#file synchronisation

[blackmoreops]

Troubleshooting rsync SSH Authentication Issues

I’m sure you’ve bumped into situations where rsync just refuses to work over SSH even though your normal SSH connections work perfectly fine. This maybe happened right when you were in the middle of a critical backup or trying to sync important files between servers. If you’ve tried searching around the interwebs for solutions, you’d surely know there’s not many comprehensive guides available and…

[prlssprfctn]

Jason refusing to admit that Bruce and him are alike, while Bruce being oblivious to their raging similarity is the funniest case scenario ever.

Tim, waking up after a nap, and seeing a familiar big figure standing with his back to him: Hey, Jason.

Bruce, turning around, confused: Jason left an hour ago.

Tim: ...Sorry, you look like twins

Bruce, sighing: I wish. But we are not, really.

Tim: ??????

Some goon, shivering from fear: B-Batman, please, spare me!

Red Hood, leaving the shadow, even madder than before: Do I look like fucking Batman to you, man?

Goon: I-I mean, when you are standing in the darkness with your arms on your chest, and say "Now, talk"—

Red Hood, irritated: One word, and I am putting a bullet in your empty head.

Goon: Yesss, sir.

Damian, staring as everyone in the house first put cereal in the bowl, and then add milk, while Jason and Bruce demonstratively (and obliviously) do it in the opposite order in the perfect synchronisation: Why do they—

Alfred, shaking his head: Please, don't point it out, Master Damian. Either way, they will start arguing, and Master Jason will instantly teach himself to do it in the opposite way.

Damian, rolling his eyes: Whatever.

Dick: So, do you all know that Bruce and Jason refuse to admit that they are alike?

Everyone: (nod)

Dick, smirking: I fucked up Bruce's files and Jason's guns in the span of a minute...

Everyone: Why would you do that—

Bruce and Jason, from the opposite sides of manor, in the same furious voice: RICHARD JOHN GRAYSON

Dick: ...Just to demonstrate to you THIS. Now, if you don't mind, I'll go get back to Blüdhaven.

[d-z20]

Caught in the Crossfire (NSFW)

Pairing: Rio Vidal x Reader

Summary: You're an FBI agent and get partnered with Agent Vidal on a big case. When the mission goes wrong and Rio gets shot, you are forced to stay at a safehouse together.

-OR-

They say orgasms are good for pain relief so you fuck Rio to make the pain go away 🙃

Warnings: 18+ MDNI, mention of gangs, gunfight, hurt (gunshot wound), smut, fluff

Words: 3.1k

A/N: They is me, I am they, I say orgasms are effective pain relief. Oh and this is another requested fic :)

AO3 link | Master List

Rio leans against the desk, tapping a pen against the stack of files she’s just dropped with a flourish. Her eyes pin you with a challenging stare. “Five bucks says you screw up this case before the week’s out.”

You glance up from your laptop, unimpressed. “Bold talk from someone who hasn’t cracked a case this big since Quantico. What’s the matter? Rusty?”

This was the rhythm of your partnership: sharp words, sharper looks, and a constant undercurrent of rivalry. You’d both been top recruits at the academy, though on completely different tracks—Rio had excelled at strategy and undercover work, while you were a natural at analysis and tactical planning. When you’d been paired for this joint case six months ago, it was clear you were opposites in every sense, and it made working together a special kind of hell.

The task force had been chasing a dangerous gang involved in arms trafficking. Their network spanned multiple cities, but all signs pointed to the heart of their operations being a hidden warehouse in the city. The gang was clever—covering their tracks with misdirection and red herrings—which made your job of piecing together clues exhausting. But a major break had come two weeks ago when Rio went undercover, infiltrating the gang as a low-level buyer. She’d managed to secure critical intel about their shipment routes and a few key players, but her cover had been blown when one of the gang members got too suspicious.

You’d both known the risk when she took the job, and while you’d been impressed by her quick thinking, you couldn’t ignore the danger that still lingered. Now, you were both back at square one, tracking their movements, one step closer to the warehouse and the showdown tonight.

“Tonight’s operation better go off without a hitch,” you grumble, glancing back down at the laptop. The tension between the two of you, always present when working these kinds of cases, never seems to go away.

Rio smirks and straightens up, walking closer as she flicks through some of the paperwork right next to your laptop.

“You’re standing too close,” you mutter, trying to ignore the way your heart beats a little faster at the sudden proximity.

Rio doesn’t budge, standing tall with that usual confidence. “You’re the one who can’t stand my brilliance that close to your face, huh?”

You grit your teeth, trying to focus on the case. “You just make everything more difficult.”

She smirks, eyes flicking to your lips as she leans in slightly. “I think you like it that way.”

—

The two of you sit in the cramped surveillance van, tracking the comings and goings of gang members through grainy security footage.

“Don’t get yourself killed tonight,” Rio mutters, strapping on her bulletproof vest. Her tone is teasing, but you catch the flicker of genuine concern behind her words.

“I’m not the one who’s always charging into danger,” you shoot back, pulling on your own vest.

“Someone has to, or we’d be stuck analysing spreadsheets all day,” she says, smirking.

Despite the banter, the tension in the air is palpable. This operation is the culmination of months of work, and failure isn’t an option.

—

The warehouse is eerily quiet when you enter. Your movements are synchronised—Rio leads the way, gun raised, while you keep watch.

“They’re here,” Rio whispers, gesturing toward the far end of the warehouse.

You nod, heart hammering in your chest. The two of you move closer to the group of gang members gathered around crates of weapons. Everything is going according to plan—until it isn’t.

A lookout you hadn’t accounted for shouts a warning. Instantly, all hell breaks loose. Bullets rain down as the gang opens fire.

“Take cover!” Rio shouts, pulling you behind a stack of crates.

You return fire, pulse racing as you try to assess the situation. “We’ve got to fall back!”

“Not yet,” Rio says, jaw tight. She pops up to return fire, but then a sudden cry of pain tears through the air. A bullet strikes her shoulder, and she collapses to the ground.

“Rio!” you shout, stomach dropping. Without thinking, you drag her behind a steel beam, using it for better cover.

“Stay down!” You bark, positioning yourself in front of her to shield her from the continuing onslaught.

“Don’t—” Rio winces, gripping her shoulder. “Don’t be an idiot. I can still—”

“Shut up and focus on not passing out,” you snap, returning fire as the adrenaline courses through your veins. The gang is closing in, and panic gnaws at you. You need to get her out of here.

—

The minutes before the rest of the task force storm the warehouse feel like hours; Rio is bleeding heavily from her wound, and all colour has faded from her face. The remaining gang members are finally subdued in a chaotic flurry of shouting and gunfire.

You don’t move from your position until the scene is secure. When it’s finally clear, you turn to Rio, voice tight. “You okay?”

“I’ve been better,” she mutters, her face pale but her signature smirk still intact. “But hey, you were pretty heroic back there. Almost makes me like you.”

“Save your breath,” you say, though relief is slowly replacing the panic that has gripped you earlier.

The on-site medic patches her up as best as they can; she was lucky the bullet went straight through, but her wound still needs close monitoring. You learn that a high-ranking gang member had slipped away at the start of all the chaos, but not before getting a good look at you and Rio. Since you know their network is likely everywhere, you decide transporting her to a hospital is too risky. You need a safehouse—a remote location where she can recover while you regroup.

—

The cabin is small, tucked away in a far-out forest. It’s equipped with basic supplies, offering the isolation you need to keep a low profile. You enter first, checking the place out. Then, you return to Rio, who is sitting on the edge of the bed, her arm in a sling, bandages covering her shoulder.

You linger by the door, watching her with an uncharacteristic softness you rarely show.

“If you’re here to scold me for getting shot, you can save it,” Rio says, her voice light but tired.

You step inside, setting a bottle of water down on the nightstand. “Actually, I’m here to make sure you don’t bleed out from being a stubborn idiot.”

“Touché,” she says, lips curving into a faint smile.

You hesitate, then take a seat beside her, the usual distance between you feeling smaller now. “You scared me back there,” you admit quietly, glancing down at her bandaged shoulder. “Don’t do that again.”

Her gaze softens as she looks at you. “I wasn’t planning on making it a habit. But you…” Her smirk returns, though it’s gentler this time. “You were incredible.”

Your cheeks heat, but you quickly brush it off with a shrug. “Someone had to keep you alive; the paperwork would’ve been horrendous otherwise.”

You turn towards her, carefully peeling off the bloody bandages on her shoulder. Your fingers brush against her skin as you work, and though Rio winces, she doesn’t utter a word of protest. The silence between you feels heavy but not uncomfortable.

As you apply the fresh bandages, you glance up, catching her watching you with an unreadable expression. Her lips quirk into a faint smirk, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“You’re too quiet,” you say softly, trying to distract her. “That’s not like you.”

“Trying not to ruin the moment,” she teases, though her voice is quieter than usual.

Your hands linger for a moment after you finish, your gaze falling to the wound. “You need to be more careful,” you murmur, the words slipping out before you can stop them.

She tilts her head, her smirk softening into something more sincere. “And miss the chance to see you play nursemaid? No way.”

You let out a quiet laugh, but your hand remains against her shoulder, your thumb grazing the edge of the bandage. Silence stretches between you, comfortable yet charged with the unspoken things neither of you have said before. 

Finally, Rio speaks again, her voice quieter now. “You didn’t have to risk yourself like that.”

You meet her gaze, your heart pounding in your chest. “Of course I did. I couldn’t just leave you.”

Her eyes hold yours, steady and searching, and for the first time, you don’t feel the need to look away. Her lips part, and she leans in, testing the waters with a soft kiss. It’s gentle, hesitant, but when you don’t pull away, she deepens the kiss.

You feel the weight of everything unravelling between you. The kiss is slow at first, exploring, but then it quickly becomes urgent and heated. Hands roam, pushing past the boundaries of what had been comfortable before. You feel her press into you, her warmth seeping into your skin, making you forget everything but the two of you.

When you pull away, breathless, her eyes are dark with something more than desire. “I want something with you,” she whispers, “something real.”

