English Mobster @ EnglishMobster @lemmy.world

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Joined

2 yr. ago

(Psst. Canada had a plan to invade the US as well.)

I think my favorite part of this is looking at the Canadian and British plans for if the US invaded Canada.

Canada's plan was to pre-emptively invade the US, knowing that Canada wouldn't be able to hold the territory long-term. They would go as deep as they could before they started to fall back as slowly as possible, hoping to buy time for the UK to sail over and invade the mainland US.

The UK's plan was to abandon Canada and just let the Americans take over. Losing Canada was seen as "non-fatal" to the UK, and it was believed that sending an invasion force to fight back would hurt the UK more than if they just abandoned Canada's defense entirely.

Could be any number of reasons.

My money is on 4chan/8chan/whatever today's derivative is. I used to be super active with them back in the day when I was young, racist, and stupid.

This sort of stuff matches their target profile:

• Visible - Reddit has shone a spotlight on Lemmy recently, and Lemmy.world specifically has gotten called out as the most promising of all the Lemmy instances
• Vulnerable - the tooling to stop large-scale attacks doesn't exist. Users aren't "locked in" to the threadiverse yet. People generally aren't expecting it.
• "Lulzy" - attacking a large Lemmy community would cause a lot of panic in the wider threadiverse community. The 4chan/8chan trolls thrive on panic; they think people freaking out is funny. The more panic they cause, the funnier it is.

The methods line up, too. I wouldn't be surprised if they were behind the DDOS as well. DDOS is the simplest tool they use, and when that stops being funny they escalate.

CSAM, gore, scat, torture are all stuff they have in their arsenal, ready to spam. They go out and look for the stuff, build up folders of it to use on their victims. That stuff causes panic, and that's what they thrive on. They want to see the biggest response they can. Scat is just gross, usually a good opener. CSAM is good because it gets operators in legal trouble. Gore and torture makes people leave a site in droves.

Channers aren't dumb, either. They know how to use technology. If something is open source, that just gives them something to study and look for attack surfaces. Someone will make a custom-built tool to exploit a vulnerability and it will run until the vulnerability is patched. I had dozens of random tools back in the day that were intended for one-off attacks, plus stuff in the toolbelt like Low Orbit Ion Cannon (DDOS) and Cain and Abel (password cracking).

I should reiterate that it has been many years since I was part of that crowd - well over a decade at this point. Things are undoubtedly different. (I refuse to call these guys "Anonymous" - that name was butchered a long time ago when people started speaking on places like Twitter "on behalf of Anonymous". I'm not using the names they call themselves either.)

When I was a channer, one of the big targets was Reddit. Channers hated Reddit, because Reddit would steal stuff from 4chan and repost it. Reddit was just an inferior version of 4chan, but they were so smug about things and they were a bunch of prudes to boot. So Reddit was a relatively popular target until finally they got better at stopping large attacks.

I have to imagine that a lot of channers dislike Reddit still. Lemmy is seen as the new Reddit - and worse, it's run by commies.

Channers that do this stuff are Nazis. They just are. (Why do you think they chose the number 8 when 4chan got sick of them? It's not because it's 4 times 2.) They're extremely open about being Nazis, with jokes about gas chambers and everything. You get the hardcore tankies as well, but the tankies are generally so far gone as to be essentially indistinguishable from Nazis themselves.

The fact that Lemmy is left-leaning makes it another reasonable target. Nazis hate commies, although they will accept tankies (to an extent). This is probably why Lemmy.ml wasn't targeted despite being the historic "main" Lemmy instance (full of tankies). Lemmy.world is left-leaning but still highly visible, so it'd be a good target. If Lemm.ee keeps growing, that's probably the next target on the list.

This is all baseless speculation. Lemmygrad and Hexbear are both also reasonable sources. Hexbear is notorious for being disruptive in the same way 4chan was back in the day, but supposedly they're better nowadays (not that I necessarily believe that).

But I'm reminded of the stuff I did as a dumb kid, before I knew better. It matches with how they act. I'm not saying it's explicitly 4chan/8chan/888chan/whatever, but the way it's coordinated certainly smells familiar.

Fuck tankies!

Not to mention that the packets almost surely are made of plastic. So the ketchup in turn almost certainly is loaded with microplastics.

Really the issue is that when all posts are hidden, Sync doesn't try to load more.

I switched my Lemmy settings to "hide on read" but it broke Sync because Sync would refuse to fetch posts if I had already seen everything on the first 2-3 pages. I had to flip that setting back off on Lemmy's end in order to get it to load things.

EA's been doing layoffs all year. They announced back in May that they're cutting 6% of all positions across the company. This is likely part of that, since the layoffs will continue through September.

EA is not a believer in the sunk cost fallacy.

