Java String Substring: 2020

Wednesday, 16 December 2020

Important policy changes for Google Account storage

Dear Google User,

We are writing to let you know that we recently announced new storage policies for Google Accounts using Gmail, Google Drive (including Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, and Jamboard files) and/or Google Photos that bring us in line with industry practices. Since you have previously used one or more of these products in your Google Account storage, we wanted to tell you about the new policies well before they go into effect on June 1, 2021. Below is a summary of the new policies. Please reference our Help Center article for a complete list of what's changing.

Summary of the new policies (effective June 1, 2021):

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If you're inactive for 2 years (24 months) in Gmail, Drive or Photos, we may delete the content in the product(s) in which you're inactive. Google One members who are within their storage quota and in good-standing will not be impacted by this new inactive policy.

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If you exceed your storage limit for 2 years, we may delete your content across Gmail, Drive and Photos.

What this means for you:

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You won't be impacted by these changes unless you've been inactive or over your storage limit for 2 years. As this policy goes into effect June 1, 2021, the earliest it would be enforced is June 1, 2023.

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After June 1, 2021, if you are either inactive or over your storage limit, we will send you email reminders and notifications in advance and prior to deleting any content.

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Even if you are either inactive or over your storage limit for one or more of these services and content is deleted, you will still be able to sign in.

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Note: The inactivity and over quota storage policies will apply only to consumer users of Google services. Google Workspace, G Suite for Education and G Suite for Nonprofits policies are not changing at this time, and admins should look to the Admin Help center for storage policies related to their subscriptions.

Learn more about how to keep your account active

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To learn more about how to remain active with these products, visit this Help Center page.

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The Inactive Account Manager can help you manage specific content and notify a trusted contact if you stop using your Google Account for a certain period of time (between 3-18 months). Note: the new 2 year inactive policy will apply regardless of your Inactive Account Manager settings. You can learn more about these changes and ways to manage your or a loved one's account in our Help Center.

Learn how to manage your storage

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Learn more about the over quota policy and what counts against storage quota.

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You can use the free storage manager in the Google One app and on the web to see how you're using your Google Account storage, and free up space across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos.

Thank you for using our services.

Your Google Team

You have received this mandatory email announcement to update you about important information related to your Google Account.

Tuesday, 22 September 2020

Suzy Cube Update: June 1, 2018

#SuzyCube #gamedev #indiedev #madewithunity @NoodlecakeGames

What a week!! We are continuing to work hard to wrap things up in time for *redacted*.

Monday, 21 September 2020

A Warm Welcome Please For

Colonel St. Jean,

the new commander of the Grey Patriote Brigade, part of the Origawn Republic Army (or Rebel army depending on your POV).

Saturday, 12 September 2020

DreamForge-Games Price Increase.

We started down the road to manufacturing plastic kits in 2012, a lot has happened since then. I have seen shipping prices nearly double, WGF has ceased to be our distributor and we have taken over that aspect of operations. We now purchase our kits from WGF China directly.

We recently place two restock orders to bring our stock levels back on par, the shipping costs have been an eye opener. In many cases shipping from China to the US was more than the actual cost to manufacture a kit. Some kits needed to be brought in line with their cost of production. This price increase was as minimal as we could make it most items will see an increase of 5% to 8% with some more drastic adjustments to kits that were selling into distribution at a lower than delivered cost to us.

To maintain the health of DreamForge-Games it has become clear that we will need to implement a price increase, effective February 15^th2016

I thank you for your continued support.

Mark Mondragon

DreamForge-Games

Die Hard, But Not Any Harder

There are a lot of possibilities for a game designer when presented with the challenge of creating a game based on a pre-existing property such as a book, film or TV series. The easiest option (and the one we see the most) is to re-skin an existing game, such as with all the licensed versions of Clue, Risk, and especially Monopoly. This is an easy way to get a tie-in product out there, but it's rarely very satisfying when assessing whether or not the result is a good game. Of course, there are exceptions; Legendary has proven itself to be a very resilient game system, supporting multiple licensed properties such as Marvel Comics, Alien, and James Bond while making each property seem a perfect fit, and I will go to my grave defending The Lone Ranger Shuffle the Deck Card Game as one of the best fits between a licensed property and a pre-existing game system ever.