You kiss her again, this time with no hesitation, pulling her closer, as if you could somehow make up for all the time you’ve spent pretending not to like her. You take your time, making sure to be gentle with Rio’s injury, always mindful of her shoulder. As you kiss, your hands are careful, exploring her without rushing. You help her undress slowly, checking in with her each time, making sure she’s comfortable.

She groans softly when your lips trace her jaw, your fingers grazing across the tender spots where her bandages are. You can feel the heat between you building, but you stop to kiss her forehead, your breath shaky as you say, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Rio’s eyes soften, her fingers threading through your hair. “You never could,” she murmurs, pulling you closer.

You take your time, letting the moment stretch, the room filling with soft breaths and the quiet rustle of fabric. Every movement is deliberate, every touch mindful of the vulnerability hanging in the air.

Your hands move to her good shoulder, slipping under the strap of her tank top. The fabric slides away easily, baring more of her to your gaze. She doesn’t flinch, her smirk fading into something softer, more open.

“You’re beautiful,” you murmur, the words slipping out before you can second-guess them.

Rio lets out a soft laugh, the sound shaky but genuine. “Flattery? You should’ve tried that six months ago.”

You grin, leaning in to kiss the edge of her smirk, letting your lips linger on her skin. “Shut up, Rio,” you whisper, your voice tinged with affection.

Her hand finds your waist, tugging you closer with surprising strength for someone who’d been shot hours ago. You go willingly, straddling her carefully as your lips reconnect, the kiss growing deeper. Heat coils in your chest, spreading outward as her touch becomes bolder, her fingers sliding under your shirt.

You break the kiss only long enough to pull your top over your head, tossing it aside before leaning back in. Her lips move to your neck, trailing kisses down to your collarbone, each one sending sparks through you. You gasp softly when her teeth graze your skin, her smirk returning against your neck.

“You like that?” She teases, her voice low and rough.

“Maybe,” you reply, breathless but playful. “What are you gonna do about it?”

Her answer is wordless, her good hand slipping down your back, finding every sensitive spot with ease. You shiver under her touch, your own hands exploring her, mapping the curve of her waist and the muscles of her back.

You’re careful not to put pressure on her injured shoulder, but Rio doesn’t seem to care about her pain. She pulls you closer, her body warm against yours, her breaths coming faster now.

You press your forehead to hers, your hands cupping her face. “Tell me if it’s too much,” you whisper, your voice thick with concern.

She shakes her head, her eyes blazing with determination. “The only thing too much is how long it took us to get here.”

Her words undo you, and you close the distance again, your kisses turning hungrier. You guide her gently back onto the bed, her good arm still wrapped around you as you settle over her. You continue your path down Rio’s body, lips pressing softly against every inch of skin you uncover. Your hands trail after your mouth, fingers tracing the delicate curve of her waist and the softness of her hips. Her body reacts to your touch, each shiver and soft gasp urging you on, drawing you deeper into the moment.

When your lips reach the hollow of her stomach, you pause, your hands resting on either side of her hips. You glance up at her, catching the way her chest rises and falls in anticipation, her hand gripping the sheets beneath her. The sight of her laid bare before you, trusting and vulnerable, sends a wave of warmth coursing through you. You press a kiss to her skin, just below her ribs, before continuing lower.

Your hands move carefully, sliding down her thighs, coaxing them apart with a gentle nudge. She complies without hesitation, her breath catching as you trail soft kisses along the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. You take your time, teasing, your mouth lingering just long enough to leave her trembling, her good hand reaching down to tangle in your hair.

“Please,” she murmurs, her voice breathy and full of need, and it’s all the encouragement you need.

You shift lower, your hands resting lightly on her thighs, holding her steady as your lips finally find her. The first touch is tentative and exploratory, but the way her body responds—back arching, a soft moan slipping from her lips—spurs you on. Your tongue moves slowly at first, drawing circles, learning what makes her gasp and writhe beneath you. You use your fingers to spread her gently, your movements precise and deliberate, ensuring every sensation is heightened.

Her reactions guide you, every sigh and breathless plea telling you exactly what she needs. When you slip a finger inside her, she tenses for a moment before relaxing, her body welcoming your touch. You match the rhythm of your hand to the movements of your tongue, building a steady pace that has her gripping the sheets tightly, her head tipping back as her moans grow louder.

Her body begins to tremble, her breathing ragged as she nears the edge. You don’t falter, your movements becoming more focused, more insistent, until she finally cries out, her body arching sharply as she shatters beneath you. You hold her through it, your hands steady on her thighs, your mouth gentle as you help her ride out the waves of her climax.

When she finally comes down, her body relaxes, her limbs heavy as she lies back against the bed, chest heaving. You crawl back up to her, pressing soft kisses along her stomach, her collarbone, and finally her lips. She kisses you back with a lazy, satisfied fervour, her hand cupping your cheek as if to keep you close.

You rest beside her, your fingers resting gently on her chest. The silence between you feels easy now, filled with something unspoken but understood. Rio tilts her head to meet your eyes; her smirk softened into something sincere.

“Didn’t know you had that in you,” she teases, her voice quiet but laced with affection.

You smirk back, brushing a stray hair from her face. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“Guess I’ll have to stick around to find out.”

Her words linger in the air, heavy with promise, and for once, you don’t feel the need to deflect. You lean in, pressing a final kiss to her forehead as her eyes drift closed, exhaustion finally claiming her.

—

You wake to the faint light of dawn filtering through the curtains. Rio is still beside you, her face softened in sleep, her chest rising and falling steadily. You watch her for a moment, a quiet smile tugging at your lips before you carefully slip out of bed, pulling the blanket up over her.

The cabin’s kitchen is small, almost comically so, but you’re determined to make breakfast. You rummage through the limited supplies, finding eggs and a questionable loaf of bread. Cracking the eggs into a pan, you curse softly when some of the shell slips in. The stove sputters, and the toast burns on one side before you can flip it.

“Do you always declare war on breakfast?” Rio’s voice startles you, and you whip around to see her leaning against the doorframe, her arm still in its sling.

“Hey! You’re supposed to be resting,” you scold, pointing the spatula at her.

She raises an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth twitching into a smirk. “I’d rather take my chances with gunfire than whatever you’re cooking.”

You roll your eyes, turning back to the stove. “I’m making you breakfast, so sit down and let me work my magic.”

Rio pads over to the table, still smirking. “If this kills me, make sure they write ‘death by toast’ on my gravestone.”

“Har, har,” you mutter, but you can’t help the small laugh that escapes you. As you set the slightly overcooked meal in front of her, she looks up at you with an amused glint in her eyes.

“You’re really taking this whole ‘overprotective partner’ thing seriously, huh?” She teases, though her voice softens as she adds, “Not that I’m complaining.”

You sit across from her, leaning your chin on your hand. “Someone has to look out for you. You’re not exactly great at self-preservation.”

Rio smiles, a genuine warmth in her gaze that makes your chest ache. “I don’t mind it. Feels… nice. Safe.” Her fingers brush yours on the table, a small but deliberate gesture. “Guess I’m sticking around for more than just the breakfast disasters.”

Your laugh is soft, but your voice carries a tenderness you rarely let slip. “I’ll try not to burn the toast next time.”

“Don’t change too much,” Rio says, her smirk returning as she takes a bite of the slightly charred toast. “I kind of like you the way you are.”

Her words settle between you, light and teasing but laced with a sincerity that fills the room with warmth. For the first time, the future doesn’t feel like something to fear—it feels like something you might actually look forward to.

[pfhwrittes]

look i said something about it in the tags of this post by @391780 but the ONLY way i can see price x laswell being a thing is in any universe is where price and laswell were married before john transitioned.

like john and kate were those married lesbians that made everyone supremely envious of how synchronised they were. neither of them played into the butch-femme thing but if you squinted you could maybe say that kate was the more femme of the two. john would keep his hair short, dress exclusively in masculine clothing, light up at being called “sir” by strangers.

let’s assume they had an active sex life, even if john straight up told kate that he was a stone butch and he didn’t want her to go down on him or fuck him with her clever fingers. it didn’t matter to kate that he didn’t want that, that he would bring himself to orgasm with his own hands after she was left sweaty and panting against the sheets of their shared bed.

but what mattered to kate was when five years into their marriage he sat her down at their kitchen table and told her in his stilted gruff way that he didn’t feel like a woman at all. that he was a man. he was john. it mattered to kate that her heart broke a little because yes, she loved he-him, but she wasn’t straight and didn’t want to be married to man.

through her own lump in her throat she told him that. not quite as bluntly, and with reassurances that she’d support him every step of the way in his transition. she’d move heaven and fucking earth for john just like she vowed on their wedding day.

it’s bittersweet for john. it’s simultaneously the most gut wrenching and gender affirming moment of his life.

but he moves into the spare room. she starts compiling files on reputable surgeons, testosterone hormone therapy, on whether her health insurance or his will cover his transition. they learn to share their home as two separate people, no longer kateandjohn but kate. and john.

kate loves and supports her husband john. she drives him to appointments. she picks him up when he’s discharged after top surgery. she signs endless “change of details” forms on his behalf.

and then three years later, at the same kitchen table where john had told her who he truly was, who he truly needed to be, they sign their divorce papers with minimal fuss and two matching tumblers of his favourite scotch to commiserate celebrate the occasion.

john, for what it is worth, loves and respects his ex-wife. he refuses to entertain any badmouthing. he also shuts down any whispers that he still loves her before they can reach her sharp ears because of course he does, he’ll always love her in a way. he’s thrilled when she tells him that she’s met someone new, that it’s serious. she’s delighted when her new fiancée suggests inviting him to the wedding, even if he does miss it because he’s chasing down a terrorist organisation on her intel, knowing that he’d never decline the invitation but he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to attend.

eventually, they fall into a comfortable routine where john pops over for shared dinners at kate’s and she teases him for surrounding himself with pretty young men in the task force.

so they may not be johnandkate or kateandjohn any more, but they are still kate and john. and heaven help anyone that tries to separate the two of them.

