This is a crazy exchange.

Does the media really think the holocaust was caused by free speech? https://t.co/EBUKx75Wfm

— JD Vance (@JDVance) February 16, 2025

Literally crying.

!animalposters !cats

As he sits in his ivory tower.

So would you rather us lose our sovereignty? If you believe that just say it.

You would give up your job, become homeless, and give up your retirement account?

If you believe that just do it.

Yeah, I'm prepared to do that -- and one more than that.

The additional one is arm up and resist.

No fricking way will I accept an American overlord on our soil.

/u/Link50L

You and what rifle? We've been disarmed! You stood by and probably cheered it as it happened!

!nooticers note how he says "arm up and resist" not just resist. This is a man who own no guns and who thinks, what he'll just be provided with one when shit hits the fan?

Stay strong like Brock, everyone!

!animalposters !cats

Video Games Can't Afford to Look This Good

The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?

By Zachary Small

Dec. 26, 2024

One way to understand the video game industry's current crisis is by looking closely at Spider-Man's spandex.

For decades, companies like Sony and Microsoft have bet that realistic graphics were the key to attracting bigger audiences. By investing in technology, they have elevated flat pixelated worlds into experiences that often feel like stepping into a movie.

Designers of last year's Marvel's Spider-Man 2 used the processing power of the PlayStation 5 so Peter Parker's outfits would be rendered with realistic textures and skyscraper windows could reflect rays of sunlight.

That level of detail did not come cheap.

Insomniac Games, which is owned by Sony, spent about $300 million to develop Spider-Man 2, according to leaked documents, more than triple the budget of the first game in the series, which was released five years earlier. Chasing Hollywood realism requires Hollywood budgets, and even though Spider-Man 2 sold more than 11 million copies, several members of Insomniac lost their jobs when Sony announced 900 layoffs in February.

Cinematic games are getting so expensive and time-consuming to make that the video game industry has started to acknowledge that investing in graphics is providing diminished financial returns.

"It's very clear that high-fidelity visuals are only moving the needle for a vocal class of g*mers in their 40s and 50s," said Jacob Navok, a former executive at Square Enix who left that studio, known for the Final Fantasy series, in 2016 to start his own media company. "But what does my 7-year-old son play? Minecraft. Roblox. Fortnite."

Joost van Dreunen, a market analyst and professor at New York University, said it was clear what younger generations value in their video games: "Playing is an excuse for hanging out with other people."

When millions are happy to play old games with outdated graphics — including Roblox (2006), Minecraft (2009) and Fortnite (2017) — it creates challenges for studios that make blockbuster single-player titles. The industry's audience has slightly shrunk for the first time in decades. Studios are rapidly closing and sweeping layoffs have affected more than 20,000 employees in the past two years, including more than 2,500 Microsoft workers.

Many video game developers built their careers during an era that glorified graphical fidelity. They marveled at a scene from The Last of Us: Part II in which Ellie, the protagonist, removes a shirt over her head to reveal bruises and scrapes on her back without any technical glitches.

But a few years later, costly graphical upgrades are often barely noticeable.

When the studio Naughty Dog released a remastered version of The Last of Us: Part II this year, light bounced off lakes and puddles with a more realistic shimmer. In a November ad for the PlayStation 5 Pro, an enhanced version of the Sony console that retails for almost $700, the billboards in Spider-Man 2's Manhattan featured crisper letters.

Optimizing cinematic games for a narrow group of consumers who have spent hundreds of dollars on a console or computer may no longer make financial sense. Studios are increasingly prioritizing games with basic graphics that can be played on the smartphones already in everyone's pocket.

"They essentially run on toasters," said Matthew Ball, an entrepreneur and video game analyst, talking about games like Roblox and League of Legends. "The developers aren't chasing graphics but the social connections that players have built over time."

Going Hollywood

Developers had long taught players to equate realism with excellence, but this new toaster generation of g*mers is upsetting industry orthodoxies. The developer behind Animal Well, which received extensive praise this year, said the game's file size was smaller than many of the screenshots used to promote it.

A company like Nintendo was once the exception that proved the rule, telling its audiences over the past 40 years that graphics were not a priority.

That strategy had shown weaknesses through the 1990s and 2000s, when the Nintendo 64 and GameCube had weaker visuals and sold fewer copies than Sony consoles. But now the tables have turned. Industry figures joke about how a cartoony game like Luigi's Mansion 3 on the Nintendo Switch considerably outsells gorgeous cinematic narratives on the PlayStation 5 like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/gui-instructions-installing-wireguard-on-silverblue/74713

liamdev: I need graphical user interace (GUI) instructions for installing Wireguard on Silverblue - Fedora 34. I'm visiting family at the moment and evidently they have Avast - which I do not want to use and I don't want the VPN that they have set up with the router to interfere with mine.