The design choice that should render much better results is when a game scratch built to fit a particular theme, but while this approach occasionally gives us an amazing game like Firefly, it all to often results in something that is too focused on the nuances of the property it's trying to simulate, to the point that the end result is a game that, while successfully evoking whatever film or TV series it's based on, doesn't actually come together very well as a playable game.

This is definitely the case with Die Hard: the Nakatomi Heist Board Game. According to the designers, the intent of the game was evoke the experience of watching the movie, and it definitely does that. If you're a fan, the game will certainly call to mind most of the film's iconic moments such as John McClane running across broken glass or Hans Gruber plunging to his death.

The game is played out over three acts, with one player acting as McClane and the rest as the thieves (remember, they're only pretending to be terrorists). The McClane player has to use cards and dice rolls to move through Nakatomi Tower completing various objectives starting with finding a gun and a radio, and finishing with pushing Gruber out of the window. The thief players have to work together to slow him down, while at the same time playing cards in the right combination to open the vault and win the game.

In many ways it's similar to Leading Edge's Aliens board game, which asks players to recreate the action from the film, but sets them the challenge of doing better than the characters did in the film (according to the game's victory conditions, they lost). It also allows for several "what if" scenarios outside of what we see in the film.

Die Hard uses cards, dice and playing pieces to provide a framework that lets players re-enact the film, and then asks them to do just that. And this is the problem. While the game mechanics are reasonably entertaining for a lightweight tactical move-and-shoot game, the players are given objectives based on what happens in the movie, and the only way to accomplish them is to do what the characters did in the movie. There's no flexibility to try different strategies, and there are no alternative ways to win. The game forces the players to use their random card draws and dice rolls to recreate the film, which means it plays the same way every time.

With little to no replay value it's not likely that we will play this game very often, but I'm thinking we might lean into the old "is Die Hard a Christmas movie" debate by storing it with our holiday decorations and playing it once a year on Christmas eve...

Rating: 2 (out of 5) More of a simulation than a game, giving players the tools to recreate the movie but no flexibility to do anything beyond that.

Die Hard: the Nakatomi Heist Board Game official website
Die Hard: the Nakatomi Heist Board Game on BoardGameGeek

Thursday, 3 September 2020

Harlequins: Not Sure If Good

Harlequins are decent at best.

I'm just going to come out and say it: I don't think Harlequins are looking too good from a competitive standpoint. With the book firmly in hand now, I don't see quite as much value from them compared to Dark Eldar when the army first got teased.

Before I completely put them aside, just note that I think there are a few things that Harlequins bring to the table. These are few, they're niche, and they're certainly conditional, but I think Harlequins can have some interesting options that no one else can really pull off. For example, when you look at some of the things that Soaring Spite can do with their Masque Form, you'll know that the army will be able to move 16"+6" and still shoot with 6" Fusion Pistols without penalty for 28" threat range. This awesomeness simply cannot be ignored. Similarly, if you take Faolchu's Talon for your Soaring Spite Warlord, you can move an additional 6" in your movement, and when you blow up, nothing happens. No explosion, no models dying, you just roll out of your drive-by mobile and find another joyride to blow people up in. This is great and all, but it's also very niche. Hell, even their big fancy Webway Gate wants me to drop multiple Talos or a fat unit of Grots out of them instead.

So here's where I have problems with the army: They're melee Horrors. They're melee-based units that cost a ton but still have the same statline as those little pink dudes. You have an army of 1W T3 4++ melee Horrors that desperately want to be relevant in a meta filled with resilience and anti-alpha. Everyone and their mother knows that T3 and 4++ with a single wound just get absolutely murdered by almost any type of shooting and even below-average melee fillers that play much better in attrition simply because of the points. Harlequins are great if you think that killing MEQ with 3+ for almost 30 points is great. You know what else is 30 points? A Grot, and a Grot comes with so much more resilience because a single Grotesque can be T6 with 4 wounds and 4++ with FNP. Speaking of 4W, this is actually much bigger than people realize. It takes 2 D2 shots to kill, out of kill scope of D3 weapons, and makes D6 weapons very nervous. It's pretty much the sweetest spot for being infuriating at 30ppm. When it comes to bashing in a Marine's face, a Grot does just as much damage but can stay alive much longer vs. almost any kind of shooting and any kind of melee. In fact, Harlequin melee stopped being relevant ever since stronger alternatives came out: Genestealers, Grotesques, Dawneagle Shield-Captains, the list goes on and on. Hell, even Wyches are better for the points if you want a melee option. Marines are dead easy to kill with any competitive army worth their salt because single-wound that cost a lot are just not cost-effective in today's meta. Attrition matters and Harlequins play the game the worst out of all the units in the game. Every other army that wants to be in melee does it better for the cost. For me, since I play Dark Eldar in a very shooty manner, why bother being in melee if you can shoot them to death from far away? My T3 5+ AS with an FNP Warrior that cost 6 points is looking a lot more cost-effective next to a 28-point Harlequin with a Fusion Pistol and an Embrace. You are essentially paying a premium for a luxury that's not needed.

