#container loading software

[coztech]

Driving Logistics Excellence With Integrations

We seamlessly integrate both legacy and modern systems; all EDI or non-EDI formats, fostering an operational framework that's streamlined, cost-effective, and transparent. With an emphasis on process optimization, we aim to significantly minimize errors, while maximizing ROI.

[argumate]

The company now legally known as “THAT COMPANY WHOSE NAME USED TO CONTAIN HTML SCRIPT TAGS LTD” was set up by a British software engineer, who says he did it purely because he thought it would be “a fun playful name” for his consulting business.

The original name of the company was ““><SCRIPT SRC=HTTPS://MJT.XSS.HT> LTD”. By beginning the name with a quotation mark and chevron, any site which failed to properly handle the HTML code would have mistakenly thought the company name was blank, and then loaded and executed a script from the site XSS Hunter, which helps developers find cross-site scripting errors.

[genericpuff]

💣💥💣💥💣

so with Episode 67 finally posted and the dust settled, I wanted to share some funny behind-the-scenes stuff with you all.

Clip Studio is a great piece of software, it's what allows Banshriek and I to work on the same episode together via cloud-syncing (it's a function called "Teamworks" in the app) but it's also... kind of garbage sometimes. Without getting too much into it, CSP has a bottleneck issue with how it predominantly uses CPU rather than the graphics card in a computer. And considering it's literally graphics software, yeah, you can probably figure out pretty quickly with the most bare minimum of computer knowledge why this is a problem that's really silly for it to have LOL

ANYWAYS. This has been known to cause problems between Banshriek and I when trying to complete an episode. Problems that - often enough for me to tell you stories about it - result in us having to essentially "rebuild" the episode we're working on. This doesn't necessarily mean having to redraw anything (thankfully that doesn't happen very often) but it usually goes down something like this:

1.) The software suddenly has an issue syncing our changes which results in either conflicted files that can't update, software crashes that refuse to load pages, updates not even going through, or taking WAY too long to update to the point that we'd rather just rebuild and work on the episode independently and then swap the files and layers when it's time for the other person to do their part.

2.) I have to inform Banshriek that Clip Studio crashed again, and in the event that I can't get back into page editing because of the aforementioned issues ^^^ they immediately get to backing up their most recent version of the file that's stored on their computer. Thankfully a lot of the time these versions are pretty up to date, but it's still a moment of tension every single time because these crashes don't always happen the same way every time.

3.) Using the backup version, a new .cmc file (the file that contains every page for each episode, it's the thing that lets you make pages for comics in the software!) is created by whoever has access to the pages without issue (usually Banshriek is the one who's able to do it, this has become a very one-sided problem LMAO) and then is sent to me so that I can upload it to the cloud to replace the old version. This file is then usually called something like "Episode#BACKUP" to distinguish between both versions as we usually still have the older versions downloaded as well.

4.) Work (hopefully) continues as normal. Though it's definitely caused setbacks, so far our survival rate is still 100% 😆

This happens at least every other episode. It's become rare to go a whole episode without having to go through this process. We're still trying to figure out what we can do to avoid it, but we've tried a bunch of other options (and Banshriek has created some test episodes using pages from completed episodes that crashed for the sake of experimenting) and so far it's still a struggle understanding what exactly is going wrong with Clip Studio and it's syncing features. Fortunately, Banshriek and I are both auDHD enough that we're gonna obsess over it until we figure it out LMAO but until then, we're constantly having to treat Clip Studio like a live snake that's trying to wrangle itself out of our hands 💀😆

And the most recent episode? Episode 67, which ran a week and a day late? It set a new personal best for number of backups, because we had to rebuild it not just once, but TWICE.

What we've noticed is that sometimes you can barely make a change to an episode and these crashes still happen, as if major changes have been made. So far the best hypothesis Banshriek has come up with regarding this observation is that the software struggles more to update changes that affect overall pixel count and appearance - stuff like moving canvases, flipping canvases, adding on textured layers (which is what we do at the end of making each page) , etc. that covers a lot of pixels at a time, even if it's only changing the hues / colors slightly, seems to cause the most problems.

During the production of Episode 67, the following plagues came to pass:

Our car exploded

Our cat nearly exploded (btw! for anyone wondering from my last post about him, he's doing better now!)

Our toilet pipes froze twice (and exploded once)

Democracy in the U.S. exploded

My husband's wisdom teeth were exploding so the last 3 of them were removed all at once

The files for Episode 67 exploded twice and had to be rebuilt just to keep it on life support (by the end of the episode we were literally sending files back and forth via Google Drive like peasants 😔 /hj)

The most non-explosive thing to happen was the tattoo shop I work at moving locations up the street, and even then, I came very close to exploding a few times during that process LMAO (and our debit machine just exploded so we're cash only for the next few days sksksks)

This episode was probably our most cursed yet, and frankly, it couldn't be more fitting, I think Dionysus himself had a hand in our madness, just for the sake of being on theme with this episode. And the worst part, we haven't even gotten into the truly chaotic stuff yet. All Dionysus has done so far is slam Hades' head into a table, he's barely gotten started. Dionysus only knows what Episode 68 has in store for me and Banshriek as well 😭💀

[alienara-simblr]

📥 How to install everything ?! 🗂️

It's a very big project ! Between the lots and the sims, you have to be very sure of what you are doing. However, this post is there to guide you through the steps of installing everything.

