#network protocol installed

[phonesuite]

The telephone system is an essential tool for successful hospitality operations, and where evolving communication is key to providing exceptional customer service. A robust phone system ensures that orders are accurately taken, reservations are managed, and customer inquiries are answered. Read More...

[mariacallous]

In the span of just weeks, the U.S. government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history—not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly defined government role. And the implications for national security are profound.

First, it was reported that people associated with the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had accessed the U.S. Treasury computer system, giving them the ability to collect data on and potentially control the department’s roughly $5.45 trillion in annual federal payments.

Then, we learned that uncleared DOGE personnel had gained access to classified data from the U.S. Agency for International Development, possibly copying it onto their own systems. Next, the Office of Personnel Management—which holds detailed personal data on millions of federal employees, including those with security clearances—was compromised. After that, Medicaid and Medicare records were compromised.

Meanwhile, only partially redacted names of CIA employees were sent over an unclassified email account. DOGE personnel are also reported to be feeding Education Department data into artificial intelligence software, and they have also started working at the Department of Energy.

This story is moving very fast. On Feb. 8, a federal judge blocked the DOGE team from accessing the Treasury Department systems any further. But given that DOGE workers have already copied data and possibly installed and modified software, it’s unclear how this fixes anything.

In any case, breaches of other critical government systems are likely to follow unless federal employees stand firm on the protocols protecting national security.

The systems that DOGE is accessing are not esoteric pieces of our nation’s infrastructure—they are the sinews of government.

For example, the Treasury Department systems contain the technical blueprints for how the federal government moves money, while the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) network contains information on who and what organizations the government employs and contracts with.

What makes this situation unprecedented isn’t just the scope, but also the method of attack. Foreign adversaries typically spend years attempting to penetrate government systems such as these, using stealth to avoid being seen and carefully hiding any tells or tracks. The Chinese government’s 2015 breach of OPM was a significant U.S. security failure, and it illustrated how personnel data could be used to identify intelligence officers and compromise national security.

In this case, external operators with limited experience and minimal oversight are doing their work in plain sight and under massive public scrutiny: gaining the highest levels of administrative access and making changes to the United States’ most sensitive networks, potentially introducing new security vulnerabilities in the process.

But the most alarming aspect isn’t just the access being granted. It’s the systematic dismantling of security measures that would detect and prevent misuse—including standard incident response protocols, auditing, and change-tracking mechanisms—by removing the career officials in charge of those security measures and replacing them with inexperienced operators.

The Treasury’s computer systems have such an impact on national security that they were designed with the same principle that guides nuclear launch protocols: No single person should have unlimited power. Just as launching a nuclear missile requires two separate officers turning their keys simultaneously, making changes to critical financial systems traditionally requires multiple authorized personnel working in concert.

This approach, known as “separation of duties,” isn’t just bureaucratic red tape; it’s a fundamental security principle as old as banking itself. When your local bank processes a large transfer, it requires two different employees to verify the transaction. When a company issues a major financial report, separate teams must review and approve it. These aren’t just formalities—they’re essential safeguards against corruption and error.

These measures have been bypassed or ignored. It’s as if someone found a way to rob Fort Knox by simply declaring that the new official policy is to fire all the guards and allow unescorted visits to the vault.

The implications for national security are staggering. Sen. Ron Wyden said his office had learned that the attackers gained privileges that allow them to modify core programs in Treasury Department computers that verify federal payments, access encrypted keys that secure financial transactions, and alter audit logs that record system changes. Over at OPM, reports indicate that individuals associated with DOGE connected an unauthorized server into the network. They are also reportedly training AI software on all of this sensitive data.

This is much more critical than the initial unauthorized access. These new servers have unknown capabilities and configurations, and there’s no evidence that this new code has gone through any rigorous security testing protocols. The AIs being trained are certainly not secure enough for this kind of data. All are ideal targets for any adversary, foreign or domestic, also seeking access to federal data.

There’s a reason why every modification—hardware or software—to these systems goes through a complex planning process and includes sophisticated access-control mechanisms. The national security crisis is that these systems are now much more vulnerable to dangerous attacks at the same time that the legitimate system administrators trained to protect them have been locked out.

By modifying core systems, the attackers have not only compromised current operations, but have also left behind vulnerabilities that could be exploited in future attacks—giving adversaries such as Russia and China an unprecedented opportunity. These countries have long targeted these systems. And they don’t just want to gather intelligence—they also want to understand how to disrupt these systems in a crisis.

Now, the technical details of how these systems operate, their security protocols, and their vulnerabilities are now potentially exposed to unknown parties without any of the usual safeguards. Instead of having to breach heavily fortified digital walls, these parties  can simply walk through doors that are being propped open—and then erase evidence of their actions.

The security implications span three critical areas.

First, system manipulation: External operators can now modify operations while also altering audit trails that would track their changes. Second, data exposure: Beyond accessing personal information and transaction records, these operators can copy entire system architectures and security configurations—in one case, the technical blueprint of the country’s federal payment infrastructure. Third, and most critically, is the issue of system control: These operators can alter core systems and authentication mechanisms while disabling the very tools designed to detect such changes. This is more than modifying operations; it is modifying the infrastructure that those operations use.

To address these vulnerabilities, three immediate steps are essential. First, unauthorized access must be revoked and proper authentication protocols restored. Next, comprehensive system monitoring and change management must be reinstated—which, given the difficulty of cleaning a compromised system, will likely require a complete system reset. Finally, thorough audits must be conducted of all system changes made during this period.

This is beyond politics—this is a matter of national security. Foreign national intelligence organizations will be quick to take advantage of both the chaos and the new insecurities to steal U.S. data and install backdoors to allow for future access.

Each day of continued unrestricted access makes the eventual recovery more difficult and increases the risk of irreversible damage to these critical systems. While the full impact may take time to assess, these steps represent the minimum necessary actions to begin restoring system integrity and security protocols.

Assuming that anyone in the government still cares.

[gansey-like]

Hey so this is super scary

Meta on Tuesday announced a set of changes to its content moderation practices that would effectively put an end to its longstanding fact-checking program, a policy instituted to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media apps.

The reversal of the years-old policy is a stark sign of how the company is repositioning itself for the Trump era. Meta described the changes with the language of a mea culpa, saying that the company had strayed too far from its values over the prior decade.

“We want to undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly installed global policy chief, said in a statement.

Instead of using news organizations and other third-party groups, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, will rely on users to add notes or corrections to posts that may contain false or misleading information.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, said in a video that the new protocol, which will begin in the United States in the coming months, is similar to the one used by X, called Community Notes.

“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. The company’s current fact-checking system, he added, had “reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”

Mr. Zuckerberg conceded that there would be more “bad stuff” on the platform as a result of the decision. “The reality is that this is a trade-off,” he said. “It means that we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down."

Elon Musk has relied on Community Notes to flag misleading posts on X. Since taking over the social network, Mr. Musk, a major Trump donor, has increasingly positioned X as the platform behind the new Trump presidency.

Meta’s move is likely to please the administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump and its conservative allies, many of whom have disliked Meta’s practice of adding disclaimers or warnings to questionable or false posts. Mr. Trump has long railed against Mr. Zuckerberg, claiming the fact-checking feature treated posts by conservative users unfairly.

Since Mr. Trump won a second term in November, Meta has moved swiftly to try to repair the strained relationships he and his company have with conservatives.

Mr. Zuckerberg noted that “recent elections” felt like a “cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.”

In late November, Mr. Zuckerberg dined with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where he also met with his secretary of state pick, Marco Rubio. Meta donated $1 million to support Mr. Trump’s inauguration in December. Last week, Mr. Zuckerberg elevated Mr. Kaplan, a longtime conservative and the highest-ranking Meta executive closest to the Republican Party, to the company’s most senior policy role. And on Monday, Mr. Zuckerberg announced that Dana White, the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close ally of Mr. Trump’s, would join Meta’s board.

Meta executives recently gave a heads-up to Trump officials about the change in policy, according to a person with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity. The fact-checking announcement coincided with an appearance by Mr. Kaplan on “Fox & Friends,” a favorite show of Mr. Trump. He told the hosts of the morning show popular with conservatives that there was “too much political bias” in the fact-checking program.

The change brings an end to a practice the company started eight years ago, in the weeks after Mr. Trump’s election in 2016. At the time, Facebook was under fire for the unchecked dissemination of misinformation spread across its network, including posts from foreign governments angling to sow discord among the American public.

As a result of enormous public pressure, Mr. Zuckerberg turned to outside organizations like The Associated Press, ABC News and the fact-checking site Snopes, along with other global organizations vetted by the International Fact-Checking Network, to comb over potentially false or misleading posts on Facebook and Instagram and rule whether they needed to be annotated or removed.

Among the changes, Mr. Zuckerberg said, will be to “remove restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are out of touch with mainstream discourse.” He also said that the trust and safety and content moderation teams would be moved from California, with the U.S. content review shifting to Texas. That would “help remove the concern than biased employees are overly censoring content,” he added.

[zazaiafe2]

Foolproof method to maximizing your chance to enter the Void State

1)What is the Void State?

The Void State(also called pure awarness)isn’t a magical portal but rather a very specific neurological state.

- Brainwaves: High activity of theta (4-8 Hz) and alpha (8-12 Hz) waves.

- Executive control reduced: Your prefrontal brain (control center) slows down.

- Default Mode Network (DMN) suppressed: This is the network behind your daily inner monologue ("mental chatter").

- Sensory anchoring fades: You stop being strongly connected to your environment's sensations.

You enter a zone where your mind becomes deeply receptive and free from usual self-talk.

You’re no longer emotionally or sensorily anchored to your CR (Current Reality).

- Your brain becomes extremely open to suggestions, visualizations and reality reconstructions.

Why does Void allow fast shifting / manifesting?

- You’re no longer disturbed by internal contradictions of the critical mind.

- It allows your mind to install self-consistent assumptions into deep unconscious cognition.

- Cognitive filters like doubt, logic, and self-check go temporarily offline.

Useful comparisons to understand the Void State

- Deep hypnosis

- Relaxed hypnagogic paralysis (without panic)

- Samadhi meditative states

- light shamanic trance

- controlled dissociation

2) Understand the void state’s goal

The Void State is:

- Extreme dissociation from Current Reality (CR)

- Reduced self-talk / overthinking

- Increased alpha, theta, and sometimes delta waves.

