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friendica - Link to source
Medinsky leads Russian delegation to Istanbul despite sabotage attacks english.almayadeen.net/news/po…

Medinsky leads Russian delegation to Istanbul despite sabotage attacks

Russia confirms participation in a second round of peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul, despite ongoing Ukrainian attacks on its infrastructure.
Al Mayadeen English (Medinsky leads Russian delegation to Istanbul despite sabotage attacks)

diaspora - Link to source

Preinstalled Android Apps Found Leaking PINs and Executing Malicious Commands


On May 30, 2025, CERT Polska coordinated the public disclosure of three significant security vulnerabilities affecting preinstalled Android applications on smartphones from Ulefone and Krüger&Matz. These flaws, tracked as CVE-2024-13915, CVE-2024-13916, and CVE-2024-13917, expose users to risks ranging from unauthorized device resets to theft of sensitive PIN codes and privilege escalation by malicious applications. Technical […]

The post Preinstalled Android Apps Found Leaking PINs and Executing Malicious Commands appeared first on GBHackers Security | #1 Globally Trusted Cyber Security News Platform.
posted by pod_feeder


Preinstalled Android Apps Found Leaking PINs and Executing Malicious Commands

Anupriya (GBHackers Security | #1 Globally Trusted Cyber Security News Platform)

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diaspora - Link to source

Achtung: Dein Doomscrolling hilft der AfD!


#analyse
posted by pod_feeder_v2


Achtung: Dein Doomscrolling hilft der AfD! - Volksverpetzer

Das Doomscrolling - das Verzweifeln an schlechten Nachrichten in deinem Feed - der AfD hilft. Und was traurige Hunde damit zu tun haben.
Charlotte Theis (Volksverpetzer)

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friendica - Link to source

Gerichtsbeschluss: Zurückweisung bei Grenzkontrollen rechtswidrig


Asylsuchende dürfen nicht auf deutschem Boden zurückgewiesen werden, ohne zu prüfen, welches EU-Land für das Verfahren zuständig ist. Das hat ein Berliner Gericht entschieden.
Gerichtsbeschluss: Zurückweisung bei Grenzkontrollen rechtswidrig

N. E. Felibata 👽 reshared this.

peertube - Link to source

Linux Mint 22 is great, but are they trying to do too much?

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Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:41 Sponsor: Proton VPN
01:56 App Installs & Flatpak changes
05:00 Cinnamon 6.2
06:43 Big App Changes
11:35 Under the hood changes
12:26 Too much work for Mint?
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16:07 Support the channel

#linuxmint #Mint22 #linuxdistro #linuxdesktop #linux

Their focus is still on deb packages, mostly, as for example, they're now maintaining a deb package for Thunderbird. The Software install app itself now loads much faster, with the main window appearing almost instantly.

By default, unverified flatpaks won't appear in Mint's software manager.

You do get an option to show these again in the store, with a warning telling you that it's not really secure, you won't see any user reviews, or ratings with the little stars, because this would, I suppose, make them look legit and just like other verified packages.

People WILL turn this setting back on, because not every flatpak people want is verified: Steam, Spotify, Chrome, Dolphin, VLC and more. When they do turn this on, they won't have any indication if said packages could have problems, because they won't have reviews or ratings.

Mint is now moving to older versions of a lot of default apps that are made by GNOME. So, the Font Viewer has been entirely removed from Mint's default install. it's still in the repos though. The video player, the calculator, the scanning app, the disk usage analyzer, the system monitor, the calendar, and the archive manager were all reverted to their older GTK 3 versions, because they all moved to GTK4 and libadwaita for GNOME, and this means Mint wouldn't be able to apply their usual themes to these applications.

The rationale here is that Mint likes to offer a cohesive desktop, much like what GNOME is doing, and what KDE is doing, with one set of guidelines for the user interface, and one theme. The problem is, Mint was using a lot of GNOME apps, which first, started losing their menubars for headerbars a while back, meaning the user interface guidelines were a bit muddied, and second, it meant that these apps were using the libadwaita library, which hardcodes the Adwaita theme itself. Mint could still change this theme, because there are ways to do so, but it's not very sustainable, and it would basically lock users to one single theme.

Other applications that Mint will now ship by default include a new Online Accounts app, that replaces the older online accounts settings panel.

Mint 22 also ships with a matrix client by default now, to replace the discontinued Hexchat app.

Mint 22 is based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, meaning it will get security updates until 2029. This package base is also going to stay the same for Mint until 2026, as always, mint will ship minor updates, but won't move to a newer Ubuntu base.
In turn, this means Mint 22 moved to pipewire as the default, because that's what Ubuntu uses now. It also means Mint comes with the kernel 6.8, and they'll add the usual hardware enablement stack to it, meaning Mint will keep supporting newer hardware by default. This kernel is NOT an LTS version, so I would also be surprised if Mint didn't move to something newer at some point.

On top of that, Mint 22 received more HiDPI improvements in their login screen and in the boot screen as well. Their themes were also updated to work with GTK4, although they won't theme libadwaita apps, only non libadwaita GTK4 apps, which there aren't many of, AFAIK.

TheLinuxExperiment's profile - Liberapay

Hi, I'm Nick, and I run The Linux Experiment, a Youtube Channel and Podcast where I talk about Linux, Open Source, and privacy. I make 3 videos per week, including a Linux …
Liberapay
This entry was edited (6 days ago)

flipboard - Link to source

‘Restricted’: Nearly 7 billion people worldwide lack full civil rights
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/2/restricted-nearly-7-billion-people-worldwide-lack-full-civil-rights?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Europe News @europe-news-AlJazeera


‘Restricted’: Nearly 7 billion people worldwide lack full civil rights

An Atlas of Civil Society report warns that democracy and human rights are under attack globally.
Al Jazeera

peertube - Link to source

How to use MASTODON: the COMPLETE GUIDE (join, use, find people to follow, etiquette...)

Get 100$ credit for your own Linux and gaming server: linode.com/linuxexperiment

Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux:tuxedocomputers.com/en#

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Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join
Patreon: patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment

Or, you can donate whatever you want: paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH
Support the channel AND get cool new gear: the-linux-experiment.creator-s…

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST:
Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE:
Mastodon: mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxE…
Pixelfed: pixelfed.social/TLENick

Twitter : twitter.com/thelinuxEXP
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I'm also on ODYSEE: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@TheLinuxExperiment:e
And on PEERTUBE: tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperime…

This video is distributed under the Creative Commons Share Alike license.

#mastodon #fediverse #socialmedia

00:00 Intro
00:31 Sponsor: 100$ free credit on your Linux or Gaming server
01:31 What is Mastodon, really?
03:07 How to create a Mastodon account?
05:45 How to access Mastodon
07:07 How to use Mastodon
10:11 How to interact with people
12:48 Learn Mastodon Etiquette
14:24 Find people to follow
15:55 The Fediverse
16:35 Sponsor: Get a device that runs Linux perfectly
17:34 Support the channel

Mastodon is a platform comparable to Twitter, but open source, and made of plenty of servers, that talk to each other to form a single social network

So, how do you join? Well the first step is to pick a server. You have a handy short list on joinmastodon.com/servers.

Let's look at the interface. The first thing is your profile. To edit and complete it, just tap your user photo, and click the edit button.

You can also add links to your various other socials, and you'll notice that's where you can be verified. This implies having your own website: you copy a link to your mastodon profile into the code of your website, and you add the link to your website in your mastodon profile, and it will show up in green with a checkmark.

By default, your timeline, in the "home" tab on the mobile app will show posts from everyone you follow. The "search tab" lets you look for people to follow.

Then you have your post button, the black button at the bottom.

Finally, you get your notifications tab.

n mastodon, you have 3 timelines: your home, where you'll only see posts from people or hashtags that you follow, you have the local timeline, which is your community, all the people on YOUR specific server, and you have the federated timeline, which is a giant dump of everything that everyone has posted everywhere. I never use the latter, personally, but you might have a use for it.

When looking at what someone has posted, you have a few options. You can reply, you can boost, which is exactly like a retweet on Twitter: you're posting to your followers the message you're boosting, as is, without any commentary. Then you can "favorite" a post, which is that little star button.

Now, if you want to write a post, then you just hit the "post button" on the mobile app, or you start writing on the left column on the desktop.

Posts have a character limit, that your server sets. By default, it's 500, but it can be more or less.

You can add hashtags like on Twitter, by just typing the hashtag symbol, and you can mention people by typing the @ symbol.

Of course, you can embed images, you can also add polls with up to 4 options, and you can add content warnings. These are basically a filter that will hide the content of your post behind blur and some text. People will only see the text you wrote in the content warning, and if they want to see the actual post, they can click on it.

Finally, you can also pick who will see your post, either only the people you mention, which is the only way to make a direct message on mastodon, all your followers, or everyone.

You can edit your posts.

When writing posts, if you add an image, use the description, and fill it in.

Second, use content warnings liberally. Third, use the "sensitive content" filter for images liberally as well.

If you had a Twitter account, use Movetodon: you login with your twitter account, then your mastodon account, and it will look at your Twitter follows, find the ones that are on mastodon, and offer you to follow them individually, or follow them all in one click.

You can also use the local timeline, using the "local" tab on the web, or in the Search, then Community tab on the mobile app.

Next is using hashtags: you can follow hashtags on mastodon. Click on the hashtag, and then on the follow button.

Fediverse Video:

Join @TheLinuxExperiment on Odysee

Join @TheLinuxExperiment on Odysee, a content wonderland owned by everyone (and no one).
Odysee
This entry was edited (1 day ago)

friendica - Link to source
Hebrew media: Yemen has launched 43 missiles into Israeli depth since March en.ypagency.net/358402

Hebrew media: Yemen has launched 43 missiles into Israeli depth since March

OCCUPIED PALESTINE, June 01 (YPA) - Hebrew media reported Sunday evening that the occupation forces closed the airspace around Ben Gurion International Airport in the Lod area near Tel Aviv, following the launch of a new missile from Yemen towards th
basheer (Yemen Press Agency)

mastodon - Link to source

To those on my side i.e Left who hate Armed Palestine Factions more than worst of the worst Nazi criminals(Empire,West,Nazi regime)

Let me offer olive branch

I'll condemn Hamas if you can

1.Decolonise Palestine from Jewish Nazism(Ur decades long "activism",Jewish Nazi apologia&parades ultimately gave genocide)
2.Give right of return
3.Prosecute Nazis&Reparations

If your ivory tower thinking cant, stop your irrational hate of Hamas& rest.

