@ConorMancone Why would "not even wrong" be offensive?

@ConorMancone I see that you just blindly import MySQLdb. It would be better to do this:

try:
    import MySQLdb
except ImportError:
    // Print a message that MySQLdb could not be found and give instructions on how to install it, then exit

In other news, I got a bit into Jekyll yesterday and I'll try to migrate my site to use Jekyll

It's basically my Gutenberg press to crank out unwanted opinions on all kinds of stuff :D

Also completely unrelated, but I hate it when movies reference in-universe events that would obviously have made better movies than the one I'm watching right now.

Like in Star Wars 2, which was incredibly boring all the way through, Anakin tells Obi-Wan that he has saved Obi-Wan's ass like 9 times so far, and Obi-Wan replies it's 8, because that one time on that one planet didn't count.

And to me, it just feels like the adventures of Anakin and Obi-Wan would have been a much better movie. You'd see much more of the two together. You could have moments where Obi-Wan tries to be a good teacher and fails due to his own inexperience (as Qui-Gon Jin died before Obi-Wan's training was complete), and Anakin tries to be a good student, but fails due to his arrogance and the idea that he is the chosen one, but is constantly told he's not ready yet.

I actually wrote a C program that does something useful :D

gist.github.com/MechMK1/d95ece5ca66ccc884267d18268ea7191

@MechMK1 Good call!

@MechMK1 I would watch that. Ironically, my oldest and I were just talking about this "universe" at breakfast this morning. We've decided that, now that Disney is making another-another trilogy, it's time for "SpaceBalls 2: The search for more money" to happen

@ConorMancone Yeah, I recently learned that C#'s using is a compile-time instruction, while Python's import is runtime

We were trying to come up with names and plot points

Obviously the name needs an update.

SpaceBalls 18: The search for even more money (after all the other money our movies printed)"

Not quite catchy enough...

@ConorMancone I'd unironically watch that too. It would hopefully be more interesting than all the talk of sand and space politics

they also need the bad guys to die, come back, die again, return once more, and die a third time

And also need a main character to start off as a good guy, become a bad guy, convert to a good guy again, and then possibly end as a bad guy

No, everything must be dark and edgy now

Everybody is a bad guy and a huge asshole, but for some reason the actions of the protagonist are seen as "justified"

Aka. Birds of Prey

I'm not sure if it would actually be funny anymore though: I feel like Star Wars has become so predictable these days that it might actually take the fun out of making fun of it

That movie was so shit

Oh man, I actually wanted to watch that! Don't tell me that!

@ConorMancone Star Wars is no longer a story, but a product

(although I also missed all Suicide squad and all the other movies involving Harley Quinn)

@ConorMancone Sorry, I won't talk about it anymore

@ConorMancone Do you want to talk about Suicide Squad?

lol, you're taking me too seriously (or I'm taking you too seriously). I do hope that Birds of Prey is entertaining, although it will probably be a decade before I get around to watching it

Yeah, but I can't know how serious people are about spoilers

Some people got furious at me when I said "I watched that movie and I liked it", because apparently that spoils them

Oh, spoilers don't bother me at all. It takes me forever to get around to watching movies, and if I'm really interested I usually end up reading about the entire plot line long before I watch it. I'm not even interested in the latest star wars movie, but I still know exactly what happens in it (I'll probably end up watching it once it comes out on Disney+)

Well, I am probably not the target audience for BoP or Suicide Squad

I really disliked Suicide Squad though. It was a complete trainwreck in every aspect of the movie

You can't even say something like "Yeah, this thing was bad, but at least that thing was good"

Like "Yeah, the plot was bad, but at least the action scenes were good"

Because literally everything is completely bonkers, and not the "From Dusk Till Dawn"-kind of bonkers

I think dissecting what exactly is horrible about Suicide Squad is far more enjoyable than watching the movie.

@MechMK1 That reminds me of "Snakes on a Plane", although that movie at least had some hilarious parts (although I'm not sure if that was intentional or not)

@ConorMancone Some movies are in the so-bad-it's-good category

Where you can find hilarity in the incompetence of the project

But Suicide Squad is in this weird territory where you can tell that the people involved thought it was AMAZING but nothing of it was even remotely passable, and you ask yourself why it even exists

I could put random movie words like "plot", "setting", "framing", "character development", "scene pacing", etc.. on a dart board and throw random darts at it and I'd have something to complain

If you want, pick your poison and I'll tell you why that thing is bad in Suicide Squad :D

Setting!

Okay, the entire setting of Suicide Squad revolves around what they call "Meta-Humans", or humans with supernatural abilities

The problem is, the rules for them are never established. This means that they follow absolutely no logic at all, and thus no logical comparisons between them can be made

How strong is this character? Nobody knows. The movie certainly doesn't know. Everyone is hyped to be this ultimate badass but I mean who the fuck is Harley Quinn even?

What is her superpower? Why is she there?

The setting is that the government needs a reliable strike force to combat superhuman threats, like Superman.

What the fuck is Harley Quinn supposed to do? Wear even less clothes? Is that her superpower?

And the dialogue lampshading it is the worst:

The problem is, that none of the supposed "Agents" could even in theory do anything against superman. Sure, Deadshot is an incredible sharpshooter, but Superman is immune against bullets, so what does it matter?

