u/CN8YLW

Okay so. Its finally time for Prestige-ing this lady. Only Kerrigan, Artanis and Vorazun left in my roster that I have left for last (these are my least played commanders for good reason).

I just gotta say man, Kerrigan's gameplay is like pulling a tooth without anesthesia. She's way too micro intensive even in hard mode, and her macro scale up is pretty horrendous not to mention complicated for the returns. I made it to level 3 before I felt blood coming up in my eyes and I gotta get a break. Unlike my other commanders who I gotta make the effort to stop playing in order to sleep. And I'm talking pre-mastery gameplay here.

And gods, I gotta do this 3 times for all her prestiges. Hard mode is a pain in the ass too, because sometimes I get paired with players who are on normal or easy, and then the game's speed gets turned down and I feel like walking through jello or something.

Hello people. Back in 2024 I started working for a new employer. They gave me a work laptop, but due to company policy about not working out of office hours, I was not allowed to bring the work laptop back home. But I do have a huge chunk of free time at home, so I sometimes wanted to work on some of my drafts back home so my office time is less cluttered. I spoke to my boss about this, and he offered to give me a copy of the company's Microsoft 365 license installed on my laptop. I was using LibreOffice back then, but hey, free Microsoft 365 license, why not right? So I brought my laptop to the office, the boss had the IT guy set everything up for me. About a year after, I resigned and the boss told me I could keep the Microsoft 365 license until they need it, upon which they will cancel my device from their end, so I'm free to use it as I want till they do.

Anyways, fast forward to today I found out that the company's Microsoft 365 account may have been compromised from the start because the company purchased the keys from an online source in bulk for cheap. Where instead of CDkeys they got a bunch of email and passwords to which the licenses were associated with, and these emails and passwords were used to set up new Microsoft 365 accounts at the official website. According to the IT guy from my old company, the 2FA was set up and linked to the company's microsoft authenticator. He assured me that there's nothing to worry about, and so far there's been no sign of compromise happening on any of the company's PCs from the Windows Defender and Malwarebytes that's running.

Okay so. More details about this.

1. Strictly speaking, the compromised Microsoft Office 365 account is used only for downloading and activating the MSword and MSexcel on my computer. Nothing else. I use a different email/account to login my Windows 11, and the Onedrive installed on my computer is also using the email I used for my Windows 11. Also, I'm not using the Onedrive for cloud computing, or at all. Its basically just sitting there unused.
2. I use Dropbox for cloudstorage, and even then nothing is synced. Whatever I want saved on the cloud, I'd just drag and drop them from my computer to the cloud's folder, basically treating it like just another storage device.
3. This is the downloaded app, not the online version.
4. I couldnt find the original purchase link the company used- IT guy says its no longer there, but he found another purchase link with the exact activation instructions. I'll post the link as a comment to this thread because of how long it is.
5. I actually have little concern about the Word and Excel files I work on. They are generally inconsequential and not confidential, so even if copies of them are made without my permission, I dont have anything to worry about. Its mostly learning materials for school kids, drafts of employment letters, a couple accounting spreadsheets that I work on for free for a couple non profits. I am mostly worried about the compromised MSWord/Excel programs being potentially used to download trojans, viruses and malware onto my computer to steal other files from my computer, or otherwise directly make copies of other files on my computer or otherwise break my computer and I gotta get a new one. I use this computer for gaming, online banking and management/storage of photo albums, and quite frankly I'm more concerned about hackers stealing my Steam account or losing my saves than anything else. I have 2FA enabled anywhere its available to be enabled, and linked to a separate device (my phone) that isnt linked or synced to my PC.
6. The email/password login associated with the license was on an email domain called ....@office365online.co (yes, I know its not an official microsoft domain, and yes I know that its definitely compromised).

So I guess I want to ask how bad is it for me? Assuming the login details were compromised in the first place, what risk am I at? Do I need to perform a full reformat of my computer? Or do I just need to uninstall MsOffice and MsExcel? Or can I just go on as usual due to #5? Can hackers gain access to my PC via a compromised Microsoft 365 account, or do they only get access to the files I work on using Microsoft 365 programs?

Heya. I'm looking for accounting software for my resident association for a small gated community. Funding is really tight, so they ask me to find free if possible, or if not then at least cheap one.

Dosent need to be super complicated, just need to be able to keep track of member houses and their monthly payment records, key in monthly expenses and at the year end generate an expense report for submission to the committee.

I've been doing all of this previously with an excel spreadsheet, but the other day after I submit the raw excel file they asked me to switch to accounting software because they dont trust my excel spreadsheet lol.

No preference if its website based (like google sheets) or if its an app I gotta download.

EDIT: Alright thanks for all the suggestions. I've tried calling the offices of a few of them and it turns out that every one is capable of being customized to suit the job I want to use them for, but I still feel its overkill considering the simplicity of the accounting of this organization, so I'll bring that up in the next committee meeting to see if they want to proceed with it or not.

Heya. Returning player here. I've been talking about this topic in the last few days here and there, and I havent really been able to get that much information beyond "just google it", to which I did, and found that most of these discussions go back 2-3 years, and mostly revolve around the argument that Steam does not offer discounts for expansions, or at least is behind Arenanet's store with regards to making those expansions available for sale. That isnt the case anymore according to SteamDB, which shows that the first 3 expansions for this game has gone on sale before, and for me that's pretty much easily a few years worth of content before I need to consider getting more. Coupled with the fact that I have a small child to care for, my gaming hours daily (about 2-4 hours on average including weekends) is extremely limited.

Aside from that, what other reasons are there to forgo a Steam account as opposed to Arenanet?

For me, the most compelling reason to go the Steam account route is because of account management, where Steam negates the need for me to record and keep my serial number in case I need to establish ownership of my account. "Support the devs" is not something I will engage in without first prioritizing my personal interests and consumer rights first and foremost. Steam specifically addresses this particular problem I have with Arenanet's account recovery option, so unless Arenanet support is willing and capable of helping players recover forgotten or otherwise lost serial numbers, I cant justify supporting Arenanet's profits at the cost of me possibly losing my account in the future in case I lose my serial numbers for whatever reason. For reference, Steam's account recovery process is extremely easy to do. I've gone through it several times in the past, for situations such as forgotten passwords and stolen account (actually I changed the password when I was drunk then forgot the password), and Steam's CS has been extremely helpful with regards to returning my account to me. I know Steam takes 30% cut from any money I spend, but this is something I've been thinking about and I don't see a good justification to forgo this service provided by Steam and risk losing my account in the future.