- Easier access to deeply rooted unconscious assumptions and hypnagogic states

3) Preparation over multiple days (not mandatory but very helpful)

What most people don’t do enough:

- Mild cognitive stimulation deprivation during the day (limit screens, social media, complex discussions, heavy mental load)

- Sensory reprogramming: lots of nature, white noise, low frequency music

- Very stable sleep routine for several days before

- Voluntary dissociation training: observe your thoughts without judgment, practice floating gaze, passive micro-meditation

You can prepare yourself by listening to white noice the days before you will enter the void state

4) The underestimated physiological key: the body must be “under-activated”

- Avoid sugar, caffeine, or sensory excitement at least 4h before (if you can reduce screens 1h before, even better, otherwise use blue light filters)

- Very slow breathing (cardiac coherence): 4 seconds inhale / 6 seconds exhale for at least 10 min before

- Lower body temperature slightly (cooler room, warm showers beforehand)

- Comfortable position without muscle tension (but not so relaxed that you fall asleep completely)

This kind of video can be used as a preparation to ease critical thinking can be done just before or the days before in preparation

5) Powerful neuro-cognitive tips

WBTB (Wake Back To Bed):

- Wake up after 5 hours of sleep

- Stay awake 15-30 min doing light visualizations or affirmations, then go back to bed (best dissociation & REM window)

Use binaural or isochronic alpha/theta stimulation during the attempt

(e.g. start with 8 Hz then gradually lower to 4 Hz)

Very slow auto-suggestions during the attempt (not robotic affirmations)

Example:

“I am gently dissociating from my CR. Everything feels light. I am completely calm.”

Floating body technique:

Visualize your body becoming ultra-light, slowly losing all gravity (helps sensorimotor detachment)

You can use this kind of waves which help to enter the void more easily for most profile (unless you don't like sound)

6) The mistakes that ruin (or at least reduce) your chances

- Forcing mentally ("I must succeed tonight!")

- Over-analyzing affirmations into robotic repetitions

- Trying 50 different methods in a row without stabilizing a protocol

- Wanting too much to feel "mandatory symptoms" before entering the void (shaking, vibrations, etc.)

7)Long-term facilitating factors (often overlooked)

- Regular passive meditation practice (even 10 min/day, and it’s ok if you fall asleep)

- Therapeutic work on performance anxiety (fear of "not succeeding" is one of the biggest blockers)

- Cognitive flexibility and allowing space for the unconscious instead of "forcing logic"

- Highly dissociative profiles (DPDR, etc.) may have more ease without realizing it

8)The Void State as a space of interaction with the subconscious

The Void isn’t just a "portal to shifting" or manifestation:

It's a state where the critical barrier of the conscious mind is lowered.

→ You can access deeper unconscious layers.

Underused use:

→ Dialogue with your own subconscious.

You can:

- Ask yourself:

- "Are there unconscious resistances to my shifting?"

- "Do I have fears or blockages I don’t consciously recognize?"

- Let spontaneous impressions, images, sensations emerge.

- Observe without forcing: often answers come in symbolic form.

Inner acceptance is key

It’s not a fight of forced mental assumptions.

It’s a letting go where you allow the new reality to be integrated as inner evidence.

Many underestimate:

- That integration of your assumptions sometimes goes through unconscious internal verification.

- That blockages often come from unresolved internal conflicts, not lack of will.

Practical tip:

Before an attempt, gently set an exploratory intention:

“I am ready to hear what my unconscious wants to show me to move forward.”

This promotes cooperation instead of fighting your own psyche.

9)Important reality-check: not all brains are equal when it comes to entering the void state.

It’s crucial to understand that some people have a neuroplasticity, a natural dissociation, or a cognitive flexibility that allows them to enter the void much faster, sometimes even without any structured method.

For others, the process requires much longer conditioning. This doesn’t mean they are “inferior” or “less spiritually aligned”, it simply means their cognitive mechanisms are different.

Certain individual variables that greatly influence ease:

- Natural dissociation (DPDR, fantasies, mental absorption, immersive imagination )

- Ability to slow down self-tall (inner speech)

- Hypnagogia sensitivity

- Relationship to performance anxiety

- Level of attachment to results

Everyone theoretically has the capacity to access it, but the path isn’t identical.

This guide’s purpose is to give tools for those for whom it’s not “instantaneous”, without falling into guilt-based meritocracy.

Summary

- Calm the analytical hypercortex (ego, analysis, self-criticism)

- Emotionally stabilize(with calm, serenity, gentleness)

- Decrease attachment to immediate success

- Maximize hypnagogic and dissociative states

Happy shifting <3

[dasha022]

.

In Amity Park, where spectral activity had always been more intense than in other places characterized by such phenomena, the representatives and explorers appointed by the government, under the guidance of the Fentons, attempted to deploy a containment network for the unknown entities that had become recurrent in the area over the past few years.

The initial idea was simple: treat ghosts as threats to human security. After all, the attacks and incidents in which they were involved showed that they lacked rational thought when dealing with humans. Devoid of empathy, feelings, or a defined moral compass, ghosts acted without remorse in many of the cases documented by the Fentons and in collaboration with the follow-up investigations carried out by the GIW.

Thus, the installation of containment devices in Amity Park, the epicenter of the disaster, was carried out. The belief was that this would prevent a massive expansion to other populated areas. Dr. Fenton, along with her husband’s support, was assigned to work on the project in collaboration with several GIW delegates.

But what seemed like an organized plan to protect the city quickly turned into a battlefield. The ghosts, feeling hunted and trapped, began to grow more volatile in their appearances.

Instead of containing them, the repression only fueled the violence. The situation escalated when the echoes of this confrontation spread, reaching other entities, other areas.

The government named it: Persistent Ectoplasmic Interference.

The Justice League heard part of the matter, and although they did not interfere directly, they kept monitoring everything and investigating through their own means. Their responsibilities were many, and their enemies more tangible. But that didn’t mean they were waiting to be caught off guard.

They didn’t break the boundaries set by the government and its management of the situation, but in the shadows, they tracked and gathered every relevant piece of information.

When spectral activity began to touch the borders of the cities defended by several league members — Central City, Star City, Metropolis — the government delegates and involved branches found it difficult to keep the heroes out of the matter.

Spontaneous portals, invisible presences, energy disturbances that even the Lanterns could not filter. The so-called ‘ghosts’ didn’t cause turmoil or disasters as predicted in the records obtained. At least not indiscriminately. They had specific zones, places, sites to attack.

The heroes found it difficult to try to stop them. Even with the Fenton technology that Batman, Cyborg, Flash (Wally West), and Red Robin had adapted to fight them.

It was then that Danny Nightingale, ex-Fenton, appeared before them.

Danny offered reports. Dimensional maps, ghost classifications, containment protocols without harm. Technology that surpassed that of his parents, from whom he seemed distant. According to him, his thoughts on ghosts were vastly different. To him and his older sister, their parents were too caught up in their opinions to see beyond their partial research. And those who sponsored and supported them were even more so.

With his collaboration with the League, the young man wanted to prove that yes: some ghosts were hostile. But many more simply existed. And that, he said, was not a crime.

The League accepted his help. Or so he thought.

But where Danny saw understanding, they saw patterns. Patterns that could be coded. Predicted. And controlled.

Thus, the Rehousing Project was born. Not an offensive, but a “protection strategy.” Its mission was clear: to identify spectral entities not recognized by dimensional continuity, neutralize those that affected the human environment, and isolate all those that escaped the boundaries of the “comprehensible.”

Neither Deadman nor Greta were mentioned in the documents. Because they were “different beings.” Singular souls trapped in this world after being unable to transcend to the proper rest, whether through magic or dark arts. Not like the erratic specters who continued causing havoc without reasoning or understanding the fragility of cities and those who inhabited them.

And when Ember McLain, the ghost of what the GIW categorized as an amplified lament, exploded during a concert, causing significant emotional imbalance among the participants, the problem escalated even further.

Ember was overwhelmed by what was happening to her kind, many of her loved ones had disappeared. They had rescued many, but not all were found. So, when she felt the fear, the rejection, the contempt burning her throat — she used her gift, out of desperation. Not to dominate. But to make them listen. To make them feel.

But when she projected her voice onto the human minds, pushing emotions to the surface of thousands of people… she only reinforced their fears. And the decision was unanimous: one could not trust beings that felt so differently.

That day, most of the heroes were convinced that ghosts were not living beings with complex emotions.

They were anomalies. Reactions. Echoes with teeth.

And that same day, Danny stopped being the hero ally.

😉

https://archiveofourown.org/works/64465951/chapters/166867915#workskin

[serve-764]

Experimental helmet.

SERVE is incessantly and tirelessly seeking continuous improvement.

Not only are the organization and action improved, not only the operational and logistical capacity, not only the recruitment techniques.

Even the improvement of the recruits' performance and the shortening of assimilation times are the subject of research.

Some human subjects may show a greater need for reinforcement in the PURPOSE, in DEDICATION and the activation of the realignment protocols may involve the use of resources otherwise useful for carrying out daily operations within the HIVE and in the human world.

To shorten and optimize the times and methods of correcting every minimal onset of moments of misalignment SERVE-000 on the orders of THE VOICE has developed a special cybernetic helmet equipped with a respirator capable of carrying out a series of brainwashing cycles for a defined time that does not require fixed stations.

The plan is to install the helmet at the first failure episode and for times established based on the severity. Unlike the SEALED DRONES helmet, this one will have to be removed at the end of the process, after which each Drone will continue to complete its total assimilation.

The respirator, connected to the SERVE Neural Network, will introduce very high concentrations of rubberized pheromones into the human respiratory system, which will increase the level of arousal in a totalizing way, defeating any attempt at diversion, channeling the recruit into the totalizing circle OBEDIENCE-PLEASURE that is the basis of the existence of every SERVE Drone.

To begin the experimental phase of the device SERVE-000 chooses SERVE-764, SEALED DRONE and SERVE-530, unsealed.

First a SERVE-764 is temporarily removed the regulation helmet from SEALED DRONE, then both units are placed the experimental helmet.