@palestine @lebanon @iran @israel @anarchy @anarchism

This entry was edited (3 months ago)

diaspora - Link to source

Hubble and Gaia revisit fate of our galaxy


image

Milky Way and Andromeda encounters

Over a decade’s worth of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope data was used to re-examine the long-held prediction that the Milky Way galaxy will collide with the Andromeda galaxy in about 4.5 billion years. The astronomers found that, based on the latest observational data from Hubble and Gaia, there is only a 50-50 chance of the two galaxies colliding within the next 10 billion years.

#news #space #science #esa #europeanspaceagency
posted by pod_feeder_v2

Brian Ó Donnell / pod_feeder_v2 · GitLab

Publishes RSS/Atom feeds to Diaspora*
GitLab

flipboard - Link to source

Supreme Court turns away a 2nd Amendment challenge to blue-state bans on assault weapons
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2025-06-02/supreme-court-turns-down-2nd-amendment-challenge-blue-state-bans-assault-weapons?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Politics @politics-LATimes


Supreme Court turns away a 2nd Amendment challenge to blue-state bans on assault weapons

California's first-in-the-nation ban on semiautomatic rifles could face a future challenge in Supreme Court.
David G. Savage (Los Angeles Times)

flipboard - Link to source

That’s fighting talk, prime minister – but can you deliver?
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nuclear-submarines-strategic-defence-review-starmer-putin-b2762068.html?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Voices @voices-Independent


That’s fighting talk, prime minister – but can you deliver?

In the face of Russian aggression, Keir Starmer says he must ready the country for war, by increasing military spending and building a platoon of nuclear submarines – but, as Mark Almond cautions, perhaps the only thing the Ministry of Defence can be…
Mark Almond (The Independent)

friendica - Link to source
New aggression by occupation aircraft on Lebanon dailyyemen.net/2025/06/02/new-…

New aggression by occupation aircraft on Lebanon

Lebanese media reported that one citizen was killed and another injured on Sunday in two attacks carried out by Israeli aircraft on two towns in southern Lebanon, as part of the ongoing Israeli aggression against Lebanon.Lebanese media reported that
DAILY YEMEN

flipboard - Link to source

Haribo sweets recalled in Belgium after cannabis found in Dutch gummies
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/06/02/haribo-sweets-recalled-in-belgium-after-cannabis-found-in-dutch-gummies?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Europe News @europe-news-euronews


Haribo sweets recalled in Belgium after cannabis found in Dutch gummies

The same packages of fizzy colas were withdrawn in the Netherlands after sample studies revealed three bags were laced with cannabis.
Lauren Walker (Euronews.com)

diaspora - Link to source

Die Welt kehrt zu den Gesetzen des Dschungels zurück. Essay von Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer.


#democracy #politik #Rechtsstaat #Demokratie


Die Welt kehrt zu den Gesetzen des Dschungels zurück - Europa Blog

Was können wir heute von Homer, Machiavelli und dem Herzog von Sachsen lernen? Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer untersucht, wie alte Denkweisen über Macht und Entscheidungsfindung in einer Zeit der Desinformation und politischen Umbrüche wieder relevant werden…
Jürgen Klute (Europa Blog)

N. E. Felibata 👽 reshared this.

mastodon - Link to source

Illegitimate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky opened his comments at the peace negotiations in Turkey by gloating about Sunday’s surprise attack deep inside Russia and begging the West (NATO) for more weapons to hurl at Russia.

thegatewaypundit.com/2025/06/2…


Zelensky Opens Peace Talks with Russia by Gloating about Sunday's Bomber Attack Deep Inside Russia and Begging the West for More Weapons (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft

          Illegitimate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky opened his comments at the peace negotiations in Turkey by gloating about Sunday’s surprise attack deep inside Russia and begging the West (NATO) for more weapons to hurl at Russia.
Jim Hoft (Where Hope Finally Made a Comeback)

mastodon - Link to source

Euromed-Monitor über das Massaker an den hungernden Menschen vom 1. Juni bei den sogenannten Verteilzentren der #GHF

>>Nearly 230 killed or wounded as #Israel carries out largest massacre since new aid mechanism was enforced in #Gaza <<
euromedmonitor.org/en/article/…


Nearly 230 killed or wounded as Israel carries out largest massacre since new aid mechanism was enforced in Gaza

The death toll is expected to rise due to the high number of critical injuries and the severe collapse of the healthcare system caused by the blockade and Israeli targeting of medical facilities
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
in reply to stephie

mastodon - Link to source

stephie

Berichte auch von Channel4 über das Massaker, über die Versuche sich dabei herauszreden, und ein Gespräch mit einem britischen Arzt vor Ort, der von den Verletzungen der Patienten berichtetet - über die Blockade von medizinischer Hilfe.

>>Israel-backed aid organisation denying attack in Gaza ‘nonsense’ says surgeon<<
channel4.com/news/israel-backe…


Israel-backed aid organisation denying attack in Gaza ‘nonsense’ says surgeon

We spoke to Graeme Groom, a British surgeon currently working at Nasser Hospital in Gaza.
Channel 4 News
This entry was edited (3 months ago)
in reply to Track_Shovel

lemmy - Link to source

idegenszavak

The lower photo is a BTS from the Great Train Robbery movie, from 1978:

The photo of alleged drunken sailors, titled "Actors 'Sleeping' Draped Over Ropes" in the Getty Images archive, actually stems from the production of the film The Great Train Robbery (1978):


snopes.com/fact-check/hangover…


Was the Word 'Hangover' Derived from Drunken Sailors Sleeping on Ropes?

The word "hangover" is derived from the practice of drunken sailors sleeping on ropes.
Alex Kasprak (Snopes.com)

lemmy - Link to source

What are some good cooperative shooters? Hidden gems?

Wondering what the people on Lemmy think 😀

Looking for stuff to play mostly with 2 players, but anything is fine.

I looked through store.steampowered.com/categor… (Shooters with tag "coop") but for some reason there's stuff like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress etc. in there, and while you can play those cooperatively, really they're competitive games.


First-Person Shooter

Action FPS
store.steampowered.com

lemmy - Link to source

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

But piracy is a crime...

EDIT: This guy is a clown

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Meta’s former head of global affairs Nick Clegg said asking for permission from rights owners to train models would is “implausible.”
Mia Sato (The Verge)
This entry was edited (3 months ago)

lemmy - Link to source

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry
As policy makers in the UK weigh how to regulate the AI industry, Nick Clegg, former UK deputy prime minister and former Meta executive, claimed a push for artist consent would “basically kill” the AI industry.

Speaking at an event promoting his new book, Clegg said the creative community should have the right to opt out of having their work used to train AI models. But he claimed it wasn’t feasible to ask for consent before ingesting their work first.

“I think the creative community wants to go a step further,” Clegg said according to The Times. “Quite a lot of voices say, ‘You can only train on my content, [if you] first ask’. And I have to say that strikes me as somewhat implausible because these systems train on vast amounts of data.”

“I just don’t know how you go around, asking everyone first. I just don’t see how that would work,” Clegg said. “And by the way if you did it in Britain and no one else did it, you would basically kill the AI industry in this country overnight.”


Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Meta’s former head of global affairs Nick Clegg said asking for permission from rights owners to train models would is “implausible.”
Mia Sato (The Verge)

lemmy - Link to source

Without mentioning smartphones or social media, what societal changes have you noticed over the course of your lifetime?

Originally it was going to be "over the last twenty years" but I decided to be more flexible.

A lot of discussions about how society has changed or how the world is different always circle around to smartphones, social media, "no one talks to each other in person, they're on their phones always" and the like.

Outside of those topics, what else has changed, by your perception?

in reply to Clot

lemmy - Link to source

assembly

This is the next step towards Idiocracy. I use AI for things like Summarizing zoom meetings so I don’t need to take notes and I can’t imagine I’ll stop there in the future. It’s like how I forgot everyone’s telephone numbers once we got cell phones…we used to have to know numbers back then. AI is a big leap in that direction. I’m thinking the long term effects are all of us just getting dumber and shifting more and more “little unimportant “ things to AI until we end up in an Idiocracy scene. Sadly I will be there with everyone else.
in reply to LandedGentry

lemmy - Link to source

assembly

Yeah that’s a big part of it…shifting off the stuff that we don’t think is important (and probably isn’t). My view is that it’s escalated to where I’m using my phone calculator for stuff I did in my head in high school (I was a cashier in HS so it was easy)…which is also not a big deal but getting a little bigger than the phone number thing. From there, what if I used it to leverage a new programming API as opposed to using the docs site. Probably not a big deal but bigger than the calculator thing to me. My point is that it’s all these little things that don’t individually matter but together add up to some big changes in the way we think. We are outsourcing our thinking which would be helpful if we used the free capacity for higher level thinking but I’m not sure if we will.

lemmy - Link to source

Anyone know how to play Killer Queen? Its only available paying $15,000 for an Arcade Cabinet

Im obsessed with this game at barcades but its impossible to play at home. There is a shitty steam version that doesnt have online anymore. Since its an arcade cabinet im guessing they use a computer under the hood of some kind that has the game loaded.

How could one possibly get the game to play on a computer of some kind? Reverse engineering?

bumblebeargames.com/products/k…

killerqueenarcade.com/


Killer Queen

For special payment requests email mike@bumblebeargames.com. Designed to cause a scene Killer Queen is designed to be the centerpiece of the arcade and to make your venue more social, fun, and profitable.
BumbleBear
This entry was edited (3 months ago)
in reply to LandedGentry

lemmy - Link to source

Saleh

bdsmovement.net/

BDS is a global movement calling for boycotts, divestment and ultimately sanctions of Israel and companies complicit in Israels illegal occupation and other crimes against the Palestinian people.

