Why Use a Password Manager?

Why should you use a password manager? Well, here’s a reason.

So your password can’t be cracked.

and

So you can easily use a different password for every site.

If one site is hacked, then the bad guys will try your email and password at lots of other sites just to see if they get a hit. Same password on different sites? Bad idea.

Let’s look at the math of password cracking.

There are about 3000 common words in English, and most other languages.

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So if you pick, for example, an easily remembered password containing two words, with initial capital letters, and then follow those two words by three numbers, you get:

3000*3000*1000 possible passwords or:

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Sounds like a big number, right? Not really.  Not only can modern graphics cards whiz through these in a few hours, but if the website where passwords were stolen did not use a different “Salt” for every password hash, then they can “pre-make” a list of the hashes and then look for matches in much less time. Instantly.  It’s just a look in a table rather than a search with billions of calculations. Does the site where you last typed in your credit card “salt” their hashes? Salting is adding some gobbly gook to your password before they hash it. And the gobbly gook is different for every customer. Yep. Keeping track of passwords is that complicated. I’m not going to cover it all here. Just saying, it’s a complicated business and many companies short cut the process, or don’t use modern security methods to keep track of passwords.

Secure Passwords and Password Managers

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Recruiting the Realm

There is a Main Scenario quest called Recruiting The Realm.

Unlike most quests in the game, it’s not obvious how to find the folks that you need to visit. Except for Alphi, who is well marked. For the other targets, only the general areas are marked on the map, and especially in Limsa Lominsa, these folks are not trivial to find. There is a page for the quest with a list of the targets with their coordinates, but this is not that easy to use either. So what I’ve done is taken a picture of the mini-map for each of the targets.

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Be Sure and Have a Healer Job

I mentioned in a previous post about what happens at level 50 and running the Castrum and Praetorium for Ironworks Armor. And I probably mentioned that it takes 30 or more minutes to queue up for this each day because I played Red Mage or Bard, which are DPS. Well, Silly Me. Healers only wait 5 minutes for these events. Duh.

I have tank jobs, but after you run this, you see that it takes a while to learn the ropes, even as a DPS. There are apparently no shortage of tanks that want to “be in charge” to run this. If I were going to run as a tank I’d need to make a map of the place and have that on another screen. The Castrum is a flat area so that would be easy, but the Praetorium is a multi-level maze, so you really need to learn to run it. I can easily keep up as a DPS or Healer, but I’m not sure I’m up for leading. Anyway, Healer’s don’t wait very long.

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Elder Scrolls Online – First Impressions

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Elder Scrolls Online, or ESO, is a long time active title that has an enthusiastic following.  I recently saw a complete history of “The Elder Scrolls Franchise”, but oddly, this video leaves out any mention of The Elder Scrolls Online.

I recently saw that one of the Youtubers that I follow for FFXIV, also plays ESO, so I thought I’d give it a try.

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Leveling 50 to 60

Once you approach level 50, your job gets a couple of quests that given them better gear. A quest at level 45 gives all the major armor pieces except the chest and the job quest at level 50 gives the chest piece.

At level 50, the Main Scenario Duty Roulette gives you access to a repeatable quest that gives Tomestones of Poetics, usually referred to as simply Poetics. These Poetics are exchanged in  Revenant’s Toll for Ironworks Gear, which is item level 120, and is the most easily attainable powerful gear at this level. Each run takes about a 30 minute wait followed by 30-45 minutes for the run. The cutscenes cannot be skipped. Also each run gives a large amount of XP – usually enough to grant a level – and either 200 or an additional 200 if any member is doing the duty for the first time.

But what about the Main Scenario Quests – Heavensward expansion quests- beyond level 50? Don’t those help level? As it turns out, no, not at all.

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Godsfall – Not All That’s Promised

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Tera just released an update that adds “Apex” skills – and flashy fireworks animations – to the end game for some classes. There are a few problems:

Only 7 out of the 13 Classes get new skills. Gee… Let’s PVP, and you have the new skills and I don’t. I’m toast. Presumably these new skills do more damage, not just have better fireworks.

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Would You Choose to Play Ugly?

If you had a choice in a Fantasy Life, would you choose to be Ugly?
Would you choose to grow old and die of old age? In a few years?
Well, if that’s your dream, you may soon will be able to do that.

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Today I tripped across a character creation video posted by the developers of this game on Youtube. See below. I think they missed the memo that says that “This is a fantasy world where you can be the way you want to be, rather than putting up with Real-Life.”

Maybe this idea will get traction, but no other popular MMO that I’m aware of makes this choice. All other MMOs that I’ve played have made it easy to be attractive. Yes, there is usually a race or two that are, shall we say, Dramatic in their appearance, But they are usually not designed to be ugly. Apparently all the tribes of Elyria are designed to be, what I’ll call here, Dramatic, and all look similarly so. That is, all the Races, or Tribes, look like variations on a single or two similar looks. For me this is a turn off. An interesting take, but still a turn off. Here are some choices that they showcased in the character creation video. I don’t mind a dramatic choice, but there don’t look like there are any “Attractive” or “Fantasy” choices.

I’m not into “Body Shaming” or criticizing folks looks. Personally, I’m not that handsome. But I don’t seek out ways to identify myself with an Avatar that looks worse than I do. At least not all the time.

I admit that there is novelty here. But I’m not clear that this is going to be popular, especially since these are the Only Choices in the game. Looks like a turn off and bad choice for the game. This is a screenshot of the Concept Art from the website. Is this the fantasy life you would choose?

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Professions Are Unsatisfying

Ok. You’ll see that this is my RANT on Professions in FFXIV. I don’t claim to be an expert and maybe I got something wrong. So what? I’ve played a lot of MMOs and if it’s so opaque and so difficult then stuff it. RANT ON.

A couple of days ago I spent most of the day leveling mining and only put 3 levels on my miner. What a waste of time. There are 70 levels in each profession. How is this not a colossal waste of time and effort for so little payoff? Just a reminder of what we are facing in professions. [Cuts from other websites are done to avoid the images disappearing when other sites change. All cuts are done with the sites name to give them credit.]

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Eight Crafting and three Gathering professions. And all level to 70, presumably.

Lets start with gathering. What’s wrong?

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Elin Gunners are Fun Too

The Elin Gunner was released Nov 2017, and I logged in and made one, but didn’t finish leveling it to 65. You know, been busy with FFXIV. So now that I have my male Brawler up to 65, I’m spending evenings leveling the Gunner.

Once you reach level 59, you head to the Tirkai Forest to fight the Argons. You’ve seen them as you’ve leveled, but this is the first time you see what devastation they bring to the land as they invade. The whole area has a creepy blue glow and is covered with their growing pollution.

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