The full KCTV segment for the ICBM is now on the KCTV archive. The footage starts at 01:50 and ends at 12:00.
The video talks about some interesting things that many people might not know about the internet piracy, like The Scene and pretty large law enforcement bust of The Scene in 2020.
I think The Scene is hard to understand. It isn't a website or group of websites. The Scene is not publicly accessible at all. The Scene is made up of a bunch of different groups who have all agreed on rules for creating releases. They communicate on IRC and they share files over ftp servers. The files from within the scene are leaked to torrent websites (peer to peer). P2P and The Scene are strictly separate entities. In the early days of torrenting, early to mid 2000s, there was a very harsh rivalry between P2P and The Scene. The Scene was very resentful that scene releases were made public by P2P. The video doesn't mention the rivalry.
A release is called a "pre" and the accompanying release information file is called a "nfo". There is a rule in The Scene that only one release of a given content slot is allowed to exist. Like say you have a movie, The Scene rules permit 3 slots for a BluRay release of a movie: 1080p, 720p and SD. So a group makes a 720p release of a given BluRay disc and if that release meets all of The Scene rules, then no other group is permitted to create the same release. This creates the concept of a race. Groups within The Scene race to be the first to create a release because they put their own groups name on the release. The goal of The Scene is to be fast while maintaining a base level standard of quality.
https://predb.net/ (cw contains names of porn movies) (there's no porn on the website)
There is a sort of public ledger of scene releases called a predb. The link above is an example of a predb. The predb doesn't contain any pirated files, it's just a list of releases from The Scene. You can search for a specific content you want like a movie name or a television show. If you don't have access to The Scene, you can search the scene release on a torrent site and probably find it.
It feels to me that the video is reading from wikipedia, as many video essay makers do. The information that is provided in the video is nearly identical to what the wikipedia page for "The warez scene" says. I think there is some more interesting information of the "talk" page of wikipedia. Some of it is speculation, but given the context of the dates, you can get a general understanding of how The Scene is perceived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Warez_scene
A key detail that the video glosses over is that before 1976, software was not considered to be protected by copyright at all. The video starts at the year 1976, but doesn't explain why. The video mentions the 1976 copyright act later in the video but doesn't mention the full implications of the act. This is an example of how the concept of property has changed over time. Software created before 1976 was considered to be public domain and freely shareable. In my own opinion, the early piracy scene was motivated by people who had experienced a time where software was freely shareable, legally.
The video contains some minor inaccuracies. When he talks about 56k internet in 1970s/1980s, he makes the claim that it would take "over 9 hours" to download a movie on 56k. I don't know how he got these numbers, "9 hours" seems like a weirdly specific number. 56k means 56 kiloBITS per second. A byte is 8 bits. 56kbps is 7 kiloBYTES per second. 9 hours at 7 kB/s is ~227 MB. I don't know when the scene first released movies, but I don't think it was common in that time period. In the 2000s, it was common for movies to be compress to 700 mb so that they could fit on 1 standard CD disc and the quality was awful. I don't know of any time when movie releases were less than 700 MB. I don't think that The Scene was sharing movies in the 70s or 80s and it would take much longer than 9 hours to share a movie on 56k. The Scene stopped allowing 700 MB movie releases probably 15 years ago. Modern movie releases from The Scene are like 1-2 GB for SD, 5-10 GB for 720p, and 7-15 GB for 1080p.
I think rtorrent is maintained. it just doesn't get new features very often. You can see that it is still in the latest software repository for Debian for example. Debian would not include the software in the repository if it was not maintained.
The "neutered" state of IME is not a full removal and it is not known whether neutering ME could open you up to new vulnerabilities because the IME still loads up but in a lesser form. Also to neuter IME, you have to attach a eeprom programmer to your motherboard. (I have done this before. I tried the IME neuter.) Normal people don't know how to do an IME neuter. Did you just like link the github and think any person could neuter their IME by running some software? You have to physically rewrite the BIOS chip on your motherboard, potentially damaging your motherboard in the process. Only giganerds have attempted to do this.
IME was just one example. Modern computers have firmwares within each part of the hardware which act independently from the operating system. An SSD has it's own firmware which thinks independently from your OS and could be potentially doing malicious things without you knowing it. Even "open hardware SBCs" use proprietary firmware blobs in the GPU and networking components. Electronic devices can not be trusted from government surveillance.
Privacy is a different thing from OPSEC. The OP of this thread changed the thread title after I made my reply. Originally it had said OPSEC. As I wrote in my post, OPSEC requires you to analyze your threat model to determine the level of OPSEC that you need. An org using GPG encryption to secure their communications is great. If an org were trying avoid government surveillance, they should likely meet in person for communications. Using TAILS with Tor to shitpost on hexbear is a waste of time.
I'm not arguing against privacy or OPSEC or Free Software. I love the EFF and FSF. I've used Debian for over 15 years now. I just don't think that using Debian prevents the government from surveilling me. This post was originally called "Hexbear guide to opsec", which I thought was misleading and the OP changed it to something else. I think OPSEC is important but the most important part of OPSEC is knowing your threat model.
From March 4 to March 14, South Korea (ROK) and the United States have been doing a military operation on the border of DPRK called Freedom Shield. I would think that this tank exercise by the DPRK is meant to deter the US and ROK from invading DPRK.
KCNA is a website operated by the DPRK government. The article does call the exercise a training match and the Seoul Ryu Kyong Su Guards 105th Tank Division won the match, so it was a competitive exercise. There is an album of 30 photos attached to the article.
The league is called necropolis so I would think that the new expansion will be undead themed.