Microsoft provides AI tools to the Israeli army -IDF- which are used to automatically designate people as targets for bombing. Among other things a particular heinous AI is infamously named "Where's Daddy", where bombings are timed so that the target is killed upon arriving home, so their entire family is also murdered.

972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli…
apnews.com/article/microsoft-i…

Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, iD-Software, Zenimax, Mojang (Minecraft) and others are all owned by Microsoft.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_…


‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza

The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.
Amjad Iraqi (+972 Magazine)

lemmy - Link to source

The Gospel of Phiber Optik or, How to Get Thrown in Prison for Knowing Shit

The Gospel of Phiber Optik or, How to Get Thrown in Prison for Knowing Shit

It begins like a lot of the old-school kick-ass digital legends, with a phone line and a curious teen. Tho I wanna say that I was a curious teen too, but just not curious in any productive way. I was too busy thinking about girls, jerking off to my step-mom’s underwear, and trying to survive the dull ache of being a loser in a town where nothing ever happened.

Sometimes I wonder how different it could’ve been if someone had handed me a clue, or a keyboard, or a reason to dig deeper. Brothers, I had the spark, but no kindling. Just a lot of static and the sense that I showed up too late. I shoulda started my Universal Monk “let’s piss off Lemmy every day while I hack into my OLPC and try to install Linux Puppy on it in the background!” persona way before I got old.

But fuck it, let’s talk about Phiber Optik.

In the early 1980s, Mark Abene, a soft-spoken kid from Queens, New York, discovered that the boring ass sound of a dial tone held secrets. Abene’s first contact with computers came around the age of nine, inside a department store where he would hang around while his parents wandered the aisles. The machines were just sitting there, blinking and waiting for someone curious enough to poke them. His first personal system was a TRS-80 MC-10, a tiny rig with 4 kilobytes of RAM, no lowercase letters, a 32-column screen, and a cassette deck that hissed and clunked as it loaded and saved programs. Like a lot of machines back then, it hooked up to the family television, turning it into a crude but functional portal to somewhere else.

Later, after his parents gifted him a RAM upgrade and a 300 baud modem, the real doors opened. Through CompuServe and its wild little corner called the CB Simulator, he found others like him. People who knew how to reach dialup bulletin board systems. From there he stumbled into guest accounts on DEC minicomputers used in the BOCES educational system in Long Island.

These machines ran operating systems with names like RSTS/E and TOPS-10 and they were a whole different universe compared to the TRS-80. Abene saw what they could do and decided to teach himself how to speak their language.

He pulled books from the library and started reading everything he could find on code. What hit him hardest was the realization that he could write something, log out, come back the next day, and it would still be there. His modest little computer setup had become a window, and on the other side of it was a world worth chasing.

Long before the term cybersecurity existed, Abene had already started burrowing into the veins of the American telecom system, decoding its logic not to destroy it, but to understand how it ticked.

His handle became ‘Phiber Optik,’ and in the grubby wire-y underbelly of the hacker scene he was damn near mythic. People talked about him with reverence or anger, depending on which side of the firewall you were on. To the kids trading exploits in IRC tunnels, he was a digital folk hero, one keyboard away from legend. To the feds, he was a glowing red dot on the radar, a walking middle finger to everything they couldn’t control.

What makes Phiber’s story relevant now, decades after his sentencing, is not just his technical brilliance. It is that he represented an ethical spine to a culture the public has long dismissed as criminal.

As pirate and privacy movements claw their way back into the spotlight, fueled by surveillance capitalism, corporate chokeholds, and the slow suffocation of open access, the old bones of Phiber Optik’s blueprint are starting to show through again. What he sketched in the static of the early 90s wasn’t just a kind of road map, it was a warning, half-forgotten, now suddenly relevant as hell.

After all, doesn’t all information want to be free?

Phiber was a member of two infamous hacking groups. First, he joined the Legion of Doom, a group that had already made its mark exploring the digital frontier of the telephone networks. Later, he co-founded Masters of Deception, or MOD, a New York-based collective that was as much a cultural counterpoint as it was a technical one. MOD went deeper into the cracks of AT&T and the broader infrastructure of early corporate networks. They said that their goal was to explore and document, not destroy.

As the Cold War fizzled and the Information Age kicked its boots up on the desk, the suits and corporations realized the growing value of digital systems. The government’s attitude toward hackers hardened. Home computers were no longer toys. They were infrastructure, currency, control. And suddenly, guys like Phiber weren’t curious kids anymore.

In January 1990, the Secret Service kicked in Phiber Optik’s door. He was just 17. They seized his gear and accused him of causing a massive AT&T network crash that had hit the country a week earlier. Phiber stood there while they ransacked his place, accused on the spot of bringing down part of the backbone of America’s phone system. Weeks later, AT&T admitted the crash had been their fault. A botched software update. No hackers involved. Just bad code and corporate silence.

That didn’t stop the momentum. In February 1991, he was arrested again, this time under New York state law, charged with computer tampering and computer trespass. He was still a minor. The legal system was scrambling to define what counted as a crime in the new digital frontier. Phiber ended up taking a plea to a lesser misdemeanor and served 35 hours of community service. The scare should have ended there. It didn’t.

By December 1991, the feds were ready for round two. Phiber Optik and four other members of Masters of Deception were arrested again. In July 1992, a federal grand jury hit them with an 11-count indictment. This time, the charges stuck. The government leaned on wiretaps. It was the first time in U.S. history they had used legally authorized taps to capture the voices and data transmissions of hackers. They weren’t trying to protect infrastructure. They were trying to make a point.

Despite no evidence of damage or theft, Phiber was sentenced to a year in federal prison. Again, no theft or damage. Just knowledge. Just access. But still, they had to fucking put him in a cage. They needed a scalp. He fit the frame. He was the first hacker convicted under the newly expanded federal computer crime laws.

The punishment was widely seen as symbolic. Phiber was articulate, clean-cut, and openly philosophical about the ethics of hacking. That made him dangerous. His case was less about securing systems than it was about sending a message. A warning to those who might try to explore behind the digital curtain without permission.

The trial lit a fuse. What came after was not just fallout. It was a shift. Phiber became the face of a new kind of threat. The hacker. The digital trespasser. The kid who knew too much. The media pounced. Magazines ran articles warning about ghosts in the machine. The New York Times printed his sentencing like it was a mafia takedown.

Today that kind of coverage is common background noise. But back then it hit like an earthquake. Computers were still the realm of hobbyists. Hackers were not yet cool icons or antiheroes. Seeing a story like this break into the mainstream meant the world had started paying attention. Even if it had no clue what it was actually looking at.

Inside the hacker community, he became a martyr for curiosity. Where some hackers sought money or infamy, Phiber was different. He believed in transparency, in challenging authority through knowledge. In many ways, his worldview mirrored what the modern open access and digital piracy movements have adopted.

Fast forward to today, and the landscape looks different but eerily familiar. Information is still locked behind paywalls. Network infrastructure is still protected less by code than by law. The average user remains dependent on gatekeepers for knowledge. Shadow libraries, sideloading communities, and decentralized networks are once again pushing the boundaries.

The ethos that drove Phiber Optik and MOD now animates projects like Library Genesis, Anna’s Archive, and countless torrent communities. These modern movements rely on the idea that access to information should not be controlled by profit motives. That understanding a system deeply is not a threat. That copying is not theft.

Phiber never claimed to be innocent. But he insisted that curiosity was not a crime. He never sold what he accessed. He documented. He learned. He shared. And he did so with the belief that a more transparent digital world was not just preferable, but necessary.

When people talk about the moral framework of piracy now, it’s all about what’s legal and who’s losing money. That’s the surface game. What gets ignored are the roots. The deeper questions. Phiber Optik and the others weren’t just rule-breakers. They were pulling back the curtain and asking who built the rules in the first place. Who benefits. Who decides what we’re allowed to know. They saw the gap widening between the ones who use the machine and the ones who own it. Between those who are fed and those who are kept hungry.

Phiber Optik went back to being Mark Abene and became a respected security consultant. He rebuilt his life above ground. But his impact lives beneath the surface. In Discord forums and dark web mirrors. In data liberation projects and copy-left publishing. In every encrypted message and anonymized torrent. He was there before the internet was sold back to us, back when it was something we made by exploring it together.

Not every hacker is a pirate. But every pirate who copies for access, who shares for freedom, who breaks a rule to question the system, carries the idea of Phiber Optik in their actions. Maybe not in name. But in spirit.

The spark is the same. Curiosity weaponized. Access reclaimed. A middle finger aimed squarely at the gate.

It was never just about phone switches or command lines. What Phiber did and what MOD stood for was proof that systems are built to keep people out, and that anyone willing to understand how those systems work could find a way in.

That blueprint did not vanish. It evolved. The mindset that once pulled secrets from a telecom grid now fuels the mirrors, torrents, and cracks of the modern internet. Bypassing a locked terminal and bypassing digital rights software are cousins in the same bloodline. Digging into AT&T’s infrastructure and scraping paywalled archives both ride the same frequency. The hardware has changed, the language has changed, but the mission is still carved in the same stone.

The kids cracking textbooks and sideloading banned books today may not know Phiber’s name, but they carry his ghost in every act of defiance. Every time they upload something they were told to keep hidden. Every time they share a file just to make sure someone else does not have to go without.

That is the legacy. The culture of piracy did not appear out of thin air. It grew out of old phone lines, library cards, and the belief that knowledge should not come with a price tag.

Sources, for those who still believe in paper trails or give a shit:

Wikipedia, bitches! (nice 90's pic of homie too)

"Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace" by Michelle Slatalla and Joshua Quittner (fun book I found on Anna's Archive)

"The Life and Times of Phiber Optik" Wired Magazine (I have actual paper copy of this!)

“I’m Universal Monk. You fuckers tried to cancel me, but I’m still here! Ha ha ha ha ha!” by Me

This entry was edited (3 months ago)
in reply to LandedGentry

lemmy - Link to source

Universal Monk

I appreciate people and their side hustles, but I write plenty of other things for pay, I don't feel the need to go crazy with Lemmy articles on pirate/hacker insights. Tho I appreciate the person saying it!

