This is a slow-news-day story and affects neither you nor anyone you care about.

The malware was impersonating Oringo and Taunahi

As usual, these hacks target idiots using cheats and aimbots, downloading them from a fake repository on Github directly, which is no different than downloading an exe. 99.99% of Minecraft mods are fine, so is Prism, so is Modrinth.

Well it seems like my time of distrusting anything the Liberals say is certainly coming to a middle.

Let other countries buy, own and run our airlines? “What could go wrong?”

It’s not Peertube, but as at least a step away from Youtube I’ve found a lot of my favourite creators immediately cross-post all their videos to Odysee (including electronics guys like Louis, Bigclive, GreatScott, etc) and I’ve also found some new channels to watch there. It’s not a great site, it’s marginally better than Youtube, which is not a high bar. For obvious reasons, I’m looking forward to finding recommendations in Peertube too though so I’ll be watching this thread.

“remove any thing that they might be able to do” is a hilariously broad brush to apply to three letter agencies in this day and age that were doing things like this 50 years ago.

I’m not saying it’s realistic that OP is being targeted for such surveillance. But if they are, good fucking luck! Flashing your firmware ain’t going to do shit when they’ve just gone ahead and replaced the chips on your board with their own that act exactly like a normal chip but have extra code that doesn’t get flashed when they don’t want it to.

Yeah but the sun burns probably millions of people every day and causes cancer, besides it’s big enough to take care of itself.

And I’ve already explained before, that “face” is just conveniently aligned shadows that make it look like a face. There’s no actual face there. Further analysis clearly showed that it was in fact a pyramid, just like the ones aliens built here in ancient Egypt. /s

I am incapable of the kind of black and white thinking that would allow me to believe that literally ACAB, but an awful lot of them clearly are, and maybe even an overwhelming majority. And I appreciate finding and documenting as much evidence as we can find of that, so that we can have an honest and accurate accounting of how many cops are actually, indeed, “bad”.

What did Mars ever do to deserve any of this? It’s just out there minding its own business not bothering anybody. Into the sun where at least they can be used as fuel, that would be a better use for them.

It sounds like you’re talking about the experience that France has in designing and building them being a massive advantage, which I agree with, which is why they’re going to be an important part of the group. The hardest things to do are the things that are the most worth doing. Laziness and efficiency are the same thing, and our relentless pursuit of efficiency in every possible thing has made us unfathomably lazy. It’s time to invest in some thoughtful inefficiency. The fact that these things are difficult is how you learn important albeit maybe expensive lessons and become an expert and a leader. To paraphrase JFK, we have to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Only a fool would think learning is a waste of time.

Sounds like it’s time for France, Germany, Norway, South Korea, UK, Australia, Canada, and anyone else who wants in to join forces and build our own modern nuclear sub class. We are not helpless subsistence farmers, we are some of the largest economies in the world, I will not be gaslit into believing we are not capable of matching or exceeding, if not US technology itself, then at least the level of technology that the US would be willing to sell to us. Where there is a collective will, there is a way. We must put as much collective effort into this as we put into the industrial revolution itself, or WW2’s economic transformations. If we did it in a matter of years under fire from Germany’s bombs and guns and U-boats we can do it under fire from Trump’s tariffs. Let’s get to work.

Fascism has always been the great enemy. Not a leader, not a country, not a people, not a religion. Fascism is part of being human, approximately 30% of the population has been found in studies to have fascist tendencies. They are not the majority, but they are common, they are powerful, they are malicious, and they always will be. And right now, a lot of them are also very, very rich.

As long as fascism is part of being human, it will always be the responsibility of the other 70% to fight it. And it is a terrible responsibility, but it will never go away. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Only when we all get lazy and apathetic and divided and decadent and distracted can the fascist 30% actually take control. So that’s what they aim to make happen. Consider that only around 25% of the US population (not registered voters – the actual human beings who live in the country) actually voted for Trump. Voter apathy, disinformation, disillusionment, disenfranchisement, demographics, gerrymandering and more have been weaponized against the actual majority to turn 25% into a slim margin of absolute victory. Trump does not have majority support, and he never did, and he never will. Remember that.

Correct, it is also a sign that it is winning that it keeps attracting (and largely still beating) direct competitors. The Switch 2 can’t have any realistic competitors because the ecosystem is so closed off and exclusive, it’s a monopoly in its space.

Despite countless attempts by numerous companies to monopolize various parts of the PC experience, it continues to foster relentless competition, and rather than attempting to lock in their little bit of monopolization, Steam Deck is too busy breaking other, much more realistic attempts at complete monopolization of the PC ecosystem (Looking at you, Microsoft Windows). Even Steam’s own game distribution dominance is a far cry from Microsoft’s near-complete control of much of the desktop OS stack. It is a genuine pleasure to see Steam Deck and the hard work done by things like Proton (and to a lesser extent, improving support from hardware vendors most notably AMD) finally actually moving the needle on that.