Arguably the best Form in the book.

This brings me to match-up. In any given competitive setting, you're going to be looking at your local meta or even the greater meta (GTs or national events) and comparing yourself to all the other armies out there. You have to factor in the fact that Harlequins are not cheap, not in the slightest. Their unit choices are limited already, but what you pay for is a unit that's not very durable but has a ton of bad match-ups. If you run into a Tyranid list with a lot of Genestealers for example, you know for the points that you're going to fight an attrition battle that you're not going to like. If you're fighting a lot of Gaunts, forget about it because you already lost the points game here (anything with Fearless sucks). God forbid you to run into a unit of Wyches, or even worse, a unit of Grots. With Meat Mountain being so popular these days, just running into a unit that you're not going to be able to really hurt while still taking assloads of damage in return is going to suck. The worst part is when you start thinking about this from a points perspective. Having Harlequins killing cheap fodder units is a waste of time and it's only going to get you shot up afterward and killed. A canny opponent is just going to spread out his line so he sets up kill zones for your units afterward (why Midnight Sorrow might be pretty decent). IG carparks are going to be super annoying and so are most armies with cheap armor and plentiful shooting. I feel very confident with my pure Kabal army vs. any army that takes a decent amount of Harlequins for example. When you bleed expensive models, your firepower and melee threat goes down a ton. That's one of the reasons why I prayed to the dice gods that GW was going to give the army -1 To Hit all-around. Alas, this was not to be. Instead, you have to pay up the ass in CPs and bet on Psychic powers or other instances to keep your basic stuff alive long enough to be relevant.

Harlequins are points-prohibitive. If you take them, you won't have a lot of anything else. If you want to run them in any meaningful way, you will take them as a Battalion. You will already need multiple HQs to get the most of your army like the Shadowseer and Troupe Master, and Troupes just naturally fill in the rest of the core choices. The difficult part here is getting into a points zone where you can still be relevant and be a threat to the enemy without costing an arm and a leg. It's not just the points that matter here, it's about being relevant and a threat to the enemy. What I mean by this is that you need to pack anti-tank in any competitive list as well as being a threat in melee because that's what you're taking Harlequins for. The army, in general, is bi-polar. If you want them to be a strong AT threat, you take Fusion Pistols. If you want them to be a big melee threat, you mix up Caress and Embrace. The problem is that they both go on the same model and when that model dies, he takes both of those upgrades with him. Some people argue saying that you can take them stock, or leave specials off them as extra wounds, but why the hell would you do that? If you're just looking at a few models that can do damage, Wyches can fill that role for much cheaper. Unfortunately, you have this current situation where both ranged and melee special weapons cost a good deal of points on an already expensive model to begin. This is why the attrition factor sucks so much for this army. It's not very durable and every model lost feels like chunks out of the army's total strength compared to other armies. Hell, most would agree with me when I say that Soaring Spite is arguably the best Form right now for Harlequins, but what people talk about but don't consider is how many points a boat filled with Fusion Pistol Troupes really are. If you want to decrease the cost by removing Fusion Pistols, you lose out on the Form's benefits. You cut the melee weapons and you're now a glorified Wych. Grats. More importantly, for how many points you're spending trying to make this clusterfuck work, you're also taking away points from allies who can possibly perform the same role better. Case in point, you can buy an entire Black Heart Spearhead for less than 500 points if you just want something to shoot.

Too much, too little.