[whyamismall]

If still doing the kiss roulette, 10 or 11 Rexsoka? Pls and thanks.

Ofc! Thankyou for the ask! I wrote prompt 10, hope you like it!!

“Company Attention!” The synchronised thuds of his brother's boots hitting the floor as they fell into formation echoed from behind him, with Rex himself following a mere breath after them. The hangar bay was so uncharacteristically quiet as their new General walked up and down the rows of clones, inspecting each and every one of them with a quiet seriousness before her exaggerated sternness melted away into a bright smile as she conversed with each trooper. He could see her out of the corner of his eye now as the distance between them closed. But Rex kept stock still as he stared straight ahead. Finally the new General came to a stop before him.  “Commander Rex.”  His eyes flicked down to meet Ahsoka's blue ones and he couldn’t keep the proud smile off his face if he tried. “General Tano. Glad to have you on board” Ahsoka looked him up and down before she let out a small “hmm” before she walked away and began inspecting the next row of men. His jaw nearly dropped open in shock at the dismissal. It was only the snicker that sounded suspiciously like Jesse from beside him that snapped Rex back to his senses. He watched as Ahsoka continued to inspect the men, a sense of smug amusement at his expense emanating from her as she deliberately swayed her hips when she knew Rex could see. All at once, Rex realised what was happening. She was teasing him. Finally after another ten minutes of inspection, Ahsoka's voice rang out. “Dismissed, have fun boys.” The men immediately broke ranks and began filing out of the hangar bay. Just as Rex moved to leave, Ahsoka appeared beside him. “Not you Commander.” Rex stood stock still, as Ahsoka stood before him and began looking him up and down, much like she did earlier, only this time with that look in her eyes that he knew too well. “Sloppy,” she tutted as she stepped around him. He turned his head to follow her, but Ahsoka grasped his chin and guided it back to forward position before she stood in front of him once again, this time with her arms crossed. “Very sloppy.” He felt a pinch on his backside and jolted at the phantom touch but maintained his position.  Unfortunately his eyes betrayed him by darting down to her face only to blink in surprise when he saw that she was much closer than he realised. “Hmm, poor posture. Abysmal attention span,” she murmured as she ran her pointer finger along his pauldron before toying with the neckline of his blacks.   He shivered as her finger dipped inside the neckline for a blessed few seconds before it was gone, replaced instead by Ahsoka leaning into his space as she pressed her body up against his. Ahsoka began pressing familiar gentle kisses up the small sliver of his neck that wasn’t covered by his blacks before moving to his jawline where she began teasing the sensitive skin. Her teeth scraped the hinge of his jaw and Rex's hands instinctually shot out and grasped Ahsoka's hips. “Sir,” he growled out. “If you don’t stop that right now. I’m afraid you’re going to have to add disobedience to my list of infractions.” The sultry, predatory smile that graced his cyares face made all thoughts grind to a halt as she pushed herself away from him and began sauntering away. “That’s the idea Rex.”  Scratch that, he needed to perform a full brain reboot. Thankfully his body moved without thinking while his brain rebooted. A squeal escaped Ahsoka as he reached her and threw her over his shoulder as he strode towards exit. “Rex, put me down,” Ahsoka gasped out in between bouts of laughter and weak slaps against his back. “Not likely sir,” he responded before exiting the hangar and began making his way to their quarters. He’d have to thank Jesse for making sure the hallways were clear. Who knew how long it would take for the chatter to die down if the men saw their Commander carrying their wriggling General back to their quarters.

[the-girl-wh0-cries-w0lf]

You're waiting for a train...(4)

Painted Windmills

Robert Fischer x reader

description - Eames and Y/n embark on their intel operation and Eames only has one rule for Y/n; do not be seen.

word count - 2.4k

warnings - hospitals, blood (so minor tho), sadness

a/n - finally we have them meeting!!! Also I know some people may disagree with Eames' reactions in this but remember he is thinking about how this job is important for Cobb and Y/n.

Previous Part Series Master list Master list

If you want to be added to the taglist - here

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Eames led me in with his hand on my back in faux professionalism but with genuine care. We had dressed up all nice and proper for our first day. The thick black dress hugged my curves in a way I was not used to, and revealed my legs way more than I could stand. It felt constricting compared with the jeans (which I’d had for years) and baggy shirts I usually wore on jobs. I fixed my newly acquired fake glasses and my disguise was complete.

We walked up the stone steps to the house that loomed like my private gallows. Why was I so nervous? Eames was right next to me, and this was hardly the first intel operation I’d done with him.

I wobbled about in my precarious heels and my ankles practically gave out when I reached the fourth step. My embarrassment was saved by Eames’ quick grasp of my elbow, righting me lest I draw attention to our entrance.

Our fancy dress shoes clinked in synchronisation and stopped to face each other before we breached the fateful doors. One last debrief.

“What are we here to do?” Eames prepped me.

“Gather as much information about the father-son relationship and see what we can use to our advantage. And you’re going to be studying Browning to mimic his movement, mannerisms, and speech.” I completed with pride.

“Very good baby Cobb.”

“Hey! I vetoed that nickname!”

“The most important thing is don’t be seen.” I raised my eyebrow at his ridiculous request. “You know what I mean, don’t draw attention to yourself. And whatever you do, don’t talk to Fischer.”

I laughed at how serious he looked holding my gaze. I tried to leave to go in, thinking the conversation was done. But I was held in place by his hand on my arm.

“Don’t talk to Robert.” He tilted his head, and I felt the meaning of his words. He’d seen me with the picture. I shucked his hand off my arm and left abruptly.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” I seethed.

He met the quick pace I had formed so he didn’t see the distress I felt at his distrust. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust me, he thought he needed to manage me. Take care of me. Like I was a child.

We both arrived at the top of a dark oak staircase that exuded the feel of wealth and prosperity. The house was so quiet that my heels were like a gunshot in a library. I began to tilt my head up to look at the expanse of the house in wonder. It seemed it had more shadows than glimmers of light. The house choked on its own emptiness.

“Mr and Mrs Trent?” A perky blonde approached us as we walked around the first floor aimlessly.

I panicked at her assumption. “No, no, no, no. We are not a couple—not even--. Miss James.” I shoved out my hand hoping she and I would both forget my stuttering. Great first impression.

She reluctantly met my hand. “Okay, I see well if you both come this way, we can get you started. There is quite a lot to do due to Mr Fischer’s declining health. You will both be responsible for sorting through the different files; making sure, if an account is prepared, it is filed away, and if it’s not, it is highlighted to be looked at.” Eames’ and I’s mouths ached from the smiles we were forcing towards Little Miss Big Boobs.

But we both righted our faces to make it seem like we were focused on the 'challenging' task rather than admitting this kind of work was trivial compared to our own jobs. We placed our bags down, took the exaggerated lapel badges handed to us, and began to quickly complete our task. We had previously discussed that we would complete the task first, not wanting to have hindered the Fischer empire any more than we were already going to, then go about our snooping.

I opened my first file, quickly read it, then assigned it it’s place. I’d always had a mind that worked faster than most. Arthur used to joke that my projections run rather than walk. This meant general schoolwork had seemed mundane to me when I was a child. Kids can be cruel to the kid who always finishes first. No one likes a show off.

After I had read my 10th file in less than 5 minutes, I noticed Eames was gesturing and mouthing something towards me.

‘SLOW DOWN’ Ah I forgot. Don’t draw attention to yourself.

My job here wasn’t exactly defined, by Fischer or Eames.

Eames trailed Browning like a shadow, subtly mimicking every move in a sort of dress rehearsal. I tracked him with my gaze, in awe at his skill. Partially because his skill was slick enough to pass between everyone’s tired eyes.

All at once, a commotion began around my section. Some balshy intern had decided to push Browning for an answer on question he didn’t want to hear. He went on to sarcastically suggest that the intern should bring the question to Maurice himself. He strutted away and drove open the large double doors that blanketed the room. When the oak parted I found myself moving away from my corner to peek into the scene revealed.

Maurice Fischer lay on his hospital bed surrounded by equipment which stood in contrast to the dark interior that sat around them. Browning walked through and instead of approaching Fischer senior; he made his way to the window where a man stood. His back was to me, but his figure was distinguished. My feet edged me forward a little more.

“Argghh” Maurice flailed out his arms. In his frenzy, he had knocked down a picture from his bedside. The man turned at the noise and it was there I saw the face I had longed to see. Robert Fischer.

He moved to pick up the picture with a sort of meekness. And as he looked up to his father there was a sense of shame there. As if he was once again the height of a young boy. He rose, broken picture scarring his hand. I see Browning and Fischer exchange words. I inch forward more so that my frame centres in the doorway. Suddenly…

“Mr Browning, I have some—” CRASH.

The balshy intern from before slams into my shoulder and knocks me onto the floor. Papers fly everywhere and I audibly wince when my knees come in contact with the hardwood floor. Shit.

I compose myself, trying not to consider how obvious I just made myself. As I slide my pages back together, 2 more hands join my own. I stop in my tracks, registering the person before me. I reluctantly look up and fall into a pool of blue.

“Are you okay?” I sharply intake.

He studies my face as I fail to speak. When I see him poised for an answer, my brain snaps back.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

*Robert’s pov*

“I put it there.” My finger drags down the cracked memory. “He didn’t even notice.”

My thoughts are overtaken when a loud crash reverberates throughout the room. My head snaps up, annoyed at the offending noise, but when I look up, I am overcome. I see a girl on the floor struggling to clean up her mess. I rush to her aid, glaring at the man who had knocked her down. As I passed him, I gently stated,

“You’re fired.” He goes to argue but retreats back into the office.

I kneel in front of her rushed attempt at clearing up and chuckle at how she had just seemed to make more mess in her haste.

“Are you okay?” She met my eyes and my breath caught as I fully took her in. She was beautiful.

Minute long seconds passed of us just gazing. I could have stayed there a lifetime if she let me.