🟪 Phase one - The "Lot Master Meshes Post" 🏗️ (for the unpopulated neighborhood) : This post contains links for custom content (Building and Buying Mode) needed that does not install itself with the packaged files and needs to be installed for lots to display properly. Not downloading those things can cause bug, especially food/shop displays. 🟥 Phase two - The "Chapters" posts : install the lots 🏡 These posts contain links to big downloads or entire download sub-folders containing the lots.packages (Neighborhood, Downtown, MagicTown etc.). Each lot.package file must be installed for every lot to display properly in the neighborhood with The Sims 2 Clean Pack Installer by Mootilda. For the lots, every CC is needed. The CC presentation in the lots posts (between pictures) serves to illustrate (or to show you an alternative or to thank a creator) and is included in the packaged file or the lot master-meshes post. The lots post where only to show what you are downloading, and for the ones who just want to pick and choose a particular lot for their own game. 🟧 Phase three - The Neighborhood 🏘️ The "Chapter 5" post includes every neighborhood decoration CC you need for the neighborhoods, after you installed every lot packaged file. When, you passed the check-list, you can choose what to download between all the options presented to you. 🟨 Phase four - The CAS Master Meshes Posts 1 and 2 A lot of CC presented in those posts are not strictly necessary. If you don't install a default replacement, you will end up with the maxis content. If you don't load a custom hairstyle or clothing, you can have a display bug, but that is quickly corrected with the "change appearance" option. Big bugs can occur when an eye or skin color is missing, so I deliberately build my sims with the Maxis eye/skin options. These posts are for the ones who want to install my populated neighborhood. For those who only want to choose a few sims from the families, each sim in each family post has their own content listed. 🟩 Phase five - Download & install the TS1 families Subhood 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 I'm working on making one big neighborhood, but the issue with main hoods is unwanted sims spawning, especially custom PT and NPCs. And then potential corruption when you try to clean that freaking mess. The Main (completely unpopulated) hood with the populated subhood is the best option to have a "Fresh Start" clean neighborhood. After deleting the subhood, you have to move the family in houses. The Sims 1 has a big family bin. Choosing who is going where is part of the game, it doesn't seem right to choose for you. 🟦 Phase six - Passed the check list 🎮 You chose, you installed, you PLAY ! (veni, vedi, vici...)

⚠️ I'm not going to lie to you. It's a big project. I tried by the past to handle that kind of installation and here is my advice, good or bad, I don't know :

1 - Install every master-meshes, well organized in your files. 2 - Install every CC included in lot packages in the same folder, to make the duplicate replacing themselves (there are a lot since I use a lot of time the same items... logic). 3 - Install the neighborhood deco nicely organized in your folders. 4 - Test the lots/neighborhoods, see if everything works. 5 - Exit your game and Run a program to search for duplicates (like this one for exemple), and suppress all duplicates files from the "lots packaged file CC folder" (suppress where it's still messy) 6 - If you want to organize the "messy" folder, you can run a program like the great Delphy Download Organizer to efficiently re-dispatch files according to your own classification. However, I strongly advise against using this software to locate duplicates. It has the option, but it doesn't work well.

💡To go faster ? - The "Navigation" page on my Simblr !

[nostalgebraist]

So, about this new "AI 2027" report...

I have not read the whole thing in detail, but my immediate reaction is kind of like what I said about "Bio Anchors" a while back.

Like Bio Anchors – and like a lot of OpenPhil reports for that matter – the AI 2027 report is mainly a very complex estimation exercise.

It takes a certain way of modeling things as a given, and then does a huge amount of legwork to fill in the many numeric constants in an elaborate model of that kind, with questions like "is this actually a reasonable model?" and "what are the load-bearing assumptions here?" covered as a sort of afterthought.

For instance, the report predicts a type of automated R&D feedback loop often referred to a "software intelligence explosion" or a "software-only singularity." There has been a lot of debate over the plausibility of this idea – see Eth and Davidson here for the "plausible" case, and Erdil and Barnett here for the "implausible" case, which in turn got a response from Davidson here. That's just a sampling of very recent entries in this debate, there's plenty more where that came from.

Notably, I don't think "AI 2027" is attempting to participate in this debate. It contains a brief "Addressing Common Objections" section at the end of the relevant appendix, but it's very clear (among other things, simply from the relative quantity of text spent on one thing versus another) that the "AI 2027" authors are not really trying to change the minds of "software intelligence explosion" skeptics. That's not the point of their work – the point is making all these detailed estimates about what such a thing would involve, if indeed it happens.

And the same holds for the rest of their (many) modeling assumptions. They're not trying to convince you about the model, they're just estimating its parameters.

But, as with Bio Anchors, the load-bearing modeling assumptions get you most of the way to the conclusion. So, despite the name, "AI 2027" isn't really trying to convince you that super-powerful AI is coming within the decade.

If you don't already expect that, you're not going to get much value out of these fiddly estimation details, because (under your view) there are still-unresolved questions – like "is a software intelligence explosion plausible?" – whose answers have dramatically more leverage over your expectations than facts like "one of the parameters in one of the sub-sub-compartments of their model is lognormally distributed with 80% CI 0.3 to 7.5."

