1 Allegedly, according to some HN comments (that are likely to be correct but I haven't verified them), you can mitigate a large part of the issue by blocking multipart uploads. So people running older PHP versions might have something they can do.

2 I never played Star Wars: The Old Republic, but it came out in December 2011 in North America and Europe (March 2012 in AU) and many people seemed to think it was quite good. You're quite right about Mass Effect 3, though, and let's not even mention Andromeda. I don't know when they fired their writers, but going from that one plot twist in Jade Empire to ... well, whatever was going on with Andromeda's plot ... Well. The writing was on the wall.

Actually, it was already on the wall when they couldn't pull off a satisfying ending to Mass Effect 3. And there was one staring them in the face the whole time: the Geth reconcile with the Quarians thanks to Shephard's actions, proving the Reapers wrong about organic life not being able to coexist with inorganic, and then the Geth use the data they got from the Reapers to expose a vulnerability in the Reapers. One that no previous cycle had managed to find, because no previous cycle had ever created an AI race, had them coopted by the Reapers, and then decided to trust them anyway when they came back and said "We're on organic life's side and going to help you take down our former masters". Paragon Shepherd and his/her idealism saves the galaxy. (OR Renegade Shepherd says "I don't trust them but what choice do we have, it's not like we'll be any deader if they betray us" and makes the pragmatic choice to trust them anyway, and saves the galaxy with pragmatism).

I came up with that in five minutes. Are you telling me nobody at Bioware came up with that idea? I don't believe it. What's much more likely is that the higher-ups didn't like the idea, and decided to greenlight their preferred idea instead, because they have no ability to recognize good writing. Certainly no game since Mass Effect 3 has had good writing.

3 It seems I don't know how I want to spell Shephard/Shepherd. And I spelled it wrong each time anyway, because it was actually spelled Shepard in the game.

4 I can't currently find the link (X search...), but someone has apparently backported the PHP fixes to everything since 5.6.

-j

5 If I am still running PHP 4 or earlier on a server exposed to the internet, than that is maybe gross negligence that should get me blacklisted from IT? Moe Lane is someone who was more generous to Mass Effect 3, and is positive on EA shutting down Bioware. Glory passes quickly from the world, and the general rule of organizations is how quickly they rot.

6 I spent ten minutes looking for the Saga of Tanya the Perfectly Nice Girl Once You Get to Know Her. I'm guessing Pixy was being pixyish and referring to the second season of the Saga of Tanya the Evil which is out now.