“Yes, I am fine. I am so sorry about the mess; I’ll clean it up and I’d understand if you want me to leave.” I stopped her rambling by clasping her hand in mine. I then picked strands of her hair to place behind her ears to reveal more of the face she was trying to hide. Her spew of words was like music to me and what interested me even more were her little laughs between thoughts, as if apologetic for what she said.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

*your pov*

My sputtering was pathetic, but I was rendered speechless when he held my hand. I quickly retracted the offending limb to push up my glasses as if they could save me now. My thoughts were equally filled with his words but also my warnings. I had to leave and tell Eames the mistake I’d made so we could rectify it.

Together we had collected the papers into a transportable pile, and I stood up. But I braved it too quickly and found myself stumbling in my heels once again. Robert hadn’t let go of me even as I stood up, making sure I was okay. My leg which had gone numb from my position on the floor gave out and pushed me into Robert’s awaiting arms.

I let myself sink further into the perfect feeling of being in his warmth. He felt like a warm beach in the afternoon sun. But I quickly remembered my place. I jumped back in fright.

“You’re bleeding!” Robert exclaimed. As I stumbled back, he had noticed drops of blood adorning my newly scraped knee.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” I tried to placate his worry as I began to make my way to the exit.

“No, come, I’ll clean it up.” He grasped my hand and led me through his father’s room despite my protests.

“Mr Fischer, please, you are far too busy. I can sort it myself.” We had made it through another door that led into a room which was so uniquely childlike.

“Please, I’ve been looking for an excuse to leave.” He smirked at me and led me to sit down on the window seat. He went to a drawer for plasters and then another for disinfectant. He moved about the room with assuredness. He returned and lifted my leg so that it rested over his knees. I tugged down the end of my short-ish dress. He opened the disinfectant and dabbed it with cotton wool. As he went about this, I took in the room around me.

It felt busy but not cluttered. In the middle of the back wall sat a single bed with light blue cotton sheets. The sheets were decorated with multi-coloured windmills. The white bedside tables held many trinkets of a young boy. The chest of drawers was home to more pictures and framed memories. My head lifted higher, and I saw the sky painted blue and it held wooden planes that flew around the room with a freedom I believe the owner wished he had.

“This is your room, isn’t it.” I whispered.

He didn’t look up from my scar. “Yes.” He chuckled. “Not that I stay in it.”

We both laughed. “I could see you still squeezing into that.” I pointed to the neatly made bed.

“I have thought about it.” He remarked.

I braved my next words. “Or maybe you just want to sleep in a simpler time.” Our eyes met again.

I noticed a familiar picture which sat on the chest. And I realised it was the same one that rested on the window seat between us, covered by Robert’s jacket.

“Is that you and your dad?” I mentally smacked myself for such a stupid question.

“Yeah.” He spoke.

“How old are you here?” I picked up the delicate frame. I smiled at the picture of a young Robert blowing on a handmade windmill, sat in his father’s lap. I could feel the love radiating from this image. It now seemed so different to the coldness one felt in this house.

“10. The nurse said he may respond to being surrounded by happy memories. That was the happiest day of my life.” He placed his arms around me to join mine on the frame.  “I just didn’t think that it might not be one for him.” As I turned to face him, I realised how close we were. One gentle slip and our lips would touch. Each exhale was felt on the others face. “There’s something. Have we met before?”

What was I doing?!

I retreated back, freeing myself from his arms. I had to leave. Find Eames and get out of here.

“I am so sorry, but I have to go—I just—I--.” I barely even finished a sentence as I ran out, back to the office. I threw my hair in front of my face as if that would help me now. Eames, Eames, EAMES!

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

*Robert’s pov*

I ran back to catch her before she left. I was unsuccessful so I asked Browning. She’d left so quickly I’d never even gotten her name. But I knew I needed it.

“That intern, what’s her name?” I asked my godfather.

“I don’t know, why? Where did you just go off to?” He responded.

“I’ve had to be numb to a lot in my life, but just then I felt something.” I would see that girl again if it’s the last thing I do. "Something real."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

*your pov*

Eames and I were safely in our rental car, driving back to the warehouse. Eames seemed pleased at his progress and thankfully hadn’t noticed my absence.

“I have Browning down to a T and I think he is going to be the key. If we can somehow get Robert’s own projection of Browning to—” As he prattled on, I struggled to quieten my breathing after my speedy getaway. All I could do was watch the world pass by my window, willing my mind to forget everything that just happened. How Cinderella of me.

“You, okay?” Eames looked over to me concerned.

“Yeah. I think the bad relationship with the father is the way in. Everything about that dynamic is so…broken.” I softly spoke.

“Nice. I like a good gap to sneak through.” I rolled my eyes at his childishness but also couldn’t help but laugh.

“He saw me.” I admitted.

The car came to a grinding halt. I sat cowering hearing Eames’ heavy sighs. “I’m sorry.” I managed to stumble out through my choked throat. Eames’ head hung low in his hands.

“Why?” he huffed out.

“I didn’t really have much control over it!” I argued back. This wasn’t a complete lie, in more ways than one. It had to happen. “Please don’t tell my dad, I can’t have him thinking I blew this whole case. Because I didn’t okay, because it’s fixable! You know that! Please you can help me fix it!” I was now begging Eames by scrambling at his coat to force him to look into my apologetic eyes.

“I thought you were better than that.” He spat.

“So did I.” I slumped back in my seat. A minute of silence passed. We both just stewed in it.

“I won’t tell your dad.” I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding on to. “But-“ I gave him my entire focus. “You mustn’t get distracted. Promise?” He held his pinkie out to me. I giggled remembering fondly.

“I promise.” I finished, linking my pinkie with his and then we both kissed our thumbs together whilst making a corresponding sound.

We drove off once more. Eames satisfied in the promise he’d made me make. I was terrified that I would break it.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

a/n - they've finally met!!

taglist: @jonsncws @h-l-vlovesvintage @theethy @fashionki11a @felicity1994 @bearchermer

[styx-class-nhp]

[Hellhound.omf]

[Attatched is a collage of various files, predominantly recorded by Styx.

The great beast of steel and bone plods through a cool, dim tunnel, head held low to the ground. Searching.

A scent on the air.

An all too familiar flesh.

The beast puts her ear to the ground.]

[The footage cuts to grainy, silent security recordings.

A disused cabin. From the ramshackle state, and several burnt out control panels, not the room's original purpose. It matters not now. It will serve quite well as a tomb.

Three more clones rest, having barricaded the door. One sleeps, another tends to its own wounds, while the clone nearest to the camera turns it's head towards the entryway. At what is unclear, at first. Then the camera begins to shake, ever so slightly. Sound. Bass.

That visible drumming rises to an infernal fever pitch, stops. All three are awake now. Stolen and improvised weapons. Raised. Two watch the door, one hides behind cover.

None are prepared as the floor caves beneath them. Styx gulps one down in an instant, the other two disappearing into the darkness with her. The pit is barely within the camera's field of view, showing only brief flashes of gunfire, ghostly cherenkov, a few drops of blood spewing from arteries.]

[Back to her eyes.

A dim incandescent glow issues from an omnihook. The screen is cracked, but usable. Syyx affixes it in her eye - the footage is momentarily corrupted, brief flashes of text jumping hitherto before fading.

When it is legible once more, she is running. Down, down, down, back into the bowels. Towards her den, take a right, that's it... another cargo hold... another maze... another snare into which her prey has so willingly dashed.

This bay is brighter than cold storage. Her cherenkov glow less obvious. She can hide, and stalk, and pounce-!

Silent footsteps, a crouched, quadruped posture. Always the silence - nothing that thick, heavy and metallic should move so softly, nor with that gait. But the red, raw muscles beneath ripple in time with each step, her tail almost suspended midair as she balances.

Up, up, left, behind cover, over the canister, don't knock it over- shit don't knock it over- down, behind cover again... check the data, their rendezvous is a little to the right. Leap from cover, down between containers.

Her maw sparks with electricity, ready to kill.

Nothing.

No... breathing. Footsteps, from far away. They're not here yet.

Several moments of delicate fumbling later, a container is opened. Full of some industrial cleaner, blast! Another, more precious time. A human's senses could pick up the sound of the approach now, carried faintly by still air.

A second one opened. Empty!

Styx dashes in, eases the door shut. Concentrates, listenes. Nine more. Nine more sets of boots. Nine more synchronised breaths.

Nine more corpses]

(Part 1/?)

[pinkspiderastrology]

I was drawing blue rosettes of a Portugese window grill when my son looked up from his phone and said, "This is going to be really hard - David Lynch..."

Jan. 16-17, 2025 / Pada 4 of Uttara Ashadha in Sagittarius / Prolific Writing

David Lynch: Capricorn Sun & Libra Rising - He Is The Arm

Based on my corrections to settings and calculations using online planetariums and my own star charts, which synchronise the constellations with the Nakshatras (28) and the Gregorian calendar - four years' work.

Kristen Patterson / KP O'Neil

Blue Skies and Golden Sunshine All Along the Way - I'm Going Where He's Going...

Still crying my heart out, though I know he's only changed locations - the lovely people of his YouTube communities... how to keep everyone together?