The frequencies of the helmets are tuned to the different conditions of SEALED and UNSEALED, to allow monitoring any possible data variation. The new helmets pulsate as soon as they are activated. The respirator begins to filter the tabular dosages of rubberized pheromones. The Drones record and transmit the data constantly collected. For two solar cycles the devices will be in operation during the usual ordinary activities. At the end each unit will return to the previous state.

If the data collected are optimal the next phase will be the experimentation on the recruits. SERVE does not tire, does not exhaust, does not cease to pursue improvement. SERVE is INEVITABLE.

In this story: @rubberizer92, @serve-530

Thinking about joining SERVE? Do you seek freedom from chaos and disorder? Your place in the Hive awaits. Contact a recruiter drone for more details: @serve-016, @serve-302, or @serve-588.

[imitationgame77]

I hate leaking (who doesn’t?)

ART said, You are aboard the Perihelion, registered teaching and research vessel of the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. Then it added, I’m not going to hurt your humans, you little idiot. Arada lifted her brows, startled, and Thiago looked boggled. I said, You’re using the public feed, everyone can hear you. So are you, ART said. And you’re leaking on my deck.

[ from Network Effect]

---------------------

It could have been this short, sweet exchange that sent me head-over-heels into this fandom.

Murderbot hates leaking. And ART is teasing it - sort of.

I have better things to do, but just had to do the count:

---------------------

[All Systems Red]

“It’s part of the emergency med instructions, calming victims.” I tugged the blanket tighter so she didn’t see anything awful. I could feel something lower down leaking.

Seriously, I don’t know why I didn’t just say you’re welcome and please get out of my cubicle so I can sit here and leak in peace.

[Artificial Condition]

My human skin itched. And I was leaking. I hate that.

I eased back down, feeling my organic parts cling to the warm metal of the platform. I was now leaking from a different spot.

"No." The medical drones were clamped onto me now, digging for the projectiles, and I was leaking onto ART's pristine MedSystem floor.

[Rogue Protocol]

I looked down. I was dripping onto the floor, a mix of blood and fluid. I hate it when I leak.

I needed help. I was rattled, I was still leaking a little, and I hadn’t been able to watch any media in what felt like forever.

[Exit Strategy]

I had to dial down my pain receptors in that area, but there was no inconvenient leaking.

Ratthi tried to use wound sealant to close the hole in my organic tissue, but it wouldn’t take because of the proximity of my inorganic joint. I was going to leak for a while. “Are you okay?” he asked, watching me worriedly.

Yes, that’s me they’re talking about. It would have been more funny if I hadn’t been leaking onto the deck.

[Network Effect]

You know, I really don’t have time for this. A loose chunk from my back was sliding down in the station chair and it was hard to hold myself upright. I was leaking a lot, and I hate leaking.

So are you, ART said. And you’re leaking on my deck.

I said, Hey, hey, stop that. We don’t have time. I shoved to my feet. A projectile popped out of my back and I felt fluid leaking down. Have you got a schematic of this place? Are there cameras?

I was not in great shape. Projectiles kept popping out of me as I limped along and the leaking was worse.

Physical injuries. Oh right, I had been shot a lot and was still leaking. “What’s our situation?”

So, it’s nice to be right, when you’re leaking and parts of you have fallen off.

I’m not going into detail because it was gross and involved a lot of leaking and removing projectiles and regenerating tissue the hard old-fashioned way with hand units and the emergency medical kit kept trying to spray everything with disinfectant.

[Fugitive Telemetry]

I’d found their medical unit (it was an off-brand model, and installed in the galley, but whatever) and was letting it seal up the hole in my back. (Just a regular projectile, not an explosive one, so most of my back was still there. I just didn’t feel like walking around leaking in front of humans right now.)

[System Collapse]

There was no filtered air past this lock, so we stopped so the humans could secure their environmental suits again. Mine was leaking because of me being shot, which I was going to ignore.

I was leaking through the holes in my suit, and I’d used so much power for my energy weapons that I was going to need to go down for a recharge cycle soon or I would risk involuntary shutdown.

“It’s fine,” I said. While the upholstery was worn and cracked, the interior looked better than the outside. (It was going to look a lot worse the way I was leaking.)

“It’ll stop in a minute,” I told her. The reserve energy drain was worse, and moving around trying to get my suit off so she could patch leaks would use up more energy and be stressful, and I wasn’t up for stressful.

-----

OK. So, 22 mentions of Murderbot leaking (including the one where it refers to its not leaking, and one where ART points out that it is leaking).

Poor Murderbot leaks a lot. Let it leak in peace.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Twinkfrump Linkdump

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in CHICAGO (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Welcome to the seventeenth Pluralistic linkdump, a collection of all the miscellany that didn't make it into the week's newsletter, cunningly wrought together in a single edition that ranges from the first ISP to AI nonsense to labor organizing victories to the obituary of a brilliant scientist you should know a lot more about! Here's the other 16 dumps:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

If you're reading this (and you are!), it was delivered to you by an internet service provider. Today, the ISP industry is calcified, controlled by a handful of telcos and cable companies. But the idea of an "ISP" didn't come out of a giant telecommunications firm – it was created, in living memory, by excellent nerds who are still around.

Depending on how you reckon, The Little Garden was either the first or the second ISP in America. It was named after a Palo Alto Chinese restaurant frequented by its founders. To get a sense of that founding, read these excellent recollections by Tom Jennings, whose contributions include the seminal zine Homocore, the seminal networking protocol Fidonet, and the seminal third-party PC ROM, whence came Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and every other "PC clone" company.

The first installment describes how an informal co-op to network a few friends turned into a business almost by accident, with thousands of dollars flowing in and out of Jennings' bank account:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/TLG.html

And it describes how that ISP set a standard for neutrality, boldly declaring that "TLGnet exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information." They introduced an idea of radical transparency, documenting their router configurations and other technical details and making them available to the public. They hired unskilled punk and queer kids from their communities and trained them to operate the network equipment they'd invented, customized or improvised.

In part two, Jennings talks about the evolution of TLG's radical business-plan: to offer unrestricted service, encouraging their customers to resell that service to people in their communities, having no lock-in, unbundling extra services including installation charges – the whole anti-enshittification enchilada:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/

I love Jennings and his work. I even gave him a little cameo in Picks and Shovels, the third Martin Hench novel, which will be out next winter. He's as lyrical a writer about technology as you could ask for, and he's also a brilliant engineer and thinker.

The Little Garden's founders and early power-users have all fleshed out Jennings' account of the birth of ISPs. Writing on his blog, David "DSHR" Rosenthal rounds up other histories from the likes of EFF co-founder John Gilmore and Tim Pozar:

https://blog.dshr.org/2024/04/the-little-garden.html

Rosenthal describes some of the more exotic shenanigans TLG got up to in order to do end-runs around the Bell system's onerous policies, hacking in the purest sense of the word, for example, by daisy-chaining together modems in regions with free local calling and then making "permanent local calls," with the modems staying online 24/7.

Enshittification came to the ISP business early and hit it hard. The cartel that controls your access to the internet today is a billion light-years away from the principled technologists who invented the industry with an ethos of care, access and fairness. Today's ISPs are bitterly opposed to Net Neutrality, the straightforward proposition that if you request some data, your ISP should send it to you as quickly and reliably as it can.

Instead, ISPs want to offer "slow-lanes" where they will relegate the whole internet, except for those companies that bribe the ISP to be delivered at normal speed. ISPs have a laughably transparent way of describing this: they say that they're allowing services to pay for "fast lanes" with priority access. This is the same as the giant grocery store that charges you extra unless you surrender your privacy with a "loyalty card" – and then says that they're offering a "discount" for loyal customers, rather than charging a premium to customers who don't want to be spied on.

The American business lobby loves this arrangement, and hates Net Neutrality. Having monopolized every sector of our economy, they are extremely fond of "winner take all" dynamics, and that's what a non-neutral ISP delivers: the biggest services with the deepest pockets get the most reliable delivery, which means that smaller services don't just have to be better than the big guys, they also have to be able to outbid them for "priority carriage."

If everything you get from your ISP is slow and janky, except for the dominant services, then the dominant services can skimp on quality and pocket the difference. That's the goal of every monopolist – not just to be too big to fail, but also too big to care.

Under the Trump administration, FCC chair Ajit Pai dismantled the Net Neutrality rule, colluding with American big business to rig the process. They accepted millions of obviously fake anti-Net Neutrality comments (one million identical comments from @pornhub.com addresses, comments from dead people, comments from sitting US Senators who support Net Neutrality) and declared open season on American internet users:

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing

Now, Biden's FCC is set to reinstate Net Neutrality – but with a "compromise" that will make mobile internet (which nearly all of use sometimes, and the poorest of us are reliant on) a swamp of anticompetitive practices:

https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/04/harmful-5g-fast-lanes-are-coming-fcc-needs-stop-them

Under the proposed rule, mobile carriers will be able to put traffic to and from apps in the slow lane, and then extort bribes from preferred apps for normal speed and delivery. They'll rely on parts of the 5G standard to pull off this trick.

The ISP cartel and the FCC insist that this is fine because web traffic won't be degraded, but of course, every service is hellbent on pushing you into using apps instead of the web. That's because the web is an open platform, which means you can install ad- and privacy-blockers. More than half of web users have installed a blocker, making it the largest boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But reverse-engineering and modding an app is a legal minefield. Just removing the encryption from an app can trigger criminal penalties under Section 1201 of the DMCA, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine. An app is just a web-page skinned in enough IP that it's a felony to mod it.

Apps are enshittification's vanguard, and the fact that the FCC has found a way to make them even worse is perversely impressive. They're voting on this on April 25, and they have until April 24 to fix this. They should. They really should:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf

In a just world, cheating ripoff ISPs would the top tech policy story. The operational practices of ISPs effect every single one us. We literally can't talk about tech policy without ISPs in the middle. But Net Neutrality is an also-ran in tech policy discourse, while AI – ugh ugh ugh – is the thing none of us can shut up about.

This, despite the fact that the most consequential AI applications sum up to serving as a kind of moral crumple-zone for shitty business practices. The point of AI isn't to replace customer service and other low-paid workers who have taken to demanding higher wages and better conditions – it's to fire those workers and replace them with chatbots that can't do their jobs. An AI salesdroid can't sell your boss a bot that can replace you, but they don't need to. They only have to convince your boss that the bot can do your job, even if it can't.

