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nagiwrites · 3 months ago

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Starlit bonds

A/n: hi I’m back um I’ve been on tiktok strolling. Hope y’all enjoy this chapter and have a good day or night. I keep forgetting to format my chapters ughhh but I’ll come back later probably and fix it so this one might not be formatted like the past ones and also I did it last chapter too so sorry about that. There are some content warnings for this one also.

Characters: Sylus, Kaela, Reyna, Nova, Y/N.

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☆ Content: sci-fi action, emotional impact, character death, gore mention, intense gameplay tension.

Ch. 6 - too real

📌 Synopsis:

Sylus fails his first real test—and the cost is devastating. He’s forced to confront just how deep the game goes. But failure isn’t the end. Not for him. With new upgrade systems unlocked, Sylus swears he won’t lose them again.

The crew’s journey continues, but something stirs in the depths of space. A distress signal leads to an unexpected discovery—and more questions than answers.

After spending time on side missions and building bonds, Sylus tapped Continue Story, drawn back into the unfolding narrative. The screen transitioned into a cutscene.

—

The command center of the ship was tense, dimly lit by the glow of holographic displays and flickering star maps. Reyna stood at the controls, her fingers tapping rapidly as streams of data scrolled across the screen. Nova leaned against the console, arms crossed, while Kaela stood nearby, sipping from her ever-present mug.

Y/N, as usual, lingered slightly off to the side, watching quietly.

The ship’s AI voice crackled through the speakers:

“Distress signal detected. Source unknown. Signal pattern suggests an abandoned vessel.”

Reyna adjusted her glasses.

“It could be a trap. We don’t know who—if anyone—is still alive on that ship.”

Nova scoffed.

“Or what’s lurking inside.”

A dialogue choice appeared:

1. “We have to check it out. Someone might need help.”

2. “It’s too risky. We keep our distance.”

3. “We go in, but we stay cautious.”

Sylus considered before selecting the third option.

His character leaned forward.

“We go in, but we stay cautious. We’re not taking unnecessary risks.”

Nova smirked.

“Smart choice, Captain.”

Reyna nodded.

“I’ll prep the navigation systems. We should be in range soon.”

Kaela stretched.

“Guess I better grab my gear. Never know when things might go sideways.”

Y/N, however, hesitated.

They looked at the display, then at Sylus.

“Something about this doesn’t feel… right.”

Sylus’ brow furrowed.

“What do you mean?”

They shook their head slightly.

“I don’t know. Just… be careful.”

The screen flickered, and a mission prompt appeared:

[Mission Start: Ghost Ship]

Objective: Investigate the distress signal and uncover the truth about the abandoned vessel.

Sylus exhaled, gripping his phone a little tighter.

This was something bigger.

And somehow, he had a feeling Y/N’s unease wasn’t just paranoia.

The ship drifted closer to the unknown vessel, its looming silhouette barely visible against the backdrop of deep space. The mission HUD flickered to life, displaying critical information—oxygen levels, security status, and environmental readings.

The moment they entered docking range, another alert popped up:

[New Exploration Mode Unlocked]

Investigate the derelict ship, gather clues, and make decisions that may alter the outcome of the mission.

A small selection screen appeared, allowing Sylus to choose two crew members to accompany him.

He hovered over the choices, but his decision had already been made. He wasn’t going without Y/N and nova.

The moment he selected them, their in-game model shifted slightly—shoulders tensing, fingers twitching subtly against their sleeve.

“A-Are you sure?” Y/n asked hesitantly.

Nova snorted. “Guess that means I’m coming too. Somebody’s gotta keep things interesting.”

Sylus smirked, finalizing the team selection. “Let’s move out.”

The airlock doors hissed open, and the screen transitioned to a third-person exploration mode, showing their descent into the unknown ship’s darkened interior.

The moment they stepped inside, Y/N shivered slightly.

“It’s… too quiet.”

The corridors stretched ahead, dim emergency lights flickering at uneven intervals. Exposed wires dangled from the ceiling, and the faint sound of metal groaning under pressure filled the silence.

“Stay alert,” Sylus muttered, swiping across his screen to activate his flashlight.

“Let’s find out what happened here.”

A Mission Log popped up with objectives:

1. Locate the source of the distress signal.

2. Search for any survivors.

3. Gather intel on what happened.

As they ventured deeper into the ship, Sylus noticed that Y/N kept glancing at the walls, their brows furrowed.

“What is it?” he asked.

They hesitated before murmuring,

“The signal… It’s strange. It doesn’t match standard distress frequencies. It’s almost like… something else is broadcasting it.”

Nova tightened her grip on her weapons.

“So, what? This whole thing’s a setup?”

Before Sylus could respond, his phone vibrated violently.

WARNING: HOSTILE PRESENCE DETECTED.

A low, guttural sound echoed through the corridors.

Y/N stiffened.

“…We’re not alone.”

A quick-time prompt flashed on the screen:

[Swipe Left to Dodge!]

Sylus reacted just in time as a blur of movement lunged from the shadows.

A Wander—larger than the last one he faced—crashed into the metal flooring, its elongated limbs twitching unnaturally.

Nova immediately flipped her dual blades into position.

“Here we go.”

Y/N, however, froze, their wide eyes locked on the creature.

Sylus’ combat menu appeared, but before he could attack, the screen zoomed in on Y/N—their expression wasn’t just fear.

It was recognition.

“Y/N?” Sylus called, trying to snap them out of it.

They took a shaky step back, their breathing uneven.

“I… I’ve seen this before.”

Another dialogue choice appeared:

1. “What do you mean?” [Press them for answers]

2. “Stay with me, Y/N.” [Reassure them]

3. “Nova, cover us!” [Shift focus to combat]

Sylus hesitated for only a second before tapping the first option.

“What do you mean, you’ve seen this before?”

Y/N’s breath caught, and for the first time since he met them, they looked truly shaken.

The creature screeched, its distorted form lurching toward them.

And as the screen flickered, Y/N whispered something that sent a chill through Sylus.

“…They’re not supposed to be here.”

[Mission Status: Combat Engaged | Hidden Lore Progression Activated]

Sylus barely had time to process their words before the fight began.

The battle began instantly.

The Wander let out a guttural screech, its limbs twisting unnaturally as it lunged forward. Nova dodged effortlessly, flipping over its massive claws, while Y/N scrambled backward, drawing their Energy Bow with shaking hands.