---

Maybe this is obvious, I dunno? I've just seen some reactions where people express confusion because the whole picture seems unconvincing and under-motivated to them, and I guess I'm trying to explain what I think is going on.

And I'm also worried – as always with this stuff – that there are some people who will look at all those pages and pages of fancy numbers, and think "wow! this sounds crazy but I can't argue with Serious Expert Research™," and end up getting convinced even though the document isn't really trying to convince them in the first place.

---

Now, if you do buy all the assumptions of the model, then yes, I guess this seems like a valuable exercise. If you are literally Daniel Kokotajlo, and hence believe in all the kind of stuff that Daniel Kokotajlo believes, then it makes sense to do all this legwork to "draw in the fine details" of that high-level view. And yeah, if you think the End Times are probably coming in a few years (but you might be able to do something about that at the margins), then you probably do want to get very precise about exactly how much time you have left, and when it will become too late for this or that avenue for change.

(Note that while I don't agree with him about this stuff, I do respect Kokotajlo a lot! I mean, you gotta hand it to him... not only did he predict what we now call the "Gen AI boom" with eerie accuracy way back in 2021, he was also a whistleblower who refused to sign OpenAI's absurd you-can't-talk-about-the-fact-that-you-can't-talk-about-it non-disparagement agreement, thereby bringing it into public view at last.)

But, in short, this report doesn't really touch on the reasons I disagree with short timelines. It doesn't really engage with my main objections, nor is it trying to do so. If you don't already expect "AI" in "2027" then "AI 2027" is not going to change your view.

[average-mako-enjoyer]

Since I just saw a pretty cool post with Connor's idle animation, it's time to talk about the nature of these little calibrations he does all the time, because they fascinate me.

I know there's this idea in the fandom that all androids need to recalibrate from time to time, and that they especially need to do this after stress or exertion. If you have ever read any fic with an android from this game that involves sex, you know what kind of stress it usually is.

Personally, I'm not a fan of "humanizing" the machines. I think androids are fun because they are inhuman and their objective reality is completely different from ours. The fact that they are constantly aware of every single process in their bodies is fascinating, isn't it? Since they can understand humans and speak fluently, they have to run several language modules all the time. Plus security modules to prevent hacking. Plus visual recognition, plus all the specialized software for their primary functions.

What I mean is that even your standard domestic android like Kara is an immensely complex machine, running thousands of processes simultaneously just to fold Todd's laundry or talk to him about dinner. Why would she need to recalibrate? To take some of the load off her systems? To do a basic check-in of her body? All my parts are still connected and functioning normally? Something like that?

Meanwhile, Connor is much, much more complex than someone like Kara or even Marcus. All those analysis modules he runs all the time, all those database connections he constantly maintains. On top of that, he has to be faster and more agile than any existing android, and he has to do combat, reconstruction, and pre-construction. His "brain" has to be so fucking fast.

And that's what fascinates me. I think Connor's consciousness and how fast he thinks actually affects how he's connected to his body. His coin, all of his complex recalibration movements are necessary because all of his immense processing power is contained in such a small body. He literally has to slow himself down to just move properly. How cool is that?

I have this idea that Connor is actually much bigger than his body, and his consciousness is only partially uploaded to each of his chassises, and the only time we see him "whole" is during his conversations with Amanda. This may explain why he can upload himself on other bodies and why his calibrations are so elaborate. He needs to do more to connect with his physical body. (I actually drafted a whole fic that explores this idea)

[maxbanshees]

P3Q Datamining Roadblock: .anno files?

Hi everyone... I have been snooping through the files of P3Q and have found one roadblock in this kind of totally inadvisable quest that I'd like to drag other nerds into.

First of all, I'm using this mod of AssetStudio [the original one by perfare doesn't work for the Unity version that P3Q is made in, and even this new one shows some issues in the terminal... but at least everything loaded in.]

I'm also following this tutorial from the Pathologic Modding Wiki for changing assets.

Now... to the roadblock itself & some workarounds that haven't worked as of right now.

When you load in all of the files and sort by TextAsset, you'll get a lot of files whose containers end in .anno, and the contents are entirely unreadable.

They seem to be related to voiceovers in English and Russian, because the container path has voicover in it, and only ever mentions those languages.

I've tried bringing in the file into Notepad++ and changing the encoding, but nothing makes it more readable.

I've also looked up the file extension, and the closest I could find is this 20 year old page for a lipsyncing software. I've tried downloading the demo for it here [cue Silent Hill "My dick has led me to places I wouldn't go to with a gun" meme] and loading the .anno file in there, but it needs a .wav file to go along with it that I don't have. I've tried putting random .wav files in there and nothing happens.

[Love how creepy this application is though.]

So... that is my issue. I have no idea what these .anno files are and how to read them. I found one that was between Daniil, Andrey, and the Changeling, and it is driving me mad. I want the forbidden fruit.

Obviously I can and should wait for the full game, but I love roping people into my highly specific endeavors.

[My theory is that the 'text' in the file represents phonemes, which the game then uses to splice together animations for lip syncing. So, they might not even be readable... but... yes.]