We’ll have to call it the ROUS garden, especially if Muskrat keeps lurking around.

If the educational system is not working, if AI has destroyed our educational system, and I think it’s fair to say it has, if teachers feel there’s nothing they can do to fix it, then throw it away and don’t waste our tears on it. We must find other ways to educate. This is imperative, education is non-negotiable. I am not giving up in defeat, I am saying we must retreat from battles that are simply not viable anymore. Use them as a delaying action if you can, but if kids are learning from LLMs and Video games and Netflix and Youtube and Tiktok now, we need to find ways to get as much good educational content as we can onto those platforms. We need to find ways to manipulate their algorithms. We need alternative platforms that aren’t corporate-controlled cesspools, where we can make the rules. Governments and institutions will be too slow to react. The only advantage we have is that we can act and react fast, even faster than the corporate interests that are burning down the Internet of Alexandria and blowing up the world into the next dark age. We can, and should, and must organize an educational resistance.

Literally nobody wants their kids to grow up like this. Not even the billionaires exploiting and profiting from this garbage. We have the advantage that everybody in the world will soon understand the scale of this problem as they are confronted with it themselves. Will it be too late? Maybe, but we have to assume it will be better if we at least try. Even if we have to rescue people one mind at a time, every effort is worthwhile and every victory is worth celebrating.

Agreed, the freelance contractor “gig economy” these apps use is a crime against the labor force. I have no idea why we tolerate this toxic business model in a civilized country with labor laws.

I know we all really like “freeway speeds” just the way they are, but saying we need them is a bit of a stretch.

Newsom’s not even the Han Solo he’s trying to imply he is here, it’s obvious he’s Lando Calrissian. He’s not your friend, and he’s not going to help you. He’s going to help himself, and that might briefly help you, but don’t count on it. We’ve gotta be our own heroes in this story.

What are electrolytes? Do you even know?

You absolutely can slap a Lambo body on anything (provided it fits) and there is a literal cottage industry that exists around doing so. It’s not popular because, let’s be honest, it’s pretty silly, and everyone involved acknowledges its pretty much just for fun and entertainment. The status symbol of “owning a Lamborghini” goes away forever the second you start the engine.

There is a lot of psychology that goes into designing the appearance of cars. Like, an extreme amount. Car companies spend millions designing and refining body shapes and styles, and building brand images, and pushing commercials that seed these ideas into your head about their brand looking a certain way and that look therefore implying quality, they’re connecting all those dots in your head, one marketing campaign at a time, and it works because we’re honestly pretty gullible creatures at least when somebody wants to spend millions upon millions of dollars researching exactly how they can weasel their way into your brain.

And this might surprise you, but the same “looks incredible but the worst piece of shit ever” can certainly apply to luxury vehicles. Aside from notorious reliability and repairability issues, Lamborghinis don’t usually win any races either. They won’t win a drag race, they won’t win an oval track race, they won’t win a rally race. They’re fast, certainly, but they’re not the fastest and for what you pay for a Lamborghini you could build a much, MUCH better purpose-built race car. You could probably build 10 purpose-built race cars. Hell, people build race cars out of junkyard parts that can beat Lamborghinis. They’re not the end-all-be-all of cars, nor are any of the other luxury brands. They have some nice features but they also have a lot of dumb features and yes, a lot of cut corners too. They’re designed to be desirable and profitable, not to be the best.

So to answer your question, it absolutely IS the case for cars, in fact it’s probably even moreso the case than it is with computer parts. Unless you really need to roar down the highway towing a 10,000 pound trailer at 80 mph and still get up to that speed in 5 seconds flat, you really only need like probably 30-50 horsepower max for most of the daily driving that people do, but people’s driving habits and attitudes would have to change and they would hate the feel of gradual acceleration, so they would simply never buy such a car. I think we really underestimate how incredible even the cheapest “crappiest” cars are. We’re talking about machines cheap enough for almost everybody in our society to own, that can drive at high speeds, in perfectly dry, climate-controlled comfort, carrying many passengers and cargo, in almost any weather short of a tornado or flood, with excellent reliability for hundreds of thousands of miles, that provide constant lighting and electricity and entertainment, all while maintaining a high degree of safety for the occupants.

If you’d rather putter around on a riding lawnmower with a Lamborghini body kit on it, you absolutely can do that, but you have to understand that once you start comparing the limited features and abilities it provides you will quickly find what you’ve constructed is the real “piece of shit” in comparison. Just don’t forget your slow-moving vehicle sign!

Maybe we could generate those with AI… oh wait, I think I see the problem…