Search Engines (suck now)
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the current state of search engines and why Google increasingly doesn't work anymore. In the news, iOS has multiple zero-day zero-interaction vulnerabilities (update your devices immediately) and Reddit is trying to embrace the worst parts of phpBB. 12 years ago we gave two short talks about how game mechanics (and UX design) literally make the communities that use them.
PAX West 2023
Tonight on GeekNights, we review and discuss PAX West 2023. The new venue is fantastic and it felt a lot like PAXes from the golden age of PAX. In the news, Scott suffered Airport Adventures yet made it to Chicaco, Steam (and our Steam accounts) are 20 years old, and the Unity game engine destroys itself with an actively hostile monetization model that is somehow worse than we expected from their 2022 merger with evil.
Blocking
Tonight on GeekNights, in light of Twitter's dying husk removing the ability to block people, we consider the concept of "blocking" in social platforms. The root problem is, as always, the twin evils of advertising and capitalism. In the news, the inability to warn the residents of Maui to the rapidly escalating wildfires requires significant government technology investment, and Dolby Atmos FlexConnect might prove interesting for home theatre setups.
Quake 2 Remastered
Tonight on GeekNights, having somehow never talked about Quake (except for Quake Live in 2009, we discuss Quake 2 and the Quake 2 Remaster. In the news, the Atari 7800 is back legit, Charles Martinet is moving on, and Marvel Snap is paying people to watch Twitch streams with .pngs in their app.
Live at PAX West 2023
GeekNights will be live at PAX West 2023 with an all new talk!
Games You Can't Play
Sunday 3:30pm PT
Blue Morpho Theatre
Games disappear. Some forever. There are a lot of reasons for this across PC games tabletop even sports. Some can be saved but many simply can't. There are games that are just "gone." Even with all the efforts to preserve and remember games the void can still claim them. Join the GeekNights crew as we explore the how and why of games disappearing from this Earth. Along the way we'll dive into several fascinating examples of games you should play but you can't.
Games You Can't Play
PAX West 2023
Games disappear. Some forever. There are a lot of reasons for this across PC games tabletop even sports. Some can be saved but many simply can't. There are games that are just "gone." Even with all the efforts to preserve and remember games the void can still claim them. Join the GeekNights crew as we explore the how and why of games disappearing from this Earth. Along the way we'll dive into several fascinating examples of games you should play but you can't.
Presented at #PAX West 2023 on Sunday, Sept 3 at 3:30pm in the Blue Morpho Theatre.
Book Club - The Murderbot Diaries
The Murderbot Diaries came up a surprising number of times recently across several conversations among different people on non-consecutive occasions. One person cited it in the course of a debate. Much like with anime, there's always a reason when people keep talking about a work.
In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.
But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn't a primary concern.
On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied 'droid -- a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as "Murderbot." Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is watch Netflix.
This isn't a single novel but a series of works. We're both reading them in chronological order, and will keep you appraised of how far we've gotten as GeekNights goes on. So far there's quite a bit to recommend it.