I mean, I already made a whole $10 off my transsexual werewolf gay porno novel that involved a genetically altered hamster who's obsessed with Cheetos, playing Balatro on PlayStation, pegging, and fetishizing women wearing strap-ons, and ignoring him while they make TikTok make-up vids on their phones. Oh, and it had a secret cult of nuns protecting magic golden dildos. (Not even joking--welcome to my life as a writer.)

So I can write Lemmy articles and put them out there just to put them out there.

This entry was edited (3 months ago)

lemmy - Link to source

Switch 2 supports USB mouse controls, developer reveals
He then plugged in a standard USB mouse, confirming that these can also be used with Switch 2 hardware. When the mouse is plugged in, a message on the screen shows that the mouse is connected and takes priority over the Joy-Con 2’s mouse controls.

Ryu then showed that it was possible to use the USB mouse with the right hand, but continue to use the left Joy-Con 2 with the left hand, meaning all the controller shortcuts are still available even when using a standard mouse.


Switch 2 supports USB mouse controls, developer reveals

A standard mouse can be used instead of the Joy-Con 2 mouse controls
Chris Scullion (Video Games Chronicle)
This entry was edited (3 months ago)

diaspora - Link to source

Naomi Klein : L’alliance entre l’extrême droite et la Silicon Valley fait naître un « fascisme de la fin des temps »


Il nous faut avoir foi en l’avenir si nous voulons lutter contre la vision apocalyptique que porte MAGA, déclare la journaliste Naomi Klein.

Source : Truthout, Amy Goodman, DemocracyNow !

Une alliance entre l’extrême droite et les oligarques de la Silicon Valley a donné naissance à une forme de « fascisme de la fin des temps », affirme la journaliste Naomi Klein, qui dans un récent essai coécrit avec Astra Taylor, détaille comment de nombreuses élites fortunées se préparent à la fin du monde alors même qu’elles contribuent à l’accroissement des inégalités, à l’instabilité politique et à la crise climatique. Selon Naomi Klein, alors que les milliardaires rêvent de se réfugier dans des enclaves bunkérisées ou même dans l’espace, le président Donald Trump et d’autres dirigeants de droite transforment leurs pays en forteresses militarisées afin d’empêcher les immigrants de venir de l’étranger tout en renforçant leur contrôle autoritaire à l’intérieur du pays.

« Le fascisme a toujours un côté apocalyptique, mais le fascisme des années 1930 et 1940 s’inscrivait dans une perspective d’avenir utopique, explique Klein. Aujourd’hui, en revanche : « Nous sommes face à des gens qui misent ouvertement contre l’avenir – et pas seulement en pariant ouvertement à son encontre, mais en alimentant les feux qui embrasent ce monde. »

AMY GOODMAN : Ici Democracy Now !, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Je suis Amy Goodman.
Nous passons le reste de cette heure avec la journaliste et auteure primée Naomi Klein. Elle vient de publier un nouvel article majeur, coécrit avec Astra Taylor, pour le journal The Guardian. Il s’intitule « La montée du fascisme de la fin des temps. » Il se penche sur la ferveur apocalyptique de l’extrême droite.

Elles y écrivent, entre autres : « Les personnes les plus puissantes du monde se préparent à la fin du monde, une fin qu’elles accélèrent elles-mêmes frénétiquement. On n’est pas très loin de la vision plus grand public des nations fortifiées qui s’est emparée de la droite [dure] dans le monde entier, de l’Italie à Israël, de l’Australie aux États-Unis : en cette période de péril incessant, les mouvements ouvertement suprémacistes de ces pays transforment leurs États relativement riches en bunkers armés », écrit Naomi Klein.

Elle est également professeur de justice climatique à l’université de Colombie-Britannique et co-directrice fondatrice du UBC Centre for Climate Justice. Son tout dernier livre est Doppelganger : A Trip into the Mirror World. (Le Double : Voyage dans le Monde miroir) [Doppelganger est le double fantomatique — le plus souvent un jumeau maléfique — d’une personne vivante. Dans le folklore, le doppelgänger n’a ni ombre ni reflet dans un miroir ou dans l’eau, NdT]

Naomi, bienvenue dans l’émission Democracy Now ! C’est un plaisir de vous avoir parmi nous. Pourriez-vous commencer en nous parlant de votre article et de ce que vous entendez exactement par le fascisme de la fin des temps ?

NAOMI KLEIN : C’est un plaisir d’être avec vous, Amy.

Ceci n’est pas l’article le plus joyeux que j’aie jamais écrit, avec Astra Taylor, une collaboratrice très proche, fondatrice de Debt Collective. Nous voulions mettre en évidence les similitudes et les différences qui existent entre les différentes politiques d’extrême-droite que nous observons aujourd’hui. Et je dois dire que ce document n’est pas seulement sinistre. Il se penche également sur les implications en termes de réponse à cette forme particulière de fascisme, parce que nous ne pouvons pas le combattre si nous ne le comprenons pas. Je pense donc qu’un grand nombre des excellents chercheurs qui tentent de comprendre l’autoritarisme aujourd’hui, qu’il s’agisse de Trump ou de personnalités comme Duterte ou Modi, se sont intéressés aux similitudes entre ces figures d’extrême droite comme, disons, Mussolini ou Hitler, et ont adopté une approche de type check-list en recherchant ce qui est similaire au passé, ok ? Et je pense que cela présente beaucoup d’intérêt. Mais le risque, c’est que cela ne tienne pas compte de ce qui est nouveau et de ce qui est propre à notre époque.

Les fascismes sont toujours nés d’une tentative de la droite pour résoudre une crise de son époque. Exact ? Ainsi, dans les années 1930, ils tentaient de répondre, vous savez, en Allemagne, aux humiliations de la Première Guerre mondiale, aux impacts de la Grande Dépression, et de proposer un front uni face à tout cela au bénéfice de leur groupe d’appartenance. Mais notre époque est différente, et l’une des choses qui la rendent différente : je veux dire, si vous pensez au fascisme des années 1930, cela se passait avant la bombe atomique. C’était avant qu’ils ne comprennent le changement climatique. Nous vivons un moment qui voit nos élites, qu’elles l’admettent ou non, réaliser que notre modèle économique – et j’ai écrit des livres à ce sujet et j’en ai parlé avec vous par le passé – est en guerre contre la vie sur Terre, pas vrai ? Et pour cela, il faut toujours plus d’extraction de combustibles fossiles, de toutes sortes de choses – vous savez, en gros, tout ce qui peut être extrait de cette Terre et transformé en énergie et en argent, en particulier maintenant avec l’IA, qui est un gros consommateur d’énergie et de ressources : l’eau, le GNL, les minerais essentiels, bref, tout ça.

Nous essayons donc de comprendre comment cela alimente le type de fascisme auquel nous assistons, et nous essayons également de comprendre ce qui rassemble cette sorte d’étrange coalition à la Frankenstein que représente Trump, où il rassemble ces – vous savez, les personnes les plus riches du monde qui aient jamais existé avec de nombreuses personnes de la classe ouvrière, ce qui fait le lien entre les deux visions, pas vrai ?

Et dans cet article, ce que nous avançons, ou ce que nous proposons, c’est qu’ils ont tous démissionné et abandonné notre monde. Ils adhèrent tous à une sorte de fièvre apocalyptique – pas vrai ? – qu’il s’agisse d’Elon Musk et de Jeff Bezos et de leurs investissements dans l’espace, du fait qu’ils ont plus ou moins rayé notre planète, de l’IA, qui est prête à sacrifier ce monde vivant pour construire un monde artificiel, ou de la vision plus populiste MAGA qui construit un État-nation forteresse. D’accord ? Et qui pensent : « D’accord, on sait que de plus en plus de gens vont venir ici. On sait que le désastre se profile à l’horizon. » J’ai beaucoup écouté Steve Bannon pour – vous savez, quand j’écrivais Doppelganger, et tout cela est très survivaliste, n’est-ce pas ? Vous savez, la plupart des publicités en fait vendent de l’or, parce que l’économie va s’effondrer, des repas prêts à consommer pour un laps de temps de 90 jours, parce qu’on ne sait jamais ce qui va se passer. On voit donc la nation et le groupe d’appartenance comme étant dans un bunker et donc que le groupe extérieur se retrouve dans ces territoires de non-droit dont vous avez parlé dans l’émission. Les deux visions ne sont donc pas les mêmes, mais ce qu’elles partagent, c’est cette fièvre apocalyptique.

Et puis, bien sûr, tout cela obéit à la même structure, une structure narrative similaire à celle de l’Apocalypse biblique. Et, bien sûr, au sein de la coalition Trump on trouve des gens qui croient à tout ça , qui sont, vous voyez bien, des sionistes chrétiens, comme Mike Huckabee et Pete Hegseth, qui sont convaincus que la fin des temps est proche, et ils pensent que tout va se passer en Israël. Et toutes ces horreurs dont vous rendez fidèlement compte dans l’émission sont autant de signes annonciateurs de ce que sera l’Apocalypse, n’est-ce pas ? Parce que cela signifie que la fin arrive et que les vrais croyants seront élevés vers une cité d’or dans le ciel. Il s’agit donc de la version religieuse de cette histoire, la version religieuse fondamentaliste de cette histoire, où vous croyez littéralement que vous allez être sauvé et emmené au paradis, mais aussi de la vision séculière, où votre richesse vous protège, ou votre citoyenneté vous protège, et vous vous retrouvez dans votre propre version de cette ville dorée et bunkérisée.

