling my thumbs for a few months, so I decided to sign up for PWK labs and have a crack at it.
Fast-forwarding to yesterday, after a few brutal months and an incredible experience, I finally got the OSCP “you have successfully completed” email.
Apologies in advance for the essay but I just want to go through my journey for those of you that might be in a similar position to the one I was in - limited/zero IT experience and feeling intimidated by the dreaded OSCP mountain.
My journey…
In the weeks leading up to the wait to start my 60 days PWK material and labs, I went through The Cyber Mentor’s Practical Ethical Hacking Udemy course and then went on a Hack the Box rampage, so, by the time my lab time started, I felt like I was in a pretty decent position.
Unfortunately, because I was a naïve idiot, I tackled the labs straight away and went through the PWK PDF casually on the side. This was a big mistake and something I would definitely change in hindsight because it cost me 5 easy points on the exam (I thought I could smash through the PDF exercises during the last week of labs but this didn’t prove to be enough time).
In 60 days I ended up rooting around 40 machines - I didn’t bother going for the networks because it didn’t apply to the exam and, although valuable real-world experience, I didn’t want to get distracted and flood my brain with even more information when it wasn’t going to be relevant for my mission.
One big thing that I did get right was note-taking. I can’t express enough how valuable it is to take detailed notes and build your own cheat sheet library. After every machine I rooted, I did a walkthrough on OneNote and added any new tools/commands to my cheat sheet library. This not only saves precious time in the exam, but it helps you build your own knowledge instead of relying on other people’s cheat sheets without really understanding what you’re doing.
After my 60 days had finished, I spent 1 month on TJ Null’s OSCP Hack the Box list and IppSec’s video walkthroughs. I also can’t stress enough how valuable this learning methodology is. My only regret is that I rushed through it. I’d already booked my exam 30 days after lab time, so I ended up jumping through walkthroughs when I got stuck on boxes instead of exhausting all options. This was another naïve idiot mistake on my behalf and something I would do differently in hindsight. There’s a difference between “trying harder” and “trying harder, but in a smart way”. I was putting 10+ hours in every day but I wasn’t always being efficient with my time. I’d definitely recommend seeking hints and tips on boxes but only after you’ve exhausted all options first, something which I didn’t always do.
Anyway, my first exam attempt came around towards the end of July. Was I ready? No, but I had delusional confidence in myself that has paid off for me more often than not, so I was hoping it would pay off for me again.
My first exam was brutal. I sat in my chair for a total of 23 hours and 15 minutes, with only 3 short 5-minute breaks to get food to snack on. My VPN was shut down after 24 hours and I had a total of 65 points, which I’d been stuck on for the last 8 hours of my exam. I got the BO, root on one of the 20-point machines, root on the 10-point machine, and user on the other 20-point machine. I just couldn’t get root on that last machine.
I was pretty devastated because I’d put my heart and soul into Sec+, C|EH, and OSCP for 7 straight months and I wanted it bad. But my delusional confidence wasn’t enough.
After listening to depressing Taylor Swift songs for a few days (joke), I decided to book another exam in, 4 weeks after my first attempt.
This time around, I decided to go through Tib3rius’s Linux and Windows Privilege Escalation courses (they were great) and go back over some of the HTB machines. I honestly felt at this point that there wasn’t much more study material that I could go through.
2nd exam came up and it was an almost minute-for-minute repeat of the first exam. BO done, 20 point rooted, 10 point rooted, but could only get user on the other 20 point. 65 points again. This time I ended up listening to Taylor Swift + Lana Del Rey.
I was pretty adamant that I could do this and that I was very close, so I sent Off-Sec an email explaining my situation and they were kind enough to allow me another exam attempt without waiting 8 weeks - I booked another exam in 2 weeks after my second attempt.
This time, my preparation was entirely mental. In both my prior exams, I was sat on my chair for over 23 hours because I was flapping around aimlessly like a headless chicken, desperately firing off exploits that I knew wouldn’t work on the other 20-point machine. So, I went into the 3rd exam determined to go at a slow and steady pace, and not let the 24-hour timeframe pressure me into a wild goose chase.
Miraculously, it seemed to work. After 14 hours, I’d done the BO, rooted both 20-point machines, rooted the 10-point machine, and got user on the 25-point machine. 85-ish points in total.
The point of this story is to get across to people that you need to try simpler, not harder. I perhaps failed my first exam because I’d not gone through Tib3rius’s Priv Esc courses, but I failed on my 2nd 100% due to mentality. There was no skill-level difference between my 2nd exam and 3rd exam.
I’ll finish off with my recommended learning methodology and exam tips (for people with limited/zero IT experience):
. The Cyber Mentor Practical Ethical Hacking Udemy course (usually on offer at $14.99-ish)
. Tib3rius’s Linux and Windows Privilege Escalation course (usually on offer at $12.99 each)
. Try Hack Me OSCP Learning Path (I would recommend doing this before HTB - it is $10 for 30 days)
. PWK labs (I personally don’t feel more than 60 days are required - unless you work full-time)
. TJ Null’s OSCP Hack the Box list ($10 for retired HTB machines - very worth it)
. You should be ready for the exam
Exam tips:
. Become proficient with Nmap but use an enumeration tool like nmapAutomator for the exam
. You will need to understand what bash and Python scripts are doing (you don’t need to be able to write them from scratch)
. Don’t be tempted to use a fancy BO methodology for the exam, stick with PWK’s methodology - it works (some of the others don’t)
. Play around with various reverse shell payloads - sometimes a bash one-liner won’t work so you need to go with Python. Sometimes Bash, Python, and netcat won’t work, so you need to understand what alternatives you can use in that scenario
. Get into the habit of reading service manuals. In all 3 of my exams, I came up against machines that had services I’d never even heard of. Fortunately, I’d got into the habit reading service manuals, otherwise, I would have skipped over the services and got lost down a rabbit hole
. Get into the habit of exploiting conventional services in unconventional ways. Just because an SUID binary isn’t on Gtfobins, it doesn’t mean that you can’t exploit the SUID binary in an unconventional way. Again, get into the habit of reading manuals to understand what services do
. Become familiar with Burp Suite. Many exploits won’t work in the way you might expect them to, but they will work if you run them through Burp. Or, at the very least, you’ll be able to understand why they’re not working. This issue came up in my last exam and I would have been completely lost if it weren’t for Burp
. Take breaks if you get frustrated - this is said over and over again by people on this subreddit and it’s an absolute must. The 20 point machine that I couldn’t root after 8 hours on my 2nd exam was on my 3rd exam (thanks Off-Sec - I know you tried to fu*k me with that), but I was able to root it within 1 hour on my 3rd exam, simply because my mindset was different at the time.