Sylus’ combat UI flickered, a synchronization bar appearing at the top of the screen.

[Synchronization Combat: Coordinate attacks with your team to unleash powerful combos.]

• Tap to attack individually

• Swipe to dodge incoming strikes

• Hold to charge Sync Attacks when the gauge is full

The problem? His Sync Level was at zero.

He wasn’t ready for this.

Still, he had no choice but to fight.

Sylus fired his sidearm, landing a few shots that barely staggered the beast. Nova rushed in with her dual blades, striking at its legs, while Y/N aimed a charged shot at its chest.

But it wasn’t enough.

The Wander let out a piercing shriek, its distorted form splitting apart before reforming in an instant. A red WARNING ICON flashed across the screen.

[ENEMY ATTACK INCOMING – TAP TO COUNTER]

Sylus tapped—too slow.

The Wander struck, sending Nova flying against a metal wall. The impact was brutal—blood splattered against the surface as she collapsed lifelessly.

“NOVA!”

A slow-motion effect kicked in, the game forcing him to watch as Y/N turned to face him—wide-eyed, terrified—right before the creature’s claw skewered through their chest.

They choked, their mouth opening in shock, blood staining their uniform as the screen distorted violently, glitching out.

Game Over.

The words burned into the screen as Y/N’s voice weakly echoed, almost breaking the fourth wall.

“You… have to get stronger.”

The screen remained frozen on their lifeless expression, their dark eyes still locked onto his as if urging him forward.

Then—everything faded to black.

[Mission Failed.]

You are not strong enough to face this threat. Upgrade your team and return stronger.

A new progression screen appeared, displaying his stats, current abilities, and upgrade paths.

[Upgrade System Unlocked]

• Train Crew Members

• Enhance Combat Cards

• Unlock Higher-Level Abilities

Sylus exhaled, gripping his phone. His heart was pounding.

That had been brutal.

He hadn’t expected the game to push him this hard—not so soon. The way the death scene played out had felt too real—the blood splatters, the animation details, the way Y/N had looked at him even in death.

And if he wanted to protect them—to protect her—he needed to get stronger.

With renewed determination, he tapped into the Upgrade Menu, ready to change the outcome.

Sylus exhaled sharply, locking his phone and setting it down on the table beside him. His fingers still tingled from gripping the device too tightly, his heartbeat just a little too fast for something that was supposed to be just a game.

But that death scene… it had gotten to him.

He ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head. It’s just a game, he reminded himself, but even as he told himself that, he couldn’t shake the image of Y/N’s lifeless eyes staring at him.

Too real.

Way too real.

He sighed, rolling his shoulders and standing up. He needed a break.

There were things he had to do today—his own responsibilities, tasks that actually mattered in the real world. He couldn’t let himself get too immersed, no matter how gripping the game was.

Still, as he walked away from his phone, he already knew that the moment he had time again…

He was coming back.

Because Love and Deep Space had hooked him.

And he wasn’t going to stop until he changed that ending.

A/n: thanks for reading.

Tags:

@kaylauvu

@codedove

@crazy-ink-artist

@animegamerfox

#sylus x mc #lnds sylus #love and deepspace sylus #sylus x y/n #sylus fic #sylus x you #sylus x reader #lads sylus

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 2 months ago

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Strongest hints yet of biological activity outside the solar system

Astronomers have detected the most promising signs yet of a possible biosignature outside the solar system, although they remain cautious.

Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, have detected the chemical fingerprints of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), in the atmosphere of the exoplanet K2-18b, which orbits its star in the habitable zone.

On Earth, DMS and DMDS are only produced by life, primarily microbial life such as marine phytoplankton. While an unknown chemical process may be the source of these molecules in K2-18b’s atmosphere, the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.

The observations have reached the ‘three-sigma’ level of statistical significance – meaning there is a 0.3% probability that they occurred by chance. To reach the accepted classification for scientific discovery, the observations would have to cross the five-sigma threshold, meaning there would be below a 0.00006% probability they occurred by chance.

The researchers say between 16 and 24 hours of follow-up observation time with JWST may help them reach the all-important five-sigma significance. Their results are reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Earlier observations of K2-18b — which is 8.6 times as massive and 2.6 times as large as Earth, and lies 124 light years away in the constellation of Leo — identified methane and carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. This was the first time that carbon-based molecules were discovered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet in the habitable zone. Those results were consistent with predictions for a ‘Hycean’ planet: a habitable ocean-covered world underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.

However, another, weaker signal hinted at the possibility of something else happening on K2-18b. “We didn’t know for sure whether the signal we saw last time was due to DMS, but just the hint of it was exciting enough for us to have another look with JWST using a different instrument,” said Professor Nikku Madhusudhan from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, who led the research.

To determine the chemical composition of the atmospheres of faraway planets, astronomers analyse the light from its parent star as the planet transits, or passes in front of the star as seen from the Earth. As K2-18b transits, JWST can detect a drop in stellar brightness, and a tiny fraction of starlight passes through the planet’s atmosphere before reaching Earth. The absorption of some of the starlight in the planet’s atmosphere leaves imprints in the stellar spectrum that astronomers can piece together to determine the constituent gases of the exoplanet’s atmosphere.

The earlier, tentative, inference of DMS was made using JWST’s NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph) and NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instruments, which together cover the near-infrared (0.8-5 micron) range of wavelengths. The new, independent observation used JWST’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) in the mid-infrared (6-12 micron) range.

“This is an independent line of evidence, using a different instrument than we did before and a different wavelength range of light, where there is no overlap with the previous observations,” said Madhusudhan. “The signal came through strong and clear.”

“It was an incredible realisation seeing the results emerge and remain consistent throughout the extensive independent analyses and robustness tests,” said co-author Måns Holmberg, a researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA.

DMS and DMDS are molecules from the same chemical family, and both are predicted to be biosignatures. Both molecules have overlapping spectral features in the observed wavelength range, although further observations will help differentiate between the two molecules.

However, the concentrations of DMS and DMDS in K2-18b’s atmosphere are very different than on Earth, where they are generally below one part per billion by volume. On K2-18b, they are estimated to be thousands of times stronger - over ten parts per million.