So what am I getting at here? It means that if you put a lot of points into Harlequins, you need them to be a decent standalone force. But if you need them to be standalone, in the fact that you need your points to also equate out to the ability to kill tanks and infantry, then you're simply increasing the cost of each Troupe unit. Taking a deeper dive: For 500 points, I can buy a Black Heart Spearhead with 3x Ravagers with Dissies on all of them. What do Dissies do? They can pretty much wreck anything because this buys the army 27 BS3+ S5 AP-3 D2 shots that can threaten GEQ, MEQ, multi-wound, single-wound, high-armor, whatever, you name it. This is just from shooting because you're not counting access to Agents of Vect, Living Muse, Cunning, or FNP on all your vehicles. You put 500 points into a Harlequin force and what do you get? You do the math and get back to me with exactly what firepower you have in shooting and in melee and see if the numbers pay off for you. First, you need to be a certain distance from the enemy to threaten them with AT Fusion Pistols, then you need to be in combat to get the most out of them. To get in, you have to brave the Overwatch, hope none of your 28 point models die, roll to get in, and then you can really shine. You have to play much cleaner, much more precise and pray for some good ol' dice rolls because there's a lot that can go wrong. With Grots, you just push models forward and results happen. With Ravagers, it's the same thing, but you don't need to commit because you're 36" away from your target. With Harlequins, it's all risk, and I hate risk. And so do most competitive players.

You know what else is risky? Conditional effects. When you look at Harlequins, almost everything in the army requires you to be within 6", roll something to enable (Veiled Path), cast a psychic power, drop multiple Strategems across multiple phases, or something else. Most of these things can fail to bad luck, some can be outright countered (Vect, Denied), and others can be counter-played sufficiently to really take the wind out of your sails. The best counter to melee-oriented armies is proper spacing and understanding threat range and averages. A good player with solid understanding of melee threat range and bubble-wraps will be murderous to Harlequins. In general, the army is almost too much fluff and not enough consistency when it comes to a lot of their army mechanics and that is a huge risk to competitive players looking to win a GT. The variables are already great, with matchups and different strength of schedules and players, so you don't need more randomness. It's almost like you're playing Orks, but you're trying to build a competitive army so you took Eldar or Dark Eldar allies and they're all looking at you like WTF, you took up half of my army points? A common theme within competitive armies is that they're consistent in their performance. Just look at some of the discussions around Harlequins being a competitive threat. It always starts with: Oh first you take this, then you do this, then you cast this, then you play this Strategem, and then you shoot and lel you embark back in your transport! Yeah, that's nice, but I play Prophets of Flesh and my entire army has 4++. That's what consistency looks like and that's why it wins games. That's why Meat Mountain is doing so much work right now. That is until people figure out how to beat it.

There is a mild saving grace for the army though, is that they're Battle Brothers with both Dark Eldar and Eldar. I would say that both of these armies are very competitive with a multitude of unit options. Eldar arguably has the best psykers (Doom, Jinx) in the game, Shining Spears, Dark Reapers, Wave Serpents, and both the Hemlock and Crimson Hunter Exarch are insane. Dark Eldar can run Meat Mountain down your throat and cost-effective Kabal units, Ravager Spearheads, Agents of Vect, and CP manipulation up the wazoo. There is a lot of good stuff in both of these armies, but ultimately it comes down to the points question all over again. Is Harlequins competitive enough to share the same points as these armies here if you're trying to build competitive? Only time will tell. Personally, I think the best Harlequin lists will be the ones mixed with either Eldar or Dark Eldar. Cegorach knows that I've been trying to make it work.

I really hope I made some solid points here. Don't get me wrong, I own a ton of the little fuckers and I love them to death, but they're definitely more of a fluffy choice than a competitive choice for me. There are just too many good unit choices out there that makes army building with them difficult. I know, I've been trying to design a good army list with Harlequins/DE and/or Eldar for the last couple of days and it's mind-boggling. When I have something good, I'll show it off.

Sunday, 30 August 2020

CEH Practical: Information-Gathering Methodology

Information gathering can be broken into seven logical steps. Footprinting is performed during the first two steps of unearthing initial information and locating the network range.