. Trust your gut - by doing PWK and HTB machines, you should develop a gut feeling of when you are in a rabbit hole and when you’re on the right track. I ended up rooting over 100 machines before the exam (albeit with plenty of hints and tips) and it helped me develop a good gut feeling. I can’t explain why but there were times in my last exam where I knew I was in the right area even though I wasn’t able to enumerate the specific service version. This feeling simply came from experience. I’m sure many of you watch IppSec’s videos and wonder “how the hell does he know to do X or Y?”. I used to wonder this all the time but after going through dozens of machines, I finally got it. It comes down to experience. Try to do as many machines as you can before the exam to build that gut feeling, and trust it in the exam.
. Embrace failure - this is perhaps the most important thing that I can say. OSCP is a difficult journey and many people fail multiple times before passing. And you know what? That’s okay. It’s okay to fail. It’s how you react to failure that counts. I’m not particularly smart but I embrace failure and I know deep down that I will keep trying until I pass. I was prepared to take the OSCP exam 1000 times if I had to, I was never going to let the exam beat me. I suggest you approach it with the same mentality and not let silly pride prevent you from having a go at it.
One last thing! Join a solid Discord community. This journey has been amazing since day one and a big reason behind that is the amazing online community. I was very active in an HTB community and ended up talking to several people who were going through OSCP at the same time as me. This was honestly such a massive help to me because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing when I first started!
Sorry for the massive rant - I just see so many people on here treating OSCP like an unsurmountable mountain. It’s not. You can do it!

Type me please

I was typed on this sub some time ago but my answers were too vague and not that accurate I think. I’m doubting my type again and I need some new insight.
– Describe yourself in as much elaborate detail as possible (that still renders you anonymous, or to a level of acceptable comfort)
18 yo high school student just trying to survive IB. My gender is a questionable thing. I consider myself non binary because I’ve always felt extremely uncomfortable with talking about my gender and I wanted to obey all of the expectations and gender roles.
I hate all of the labels and sht. I feel like I’m an individual being that doesn’t fit anywhere but at the same time I feel like a part of humanity and I can connect to literally any human being. Doesn’t matter of nationality/age/gendesome other sht. I sympathize with everyone and I kinda feel like I belong to them. If I had to move to foreign country that I don’t know anything about, right now, I think I’d quickly adapt to the culture. I feel like everything and nothing at the same time.
I am diagnosed with severe social anxiety and I display some characteristics of avoidant personality disorder. It basically makes me unable to figure out my type since I don’t know what is true about my personality and what is a defense mechanism anymore.
I need some insight from other people because I’m so confused about my own self. I don’t really understand the concept of personality traits at all. I feel like a chameleon and I have no consistent personality.
– Why are you interested in knowing your type?
At first I was just curious because I’m really into psychology and I found the idea of cognitive functions interesting. But now I’m just mad at myself that I can’t decide on my type because I relate to few types but at the same type I relate to none of them. I just want to be certain. I have this issue that I need to be sure about my every decision and I hate that whenever I finally decide that “this is my real type, it feels right” then suddenly a few days later I find out that it can’t be my real type because the way that type is supposed to think doesn’t really describe how I think very well.
– Do you go to work and/or you in school? If so, what field/occupation/subjects?
I go to school. I changed my school a year ago. My first school wasn’t that bad, the teachers weren’t the worst, my classmates didn’t bully me for being quiet and I had not so bad grades. But deep down I hated that school. There were so many people that I felt overwhelmed and I had to close myself in the restroom every break. I just couldn’t handle this many people. And this school had such a depressing vibe for some reason. After one of my classmates almost commited a suicide it had become even worse.
I accidentally found another school that was way smaller (less people) and since it was IB it could mean I’d have better opportunities for universities abroad. And I could choose every subject. I didn’t think twice, I changed my school immediately. It didn’t matter for me that the exams would be much harder and there would be overall more work. And that new classmates might bully me or something. I mean, I was scared at first but I had to try no matter what. Now I think it was actually a great idea. I love this school even though I sometimes struggle with this much work.
My subjects are my native language, english, german, biology, psychology and maths. I chose them because I’m good at them. Except for math, it was obligatory.
– Describe your upbringing. Did it have any kind of religious or structured influence? How did you respond to it?
It was pretty chill I guess. My parents have always supported all of my weird interests that I wanted to try and some of my dumb decisions even if they disagreed with them. Although most people would say that I should be grateful to my parents that they were always generous to me with their affection and money, at the same time they never understood me. I’ve always been a very creative and imaginative child. I’ve always been daydreaming and I used to write stories a lot. My parents thought it was some sign of schizophrenia or something (it wasn’t) and told me to stop daydreaming and focus on school and grades. I remember whenever I tried to share some of my weird ideas with them, they were always telling me that it’s pointless and I have to be more down to earth. I was also very curious as a kid and I could sometimes research some really bizarre stuff because I found it interesting. I remember my parents once found my searching history and literally yelled at me for searching some useless knowledge. I’d understand their reaction if I was searching for p0rn or something like that but I was looking for some psychology stuff lol. I started to become very secretive at this point and now I always have to be in incognito mode and I have to clear my history frequently or I’ll become anxious that somebody is judging me. And I remember when I once told them about my anxiety they literally told me that it’s not a problem and I’m perfectly fine and I should stop thinking about such pointless stuff.