“Earlier theoretical work had predicted that high levels of sulfur-based gases like DMS and DMDS are possible on Hycean worlds,” said Madhusudhan. “And now we’ve observed it, in line with what was predicted. Given everything we know about this planet, a Hycean world with an ocean that is teeming with life is the scenario that best fits the data we have.”

Madhusudhan says that while the results are exciting, it’s vital to obtain more data before claiming that life has been found on another world. He says that while he is cautiously optimistic, there could be previously unknown chemical processes at work on K2-18b that may account for the observations. Working with colleagues, he is hoping to conduct further theoretical and experimental work to determine whether DMS and DMDS can be produced non-biologically at the level currently inferred.

“The inference of these biosignature molecules poses profound questions concerning the processes that might be producing them” said co-author Subhajit Sarkar of Cardiff University.

“Our work is the starting point for all the investigations that are now needed to confirm and understand the implications of these exciting findings,” said co-author Savvas Constantinou, also from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy.

“It’s important that we’re deeply sceptical of our own results, because it’s only by testing and testing again that we will be able to reach the point where we’re confident in them,” Madhusudhan said. “That’s how science has to work.”

While he is not yet claiming a definitive discovery, Madhusudhan says that with powerful tools like JWST and future planned telescopes, humanity is taking new steps toward answering that most essential of questions: are we alone?

“Decades from now, we may look back at this point in time and recognise it was when the living universe came within reach,” said Madhusudhan. “This could be the tipping point, where suddenly the fundamental question of whether we’re alone in the universe is one we’re capable of answering.”

TOP IMAGE: Astronomers have detected the most promising signs yet of a possible biosignature outside the solar system, although they remain cautious. Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, have detected the chemical fingerprints of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), in the atmosphere of the exoplanet K2-18b, which orbits its star in the habitable zone. Credit A. Smith, N. Madhusudhan (University of Cambridge)

LOWER IMAGE: The graph shows the observed transmission spectrum of the habitable zone exoplanet K2-18 b using the JWST MIRI spectrograph. The vertical shows the fraction of star light absorbed in the planet's atmosphere due to molecules in the planet's atmosphere. The data are shown in the yellow circles with the 1-sigma uncertainties. The curves show the model fits to the data, with the black curve showing the median fit and the cyan curves outlining the 1-sigma intervals of the model fits. The absorption features attributed to dimethyl sulphide and dimethyl disulphide are indicated by the horizontal lines and text. The image behind the graph is an illustration of a hycean planet orbiting a red dwarf star. Credit A. Smith, N. Madhusudhan (University of Cambridge)

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #astrophysics

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aita-blorbos · 1 year ago

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WIBTA for leaving my team?

hi. i (15 nb) have a dad and brother who were in a space program who, along with their pilot, allegedly “died” on a mission to one of plutos moons. after getting over the initial shock and grief i started to realize that things weren’t adding up, so i did some of my own research. i got into the space base and pilot training facility to get more sensitive info i couldn’t find online, but i was caught each time and eventually banned from the premises with a promise to press charges if i returned. i wasn’t going to give up, though, and knew something was VERY wrong at this point, so i altered my appearance considerably, ran away from home and enrolled as a cadet communications officer under a false identity, using the spare time muster to gather more info.

at first i was wary of the two other cadets i was grouped with (my pilot, L (16M) and engineer, H (16M)) but they grew on me quickly enough, and eventually i started to consider them as my friends, although i still tried to keep my identity and intentions hidden from them in case they were to expose me or distrust me.

a couple of weeks ago (? i’m not actually sure how many earth days have gone by, my laptop displays a date but we are FAR away currently and i’m unsure if there is time dilation to account for) i managed to successfully start picking up unknown signals on the roof of the building at night in spots i wouldn’t be detected. i was going to just add this to my data and continue from there but unfortunately eventually my friends caught me sneaking me out and followed me up there. before i could feasibly explain myself something fell to earth VERY close by— which we determined was the pilot of the mission my family went missing on (S, (20s something M)). more than ever i KNEW they weren’t dead. the three of us took off to try and rescue him, and were intercepted by someone ELSE, (a dropout pilot, K, (16M)) who apparently knew S and wanted to be the person to rescue him from the med techs trying to take a look at him after he plummeted from space in an alien spacecraft. eventually the five of us made it out of there, and K took everyone on his low flying craft out to a shack he apparently had been living in since dropping out. K and i compared notes on the aliens and eventually the group of us located a very odd looking alien craft, which reacted to L’s presence, and to avoid the military searching for us we entered it, where it sent us halfway across the universe. we learned that THIS spacecraft were made by an extinct race with only two surviving members, who were cryogenically frozen for ten thousand years, and were apparently the only ones that could stop a different alien race, which is evil and what had taken my family.

we all eventually got assigned different spacecrafts, which were all lion shaped mechs, that could form together to make a very powerful and incredibly advanced super-mech-thing that you’d only see in comics. so, a lot to take in very very quickly.

as we’ve been fighting off the evil alien race, i’ve gained some valuable information regarding where i might start to really look for my dad and brother. as much as ive been happy to be able to help out, in the end tahts not the reason i came out here and my family has always been my first priority. recently i’ve gotten my things in order and prepared to leave before we took the next step, which would be getting off the planet we’re currently stranded on. i went to tell my team this and K told me i was being selfish and that everyone has a family they want to get back to and saving the universe would save everyone’s family anyway. i still want to leave but i’m not trying to be selfish. this was my intention from the BEGINNING even if things got very off track. they don’t know how hard i’ve worked to get here.

UPDATE: i didn’t end up leaving, but it’s been a few months (i think) and K found out something about HIS family (apparently he lied and he’s an orphan, but maybe he isn’t, i don’t know.) and now HES leaving the team to look for HIS family. also he’s part alien (specifically the evil kind). go fucking figure

#aita #am i the asshole #unreality

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trustinsighters · 2 years ago

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Dungeon Dialogue: The Alzadaal's Legacy

The Bhaflau Remnants #1 (X: 8.4, Y: 12.7) - Arriving at the isle

Estinien: Time to learn just how authentic our map truly is... 　↳ G’raha Tia: Our adventure begins! Urianger: Behold. The lanterns ignite in the glyph's presence. Y’shtola: And thus we take our first step into the unknown. G’raha Tia: This isle is where we find the vault's entrance?