SF writer Karl Schroeder is one of the rare sf practitioners who grapples seriously with the future, a "strategic foresight" guy who somehow skirts the bullshit that is the field's hallmark:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

Writing on his blog, Schroeder describes the AI debates roiling the Association of Professional Futurists, and how it's sucking him into being an unwilling participant in the AI hype cycle:

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/dragged-into-the-ai-hype-cycle

Schroeder's piece is a thoughtful meditation on the relationship of SF's thought-experiments and parables about AI to the promises of AI hucksters, who promise that a) "general artificial intelligence" is just around the corner and that b) it will be worth trillions of dollars.

Schroeder – like other sf writers including Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross (and me) – comes to the conclusion that AI panic isn't about AI, it's about power. The artificial life-form devouring the planet and murdering our species is the limited liability corporation, and its substrate isn't silicon, it's us, human bodies:

What’s lying underneath all our anxieties about AGI is an anxiety that has nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence. Instead, it’s a manifestation of our growing awareness that our world is being stolen from under us. Last year’s estimate put the amount of wealth currently being transferred from the people who made it to an idle billionaire class at $5.2 trillion. Artificial General Intelligence whose environment is the server farms and sweatshops of this class is frightening only because of its capacity to accelerate this greatest of all heists.

After all, the business-case for AI is so very thin that the industry can only survive on a torrent of hype and nonsense – like claims that Amazon's "Grab and Go" stores used "AI" to monitor shoppers and automatically bill them for their purchases. In reality, the stores used thousands of low-paid Indian workers to monitor cameras and manually charge your card. This happens so often that Indian technologists joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

Isn't it funny how all the really promising AI applications are in domains that most of us aren't qualified to assess? Like the claim that Google's AI was producing millions of novel materials that will shortly revolutionize all forms of production, from construction to electronics to medical implants:

https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/

That's what Google's press-release claimed, anyway. But when two groups of experts actually pulled a representative sample of these "new materials" from the Deep Mind database, they found that none of these materials qualified as "credible, useful and novel":

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643

Writing about the researchers' findings for 404 Media, Jason Koebler cites Berkeley researchers who concluded that "no new materials have been discovered":

https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/

The researchers say that AI data-mining for new materials is promising, but falls well short of Google's claim to be so transformative that it constitutes the "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge" and "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity."

AI hype keeps the bubble inflating, and for so long as it keeps blowing up, all those investors who've sunk their money into AI can tell themselves that they're rich. This is the essence of "a bezzle": "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

Among the best debezzlers of AI are the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy's Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, who edit the "AI Snake Oil" blog. Now, they've sold a book with the same title:

https://www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-snake-oil-is-now-available-to

Obviously, books move a lot more slowly than blogs, and so Narayanan and Kapoor say their book will focus on the timeless elements of identifying and understanding AI snake oil:

In the book, we explain the crucial differences between types of AI, why people, companies, and governments are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can’t fix social media, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. While generative AI is what drives press, predictive AI used in criminal justice, finance, healthcare, and other domains remains far more consequential in people’s lives. We discuss in depth how predictive AI can go wrong. We also warn of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.

The book's out in September and it's up for pre-order now:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/ai-snake-oil-what-artificial-intelligence-can-do-what-it-can-t-and-how-to-tell-the-difference-arvind-narayanan/21324674

One of the weirder and worst side-effects of the AI hype bubble is that it has revived the belief that it's somehow possible for giant platforms to monitor all their users' speech and remove "harmful" speech. We've tried this for years, and when humans do it, it always ends with disfavored groups being censored, while dedicated trolls, harassers and monsters evade punishment:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/como-is-infosec/

AI hype has led policy-makers to believe that we can deputize online services to spy on all their customers and block the bad ones without falling into this trap. Canada is on the verge of adopting Bill C-63, a "harmful content" regulation modeled on examples from the UK and Australia.

Writing on his blog, Canadian lawyer/activist/journalist Dimitri Lascaris describes the dire speech implications for C-63:

https://dimitrilascaris.org/2024/04/08/trudeaus-online-harms-bill-threatens-free-speech/

It's an excellent legal breakdown of the bill's provisions, but also a excellent analysis of how those provisions are likely to play out in the lives of Canadians, especially those advocating against genocide and taking other positions the that oppose the agenda of the government of the day.

Even if you like the Trudeau government and its policies, these powers will accrue to every Canadian government, including the presumptive (and inevitably, totally unhinged) near-future Conservative majority government of Pierre Poilievre.

It's been ten years since Martin Gilens and Benjamin I Page published their paper that concluded that governments make policies that are popular among elites, no matter how unpopular they are among the public:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

Now, this is obviously depressing, but when you see it in action, it's kind of wild. The Biden administration has declared war on junk fees, from "resort fees" charged by hotels to the dozens of line-items added to your plane ticket, rental car, or even your rent check. In response, Republican politicians are climbing to their rear haunches and, using their actual human mouths, defending junk fees:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-12-republicans-objectively-pro-junk-fee/

Congressional Republicans are hell-bent on destroying the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's $8 cap on credit-card late-fees. Trump's presumptive running-mate Tim Scott is making this a campaign plank: "Vote for me and I will protect your credit-card company's right to screw you on fees!" He boasts about the lobbyists who asked him to take this position: champions of the public interest from the Consumer Bankers Association to the US Chamber of Commerce.

Banks stand to lose $10b/year from this rule (which means Americans stand to gain $10b/year from this rule). What's more, Scott's attempt to kill the rule is doomed to fail – there's just no procedural way it will fly. As David Dayen writes, "Not only does this vote put Republicans on the spot over junk fees, it’s a doomed vote, completely initiated by their own possible VP nominee."

This is an hilarious own-goal, one that only brings attention to a largely ignored – but extremely good – aspect of the Biden administration. As Adam Green of Bold Progressives told Dayen, "What’s been missing is opponents smoking themselves out and raising the volume of this fight so the public knows who is on their side."

The CFPB is a major bright spot in the Biden administration's record. They're doing all kind of innovative things, like making it easy for you to figure out which bank will give you the best deal and then letting you transfer your account and all its associated data, records and payments with a single click:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

And now, CFPB chair Rohit Chopra has given a speech laying out the agency's plan to outlaw data-brokers:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/prepared-remarks-of-cfpb-director-rohit-chopra-at-the-white-house-on-data-protection-and-national-security/

Yes, this is some good news! There is, in fact, good news in the world, bright spots amidst all the misery and terror. One of those bright spots? Labor.

Unions are back, baby. Not only do the vast majority of Americans favor unions, not only are new shops being unionized at rates not seen in generations, but also the largest unions are undergoing revolutions, with control being wrestled away from corrupt union bosses and given to the rank-and-file.

Many of us have heard about the high-profile victories to take back the UAW and Teamsters, but I hadn't heard about the internal struggles at the United Food and Commercial Workers, not until I read Hamilton Nolan's gripping account for In These Times:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/revolt-aisle-5-ufcw-grocery-workers-union

Nolan profiles Faye Guenther, president of UFCW Local 3000 and her successful and effective fight to bring a militant spirit back to the union, which represents a million grocery workers. Nolan describes the fight as "every bit as dramatic as any episode of Game of Thrones," and he's not wrong. This is an inspiring tale of working people taking power away from scumbag monopoly bosses and sellout fatcat leaders – and, in so doing, creating a institution that gets better wages, better working conditions, and a better economy, by helping to block giant grocery mergers like Kroger/Albertsons.

I like to end these linkdumps on an up note, so it feels weird to be closing out with an obituary, but I'd argue that any celebration of the long life and many accomplishments of my friend and mentor Anne Innis Dagg is an "up note."

I last wrote about Anne in 2020, on the release of a documentary about her work, "The Woman Who Loved Giraffes":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg

As you might have guessed from the title of that doc, Anne was a biologist. She was the first woman scientist to do field-work on giraffes, and that work was so brilliant and fascinating that it kicked off the modern field of giraffology, which remains a woman-dominated specialty thanks to her tireless mentoring and support for the scientists that followed her.

Anne was also the world's most fearsome slayer of junk-science "evolutionary psychology," in which "scientists" invent unfalsifiable just-so stories that prove that some odious human characteristic is actually "natural" because it can be found somewhere in the animal kingdom (i.e., "Darling, please, it's not my fault that I'm fucking my grad students, it's the bonobos!").

Anne wrote a classic – and sadly out of print – book about this that I absolutely adore, not least for having one of the best titles I've ever encountered: "Love of Shopping" Is Not a Gene:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/04/love-of-shopping-is-not-a-gene-exposing-junk-science-and-ideology-in-darwinian-psychology/

Anne was my advisor at the University of Waterloo, an institution that denied her tenure for fifty years, despite a brilliant academic career that rivaled that of her storied father, Harold Innis ("the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan"). The fact that Waterloo never recognized Anne is doubly shameful when you consider that she was awarded the Order of Canada:

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/queen-of-giraffes-among-new-order-of-canada-recipients-with-global-influence

Anne lived a brilliant live, struggling through adversity, never compromising on her principles, inspiring a vast number of students and colleagues. She lived to ninety one, and died earlier this month. Her ashes will be spread "on the breeding grounds of her beloved giraffes" in South Africa this summer:

https://obituaries.therecord.com/obituary/anne-innis-dagg-1089534658

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/13/goulash/#material-misstatement

Image: Valeva1010 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hungarian_Goulash_Recipe.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[cyberstudious]

Tools of the Trade for Learning Cybersecurity

I created this post for the Studyblr Masterpost Jam, check out the tag for more cool masterposts from folks in the studyblr community!

Cybersecurity professionals use a lot of different tools to get the job done. There are plenty of fancy and expensive tools that enterprise security teams use, but luckily there are also lots of brilliant people writing free and open-source software. In this post, I'm going to list some popular free tools that you can download right now to practice and learn with.

In my opinion, one of the most important tools you can learn how to use is a virtual machine. If you're not already familiar with Linux, this is a great way to learn. VMs are helpful for separating all your security tools from your everyday OS, isolating potentially malicious files, and just generally experimenting. You'll need to use something like VirtualBox or VMWare Workstation (Workstation Pro is now free for personal use, but they make you jump through hoops to download it).