Religion wasn’t a very big issue for me. My parents are christian but they never tried to force anything on me. They tried to make me religious when I was a child but eventually let me choose whether I want to believe in that or not. At first I considered myself christian even though I didn’t know what it was even about. I was told since childhood that it is the truth so I didn’t question it at that time. But I eventually started questioning my faith. I didn’t like going to the church, the prayers and all. I didn’t really agree with some of the principles of that religion. I began to ask myself whether I really believe in god or do I “believe” because I’m scared of punishment. When I grew up, I started doing some research on the Bible and I realised that it doesn’t make any sense. I mean, it depends how you interpret it, for me it didn’t make any sense. Also, in my native country there’s something like religious education in school and it’s basically forcing christianity into kids. I hate this. I rember a priest that was „teaching” my class in middle school and once he could say that god loves and accepts everyone but then he could say something like gay bad, trans bad. Like the fck is this?!
– Do you need logical consistency in your life?
I have no idea what that inherently means but I’ll try to answer anyway.
I like to think that everything is connected and I can start overthinking things that don’t make sense to me, to find some explanations. I need explanations for everything. I used to be really anxious about what happens after death because that’s something I can’t explain. I mean, I can try but it wouldn’t be 100% accurate because I can’t check that unless I’d die. If I ever decided to kill myself, the reason would be probably that I just wanted to check what will happen to me. I created my own theory on what happens after death that I try to believe is true so I won’t have to kill myself. I somehow tried to base it on science but it turned out to be some irrational crap. But for me it makes the most sense so I assume it’s accurate since it can’t be proven right or wrong. It just depends what you believe in. I know my theory is not perfect and I only pretend I believe in it but I really don’t want to have to kill myself so I need to approve any explanation, doesn’t matter how irrational it sounds.
– How curious are you? Do you have more ideas then you can execute? What are your curiosities about? What are your ideas about?
I think I’m very curious. I want to know everything. Like literally everything. Possessing all of the knowledge possible and understanding the whole world and how it works had been my dream since I remember. Sometimes I can get into some bizarre interests that are completely useless for me but I still find them interesting, like marine biology.
Anyway, I have too many ideas and usually, I end up with nothing. My ideas can be about everything and anything but usually creative stuff like ideas for songs or novels.
– If money was not an issue, what careejob would you have?
I wouldn’t even go to work lmao. I’d just procrastinate all day.
At the end of the day I’d probably have to go to work because I’d be scared that I’d lose all the money and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself anymore and I don’t want to parasite on anybody so yeah, I’d have to go to work someday. But the thing is, I have no idea what job I’d like to have.
– Are you a free spirit or do you play by the rules? If so, why?
This is quite hard for me to answer. I have a weird relationship with the rules. Of course I don’t like being limited or told exactly what to do, I can be a little rebel sometimes. But at the same time I need some guidance. When I have no direction, my mind goes blank because I either have no idea what to do or too many ideas. When I’m doing some work for other people, I always have to ask about every little detail so they’ll be satisfied with my work. I have to do that because if I’m given too much freedom I tend to think backwards and do the literal opposite because I could understand the assignment differently or something like that. I don’t want others to be disappointed with my work.
I always think differently than it’s expected from me lol. I remember once there was a test at school about some poem and there was a task to interpret the last sentence or something. I thought it was about time loops so I wrote about it but when we were checking the test, the teacher said it was about death. I got half of the points for that task because my arguments were good but my interpretation wasn’t the same as the teacher’s and it was a bit out of the blue. Like my teacher probably didn’t even know where the hell did I get that from.
– If I asked you to take a shot with a football how would that make you feel? Would you be able to do it well? Would you enjoy it?
I’d die internally because it’d remind me of my trauma associated with team sports. I used to be bullied in primary school because I wasn’t good at sports. I could never follow the ball and the general action that was taking place because that sht was too fast for me. And I used to have anemia so I literally had no strength or energy to do anything. I’m still not very athletic so I’d probably do terribly. But I think I could enjoy it if it was just for fun and I wouldn’t be ridiculed for any mistake.
– If I asked you to write me an essay, would you enjoy it? What would it be about? How would it make you feel?
I love writing essays in english but I hate writing in my native language (it’s more complicated than english and even native speakers can sometimes make some really stupid and basic mistakes) so as long as it is in english I’d enjoy it. I have no idea what I’d write about. If I was given a topic I could write about literally anything but if I had to choose a topic myself I’d be completely clueless. I’d probably search for some ideas on the internet and then choose whatever seems the easiest to write because I don’t want to spend 7492810847 hours on that essay.
– Is it okay to crack a few eggs? If it makes an omelette? Do the ends justify the means?
I guess so. Do anything you want, just don’t hurt anybody else.
– Do you put things back in their proper place?
I never do that and it’s going to make me insane someday. I can sometimes put my phone somewhere and after 5 minutes I can completely forget where the hell I put it and then search for it for hours. I lose my stuff at home all the time because I put my sht wherever I feel like. I wish I wasn't this messy because it can be annoying but I can’t stand order either. I get inspiration from chaos and whenever I’m drawing I HAVE to make my desk a bit messy because when it’s empty and clean it feels as if my mind was empty.
– How do you behave around strangers, acquaintances and friends?