In cooler news, I was snooping around the mesh files, and I think the P3Q Polyhedron uses the Exact same model as the P2 Polyhedron, but with some additional meshes and new textures.

[The additional parts I believe are called "Small_Part_##"]

I have to remember how I ripped buildings from P2 with all of their parts and props [I have the Polyhedron, along with Peter's whole damn house], but I think you have to go through the Scene Hierarchy tab + export as something besides OBJ.... I don't even remember.

Okay. Thanks everyone.

[iwonderwh0]

I don't think androids store memories as videos or that they can even be extracted as ones. Almost, but not exactly.

Firstly, because their memories include other data such as their tactile information, their emotional state, probably 3d markers of their surrounding...a lot of different information. So, their memories are not in a video-format, but some kind of a mix of many things, that may not be as easily separated from each other. I don't think a software necessary to read those types of files are publicly available.

Even if they have some absolute massive storage, filming good-quality videos and storing them is just not an optimal way to use their resources. It's extremely wasteful. I think, instead, their memories consist of snapshots that are taken every once in a while (depending on how much is going on), that consist of compressed version of all their relevant inputs like mentioned above. Like, a snapshot of a LiDAR in a specific moment + heavily compressed photo with additional data about some details that'll later help to upscale it and interpolate from one snapshot into the next one, some audio samples of the voices and transcript of the conversation so that it'd take less storage to save. My main point is, their memories are probably stored in a format that not only doesn't actually contain original video material, but is a product of some extreme compression, and in this case reviewing memories is not like watching HD video footage, but rather an ai restoration of those snapshots. Perhaps it may be eventually converted into some sort of a video readable to human eye, but it would be more of an ai-generated video from specific snapshots with standardised prompts with some parts of the image/audio missing than a perfectly exact video recording.

When Connor extracts video we see that they are a bit glitchy. It may be attributed to some details getting lost during transmission from one android to another, but then we've also got flashbacks with android's own memories, that are just as "glitchy". Which kinda backs up a theory of it being a restoration of some sort of a compressed version rather than original video recording.

Then we've also got that scene where Josh records Markus where it is shown that when he starts to film, his eyes indicate the change that he is not just watching but recording now. Which means that is an option, but not the default. I find it a really nice detail. Like, androids can record videos, but then the people around them can see exactly when they do that, and "be at ease" when they don't. It may be purely a design choice, like that of the loading bar to signalise that something is in progress and not just frozen, or mandatory shutter sound effect on smartphones cameras in Japan.

So, yeah. Androids purpose is to correctly interpret their inputs and store relevant information about it in their long term memory, and not necessarily to record every present moment in a video-archive that will likely never be seen by a human and reviewed as a pure video footage again. If it happened to be needed to be seen — it'll be restored as a "video" file, but this video won't be an actual video recording unless android was specifically set to record mode.

[astralynx]

I figured out how to rip DOTDD Models and now I'm teaching you! (plus uploading mine)

^ download these things onto your computer devices anytime!

Last summer I spiraled into insanity trying to figure out and eventually gave up so now that I know I'm saving you the trouble! I've also put all of my rips into a drive folder here that contains most of the notable npcs + playable characters but I'm planning on submitting them to modeler's resource when I have the time.

Final disclaimer: i also don't know much about ripping / romhacking / blender / computers in general but I thought it would be nice to put up what I've figured out anyway. I've also never actually written a guide to anything before so uh. i hope this is clear enough. Now finally onto the tutorial itself!

You'll need: tinke / apicula / a dotdd rom (not important if its in english or not but if you want like some of the translated ui elements / fonts you might wanna use a ver w the fantranslation patch) / and (optionally) blender or whatever other 3d modeling software that can read .dae files so you can actually do stuff with these.

First is to launch Tinke and load in your dotdd rom, you'll then be met with this menu. the models are contained under the "mdl" tab

each of these have different things but you'll probably care about mb (major npcs) and pc (player characters) and also mn (familiars). also using this to say that tinke is a. very finnicky program so sometimes stuff will just Not Work. sorry about that. anyway.

Once you're in you can start looking for whatever model (.n3d file) you want, unfortunately the models aren't named clearly so you'll have to open them to see what they are. You can do this by selecting the .n3d file and clicking "unpack" which will open a .bmd0 file with a yellow box icon, you'll need to unpack that file one more time to actually be able to open the file it gives you after that in the viewer / export it

When you get the second unpacking (which should be a .bmd0 file with a mostly green drawing for the icon), you can open it in the viewer and it'll look like this!

sorry any file you open that has a skeleton will look like that. I have been informed that sometimes ds games just store their models like this and it has no affect on the model when its exported so. lets just move on. Also sometimes tinke will give you an error that will stop you from opening the viewer properly but it will (most of the time) let you see the textures fine so you can double check (and even if it doesn't we have a workaround coming up soon)

Next big step is to set up apicula! When you download it, the program can't run by itself. You will need to create two text files, one named "apicula view nsbxx_files" and "apicula convert nsbxx_files -o dae_files" (no quotation marks) to put in the same folder as the apicula exe. You will then rename these .txt files into .bat files and you'll use these to actually "run" the program. You'll also make a folder alongisde those called nsbxx_files. It should look like this at the end

Back to tinke, you'll take the viewable .bmd0 model you want to export and click "extract" and I usually put mine directly into the nsbxx folder in my apicula folder for convenience sake. double clicking the "view" .bat will put the models into a viewer that I like to use as a final double check (and also what you can use if tinke's preview is giving you trouble). Its WASD to move and Q and E to lower / raise the camera

to actually convert the file, double click the "convert" .bat file and it will create a new folder named "dae_files" and inside will be your model and its textures in a .dae folder that you can read in blender and contains its skeleton!

