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.
Once you've played poe for a while, you can play without following a guide exactly. You can even make a build from scratch. My favorite thing about path of exile is that you can make a character so powerful that it feels like you break the game. During necropolis league, I reached over 4 billion dps as manaforged arrows hierophant.
It might be the biggest expansion ever. Melee skills got a 70% more damage buff. Reflective mist from Kalandra league has been added to the core game. Sentinels from Sentinel league are added to the core game. Wildwood, Warden class, tinctures, and itemized spectre corpses from Affliction league have been added to the core game. Blight maps and Simulacrum have improved rewards. Recombination from Sentinel league has been reintroduced in the current temp league. The new expansion centers around hiring NPCs to automate tasks for you.
2006 was a date from my own personal experience. However, here is a document from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) US government agency. The document is called 800-147 Bios Protection Guidelines, published in April 2011. I am not positive that every manufacturer follows these guidelines but I did see that Dell and ASUS say on their website that all products comply with this document. It is at the very least an industry standard.
https://www.nist.gov/publications/bios-protection-guidelines
If you go to page 6 of the document, it says "Unauthorized modification of BIOS firmware by malicious software constitutes a significant threat because of the BIOS’s unique and privileged position within the PC architecture. A malicious BIOS modification could be part of a sophisticated, targeted attack on an organization—either a permanent denial of service (if the BIOS is corrupted) or a persistent malware presence (if the BIOS is implanted with malware)."
The document then recommends the following guidelines for computer manufacturers to secure the BIOS, which as I mentioned in my previous post, prevents the installation of bios files which do not match the manufacturer's digital signature.
Security guidelines are specified for four system BIOS features:
• The authenticated BIOS update mechanism, where digital signatures prevent the installation of BIOS update images that are not authentic.
• An optional secure local update mechanism, where physical presence authorizes installation of BIOS update images.
• Integrity protection features, to prevent unintended or malicious modification of the BIOS outside the authenticated BIOS update process.
• Non-bypassability features, to ensure that there are no mechanisms that allow the system processor or any other system component to bypass the authenticated update mechanism.
So yes, I am claiming that is impossible to flash a third-party BIOS without an external programmer on most computers. Considering this was the industry standard in 2011, many computers had this protection before 2011, and even more protections have been added since then.
no, it's possible to overwrite the BIOS chip without an external programmer on some devices
Comrade, it has not been possible to overwrite a bios chip without an external programmer since like 2006. When you update your BIOS's firmware, the existing BIOS verifies the new BIOS file using a PGP signature to check if the file has been approved by the manufacturer. This is in some ways a good thing because otherwise getting a computer virus would brick your PC by hijacking your BIOS.
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.
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.
I made this statement "GDP is a misleading thing to look at." Then the first reply to your comment where you mention first the 2% GDP number, the OP of the post has replied to you "barely noticeable drop in exports for China." Then you replied to that user, correcting them that the 2% number is more significant than it appears. You are seeing in real time that the information you provided has the capability of misleading people.
The 2% number that you are citing also doesn't account for the imports that China receives from the US, which makes up 7% of all imports. Internal trade and external trade are misleading to compare because external trades are for the purpose of acquiring things that can not be gotten internally. These are among reasons why I say 2% is a misleading number to look at when you consider the total impact of loss of trade.
China knows that it is being hurt a decent amount by losing trade with the US. This is why China has said to drop the tariffs. China has not denied that the tariffs are hurting them. China likes doing trade with the US. What the Chinese government has said is that the US is a bully and that bullies take a mile when you give them an inch. China is hoping that the US concedes to their self-inflicted wounds and then continues to do trades with China.