Hi everyone, this is an older article of mine where I reviewed the amazing Robotics;Notes Elite Visual Novel! At the time, I was super new to both blogging and the Science Adventure series, but I still wanted to share my appreciation for such a wonderful game! I'm sharing this again as the site is undergoing a massive revamp of its UI, and my partner and I are also updating some older articles, namely this one! I've added many things I missed back then, and it's nice how my love for this game never faded! If you decide to take the time to check it out, then thank you, and I really hope that you enjoy it!

Buried in the story was a deceptively simple question: does your AI agent count as an employee?

At a recent conference, Microsoft executive Rajesh Jha floated a provocative idea. In a future where companies deploy fleets of AI agents, those agents may need their own identities — logins, inboxes, and even seats inside software systems. If so, AI wouldn't shrink software revenue. It could expand it.

Yes, they did, but there are measurements to go along with that.

The U.S. restricted data transfers abroad. Cast as an assertion of sovereignty, the new posture signals weakness in great-power competition.

...When a great power restricts its data exports, the move suggests not only diminished control over platforms and infrastructure but also a lack of confidence in technological dominance and a posture defined by perceived strategic vulnerability...

...the EU’s approach to protecting individuals’ privacy was never just an expression of sovereignty. Protecting Europeans’ privacy by reining in data exports became necessary because of Europe’s infrastructural dependence, geopolitical frailty, and military irrelevance...

The United States did not feel the need to emulate Europe. For decades, the free flow of data served U.S. interests perfectly well. It allowed Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft to scale globally and crush local competitors...the U.S. championed free data flows because it was winning.

...the policy shift crystallizes the U.S.’s anxieties about its position in global competition.

Launched internationally in 2017, TikTok became the most downloaded app in the world by 2020...and the U.S. found itself on the receiving end of potential mass surveillance.

...TikTok’s success shattered conventional assumptions about U.S. technological supremacy. U.S. consumers voluntarily chose a Chinese-owned app over homegrown alternatives...

Regulatory actions reveal more about a country’s self-assessment than speeches or polls. They show what governments are willing to spend political capital on, what economic costs they are prepared to absorb, and what trade-offs they consider acceptable. The TikTok legislation—passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in a Congress that struggles to agree on almost anything else—alone reveals the depth of concern.

Countries also send messages through regulation, whether they intend to or not. When the United States builds data walls, it signals to allies and adversaries alike that it no longer feels confident enough to rely on the openness it once championed.

Europe turned to data export controls because it lacked technological power. Now the U.S. has joined the defensive club. Beijing will notice.

Hey guys. I have a few selfhosted systems that are available to the public. Its getting difficult to notice if any wrong port is still open or some web server is out of date. I am looking for a (foss) tool that can reguarly monitor my systems (via their public ip/domain) and notify me if any port that I not specifically allowed (in a config) is open. Additionally it would be cool if it checked all open ports if they provide out of date software (like webservers) or known security issues.

I found nikto, but it feels like its doing only half of what I want. greenbone feels way to bloated for my use case.

Do you know any kind of software that would do something like that?

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/44122961

After decades of living in a linux-FOSS world, I noticed these games at a 2nd-hand street market:

• Starcraft (few different versions/themes)
• Age of Empires (few different versions/themes)
• Civilization

They were a dollar each, so why not. I grabbed. Got home, installed win7 on a machine someone dumped on a curb, but could not install any of the games b/c I live offline. Fucking hell.

When I last played Starcraft well over a decade ago, I lived online and probably thought nothing of it. But it seems clear this shitty requirement is an anti-sharing policy because these games do not inherently need Internet. You can play against the machine or on a LAN. It’s not just the elitist exclusive WAN requirement that pisses me off.. there’s a privacy issue too. And what happens when I enter the product key of a used CD? They probably have a tolerance on how many times that can happen, perhaps dependant on whether the hardware changes. Fuck the nannying.

Also consider that Blizzard and Microsoft servers are not going to run forever. They can pull the plug at any time and then no one can install their game. Should be illegal to make installation needlessly dependant on a service. Forced obsolescence.

Some of these games also require a CD to be inserted, which means you must have a fucking noisey CD drive attached at all times. Back when these games were made it was no big deal because all laptops and desktops had CD drives. Not anymore. I’m mostly annoyed by having to insert the disc, wait for it to spin, then I have to hear the loud spin as I play which also wastes power. So I installed Alcohol 120 to image the Warcraft 3 disc (which I still had from yrs past). It has 3 different versions of the crack for the particular shitty scheme used on WC3. None of the images work.

Obviously if I want to play these games I will need warez versions. How good are those dodgy distros these days? I can imagine some are just the original content but you still enter a product key (which I have anyway). But if they still need a WAN that won’t cut it for me. Do the warez versions overcome all these issues? Are they still in circulation?

Alternatively, I should ask, have there been any versions of these games repackaged and re-released for the retro gamers which don’t impose the shitty protections and server dependencies?

If not, I must say unlicensed cracked versions would be the most ethical ones:

• designed obsolescence thwarted
• privacy kept
• more inclusive (offline ppl and those without CD drives)
• better UX (no fiddling with discs and hearing the spin)

Surtout ne changez rien, ça marche tellement mieux la concurrence libre et non faussée, toussa toussa

Because of the ubiquity, nay, monopoly of systemd I always assumed it was miles ahead of other init systems. Nope. I've been using a non-systemd environment for a while and must say I'm surprised by how little breaks, i.e., next to nothing. Moreover, boot and shutdown times are faster, and more of that good stuff. I suggest trying it out.

https://nosystemd.org/.

Digital clone being trained on his thoughts, tone and mannerisms to help workers feel connected