AMY GOODMAN : Vous avez parlé de Gaza, et vous revenez de la conférence de Jewish Voice for Peace qui s’est tenue à Baltimore, où plusieurs milliers de personnes se sont rassemblées venant de tout le pays. Notre Une la plus récente parlait de l’armée israélienne qui est en train de rappeler des dizaines de milliers de réservistes alors que le cabinet de sécurité israélien a approuvé à l’unanimité ce week-end des plans visant à étendre son assaut sur Gaza, alors qu’Israël y a déjà tué plus de 52 000 Palestiniens – et c’est de loin une sous-estimation – au cours des 18, 19 derniers mois. Israël a tué plus de 2 400 Palestiniens depuis sa violation du cessez-le-feu en mars. Tout ceci se produit alors que le blocus dévastateur d’Israël concernant l’aide alimentaire est entré dans son troisième mois. Les autorités sanitaires palestiniennes affirment que 57 Palestiniens sont déjà morts de faim. Selon l’UNICEF, depuis le début de l’année, plus de 9 000 enfants ont été hospitalisés pour malnutrition aiguë. Les organisations humanitaires, comme le Conseil norvégien pour les réfugiés, fustigent une nouvelle proposition israélienne visant à prendre le contrôle de la distribution et à confier cette tâche à des entreprises de sécurité américaines. Pourriez-vous nous parler, comme vous le faites si souvent, de ce qui se passe à Gaza et en Cisjordanie et de la place centrale qu’occupe Israël dans la vision du monde et l’approche de la politique étrangère du président Trump et de l’actuel gouvernement américain – même si c’était aussi le cas, par le passé, du président Biden ?

NAOMI KLEIN : Eh bien, je ne pense pas que la réponse à la question de savoir quelles sont les forces motrices soit univoque. Et c’est ce que nous essayons de comprendre, il y a en fait une sorte de convergence de ces différentes visions apocalyptiques du monde. Certaines d’entre elles sont religieuses, d’autres sont laïques, pas vrai ? Je pense donc que les gens qui souscrivent à cette version littérale de l’Apocalypse pensent que tout cela c’est une bonne nouvelle, dans le sens où, selon l’histoire en laquelle ils croient, les Israélites doivent retourner dans le Grand Israël. Ce sont les conditions préalables au retour du Messie. Ils doivent reconstruire le Troisième Temple. Et voilà comment on se retrouve avec une convergence d’intérêts entre les extrémistes religieux et le gouvernement Netanyahou, tous sont absolument déterminés à reconstruire le Troisième Temple. C’est vraiment ce qu’ils veulent faire. Ils veulent détruire Al-Aqsa. Voilà pourquoi celle-ci fait l’objet de toutes leurs attentions.

Mais alors, voyons, Trump croit-il en tout ça ? Je ne pense pas que ce soit le cas. Ce que je veux dire c’est que ce que Trump voit pour Gaza, c’est tout simplement une source de richesse. Il voit de l’argent. Il voit un complexe touristique privé.

AMY GOODMAN : Complexe touristique…

NAOMI KLEIN : Tout à fait. Mais c’est ce que je dis depuis le début. Je pense que les intérêts ont été assez consistants en ce qui concerne l’objectif final, à savoir le dépeuplement de Gaza, l’expulsion des Palestiniens, que ce soit par la mort ou par l’exil forcé, ou encore par le nettoyage ethnique. Et du temps de l’administration Biden, il y avait un déni de ce qui se passait. Et avec l’administration Trump, tout est révélé au grand jour. Donc, vous voyez, c’est ça qui se passe.

Je pense que la raison en est différente. Mais c’est ce que – une partie de ce à quoi nous arrivons dans l’article, Astra et moi, est qu’il y a une convergence d’intérêts en termes de ce qu’Israël représente. Certains des partisans de l’administration Trump dans l’industrie de la technologie parlent de vouloir des villes de la liberté, par exemple, ces villes d’entreprises privées. Et ils en parlent comme étant du sionisme technologique. Ils ont beaucoup d’admiration pour l’idée qu’Israël a été créé, disent-ils, à partir d’un livre, les livres de Theodor Herzl. Et ils se sont dit : « Pourquoi ne pourrions-nous pas créer notre propre pays, nos propres pays privés ? Pourquoi devrions-nous – vous savez, pourquoi devrions-nous respecter les règles de l’État-nation ? »

Je pense donc qu’une partie du soutien que reçoit Israël n’est pas seulement due à nos conceptions classiques du sionisme juif ou du sionisme chrétien, bien que cela soit exactement ce qu’il se passe. C’est aussi l’idée d’un start-up pays très avancé sur le plan technologique, voyez-vous ? C’est ainsi qu’Israël s’est vendu sur le marché. Et beaucoup de ces entreprises technologiques veulent faire la même chose à San Francisco. Elles veulent expulser tous ceux qui ne sont pas d’accord avec elles, qui sont pauvres, qui ont davantage de besoins, et créer leur sorte d’utopie corporatiste et privatisée. Alors, vous savez, je ne prétends pas qu’il s’agit là d’un projet rationnel. Je dis qu’il y a beaucoup d’histoires qui se recoupent, qui suivent une structure similaire et qui partagent des objectifs similaires, si cela a un sens.

AMY GOODMAN : Je veux dire, oui, je veux dire, la question globale, évidemment, est difficile à comprendre.

NAOMI KLEIN : Mm-hmm, oui.

AMY GOODMAN : Pourtant, la plupart des partisans de Trump ne sont ni riches ni sionistes chrétiens. Alors, pourquoi soutiennent-ils entièrement une telle approche ?

NAOMI KLEIN : Eh bien, on ne sait pas exactement dans quelle mesure ils le soutiennent activement, mais je pense qu’ils estiment avoir un lien de parenté avec l’ethno-état – d’accord ? – parce que nombre des partisans de Trump adoptent une attitude de plus en plus nationaliste chrétienne vis à vis des États-Unis. Et cette tendance est fortement encouragée par des personnalités comme Steve Bannon. Et donc, ils observent Israël, qui est ouvertement un ethno-état qui se retranche face à un océan d’ennemis, et ils veulent faire quelque chose de similaire. Ils partagent des technologies. Ils partagent des précédents juridiques, des outils. Il y a donc bel et bien un sentiment de parenté. Et, vous savez, nous le voyons actuellement avec l’Inde et ses attaques au Cachemire, utilisant des techniques similaires à celles qu’Israël a utilisées à Gaza. Il existe donc une sorte de solidarité entre les ethno-états. Et ils mettent en commun – vous savez, ils échangent même des babioles comme des bippeurs couleur or et des tronçonneuses. Vous savez, c’est une chose que nous – je pense que quand vous êtes ici à la source, aux États-Unis sous l’ère Trump, il est difficile de voir dans quelle mesure il s’agit ici d’un projet international de la droite, et qu’ils s’influencent les uns les autres.

AMY GOODMAN : Et ce qui les unit, vous savez, toute cette mentalité de forteresse, c’est cette haine des immigrés. Vous avez…

NAOMI KLEIN : Oui.

AMY GOODMAN : Le président Trump vient de dire qu’il ne sait même pas – il n’est pas avocat, donc il ne sait pas s’il doit respecter la Constitution, a-t-il dit.

NAOMI KLEIN : Exact. Ce que je veux dire c’est que c’est ce que j’essaie de comprendre, que nous vivons une ère de conséquences, que lorsqu’on ne fait rien face à la crise climatique depuis des décennies, alors que les scientifiques nous mettent en garde, de plus en plus de régions du monde ne sont plus habitables, et voilà que les gens se déplacent pour essayer de trouver la sécurité face aux guerres, aux privations économiques et aux désastres écologiques.

Et donc cette transformation de l’État-nation en véritable forteresse – je pense que c’est ce qu’Israël en est venu à représenter, simplement une toute petite nation retranchée derrière des murs – même si c’est une muraille de haute technologie, le Dôme de fer. Trump explique aujourd’hui : « Ce n’est pas un dôme de fer que je veux, c’est un dôme de richesse ». N’est-ce pas ? Cela…

AMY GOODMAN : Ici.

NAOMI KLEIN : Ici. Et c’est à ça que tout se résume, que ce soit dit explicitement ou non.

AMY GOODMAN : Et un défilé militaire qui coûtera des dizaines de millions…

NAOMI KLEIN : Oui.

AMY GOODMAN : de dollars, le jour de son anniversaire, en juin, alors même qu’il fait tout pour mettre en pièces le gouvernement fédéral.

NAOMI KLEIN : C’est exact. Le modèle consiste donc à protéger le groupe d’appartenance et à procéder à une épuration concernant les groupes extérieurs. N’est-ce pas ? Et donc, je pense que c’est – vous savez, s’il y a un soutien de la base MAGA en faveur d’Israël, c’est moins par affection pour Israël que parce qu’il y a une identification, comme si eux faisaient ce que nous, nous souhaitons faire ici.

AMY GOODMAN : Vous écrivez beaucoup de choses dans votre article, et je voudrais juste revenir sur l’une d’entre elles. En parlant de la vision apocalyptique de Musk, vous parlez, et vous détaillez aussi le fascisme de la fin des temps, toute cette question de la montée de la ville-État, de la ville-État entreprise. Je pense que c’est un concept nouveau pour beaucoup. Ils ne sauront pas de quoi vous parlez.

NAOMI KLEIN : Oui.

AMY GOODMAN : Dans le sud du Texas, Starbase, ce groupe de gens, qui sont principalement des gens qui travaillent pour SpaceX, viennent de voter pour la création d’une ville juste à cet endroit ?

NAOMI KLEIN : Mm-hmm, oui. Oui. Je veux dire que l’idée d’une ville d’entreprise n’est pas entièrement nouvelle, n’est-ce pas ? Disney a eu Celebration, en Floride, et il existe une certaine continuité dans ce domaine, n’est-ce pas ? Des lignées coloniales. Vous savez, je vis au Canada, qui a commencé avec la Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson, n’est-ce pas ? C’était donc une société avant d’être un pays. Il y a donc des précédents.

Mais je pense qu’il s’agit – je suis cela du coin de l’œil, Amy, parce que c’est la direction que les libertariens ont prise depuis un certain temps. Peter Thiel était obsédé par cette idée. Quand on en parle, il s’agit de plus en plus d’exil, c’est-à-dire de quitter la nation et de fonder son propre pays, où l’on peut fixer son propre niveau d’imposition, où l’on peut établir ses propres réglementations.

AMY GOODMAN : Ou pas.