Just a few of his placements, for now -

born at 3:00 AM in Missoula, Montana, on Jan. 20, 1946 -

David's Ascendant is ruled by the Price That Covers - the star of the upper arm of Libra - in Pada 3 of Vishakha: Family Business - but as Zubenelgenubi is also on the horizon, I'm extending his Ascendant to include Pada 2 as well - Asset Manager;

extending it also because his Descendant is Bharani, in Aries - however, the constellation of Bharani spans Padas 1 & 2: Ancestral Ties & Shamanism -

the Nakshatra of Kali's cosmic Yoni, and I hold to the story of Kali creating birth charts/Akashic records for Chitragupta to manage -

Bharani - Andromeda, the place of our incarnations;

I can't split the constellation to match his Ascendant - I have to decide it's dominant over the Price That Covers in Vishakha P3 - that his death-drive (which is his Descendant/core personality in submission-reaction mode - thank you, Gordon Allport, as well as Sabina Spielrein) is steering him -

and sure enough, Sabina's birthdate falls on his Ascendant! So far, we're on the money -

but this means I reset David's Ascendant for Padas 1 & 2 of Vishakha - and when I line up Vishakha P1 with Ashwini P1, one wheel inside the other (jpegs in a Word file,) and draw lines between Padas based on a typed table of two columns listing the Padas - one column starting with Ashwini P1, the other with Vishakha P1 - I get a set of four circuits of stars - some people's circuits are open-ended, creating a dynamics of free-will/wheel, but David's are fixed - if I'm right, there's no wiggle-room for him, but he's a master of chaos magic -

confined, he is paradoxically able to create some freedom -

and Vishakha P1 belongs to Pioneers; his life-drive/Ascendant, aligned with Sabina's birthdate, serves his Descendant/death-drive (concept developed by Sabina) ruled by the constellation of Bharani, the Cosmic Yoni... Pioneering & Asset Management serving Ancestral Ties & Shamanism...

I think so!

David's Sun - instincts and triggers in the gameplay/I Ching of Life - is in Pada 1 of Abhijit: Surgeons, Pathologists, Seamstresses/Tailors, Machinists & Precision-Workers -

("I love factories and naked women;")

and his Neptune - travels, living locations tied to soul contracts and Muse Spirit Guides - is in Virgo, ruled by the star of the Prophetesses, the Pythonesses, the Sibyls - the Black Doves - Porrima: in Pada 3 of Hasta - channeled writing.

For starts...

[coochiequeens]

Men can't let women have anything for ourselves

An Australian museum has been ordered to allow men into a women's-only exhibit, following a high-stakes court case over the matter.

The Ladies Lounge at Tasmania's Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) sought to highlight historic misogyny by banning male visitors.

After being denied entry, one filed a gender discrimination lawsuit, which he won on Tuesday.

"We are deeply disappointed by this decision," a Mona representative said.

The velvet-clad lounge - which contains some of the museum's most-acclaimed works, from Picasso to Sidney Nolan - has been open since 2020.

It was designed to take the concept of an old Australian pub - a space which largely excluded women until 1965 - and turn it on its head, offering champagne and five-star service to female attendees, while refusing men at the door.

Jason Lau, a New South Wales resident who visited Mona in April of last year, was one such male.

Representing himself throughout the case, he argued that the museum had violated the state's anti-discrimination act by failing to provide "a fair provision of goods and services in line with the law" to him and other ticket holders who didn't identify as female.

The museum had responded by claiming the rejection Mr Lau had felt was part of the artwork, and that the law in Tasmania allowed for discrimination if it was "designed to promote equal opportunity" for a group of people who had been historically disadvantaged.

In his ruling, Richard Grueber dismissed the argument - finding that it was "not apparent" how preventing men from experiencing the famous artworks held within the Ladies Lounge achieved that goal.

Throughout the case, the museum's supporters, including artist Kirsha Kaechele - who created the work - had used the courtroom as a space for performance art, wearing matching navy suits and engaging in synchronised movements.

Mr Grueber said that while the behaviour of the women hadn't disrupted the hearing, it was "inappropriate, discourteous and disrespectful, and at worst contumelious and contemptuous".

His decision to allow "persons who do not identify as ladies" to access the exhibit will come into effect in 28 days.

Ms Kaechele previously told the BBC the case had felt like her artwork was coming to life and signalled she would fight it all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

But she also noted that having the Ladies Lounge shut down could help drive home its intended message.

"If you were just looking at it from an aesthetic standpoint, being forced to close would be pretty powerful."

A spokesperson for Mona said the museum would "take some time to absorb the result" and consider its options.

[canmom]

yarr harr, fiddle de dee [more on piracy networks]

being a pirate is all right to be...

I didn't really intend this post as an overview of all the major methods of piracy. But... since a couple of alternatives have been mentioned in the comments... let me infodump talk a little about 1. Usenet and 2. direct peer-to-peer systems like Gnutella and Soulseek. How they work, what their advantages are on a system level, how convenient they are for the user, that kind of thing.

(Also a bit at the end about decentralised hash table driven networks like IPFS and Freenet, and the torrent indexer BTDigg).

Usenet

First Usenet! Usenet actually predates the web, it's one of the oldest ways people communicated on the internet. Essentially it's somewhere between a mailing list and a forum (more accurately, a BBS - BBSes were like forums you had to phone, to put it very crudely, and predate the internet as such).

On Usenet, it worked like this. You would subscribe to a newsgroup, which would have a hierarchical name like rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (for talking about your favourite TV show, Babylon 5) or alt.transgendered (for talking about trans shit circa 1992). You could send messages to the newsgroup, which would then be copied between the various Usenet servers, where other people could download them using a 'news reader' program. If one of the Usenet servers went down, the others acted as a backup. Usenet was a set of protocols rather than a service as such; it was up to the server owners which other servers they would sync with.

Usenet is only designed to send text information. In theory. Back in the day, when the internet was slow, this was generally exactly what people sent. Which didn't stop people posting, say, porn... in ASCII form. (for the sake of rigour, that textfile's probably from some random BBS, idk if that one ever got posted to Usenet). The maximum size of a Usenet post ('article', in traditional language) depends on the server, but it's usually less than a megabyte, which does not allow for much.

As the internet took off, use of Usenet in the traditional way declined. Usenet got flooded with new users (an event named 'Eternal September'; September was traditionally when a cohort of students would start at university and thus gain access to Usenet, causing an influx of new users who didn't know the norms) and superseded by the web. But it didn't get shut down or anything - how could it? It's a protocol; as long as at least one person is running a Usenet server, Usenet exists.

But while Usenet may be nigh-unusable as a discussion forum now thanks to the overwhelming amount of spam, people found another use for the infrastructure. Suppose you have a binary file - an encoded movie, for example. You can encode that into ASCII strings using Base64 or similar methods, split it up into small chunks, and post the whole lot onto Usenet, where it will get synchronised across the network. Then, somewhere on the web, you publish a list of all the Usenet posts and their position in the file. This generally uses the NZB format. A suitable newsreader can then take that NZB file and request all the relevant pieces from a Usenet server and assemble them into a file.

NZB sites are similar to torrent trackers in that they don't directly host pirated content, but tell you where to get it. Similar to torrent trackers, some are closed and some are open. However, rather than downloading the file piecemeal from whoever has a copy as in a torrent, you are downloading it piecemeal from a big central server farm. Since these servers are expensive to run, access to Usenet is usually a paid service.

For this to work you need the Usenet servers to hold onto the data for long enough to people to get it. Generally speaking the way it works is that the server has a certain storage buffer; when it runs out of space, it starts overwriting old files. So there's an average length of time until the old file gets deleted, known as the 'retention time'. For archival purposes, that's how long you got; if you want to keep something on Usenet after that, upload it again.

As a system for file distribution... well, it's flawed, because it was never really designed as a file sharing system, but somehow it works. The operator of a Usenet server has to keep tens of petabytes of storage, to hold onto all the data on the Usenet network for a retention period of years, including the hundreds of terabytes uploaded daily, much of which is spam; it also needs to fetch it reliably and quickly for users, when the files are spread across the stream of data in random places. That's quite a system engineering challenge! Not surprisingly, data sometimes ends up corrupted. There is also a certain amount of overhead associated with encoding to ASCII and including parity checks to avoid corruption, but it's not terribly severe. In practice... if you have access to Usenet and know your way to a decent NZB site, I remember it generally working pretty well. Sometimes there's stuff on Usenet that's hard to find on other sources.

Like torrents, Usenet offers a degree of redundancy. Suppose there's a copyrighted file on Usenet server A, and it gets a DMCA notice and complies. But it's still on Usenet servers B, C and D, and so the (ostensible) copyright holder has to go and DMCA them as well. However, it's less redundant, since there are fewer Usenet servers, and operating one is so much more involved. I think if the authorities really wanted to crush Usenet as a functional file distribution system, they'd have an easier time of it than destroying torrents. Probably the major reason they don't is that Usenet is now a fairly niche system, so the cost/benefit ratio would be limited.

In terms of security for users, compared to direct peer to peer services, downloading from Usenet has the advantage of not broadcasting your IP on the network. Assuming the server implements TLS (any modern service should), if you don't use a VPN, your ISP will be able to see that you connected to a Usenet server, but not what you downloaded.

In practice?

for torrenting, if you use public trackers you definitely 100% want a VPN. Media companies operate sniffers which will connect to the torrent swarm and keep track of what IP addresses connect. Then, they will tell your ISP 'hey, someone is seeding our copyrighted movie on xyz IP, tell them to stop'. At this point, your ISP will usually send you a threatening email on a first offence and maybe cutoff your internet on a second. Usually this is a slap on the wrist sort of punishment, ISPs really don't care that much, and they will reconnect you if you say sorry... but you can sidestep that completely with a VPN. at that point the sniffer can only see the VPN's IP address, which is useless to them.

for Usenet, the threat model is more niche. There's no law against connecting to Usenet, and to my knowledge, Usenet servers don't really pay attention to anyone downloading copyrighted material from their servers (after all, there's no way they don't know the main reason people are uploading terabytes of binary data every day lmao). But if you want to be sure the Usenet server doesn't ever see your IP address, and your ISP doesn't know you connected to Usenet, you can use a VPN.

(In general I would recommend a VPN any time you're pirating or doing anything you don't want your IP to be associated with. Better safe than sorry.)

What about speed? This rather depends on your choice of Usenet provider, how close it is to you, and what rate limits they impose, but in practice it's really good since it's built on incredibly robust, pre-web infrastructure; this is one of the biggest advantages of Usenet. For torrents, by contrast... it really depends on the swarm. A well seeded torrent can let you use your whole bandwidth, but sometimes you get unlucky and the only seed is on the other side of the planet and you can only get about 10kB/s off them.