The voice speaking in the trailer is maybe a new character. The voice sounds sounds similar Cadiro Perandus and mentions prosperity. Cadiro was removed from the game in 3.16. In the lore, the Perandus family is very wealthy merchant family.
At the end of the trailer, we see 5 persons. The winged figure on the left is Catarina aka Mastermind, the final boss of the Immortal Syndicate of Betrayal League. The winged figure on the right is Lycia, the final boss of The Forbidden Sanctum of Sanctum League. The 3 shadowy figures are maybe Ulaman, Amanamu, and Kurgal, these are 3 bosses of The Abyssal Depth.
It is unclear whether the 5 figures at the end will be incorporated into the new league mechanic or if it is teasing a rework of the old game mechanics.
KCNA is the DPRK news outlet. The main post is the official statement from the DPRK. The summary is that the US keeps putting more military units near the Korean Peninsula. DPRK responded by firing a warning missile into the sea, called ICBM Hwasongpho-18. The KCNA article also includes like 25 photos that are kind of cool. The United States should stop antagonizing the DPRK.
Western media below:
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/north-korea-says-it-conducted-hwasong-18-icbm-monday-yonhap-2023-12-18/
https://apnews.com/article/north-korea-kim-icbm-missile-us-bf6bec75fca1fc2bf04170b9f65f274d
To me, Path of Exile game play begins outside of the game. The game is not just playing the game itself, but reading the wiki and using character planner software to find interesting or unintended interactions. The game is as much about discovering what is possible as it is about playing the character that you came up with.
The character planner software is called Path of Building. There are so many different moving parts in Path of Exile, which leads to many, many build possibilities. Path of Exile is basically an engineering game. It feels to me like Path of Exile 2 is removing the engineering element from the game.
The videos that I posted showcases a possible character build outcome after hundreds of hours of planning and preparation. The guy who came up with the build secretly planned it for over 2 years and spent weeks at the start of the league creating gear to make the build work properly. Most players of the game will never reach that point but I like that it's possible. Path of Exile feels like a game with endless possibilities.
Also the build in the showcase is built for one very specific game play style. It is built only for very quickly clearing map zones with moderate difficulty monsters and that's basically all it can do. This build would not be able to do uber bosses, sanctum, heist, delve, delirium, simulcrum, labyrinth, etc. There are some builds that can do all of the game modes, but there are specific builds that specialized for each game mode.
Some thoughts from the patch notes, information not included in the video
- 14 unique items from ancestor league are added to the core unique pool, can drop anywhere in the game. TOTA mechanic is not core, tattoos will not be accessible. One of the uniques is "Utula's Hunger", which is quite a good body armor, and "Rakiata's Dance", a very nice 2h sword.
- "When Delirium fog has ceased its movement due to players engaging in other League content, walking out of the mist will no longer cause the Delirium fog to dissipate." Quality of life improvement.
- Reduced drop rate of Forbidden Tomes, this is a nerf to Sanctum. Tomes will cost more which will make Sanctum less rewarding.
- "The vendor recipe for turning a Level 20 Gem into a 20% Quality Level 1 version of that Gem no longer works" This sucks. they want you to increase gem quality by labyrinth running or gcps I guess.
- "Labyrinth rewards can no longer be obtained from other league content." All ways of getting helmet enchants are removed. No helmet enchants
- "The Anima Stone Unique Jewel no longer has "+1 to maximum number of Summoned Golems"" Golem nerf?
- Lots of skill gems have changed the effect of their gem quality. I need to look further into these.
- There's no real changes to classes or ascendancies. Small QoL change to Chieftain.
- There's no major changes to the passive tree. One accuracy mastery is changed.
- "With the Speaker of the Dead Keystone Atlas Passive, Players can now Touch up to 20 nearby normal or magic Monsters for each Tormented Spirit Possessing them (previously 50)." Nerf to ghostbusting if that even still works.
- "With the Destructive Play Atlas Keystone allocated, killing the Map boss before The Maven can cast Up The Stakes no longer causes her to leave without summoning additional bosses." Huge QoL improvement for boss killing.
- Some of the nerfed unique items: Ashes of the Stars, Heatshiver, Replica Dragonfang's Flight, Kaom's Spirit, Ralakesh's Impatience
- "Hinekora's Lock can no longer foresee the result of corrupting an item at the Altar of Corruption." Hinekora's lock won't work for double corrupts in standard league. No hinekora's lock in affliction league
You say my mind is colonized because I think GDP on it's own is a misleading way to describe the trade relations between China and the US? You didn't even know that imports are not included in a country's GDP. I'm not even sure that you know what GDP is. GDP is not a Marxist measurement of the economy. GDP misplaces value on the sales price of goods rather than the value of labor. The Chinese government didn't even start using GDP measurements until 1985-1993, when China had major economic reforms under Deng Xiaoping. Before adopting GDP, China measured their economy with an accounting system called Material Product System (MPS). MPS was invented and used by the Soviet Union. MPS is still used by DPRK and Cuba to this day. MPS was created with Marxist principles and measures the annual production of material goods. GDP was developed by Simon Kuznets, a Russian-born American economist who chose to leave the Soviet Union after the 1917 revolution to live in the United States, and then went on to mentor Milton Friedman.
"Decolonize your mind". Who taught you this phrase? You think that my mind is colonized because I think it's misleading to imagine China's global trade using an American economic framework which places economic value on sales price rather than labor, created by a bourgeois economist who fled the Soviet Union shortly after the revolution. I don't know what to say to you if you believe that GDP is decolonial but I will tell you a joke.
Two economists are walking in a forest when they come across a pile of shit.
The first economist says to the other "I'll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit." The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.
They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says "l'll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit." The first economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.
Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. I can't help but feel like we both just ate shit for no reason." "That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased the GDP by $200!"