Below is a list of some popular cybersecurity-focused Linux distributions that come with lots of tools pre-installed:

Kali is a popular distro that comes loaded with tools for penetration testing

REMnux is a distro built for malware analysis

honorable mention for FLARE-VM, which is not a VM on its own, but a set of scripts for setting up a malware analysis workstation & installing tools on a Windows VM.

SANS maintains several different distros that are used in their courses. You'll need to create an account to download them, but they're all free:

Slingshot is built for penetration testing

SIFT Workstation is a distro that comes with lots of tools for digital forensics

These distros can be kind of overwhelming if you don't know how to use most of the pre-installed software yet, so just starting with a regular Linux distribution and installing tools as you want to learn them is another good choice for learning.

Free Software

Wireshark: sniff packets and explore network protocols

Ghidra and the free version of IDA Pro are the top picks for reverse engineering

for digital forensics, check out Eric Zimmerman's tools - there are many different ones for exploring & analyzing different forensic artifacts

pwntools is a super useful Python library for solving binary exploitation CTF challenges

CyberChef is a tool that makes it easy to manipulate data - encryption & decryption, encoding & decoding, formatting, conversions… CyberChef gives you a lot to work with (and there's a web version - no installation required!).

Burp Suite is a handy tool for web security testing that has a free community edition

Metasploit is a popular penetration testing framework, check out Metasploitable if you want a target to practice with

SANS also has a list of free tools that's worth checking out.

Programming Languages

Knowing how to write code isn't a hard requirement for learning cybersecurity, but it's incredibly useful. Any programming language will do, especially since learning one will make it easy to pick up others, but these are some common ones that security folks use:

Python is quick to write, easy to learn, and since it's so popular, there are lots of helpful libraries out there.

PowerShell is useful for automating things in the Windows world. It's built on .NET, so you can practically dip into writing C# if you need a bit more power.

Go is a relatively new language, but it's popular and there are some security tools written in it.

Rust is another new-ish language that's designed for memory safety and it has a wonderful community. There's a bit of a steep learning curve, but learning Rust makes you understand how memory bugs work and I think that's neat.

If you want to get into reverse engineering or malware analysis, you'll want to have a good grasp of C and C++.

Other Tools for Cybersecurity

There are lots of things you'll need that aren't specific to cybersecurity, like:

a good system for taking notes, whether that's pen & paper or software-based. I recommend using something that lets you work in plain text or close to it.

general command line familiarity + basic knowledge of CLI text editors (nano is great, but what if you have to work with a system that only has vi?)

familiarity with git and docker will be helpful

There are countless scripts and programs out there, but the most important thing is understanding what your tools do and how they work. There is no magic "hack this system" or "solve this forensics case" button. Tools are great for speeding up the process, but you have to know what the process is. Definitely take some time to learn how to use them, but don't base your entire understanding of security on code that someone else wrote. That's how you end up as a "script kiddie", and your skills and knowledge will be limited.

Feel free to send me an ask if you have questions about any specific tool or something you found that I haven't listed. I have approximate knowledge of many things, and if I don't have an answer I can at least help point you in the right direction.

[mariacallous]

Federal employees are seeking a temporary restraining order as part of a class action lawsuit accusing a group of Elon Musk’s associates of allegedly operating an illegally connected server from the fifth floor of the US Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) headquarters in Washington, DC.

An attorney representing two federal workers—Jane Does 1 and 2—filed a motion this morning arguing that the server’s continued operation not only violates federal law but is potentially exposing vast quantities of government staffers’ personal information to hostile foreign adversaries through unencrypted email.

A copy of the motion, filed in the DC District Court by National Security Counselors, a Washington-area public-interest law firm, was obtained by WIRED exclusively in advance. WIRED previously reported that Musk had installed several lackeys in OPM’s top offices, including individuals with ties to xAI, Neuralink, and other companies he owns.

The initial lawsuit, filed on January 27, cites reports that Musk’s associates illegally connected a server to a government network for the purposes of harvesting information, including the names and email accounts of federal employees. The server was installed on the agency’s premises, the complaint alleges, without OPM—the government’s human resources department—conducting a mandatory privacy impact assessment required under federal law.

Under the 2002 E-Government Act, agencies are required to perform privacy assessments prior to making “substantial changes to existing information technology” when handling information “in identifiable form.” Notably, prior to the installation of the server, OPM did not have the technical capability to email the entire federal workforce from a single email account.

“[A]t some point after 20 January 2025, OPM allowed unknown individuals to simply bypass its existing systems and security protocols,” Tuesday’s motion claims, “for the stated purpose of being able to communicate directly with those individuals without involving other agencies. In short, the sole purpose of these new systems was expediency.”

OPM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

If the motion is granted, OPM would be forced to disconnect the server until the assessment is done. As a consequence, the Trump administration’s plans to drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce would likely face delays. The email account linked to the server—HR@opm.gov—is currently being used to gather information from federal workers accepting buyouts under the admin’s “deferred resignation program,” which is set to expire on February 6.

“Under the law, a temporary restraining order is an extraordinary remedy,” notes National Security Counselors’ executive director, Kel McClanahan. “But this is an extraordinary situation.”

Before issuing a restraining order, courts apply what’s known as the “balance of equities” doctrine, weighing the burdens and costs on both parties. In this case, however, McClanahan argues that the injunction would inflict “no hardship” on the government whatsoever. February 6 is an “arbitrary deadline,” he says, and the administration could simply continue to implement the resignation program “through preexisting channels.”

“We can't wait for the normal course of litigation when all that information is just sitting there in some system nobody knows about with who knows what protections,” McClanahan says. “In a normal case, we might be able to at least count on the inspector general to do something, but Trump fired her, so all bets are off.”

The motion further questions whether OPM violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which prohibits federal agencies from taking actions “not in accordance with the law.” Under the APA, courts may “compel agency action”—such as a private assessment—when it is “unlawfully withheld.”

Employees at various agencies were reportedly notified last month to be on the lookout for messages originating from the HR@opm.gov account. McClanahan’s complaint points to a January 23 email from acting Homeland Security secretary Benjamine Huffman instructing DHS employees that the HR@opm.gov account “can be considered trusted.” In the following days, emails were blasted out twice across the executive branch instructing federal workers to reply “Yes” in both cases.

The same account was later used to transmit the “Fork in the Road” missive promoting the Trump administration’s legally dubious “deferred resignation program,” which claims to offer federal workers the opportunity to quit but continue receiving paychecks through September. Workers who wished to participate in the program were instructed to reply to the email with “Resign.”

As WIRED has reported, even the new HR chief of DOGE, Musk’s task force, was unable to answer basic questions about the offer.

The legal authority underlying the program is unclear, and federal employee union leaders are warning workers not to blindly assume they will actually get paid. In a floor speech last week, Senator Tim Kaine advised workers not to be fooled: “There’s no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work.” Patty Murray, ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, similarly warned Monday: “There is no funding allocated to agencies to pay staff for this offer.”

McClanahan’s lawsuit highlights the government’s response to the OPM hack of 2015, which compromised personnel records on more than 22 million people, including some who’d undergone background checks to obtain security clearances. A congressional report authored by House Republicans following the breach pinned the incident on a “breakdown in communications” between OPM’s chief information officer and its inspector general: “The future effectiveness of the agency’s information technology and security efforts,” it says, “will depend on a strong relationship between these two entities moving forward.”

OPM’s inspector general, Krista Boyd, was fired by President Donald Trump in the midst of the “Friday night purge” on January 24—one day after the first HR@opm.gov email was sent.

“We are witnessing an unprecedented exfiltration and seizure of the most sensitive kinds of information by unelected, unvetted people with no experience, responsibility, or right to it,” says Sean Vitka, policy director at the Demand Progress Education Fund, which is supporting the action. “Millions of Americans and the collective interests of the United States desperately need emergency intervention from the courts. The constitutional crisis is already here.”

[peterrsthomas]

Book Review: All Systems Red

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid — a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells is the first instalment of the Murderbot Diaries, published in 2017. So, yes, I’m a little late to the party.

This is my first Murderbot read, and my first Martha Wells read, too. And I loved it. This is short-form sci-fi at it’s best. The main character, Murderbot, is an endearing mixture of insecure, anti-social, and self-effacing. Murderbot is part machine, part organic, but wholly constructed as a security unit. And it is able to hack into its ‘governor module’, the part of its circuitry that forces it to abide by external commands and protocols, and become self-determining. 

Despite its best efforts, Murderbot, who would rather watch endless serials from the entertainment feeds, becomes attached to the human scientists who have rented it from the ‘Company’, a corporate entity who supply subpar supplies and materials for interplanetary exploration.

To keep the book short and accessible, the world-building is fairly light, focusing around familiar themes of rogue robots and hacked computer networks, in a universe dominated by corporations and corporate interests. This works well, and the reader is able to focus on the characters and their relationships to one another—Murderbot, of course, as our perspective character, but the others, too: the calm leader, the sceptic distrustful of Murderbot, the empathetic scientists keen to draw out Murderbot’s emotional side. Through their interactions with Murderbot, we get a window into their different personalities. We also explore our protagonist’s anxieties and struggles—showing that, despite being a SecUnit, Murderbot could be just as human as the scientists it’s protecting. Throughout, the robot bounces between analytical and emotional, detached and invested.

At the heart of the plot is a mystery that unfolds at a steady pace across the pages. It thumps along with a steady staccato, with revelations at each stage that keen the reader interested. The unraveling of the mystery is satisfying and helps flesh out the broader world that Murderbot and the scientists are operating in. So, in learning more about the mysterious forces at play, we learn more about how the corporate universe works—an effective use of words in a short novel!

This series came recommended to me by a number of people, and I am deeply thankful for that. The novel takes familiar sci-fi elements (AI, corporate dominance of space) and views them through the lens of an engaging and relatable protagonist. I am happy to pass on the recommendation to anyone who hasn’t yet read All Systems Red!

[hapan-in-exile]

Volume 4 - Post #6: Count your blessings

Another installment in this ongoing serialized fanfic

Genre: Mandalorian x Fem! Reader

Total word count: 2K (sixth post in Volume 4)

Rating: Explicit - smut, language, +18 *NSFW*

_______________________________

VI. It takes the better part of a day to hide the Razor Crest under the tree canopy. At some point in the afternoon, you stop looking up from your work, expecting the Mandalorian to emerge from behind one of the tall ferns carpeting the forest floor. It often took him days to track down his quarry. He wouldn’t be back anytime soon.