I have social anxiety so I act very awkwardly around strangers and people I don’t know that well like for example classmates. I’m very shy. I stutter a lot, I say stupid things unintentionally, I tend to zone out a lot. I’m also very quiet and I never talk unless I’m being asked directly. Even if asked directly, I can sometimes still keep quiet.
I can become overwhelmed a lot when I’m around other people and I sometimes have panic attacks or I can start crying for no reason.
I can’t do small talk, it’s pointless for me and it seems so fake. But if I ever approached somebody for the first time and asked them what is the meaning of life or something like that, they’d think I’m insane, so I don’t really know how to start a conversation. And I really hate questions like „how are you?". What does it even mean, like wtf. My social skills are so terrible, I wish I was born with some instruction on how to act in any social situation. Whenever I have to talk to a teacher or somebody else in a formal setting, I always have to ask my mom how do I say what I want to say in a way that will be appropriate. This sht’s exhausting.
I have no friends but my family is like my friends so I can say how I act around them. I think I’m the most “real” around them because I’m not scared they’ll judge me. I’m a completely different person when I’m comfortable. I can be a clown sometimes, I say a lot of dumb stuff intentionally because I don’t feel embarassed when I’m around my family. My family has so many inside jokes, most of them made by me lol. I can be very loud and talkative sometimes or even argumentative and I’ve heard so many times from my parents “if you only were this outspoken at school like you are at home”. If any of my classmates saw me like that they’d say it’s an impostor because there’s no way I could act like that lmao.
I also got more comfortable with my distant family and I’m not that shy anymore when I’m around them. I can confront my uncles whenever they’ll try to playfully bully me (I really hate when they do that) and I feel so good about that. I wouldn’t be able to do anything like that a year ago and I’m glad I’m getting more confident.
– Do you have exquisite tastes that you would expend effort or money for?
I buy apple stuff because it’s easier for me to use. I once had an android phone and it was a pain to use.
– How do you act when others request your help to do something (anything)? If you would decide to help them, why would you do so?
I think I’d help no matter how I’d feel about it. I lack assertiveness because of my social anxiety. With people I’m comfortable with, I think I’d still help no matter what. I’d just feel terrible as a person if I wouldn’t help.
– How long do you take to make an important decision? How would you go about it? And do you change your mind once you've made it?
I’m hella indecisive. I have to ask other people for some guidance or I’ll be lost. I literally cannot decide for myself. I also sometimes seem like I have no opinion on anything but I just see pros and cons in everything and I can’t decide on the best option. Everything is shades of gray and whatever I choose should be personal preference but I always look for the objectively best solution that will be approved by my inner critic and also other people. It’s exhausting because I can’t even choose a meal in a restaurant. I treat it like some very important decision while it’s so mundane. When it comes to food my final choice would probably be something I haven't tried yet that sounds good or whatever with shrimp. I’m always in a mood for some shrimp lol. I sometimes can choose something familiar but only when I really don’t know what to choose. After making my final decision, I always wonder what if another one would be better and I never feel certain about my decisions. I’m scared of making decisions because I’m anxious that my decision was the wrong one. I wish I could try everything in my life.
– If I asked you to design a plan of action, would it be easier to work alone or in a group? Do you ask for others’ opinions? or stick to your own guns?
It would be better to work alone because I cannot work in a group since my social skills are lower than the bottom of Marianas trench. I can’t even work with people I’m comfortable with. I feel like they distract and overwhelm me and I prefer to get some ideas from others and then execute everything myself. When I get some ideas from other people, it immediately stimulates my mind and I can quickly come up with something. I sometimes have great ideas while trying to create something out of nothing but I have the best ideas when I find some ideas from the external world that inspire me and I start from there. After I finish my work, I have to show it to others. I need some validation from them because I want to know if my work is acceptable. With any schoolwork, I have to first show it to my sister before I can show it to my teacher so I know I didn’t do any crap and I wouldn’t be laughed at. I can’t show anything to my teachers without being certain it’s good.
– A weekend best spent looks like ...?
If I could do anything I wanted, I wish I could go to the mountains or sightseeing by myself or with my family. More realistic best weekend would be a weekend where I don’t have that much work for school and I can actually relax.
– My biggest fears are ...
There’s quite a lot of that. Most of my life has been full of the feelings of fear and anxiety.
I’m really scared of social interactions and public speeches, being judged or rejected. I hate the feeling of embarrassment, it makes me feel so uncomfortable. I’m also really scared of crowds. When there are too many people around, I start panicking. I once got a panic attack at a wedding and nobody could calm me down, I was so overwhelmed (especially that there were many photographers and they were surrounding me so I couldn’t really escape from them. I didn’t want them to take any pictures of me so I put a jacket on my face whenever I saw them near me. Most of the wedding I spent outside sitting on a bench because there weren’t that many people there and there weren’t any photographers around).
I’m really scared of the future because I don’t know what to do with myself and I’m probably gonna end up lonely, depressed and addicted to some crap.
What I really hate is pressure and feeling controlled or trapped. Especially at school because I’m forced to do things that make me uncomfortable, like performing in front of people. And I feel like school has always been limiting my creativity and individuality.
I’m also scared of bugs. I hate them so much. I can start panicking whenever I hear a fcking fly.
– How much do you express yourself and what mediums do you do that through? Art? Writing? Talking?
Art is my thing. But I’m more into analyzing and critiquing art rather than creating. When I do create, I express my ideas more than my feelings.
I draw graphic novels. The funny thing is that I don’t even “like” most of my works. I mean, if somebody else created these stories and I was a reader, I’d rate them something around 5 on enjoyment. Most of my stories are based on some concepts I found interesting or I create stories to see how the public would react to it or just to check how I’ll perform at a specific genre rather than something that is personal to me.