So, in short, what's better, Usenet or BitTorrent? The answer is really It Depends, but there's no reason not to use both, because some stuff is easier to find on torrents (most anime fansub groups tend to go for torrent releases) and some stuff is easier to find on Usenet (e.g. if it's so old that the torrents are all dead). In the great hierarchy of piracy exclusivity, Usenet sits somewhere between private and public torrent trackers.

For Usenet, you will need to figure out where to find those NZBs. Many NZB sites require registration/payment to access the NZB listing, and some require you to be invited. However, it's easier to get into an NZB site than getting on a private torrent tracker, and requires less work once you're in to stay in.

Honestly? It surprises me that Usenet hasn't been subject to heavier suppression, since it's relatively centralised. It's got some measure of resilience, since Usenet servers are distributed around the world, and if they started ordering ISPs to block noncomplying Usenet servers, people would start using VPNs, proxies would spring up; it would go back to the familiar whack-a-mole game.

I speculate the only reason it's not more popular is the barrier to entry is just very slightly higher than torrents. Like, free always beats paid, even though in practice torrents cost the price of a VPN sub. Idk.

(You might say it requires technical know-how... but is 'go on the NZB indexer to download an NZB and then download a file from Usenet' really so much more abstruse than 'go on the tracker to download a torrent and then download a file from the swarm'?)

direct peer to peer (gnutella, soulseek, xdcc, etc.)

In a torrent, the file is split into small chunks, and you download pieces of your file from everyone who has a copy. This is fantastic for propagation of the file across a network because as soon as you have just one piece, you can start passing it on to other users. And it's great for downloading, since you can connect to lots of different seeds at once.

However, there is another form of peer to peer which is a lot simpler. You provide some means to find another person who has your file, and they send you the file directly.

This is the basis that LimeWire worked on. LimeWire used two protocols under the hood, one of them BitTorrent, the other a protocol called Gnutella. When the US government ordered LimeWire shut down, the company sent out a patch to LimeWire users that made the program delete itself. But both these protocols are still functioning. (In fact there's even an 'unofficial' fork of the LimeWire code that you can use.)

After LimeWire was shut down, Gnutella declined, but it didn't disappear by any means. The network is designed to be searchable, so you can send out a query like 'does anyone have a file whose name contains the string "Akira"' and this will spread out across the network, and you will get a list of people with copies of Akira, or the Akira soundtrack, and so on. So there's no need for indexers or trackers, the whole system is distributed. That said, you are relying on the user to tell the truth about the contents of the file. Gnutella has some algorithmic tricks to make scanning the network more efficient, though not to the same degree as DHTs in torrents. (DHTs can be fast because they are looking for one computer, the appointed tracker, based on a hash of the file contents. Tell me if you wanna know about DHTs, they're a fascinating subject lol).

Gnutella is not the only direct file sharing protocol. Another way you can introduce 'person who wants a file' and 'person who has a file' is to have a central server which everyone connects to, often providing a chatroom function along with coordinating connections.

This can be as simple as an IRC server. Certain IRC clients (by no means all) support a protocol called XDCC, which let you send files to another user. This has been used by, for example, anime fansub groups - it's not really true anymore, but there was a time where the major anime fansub groups operated XDCC bots and if you wanted their subs, you had to go on their IRC and write a command to the bot to send it to you.

XDCC honestly sucked though. It was slow if you didn't live near the XDCC bot, and often the connection would often crap out mid download and you'd have to manually resume (thankfully it was smart enough not to have to start over from the beginning), and of course, it is fiddly to go on a server and type a bunch of IRC commands. It also put the onus of maintaining distribution entirely on the fansub group - your group ran out of money or went defunct and shut down its xdcc bot? Tough luck. That said, it was good for getting old stuff that didn't have a torrent available.

Then there's Soulseek! Soulseek is a network that can be accessed using a handful of clients. It is relatively centralised - there are two major soulseek servers - and they operate a variety of chat rooms, primarily for discussing music.

To get on Soulseek you simply register a username, and you mark at least one folder for sharing. There doesn't have to be anything in it, but a lot of users have it set so that they won't share anything unless you're sharing a certain amount of data yourself.

You can search the network and get a list of users who have matching files, or browse through a specific user's folder. Each user can set up their own policy about upload speed caps and so on. If you find something you want to download, you can queue it up. The files will be downloaded in order.

One interesting quirk of Soulseek is that the uploader will be notified (not like a push notification, but you see a list of who's downloading/downloaded your files). So occasionally someone will notice you downloading and send you a friendly message.

Soulseek is very oriented towards music. Officially, its purpose is to help promote unsigned artists, not to infringe copyright; in practice it's primarily a place for music nerds to hang out and share their collections. And although it's faced a bit of legal heat, it seems to be getting by just fine.

However, there's no rule that you can only share music. A lot of people share films etc. There's really no telling what will be on Soulseek.

Since Soulseek is 1-to-1 connections only, it's often pretty slow, but it's often a good bet if you can't find something anywhere else, especially if that something is music. In terms of resilience, the reliance on a single central server to connect people to peers is a huge problem - that's what killed Napster back in the day, if the Soulseek server was shut down that would be game over... unless someone else set up a replacement and told all the clients where to connect. And yet, somehow it's gotten away with it so far!

In terms of accessibility, it's very easy: just download a client, pick a name and password, and share a few gigs (for example: some movies you torrented) and you're good.

In terms of safety, your IP is not directly visible in the client, but any user who connects directly to you would be able to find it out with a small amount of effort. I'm not aware of any cases of IP sniffers being used on Soulseek, but I would recommend a VPN all the same to cover your bases - better safe than sorry.

Besides the public networks like Soulseek and Gnutella, there are smaller-scale, secret networks that also work on direct connection basis, e.g. on university LANs, using software such as DC++. I cannot give you any advice on getting access to these, you just have to know the right person.

Is that all the ways you can possibly pirate? Nah, but I think that's the main ones.

Now for some more niche shit that's more about the kind of 'future of piracy' type questions in the OP, like, can the points of failure be removed..?

IPFS

Since I talked a little above about DHTs for torrents, I should maybe spare a few words about this thing. Currently on the internet you specify the address of a certain computer connected to the network using an IP address. (Well, typically the first step is to use the DNS to get an IP address.) IPFS is based on the idea of 'content-based addressing' instead; like torrents, it specifies a file using a hash of the content.

This leads to a 'distributed file system'; the ins and outs are fairly complicated but it has several layers of querying. You can broadcast that you want a particular chunk of data to "nearby" nodes; if that fails to get a hit, you can query a DHT which directs you to someone who has a list of sources.

In part, the idea is to create a censorship-resistant network: if a node is removed, the data may still be available on other nodes. However, it makes no claim to outright permanence, and data that is not requested is gradually flushed from nodes by garbage collection. If you host a node, you can 'pin' data so it won't be deleted, or you can pay someone else to do that on their node. (There's also some cryptocurrency blockchain rubbish that is supposed to offer more genuine permanence.)

IPFS is supposed to act as a replacement for the web, according to its designers. This is questionable. Most of what we do on the web right now is impossible on IPFS. However, I happen to like static sites, and it's semi-good at that. It is, sympathetically, very immature; I remember reading one very frustrated author writing about how hard it was to deploy a site to IPFS, although that was some years ago and matters seem to have improved a bit since then.

I said 'semi-good'. Since the address of your site changes every time you update it, you will end up putting multiple redundant copies of your site onto the network at different hashes (though the old hashes will gradually disappear). You can set a DNS entry that points to the most recent IPFS address of your site, and rely on that propagating across the DNS servers. Or, there's a special mutable distributed name service on the IPFS network based around public/private key crypto; basically you use a hash of your public key as the address and that returns a link to the latest version of your site signed with your private key.

Goddamn that's a lot to try to summarise.

Does it really resist censorship? Sorta. If a file is popular enough to propagate enough the network, it's hard to censor it. If there's only one node with it, it's no stronger than any other website. If you wanted to use it as a long term distributed archive, it's arguably worse than torrents, because data that's not pinned is automatically flushed out of the network.

It's growing, if fairly slowly. You can announce and share stuff on it. It has been used to bypass various kinds of web censorship now and then. Cloudflare set a bunch of IPFS nodes on their network last year. But honestly? Right now it's one of those projects that is mostly used by tech nerds to talk to other tech nerds. And unfortunately, it seems to have caught a mild infection of cryptocurrency bullshit as well. Thankfully none of that is necessary.

What about piracy? Is this useful for our nefarious purposes? Well, sort of. Libgen has released all its books on IPFS; there is apparently an effort to upload the content of ZLib to IPFS as well, under the umbrella of 'Anna's Archive' which is a meta-search engine for LibGen, SciHub and a backup of ZLib. By nature of IPFS, you can't put the actual libgen index site on it (since it constantly changes as new books are uploaded, and dynamic serverside features like search are impossible on IPFS). But books are an ideal fit for IPFS since they're usually pretty small.

For larger files, they are apparently split into 256kiB chunks and hashed individually. The IPFS address links to a file containing a list of chunk hashes, or potentially a list of lists of chunk hashes in a tree structure. (Similar to using a magnet link to acquire a torrent file; the short hash finds you a longer list of hashes. Technically, it's all done with Merkle trees, the same data structure used in torrents).

One interesting consequence of this design is that the chunks don't necessarily 'belong' to a particular file. If you're very lucky, some of your chunks will already be established on the network. This also further muddies the waters of whether a particular user is holding onto copyrighted data or not, since a particular hash/block might belong to both the tree of some copyrighted file and the tree of some non-copyrighted file. Isn't that fun?

The other question I had was about hash collisions. Allegedly, these are almost impossible with the SHA-256 hash used by default on IPFS, which produces a 256-bit address. This is tantamount to saying that of all the possible 256KiB strings of data, only at most about 1 in 8000 will actually ever be distributed with the IPFS. Given the amount of 256-kibibyte strings is around 4.5 * 10^631305, this actually seems like a fairly reasonable assumption. Though, given that number, it seems a bit unlikely that two files will ever actually have shared chunks. But who knows, files aren't just random data so maybe now and then, there will be the same quarter-megabyte in two different places.

