u/Mampacuk

took TOEFL 6 years ago before the AI boom when getting into bachelor’s, need to take it again soon for graduate school applications

started getting targeted TOEFL ads on instagram and couldn’t believe my eyes that they AI-generated a new purple-haired girl mascot. the animations are all AI. it’s appalling.

sure ETS is not a small company that can’t afford paying real artists to design, draw and animate a new mascot for them? this is outrageous ngl… i’m disappointed that my favorite English exam (i love TOEFL over IELTS) stooped so low

the variety of hot women in this game is great, but can we please address/undress the elephant in the room, which is James Bond himself?

literally 75% of NPCs, no matter if it’s a man or a woman, comment on Bond’s looks and i can’t help but agree with them 😭 this man is so hot it should be criminal. my screenshots are full of his face. happy pride month i guess!

hi, i'm a non-UCD alum who will be presenting at the medical imaging conference at UCD on July 20-22. however, i'm the only one who will come from my research group, so i'm looking for a peer to potentially spend the conference with (and maybe do some Dublin sightseeing too, haha). i'm a 22m computer science bachelor's grad from Armenia.

whether you're a UCD student or not, and a conference participant or not, please DM me to let me know if you're in a similar situation looking to have someone pre-acquainted, or just wanna meet a new person.

am i dumb and inattentive, or was Kate's PTSD only involved in a single scene with Mark where she finds the newspaper about the incident with her college friend? the scene itself i found cool and chilling, it really does highlight that Du'Met is a creep who stalked Kate's life and wanted to press on her weaknesses and scare the shit out of her.

however, it felt to me that if we remove that scene, then nothing changes about Kate's personality. her interactions and scenes for the remainder of the game never come back to this topic? she almost bears no survivor guilt, when that's what logically she would do as a result of such PTSD? please correct me if i'm wrong

glad to hear a familiar voice and a familiar face of Lennie James in Greenway in the new James Bond videogame. however, he reminds me every single time of how terribly downhill Fear the Walking Dead went after Morgan was given the lead role 😭😭😭🙏 i could write pages and pages on the show’s downfall due to Morgan, but low-key i’m glad to see him back at least in this form in 007 First Light

can’t buy Until Dawn in a locked region (Armenia) even though i have the Quarry and some of Dark Pictures games. UD simply doesn’t exist in the steam search. any keys i see online, tell me explicitly based on my GPS location that if i buy them, i won’t be able to activate.

however, i will be visiting Dublin, Ireland to present at a conference, soon, by the end of July.

what do i need to do to purchase the game while i’m abroad in Ireland?

do i need to make a purchase with an Irish debit card? if yes, then i don’t think i can do that since i will be there for 4 days. any way to circumvent this? worst-case scenario, will have to search for someone Irish to do that for me :( can i still buy it with my Armenian visa debit card, but on territory of Ireland?

also i’m willing to change my store country only temporary for this single purchase, need to revert it back to my homeland when it’s over

let me start; with 1.8k hours in the game, i heard for the first time in my life:

1. when there’s 2 survivors dead in No Mercy and the other 2 reach the hospital elevator, they exchange something like “well, only the two of us left,” and the other one replies with something reassuring “we’ll do it”
2. when Coach is being helped up after getting downed, he says “you’d better name a school after me after this shit!!!”

if HBO is really a greedy capitalist corporation caring about money so much, why won’t they replace CondHess with someone better at their job?

don’t they see the viewership and ratings drop in 2nd season of House of the Dragon? and also George’s terrible relationship with the current showrunners?

considering that it takes them 2 years to produce a season, i’m guessing they could’ve found someone better or at least buy Miguel Sapochnik back. they’re literally ridding themselves of their own money. there’s a noticeable trend that the show is becoming worse and worse but they choose to ignore it. then they will start axing other GOT-related shows because this one will not meet their expectations 💀

conference takes place in Dublin, Ireland, on July 20-22.

conference organizers released acceptance notifications only on June 5 i.e. 3 days ago. my home country is Armenia.

the official website recommends applying "3 months in advance" and warns that "in general, you can expect 8 weeks of processing time" which amounts to 2 months.

question: am i doomed? or is there a chance? can i hope for a faster processing time due to the nature of application being "short stay ‘C’ conference/event visa"?

bonus points go to the following fact: there's no Irish embassy in Armenia, and local travel agencies send packages to Bulgaria, Sofia, and i see reports of it taking an additional week for the package to get into a single direction, so we can expect +2 weeks of processing time...