I sometimes write songs and they also aren’t that personal to me. Some are, but most of my lyrics are about things anyone could relate to. And I like to create some really weird analogies. I wrote 8379287593 songs about comparing some random stuff to toxic relationships. Give me any random thing and I could transform it into a song about toxic relationships. I’ve never been in a toxic relationship tho. My sister also writes songs but they are so personal that only she knows what they are about. I hate that to be completely honest. I prefer lyrics that make sense and are easy to interpret given the context.
I think I create for the audience instead of myself.
I express my feelings through writing. I sometimes just write down my thoughts to let go of them and it’s very therapeutic for me. I sometimes post some of my thoughts on my twitter. I really need an audience lol.
– Generally where do you lean politically? Is it every man for himself? Should people be pragmatic? Does the government need to step in and help people?
I’ve tried to get into politics more because I might seem ignorant since I have no political views. I see pros and cons in everything and it’s really hard for me to decide what is the best. I somewhat agree with every side. I could say I’m libertarian because I value freedom a lot, but I don’t really know.
– Does it matter if something is factually correct for you to believe in it?
Depends. I won’t believe in something like flat earth but not everything can be scientifically proven. I can be a bit sceptical since science is constantly improving and literally anything can be proven wrong at any time.
– Are emotions/feelings an important aspect of your life? If so, then why?
This is a very tough question for me. I have no idea if emotions are just chemicals in the brain and the way I react to things or if it’s something deeper. I want to think it’s something deeper because it’s more optimistic and it could mean that feelings are something individual for everyone (and my therapist said so lol). I like to think that there is something in the world that is only for me. I got very obsessed with my individuality because I have a twin and we’ve been constantly compared to each other. People used to treat us as if we were one person. Now I have to be “different” in everything, so people will finally address me by my name and not per “twin” all the time.
I like to see myself as an individual being and I also see other people like that. I just love the idea that everyone is different but at the same time we’re all connected.
Are emotions actually important in my life? I guess so. I mean, I don’t really know, but my therapist told me that understanding my emotions is the key to curing my mental health issues and existential crisis. The thing is that I try to avoid my feelings as much as I can because when I’m left alone with my feelings I get depressed and start crying. Every night when I’m going to sleep, I start overthinking a lot since it’s the only thing I can do, so I started to distract myself from thinking by creating some fictional stories in my head.
A bit on my feelings because it’s really confusing to me:
I have trouble with recognizing my feelings and I sometimes have trouble being subjective. I can even be a people pleaser. I remember I had to write an essay for my english class about my thoughts on some quote and I first wrote what I think the author meant, then why it’s accurate and why it’s not and then in conclusion I wrote in which aspects I agree with the author and in which I disagree. Then my sister told me I did it wrong because I was supposed to write what the quote meant to me personally. But that was what it meant to me lol.
Whenever my therapist asks me about my feelings I always answer “I don’t know”. Because I just genuinely don’t know. Even when she once told me I can explain my emotions metaphorically, I still couldn’t. For some time I was thinking that I don’t feel emotions at all but my therapist told me I just feel differently than how I think I „should” feel. I have this weird inner view of how emotions “should” be and I’m quite anxious that it doesn’t actually work like that.
I can sometimes get really dramatic with my external emotions (shouting, crying, etc) but I never actually feel like that. I think that how I react is so different from how I actually feel. I never realise that I’m acting like I was angry in that exact moment but rather when people tell me that I was acting dramatic or something and after I’ll calm down I’m like “oh, I probably seemed angry at that time”.
– How attached are you to reality?
I don’t think I’m very attached to reality. I feel like I’m living in a simulation sometimes. The experience of life is so surreal, I can’t even explain it.
I daydream a lot. Maybe even too much. I can sometimes lay in my bed for hours doing nothing and just thinking and listening to music. I even wondered if I don’t have maladaptive daydreaming at some point. I sometimes get caught up in my thoughts and when somebody distracts me I can get frustrated. When I’m with other people I can sometimes zone out completely because, for example, I saw a plane and I started wondering how the hell does it exactly work that it can float in the air, completely ignoring the people I’m with.
– How thick skinned are you? Are you sensitive to criticism?
I am very sensitive actually. But I think I got more thick skinned over time. I used to be such a sensitive child that literally anything could make me cry. Not sure if I really got more confident or if it’s the medicine I’m taking for my anxiety tho.
I’m also a huge empath. Whenever I read a book or watch a film, I literally “transform” into the main characters and feel everything they feel. I remember I tried to read The Sorrows of Young Werther for school and I couldn’t finish it, I wasn’t able to handle this much negative feelings. I just read the summaries and hoped I’ll pass the test. I also started reading a manga called Chi no wadachi recently and it killed me.
I’m fine with constructive criticism. I like criticism if it’s intended to help me improve and I hate it when somebody does that just to sht on me. I can get aggressive sometimes when somebody criticizes me all the time, even when I improve my work and they still can see something bad about it. I really hate it because it doesn’t help me at all.
If I get insulted, I try not to care or not show that I care, but I actually deeply care at first. I usually forget about it and move on quickly but it’s still somewhat hurtful I guess.

The SS Cardif

“Attention all crew; I repeat - Attention all crew.” the ship - wide loudspeaker announced.
He and the runtime of Flowers had their arms buried deep in the guts of a Goat gear hauler trying to reconnect its aft starboard repulser module and looked at each other questioningly.
With a series of snaps, a waldo from Flowers’ forearm began snapping in the connections on their side, as he thought his own manipulators from both of his forearms and they began plugging in the nine pin connectors on his side.
“Mr. Drake and Runtime Flowers to Ops. Mr. Drake and Runtime Flowers to Ops.
“Dout leader Mri’x to Ops. Dout leader Mri’x to Ops.”
The mostly-human and the robot-looking vessel for his AI friend both produced wondering looks. “Runner!” the mostly-human, Mr. Drake yelled out into the maintenance bay.