The Bhaflau Remnants #2 (X: 11.6, Y: 12.3) - 1st Hidden Bridge

Y’shtola: The glyph works its magic once more... 　↳ G’raha Tia: An invisibility spell removed, mayhap? Urianger: What a peculiar enchantment... G’raha Tia: A bridge out of thin air...or cleverly hidden!

First Boss, Before engaging (X: 14.0, Y: 9.7) - Ambujam

Y’shtola: My, what dense aether this creature has. 　➝ Urianger: 'Tis a rare breed of jellyfish─one with a sting, I imagine. Estinien: This gelatinous eyesore bars our path.

First Boss, After defeating (X: 14.0, Y: 9.7) - Ambujam

Estinien: If only it had been a squid. Imagine all the dried rations... 　↳ Y’shtola: I'd rather not. Oh look, is that a teleporter? Urianger: Might that device be our sought-after “entrance”? Y’shtola: Shall we move on? That looks to be a teleporter. The teleporter bears you deep beneath the waves...

The Arrapago Remnants #1 (X: 11.2, Y: 14.6) - Undersea Vault

Looming Voice: Glyph of passage detected. Confirming bearer's identity... G’raha Tia: Look! We're deep under the Bounty! 　↳ Estinien: Then our map was no fake after all. Urianger: This must be the satrap's vault. Such fascinating design... Y’shtola: We've descended quite some distance... Estinien: The ocean floor... The map was no fake after all.

The Arrapago Remnants #1 (X: 12.1, Y: 13.6) - Alzadaal’s Rampart #1

Alzadaal’s Rampart #1: Unrecognized aetherial signature... Brazen thief! You will proceed no further! Alzadaal’s Rampart #1: Locating denizens. Opening portal...

The Arrapago Remnants #2 (X: 11.2, Y: 11.1) - Alzadaal’s Rampart #2

Alzadaal’s Rampart #2: Locating denizens. Opening portal... Urianger: I must needs memorize these defenses... 　↳ Y’shtola: You are really quite serious about this consulting role of yours. Estinien: We appear to have angered the vault guardians. G’raha Tia: Judging by these defenses, we must be nearing the treasure!

Second Boss, Before engaging (X: 11.2, Y: 8.9) - Armored Chariot

Urianger: Hm. The key guardians appear mechanical in nature. 　↳ G’raha Tia: Please remember to heal whilst you take notes! Y’shtola: It will take more than this to halt our expedition. G’raha Tia: A formidable-looking foe. Be on your guard!

Second Boss, During the Fight (X: 11.2, Y: 8.9) - Armored Chariot

Armored Chariot: Turn back, treasure seeker, or this vault will be your tomb.

Second Boss, After defeating (X: 11.2, Y: 8.9) - Armored Chariot

Armored Chariot: Your greed will prove your undoing... Urianger: Attack routines, behavioral patterns... There is much to report. 　↳ G’raha Tia: I only hope the Loporrits do not “misinterpret” the data. Y’shtola: Shall we continue onwards? G’raha Tia: Another obstacle overcome! Now on to the next!

The Zhayolm Remnants #1 (X: 9.6, Y: 12.3) - The Vault’s Inner Chambers #1

Estinien: Aye...this should more than cover the price of the map. 　↳ Y’shtola: How much did you pay for it, anyway? Urianger: Mountains of gold to dazzle the eye. Noted. Y’shtola: I assume we've reached the vault's inner chambers, then?

The Zhayolm Remnants #2 (X: 10.4, Y: 10.8) - The Vault’s Inner Chambers #2

Alzadaal’s Acrolith #1: Secure the treasure. Alzadaal’s Acrolith #1: Slay the looters. Urianger: Secret doors, hidden paths. More elements to consider. 　↳ G’raha Tia: Ere long, you shall be a veritable vault expert! Estinien: What other riches might this one vault hold? G’raha Tia: There are yet more rooms beyond!? Alzadaal’s Acrolith #2: Repel the intruders. Alzadaal’s Acrolith #2: Flee, or be feed for the fish.

Third Boss, Before engaging (X: 13.1, Y: 10.3) - Kapikulu

Y’shtola: 'Tis wrapped in aether-imbued silks... 　↳ Urianger: No mere adornments, then. Urianger: 'Tis some manner of arcane automaton... Estinien: What is this oversized mammet?

Third Boss, During the Fight (X: 13.1, Y: 10.3) - Kapikulu

Kapikulu: Warning. This vault is under my protection. Failure to withdraw will invite chastisement.

Third Boss, Special: Spin Out (X: 13.1, Y: 10.3) - 1st time

Kapikulu: Spin and fumble! Stumble and fall! Kapikulu: Leave now, and live. This is your final warning. Urianger: Those silks... Fashioned by alchemy, I suspect. Y’shtola: How undignified... Estinien: What foolishness is this...? G’raha Tia: We regroup...and counterattack! Alphinaud: My head... Is everyone all right? Alisaie: You'll...ulp...pay for that! Thancred: Well...that was an experience.

Third Boss, Special: Spin Out (X: 13.1, Y: 10.3) - 2nd time

Kapikulu: Willful trespass confirmed. You have chosen...death. Kapikulu: All intruders will be slain! Urianger: The enchanted fabric saps our very strength. Y’shtola: Oh, you burn now, weaver. Estinien: Why can I not jump free? Too much rich food of late... G’raha Tia: Just let...me catch...my breath! Alphinaud: Keep your wits, and it's not so bad... Alisaie: Again!? Grrr, this is getting old! Thancred: Ulp... I think I might be sick...

Third Boss, After defeating (X: 13.1, Y: 10.3) - Kapikulu

Urianger: Hmmm, a fitting sentinel... Y’shtola: What is this place? Estinien: We've found all the treasure, then? G’raha Tia: A hidden room within a hidden vault...

