Just to provide some context as someone who played the hell out of 2020 (on gamepass) and is looking forward to buying 2024 minute 1 and then figuring out how to keep a cat from fucking up a HOTAS sled for minutes 2-900:

The install is small because that is just the core game. Theoretically, that is all you need and it contains the meshes/logic for meshes and plane textures and so forth. You will then stream map data as you play and cache that. So the first time you take off at Pyongyang International it will take a bit of time to load but subsequent trips will be super fast.

That said… you will almost assuredly download the world packs. This is the much more hand crafted cities and airports so you can genuinely feel like you are flying over Paris or escaping from London Heathrow’s international terminal and so forth. Or just to fix some weirdness because of a building layout near a river. And those world packs get big.

Before I switched over to linux for full time gaming? My PC install of MSFS 2020 was probably 100-200 GB on its own just from all the updates?

My understanding is that much of the map data is also used by bing maps and other satelite services. So those are unlikely to go away in the short term.

But also? The same is true for 2020. Yes, it will probably stop working at some point down the line. But it is a really good game for the time being and people have already gotten 4 years of awesome support for probably the best general purpose flight sim out there.

Also… this is the kind of game that kind of requires a “live service” element. Because having people download static map data for the entire planet just to play a game is untenable. Let alone providing semi-regular updates and supporting the questionably tasteful minigame of racing to go fly through the latest natural disaster.

Like almost everything, it isn’t about stopping piracy entirely.

Physical copies get sold early by stores/cashiers that don’t care. Or they get outright pocketed/copied at the factories and warehouses. Which lead to the constant “This nintendo game leaked a week or a month or whatever early”. Which… less so after the lawsuits but it means emulators can be updated to support the games before they even hit shelves.

Digital only doesn’t entirely stop that. But it tends to lead more toward “an unknown fake influencer posted all the cutscenes of this game online a week early”.

And if you are wondering why Sony is killing physical games…

It isn’t about being “evergreen”. It is about having historical evidence.

Because maybe someone will do a study in 2030 and want to be able to compare to your UX research in the 2000s. If you wrote your paper properly they can reproduce your experiments (to the degree reasonable) and actually demonstrate progress.

Its the inherent disconnect between “News” and “Science”.

Science requires rigorous study and incremental advancement. A 2023 article based on 2022 data is inherently understood to be… 2022 data (note: I did not actually check but that is the timeline I assume. It is in the study).

But news and social media just want headlines that get people angry and reinforce whatever nonsense people want to Believe.

It is similar to explaining basic concepts. Been a minute since the last time I was properly briefed, but think stuff like “Do NOT say ‘theory’ of evolution. Instead, talk about how evolution is the only accepted justification based on evidence and research”

I have sprinted without this being an issue so color me very confused.

Do you wear very loose fitting clothes by any chance?

Good on the workers. But my worry is that Boeing is a sinking ship and this will end up as anti-union propaganda when they (not the doors that fall off mid-flight) are what is blamed for Boeing collapsing.

No. There is every reason to “defend yourself”. The key is to actually be aware of what research and efforts are out there and minimizing your risk profile any time you are dealing with a black box.

I mean, it is known that people can pick locks. Do you plug your ears every time you hear someone talk about how doors can be compromised? Or do you give up on everything and remove every single deadbolt in your home?

Or… do you do a bit of research and figure out what you can do to make your home harder to break into. Whether it is sturdier screws, a reinforced doorjam, or other methods?

I can’t speak to monero specifically

But:

• Why aren’t they catching more criminals? They are. They just are finding alternate sources of evidence. Dick Wolf shows love to talk about how cops need to protect themselves from any poison fruit and blah blah blah. The reality is that they immediately go to the poison fruit and use that to make a plausible excuse for why they investigated something else that can confirm information they got from the illegal source. If you’ve ever wondered why they would think to investigate a random unrelated company that ends up being the smoking gun…
• Why didn’t anyone claim the bounty? Because the CIA and the like don’t want people to know they compromised it?

Back in my pure research days it was always fun to guess what the latest “big thing” was actually about. It was especially fun when you would be looking for funding opportunities and see really weird stuff that made no sense for the org sponsoring it but would have made perfect sense for a different 3LA.

It was ALSO real fun to totally never notice when certain funding opportunities dried up and then there was a big push in the news about how we need to outlaw technology those opportunities totally didn’t already compromise.

Like, for the better part of a decade The Big Thing was graph analysis techniques. And the number of kids who had no idea they were basically writing algorithms to process social media (especially twitter) was downright sad. And the people who DID realize what their work was geared toward? They applied for jobs where they got paid a lot more to do exactly that without needing to pretend it is actually about data storage technologies or optimizing cell tower load.

And… let’s just say that most of those algorithms ALSO apply toward cryptocurrencies and transaction logs (since they had great applications for bank transactions…) and even doing a number on tumblers and so forth.

