I think you're right, but this is usually a developer skill issue. This UE developer thread was really useful in understanding the 'why' of ugly motion blur for me. https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/correct-motion-blur-values-to-use/131392
BCOVertigo
joined 1 year ago
Between the demand to install an app we are prohibited from even "decipher"ing and the theft of content, I don't think this service is anything I want to be a part of. I thought they were trying to be something better.
The contract language that informed my opinion follows.
When you post Contributions, you grant us a license (including use of your name, trademarks, and logos): By posting any Contributions, you grant us an unrestricted, unlimited, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free, fully-paid, worldwide right, and license to: use, copy, reproduce, distribute, sell, resell, publish, broadcast, retitle, store, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part), and exploit your Contributions (including, without limitation, your image, name, and voice) for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, your Contributions, and to sublicense the licenses granted in this section.
As a user of the Services, you agree not to: Except as permitted by applicable law, decipher, decompile, disassemble, or reverse engineer any of the software comprising or in any way making up a part of the Services.
(The choice between a "daemon in the sheets" or "cronD in your log folder" joke is left as an exercise for the reader.)
"Nut meat" is a common phrase so I would guess the peanut product is closest, but please stop this line of thought for your own safety.
Confusingly, there's actually two similar staves that get mixed up. The helix patterned one with two winged snakes I think you have in mind is called the Caduceus, but the the single wingless version I meant is the staff of Aesculapius (multiple spellings out there).
Go check out the alledged link between the snake wrapped staff that's used to represent medicine and the treatment for guinea worms. Googling puts that theory with the Ebers papyrus from 1500 BC if it's true!
Third edition draconomicon explained the "draconis fundamentum" in a similar way I believe. Maybe that's what you're thinking of?
Low effort speculation:
That's a vodaphone portugal IP, but this is likely traffic routing though their customer cellular network and not their corporate. It's possible that someone in PT has a similar username for this service and is fat fingering it. It's also possible that you're seeing a tiny sliver of a larger attack.
Spur.us tracks that IP as an egress point for openproxy and windscribe ResIP networks so it's worth considering that the origin of the authentications you're seeing may not be Portuguese cellphone but someone hiding behind those services.
Here's a paper describing the difficulties such a service creates for folks trying to secure accounts with traditional IP reputation based rules. "Resident Evil: Understanding Residential IP Proxy as a Dark Service" https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8835239
Shooting in the dark for how a bad actor would monetize account takeover for this service if this is in fact an attack.... They could try to sell your invitation to that private tracker. They could also look to scoop up a bunch of folks to try and blackmail based on what victims are download/seeding. Other more creative options I'm not thinking of might be on the table.
The campaigns my players consistently voice as their favorites are ones where I created an overarching plot, and then incorporated their backstories as significant and impactful portions of that plot. Being the sole input for character motivations for a story (as with a book) makes it easier to end up with a coherent vision and story, but more difficult because of the amount of content you're responsible for. Conversely a good DM can offload work to players and end up with a result that everyone is personally invested in.
I will say though that some DMs end up writing thousands of pages over the course of years spent in an ongoing campaign and might cry at your characterization.
It's definitely POSSIBLE to run a campaign without ever writing a page, but good luck when your characters get attached to an NPC you forgot about if improvisation isn't your forte.