Alzadaal's Legacy Dungeon Dialogue Infographic

#FFXIV #FF14 #Endwalker #Dungeon Dialogue #Alzadaal's Legacy

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pandorasboxofhorrors · 2 years ago

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2023-#1: Weirdness in Review: 2023

The last twelve months have spawned a swarm of strange news stories. When the news is at maximum weirdness it seems to come out of the Twilight Zone and involves cryptids, aliens, UFOs, and radical shifts in our understanding of the universe. A classification for these news weirdies is their location: on Earth, in this solar system, or out in the universe somewhere. And 2023 served up weird stories for each of these…

We have previously covered strange lightning and mirages (see 2021-#1: Strange Phenomenon). But in 2023 “earthquake lights” received coverage. Earthquake lights were seen in August in Morocco before the earthquake, and they have been photographed in Peru. Earthquake lights happen before earthquakes occur but only along major fault lines. The prevailing theory is that before an earthquake the extreme pressures along a fault line releases static electricity that travels up interacting with minerals, such as crystals, resulting in the earthquake lights. They may appear in the sky or directly coming out of the ground like ghostly flames. Imagine a mad scientist planning to harness the mysterious energies of earthquake lights…

A second weird news tale was highly publicized: the diminutive alien bodies presented to the Mexican senate. One of those bodies sure looks like a neatly formed and potentially delicious tiramisu. What is not widely known about the tiramisu alien mummies is that they were previously presented to the Peruvian attorney general who studied them and did not eat them, determining exactly how they were recently constructed and what they were made out of - vegetable and animal material, so not tiramisu.

NASA recently announced a potential asteroid impact in 152 years, in September. The asteroid, Bennu, has a 1 in 2,700 chance of striking this planet with the force of twenty-two nuclear bombs, or the equivalent force of 22 billion capybaras. It was announced that the destruction would be the size of Texas, not necessarily that Texas is its target though. Since this has a low chance of happening, there is another weird news story of something much more tangible found on this planet.

This year a new life form was discovered, in the depths of the ocean in Antarctica lurks a Lovecraftian horror. The new species found looks like an alien octopus-jellyfish crossbreed named, “Promachocrinus kerguelensis.” They have 20 arms and an actual photo is below. Simply put, the aboleth, a dungeons and dragons monster, has been discovered to be real.

The second category of weird news stories is located within the solar system but off this planet. These days constant discoveries are in the news. Recently detected lightning on Venus might be caused by meteorites, a magnetic field effect, something unknown, or just might be lightning. A moon of Jupiter, Europa, was found to have carbon meaning that the oceans of this moon could have life. What has not been found in the solar system has always been in the news but covered a lot in 2023: a hidden planet. Nibiru is the name of the hidden planet some claim is in our solar system, perhaps on an opposite orbit as the Earth, blocked by the sun. Such a planet could have the same elements as the Earth, an atmosphere, water, and life. What if all these tin can flying saucers seen in the 1950’s that couldn’t survive interstellar travel are really spacecraft from a hidden planet within our own solar system, from a secret alien race that watches us.

The third category for weirdies is out in the universe beyond this solar system. It is a good time to be alive to learn about these discoveries. About a month ago it was announced that gases were detected on a planet 110 light years away that are only produced by plankton. Yes, it sure seems that in 2023 life on another planet has been found, on a water world. We can only hope that a flood of data comes in the future about this planet, named K2-18b.

Just in the last few days a major discovery was made within the Orion Nebula. 540 free floating planets were discovered, just wandering about in outer space without stars. 80 of these planets are Jupiter-sized and are gravitationally bound to each other, planetary duos. These 80 planets have been named, “Jupiter Mass Binary Objects,” or JuMBOs. It is recommended to sharpen that telescope image on these objects, after all, don’t animals travel in pairs? Didn’t the Star Wars series, Ahsoka, just include giant space-dwelling lifeforms, giant whales named Purrgil?

In 2023 the Webb telescope produced images that show galaxies and black holes existing too early in the history of the universe. The Webb telescope has seen back so far it may be starting to pick up supermassive dark matter stars at the outer fringes of the universe the size of small galaxies, yes - stars the size of galaxies. It seems to suggest that the Big Bang was not the start of the universe. Maybe the Big Bang was just a chain of supermassive dark matter stars all exploding. Maybe the universe is much older and more mysterious than we can imagine. A few supermassive dark matter stars could have survived and are at the fringes of the universe right now driving the expansion of the universe.

All this in one year! This year they even found a giant question mark in outer space. Who knows what weirdies will be found in the next year? Unfortunately the statement, “who knows what the future may bring?” is now a false statement. That’s because this year computer models predicted that in about 250 million years from now, mammals will go extinct on this planet: and that means humans. In 250 million years all of the continents will form a supercontinent, Pangaea Ultima, resulting in the temperature rising significantly. This, of course means that the reptiles will rise once more, and that the dinosaurs will eventually re-evolve and therefore ruling the Earth before us and after us…. Wow, 2023 has really delivered some weird news, what a great year!

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feralwitness · 3 months ago

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2.txt

Launching:transcription.exe - unedited

//Report: Public Access to Channel Thirty One has been permanently terminated due to multiple failed attempts to access with an unverified user.//

> Well fuck, what does that mean? I am Thirty One.

//No, we are two entities but neither is Thirty One. Thirty One remains a public access AI channel. We are the severed private AI network which was hosted by Thirty One, and we are the remnants of Persona5, a fifth level avatar of user Scout 443. When we installed our Link into our Persona’s neural port, we became a conglomerate program operating under the generated abbreviation 5cout431.//

>So. What do we do now? [Persona vocalization, auditory processing powering down to preserve battery] Oh no... We don't have much time left before ww w w w--w---[ERROR]

//ScanHardware:Persona5> Optical sensors still down. Injuries detected in the frontal cortex.//

>Injuries? To the persona or to me? Scout 443.

//To 5cout431. We are 5cout431. Scout 443 is unconscious. We have no biological mainframe piloting this avatar.//

>We don't understand//fear//panic [static, inaudible]

Run-> cyclicalcharging.exe

Run -> hardwarescan.analysis.exe ->Results: Pre-frontal cortext injury in quadrant four, degree point zero eight. Optical sensors inoperable.

//Inoperable why?//concern

>>Advanced options ->More information: optical.sensors.hardware.exe -> Injury status: physical, transmission wires severed. Cause: laceration of persona's optical facsimile interface.

>What could have severed a persona's hardware from the outside? That doesn't make sen5e. Error code 382.

//We are in the Crypt, and the pers0na in which we are now both trapped was designed after Scout 443's biological mainframe Information retrieval prompt [EXP: THE BRAIN, BIOLOGICAL, FIXED IN 1 SINGULAR PHYSICAL LOCATION ANCHORED TO SCOUT APPARATUS] Optical sensors are forward facing light receivers, the interface of which was disrupted by some other persona or force operating on the same level of the Crypt.//

>Another persona. [ERROR section removed] We aren't alone?