I'm a AAA game dev who worked on a game at EA for 4 years (plus 2 years of pre-production I was not involved with).

They cancelled the game a couple months before we were supposed to launch. Everyone at the studio got laid off. They had sunk literally millions into the game, but when they decided to change their minds there was nothing we could do to stop them. We literally had a working game that never went to players.

This is not exclusive to EA, either. Disney Interactive pulled this a couple times as well. There's an open-world Iron Man game which was largely complete but never saw the light of day (even though it was really fun!) because Disney decided they didn't like movie tie-ins one day.

There was a Pirates of the Caribbean game that was also nearly finished when it got cancelled. The assets/code got sold to Ubisoft and the game was reworked into Assassin's Creed: Black Flag.

Moral of the story: never assume your game is safe until you see it on shelves.

Disappointingly, there is not a miniature France inside of the miniature France.

My brain thought I was on !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone for a second

Eh, kinda?

In California generally? Sure; you get a jolt every 1-2 years. Typically they're over within seconds; you have enough time to register that an earthquake is happening and that it isn't your imagination, then it ends. A really big one will go on for about a minute or two before it stops; last time we had one of those was back in 2019. Usually they last less than 30 seconds.

This specific area isn't typically the epicenter of many earthquakes, though. They're usually to the west (San Andreas Fault) or to the south (San Gabriel Fault, San Jacinto Fault).

Not necessarily instance-agnostic; in the past I've been redirected to the home instance and not the copy on my instance. (Although this may have been fixed.)

/c/leopardsatemyface@lemmy.world

https://ttrpg.network/ is the fediverse home for DnD and any other tabletop roleplaying game. It's based on Lemmy.

There's also https://pathfinder.social/ for specifically Pathfinder (which is related to DnD but is technically a different system based on an older version of DnD).

Groups are always going to be the hardest part.

Ask your friends/coworkers if they want to join you. Personally knowing people goes a long way. Even if you guys are just acquaintances, it's better than joining a group of strangers. Generally 5 is an ideal number (counting yourself), with 3 being a "minimum" for a good game. You can get away with 2 if an adventure is specifically designed for it, but generally the best experiences will be when you have 5-6 people total.

My last campaign I asked a group of co-workers if they wanted to play, and we wound up with a group of 4 that played every 2 weeks. I'm also in a campaign with my fiance's friend where it's 5 of us every week (my fiance was invited and she asked if I could come along, even though I didn't know the organizer originally). There's a third campaign where my stepdad asked me if I wanted to join him; we're a group of 7 meeting every 2 weeks.

But you still totally can join a group of strangers, if you want! As others have suggested, start by asking your local comic book/games shop. Places that sell Warhammer figurines are also good spots to start; there's a lot of overlap in the communities and typically they'll have DnD nerds too.

Once you have a group, the next hardest part is figuring out who will be the Dungeon Master. The Dungeon Master is the referee; they call the shots, decide what happens, and act as "the bad guy". The Dungeon Master is a player, too; they just have different responsibilities than the other players. It's a lot of work to be a DM, but it's very rewarding.

My first-ever campaign I became the Dungeon Master, because nobody else wanted to do it and I really wanted to play DnD. I didn't have a firm grasp of the rules, but I tried my best and worked with my players as much as I could. You want to make sure that they're having fun, and you want to facilitate communication as much as possible. Players will have lots of questions - "is it okay if I do XYZ?" "What gods should I worship?" etc. It's the DM's job to handle this sort of stuff and make sure everyone is on the same page.

This also applies to other things, as well. Typically the first session with a group is "Session 0", where everyone tests that everything is working and people are put on the same page. It's not expected that people play in session 0; the goal is to establish boundaries.

What themes are going to be in this campaign? Does the campaign allow guns, or is it strictly fantasy weaponry? What level do players start at? Are there any homebrew rules? How are player stats generated? Are people okay with descriptions of slavery? Sexual assault? Is it okay for players to romance other players? Where do people draw the line? You make these decisions in session 0 so everyone is onboard and comfortable - make sure everyone is heard and everyone has collectively agreed on where that line is.

A great example - a player I had in a campaign had arachnophobia, so I reskinned my spiders into something else for her (without telling her they were really spiders - I described them as giant rats).

Certain campaigns may have other rules. For example, some campaigns may exist in a world where magic is outlawed or rare - this means that spellcasters aren't common, and being able to do magic is an oddity or a crime. Other times there may be restrictions like "this takes place in a tropical jungle, so if you wear heavy armor your character will always be hot and may have issues."