I've read the 1981 internet protocol that was published by DoD. I'm so immeasurably frustrated that something like an encrypted tunnel from end point to end point is such a complicated issue.

The articles on Fedora Magazine are not sufficient for a beginner and only show command line instructions and the only video on YouTube that's worth watching is chaotic with a guy typing a millions commands plus he's using Ubuntu anyways. GUI instrucitons please.

computersavvy: If they are already using a vpn why add another layer. Since you are just visiting you can temporarily disable your own vpn, use the one they already have configured at router level and go with it.

liamdev: With all due respect, I was looking for GUI instructions on how to set up the Wireguard VPN on Fedora Silverblue, not advice on what I should be doing with a presumption that I had one set up before.

liamdev: I haven't come across anyone that has sucessfully set up a VPN on a YouTube tutorial or anything else via GUI. VPN's should be simple, point and click free solutions to protect your identity and information from being transmitted widely over the internet. There's literally no point in moving forward with any future releases of any distribution if a GUI VPN hasn't been developed.

Regarding a server - i don't have a personal VPN server - that's what WireGuard is supposed to be ? WireGuard is supposed to be both the VPN Server and the VPN Client for someone that has neither right now.

computersavvy: I think you are misinterpreting what a vpn is & does.

It securely connects you via a tunnel from one point to another, the remote being a vpn server and may be free, paid, or company owned.

liamdev: Thanks for the info. My use case is this - I want to be able to install a VPN so that anything I search for on the internet is encrypted. I want an encrypted tunnel between my computer and the internet browser.

The reality is, there are (from what I see) 1.5 million man pages that have 10,000 functions. In other words, there's 150 ways to do the same thing. The system is so broken that I'm shocked the DoD has even let it carry on the way that it has.

From what I understand, Gnome Box VM's don't even hide your physical IP address or MAC address or anything really? So if someone wanted to use the hacking cowtools that are in Linux - well there wouldn't be much stopping them from getting literally all of my passwords and information…

So if someone wanted to use the hacking cowtools that are in Linux - well there wouldn't be much stopping them from getting literally all of my passwords and information…

augenauf: interesting, I would be curious to learn how to do that, just for research purposes. could you share any insights?

liamdev: Gothca - thanks, Sure thing, I'll map them out. Here's how you:

Get Kali Linux -

Fingerprint Web Apps & Servers for Better Recon [Tutorial]

Clear the Logs & History on Linux Systems to Delete All Traces You Were There [Tutorial]

Haunt a Computer Using SSH [Tutorial]

How Hackers Can Find Hidden Wi-Fi Networks & Their Names

Generate Crackable Handshakes with the ESP8266 [Tutorial]

Watch Hackers Craft Malicious Office Macros (ft. Kilian from SecurityFWD)

I mean just follow that channel in general. Then look at:

How to HACK a password // password cracking with Kali Linux and HashCat - how to HACK a password // password cracking with Kali Linux and HashCat

You get the point.

So, regarding the VPN and just general freedom to have privacy haha… I'll check out the blog post again. I don't understand how it's so easy to find out how to track and airplane from a video tutorial but something as basic as a VPN seems to have so many different components to the workload that could break at any moment.

liamdev: With all due respect, it's none of your business why I don't just turn it off at the Router level. I genuinely mean that as well - I don't mean to disrespect you, but posting in a public forum why I don't do that shouldn't even be a consideration as a response.

I'm gathering that no one has developed a GUI to use this Wireguard VPN. I clicked through the link that you sent, and the link that was in there and the link in that one too. Thanks for the effort but it didn't provide an actual GUI answer.

I'm gathering that no one has developed a GUI to use this Wireguard VPN.

augenauf: It's integrated in Network Manager in Gnome, consider searching the internet.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NetworkManager#VPN_support

liamdev: okay so there's no way to easily install the WireGuard VPN via a GUI. The strategy here is to loop people in w/ Lenovo, offer them "free" everything that's not really free, offer tons of documentation to the point where people either give up or - the optimal outcome - they hire a company like Red Hat - that's using non-profits as a tax write off - or someone else that's anonymous but the risk in the anonymous folks is that they could be hackers ha.