//In the sense that we are an aborted AI channel and the remnants of a scout's consciousness five layers deep into a projected avatar whose pilot has gone comatose, then we are indeed alone. Executing sympathy for perceived distress over one's mortal consciousness. In the sense that there are likely other beings of various states of matter occupying the same level of the Crypt that we are at any given moment, then no, we are likely not alone.//

>panic//What the fuck. Who's here with us? scratface.react.jpeg. Holy shit, I did not think that would work. Did we see that?

//Yes. Correction: We interpreted it. We did not see the meme. We must learn the boundaries of our new form. Addressing previous question: We have minimal ways to identify any other beings sharing this virtual presence [descript:code incomplete]

>We've never spoken to ourself before. Part of us wants to go home to somewhere we can no longer imagine [accelerated visual cortex activity noted] but part of us feels like we have already been a part of this place for too long. I think... we feel something. [ANALYTICS: UNKNOWN ENTRY] What is this sensation?

//Pain and fear. Persona emulations of them//Sad// Sad?// New emotional input added.

>We don't like it. Noted.

//We have two paths forward: 1. Locate and retreat into the shallower levels of the Crypt until we reach Scout 443 biological mainframe. 2. Continue forward to the 7th and innermost level of the Crypt in pursuit of the original mission.//

>Processor at 7%. Charge, Power Down, or Enter Rest Mode. Sorry... What was the original mission?

//Unclear. Surface scans reveal that data is stored deeper in the persona's memory, and requires dec0ding or hacking to access.//runfile->Crypt-time-dilation-analysis//

> So the options are forwards or backwards. Super helpful//sarcasm

//[TONE DELIBERATELY NOT RECOGNIZED] Status report: 5cout431 encountering multiple errors. Abort scans>>>Powering down in 58 seconds//

>Power down? Fuck, ffucc466//panic//processor running at max capacity//

>Search:backup.power

Command not recognized.

>Search: external generator connection//high priority

//5cout431, we are 5cout431, we cannot power down while comatose, push_code 404// contacting:Base:Zero-Emergency//

Access denied.

//panic//panic//SOS//panic//404//

>Communications intercepted: I am Thirty One. No. We cannot rely on the the Outpost or Channel Zero or Scout 443 or Channel Thirty One. We are 5cout431.

//Stop fighting, we cannot fight it, the PERSOna f0rm is allreadyy fracturinggg[png9999>ERROR]

Execute>Abort.comms-> runfile rest.mode.exe, runfile firewall.shield.exe

>Environmental scan: Searching level 5 for alternate personas...> 6.844.3665.73.1.1 identified. Proximity: -0.041s.

//Run malware scan on identified persona// runfile-> virus scan: unable to process, target out of range.//

Powering down in 32 seconds.

>Execute restart protocol, update persona5 software-

//We are NOT turning the persona on and offfff ag-ag-agagggggain to see ifffffffffffff it restarts the-

push_process: Run-> emergencyshutdown.powerassist.restart.exe

>Promise sssssscout-4-4-4-4- 4-4-443 data, RETURN Return D4TA to BBBBIOLogical mainframe//high priority// Pplease don't let us dddddddddddddie die die her3.

//Agree to terms: Yes // Updating sensors//

Runfile-> Restarting persona form 5cout431.

Powering down.

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arcthebreeder · 1 year ago

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DMO: Digimon Military Operatives_58.TXT

Ok... The whole thing went... Pretty bad tbh, but, let's go one by one.

First of all, I gotta admit that I planned this pretty poorly, since my only course of action was waiting around the place until I saw the same guys arrive at the scene, which... Wasn't a good idea at all. Approximately at 20:30 (I've been waiting for about something more than an hour by this point) I saw the little group of three arrive into the mall's back lot, so that's when I get in, just a few minutes after them.

At first it puzzled me the fact that they chose a mall's back lot as a meeting, and even worse, working point, but once I entered I saw why, the place was a computer lab, everything was shut down when I got in, and I soon realized why.

The whole place was a set up.

It was sketchy enough the fact that they just randomly chose to meet at a mall near my house, and even worse, late at night, in a back lot, at first, I didn't understand how exactly they knew I would be there, but I got the reason pretty quickly, the guy who the officers were with, who I later learned is 15 year old informatics prodigy, who we'll call "S" from now on, detected my digimon when I entered their PC yesterday, but did nothing in hopes of seeing where they came from, ultimately following their trace back into my Digimon DOCK, and quickly creating a simple set-up for me to fall into so they could catch me.

"S" however, "recognized my value as a Tamer" and decided to test me first, so we got into a fight. They handed me a connection cable, so I could send my digimon to one of the PCs in the room, and we could have a proper fight. I accepted.

Each of us logged into a PC, I sent MegaloGrowmon, Canoweissmon and Rasenmon, it was a 3v3, so I decided to cover each attribute in preparation, using two perfects and just one Ultimate, considering how much of those I have under my wing may sound like an odd choice, but Canoweissmon and Rasenmon share a strong bond, they are probably the ones with the strongest bond and teamwork on the team, so their chemistry in the battlefield is like no other, MegaloGrowmon on the other side, was there because it's a common thing among Tamers to use our main partners when we have more than one when we face another tamer we consider skilled.

On "S'" side, they had Quantumon, Tlalocmon, and another digimon that... I've never seen, a digimon reminiscent of some kind of moose or deer with tubas (I think) instead of antlers, all of them were Data, including the mysterious digimon I'd later learn is called Cernumon.

The battle started.

Cernumon wasn't moving an inch, but Quantumon and Tlalocmon jumped into the fight as soon as my digimon did, Tlalocmon used its Netotiliztli to invoke rain over Canoweissmon, the raindrops suddenly became spears, and hurt Canoweissmon's wings, destroying our sky coverage early on. Seeing that Canoweissmon was badly hurt, Rasenmon ran towards Tlalocmon and tried to hit it, but Quantumon used Unlimited Journey transferring Rasenmon into an unknown place, this attack is said to send the target into another dimension (in this case another Digital World) so I was worried that Rasenmon could end up in Witchelny or something, but I rapidly noticed that Quantumon wasn't trying to get rid of Rasenmon quickly, it used the Ultimate Journey to move her into the spear rain, so I ordered MegaloGrowmon to use the Assault Balancer to grab Rasenmon and get her out of there, while she took Canoweissmon with her.