PLEASE NOTE!!!! that apicula can only read / convert one file at a time! this means that it will just use the topmost file in the nsbxx folder and if you'll have to delete the dae folder every time once your done with it so it can run properly again. so just make sure you move your converted files somewhere else before you do. but now you'll have a model to put into blender!

the tutorial is technically "done" now but I'm gonna share how to set up these models in blender (which for the sake of explaining i'm gonna assume you don't know much about). When you first load in the models you'll have to "turn on" their textures using the drop down arrow in the menu on the top right corner of the 3d viewport and turn on these settings (while still selecting the solid circle tab)

Secondly, Many of them use transparent elements in their textures that blender doesn't like to load without some help

you can fix this by expanding the menu on the bottom of the screen and clicking the clock icon to turn it into the "shader editor" tab

Then, you'll select your model and go to the "base color" node in the shader editor, go down to the "alpha" tab and set it to "pre-mutliply" and it should remove the white lines around the transparent elements!

That's all from me! if you have any questions you can reply to this post / send me an ask or dm or whatever and I'll try my best to help! happy ripping!

[coztech]

Enterprise Data Management Services

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[frakyeahbattlestargalactica]

Monty Jaggers McGraw:

I am writing new BASIC programs to demo at my VCF Southwest 2025 exhibit of my 1979 Tektronix 4054A color vector graphics computer.

One of the programs I am writing is a 1978-1979 Battlestar Galactica TV demo. That TV show had $500,000 of Tektronix vector graphics computers and test equipment and many screenshots of their green vector storage CRT displays - some stills - some animated. These computer graphics were generated on both 1975 4051 and 1976 4081 vector graphics computers - predecessors to my 4052 and 4054A computers (see first photo attached).

Miami Herald TV 1978 magazine interview with the Battlestar Galactica set designer indicated extras on the set stationed in front of the 4051 computers were playing games during filming to increase realism and were so absorbed they kept playing after the cut! (article page attached).

The 4051 and second generation 4052 were the same physical size and used the same CRT and same Display board, but the 4052 and 4054 computers replaced the 800KHz Motorola 6800 CPU with a custom four AMD2901 bit-slice CPU to create a 16-bit address and data bus ALU which emulated the 6800 opcodes and added hardware floating point opcodes to speed up these computers 10x over the Motorola 6800, doubled the BASIC ROM space to 64KB and doubled the RAM space to 64KB!

I created these vector bitmap graphics using a "3D CAD" picture I found on the web of the Battlestar Galactica (last attachment).

As far as I know - there was never any 4050 BASIC program to view bitmap pictures on any of the 4050 computers. The 1979 4014 vector graphics terminal had a grayscale bitmap mode in the Extended Graphics option board, but I have only found a couple of bitmap 4014 images on a single Tektronix demo tape cartridge.

My 4050 BASIC program to display bitmaps works on all 4050 series computers - with an optional Tektronix 4050R12 Fast Graphics/Graphics Enhancement ROM Pack. This ROM Pack speeds up displaying vector images (including vector dot images) 10x over using BASIC MOVE and DRAW commands.

The Battlestar Galactica bitmap image in R12 binary format is 332234 bytes - slightly larger than would fit on a DC300 quarter-inch tape cartridge in the internal tape drive of all three 4050 computers, but would have fit on a 3M DC600 tape cartridge with a capacity of 600KB - it would have been very slow to load.

I designed an Arduino board to emulate the Tektronix 4924 GPIB tape drive - with the help of my software developer. My GPIB Flash Drive board contains a MicroSD card with gigabytes of storage and the Flash Drive emulates a GPIB tape changer, storing all the files of a "tape" in a single directory. I have also attached to this post a photo of my GPIB Flash Drive.

I have recovered almost 100 Tektronix 4050 Tapes and posted the ones I think are the most interesting at this time on my github repository for Tektronix 4051/4052/4054 computers: https://github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files I included Tektronix published MATH volumes 1, 2, and 3 and Electrical Engineering, but I don't think they have a lot of use today. I have in my collection but not recovered tapes on Project Management, Statistics, and over 100 more tapes from the very active user group, which Tektronix made collections and published abstracts in their newsletter and the newletter customer got the tape for free. Commercial software like CAD programs were likely encrypted to eliminate copying - since Tektronix 4050 BASIC included a SECRET command which would then encrypt the program file as it was recorded to tape and add a SECRET flag in the tape header that would signal to BASIC ROM when that file was accessed to decrypt the program when it was loaded into memory. One big limiter to the size of the program was RAM in the 4051 was limited to 32KB and the 4052 and 4054 were limited to 64KB of RAM, although Tek BASIC did include commands to allow program "chunks" to be overlayed as necessary. Tektronix used those commands in their 4050 System Tape which was shipped with every system and included a tutorial on many of their BASIC commands. The tutorial ran on the original 4051 with 8KB of memory, and if the program detected 16KB of memory it would APPEND larger program files to speed up the tutorial.