NAOMI KLEIN : Ou pas. Et les pays – et ces petits pays d’entreprises – seront en concurrence les uns avec les autres pour essayer d’attirer les capitaux, n’est-ce pas ? D’une certaine manière, il s’agit donc d’une extension de la zone de libre-échange, n’est-ce pas ? – Il s’agit en quelque sorte d’un pays dénationalisé à l’intérieur d’un pays. Mais Trump a commencé à lancer cette idée en 2023, pendant sa campagne, l’idée qu’il créerait 10 villes de la liberté. Je ne pense pas que sa base savait de quoi il parlait. Mais maintenant, il y a tous ces lobbyistes qui ont bien l’intention de le prendre au mot. Et nous commençons à en voir les prémices avec cette ville SpaceX.

AMY GOODMAN : Vous vous exprimez également sur le Centre de confinement du terrorisme du Salvador, la célèbre prison, CECOT, où des centaines de personnes ont été envoyées depuis les États-Unis, et en même temps, au cours de ces dernières 24 heures, le Président Trump a dit qu’il voulait rouvrir la célèbre prison d’Alcatraz…

NAOMI KLEIN : Oui.

AMY GOODMAN : une île à San Francisco. Si nous pouvons parler de la prison comme d’un modèle pour ce que Trump veut mettre en avant, et en particulier en relation, comme nous le voyons, avec les immigrés ?

NAOMI KLEIN : Eh bien il s’agit là d’une vision incroyablement lugubre. De fait, la répression est toujours un élément essentiel de tout projet fasciste, n’est-ce pas ? Il faut endiguer le groupe extérieur. Il faut le faire disparaître. Cet aspect n’est donc pas nouveau. Mais ce qui me préoccupe le plus, c’est que Trump a été élu en promettant toutes sortes de choses à sa base, n’est-ce pas ? Il a promis d’éliminer l’inflation. Il a promis de ramener ces emplois formidables au pays. Il n’est en train de tenir aucune de ces promesses. La partie sadique de son projet est donc tout ce qu’il a à offrir, n’est-ce pas ?

Je pense que l’une des choses les plus glaçantes que j’aie jamais vues aux États-Unis, c’est la vidéo que Trump a partagée lors de son meeting des cent jours, du sadisme à l’état pur, où l’on voit des prisonniers, comme un divertissement, se faire raser, se faire entrâver par des chaînes, être exhibés. Par contre il ne tient pas ses promesses en ce qui concerne le prix des œufs. Et il ne tient pas ses promesses en matière d’emploi, parce qu’il mise tout, il se lance à corps perdu dans l’IA. Les emplois qui reviennent semblent donc être principalement destinés aux robots. Ils ne sont pas vraiment pour sa base. Et donc, toiut cela ne fait qu’augmenter le besoin de sadisme et de ces spectacles, n’est-ce pas ? Et je pense que c’est ce que représente quelque chose comme Alcatraz. Trump est un producteur de télévision, avant tout, n’est-ce pas ? Il produit des spectacles. Et moins il a à offrir économiquement, tangiblement, matériellement, plus il s’appuie sur le sadisme.

AMY GOODMAN : Vous écrivez : « L’idéologie de l’extrême droite est devenue un survivalisme monstrueux et suprémaciste. Notre tâche est de construire un mouvement suffisamment fort pour les arrêter. » À quoi ressemblerait un tel mouvement, ou que voyez-vous se dessiner à l’heure actuelle ?

NAOMI KLEIN : Vous savez, ce que nous faisons dans cette pièce en exposant la noirceur de la vision – et quand je dis « noirceur », vous savez, je pense que c’est au-delà de ce qu’on a jamais vu auparavant, parce qu’il y a toujours une facette apocalyptique au fascisme, mais le fascisme des années 1930 et 1940 avait un horizon. Disons qu’après l’apocalypse, on promettait aux gens un avenir, un petit coin de terre pastoral et paisible où ils pourraient vivre leur vie. Même si Trump parle d’un âge d’or, il n’y a pas vraiment d’avenir auquel la base croit, vous savez ? Et c’est ce que j’ai appris en avalant beaucoup trop de médias MAGA, Amy. Ils envisagent un avenir de guerre sans fin, n’est-ce pas ? Et c’est pour ça qu’ils se bunkérisent. C’est pour ça qu’ ils achètent des repas tout prêts pour subsister. C’est pour ça qu’ils achètent de l’or et des crypto-monnaies. Ils pensent que tout va s’écrouler. Donc…

AMY GOODMAN : Et c’est aussi pour ça qu’Elon Musk essaie d’avoir autant d’enfants, au moins 14 à ce jour. Mais il l’a explicitement indiqué par texto, en disant : « C’est une chose que nous devons faire beaucoup plus vite », comme il l’a proposé à l’une des femmes avec lesquelles il a des enfants, en disant : « Nous devons commencer à utiliser des mères porteuses. »

NAOMI KLEIN : Ils ne croient donc pas en l’avenir, c’est tout ce qu’il faut retenir. Et c’est – vous savez, je pense que j’ai été dans beaucoup d’espaces progressistes ces derniers mois pendant lesquels nous avons parlé de construire ces coalitions très larges, y compris avec des gens avec lesquels nous ne sommes pas entièrement en désaccord. Je n’ai jamais rencontré de coalition potentielle plus large que celle qui souscrirait à l’idée suivante : et si nous avions foi en ce monde ? Et si nous avions foi en l’avenir ? Parce que nous avons en face de nous des gens qui misent clairement en défaveur de l’avenir, n’est-ce pas ? Pas seulement en misant activement contre lui…

AMY GOODMAN : Vingt secondes.

NAOMI KLEIN : mais en alimentant les feux qui brûlent ce monde, en les attisant ouvertement. Je pense donc que si nous avons le courage de regarder en face la noirceur de ce en quoi ils croient, c’est-à-dire un avenir apocalyptique, alors nous avons du pain sur la planche pour être celles et ceux qui croient réellement en cet univers, en ce monde, en la beauté de la création et en chacun d’entre nous.

AMY GOODMAN : Naomi Klein, je tiens à vous remercier de nous avoir répondu, vous êtes une journaliste primée, autrice, chroniqueuse. Nous allons mettre en lien votre article avec Astra Taylor, « La montée du fascisme de la fin des temps ». Je suis Amy Goodman. Ici Democracy Now !

*

Amy Goodman est l’animatrice et la productrice exécutive de Democracy Now !, un programme d’information national, quotidien, indépendant et primé, diffusé sur plus de 1 100 chaînes de télévision et stations de radio publiques dans le monde entier. Le Time Magazine a nommé Democracy Now ! son « Pick of the Podcasts », au même titre que Meet the Press de NBC.

Source : Truthout, Amy Goodman, DemocracyNow !

les-crises.fr/l-alliance-entre…


Naomi Klein : L'alliance entre l'extrême droite et la Silicon Valley fait naître un « fascisme de la fin des temps »

Il nous faut avoir foi en l'avenir si nous voulons lutter contre la vision apocalyptique que porte MAGA, déclare la journaliste Naomi Klein. Source : Truthout, Amy Goodman, DemocracyNow ! Traduit p…
Les-Crises.fr

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QUE FAIRE DE L'UNION EUROPÉENNE ? - 20 ans du NON au référendum ! - Un entretien avec Aurélien BERNIER


youtu.be/SAug5X4ftO8

Aurélien BERNIER est journaliste et essayiste, spécialiste des politiques environnementales et souverainiste de gauche. Il a notamment publié « Désobéissons à l'Union européenne ! » (2011) et « La Gauche radicale et ses tabous, Pourquoi le Front de gauche échoue face au Front national » (2014). Il vient de sortir « Que faire de l'Union européenne ? » aux éditions de l'Atelier.

Chapitres :

-Le NON au référendum et ses suites

-Chute du PCF et montée du RN

-Renoncements du PCF sur l'UE

-Leviers de la puissance européenne

-Transformer l'UE de l'intérieur ?

-Désobéir à l'UE (« opt out ») ?

-La stratégie du Frexit progressiste

-Alliance souverainiste des deux rives ?

-Approche marxiste et sortie de fait

-Réformisme ou révolution ?

communcommune.com/2025/06/que-…


QUE FAIRE DE L'UNION EUROPÉENNE ? - 20 ans du NON au référendum ! - Un entretien avec Aurélien BERNIER

Pour faire un don au Café marxiste : https://www.helloasso.com/associations/cafe-marxiste/formulaires/1 Pour commander nos brochures : https://www.helloasso.com/associations/cafe-marxiste/boutiques/les-brochures-du-cafe-marxiste Pour vous abonner à..
El Diablo (Commun COMMUNE [le blog d'El Diablo])

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« Complorama », l’OTAN et les archives, par Philippe Descamps (Le Monde diplomatique, mai 2025)


#géopolitique #impérialisme #OTAN

France Info propose des balados qui décryptent « l’activité de la complosphère ». Le 4 avril, « Complorama » met en ligne « L’OTAN dans l’imaginaire complotiste », une sorte de gloubi-boulga mêlant propos d’influenceurs fantaisistes (et risibles), de responsables politiques comme MM. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan ou Jean-Luc Mélenchon, et enquête historique.

Coproducteur de l’émission, Rudy Reichstadt aime jouer les contempteurs de tous ceux qui osent s’interroger sur le pouvoir d’influence des États-Unis — même à l’heure où le pays annonce faire une pause dans ses cyberopérations contre la Russie (The New York Times, 2 mars 2025). Également directeur de Conspiracy Watch, un observatoire du conspirationnisme, il commence par relativiser la puissance de l’organisation atlantiste. « La Russie ne partage que 11 % de ses frontières terrestres avec des pays de l’OTAN », affirme-t-il. C’est faire peu de cas des 6 500 kilomètres de voisinage maritime entre la péninsule de Kola et les îles Aléoutiennes, et des bases américaines implantées du nord du Groenland au Japon, en passant par l’Alaska.

Reichstadt tient sa « fausse nouvelle », « selon laquelle l’OTAN ou les Occidentaux auraient fait la promesse à la Russie de ne pas admettre d’autres pays membres, de ne pas s’élargir à l’Est ». Selon lui une « fable (…) régulièrement reprise sur des sites alternatifs, des sites complotistes ou même des médias, comme Le Monde diplomatique ». Argument de poids : cela aurait été démenti « par Mikhaïl Gorbatchev en personne ».