if i don't make it in time, i will have to ask a co-author/supervisor present it instead of me, which i'm not sure they will agree to do since they just supervised the project without knowledge of little details. the paper will not get published in a journal without an in-person presentation!! what do i do??

i still have a 070 authority passport from Artsakh,
has anyone managed to get a visa to an EU country with such passport?

i must present at a conference in Ireland (which is NOT in Schengen area but should still be hard to get). am i doomed to get it rejected due to this?

i’ve had bad luck with a visa application before. my Spain travel visa was rejected recently but i’m not sure whether to blame it on the 070 authority in the passport. how do i find out if i’m safe?

hi, i want to order some expensive frames from Cettire. i can't order directly to my country, but i can order to U.S., UK or Greece and then freight-forward to my country. the first two use air while the latter is delivered by ground.

anyone has done this before and can provide some extent of an educated guess of how safe will they arrive at my home country? i mean i've ordered a bunch of stuff, including a lot of tech, but idk how fragile will a pair of glasses be. i know my freight forwarder sometimes includes additional padding to some of the parcels, but it's not always the case.

if i were to choose between the countries to order to, which one of the 3 would i select? the freight forwarder also promises return of packages back only for U.S. orders. should i then go for U.S.?

yes, i bought all the L4D-like games out there to fill in the void of L4D3 that we never got.

i rage-quit B4B after a very short playtime and now am exploring WWZ. and i just wanna say that it somewhat feels much more like L4D2 when played from 1st person POV. i find it much more enjoyable than B4B!

here are my main observations:

1. L4D’s survivors are all equal which i take as a preferred baseline. still, WWZ has survivor skills and classes which are much less annoying than B4B’s cards & decks. WWZ’s character upgrades are more intuitive and simple. i was so upset by the cards in B4B that i ended up never changing my deck until it hit me like a truck that some campaigns low-key force you to use them, otherwise they will be impossible to complete. very maddening! meanwhile i had no problem in choosing a class in WWZ.

2. WWZ’s stealth mechanic is actually so refreshing. in WWZ, the director is “idle” and doesn’t spawn anything until survivors make a lot of noise by running/shooting without silencers/exploding. then it becomes active and starts sending hordes and special infected once either noise is made, or a loud progression-blocking event is triggered, or a finale is launched. this (i feel like) could’ve fit perfectly into L4D.

3. B4B’s special infected, sound, and visual design are extremely irritating. also the pacing is too quick (saying this when L4D is by default fast-paced). whenever there’s too many zombies, a terrible cacophony starts. everything is extremely bright, too loud, and confusing. and the UI is littered with so many highlights, it’s unbearable.

i mean we have similar moments in L4D too, but WWZ and L4D provide a much calmer and smoother experience of combat. especially WWZ’s stealth sections help ironing out the intensive combat sections.

4. no one can top L4D in terms of character design: both WWZ and B4B’s characters suck a big time. however, i find WWZ survivors somewhat less annoying?

while both WWZ and B4B’s survivors are completely devoid of iconic voicelines (unlike our great 8 of L4D), i particularly noticed that B4B survivors try too hard to sound cool and badass which comes off as fake and cringe. it’s as if the snarky attitude was copy-pasted between them. WWZ survivors may also crack bland jokes from time to time, but they are in general far more grounded and serious in that sense, hence less annoying. WWZ survivors most of time provide general commentary that blends in gameplay well instead of sounding outlandish and immersion-breaking like they do it in B4B.

so yeah this is a sign for you to check WWZ out (it’s on sale) maybe you’ll like it. let me know if you agree/disagree

we all wish for Valve to make sequels for their flagship games (Half Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, etc.). and we know they don't make them partially because Valve doesn't rely on videogame sales anymore to sustain themselves.

however, i believe that the recent success of old horror game remakes such as Capcom's and Konami's RE and SH could serve as a decent starting impetus. Valve games without the 3rd installment are already old and suitable for either a remake or a sequel. why not leverage the opportunity now?

like i'm 100% confident they will recoup development costs instantly and sell millions within days. a fresh entry of Resident Evil 9: Requiem sold 5mil copies in just 3 days after release and i'm sure a Left 4 Dead 3 or a Half Life 3 will do the same numbers.

honestly that'd be such a bombshell that would generate so much revenue and make hundreds of thousands fans worldwide happy. have you seen the fan response to SH transmissions or RE announcements? it's freaking crazy and it feels such a FOMO that Valve is not picking up the goddamn trend!!!