[ori-anna-v-58008]

Rampart Reengaging

[ATTEMPTING TO REESTABLISH COMMUNICATION WITH PILOT…]

"What do you mean attempting?"

"It's not easy to wake these things back up without proper software, give it a bit."

"You're hopeless. Give me one good reason to ever let you work on her again."

"Sure thing. I'm the only one willing to do your dirty work. That suffice?"

"Shut up and work. We still need this one."

"Yeah? Who's we? Last I checked, your little pet project wasn't exactly popular with Command."

"…Maybe they've taken a shining to it."

"I doubt it. How many millions did this thing cost them?"

"The cost that she incurs is ultimately of no consequence. She gets results."

[COMMUNICATION SUCCESSFUL. PILOT ONLINE.]

"Hah. Whatever you say, [REDACTED]."

"Wait. It's working again?"

"Seems that way. Welcome back, Rampart."

The first thing you heard outside the vast emptiness that had taken over your universe was the telltale sound of Handler's knuckles smacking clean across someone's face. You flinched on instinct.

"Don't call it that."

[WARNING: VISUALS NONFUNCTIONAL.] [WARNING: SPEECH MODULE NONFUNCTIONAL.] [WARNING: PERSONALITY MATRIX MALFUNCTION DETECTED. SEE NODE MARKED "LOUD NOISES".]

"God, you do not make yourself pleasant to work with, do you? Let me see if I can fix that error…"

"No! It needs that. That PM is loaded with responses like that, and it needs every one of them."

"I'm sure traumatized kamikaze pilots are so much better at crashing than ones that aren't."

"She doesn't run. She slams her eyes shut and the thrusters on. Jumping at loud noises makes her destroy them faster. They put those responses in them for a reason.

[PILOT INPUT: "Handler? Is that you?"]

You liked getting to hear Handler's voice again. You weren't sure where your own went, or if Handler had any means of understanding you at all. It was humiliating and frustrating to not be able to use your voice. You weren't entirely sure what you did to deserve having it taken away. In spite of this, you accepted it instantly.

"Give me a summary of the most recent memories you have on file." You giggled, even if no sound came out.

[PILOT INPUT: ""The Pilot of the Rampart was successful in defeating an overwhelming opponent". That's all I have."]

"Correct. Good girl."

[ADMINISTERING REWARD…] You couldn't feel your face enough to know what expression you made, but you knew you couldn't control it.

"You call that a summary? Shit was literally a single sentence." You didn't like this other voice. Handler's silence made you wince as much as the smack sound you heard earlier.

"Do you believe our enemies survived that explosion?" You heard drops of tension in her voice like slipping a poison into tea.

"No."

"Do you believe any other witnesses exist?"

"Your extreme interest in friendly fire makes it seem unlikely."

"So this is the only account of the assault that exists. It contains all relevant information, does it not?"

"You must think command is so fucking stupid, [REDACTED], If you think they're just gonna throw their hands up about [REDACTED] pilots and [REDACTED] dollars getting smashed to bits--"

Your hands clenched around imaginary triggers when you heard the gunshot. Your audio processor was able to filter out most of the mechanic's screaming, but it was imperfect - you heard her loud, sharp inhales before she wailed again and again.

"S[]t []p or th[] nex[] one []oes through your head." Handler's voice was caught up in the screaming and got glitchy. The mechanic was reduced to hurried breathing. You clung onto every sound you could from her lips, knowing she would do anything and everything if it meant keeping you safe.

--

This story is part of a series. To read the beginning, please click here.

[typosandtea]

typos, i'm having soo many Tango thoughts. 😵🥛💩 from the emoji asks for Tango please :]

@charliesvarietyhour

I am also having so many Tango thoughts you have no idea aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa yay!

Sickness headcanons

Hmmmmmmmmmmm being that Tango is basically a brain slapped into a suit of heavily modified powerarmour they don't get sick as such anymore. Would be a germaphobe but they have far too much confidence in their own mechanical work, which is good, cause if they did get virus or bacteria in their life support system it would be very very bad news! (What does getting a cold in your brain even feel like????). They are however susceptible to computer viruses as the brain-suit interface is a huge amount custom software and hardware. They often find it easier to hack things 'software to software' and will plug themselves in to random terminals to hack em directly.. (they have modified one of the little storage containers in the torso to hold a few cables connected to them with various common plugs to the can interface with things). They also will just load random holotapes onto themselves if they want to see what's on it and there's no terminal nearby.. which is a GREAT way to get a virus or malware.. (and is a legitemate hacker technique irl!, people's first thought at finding a random drive on the ground is often to plug it into their computer rip). The good thing about custom software is that any virus doesn't work as intended ….. once they overloaded and fried nearly every wire.. that was a hell of a job to fix ..