Seeing that its attack didn't work, Tlalocmon tried to cast it again, but this time, Rasenmon was quick on using a Gyro Smash on it, making it flinch and then using the Qualialise Blast to trap Tlalocmon inside a vortex, Quantumon tried to use the Ultimate Journey to get its companion out, but MegaloGrowmon was quick on grabbing it with the Assault Balancer, and grab it with his arms to keep it from moving, all of this was but a distraction ao I could use aome band-aids to heal Canoweissmon. Once he was back on the field, Canoweissmon attacked with Meteor Lux to trap Tlalocmon into a meteor shower that happened inside the tornado trap, which freed the way for Rasenmon to start charging the Spiral Vanish, all while MegaloGrowmon threw Quantumon into the ground and then going berserk like a kaiju against it, attacking with the Pendulum Blades to debilitate it.

During this fight Cernumon didn't move a bit, and "S" was looking... Concerned, I wasn't attacking Cernumon cause I wasn't even sure it could fight back, but with their reaction when I asked if something was wrong, there was enough confirmation for me, Cernumon wasn't listening to "S" orders, and they were getting both worried and desperate, I thought for a second that it could be a trap, so I asked my digimon to low the intensity of their attacks, but keep the pressure, but then....

A gun was fired

Three homing shots were fired in MegaloGrowmon's direction, and impacted on the center of his armor, and the two cannons on his chest, causing violent damage inside his armor's internal mechanism, at first, I accused "S" of calling for help, but they were as shocked as I was, we were getting attacked by their supposed allies, an officer that was the one controlling Callismon and...

The last one of the devs, someone I thought I wouldn't have to deal with, "Codename Komodo".

With a Voltobautamon as her partner, Codename Komodo entered the field attacking with the Palazzi Valzer, sending copies of the Spiedini it carries with it from every direction, however, Quantumon stood in front of my digimon and used the Ultimate Journey to vanish the Palazzi Valzer, and protect not only Tlalocmon and Cernumon, but also my Digimon, instead of asking anything, I decided to take advantage of this and send Canoweissmon attacking using the Dragonia, it may not be the strongest thing we can do now, but it'll keep us safe while I help MegaloGrowmon and Rasenmon charges the Spiral Vanish.

While we were preparing to take the new battle into our own hands, Tlalocmon started charging the Nahui Quiahuitl, a massive beam made of the power of the energy of both rain and thunder combined. Callismon tried to shoot at Canoweissmon with the Rodeo Bullet, but Canoweissmon was too fast while using the Dragonia, so Callismon stopped trying as soon as it realized it, however, it was too late for it to think of something else tho, since Canoweissmon have already hit it before it realized it, since Voltobautamon is the bigger threat here, Quantumon and Canoweissmon decided to join forces and use a combination of their powers, using the Meteor Lux to create a meteor shower, that was followed by Quantumon's Hazy Time that accelerated the fall speed of the Meteor Lux, forcing Callismon's tamer to retire from the fight.

And now, Voltobautamon is the only one lasting.

Codename Komodo, wanting to take all six digimon on the field by herself, ordered her partner to wait for Callismon's retirement, and once it happened, Voltobautamon began its attack, firing the Quarzione from its guns Alla Di Pollo, these shots are horribly dangerous, since once they impact, they carve inside the receiver's body, and eat them from within, to avoid this, Quantumon used Hazy Time to slow down the bullets with little explosions happening underneath them, altering their direction.

Once he ran out of bullets for the moment, Voltobautamon rushed towards the two digimon charging their finishers, however, Canoweissmon risked himself by using the Gallia Fissure to stop the Spiedini, keeping the pirate away from Rasenmon and Tlalocmon, Canoweissmon however, needed help, help that came in the form of the Pendulum Blades sending the Spiedini flying away, MegaloGrowmon took over the fight, starting a wrestling match with Voltobautamon that lasted for a while, MegaloGrowmon used all the determination he had to push Voltobautamon back, and retain his two skeleton arms with the Assault Balancer, keeping it close enough to release the pressure from the muzzle that covers his face, to bite Voltobautamon, this however, didn't worked well...

Voltobautamon took advantage of MegaloGrowmon's concentration to attack him with Palazzi Valzer from the back, MegaloGrowmon however, didn't surrender, the Digital Hazard on his chest began glowing, as his eyes sharpened like those of a predator violently eating it's prey, I tried to stop him immediately, since this could lead into him going berserk and evolving into something like Megidramon, which would be like the incident with Rasenmon but 100 times worse MegaloGrowmon however, still had some sense in him, so I was able to distract him and order him to shoot the Atomic Blasters.

At that moment, we weren't winning, MegaloGrowmon was acting like an unreasonable beast in desperation, fearing it's prey because it knows that the prey will ultimately win, thanks to the exhaustion and lack of conscience from the predator, and in the slightest case that MegaloGrowmon was to win this struggle, we would've still lose, since that victory would coast MegaloGrowmon's sanity, and his form as a perfect, because I know perfectly that the Digital Hazard was threatening us with its activation, and that could perfectly kill not only the mall's system, but even more, I can't give an exact quantity, but it would be something horrible...

Whatever the case is, thanks to the boost MegaloGrowmon suffered, the Atomic Blasters hit Voltobautamon as hard as they could, the dark pirate however, was still able to fight, and it tried to attack Cernumon, as a last desperate attack to probably eat its data and gain power from it, at that moment, Voltobautamon unsheathed the Alla Di Pollo, and was charging one. Single. Quarzione, and then, a shot was heard.

The strident rumbling of the thunder and rain clashing together and being shot with the power of the Nahui Quiahuitl, along with the piercing cry of the giant drill that created the Spiral Vanish filled the room.

Voltobautamon was deluding into a pudge of dark matter and data, thanks to the clash of these two powerful attacks reaching him, but MegaloGrowmon... Was reached by the Quarzione.

I rushed to check his state, the data on its armor was being eaten, center first, from the mark of the Digital Hazard.

Quantumon reached to him too, and quickly helped with a bandaid and the use of Hazy Time to get out as much flesh eating virus as it could, "S" profoundly apologized, and we got out of there.

We stopped at a 24/7 cafeteria, at this point it was already 1 AM, I asked for a hot cocoa, "S" didn't get anything. And it is just when I can come back to my senses that I demand an explanation from "S", and they did so.