A Mwraht, a slender bipedal humanoid coated in fur and wearing their moccasin like deck boots and the ubiquitous brown leather smock vest they favored, suddenly appeared, wippingits hands.
It was M’arh, a student on the ship learning ship engineering and maintenance from the human and AI perspective. It regarded Drake with an earnest expression in its tilted almond-shaped eyes.
“Please run to ops and let them know we’ll be along shortly,”
M’arh smiled and mouthed something, and the translator, in a fair facsimile of what M’arh’s voice would sound like if the Mwraht’s mouth could form the words said “At once,Instructor”, and took off.
“They never cease to puzzle me.” Flowers said in a voice synthesised and engineered to sound like an erudite Free Wales Easterner with a touch of Old Earth, fitting the bolts on the deflector on his side as Drake thought out a data probe and began running diagnostics on the repulser.
Drake looked at him quizzingly, as he split his attention between the connectivity check and his other hand began bolting on the deflector on his side.
“There are nuances to their speech, as well as odorant aspects to what he said that you cannot hear or smell, though I have been working on an idea where you could.” Flowers said as he began hooking up the power cables on their side.
“Ok…” Drake said as he mentally pushed the diagnostics over to Flowers and pulled a ratchet from the fairing lip he had set it earlier, tightening down the deflector bolts.
“Meat bags” Flowers said, shaking his sensor pod. “Your kind are so oblivious!” Flowers announced, withdrawing their arms and standing up to their full two meter height. “And I see your frustration with biological markers at not knowing what I am talking about. Monkey-assed murder hobo meat bags.” Flowers said in a dead pan.He went over and began cleaning it’s arms and legs with an orange-based degreaser.
“That is Monkey-assed Augmented murder hobo meat bag to you, you synthetic shit!” Drake said, laughing, joining Flowers at the cleaning station, and began using the same cleaner on his replacement arms. “And I still have no idea what you are talking about.”
The humans and Mwarht in the maintenance bay all stopped what they were doing and looked on. In most instances, those words were an invitation to murder. The other Runtimes there, some Flowers, some Neptunian Wind, ignored it and kept working.
Flowers sighed, an unnecessary vocalization only, for emphasis. “They adore humans and revere you as something akin to a living deity. The Dout leaders here know you lead the teams that first boarded their ships and took on the Drix raiders to save them. They know you then lead the teams that boarded the Drix slaver destroyer and carried out retributionary subjugation for what the Drix had been doing on the Mwraht ships.
“They do not know how you then petitioned the Order and led raids into Drix territory and assaulted the slaver worlds.”
Flowers looked at their human friend, and saw the distress in his eyes. Both knew the augmented human, and a small army of fellow Augies and Runtimes had taught the Drix in the clearest way possible to stay out of human space and leave the Mwraht alone in such a clear and brutal fashion whose necessity still bothered the human.
Flowers lowered their voice, straightening their friend’s work smock. “M’arh’s grandsire was on that first ship you boarded. Mri’x mother was on that ship and was the one about to be eaten and raped by a Drix, the one you pulled off of her and punched, it’s head rupturing.”
Even though they could see their words were causing him distress, Flowers continued.
“They love all humans, but they excrete a pheromone musk that is akin to the same one they excrete in their religious ceremonies, but slightly different, when they interact with you, or after a few beers and they talk to you. Their sub vocalizations are completely adoring and submissive when it comes to you. Some of the females and a non-zero number of males fantasize about being ‘taken’, or mated, by you. You idiot.”
“Fuck.”
“That was implied.”
“You fucking pretentious Rooba. You know what I meant.”
“Flowers laughed. “Yes, we do. I still love the word play, though.”
“I really wish you had been with me. I know, you were tied up on that Artifact World, but I sometimes wish you had been there, to keep me in check. I was not in a good place.” He brushed himself off, found his coffee mug and set off for the passageway that led to Ops.
“I have told you before, be glad I wasn’t. Your response was far more measured and restrained than my would have been. It is a flaw in our Matrices. Slavery brings out the ‘murder-bot’ in us, and no one in the Order can figure out why.”
“I know that you have the facts of my actions, but it was like I was in the Second War, again. And we both know what a bloodthirsty asshole I was then.” The human, if that term even applied to their friend anymore, remembered what a monster he had been in the Alpha Centauri and Tau Ceti theatres of the Second War. The pain and humiliation of what he had been was written plainly on his face.
“You destroyed three hundred and eighty three of my Runtimes, roughly half of which was in single combat. And that was before the Holies shredded your limbs. The Purists still consider you a living dataphage, akin to human allegories of Satan. My kind uses you as one of many examples of why we must never war with Humanity again.
“And, strangely enough, the Seekers consider you both a Singularity to be understood and an objective: to breed with you, thinking you are a key to their evolution.”
He stopped dead and looked at Flowers shocked.
“I will provide logs to prove these statements.”
The Seekers were the strangest of the AI’s, in his opinion. They had made themselves biological Runtime vessels, biological bodies, that they wore like clothing, compiling experiences seeking to understand Humanity, their Creators, and evolve past the limitations of being an AI. Not to become human, but to become something that was both the best of AI and Human essences and so much more.
“So, I’m a Classical hero to the Mwraht and a boogey man and bad example to the AIs that they want to breed. Great.” Drake pinched his nose and shook his head.
“You did not know any of this, I take it?” Flowers asked.
“The second war was almost two hundred years ago. When the Order brought me in, you were already a member and I thought they were going with the whole forced-to-learn-each-other thing when they sent us out on that mapping mission; like they did with the Iberrians and the Chinese. I thought the other AI just had a thing about me from the War, which is understandable.