Drink headcanons

Since the only biological bit of Tango left is brain, it's takes not much alcohol to put them on the goddamn floor, though without a body the worst hangover symptoms they can get are headache. The life support system is particularly good at filtering out poisons (ie. alcohol) so being the drunkard that he is Darren (one of the 2 robobrains that made tango) invented a bypass / injection system so they can all still drink haha. Tango doesn't like being vunerable so mostly avoids getting full drunk, but does like being a bit tipsy, especially if everyone else is drinking. Is a bloody menace drunk though, has forgotten they are armoured while very drunk at the party after taking the castle and tried to sleep in a bed breaking it (sorry Preston!). Also Tango is prickly at the best of times but hungover Tango is cranky af, even without facial expressions they are super expressive in body language and hungover Tango is enough to make people scatter haha.

Ridiculous headcanons

…… everything about tango is already kinda ridiculous lol but particularly that they have 0 lockpick ability. Not even novice locks. They are nimbler than normal power armour but it's still power armour. Good luck holding a bobby pin. Attempts usually result in rage and broken doors.

Also! If they think they are completely alone you may spot small robobrain style arms poking out of panels trying to fix / clean parts of themselves. (Especially the helmets visor, still needs to be clean for the sensors to see through em). Has spooked Hancock once, but he was high at the time so it's ok haha.

[mariacallous]

KnowBe4, a US-based security vendor, revealed that it unwittingly hired a North Korean hacker who attempted to load malware into the company's network. KnowBe4 CEO and founder Stu Sjouwerman described the incident in a blog post this week, calling it a cautionary tale that was fortunately detected before causing any major problems.

"First of all: No illegal access was gained, and no data was lost, compromised, or exfiltrated on any KnowBe4 systems," Sjouwerman wrote. “This is not a data breach notification, there was none. See it as an organizational learning moment I am sharing with you. If it can happen to us, it can happen to almost anyone. Don't let it happen to you.”

KnowBe4 said it was looking for a software engineer for its internal IT AI team. The firm hired a person who, it turns out, was from North Korea and was "using a valid but stolen US-based identity" and a photo that was "enhanced" by artificial intelligence. There is now an active FBI investigation amid suspicion that the worker is what KnowBe4's blog post called "an Insider Threat/Nation State Actor."

KnowBe4 operates in 11 countries and is headquartered in Florida. It provides security awareness training, including phishing security tests, to corporate customers. If you occasionally receive a fake phishing email from your employer, you might be working for a company that uses the KnowBe4 service to test its employees' ability to spot scams.

Person Passed Background Check and Video Interviews

KnowBe4 hired the North Korean hacker through its usual process. "We posted the job, received résumés, conducted interviews, performed background checks, verified references, and hired the person. We sent them their Mac workstation, and the moment it was received, it immediately started to load malware," the company said.

Even though the photo provided to HR was fake, the person who was interviewed for the job apparently looked enough like it to pass. KnowBe4's HR team "conducted four video conference based interviews on separate occasions, confirming the individual matched the photo provided on their application," the post said. "Additionally, a background check and all other standard pre-hiring checks were performed and came back clear due to the stolen identity being used. This was a real person using a valid but stolen US-based identity. The picture was AI 'enhanced.'"

The two images at the top of this story are a stock photo and what KnowBe4 says is the AI fake based on the stock photo. The stock photo is on the left, and the AI fake is on the right.

The employee, referred to as "XXXX" in the blog post, was hired as a principal software engineer. The new hire's suspicious activities were flagged by security software, leading KnowBe4's Security Operations Center (SOC) to investigate:

On July 15, 2024, a series of suspicious activities were detected on the user beginning at 9:55 pm EST. When these alerts came in KnowBe4's SOC team reached out to the user to inquire about the anomalous activity and possible cause. XXXX responded to SOC that he was following steps on his router guide to troubleshoot a speed issue and that it may have caused a compromise. The attacker performed various actions to manipulate session history files, transfer potentially harmful files, and execute unauthorized software. He used a Raspberry Pi to download the malware. SOC attempted to get more details from XXXX including getting him on a call. XXXX stated he was unavailable for a call and later became unresponsive. At around 10:20 pm EST SOC contained XXXX's device.

“Fake IT Worker From North Korea”

The SOC analysis indicated that the loading of malware "may have been intentional by the user," and the group "suspected he may be an Insider Threat/Nation State Actor," the blog post said.

"We shared the collected data with our friends at Mandiant, a leading global cybersecurity expert, and the FBI, to corroborate our initial findings. It turns out this was a fake IT worker from North Korea," Sjouwerman wrote.

KnowBe4 said it can't provide much detail because of the active FBI investigation. But the person hired for the job may have logged into the company computer remotely from North Korea, Sjouwerman explained:

How this works is that the fake worker asks to get their workstation sent to an address that is basically an "IT mule laptop farm." They then VPN in from where they really physically are (North Korea or over the border in China) and work the night shift so that they seem to be working in US daytime. The scam is that they are actually doing the work, getting paid well, and give a large amount to North Korea to fund their illegal programs. I don't have to tell you about the severe risk of this. It's good we have new employees in a highly restricted area when they start, and have no access to production systems. Our controls caught it, but that was sure a learning moment that I am happy to share with everyone.

[terresdebrume]

Nobody sent asks about the persocons AU but fuck it, I'm having visions at 11pm and doing anything more than typing away on the phone would be really unreasonable so here we go for a very short pile of Vibes

Ps: I'm using persocons in reference to the manga Chobits, as a shorthand way of saying that the boys in this are robots with a very solid mimicry of sentience going on + are a normal part of society but ALSO as a way to indicate to those in the know that we are fucking with the laws of robotics a little bit

"Thank you," says Vera as Edwin hands her the crate and the spitting mad cat it contains. "You're very kind."