While I agree this definitely feels like more of a threat than an action, it IS worth understanding the many times that tor nodes have been compromised. Exit nodes are a well documented mess (and have many of the same vulnerabilities normal VPNs do) but eavesdropping and traffic analysis are also probabilities based upon how much of the network any given org has access to.

If that NGO was doing hinky stuff or just doing a sloppy job? Those cops might actually have a LOT of actionable data that just needs a bit of processing.

Which is why it is always important to understand what your risks and benefits from a privacy related tool are. People often think “I’ll just put everything through a vpn/tor” which DRASTICALLY increases their risk profiles. But they also don’t understand how tor works well enough to even know what it gives them over a traditional vpn (as opposed to “Dark Web” stuff which is a different mess).

It very much sounds like ifixit are actively asking influencers/reviewers to compare it to at least one of those in the videos.

Doesn’t really change much.

You NEVER connect to sensitive resources via wifi. Different orgs and levels have different rules about whether a device capable of wifi can even be in the same room, but the key is to not connect it to the secure network. This is commonly referred to as “an airgap”. And if you are wondering how different ships can communicate with each other and The US? Don’t ask questions!

For less sensitive resources? YOLO that shit. But it is also incredibly trivial to set up a security model where users cannot connect to arbitrary networks.

So StinkyNet would, presumably, only be usable by personal devices. Which should have absolutely nothing sensitive on them to begin with. And if anything on any of the ship’s sensitive networks was even able to connect to StinkyNet then… the Navy done fucked up.

Which… might explain the rapid action to punish those who violated policy.

And if there is not immense amounts of “do not have a fucking fitbit” levels of warnings and policies, that is a problem for the US Navy itself. Because a lot of those will also cache data and send the last N days once they get back to shore.

Again, unless they were ACTUALLY doing sensitive stuff (rather than just “sensitive by default” to protect Leadership™ from having to think and make decisions) then we are looking at the same problem the russians have in Ukraine.

Otherwise? It is a policy violation, not a security violation, in and of itself. What people then share on social media is on them.

And a friendly reminder: Policy is made to minimize the risk of a security issue and you should follow it (if only because you are paid to). But it is VERY important to understand what you are actually protecting yourself from so that you understand if policy is even doing anything. Otherwise you get complete insanity as more and more bureaucrats and Leaders™ add bullshit so they can get a bonus for being “security minded”.

Itself? Not really.

If a ship is close enough to pick up an SSID they are close enough for any number of other methods. And starlink is theoretically trusted by the us government.

But if they were actually locked down for a real mission (not the stuff you do to make people feel important) then we could have seen the same kinds of telegram leaks Russian has near constantly.

Yup.

It is not an exoneration of the average soldier. A lot did some really heinous shit… like all soldiers in all wars. But a lot were also just there because they were drafted and had no choice. And that is what investigations are for.

People like the black and white of “You wore a uniform, you are pure evil”. And governments ESPECIALLY love that and a lot of media has been funded to specifically reinforce that so it is super easy to Other the other guys (We have always been at war with Eastasia and all that). But when you actually think things through? What is the difference between a conscript terrified in their bunk at night and a civillian who gleefully makes shells and tanks in a factory?

All of which is kind of moot. Because, to reference the great dril: You do not “gotta hand it to them” to ISIS, Nazi German, or Stalin and his cronies in the USSR.

While there is a lot of argument (in both directions) on the culpability of the average german soldier to the Nazis: The way you punish that is through trials. I hear Nuremburg had a few of those.

This was russia abducting enemy combatants and using them as slave labor for a decade. And, like most of stalin’s purges and enslavements, had very little to do with whatever crimes the slaves were accused of.

Looks photoshopped but I desperately need that shirt

Except they aren’t particularly well known. I am not even sure how many people even remember “Leave Britney alone” anymore. Let alone the name of the person who was in the video (if they ever knew). If you were to look up whatever Scumbag Steve’s legal name was, I would stare at you and be confused. If you say “Scumbag Steve” I instantly remember that picture.

So, in this case, “Cara Cunningham went into pornography after her viral Leave Britney Alone” video would be the non-transphobic version of that headline. It conveys all the information required.

A good example is Elliot Page where things get murky and there often is a need to acknowledge he transitioned because, otherwise, it makes portrayals like Juno and Shadowcat and the like confusing. So the common phrase I hear, when it is relevant, is “Elliot Page, in work prior to his transition, portrayed a teenager who made the mistake of letting Michael Cera stick it in her…”

But here? It adds nothing.

Shit on people for what they do, not for what they are.

jonathan majors is (allegedly?) a domestic abusing piece of shit. Yet I didn’t see a massive swarm of people insisting we need to start calling him the n-word.

Yet when a trans person is in the media (also I am not sure how Cara is an asshole in this situation, but I have not followed her in the slightest), everyone suddenly decides it is their civic duty to be as transphobic as possible.

Which mostly just says a lot about them.