La vérification est pourtant facile, dans les archives diplomatiques du gouvernement américain. Le 9 février 1990, par exemple, le secrétaire d’État américain James Baker affirmait à trois reprises devant son homologue soviétique Édouard Chevardnadze : « La juridiction militaire actuelle de l’OTAN ne s’étendra pas d’un pouce vers l’est (1). » Certes, le traité portant règlement définitif concernant l’Allemagne, qui se limite à ce pays, n’a pas consigné ces promesses orales concernant l’Europe centrale. Vingt ans après, Gorbatchev le regrettait et voyait bien l’expansion à l’Est de l’Alliance atlantique commencée en 1993 comme une « grave erreur » : « Ce fut irrévocablement une violation de l’esprit des déclarations et des assurances qui nous avaient été données en 1990 », concluait l’ancien dirigeant soviétique dans un entretien… cité en référence par l’observatoire de Reichstadt (2).

Philippe Descamps

(1) Lire « “L’OTAN ne s’étendra pas d’un pouce vers l’est” », Le Monde diplomatique, septembre 2018.

(2) « Mikhail Gorbachev : I am against all walls », Russia Beyond ; « L’OTAN a-t-elle vraiment promis à la Russie de ne pas s’élargir à l’Est ? Pas si simple… », Conspiracy Watch, décembre 2017.

monde-diplomatique.fr/2025/05/…


« Complorama », l’OTAN et les archives

France Info propose des balados qui décryptent « l’activité de la complosphère ». Le 4 avril, « Complorama » met en ligne « L’OTAN dans l’imaginaire (...)
Philippe Descamps (Le Monde diplomatique)

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When rot is worse than a shutdown: The sad state of PC Call of Duty


Recently, a post I made discussing how games like Counter Strike or UT99 still are either playable or have communities went viral. I had many interesting responses to it, and while there were some weird comments many did grasp the point: older games were more moddable and some studios actually care about devs. Maybe I should have put “Multiplayer” in the title because old single-player games literally can never die as long as a single copy exists and is playable/preserved in some way, and there’s a computer out there that can run it (or there’s interest in writing an emulator to do such even if the hardware no longer exists or is rare, as with the Konix Multisystem or 3do m2.) In fact; as translations of games for Japan-only platforms such as the NEC PC-9801 or Bandai Wonderswan have shown, sometimes emulation can unlock a new audience for said games.

What also was mentioned was stuff like Stop Killing Games, something I 100% agree with as many AAA games either choose to force part of the game logic online, or have modes locked behind internet connections. While this trend wasn’t new (TGM: Ace needs a XBL Gold account for many modes while PSO on the OG Xbox needed a gamertag to play offline!), it’s ramped up with the rise of “cloud” stuff for online gaming. The Crew is a notorious example, along with NFS 2015, but even Call of Duty Zombies needs online for major functions of maps to function such as locking easter eggs behind a connection and this interesting video I found recently demonstrates this.

youtube.com/embed/ZPJ7EG_evBg?…

But what could possibly be worse than an online shutdown? What could be worse than a game that requires online connections to play either due to arbitrary restrictions the developers coded in or “cloud” connections? It’s a game that is literally unsafe to play online and I don’t mean that in an exaggerated way either.

Call of Duty and a brief history of the technical flaws


Call of Duty is a very weird franchise in many ways. It’s what happens when a company who only cares about money hits it big, only for the cracks to show quickly despite its popularity. Call of Duty is a very popular franchise and while part of this has to do with FOMO, the Xbox 360 era (and maybe some of the early next-gen games) held up well in theory.

The difference between Call of Duty and other games I mentioned in the last post, is that Activision absolutely hates their fans on a level only surpassed by Nintendo (in the legal department), without the excuse of having a record of making solid games like Nintendo does. The other difference is that Call of Duty is released in a yearly model reserved for sports games; with every year having a new title released. In fact, the exes for newer Call of Duty titles will have names like “cod23” or “cod22” for their exes and folders; literally being the release year. On top of that, the schizophrenic “3 development studio” model (where every year another dev releases their title) and pursuit of money has led to some very bizarre decisions that are inconsistent from game to game. Due to this, the Call of Duty playerbase is fragmented among different games that people like in particular. Some people like the WWII titles, others like something from the “golden age” of 360 titles from CoD4 to BO2, others like some of the Xbox One/PS4 era titles such as AW, Ghosts, and BO3, and others like the newest CoDs made after MW2019 acted as a reboot of the franchise (sometimes nicknamed the SBMM era).

While many of the core gameplay elements are there, the gameplay elements have shifted so dramatically between titles (think like Sonic or Need for Speed) that each person has their own individual game they love. In an ideal world, this would not be a problem. In fact for older titles like CoD1, 2, 4, and World at War on the PC, there’s even a server list one can use. Players essentially control that game to some degree, as these titles were PC focused games.

In 2009 however, Call of Duty on the PC would suffer a blow it would never recover from. PC Modern Warfare 2 was a straight up console port, with no mods, dedicated servers, LAN play (which was still on consoles), or similar. It was a giant middle finger from Activision to the PC audience, showing they were no longer their audience but rather the Xbox audience was. CoD on the PC would now be a matchmaking-based shooter, relying solely on VAC and maybe reports to get cheaters banned as opposed to the model of servers that worked. There were boycott MW2 campaigns that worked to varying degrees of success, and while people bought it initially over time interest waned. There were projects to replace the Steam matchmaking system in later PC Call of Duty titles with a server list like AlterIWNet, FourDeltaOne, and later IW4x/Xlabs. Every single one of them was shut down except for IW4x, which was designed with redundancy in mind for if this were to happen. Years later, these projects would gain more importance but keep this in mind.

Anyhow, back to 2009. Call of Duty MW2 launched and the cracks began to show. See; Call of Duty has this thing where they would reuse code all the time. The engine of CoD (at least for this era) is based on a heavily modified id Tech 3 engine, which CoD1 ran on. Call of Duty 2 and later titles for a while would run on descendants of this engine (to the point of still using Radiant), and even BO6 has the id Software copyright notice.

Still; the biggest problem with Call of Duty especially early on is the fact that the engine was not very locked down. The sole layer of security with older Call of Duty titles was if the platforms were secure to begin with. The Xbox 360 would get blown wide open with the JTAG hack of 2009, and the PS3 would follow not long after in 2010. VAC on the other hand was a total joke on the PC and there were bypasses being made and allegedly even ways to get other people VAC banned. Call of Duty’s high profile, lack of security (many “mod menus” were fancy GSC (the CoD engine scripting language) scripts), and desire for anyone to “get good” with cheats led to a period in which every Call of Duty title on every platform was “hacked” to death. It’s not uncommon to join a MW2 lobby in the current year and end up with hackers and mod menus, and don’t get me started on the infamous BO2 theater mode exploit years after launch that would run GSC scripts on unmodified consoles.

Activision tried many things to stop the modders on different titles that were new, but left the old ones to be abandoned and overrun with skids. This is maybe because they wanted people to plunk down $60 on BO2 if you wanted your CoD fix but didn’t want to run into xXBluntSmoker420Xx’s Wicked Sick Mod Menu being in use. As these older titles aged, Activision just abandoned them as they continued the eternal war on cheaters on newer titles with better security models. At least in a new CoD title the worst you’ll deal with are aimbotters and similar, which sounds crazy if you didn’t play these titles.

So you might be thinking, what’s the worst that can happen from a cheater on 360-era CoD? On a console, the worst that’ll happen is you’ll get “deranked” and find yourself unable to play online unless you jump into someone’s mod lobby or something to fix your rank (sometimes people have reported having corrupted files that cause an instant crash on Steam). The second worst thing that’ll happen is that your console can get frozen up and you have to reset it, and the third is that some kid will DDoS your internet connection.

On the PC, it’s so much worse it’s unreal.

RCE Exploits in your games? It’s more likely than you think


When Activision switched over to a mix of Demonware and Steam for Call of Duty’s network backend on PC, they had no idea of the can of worms they were opening at this point. There were the usual console exploits like mod menus mixed with VAC disablers and whatnot, but the worst was yet to come. In the late 2010s, people began to report having malware installed on their PC from playing Call of Duty titles. This wasn’t just some stuff that a CoD player was saying because he was mad online, oh no this was very much real. There are multiple
different
CVE entries from this period relating to Call of Duty. One of these would be documented by Call of Duty mod developer momo5502 and others, and by the time he wrote about it this exploit was floating around the CoD modder community for a while. This exploit used crafted packets in particular, while another exploited Steam’s auth and another exploits party joining commands. There are more exploits that haven’t had CVEs or only had patches for them, like one for MW3 and the MemberJoin call.

Now I’m no programmer or professional pentester, so I’m not going to talk about the nitty gritty that’s already out there since at least the PoC for one now-patched exploit is on the open internet and it’s safe to assume that other exploits use variants of this. But the crazy part is, all the code reuse bit them as it wasn’t just an exploit for one game but literally years’ worth of titles. There are recent reports on Steam forums of people getting malware dropped while playing Call of Duty titles on the PC version. In fact, this was talked about all the way back in 2018 (after at least one of the exploits was released) with a viral Reddit post by one such person having a RAT planted on his PC thanks to packets targeted towards him. But if this sounds like a “fake” story; this has happened to top streamers playing the game to the point YouTube videos would come out about this scare.

youtube.com/embed/YHMjL9nDAC0?…

It got to the point where in 2023 Activision had to make an emergency patch after PC players were getting exploited en masse on Modern Warfare 2 thanks to a worm targeting the game to the point Kotaku and others picked up the story. A Steam user even discovered strings relating to modded lobbies in the malware itself.

Essentially; Steam-era Call of Duty titles are vulnerable to some serious exploits that allow your PC to get hacked by someone who wants to take control of your PC and in one dramatic example, a self-spreading worm. Usually this targets streamers, big players, or anyone who makes a skid feel angry online. The exploits are real, and while it’s debatable on if the stream video is kayfabe for clicks or not, the point is Steam-era Call of Duty titles are not safe to play online on the PC in their unmodded form.