Footprinting

Footprinting is defined as the process of establishing a scenario or creating a map of an organization's network and systems. Information gathering is also known as footprinting an organization. Footprinting is an important part of reconnaissance process which is typically used for collecting possible information about a targeted computer system or network. Active and Passive both could be Footprinting. The example of passive footprinting is assessment of a company's website, whereas attempting to gain access to sensitive information through social engineering is an example of active information gathering. Basically footprinting is the beginning step of hacker to get hacked someone because having information about targeted computer system is the main aspect of hacking. If you have an information about individual you wanna hack so you can easily hacked that individual. The basic purpose of information gathering is at least decide what type of attacks will be more suitable for the target. Here are some of the pieces of information to be gathered about a target
during footprinting:

Domain name
Network blocks
Network services and applications
System architecture
Intrusion detection system
Authentication mechanisms
Specific IP addresses
Access control mechanisms
Phone numbers
Contact addresses

Once this information is assemble, it can give a hacker better perception into the organization, where important information is stored, and how it can be accessed.

Footprinting Tools

Footprinting can be done using hacking tools, either applications or websites, which allow the hacker to locate information passively. By using these footprinting tools, a hacker can gain some basic information on, or "footprint," the target. By first footprinting the target, a hacker can eliminate tools that will not work against the target systems or network. For example, if a graphics design firm uses all Macintosh computers, then all hacking software that targets Windows systems can be eliminated. Footprinting not only speeds up the hacking process by eliminating certain tool sets but also minimizes the chance of detection as fewer hacking attempts can be made by using the right tool for the job. Some of the common tools used for footprinting and information gathering are as follows:

Domain name lookup
Whois
NSlookup
Sam Spade

Before we discuss these tools, keep in mind that open source information can also yield a wealth of information about a target, such as phone numbers and addresses. Performing Whois requests, searching domain name system (DNS) tables, and using other lookup web tools are forms of open source footprinting. Most of this information is fairly easy to get and legal to obtain.

Footprinting a Target

Footprinting is part of the preparatory pre-attack phase and involves accumulating data regarding a target's environment and architecture, usually for the purpose of finding ways to intrude into that environment. Footprinting can reveal system vulnerabilities and identify the ease with which they can be exploited. This is the easiest way for hackers to gather information about computer systems and the companies they belong to. The purpose of this preparatory phase is to learn as much as you can about a system, its remote access capabilities, its ports and services, and any specific aspects of its security.

DNS Enumeration

DNS enumeration is the process of locating all the DNS servers and their corresponding records for an organization. A company may have both internal and external DNS servers that can yield information such as usernames, computer names, and IP addresses of potential target systems.

NSlookup and DNSstuff

One powerful tool you should be familiar with is NSlookup (see Figure 2.2). This tool queries DNS servers for record information. It's included in Unix, Linux, and Windows operating systems. Hacking tools such as Sam Spade also include NSlookup tools. Building on the information gathered from Whois, you can use NSlookup to find additional IP addresses for servers and other hosts. Using the authoritative name server information from Whois ( AUTH1.NS.NYI.NET ), you can discover the IP address of the mail server.

Syntax
nslookup www.sitename.com

nslookup www.usociety4.com

Performing DNS Lookup

This search reveals all the alias records for www.google.com and the IP address of the web server. You can even discover all the name servers and associated IP addresses.

Understanding Whois and ARIN Lookups

Whois evolved from the Unix operating system, but it can now be found in many operating systems as well as in hacking toolkits and on the Internet. This tool identifies who has registered domain names used for email or websites. A uniform resource locator (URL), such as www.Microsoft.com , contains the domain name ( Microsoft.com ) and a hostname or alias ( www ).
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) requires registration of domain names to ensure that only a single company uses a specific domain name. The Whois tool queries the registration database to retrieve contact information about the individual or organization that holds a domain registration.

Using Whois

Go to the DNSStuff.com website and scroll down to the free tools at the bottom of the page.
Enter your target company URL in the WHOIS Lookup field and click the WHOIS button.
Examine the results and determine the following:
- Registered address
- Technical and DNS contacts
- Contact email
- Contact phone number
- Expiration date

Visit the company website and see if the contact information from WHOIS matches up to any contact names, addresses, and email addresses listed on the website.

If so, use Google to search on the employee names or email addresses. You can learn the email naming convention used by the organization, and whether there is any information that should not be publicly available.

Syntax
whois sitename.com
whois usociety4.com