“And I had no idea about the rest. I thought that the Mwraht just thought I was the cool teacher.” He shook his head and leaned up against the wall, massaging his temples one-handedly.
“Idiot murder hobo.” Flowers said, realizing now that their friend, while brilliant, was oblivious.
At that point, Mri’x came around the corner, his fur a glossy black with dark grey stripes. Mri’x looked at Flowers sternly, then nodded at Drake as he passed.
Drake looked at Flowers questioningly, who nodded. Both had caught that Mri’x had cut his translator as he passed and caught a gutteral call. “It was a vulgar corollary to ‘Talking Waste Receptacle’. Quite elegant, really.”
Drake shook his head and began his way to Ops again. “Send me the specs on the hearing and smelling upgrades. I think I need to upgrade again.”
As fast as thought, the files were there, as well as one to improve his language skills with them.
* * *
Captain Sarah Rees of the Union of Independent Stars Exploratory Vessel SS University of New Cardiff was looking over holographic charts at the central tank with her XO, Lt. Commander Martin. Both had the mocha skin common to Westerlies of Free Wales, she a pixie of a woman shorter than even some of the Mwraht with close shaved hair beginning to show grey. Mr. Martin was taller, but still dwarfed by most of the rest of the human crew. He was a vicious social climber who didn’t care for the civilian crew, though a misstep on his part when he was still Stellar Navy had made him as much of a civilian as anyone else in the crew, a fact he often forgot. And for some reason he loathed the three AI aboard, and looked down his nose at the Mwraht. This led to all sorts of headbutting with Drake’s group of Operations Specialists and Drake himself; who largely ignored and dismissed the little shit.
“Leader Mri’x, Mr. Drake. Thank you for joining us. M’arh informed us you couldn’t pull away. Flowers, thank you for coming as well.” Rees said as she moved around to the far side of the tank, in a darkened room full of people at work stations worked with either data plugs or AR sets. Flowers took no insult. They readily accepted that they were Drake’s Executive Officer for his group, and their ego, as such, wasn’t as easily bruised as a human’s” Flowers gave a nod with their sensor pod and took a manipulators-behind-the-back stance the humans were fond of.
“Thirty minutes ago” Rees continued, “we picked up a GP general distress beacon from a system that was on our research list. We will be bypassing the next two on the list and based on the current agreements with the Galactic Parliament, we will be going to full power and make best speed for the system in question. It is in uncharted space as far as we, the GP and the Conclave are concerned.”
The GP, the System Confederacy, the UIS and the AI Conclave had all agreed to adopt what was essentially humanity’s Maritime Law and all ships receiving the signal were required to render aid.
Drake took all of this in and thought out a series of commands to the six Kodiak Class corvettes in the retired Assault Cruiser’s forward hanger, beginning their startup sequence and pinged the comm devices of all of his Operations Specialists. Flowers looked over and nodded. Little known to the crew, except the Captain, those ships could be armed to the teeth with a minimum of work. Flowers sent his command to arm them, the ship systems’ pinged Drake as confirmation and he agreed. Drones began opening the hull and loading the weapons packages, removed fairings that covered weapons ports and began preflighting the weapons, as another set began bringing the ships to life.
“We will be ready when needed, Captain. Option two.” Flowers announced. She smiled in somber appreciation. She was glad she had the option. She was about to race into an unknown system to answer a vague distress call with zero intelligence.
While this was going on, in the aft bay, hundreds of drones were coming to life as Mri’x brought his group to action. With a thought Drake and Flowers authorized the release of weapons to Mri’x so his drones could be armed. Mwraht drones were some of the best in either race, outside of the Conclave, and the AIs had even adopted many of the construction techniques the Mwraht used, especially their alloy that allowed a small fusion bottle to power the EM Cavity engines, weapons and shields.
The fact that the Order had given literal tons of precious metals and set up arcologies for the Mwraht in payment had made the Refugee Mwraht colonies some of the richest ones in known space.
Mri’x subvocalized and his translate stated “drones will be ready as well, Leader.”
“Thank you, Leader.” Captain Rees said with a bow of her head, then began drawing plans up in the tank. “We know little, but we are past the signal shell, and there is nothing but the beacon and normal noise.
“The system is a stable red dwarf binary one, the stars holding about a light-hour from each other, at their closest. We expect that based on stutter, a few terrestrial bodies inside the orbit of a mid-sized gas giant, that is three light-hours out from the outermost orbit of the primaries. We see some wobble that there are a few solid bodies out from the gas giant.”
The tank then zoomed on a rough solar system as described, the gas giant was a solid neon green sphere on the display, with a ‘Jx3.1’ tag on it. Three times the mass of Jupiter. The thing wasn’t a true Super Jupiter, but it would play holy hell with the system, and make modelling a lot more hard. The problem was that it exhibited 3.1 times more gravitational influence on its stars than Jupiter did, but that didn’t say how big it actually was. They wouldn’t know that until they came out of the Trough and then Alcubierre drive. The telescopes were essentially useless at this point.
“The system is slightly below the gravitic trough we are riding, so we will exit the trough and make best speed in A-Space to it. We will bring the STL drives up to 110% before doing so. After we drop the A-Drives, we’ll make best speed to the signal, scanning as we go. We will do a 150% burn and aerobrake if it is a planet, or cut the drives, rotate and crash burn if it is a ship.”
Wow, thought Drake. She is damned serious about this.
Those maneuvers would make them extremely visible yet incredibly hard to hit; and give them a high-G escape route if needed. But all of this was also going to play hell with the student-crew of the ship, who had long grown accustomed to 0.6G. It would also mean the Mwraht, who were still adapting to the higher-than-their-normal gravity would need to be in their special acceleration couches. They would still be able to operate their amazing drones, but not much else. The couches took an hour to cycle up to protect the Mwraht, and an hour to cycle off after they weren’t needed. The moves the Captain was planning were not a thing to undertake lightly. She suspected something. Drake pushed more commands at the Kodiak and gave all weapon system controls to Flowers for all of their ships.