Killer Croc is a guy who can dive and move well in water. What does that do against superman?

Captain Fucking Boomerang can throw boomerangs. That's it

Obviously they don't actually fight superman, but get "tapped" for a different set of tasks?

he's a man that can throw a strick

@ConorMancone Their "task" is that one of them went rogue (like, even more rogue) and now they need to stop them

@MechMK1 lol!

And the funny thing is, they do this so much worse than a single squad of trained soldiers would

It makes no sense. The one who went rogue is called "Enchantress", who is supposedly a witch.

@MechMK1 Maybe they were actually trying to make fun of mystery men, because that is exactly what this sounds like. I can't quite remember the line from the movie, but one of the guys is all, "I shovel really well"

Her powers are completely unestablished. How strong is magic? Who the fuck knows or cares

@ConorMancone Yeah it is kind of that level

That movie was at least funny

Then Enchantress wants to build a superweapon of some kind? Who knows? It's never established

@ConorMancone Yeah suicide squad isn't funny. It doesn't acknowledge that some of the people there are completely out-of-place

It tries to paint all of them as complete underdogs, but they're not. They are just huge assholes and criminals

Another big problem is that the movie has waaaay too many characters

Like, way too many

And as a result, every single character is chronically underdeveloped

I literally forgot that Katana existed, because she literally serves no purpose

She does nothing.

You could cut her out completely and the movie would be the same

Killer Croc and Captain Boomerang do nothing either

Harley Quinn does nothing

Only El Diablo and Deadshot at least do something

The storytellers have long departed from Hollywood.

And Deadshot never even uses his superhuman marksman skills. He just shoots his gun as well as Jack Flag or however that one soldier guy is called

Rick Flag, that was his name

Rick, Jack, doesn't fucking matter

It has definitely become the era of the never-ending movie series

What's the word I'm looking for to describe that?

Yeah, I hate the fact that everything needs to be an Extended Universe now

LOL. To do what they did with Star Wars? No thanks.

Like, it's funny when a director makes two movies like 6 years apart and there are subtle references between the movies, hinting that they play in the same universe

Like, imagine that one was an action movie and the other some drama. And you'd see a report of a car chase from one movie as background filler of the other. That kind of thing is perfectly fine for me

But fuck me with those MCU bullshit.

Well, it is normal for writers to want to have some kind of universe to base their story in. Though it must been thought as is from the start, or actually not really matter at all

I don't want to feel the need to use a package manager's dependency resolution to figure out what movies I have to watch before I can watch a given movie.

Sure, before Matrix 2 will make sense I need to see Matrix 1. But honestly, what movies do I need to see before some Avengers kind of movie makes sense? At least 5, right?

No, it's 8

MCU is an oddball, they don't care about retrofitting the stories / changing what their plan was in subsequent movies. And it works well because it's a 'comics universe' and no one really care about coherence and continuity so much

I just hate the fact that everything needs to be part of an "extended universe"

I feel like "Extended Universe" for movies is becoming the "Live Service" of videogames

I don't mind, if they can make their films work as standalone

One company did it and got lots of money, and now everybody feels the need to do the same

@M'vy Have you ever watched a DCEU movie?

They don't even work if you did watch the other movies

Because all of them are like 2.5 hours long and are 65% setups for future movies that are then never made

I've only seen man of Steel. And did not like it

@M'vy If you want to torture yourself, watch Batman v. Superman

ahah, yeah... no probably not :D

I'm not saying Zack Snyder is incompetent, I'm just saying that he is really bad at what he does

Do you want to know something funny about Suicide Squad?

One of the things that people disliked, but couldn't quite put their finger on was the scenes. Or rather, lack thereof.

Because every scene needs a beginning, a middle and an end. Sure, you can use different structures, but you need some structure.

Suicide Squad completely lacks this, and instead every scene is just characters doing something, with this "something" being without any framing or purpose conveyed to the audience.

As any movie (or saga) needs stakes. That did not preclude them to make the last SW movies :D

Ahah how I do like to trashtalk them. I should stop

We've lost something in filmaking during the last decade

I think cinema stopped being an art and became a business

The reason as to why Suicide Squad has no scene structure is because the entire movie was cut by a company that only produces trailers.

And for a trailer, it makes sense that scenes have no introduction or conclusion, only the middle part with the action

@M'vy I could talk a lot about Star Wars and I am not even into Star Wars

But I like good movies

And neo-Star Wars is the opposite of that

Oh yeah

At least the Hobbit had... no wait, let's not go there either

Hi, I wondered if anyone had an idea for a name for this concept:

A Vulnerability is something like SQL Injection, Cross-site Scripting, etc.

But sometimes there are variants, e.g. XSS in HTML body, XSS in attribute, XSS in <script> tag, etc.

Is there a better term than "Vulnerability Variant" ?

@paj28 I think you mean "context"

So term will be "XSS in different contexts"

like XSS in attribute, variable, etc.

Good point. That definitely works for XSS

Just wondering if there's a more general term

SQL Injection - you may have Postgres SQL Injection where only single quote is dangerous, and MySQL Injection where double quote and backslash are dangerous too

Hmm... Context probably does work! Nice one :)