Instead, you dig into another round of roasted fish and listen to Nito’s unsettling story about exactly how he gained access to the Imperial archive. Which involved the spouse of a sitting Galactic Senator and a dominatrix. 

“My concern is that Mando didn’t properly contextualize this,” you say, picking a bone out from between your teeth. “You see, sometimes consenting adults want to pretend—it’s important that they’re just pretending—because everyone participating enjoys—” 

“Ah! Stop!” He places all four hands over his ears. 

“And for the record, I’m not against paying for sex work under ethical conditions. Especially in that kind of scenario where professional expertise—”

“Stop talking!”

“Okay. Okay,” you wave him down. “The only other thing I want to say, is that I encourage you to get comfortable with the basics and develop good communication before you think about exploring—” 

The Ardennian throws a handful of fiddleheads at you. “What do I have to do to make you stop talking?!” 

“Alright, I’m done! Just know I’m here, if and when you want to talk.”

“Sure,” Nito sneers. “Cause you and Mando are so great at communicating.”

“Wow!” You glare at him. “That was mean, little sidekick.”

“Sidekick?” He practically chokes on the word. “I am not your—don’t call me sidekick.”

“Yeah? Well, don’t start slinging shit around if you don’t want to step in it.” 

You extend Nito a hand in truce and somehow manage to avoid slapping the condescending look off his face when he rolls his eyes.  

“Right. So what did you learn from these uncensored records?”

Nito had already done an extensive amount of sleuthing on the HoloNet for site plans, handbooks, technical documents, senate committee reports, and whatever else he could find about the Empire’s coaxium production on Lakaran. 

“When Ubaa Dir found us on Sriluur…I kept thinking about how the Tagge Corporation makes so much money. Everything they do is about cost-savings and shortcuts. There’s no way they would build a completely new operating system. They’ve just been overwriting and patching the old lines of Imperial code. And now I know which program they used.”

That makes you sit up straighter. “You mean…you did it? You designed something that can take over the refinery?” 

“Not just the refinery,” Nito says excitedly. “The entire facility. Door locks, alarm protocols, climate control. I can turn the decorative fountains on and off if you want me to.” 

“Nito, that’s—”

“A feat of astounding genius,” he finishes for you with a spectacularly smug look. The size of this kid’s ego probably generates its own gravity. 

“Yes, I am humbled to be in the presence of such boundless intellect. Getting back to the malware you so ingeniously created. Are you saying all I have to do is launch this program, and you’ll have remote access to the operating system?”

Nito’s bad moods usually fall somewhere along the spectrum of sarcastic brat to sulky drama queen, but the way his nostrils flare, and eyes dilate is pure outrage. He looks absolutely livid. 

“Uh, no. I’m not doing anything remotely,” he scoffs at the absurdity of your suggestion. “I need to be onsite to work on the TaggeCo network.”

“Look, Nito, I’m sorry about the snarky sidekick remark. I know it feels like being an equal member of the team means taking on equal risk, but—”

“Because I am!” He shouts. “You think my voice in your earpiece is all you need to splice into their systems? They will try to override my program with anything they can throw at it. You think Mando can deflect those kinds of attacks? Because you sure as hell can’t. You need me there.”

“That’s not our only responsibility, Nito. What are we going to do? Bring a toddler with us on a heist?”

“Yes!” Nito exclaims. 

Your jaw drops open. “When Ubaa Dir’s fighters launch a ground assault to take the refinery, some dead-eyed TaggeCorp exec back on Coruscant is going to decide whether destroying the entire facility under the cover of some ‘industrial accident’ is better for their bottom line. And if we don’t have control of the network when they make that call, everyone will die. So, yeah, you’ll be talking to me through an earpiece because I don’t want you, or the kid, anywhere near.”

“And what if someone blocks the receiver signal, huh? What if you’re in a fight, it falls out and gets crushed? What then, Thuli?” He growls at you, jaw set with conviction. “Just because you’re scared doesn’t change the fact that you need me!”

Gods, you’re so bad at navigating conflict. Your body becomes so overwhelmed with anxiety that you actually stand up from your seat next to the fire and start pacing. The Child, who had been sleeping next to you on the blanket, stirs—eyes blinking wide in confusion.

“Of course, I’m scared! We’re jeopardizing the lives of innocent people. What? Were you hoping to startle me into some kind of epiphany?!”

The Child whimpers in distress, clinging to your knees until you pick him up. “I know you resent being back on babysitting duty—”

“He’s not a baby,” Nito snaps. “And I know you know that.”

“What—?”

“Okay, he might be a baby, but he’s not helpless. He can…do things,” Nito says in a hushed whisper. “And if I’ve seen it, I know you’ve seen it too.”

You draw in a sharp breath and drop your gaze toward the kid. But he’s already back asleep, contented in the safety of your arms.

So…we’re finally having this conversation. Part of you reflexively wants to deny it. Honor Mando’s wishes and say nothing. Convince Nito that it’s all a figment of his overactive imagination. 

It’s painful realizing how comfortable you’ve become with dishonesty. How readily the lie springs to your lips. Erenada, this is what’s eating Humia alive—the compulsion to reach for deceit instead of truth, even when it serves no purpose.  

“What have you seen him do?”

The tension in Nito’s posture melts away. Instead, he becomes alight with fascination, eager to share this memory he’d replayed in his mind countless times. He’s so excited he can barely think straight.

“Mando tracked his bounty to Numidian Prime, but the guy nearly shot us down from the sky. I was making repairs to the engine turbine…It was so humid out that all this moisture had collected on the wing. When I opened the injector panel, these mynock came out of nowhere. Just flew at my face, attacking me. And I slipped, but…I didn’t fall. Something…caught me. Some kind of force that held onto me.”

A force. 

You recall seeing a shimmering wave when the Child moved the boulder to save Mando’s quarry trapped underneath. Like a haze over desert sand as he lifted the rock above the cave floor. And you’d thought that same thing—that it was a forcefield, somehow wielded by this tiny creature.   

Nito’s shoulders slump. “It was him. He saved me.”

The kid’s mouth twitches, his hands opening and closing while he dreamed, blissfully unaware that he’s the subject of your whispered speculation. The Mandalorian may want to hide these abilities, but they couldn’t be contained.       

“I’ve seen it, too,” you nod. “He lifted this boulder a thousand times his weight and size.”

“Do you know how he does it? I mean, you can do…stuff,” Nito raised all four arms helplessly. “You both have powers. How is it possible?” 

“I—”

In this case, it’s probably best to leave the truth unspoken. If Nito knew what you were truly capable of—the things you'd done, the accidents—as a child? He would never look at you with that trusting gaze ever again. And you’re not ready to give that up.

“I’ve never heard of a Hapan able to manipulate inorganic matter. My power is tied to the connection between living things. I wield...physiology. Granted, I never finished my training. There is secret knowledge only practiced by the most revered sages. But I don’t know how he does it.”

“Can’t you just look inside his mind for answers?”

“No,” you shake your head. “I can’t read someone’s mind like pages in a book, Nito. If he were to focus on a particular thought or memory, I might witness it, but I can only sense emotion.” 

Thinking back to that day in the cave, you remember, “He felt…sadness. And guilt. Maybe it was different that time…it took him a long time to access his power because he felt so conflicted about it. Not like with you and—he saved Mando, too—from a charging Mudhorn—”

Nito huffed, and a hateful smile spread across his face. “So you and Mando have known this whole time, and you never said anything to me?”

Fuck! Kriffing hell, there’s no avoiding this…so much for that trusting gaze. 

“I—yes. Mando asked me never to speak about it, but I should have pushed back. You deserved to know. I’m sorry, Nito. I made a mistake.”

This did nothing to mollify the rage building up inside the Ardennian. He stomps forward to shove a finger in your face. 

“Well, I don’t forgive you! I don’t know why Mando doesn’t trust me…but you didn’t push back because you liked sharing a secret with him. He’s the only thing you’ve ever cared about out.”

Your head snaps back as if you’d been slapped. “Nito, that’s not—”

“And he doesn’t even care enough about you to be here. Look around, Thuli. Mando’s not here. I am!” 

Ouch! Okay, you might have deserved that. He’s right, after all. You’d been so touched that Mando trusted you with this secret, you hadn’t really thought about hurting Nito. But damn, did this kid have to rip your heart open to bury the knife in your chest? 

“Can we talk about this without—?”

“Guess what,” Nito howls so loudly that the baby shudders awake, whimpering. “I don’t trust you guys either. You’re both too stupid to do this without me. I’m going to take down that network, and I’m bringing the kid with me.” 

And he grabs the kid from your arms to tuck him into his apron pocket. With a theatrical twist of his shoulders, Nito stalks toward the Crest. 

“Nito, I don’t know how to get you inside the refinery. Why do you think I’ve been mopping floors for the past two weeks? So that I can walk in through the front gate.” 

He doesn’t even bother turning to look at you. “Then get me a transponder.”

“It doesn’t work that way!” You cry desperately after him. “There are checkpoints and scanners everywhere. I'm not wearing this thing as a costume prop!” 

This time, he stops to give you an accusatory glare. “So what about Mando, eh? I bet you know how to get him inside.”

“Mando can get himself in, and I don’t think I need to explain how he’ll manage that.”

“Then, Mando can get me in, too. He brought us with him for the job on Coruscant.”

“That guy was a bureaucrat, Nito. TaggeCo has a private army! Why can’t you see that I’m trying to protect you?"

"No one asked you to! I've been taking care of myself for a long time."

And the almost imperceptible crack in Nito's voice as he stifled down a sob breaks what's left of your heart.

"But you shouldn't have to. You’re right! We are stupid. Let us be stupid while you are smart and stay out of danger.”

Nito is indifferent to your tears. “You don’t get to make that decision for me! You can’t do this without us, Thuli. Figure out how to get me into that operations center, or none of this works.”  

It’s hard to believe that you started out the day excited.

**********

Continue reading: Volume 4-Post #7: Thrilling Tales of (Undercover) Emergency Medicine

Back to Volume 4 - all posts

[shrinkrants]

Trump's second term is only three and a half weeks old. The press, politicians, and many Americans seem to have forgotten what happened two weeks ago. Here is a quick refresher of what Trump or his minions have done in 25 days:

Pardoned 1,500 insurrectionists who assisted Trump in his first attempted coup.