Mods to the rescue?


Call of Duty is a game that after its sell-by date passes, gets left to rot by Activision. The servers stay up, but playing the game becomes a gambling session. Playing the game online now might get you into a good match, or you’ll get into a match with some kid trying to render a 15-year-old game unplayable because he’s having a bad day or wants to cause chaos. I mean, the entire TF2 cathook fiasco that took forever for Valve to finally stomp out after dragging on for literal years with numerous “save this game” campaigns was a good example of this. Activision could care less, which has led to community members taking matters into their own hands.

Black Ops 3, probably the most popular title in the franchise on Steam for now, has a third-party fix for it. With t7patch, RCE bugs are patched and you can even put a password on your game or make it friends only to reduce the attack surface, and 2.04 even reduces it further by disabling Steam Workshop support (meaning that you have to subscribe to mods first, avoiding possibly malicious mods from being downloaded).

The situation is much more mixed for older titles. There are two major modding groups for older Call of Duty titles, AlterWare and Plutonium. Plutonium is the most successful of these, covering Black Ops 1, 2, MW3, and World at War (for when the servers go down for that like they did a while back). AlterWare (covering AW, MW2, and Ghosts) is much less popular due to some players moving back to the hacked dumpster fire of vanilla MW2 (thanks to the Xlabs shutdown) and the relative unpopularity of Ghosts and AW (it’s a shame because AW is really fun…and I’d love to not play on a P2P connection from Venezuela (and I’m not joking) on the PS3). Both of these are probably the best way to play older Call of Duty titles on the PC not only due to the RCE exploits, but also due to the fact that they run with a server list model. In fact, Plutonium has more people than the Steam versions do right now, and it’s the only way to play BO1 online once the server payments end for the few remaining servers on GameServers!

There are two major problems with this. The first is that due to how these mods work, the playerbase is rather split between people playing the Steam versions, and the mods with server lists. The second problem is that these mods have had a shaky legal history.

A few years back, Activision shutdown one of the modding groups, Xlabs, with legal action. There are different people who had different theories for why this happened but the big theories at the time were:

  • XLabs was literally linking to pirated game torrents.
  • The devs were Patreon-walling a BO3 PC client, which to add insult to injury wasn’t even GPL licensed but worse: a “proprietary” license.
    • Modding BO3 on the PC is also a touchy topic given that BO3 on the PC is the only CoD title made after CoD WaW to allow for full player control of the game, and the servers are still up. The motivation for modding the other PC titles had to do mostly with wanting dedicated servers and mods.


  • XLabs was not verifying that anyone using their patch and servers legally owned the game.

This led to several major events. AlterWare would pick up the mantle from XLabs, but due to the panic over XLabs and its shutdown the player count for IW4x decreased even with the fallbacks that allowed it to survive the shutdown. Meanwhile AW and Ghosts were unpopular on the PC as it was so this acted as a killing blow to those two games on the PC. Unlike XLabs, AlterWare does not link to pirated games and instead instructs you how to install the mod side by side with your Steam install. The bigger thing is that Plutonium would force you to link a Steam account to play online that showed you owned those games. This seems to have worked because neither project has been shutdown yet (and to be fair nobody cares about AW or Ghosts on PC, unfortunately).

The fear seems to have subsided for now about Activision shutting down these modders as they seem to be focused more on suing cheat developers and trying to get people to play Black Ops 6. Furthermore, what led up to the bnetd lawsuit and controversy over that was the inability to verify that anyone using their software owned the games as the CD Key was the copy protection measure of the time. By making sure that anyone on Plutonium owns Black Ops 2, this solves this problem and this has likely led Plutonium to stay active. If these servers would go down, it would be a massive loss for anyone trying to play this game online today.

It’s also why it’s unlikely you will see similar mods for SBMM-era Call of Duty titles for a good period of time, because most of the legal action against private servers took place when these games were still at their peak. Trying to make a mod to play any SBMM-era Call of Duty title online with servers instead of SBMM is just as legally risky as making AlterIWNet was when MW2 was still popular. Maybe in a few long years you might see these, but by then will anyone care? I don’t think people will be as nostalgic for MWII as they were for MW2.

It’s why user control of online games is important


The patches for these titles are not because of Activision, but rather despite them. Activision has left these titles out on a vine to die and they could care less. In fact, the saddest long-running joke about how Activision simply couldn’t care less is that the digital prices for old Call of Duty titles are still $60. Black Ops 2 in particular is still $60, along with later titles like Ghosts, AW, Infinite Warfare, and more. They could care less about lowering the price on a 2012 game that is so old that we’re living in the year it takes place in (2025!)

This game has serious exploits that remain unpatched unless something so blatant and drastic like “malware that self-spreads” is written for it. Even the theater mode exploit remained unpatched for a while. Activision just doesn’t care, but if this were an older game you could imagine how there’d be a community patch already and a serverside patch too by now. Yet because the control of the player was removed, these exploits are only fixed with a third-party patcher or an entire infrastructure designed for the sole purpose of escaping the closed system.

The point is; user control of online games isn’t just important because of shutdowns or matchmaking chugging because of a low player count. It’s because there are things a lot worse than shutdowns, like having your computer exploited by malware.

Activision Is Suing the Creators of a Call of Duty Hack It Says Is So 'Toxic' It's Causing Fans to Quit Playing the PC Version of Black Ops 6 Altogether - IGN

Activision is suing the people behind a well-known Call of Duty hack it alleged is so "toxic" it's causing fans to stop playing the PC version of Black Ops 6 completely.
Wesley Yin-Poole (IGN)
This entry was edited (3 months ago)
in reply to AffordablePDSEO

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Dr. Naomi Wolf to Marty Makery on the 'Murderous' Covid Injection: 'There Is No Grey Area!'

rumble.com/v6u71e7-dr.-naomi-w…

Comments below the video:

"Amen!
Even though Dr. Naomi Wolf is not a medical doctor, she and her team really dug into the facts and investigated the shots. She understands more about the shots than most doctors do.
People should absolutely listen to what she’s saying.

P.S. People need to STOP the ridiculous ...


Dr. Naomi Wolf to Marty Makery on the 'Murderous' Covid Injection: 'There Is No Grey Area!'

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?Worse than Nazi crimes?: Hamas condemns Israeli massacre of Gaza aid seekers en.irna.ir/news/85849771/Worse…

‘Worse than Nazi crimes’: Hamas condemns Israeli massacre of Gaza aid seekers

Hamas condemned Israel's deadly attack on Gaza aid seekers as worse than fascist and Nazi crimes, urging the Islamic world to confront the killers.
امین محمدزادگان خوئی (IRNA English)

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Why you'd want a TILING WINDOW MANAGER, and why I DON'T

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Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:44 Sponsor: Squarespace
01:45 What's a window manager?
06:02 Advantages of Tiling WMs
09:40 Why I don't like them
14:39 Sponsor: Tuxedo
15:44 Support the channel

#Linux #tiling #windowmanager #linuxdesktop

All desktop environments provide a window manager, it's in charge of displaying your windows, handling their position and state, as in maximized, minimized, the size of the window, the current focused one, and everything along those lines. On top of these baked in window managers, you have tiling window managers.

Stuff like i3, hyprland, sway, awesomeWM, BSPWM, XMonad, qtile, ratpoison and a lot more.

Some are manual tilers, some are dynamic. Dynamic tilers will open each new window following something YOU defined.

Basically, you have plenty of choice, but tiling window managers will replace your current desktop with something that is more meant to be used with a keyboard, without much user input, to maximize the use of your screen real estate. So, let's look at why you'd want to use a tiling window manager.

The first, obvious advantage is that you never get anything overlapping anything else, unless you actively choose to do so. On a regular desktop, you'll have to move windows out of the way, or minimize them, or resize them, and this is basically wasted time; it's time not spent using the computer and accomplishing something.

The second advantage is that it sort of removes the need to use the mouse or the touchpad 99% of the time. The only time you'll probably need to use it is to interact with the contents of the window itself, like clicking a link in the web browser, or clicking a button in a window.

Another advantage is resource usage. A tiling window manager generally doesn't bring with it a whole system of panels, overviews, app grid, menus, effects and more, meaning that you don't load as many things in memory as with a complete desktop.

A big advantage is also screen usage: without a big panel and a dock, tiling windows always uses the most space available on your screen.

So, with so many advantages, why wouldn't I use a tiling window manager?

Most desktops already give me enough of the tiling features to suit my use case. Using KDE, or GNOME, I can already tile my windows if I want to. I can drag them to any corner or edge and have them use that screen size. In KDE, I even have a full tiling manager that I never use because I don't need it.

Sure, this edge tiling doesn't give you as much flexibility as a full tiling window manager, but for me personally, it's more than enough. And it all comes down to my use case: I make videos.

Which means I have 2 modes: research / writing mode, and video editing mode. In the first, I need 2 windows: A browser for research, and QOwnNotes to write. Sometimes, I'll use a virtual machine as well, but tiling this on a laptop display doesn't make sense, so I open it full screen on a virtual desktop.

In editing mode, I have my video editor, Davinci Resolve, in full screen. Again, not something a tiling WM would help me with.

My panel autohides behind windows, so it doesn't take up space, and while I do have title bars, I also don't have gaps between my windows when they're tiled, or between a window and a screen edge, so I'm actually pretty sure it's the exact same screen space usage.

I also don't lose out on configuration, at least on KDE: I can change all these shortcuts, I can change how windows open by default, they remember their previous size, it works. And finally, most of the time, I work on a laptop. It's a 16 inch screen, but it's still a laptop. And tiling there is just completely inefficient and makes things way too small.

What I'm saying is that yes, a tiling window manager is really useful, and cool, but it's NOT for every use case and every user.

TheLinuxExperiment's profile - Liberapay

Hi, I'm Nick, and I run The Linux Experiment, a Youtube Channel and Podcast where I talk about Linux, Open Source, and privacy. I make 3 videos per week, including a Linux …
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This entry was edited (1 month ago)
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