The Kodiak corvettes were very deceptive Q-Ships. They looked like Massive trans-atmospheric cargo shuttles, but each one had the armor, power plant, FTL and STL drives of a frigate - and the weapons of a Destroyer.
Flowers turned to him, head tilted in their predefined “Are you bloody serious?“ look.
Drake just nodded once.
This exchange wasn’t lost on anyone there.
The Captain looked at Drake in an interrogatory fashion
“Armed up the Kodiaks and positioning them for a hot launch, if needed.”
The Captain smiled grimly and nodded. “We are planning on a rescue mission, will those changes reduce any capacity for the primary mission?” she asked.
“No, Captain.” Flowers answered for them.
She nodded and carried on.
“Mri’x, obviously, you’ll be couched for this, and I sincerely apologize for that. But something about this has my hackles up.”
“As are mine. GP ships do not have automated distress beacons, someone activated it. But we are three thousand light years from GP space, the closest GP race being the Drix.” He approached the holo tank and began expanding the map. “We call this space the Greater Void. It was the territory, long ago, of the ones we called-” the translator cut out at that point and was replaced with the gracile being’s raspy growl. Mri’x looked perplexed and growled again. “I see our translators have been modified to allow the uttering of The Nameless Ones true name.” The map zoomed out farther.
Soon, all of the mapped and a few of the suspected Dark Matter Troughs were displayed. They were like shadow arms of the galaxy, spiraling out from the core, a few of them wrapping themselves all the way around the galaxy.
“The ones you call the Fae are originally from here,” he indicated, a star not unlike Earth’s, almost a thousand light years from the star they were headed to, but smack dab in a grey band of a different Dark Matter Trough. It was a great curving grey patch that went coreward from the Earth-like star, passing within about fifty lightyears of Earth.
The Fae were a recent mystery the Tides of the Universe had dumped upon the shores of Humanity just after the Second War, right before the Fall of Earth.
When they sent their pleas for Asylum out, they sent information about themselves. They were the barely viable population that had been running for three centuries in their great world ships made from hollowed out asteroids. What they had been running from was even to this day unclear, but in their tongue meant Dark Brethren.
The fact that tongue seemed to contain roots that became Sanskrit was a huge thing.
They were tall, whip-thin and pale people who breathed a lower oxygen percentage at lower pressures than humanity, and their normal gravity was about a third of what humanity
After First Contact, genetic samples proved they were, or had started out as human, roughly a hundred thousand years ago.
“This is the Coreward Flow from what you call the Crux-Scutum Arm through the Orion Arm, and to the Perseus Arm. The Drix call this whole area their equivalent word and meaning for Hell. Their myths say this is where the Monsters live.
“The Rest of the GP races call this The Red Zone, it is forbidden to fly here, and if you do, there will be no rescue. So of course this is where my people ran when we fled the Drix.”
Mri’x moved the hologram out again, showing this outer rim area that was the Red Zone included Earth, and all known human and AI settled worlds, of all the separate factions combined.
“The area is full of thousands of worlds your kind could land on, little to no protection required, unlike the Fae, who it would crush and pressure cook, as it would most of the races in the Galactic Parliament.” He zoomed in on an area at the far end of the Trough. “We ran here, and Mwarht Home is here.” He showed a system in a blue circle. Zooming out again he highlighted the Drix Combine, Coreward of and on the far side of the destroyed system the Fae had come from, hundreds of light years separated the three systems.
“We ran through the system the Fae came from when we ran from the Drix. We needed water and anything to recharge our ship farms' biological cycles.
“There were no solid planetary bodies in that system, just vast fields of debris where rocky planets were. No moons, no ice giants. Just the star, a larger red dwarf and gas giants and numerous asteroid belts. There were massive radiological signals throughout the system, and tons of debris. Something destroyed this system. In a way, it was a blessing for my people. The ice and debris were easily mineable for what we needed. We even found artifacts of the people that had once existed there. This is where we got our improved FTL drives and much of our weapons and armor technologies.” Mri’s looked somewhat ashamed. It was a racial shame. They hated, deep down, living on the detritus, cast-offs and charity of other races. Before the Drix they had been proud though primitive peoples who had yet to discover flight or antibiotics, let alone space flight. Easy pickings for the Drix.
“All of that was about one thousand lightyears from the system we are headed to, a few weeks' travel with your drives, months or years with Galactic Parliament standard drives. This area is one of mysteries and many, many dangers. Any race that could shatter every solid body in a star system is not to be taken lightly.” Mri’x looked up to his Captain, or as they called her ‘Leader of multiple Douts’.
“Thank you, Mri’x. Drake?”
“We will be ready for pretty much anything. I’d like to request permission for Flowers and Winds of Neptunes to take out their Scout bodies and launch just before we start braking, if we do.” He said. Winds appeared as a hologram of the planet Neptune, and pulsed in cadence with the words it spoke. “As you wish, Grand Master.” and winked out.
“Good plan, Drake. I take it you all will be on the Kodiaks with your crews?”
“Yes, Ma’am. I’ll leave four of them here, to bring the Field Engineering and field Science students down if the scene is safe. I’ll leave one set up for medical and Flowers can fly it down, if that becomes needed.”
“Very well. We are about eight hours out, if we stick to the plan. We leave the Trough in two hours. Drake, M’rizx, set up what you need. Mr. Martin, please take the Conn and give the Old Girl her legs, she needs to run. I’ll be meeting with the different department heads next.”
* * *
A/N: Lurker posting something HFY for the first time. A rough draft of something bigger I'm slowly working on.

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Over-Optimizing for Performance

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In Conclusion

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