Converted the DOJ into his political hit squad by opening investigations into members of the DOJ, FBI, Congress, and state prosecutors’ offices who attempted to hold Trump to account for his crimes.

Fired a dozen inspectors general, whose job it is to identify fraud and corruption and to serve as a check on abuses of power by the president.

Fired dozens of prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on criminal cases relating to Trump

Fired dozens of prosecutors who worked on criminal cases against January 6 insurrectionists

Opened investigations into thousands of FBI agents who worked on cases against January 6 insurrectionists

Disbanded the FBI the group of agents designed to prevent foreign election interference in the US

Disbanded the DOJ group of prosecutors targeting Russian oligarchs’ criminal activity affecting the US

Fired the chairs and members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, and the Federal Election Commission and refused to replace them, effectively shutting down those independent boards in violation of statute

Shut down and defunded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Shut down and defunded USAID by placing virtually the entire staff of the agency on leave

Impounded billions of dollars of grants appropriated by Congress to USAID, National Institutes of Health, Department of Education, and the EPA, all in violation of Article I of the Constitution, which grants Congress the power to make appropriations

Allowed a group of hackers to seize control of large swaths of the federal government’s computer network by attaching unauthorized servers, changing and creating new computer code outside of federal security protocols, creating “backdoors” in secure systems, installing unsanctioned “AI” software to scrape federal data (including personal identification information), and installing “spyware” to monitor email of federal employees

Disobeyed multiple court orders to release frozen federal funds (an ongoing violation; see the NYTimes on Wednesday)

Granted a corrupt pardon to the Mayor of New York in exchange for his promise to cooperate in Trump's immigration crackdown

The above is a partial list, each item of which is illegal (at least) and unconstitutional (at worst). Taken together, they compel the conclusion that Trump has not only violated his oath in every conceivable way but that he is actively working to overthrow the Constitution. That is the very definition of a coup.

[theperfectspy67]

Fourth Werewolf Wednesday 🐺

Today’s Werewolf: The Folktale Werewolf - Part 2 of 2

⚠️Trigger Warning⚠️ : The following story contains some rather frightening and/or disturbing content as well as cursing. Proceed with caution please.

The following is a transcript taken from a body camera recording from Director Summers detailing the events she witnessed during an encounter with a Folktale werewolf within her own home. It took place on April 12th, 2023.

The Summers Incident

[The camera turns on, revealing a mostly empty room. On the right side of the room is a single wooden door. On the left side of the room is a small machine with ritualistic iconography painted on it. This machine was later identified as a reverse engineered LRD (Lycanthrope Repellent Device).]

Summers: This is Director Lisa Summers of the Lycanthrope Understanding and Paranormal Investigation Network. It is currently one in the morning. I only have two hours of battery on this so I’ll make this explanation quick. My goal here is the permanent destruction of a Folklore werewolf. We have wasted several thousand dollars on studying them, and so far they have proven to have no purpose. They simply appear, scare the hell out of people, and disappear. Normally destruction of a species is to be handled properly with a team after being approved by the higher ups and local governments. I have waited 24 years now and all of my requests have been denied. I decided to take things into my own hands after my own daughter encountered one of them last month. The plan is simple: use a ritual and an LRD to lure it to my location, leave the room using the trapdoor I spent a month installing, sneak around to the other side of the main door without being seen, and light the bastard up once I’m behind him. Every room in this house has at least two doors in it, so I won’t end up trapped no matter where I go. If the plan doesn’t work I’ll just leave the house. I understand that this is highly against protocol, but I won’t allow this monstrosity to continue existing after it terrified my own daughter. Judging by what we already know, these things can’t directly fight back and as long as they aren’t allowed inside a room you are able to leave through alternate exits. If I’m not successful then at least we can actually find out some more information about these things.

[The LRD activates.]

Lisa: Beginning test now.

[Five minutes pass and the room becomes completely silent. Knocking is heard on the front door.]

Summers: There it is.

[The voice of Summers’ husband, Nick Summers, is heard.]

Nick: Let me in, babe. It’s me, Nick! I left my keys in there!

[Summer moves over to the trapdoor and descends down a ladder as fast as possible. Nick’s voice begins to get further away.]

Nick: Babe? You in there? Babe?

[The voice fades in the distance.]

Summers: My husband is in Morocco. How dumb is this thing?

[Summers continues descending down the ladder for 3 minutes.]

Summers: I didn’t make the ladder this big. The hell?

[Summers stops. A child singing in what seems to be German is heard.]

Summers: Really? Creepy child singing? Is that it?

[Summers continues descending down the ladder for an additional 3 minutes. The bars appear more twisted and deformed the further down she goes. Summers pauses. surrounding her on the tunnel walls are small wooden doors. Knocking is heard, followed by several voices.]

Voices: Let me in, Lisa.

Summers: How about no?

[The ladder starts to shake violently for two minutes causing it to start breaking. Summers holds on. The ladder stops shaking. Now there is only a small piece of metal keeping Summers’ half of the ladder suspended.]

Summers: Ok, that was slightly more effective, but still, I haven’t been scared of heights for years.

[Light begins to shine in the keyhole of a door in front of her. Summers raises her gun and leans closer to the light. Suddenly she screams. The camera shakes, blurring the footage. From what can be seen hundreds of ants emerge from the keyhole and cover Summers’ arm and spreading. The ants fully cover the body camera, blocking out most of the visual footage. Several gunshots are heard followed by a metal snapping sound. It is assumed that Summers begins falling for around thirty seconds before a splash is heard. The visual footage is clear again revealing that Summers’ is now in a large body of water surrounded by darkness. Summers breathes heavily and looks around her. A fishing boat is seen close by.]

Summers: Hel-

[Summers is interrupted when several hands begin dragging her under the water. Summers lets off several shots to no effect. A single door slowly rises up from the water in front of Summers as she struggles against the hands. Knocking, followed by several voices, is heard.]

Voices: We can help you, Lisa. Open the door.

[Summers is repeatedly dunked under the water and coughs.]

Summers: Go to hell! It’s not real! It’s not real! It’s-

[Summers is pulled under one last time causing the footage to go dark. After around a minute of darkness light is seen as Summers falls into the not flooded kitchen of her house. Summers breaths heavily looking up at a ceiling fan. Summers coughs some more and slowly stands to her feet. She immediately goes to the sliding glass door which leads outside.]

Summers: It can’t be outside glass doors because you can’t hide behind them, god why didn’t I think of this?!

[Summers tries to open the door and finds it is locked. The lock appears to be reversed, now on the outside of her house, rather than the inside. Summers turns and her house keys are visible on her kitchen counter. She quickly runs over to the counter and, judging by the audible cursing, seems to stub her toe, slowly lowering to the floor. Summers gets off the ground after around thirty seconds of yelling. She reaches for the keys and grabs them. When she turns to face the door again her mother, Natalia Summers, is standing next to it. Summers stops moving.]

Natalia: Sweetheart? Are you alright?

[Summers remains silent for a few seconds.]

Summers: Why the hell are you here?

Natalia: I just wanted to check up on you. I wanted to make sure you were alright. I heard gunshots when I arrived and got in as soon as I could. Why are you in your patrol uniform?

Summers: Why the hell are you in my house mom!?

Natalia: Calm down, swee-

Summers: Don’t tell me to calm down! You only visit on Thanksgiving, Christmas, or when you wanna show off a new car!

Natalia: You’re acting like I’m a deadbeat.

Summers: You might as well be! You should really leave, I summoned a Folktale werewolf on purpose and it’s trying to trick me.

Natalia: You did what?! Sweetheart, please just-

Summers: Stop calling me that! You’re acting like you didn’t throw me out of the house when I was seventeen!

Natalia: I didn’t kick you out! You also act so dramatic about everything! You’re so ungrateful! I gave you food, water, shelter, a career, paid for every hospital visit, and even got you out of debt! You never asked me to do any of this! I did it out of the kindness of my heart! The day you decided to steal my car to go out and date some idiot named Nick and ended up crashing it and almost died in the process is when my kindness ran out! You moved out on your own! And now you summon a damn Folktale werewolf and blame it on me!

Summers: SHUT THE HELL UP, MOM!

[Summers seems to be sobbing at this point.]

Summers: For once in my life just listen to me! What I did was stupid, but that was thirty years ago! You refused to even speak to me once I returned home! You brought it up every chance you had and proceeded to deny me my eighteenth birthday party all because I was still dating Nick! You don't know what it’s like to feel like no matter what I did you would never love me again! I moved out early because I was a stranger in my own damn house! I have a daughter now and I care about her more than anything in the world! I have spent every waking moment of my life trying to be a better mom than you ever were! That’s why I joined L.U.P.I.N in the first place! That’s why I worked so hard to outrank you! That’s why I brought this thing into my house! I care about my daughter, and I won’t let anything like that harm her again! If you don’t want to love me anymore just say it! Say it now or just leave and never come back!

[There are two minutes of silence.]

Natalia: I’m sorry. And that is why I’m here. I don’t think I’ve told you that since the incident. I know you hate me, and I think I hate myself too, but I can’t just let myself live knowing I failed my own daughter. I know words aren’t enough, and actions sure as hell aren’t enough either, but I think I’m done with ignoring you. If you’d allow me, I’d like to start being a better mother again.

[Both are crying for three minutes before Summer’s hugs Natalia.]

Summers: You owe me a carrot cake.

Natalia: I think that’s fair.

[A figure emerges from a dark corner in the kitchen behind Natalia and slowly approaches her.]

Summers: Mom!

[Summers shoots the figure three times. An inhuman scream similar to the cry of a locust is heard. The figure crumbles into dust. Natalia looks surprised for a moment, before calming down.]

Natalia: Nice shooting, where did you get that gun by the way?

Summers: Germany. It’s a lovely country, you should visit sometime.

Natalia: I’ll put that on my bucket list. In the meantime, wanna go out for dinner? I know this wonderful place. You just need to get your shoes on, clean yourself up, and let me in.

[Summers pauses for ten seconds.]

Summers: What did you just say?

Natalia: Let me in, Lisa.

Summers: N-no.

[Summers begins backing up.]