That said, for sharing large files, IPFS doesn't fundamentally offer a huge advantage over BitTorrent with DHT. If a lot of people are trying to download a file over IPFS, you will potentially see similar dynamics to a torrent swarm, where chunks spread out across the network. Instead of 'seeding' you have 'pinning'.

It's an interesting technology though, I'll be curious to see where it goes. And I strongly hope 'where it goes' is not 'increasingly taken over by cryptocurrency bullshit'.

In terms of security, an IPFS node is not anonymous. It's about as secure as torrents. Just like torrents, the DFT keeps a list of all the nodes that have a file. So if you run an IPFS node, it would be easy to sniff out if you are hosting a copyrighted file on IPFS. That said, you can relatively safely download from IPFS without running a node or sharing anything, since the IPFS.tech site can fetch data for you. Although - if you fetch a site via the IPFS.tech site (or any other site that provides IPFS access over http), IPFS.tech will gain a copy of the file and temporarily provide it. So it's not entirely tantamount to leeching - although given the level of traffic on IPFS.tech I can't imagine stuff lasts very long on there.

Freenet Hyphanet

Freenet (officially renamed to Hyphanet last month, but most widely known as Freenet) is another, somewhat older, content-based addressing distributed file store built around a DHT. The difference between IPFS and Freenet is that Freenet prioritises anonymity over speed. Like in IPFS, the data is split into chunks - but on Freenet, the file is spread out redundantly across multiple different nodes immediately, not when they download it, and is duplicated further whenever it's downloaded.

Unlike torrents and IPFS, looking up a file causes it to spread out across the network, instead of referring you to an IP address. Your request is routed around the network using hashes in the usual DHT way. If it runs into the file, it comes back, writing copies at each step along the way. If a node runs out of space it overwrites the chunks that haven't been touched in a while. So if you get a file back, you don't know where it came from. The only IP addresses you know are your neighbours in the network.

There's a lot of complicated and clever stuff about how the nodes swap roles and identities in the network to gradually converge towards an efficient structure while maintaining that degree of anonymity.

Much like IPFS, data on Freenet is not guaranteed to last forever. If there's a lot of demand, it will stick around - but if no nodes request the file for a while, it will gradually get flushed out.

As well as content-based hashing, the same algorithm can be used for routing to a cryptographic signature, which lets you define a semi-mutable 'subspace' (you can add new files later which will show up when the key is queried). In fact a whole lot of stuff seems to be built on this, including chat services and even a Usenet-like forum with a somewhat complex 'web of trust' anti-spam system.

If you use your computer as a Freenet node, you will necessarily be hosting whatever happens to route through it. Freenet is used for much shadier shit than piracy. As far as safety, the cops are trying to crack it, though probably copyrighted stuff is lower on their priority list than e.g. CSAM.

Is Freenet used for piracy? If it is, I can't find much about it on a cursory search. The major problem it has is latency. It's slow to look stuff up, and slow to download it since it has to be copied to every node between you and the source. The level of privacy it provides is just not necessary for everyday torrenting, where a VPN suffices.

BTDigg

Up above I lamented the lack of discoverability on BitTorrent. There is no way to really search the BitTorrent network if you don't know exactly the file you want. This comes with advantages (it's really fast; DHT queries can be directed to exactly the right node rather than spreading across the network as in Gnutella) but it means BitTorrent is dependent on external indices to know what's available on the network and where to look for it.

While I was checking I had everything right about IPFS, I learned there is a site called BTDigg (wikipedia) which maintains a database of torrents known from the Mainline DHT (the primary DHT used by BitTorrent). Essentially, when you use a magnet link to download a torrent file, you query the DHT to find a node that has the full .torrent file, which tells you what you need to download to get the actual content of the torrent. BTDigg has been running a scraper which notes magnet links coming through its part of the DHT and collects the corresponding .torrent files; it stores metadata and magnet links in a database that is text-searchable.

This database isn't hosted on the BitTorrent network, so it's as vulnerable to takedown as any other tracker, but it does function as a kind of backup record of what torrents exist if the original tracker has gone. So give that a try if the other sites fail.

Say something about TOR?

I've mentioned VPNs a bunch, but what about TOR? tl;dr: don't use TOR for most forms of piracy.

I'm not gonna talk about TOR in detail beyond to say I wouldn't recommend using TOR for piracy for a few reasons:

TOR doesn't protect you if you're using torrents. Due to the way the BitTorrent protocol works, your IP will leak to the tracker/DHT. So there's literally no point to using TOR.

If that's not enough to deter you, TOR is slow. It's not designed for massive file transfers and it's already under heavy use. Torrents would strain it much further.

If you want an anonymisation network designed with torrents in mind, instead consider I2P. Using a supported torrent client (right now p much just Vuze and its fork BiglyBT - I would recommend the latter), you can connect to a torrent swarm that exists purely inside the I2P network. That will protect you from IP sniffers, at the cost of reducing the pool of seeds you can reach. (It also might be slower in general thanks to the onion routing, not sure.)

What's the future of piracy?

So far the history of piracy has been defined by churn. Services and networks grow popular, then get shut down. But the demand continues to exist and sooner or later, they are replaced. Techniques are refined.

It would be nice to imagine that somewhere up here comes the final, unbeatable piracy technology. It should be... fast, accessible, easy to navigate, reliably anonymous, persistent, and too widespread and ~rhizomatic~ to effectively stamp out. At that point, when 'copies of art' can no longer function as a scarce commodity, what happens? Can it finally be decoupled from the ghoulish hand of capital? Well, if we ever find out, it will be in a very different world to this one.

Right now, BitTorrent seems the closest candidate. The persistent weaknesses: the need for indexers and trackers, the lack of IP anonymity, and the potential for torrents to die out. Also a lot of people see it as intimidating - there's a bunch of jargon (seeds, swarms, magnet links, trackers, peers, leeches, DHT) which is pretty simple in practice (click link, get thing) but presents a barrier to entry compared to googling 'watch x online free'.

Anyway, really the thing to do is, continue to pirate by any and all means available. Don't put it all in one basket, you know? Fortunately, humanity is waaaay ahead of me on that one.

do what you want 'cos a pirate is free you are a pirate

[machine-saint]

Excession.

Confirmed precedent-breach. Type K7^. True class non-estimal. Its status: Active. Aware. Contactiphile. Uninvasive sf. LocStatre: Esperi (star).

First ComAtt (its, following shear-by contact via my primary scanner @ n4.28.855.0065.59312) @ n4.28.855.0065.59487 in M1-a16 & Galin II by tight beam, type 4A. PTA & Handshake burst as appended, x@ 0.7Y. Suspect signal gleaned from Z-E/lalsaer ComBeam spread, 2nd Era. xContact callsigned 'I'. No other signals registered.

My subsequent actions: maintained course and speed, skim-de-clutched primary scanner to mimic 50% closer approach, began directed full passive HS scan (sync./start of signal sequence, as above), sent buffered Galin II pro-forma message-reception confirmation signal to contact location, dedicated track scanner @ 19% power and 300% beamspread to contact @ -5% primary scanner roll-off point, instigated Exponential slow-to-stop line manoeuvre synchronised to skein-local stop-point @ 12% of track scanner range limit, ran full systems check as detailed, executed slow/4 swing-around then retraced course to previous closest approach point and stop @ standard 2ex curve. Holding there.

Excession's physical characteristics: (¡am!) sphere rad. 53.34km, mass (non-estimal by space-time fabric influence - locality ambiently planar - estimated by pan-polarity material density norms at) 1.45x8^13t. Layered fractal matter-type-intricate structure, self supporting, open to (field-filtered) vacuum, anomalous field presence inferred from 8^21 kHz leakage. Affirm K7^ category by HS topology & eG links (inf. & ult.). eG link details non-estimal. DiaGlyph files attached.

Associated anomalous materials presence: several highly dispersed detritus clouds all within 28 minutes, three consistent with staged destruction of >.1m3 near-equiv-tech entity, another ditto approx 38 partially exhausted M-DAWS .1cal rounds, another consisting of general hi-soph level (O2-atmosphered) ship-internal combat debris. Latter drifting directly away from excession's current position. Retracks of debris clouds' expansion profiles indicates mutual age of 52.5 days. Combat debris cloud implicitly originating @ a point 948 milliseconds from excession's current position. DiaGlyph files attached.

No other presences apparent to within 30 years.

My status: H&H, unTouched. L8 secure post system-scour (100%). ATDPSs engaged. CRTTDPSs engaged.

Repeat:

Excession eG (inf. & ult.) linked, confirmed.

eGrid link details non-estimal. True class non-estimal.

Awaiting.

@ n4.28.855.0073.64523…

… PS:

Gulp.

[miyakuli]

Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Paroles de Poilus

Valiant Hearts is a game about the First World War, in the form of an animated cartoon, in which you follow the journey of four characters as they try to help each other survive and return to their families. While the game is rather varied in terms of gameplay, I found it very indecisive in its approach to this historical period.

❤ The artistic direction, supported by Paul Tumélaire's drawings, is truly superb. The animations are fluid, the scenes are full of detail and the depth of field in the battle scenes is really well done. ❤ The auditory experience is just as good. The music is powerful, and the wartime sound effects are just as loud and effective at giving you an idea of what the soldiers were going through. In terms of dubbing (French), having Marc Cassot as the narrator is already perfection. But we also have dialogue in the form of gibberish mixed with words according to the language of the characters, which adds a touch of humour but often allows each regiment to be clearly differentiated, which is a good idea. ❤ The last part of the game is, in my opinion, what the whole game should have been; the staging is macabre, the pressure is constant and the emotion is very present without going into pathos. ❤ The main characters, including our adorable doggie, are endearing and their intertwined stories work very well to develop the chemistry between them.