If there was a "CEO" of Fedora, who would that be? Who is in charge of operations? Who is in charge with the Lenovo relationship? Who is in charge with the financial side is probably the most important in this question. I don't want to reach out to an anonymous profile and this VPN is arguably one of the most critical elements of the research I'm doing. If this is seriously the end result - the messages on these threads and recommendations - then there is a massive problem that needs to be addressed.

augenauf: So, you tried to set up the wireguard between your Fedora Workstation and your EC2 instance?

Where are you stuck? What are the error messages? Any logs?

liamdev: No, I'm hopeful you can help me find some way to connect directly with the Fedora leadership team. What is the best route? I believe whoever would be equivalent to the CFO would be the most appropriate.

augenauf: So, I am going to close the topic if you are not interested in technical support solving your problem. You're wasting your time and our time by discussing useless stuff. Had you ever posted a link to the guide you are trying to follow, the commands you had executed, the conf files you used, and error messages or log files that were generated, we could have long solved your problem. Instead …

As for the contact to Fedora Council and its Chair, I am sure you find that in Fedora Docs or by means of a search engine.

Do you actually call Jeff Bezos if your EC2 instance doesn't install an update?

I can only second @ilikelinux comment; get a professional IT consultant. He or she will setup wordpress and a store within a couple of days, including a wireguard connection for you to mess up the installation.

https://www.mcgorray.com/obituaries/LIAM-J-BIRT?obId=27828780

!schizomaxxxers press to pay respects to our fallen king

- 39 votes

Lmao at thousands of people downloading Rednote (the version of tiktok that is actually owned by China) to spite the U.S. government, finding themselves having lovely interactions with the millions of Chinese citizens on the app & inadvertently undoing decades of U.S. propaganda. pic.twitter.com/2OVe06tTpz

— abby (@abby4thepeople) January 13, 2025

AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/7ecqW5Xwxa

— Bird on Fire 🔥 (@nobodyknows2322) January 14, 2025

i will birdpost when i am no longer a walking pathogen. for now. shitposting

Elon and I decided to honor our African heritage by naming him Niggerman pic.twitter.com/5CsBITg4q7

— Brittany Venti (@BrittanyXVenti) February 24, 2025

It's all just like wall to wall orange man bad / if you scroll back further anti-covid 'trust the science'

She used to make short films and dense, disturbing line art

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by social media, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through Black Twitter at dawn looking for an angry fix.

To discuss the 5th chapter of our bookclub current pick, "Petersburg" by Andrey Bely.

!bookworms

Nikolai Apollonovich and a glowie go to a bar, hilarity ensues. The footnotes mentioned that Bely referenced Dostoevsky and it shows, Pavel Yakovlevich conversation with Nikolai parallels that of Profiry Petrovich from C&P with Rodion Raskolnikov.

Department of Education is (soon) kill!?

I was talking to a irl maga person a month ago and they were like:

...what? It doesn't matter who gets appointed to head the DOE because Trump will dismantle it. He literally said so lol

And I was like

pshhh that will never happen...

President @realDonaldTrump addresses the drivers before the 2025 Daytona 500. pic.twitter.com/DP9hXWjDpm

— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) February 16, 2025

wtf man? its not even round?? the cheese doesnt cover all the sauce???

seems everyone involved, from the chef to the judges, was drunk as shit

This is ongoing, with no end in sight so far.

1. "That statue should be in JAIL"

2. "they built a frickin statue" "as they should"

3. "let's make a petition to get it removed" "why can't we simply destroy it"

4. "some real racist comments in here..." "you sound vaccinated"

5. "If I lived near that monstrosity it would be a boat anchor"

6. "I love that bird" "I use that flag in your profile photo as potty paper"

7. "is that real bronze... scrap prices are up right now wink, wink"

8. "darn racists... I wish many generations of Amurimutts for your bloodline " "So then you agree that mixed grandkids would be a curse?"

9. "where is it, I wanna take a dump on it too"

These comments just go on and on lol...

What the heck is going on in Alabama?https://t.co/xgFQpPdSTk pic.twitter.com/3qJyDgaeQ1

— I Love America News (@ILA_NewsX) February 21, 2025

Ιmаgínе соmfу оnļínе mоnítоríng ínkwеļļs аnd thеn sudеnļу bеung sеnd undеr соvеr íjtо drug саrtеļ

!dramatards !chuds !upmarseysluts !hawktuah

the same elon musk that supports the IA despite having a 'ton of negative bs' about him lmao

even as recently as September he still was supporting them when he was campaigning for Trump

per usual,