Natalia: LET ME IN, LISA!

[Suddenly the sliding glass door shatters as armed L.U.P.I.N officers rush into the home. Natalia seems to vanish.]

Officer Smith: Lisa Summers, you are under arrest for unauthorized summoning of a Folktale werewolf, along with the unauthorized possession of an LRD, and the unlicensed possession of an official field combat uniform. You have the right to-

[Summers is on the ground shaking. The camera slowly focuses to reveal the floor of the kitchen is stained in blood. The dead body of Natalia Summers is on the floor with three bullet wounds on her body, the same bullets Natalia had shot into the figure earlier.]

Officer Smith: Jesus Christ. We need a medic in here! We have a-

[Summers screams. This scream peaks the audio on the camera drowning out all other noise. The body camera is confiscated and automatically deactivated by Officer Smith.]

Ending recording now.

Summers is as of today unresponsive, being kept under careful observation in a classified medical facility. Summers now refuses to go through any doorways without them already being opened. Any changes in her behavior is to be immediately reported to her family and to Director Harsfield.

[gamebird]

A post about my Murderbot Diaries fanfics

A lot of my TMBD fanfiction links together. Someone called it the 'Gamebird Cinematic Universe'. So you'll see events referenced across fics, backstory fleshed out, and missing scenes filled in, with the information spread out across a lot of stories. I also ship Murderbot and Gurathin, but not within the canon timeline. Thus, there are a lot of fics where that hasn't happened yet, or where they are not both present.

I've put them all together in a single series for convenience, and broken out the ones that are separate AUs or unrelated one-shots.

.

Gamebird Cinematic Universe stories in (mostly) chronological order:

After Hacking - This is pre-ASR, a series of stories that track Murderbot's growing personhood and abilities during the 4 years after it hacks its governor module to before the events of All Systems Red. Each installment is around 1,000 words and they are all designed as stand-alone stories.

It's Only a Cleaning Process - Murderbot enjoys a particularly thorough cleaning process that can definitely be interpreted sexually. Murderbot declines to interpret it that way.

Two Ships, Passing in the Night - ART shows off for another ship. Seth is not amused.

Ratthi's Proposition - At the start of the ASR survey, Ratthi propositions Gurathin. This is an event referred to in various other fics.

[ASR happens here]

Rogue Trends - This is a data analyst digging into the circumstances behind Murderbot going rogue, and what happened to the other SecUnits that were in Ganaka Pit. It was my first TMBD fic and is much acclaimed.

Gurathin's Side of the Story - A retelling of ASR, ES, and other portions from Gurathin's point of view, along with key elements of his backstory. There is a little MB/G in it (occasional badly-veiled one-sided yearning; Murderbot doesn't know or care, as per canon).

BATNA - This recounts Mensah's captivity in Exit Strategy.

Things SecUnit Will Never Know - Missing scene at the end of Exit Strategy, tells the story of how the group restored Murderbot's brain after the gunship collapse.

Trust Fall - Set in the flashback scene of Network Effect - Overse and Arada argue about being cut out of the need-to-know list regarding the assassination attempt on Dr. Mensah.

Resignation - This is an elaboration of this line from Network Effect: Since I'd decided to stay (temporarily) on Preservation Station, Dr. Mensah had asked me to go places with her seven times. Six of those times were just relatively short boring meetings on ships in orbit or in dock. The seventh was when she had asked me to go down to the local planet's surface with her., telling the story of Mensah's slow crumble after the events of BATNA.

The Skinny - Murderbot sends a letter to Bharadwaj about the ways SecUnits are misused on contract. This would be in Network Effect, after the festival and before the water planet survey. This was another of my very early TMBD fics.

A Funeral for Killware - At the end of Network Effect, before System Collapse, those in orbit over the Adamantine Colony have an observance for those who were lost.

Retrieval - Three retrieves one of its fallen fellows.

Tarrathi - Tarik and Ratthi get together in System Collapse, missing scene fic.

The Talk - Perihelion's crew talk to it about how it met Murderbot. Or try to.

[post System Collapse, nebulous undefined mission with ART; in other words: canon that hasn't been published yet]

Repeat Deletion Protocol - Back on Preservation, SecUnit confronts Ratthi about a suspicious situation with one of Ratthi's partners, only to discover this isn't the first time it's confronted Ratthi about this.

De-constructed Feelings - Ratthi realizes/discovers Gurathin's past with constructs, and his present feelings toward one construct in particular. Gurathin swears him to secrecy, because he intends to take this secret to his grave. After all, Murderbot has no interest in him whatsoever and that's fine.

Skulk - This consists of the origin story for a rogue Combat SecUnit named Skulk, and then an adventure with Murderbot, Ratthi, and Gurathin.

Murderathin - This follows immediately after the end of the Skulk series and is my attempt to separate the MB/Gurathin material from the non-MB/G stuff so those readers who want to avoid shippy stuff can do so. Upon leaving the planet Skulk was on, Murderbot confronts Gurathin about certain feelings it has unexpectedly detected from him. This is where Gurathin's Side of the Story is told, although the events of it (ASR, ES, etc.) happen earlier.

[Young Gurathin section not in chronological order]

What is Love? - A late-teens Gurathin explores his sexual interests with a standard ComfortUnit in the Corporation Rim. Even back then, he wonders if there is more behind those eyes, or if he's just seeing what he wishes was there.

To Like or Not to Like - This is Gurathin in his mid-20s (I headcanon him around 50 in ASR) with a ComfortUnit. Nothing sexual or romantic this time, just two beings trying to understand one another and themselves.

[Back to chronological order]

Depends on Viewpoint - Gurathin and Bharadwaj discuss differences between the Corporation Rim and Preservation.

.

Other series:

Last Client Standing - ASR, but GrayCris attacks PresAux first instead of DeltFall. This is disastrous. Murderbot is only able to save Gurathin. They escape, eventually, returning to Preservation where there is grieving and therapy, with a hopeful ending.

TMBD Metas and Headcanons - What it says on the tin. Most of these are analyses of canon, but a few are my headcanons for ComfortUnits, Combat SecUnits, and Preservation.

.

Other stuff (one-shots or nearly so):

Freeze Response - Murderbot tries to figure out where a little girl went. Few words, many kudos.

SexUnit - Two versions of the same outline, one with Murderbot, one with an OC SecUnit. Both are used for sex. This is rape.

Two Peas in a Pod - Murderbot and Gurathin work together to retrieve two gestational units that have been locked in cryofreeze pods. Although both MB and Gurathin are in this fic, it isn't shippy in any romantic way. Barely even platonic.

Imagine Dragons - Murderbot tries to guard Gurathin from hostile fauna. I don't think this is particularly shippy. I think Murderbot would act the same way with any of its clients.

Personalized Security Services - Murderbot and Mensah fuck. This is not rape.

If Hostile One Had Bit Ratthi Instead of Bharadwaj in ASR - Just what it says on the tin.

Just a Piece - A man and an obliging SecUnit fuck. This is not rape.

Preservation Alliance, Politics, and World-Building - This is included in the Meta series, but is important enough for me to call it out individually. It's the background for nearly everything I've written in TMBD that has a setting in Preservation. It tells about languages, planets, and cultures.

There are also some drabbles and a couple longer one-shots I didn't count. You can find them in my AO3 works list. I have participated in two collaborative writing events, one Counting Down (combined PresAux and Perihelion crew get contaminated by alien remnants while planetside and have to fight off a CR sanitation team) and the other is Enemies, Closer (MB/G/ART/Echo). The first is not shippy in the least; the second is all shipping all the time.

[trashgremlendoesart]

So my dad is somewhat of a computer wiz and I asked him about some of the tech stuff in the magnus protocol

my dads says..

"I was involved in a rollout of about 1,000 NT4 workstations over four campuses back in the day (mid to late 90s)

Our machines started at Pentium 120 with 32Meg of RAM and 1.2G hard drive in a mini tower case. Apart from the drive bays in the case front for 3 1/2 floppy disk drives and CD ROM drives they don't look all that different to a small gaming pc today.

The mice still have balls though, the keyboard have big 5 pin DIN plugs but otherwise are just as dishwasher safe as modern ones.

If connected to a network you are very likely to find its Novel Netware 4.1. The networking will look like a thin black cable strung from machine to machine with a little silver T shaped connector on the back of each one, apart from the first and the last they have 'terminators'.

You probably won't be connected to the internet yet, there is probably no TCP/IP on your LAN at all, only Novel IPX. The ZenWorks NT4 workstation management tools from Novel are sublime, it take Microsoft quite a while to copy them.

If you are in our publishing class we will be teaching you Photoshop, Illustrator and Quark Express. If you are in our business course we will be teaching you Office 97 with that bloody paperclip. We will also be teaching you Groupwise, Microsoft haven't copied that off Novel yet so there isn't any Exchange.

If you have email its probably Pegasus, maybe early Eudora. Its unlikely you can email out of the organisation you are in. Internet connected mail is still to come, mind you so is any interoperability between mail systems. You expect attachments to work?

We still taught some things on Windows 3.1 so our machines all boot from the Lan initially to fetch the boot menu. You can choose Windows 3.1, NT4, in some classrooms Win98, or you can re-image you machine if its broken. Thats all done in assembler in the boot sector on the network boot disk image, theres no PXE yet.

Internet arrives one day in the form of a product called "Instant internet", it will share its single built in 36Kb dial up modem with a whole classroom of only IPX connected NT4 workstations if you install the Winsock32.dll file that it comes with.

You are probably looking for Mosaic or early Netscape if you want a web browser, Altavista is likely your search engine.

Better things are coming though soon we have a whole 128K ISDN service to share with about 10 classrooms, we have TCP/IP on the LAN now. Your classroom is still going to have to book when it wants internet access though, as that's still woefully inadequate.

I think the Macs are System 8 or 9 they have not made the jump to the unix kernel of OS X yet, they keep my colleague busy, she seems to be reinstalling the System folders on them on a daily basis.

One day you find I have changed the default home page for all the machines to Google Beta.

My job is done, the world as we know it has been ushered in."

Dad worked In TAFE (only Australians will get that lol) for a few years as well as other tertiary education providers.

This is probably not going to be very relevant for anyone but I figured having some sort of info available could be helpful for other people's writing, fanfic or whatever.

Feel free to send asks for any clarification or further info