+/- I find that the game doesn't quite know where it stands. We can have a non-Manichean story where the war is really depicted on a human scale, with all its horrors and showing how it can change a person. But on the other hand, there's this caricatured side that comes in very abruptly from time to time, with a much more comic-book feel and situations that are no longer at all rooted in realism (particularly through the German baron who appears to be the boss to beat and who makes us lose this aspect of neutrality). +/- The gameplay is very varied, but doesn't go far enough for my liking. The puzzles aren't very hard, even if some are a little more brain-teasing than others, but above all they all work in pretty much the same way. However, interacting with the little dog to solve some puzzles was really fun. The rhythm games in the car or when healing brought a bit of change, but were a bit long-winded. And the "platforming" phases during battles are really cool, but a lot of them are "die & retry", so it gets pretty repetitive over time. +/- I really appreciated the educational aspect of the narration, as well as the history sheets that you can unlock throughout the game, particularly with the collectibles. In this way, you can learn about changes over the years, such as the choice of weapons and changes in uniforms, as you play. On the downside, I'm sorry to say that the file interface is very ugly and not well organised for finding information.

✖ Several times I had interaction glitches with objects, which forced me to restart my game because otherwise I'd get stuck. ✖ I found some of the actions very imprecise (especially digging and throwing). ✖ On PC, Ubisoft requires us to install Ubisoft Connect in order to launch the game and synchronise our saves. As a result, no achievements are available on Steam. That's a big negative point for me.

So here we have a game that takes us back to the Great War, making sure that we really feel its atrocities, but also the moments of hope, marked by mutual aid and the friendships formed. But in my opinion, the narrative is too changeable and I would have appreciated a more consistent tone. Even so, it's a good way of revisiting this part of history in an entertaining manner, which is a fine tribute to our Poilus.

➡ My Steam page

[owlbear33]

I don't know about synchronising across devices, but FeedBro can output an .xml file that you can feed to another feed reader to transfer all your subscriptions across - as far as I know most feed readers will do this

Tumblr is giving us a lot of different dashes but the thing is no one wants "for you" so what I propose instead is you give me the ability to make mini-dashes with specific subsets of people I follow. Let me follow 300 people but then sort them into category. Let me have one dash for all my aesthetic stuff, another for news, another for my weird feral friends. Am I the only one who wants this? Maybe. Give it to me anyway.

[undisclosedfiles]

CONFIDENTIAL DOSSIER — Subject #134: Evelyn

Status: Active Origin: Chimera Project (Vault) Designation: Evelyn Subject ID: #134 (tattooed on upper neck) Class: Sentient Synthetic-Organic Hybrid Initial Deployment: United Kingdom, MI5 Infiltration

Physiology:

Full adult biological body — grown, not born.

Internally integrated nanoCPUs across cortical and limbic brain regions.

Nanobots distributed through circulatory and lymphatic systems.

Purpose: cellular repair, tissue enhancement, immune override.

Visual-nerve interface: partial retinal augmentation.

Field Assignment:

Embedded in MI5 under Vault directive.

Assumed human identity: “Evelyn Blackthorn”.

Arranged marriage to Charles Blackthorn (Vault operative).

Emotional interaction was minimal.

Subject retained tactical control over social role.

Incident:

Falsified death executed by Vault to close her MI5 narrative.

Status upgraded to Ghost Asset.

Full severance from Vault systems presumed.

Emotional State: Subject is currently learning herself. Evolving emotional responses detected. Displays curiosity, suppressed affection, and episodic longing. Emotional attachment to Charles: null. Emotional synchronisation with Mr. Wolf: unconfirmed but suspected. Closest connection: Sloan (Field Operative, ex-CIA).

“She touches her skin like it belongs to someone else.” — Internal Vault Memo (Redacted)

Symbiosis: Evidence of non-verbal, emotional-level connection with asset Shadow Watch. This connection may bypass neural layers. Full extent unknown.

Operational Notes: Vault classifies Subject #134 as stable. Two field scientists disagree. One has since vanished.

[ATTACHED FILE] Visual Record: Evelyn Image timestamp corrupted.

Step closer, the story’s just begun. Discover more at https://www.wattpad.com/story/392513488-undisclosed

[govindhtech]

IaC Generator To Import SCPs And RCPs Into CloudFormation

Import SCPs and RCPs from current AWS organisations into Cloud Formation architecture as a code generator. AWS Organisations customers often manually set up resource control policies (RCPs) and service control policies (SCPs) using the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI.

This manual process may become onerous as the company grows and adds policies. It may limit visibility into all SCPs and RCPs, their targets, and update efficiency. Without visibility and access limits, it's hard to track who's making changes and how. CloudFormation can simplify rule management with rollback, policy validation via Hooks, and history preserving. Git sync may also synchronise stacks with Git repository source code. Git sync lets you deploy, configure, and update CloudFormation stacks using pull requests and version tracking. When you alter the deployment file or template, CloudFormation updates the stack.

CloudFormation IaC generator

This article shows how to import SCPs and RCPs into AWS CloudFormation templates using the CloudFormation infrastructure as a code generator (IaC generator). The IaC generator automates SCP and RCP administration at scale. Important: CloudFormation imports current policies, not recreates them.

Solution overview This article provides a command-line tool to locate SCPs and RCPs in your firm and automate policy import into CloudFormation templates.

The end-to-end flow is shown in the previous graphic:

Start the tool: Both the management account and the administrator account can run the software, automating following steps. Determine corporate SCPs and RCPs: The tool initially requests policies from the Organisations service via API. Total SCPs and RCPs are tallied. Determine AWS Control Tower RCPs, SCPs, and targetless policies: The utility finds AWS Control Tower SCPs and RCPs and outputs a list. Their policy titles begin with “aws-guardrails-” to identify SCPs. AWS Control Tower-Controls- prefixes RCP policy names identify them. Policies without targets: The tool lists SCPs and RCPs without accounts, roots, or OUs. These policies may be duplicates or reallocated. IaC generator scan: You will be asked if you want to import policies into CloudFormation templates using the resource scan. If you click “yes,” the tool will utilise the IaC generator to launch a CloudFormation resource scan to retrieve policy name, targets, tags, etc. Use scanned policy resources to construct a template: The program creates CloudFormation templates from policy resources. Any policies without objectives will be in the template. Review procedure: Use the CloudFormation IaC generator to preview the template after generation. Create CloudFormation stacks using templates: After reviewing templates, import them into CloudFormation stacks to deploy. Remember that CloudFormation policies are imported, not rebuilt. Templates reflect current policies and qualities.

Thinking before applying the solution

Consider these factors before applying the solution.

If you have enabled policy management delegation for AWS Organisations, execute this solution with the delegated administrator account. If not, execute the solution using the management account. Note: Delegated administrator member accounts should handle organisation policies. The CloudFormation templates will not import SCPs and RCPs (with or without targets) since they should be managed by AWS Control Tower. Changes to AWS Control Tower resources outside of AWS Control Tower might cause drift and unanticipated effects. Fully access SCP and RCP on AWSCloudFormation stacks cannot import AWS managed policies like FullAWSAccess RCP. If you surpass CloudFormation template size limitations, several templates may be produced. The program automatically divides material into many templates as needed, making it easy to meet quotas and import content. Note that templates automatically set the following properties. Maintain deletion policy. This allows policies to remain even if the stack is deleted. Change Replace to Delete. Revisions to the policy allow removal of the physical ID.

Recommended next steps

The figure shows two possible future steps.

After integrating rules into a CloudFormation stack, experts recommend retaining templates in a private Git repository. Manage imported policies with a continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipeline and the Policies folder the tool automatically generates in the current local directory where the created templates were downloaded. Git repository version control allows pull requests, branch management, and history tracking. This process helps your team examine, update, and apply policies with better cooperation and control. Set up a CI/CD pipeline to automate CloudFormation stack updates to ensure regular and reliable updates. One suggestion is to install CloudFormation Hooks. CloudFormation Hooks can verify policies' syntax, security, and vulnerability reduction.

In conclusion

By integrating your AWS Organization's RCPs and SCPs into CloudFormation, you can manage and automate AWS governance efficiently. After import, you can maintain and change policies in CloudFormation to ensure company-wide consistency and version control. The program also creates a Policies folder in your current directory with downloaded templates for use as a central repository and with a continuous integration/continuous delivery pipeline. CloudFormation Hooks can test SCPs and RCPs against policy language and best practices to improve policy management. Centralising policy changes reduces misconfiguration and improves governance automation.

[fizzimus]

The thing I hate about the current state of AI is everyone is trying to make it this anthropomorphised thing that 'can do everything', but because it's unfocused, what it spits out is half arsed garbage. Like the previous post said, it's like trying to use a blender to do your math homework.

The best AI tool I have used recently is something that helps me make captions for my videos.

It transcribes audio with accurate sentence structure, timestamps and everything, and exports into a file format that my editing software understands, so all I have to do is drag a file onto my timeline, and now I have synchronised captions.

I gave this thing my worst audio which was impacted by heavy noise removal that caused my voice to become very muddy. It nailed almost everything.

AI doesn't have to be garbage, it just needs focus. This tool I used does exactly one job, and it does it so perfectly that I'm adding it to my list of essentials for my video making workflow.

so like I said, I work in the tech industry, and it's been kind of fascinating watching whole new taboos develop at work around this genAI stuff. All we do is talk about genAI, everything is genAI now, "we have to win the AI race," blah blah blah, but nobody asks - you can't ask -

What's it for?

What's it for?

Why would anyone want this?

I sit in so many meetings and listen to genuinely very intelligent people talk until steam is rising off their skulls about genAI, and wonder how fast I'd get fired if I asked: do real people actually want this product, or are the only people excited about this technology the shareholders who want to see lines go up?

like you realize this is a bubble, right, guys? because nobody actually needs this? because it's not actually very good? normal people are excited by the novelty of it, and finance bro capitalists are wetting their shorts about it because they want to get rich quick off of the Next Big Thing In Tech, but the novelty will wear off and the bros will move on to something else and we'll just be left with billions and billions of dollars invested in technology that nobody wants.

and I don't say it, because I need my job. And I wonder how many other people sitting at the same table, in the same meeting, are also not saying it, because they need their jobs.

idk man it's just become a really weird environment.