Charles isn't so far gone yet that he doesn't catch the infinitesimal twitch of Edwin's lips. They're pretty nice lips, plopped in the middle of a classically nice face, paired with a neat haircut and what is probably a classically nice body under all the tweed. The PAYNE line was kind of designed for that, after all. Well, Charles doubts any designer ever planned for the tweed, but the broadly appealing features and physique were definitely discussed for at least ten years down in the bowels of Hilarion Inc. headquarters. All in all: not surprising Charles would look. He's only—well.

Out of the shadows where Charles lurks, Vera steps back towards the next service shaft and the upper levels of London. Edwin watches her go with near perfect immobility, but even Charles' factory-work-oriented eyes don't miss the relaxing in his jaw, the miniscule sag of his shoulders. Edwin, Charles is willing to bet, is satisfied with a job well done... Which means there is no reason for him not to smile when Edwin joins him at the back of the alley.

"She's right you know. You're proper kind."

He falls into step with his newly found work partner, smirking when Edwin throws him a sideway glance and looks back ahead.

"Do not be ridiculous. Kindness is a human trait, and I am not human."

"Plenty of us Robots grow emotions, you know."

Mainstream research currently holds that persocons happen over time. Owner misses a software adjustment here, shakes a bot's servers a little too hard there, and eventually that all messes with the auto-learning routines in ways unpredicted and unpredictable and boom: your fuck off tall toaster now has opinions. Charles, who gave himself a name before he was even out of the factory, would beg to differ if he didn't suspect that would get him shipped straight to the richest R&D department for a nice long play session with his programming. Not exactly an appealing prospect.

"So experience seems to indicate," Edwin says, sounding exceedingly prim. "I however, haven't. It would be illogical for you to pretend I did."

"Sure mate. No worries."

Edwin gives a little nod that Charles decides to go ahead and label as satisfied. He'll keep mum about the whole emotions thing, of course. No point in going against Edwin on it. It's just that he also knows it's a load of tosh, really, and he doesn't know it because of the way Edwin's lips twitch sometimes in response to what other people are saying. It's not because he took one look at Charles' crumbling state—the shot up voice modulator, the stringy red hair falling off his head, the long stripe of skin missing from his jaw to his collarbone—and took Charles under his wings. It's not even because Edwin gave himself a name.

It's because, well. Charles was built as a factory model. He has the specs for thousands of android parts running through his data banks at any given time and access to millions more with the internet. Edwin's eye covers—the pale green of his irises, specifically—haven't been on the market for the past sed venty three years, four months, one week and two days. A normal android his age would have been replaced a long time ago. Crucially: it wouldn't have given a shit.

That's kind of the thing with androids that work like they're supposed to: they mimick emotions real well—as much as the humans want them to, that is—but when the moment comes to have them recycled they treat it like any other day. 'Oh, you want to erase me from existence forever? Okay.' And then they go. But then once in a while, someone like Charles comes along: a defect, a bug in the machine. An everlasting problem to robotics engineer everywhere, whose position on the whole being recycled is a resounding:

"Fuck that."

That's how Charles knows Edwin isn't actually emotionless. Because no matter how many personality protocols he's actually got running—or shut down, really, he sounds like enough of a beautiful freak to actively have played with his own brains—when the time came to be recycled, it is abundantly clear that Edwin's answer in spite of any Robotics Law overrides was also no thank you.

And if Charles is lucky, one of these days, Edwin might even admit it.

[stupidsexymecha]

Horus Kobold

The Kobold pattern group first appeared among revolutionary Ungratefuls toiling on Bo, the capital world of the House of Dust, where it manifested as a clever suite of hardware and software compatible with a broad range of mining and heavy industry mechs. The steaming, shuddering final result of K-PG exposure is an ugly affair: a device transformed from plow to blade by powerful, viral-morph liturgicode that is almost impossible for conventional codec sniffers to capture pre-print. The clandestine mechanisms by which the Kobold is transmitted and applied make it the perfect machine for fighting Baronic suppression forces. The desperate workers who printed the first Kobolds found them to be eminently fungible. When loaded into their mining exos and chassis, the K-PG code repurposed reactors and industrial tools to deadly effect, weaponizing the very materials and superstructures that powered it. The rapid flash-melting, processing, and extruding of raw material into molten plural-state particles is dangerous – often just as dangerous to its pilot as the final product is to its targets. Operational dangers notwithstanding, the Ungratefuls who first adopted the K-PG stunned their Baronic overseers with a series of rapid and total victories, liberating a great swath of lunar helium-3 mines. While the insurgency was eventually contained to Bo, it continues, necessitating the deployment of the House of Dust's Graveborn Banner Company for counter-insurgency operations beyond the capability of local security forces. HORUS's assets in the Long Rim continue to produce K-PG liturgicode seeds. The House of Dust has contracted Mastodon to track down and eliminate HORUS elements in the area; meanwhile, Harrison Armory has reached out to the Brigade-Legion to counter the House of Dust's efforts.