It's up to the DM what rules exist in the world (or not). Even if it's an established setting/world, they may put restrictions on things they don't want to deal with. Some DMs will allow "oddball" races like Aarakocra (Jarnathan from the DnD movie is an Aarakocra). Other DMs ban them because they can fly, and flying creatures break puzzles - or they don't think a race like Warforged is a fit for their setting. Some DMs really care about your backstory so they can use it against you later; others are sticking to a script where you are a blank slate and your backstory doesn't matter.

If you suggest the campaign, it's very likely that you will wind up as the DM, unless you can con someone else into it. Some groups even rotate the DM, where 3-4 people serve as the DM with their own campaigns and each week it's a different person running things.

Only once the DM has been sorted and you've had your session 0 can you really think about character creation. Your DM can even help you come up with characters during session 0, if you'd like (that's part of the reason why session 0 exists).

Every campaign will be different. The rules on what kinds of characters will be good fits will always change. Some DMs are very combat-heavy; others will go weeks without a combat encounter and rely heavily on roleplaying and intrigue. You can't really come up with a "best" character because you will always have strengths and weaknesses; you might be good at combat but bad at puzzles.

Either way, you should strive to have a balanced party. Generally you want a "Striker" (max single-target DPS), a "Scout" (stealth), a "Face" (high Charisma, good at deception), a "Blaster" (max AoE), a "Controller" (control where people can or can't go), a "Defender" (tank, draw aggro, protect your squishies), a "Healer" (take a wild guess), a "Librarian" (high knowledge/investigation), a "Support" (apply buffs), and a "Utility" (out of combat magic).

Of course... you don't have that many characters! So you pick and choose which roles your party is lacking, doubling or tripling up on some roles. For example, the Healer is frequently dropped entirely because combat healing isn't very good in DnD. The Blaster is often also the Librarian or Face, the Striker can be the Scout, the Controller can be Utility, etc. You need to look at what everyone wants to play and figure out where the party is lacking, then create a character to fit that gap.

The "standard" party is generally "Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard". Each character is usually covering multiple roles (although classes will handle some roles better than others). Note that in Baldur's Gate you run into all those exact classes within 5 minutes after the tutorial... almost like the devs did that on purpose!

You don't have to run that exact party, but it's a good guideline for how you should build a party. Druids can substitute for Clerics or Wizards, Barbarians or Paladins can substitute for Fighters, Monks or Rangers can substitute for Rogues, Sorcerers/Warlocks can substitute for Wizards, heck even Warlock/Wizard can substitute for Fighter with the right build.

A lot of builds you see online will be "minmaxed" builds. They'll do things like multiclassing and bending the mechanics of the game until they break. Your DM may not allow this. Get a vibe for what's okay or not before just grabbing builds online just because they seem powerful.

A helpful resource is DnD Beyond. They have guided character creation and interactive character sheets. Game mechanics are turned into easy buttons and stuff is calculated automatically instead of making you do math.

If your campaign is on DnD Beyond and someone has bought books through them, they can opt to share those books with everyone in that campaign. This lets you have access to content you'd usually need to buy just because your friend has it - very handy! IRL you'd just share the book, but DnD Beyond makes it very easy.

I hope that helps!

DnD is a lot of fun, but the challenge is always in keeping the group going. It's very easy to miss a session and have the whole thing fall apart. Make sure that standards are set and that attendance is expected (with exceptions, of course). Most campaigns will never be completed; they die to schedule conflicts after a year or so. That'll be your eternal enemy, so do your part in trying to fight it.

Any time you make something, you have a copyright on it.

You have a copyright on the comment you just made, for example. And I have a copyright on this reply. It just magically happens once you create the work.

You can give your copyright away (for example, allowing Lemmy to publish your work on other instances or show it to others). You can also sell your copyright; when a publisher buys a book from an author, they actually buy the copyright to the words the author wrote (and thus the author loses their copyright over the work).

This goes beyond just words - pictures and whatnot have the same inherent copyright.

So the problem is that white noise doesn't compress very easily.

Compression algorithms are generally designed to reduce noise; if you have something that's extremely noisy it's really hard to compress because that's not what the algorithms were designed to do.

This means that these podcasts take up more space, which means they use more bandwidth than an equivalent non-white-noise solution.

A middle ground would be banning these "podcasts" and then having a white noise generator built into the app. The white noise generator would run locally on your device (very easy to make white noise) and wouldn't cost any bandwidth at all.

Ah-ha! Thank you!

Courts have been blocking them consistently. They've been a touch more aggressive, but Congress needs to pass more aggressive laws. Many of these companies are vertically integrated, not horizontally - and the laws aren't really equipped to deal with that.

Google does the same.

I don't use Chrome. Every single time I go to any Google service, it tells me I need to be using Chrome. It doesn't take "no" for an answer; it's a constant nag.

Google Docs especially gets mad and doesn't even let you paste without formatting.