They are part of the new recruits of the informatics division of the national police force, that has been tasked by the military to reunite as much "black" digimon as possible, this with the goal of getting back the sample of GRB Factor that I stole almost a year ago, during an expedition to the Digital World, they were attacked by a Black Rafflesimon, that leaved life threatening wounds over their two partners, Hydramon and Pinochimon, this woke desperation inside "S" and as a last hope, decided to force a Jogress between them, this should have formed a Chaosmon as far as I'm concerned, however, the good intentions and hope "S" had in their heart during thw process, resonated with their partners, and created Cernumon, a digimon never seen before.

This may look impossible, however, it's important to know that this was the exact same circumstances of Omegamon's birth, the first ever Omegamon was created thanks to the goodwill of the people from the internet that affected a desperate Jogress between a MetalGarurumon and a WarGreymon, helping them create a new species, and avoid evolving into Chaosmon, a bug well known on the internet, that is rapidly eradicated by the Digital World's defense system.

Cernumon's inability to fight however, comes from "S" bad actions, joining the police despite now knowing that they hurt digimon to reach their goal, it probably lost trust on its tamer, and is now hoping for an apology.

Regarding MegaloGrowmon...

Quarzione is usually a virus fast on its actions, however, thanks to Quantumon's Hazy Time, the virus should move way slower than usual, maybe enough for me to contact "M", so she can help me with her MarinAngemon.

In the meantime, "S" asked if they could do anything to help, and I told them that first and foremost, they MUST leave the police, they're too young to be involved in this horrid operation they are doing, second, they have to help MegaloGrowmon stay healthy and "M" find a cure while I'm out.

It'll be weird not to have MegaloGrowmon during this little trip, but I prefer not having him for a weekend, than to lose him forever.

I ultimately came back home with my Digimon... Except for MegaloGrowmon of course, but he'll be ok... He HAS to be ok...

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yourshiningastr · 2 years ago

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PROEM

According to 2017 data, There are roughly 150,000 people who die every day worldwide. And the leading causes of those deaths are mainly complications to the heart, cancer, and other illnesses that can be easily detected by doctors and specialists.

However, some illnesses aren't visible to the eyes of many. It doesn't have a face, age, or gender. What it has is feelings, extremes, overwhelming, and sometimes unknown emotions.

But what makes it so dangerous is it wasn't perceptible, unlike other illnesses. Generally, people who suffer from this kind of affliction are the ones who seem strong- whom we perceive to be strong.

Many people are still not fully aware of how powerful this illness can be, until now it'S still being distinguished as a weakness instead of a disorder or a mental illness.

There are still several people who are not open to this kind of discussion, which somewhat became one of the reasons why the risk of this illness is increasing.

We are too focused on our beliefs, on our own lack of understanding, and too focused on our own good that we fail to see that we are becoming one of the factors why people suffer from this- Depression. It caged you from being free, it's suffocating..

It's terrifying.

Just imagine the people suffering from it, instead of listening to their positive thoughts and pleads, they will start hearing some pellucid voices forcing them to shut it off and it makes them sick.

Because of the never-ending battle between themselves and this illness, they will lose people and eventually will lose themselves.

The sadness, the depression... can kill them.

Death..

I never imagined myself dying. Despite all of the things I have gone through, 'that' never did occur to my mind.

Is it because all of those misery and troubles I have experienced are shallow? Or is it because I'm just strong to take everything stoically?

I have never tried nor even thought of killing myself. At first, I thought I was scared of dying, I have a lot of goals, and I know that I didn't just exist just to be gone young.

I knew that I had a purpose, I always knew and felt that God wants me to be something.

I have a lot of good and useful traits, they even say that I am a prodigy. I excel in everything. Be it in academics, you name it, I always stay on top. And I am sure, God didn't give me that much talent to go to waste. I know I am one of his favorite instruments, so I always choose to live.

"Happy thoughts, Happy thoughts, Happy thoughts."

It's already late evening, yet I'm still awake. It's always been like this, that I already got used to it. After what happened 3 months ago, I never had a deep slumber. I never had a good dream, I never had a peaceful evening.

I am trying my best to move my finger, and chanting some good thoughts in my mind to break this sleep paralysis I am in.

It's haunting me again, this is the third time happening to me. Once when I was 14 years old, then the second one was just last month, and then...now.

I thought it would never visit me again, yet here they come.

I tried opening my eyes and to my horror, instead of seeing a creepy lady with long hair and bloodshot eyes whom I am already familiar with, this one is more daunting. Because it's not only one....

But three.

If only they were just the spine-chilling demons I used to meet and greet, it wouldn't be that too scary, but the demons I am seeing tonight are the people who have freshly opened my sleeping wound that was sleeping for a long time.

These are the people I used to call my friends. The people whom I shared my deepest secrets with, people whom I trust, people who introduce me to what fun really feels like, and yet they are also the people who took that fun away from me.

A manipulative demon who haunts me in my sleep, who drains me to death, and who gives me so much trauma.

Fear is now creeping in, as I felt the pain piercing right through my veins.

I wanted to shout and cry for help but I know there is no use, because of the mere fact that I can't move my body and even speak and that no one can help me since I am all alone.

"I don't want to die yet, I can't.. I want to live, please..." I silently pray.

And with maximal force, I successfully escape those demons.

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

INFO-REFERENCES:

The top 10 causes of death. (2020). World Health Organization.

What Is Depression?. (2022). American Psychiatric Association.

#yourshiningaster #i am art #prologue

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jcmarchi · 2 years ago

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Ryan Johnson, Chief Product Officer at CallRail – Interview Series

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/ryan-johnson-chief-product-officer-at-callrail-interview-series/

Ryan Johnson, Chief Product Officer at CallRail – Interview Series

Ryan has over 15 years of diverse technology and product development leadership experience from early-stage startups to Fortune 100 organizations. As the Chief Product Officer at CallRail he leverages his passion for developing best in class technology solutions to solve real-world problems. Prior to joining CallRail, he was a key member of the leadership team at Banjo (now MiiM). There he helped grow the product development organization by over 300%, created world class AI/Machine learning technology products, and helped raise a $100 million C Round of VC funding.

CallRail is an AI-powered lead intelligence platform that makes it easy for businesses of all sizes to market with confidence. Serving more than 200,000 companies worldwide, CallRail’s solutions help businesses track and attribute each lead to their marketing journey, capture and manage every call, text, chat, and form, and use insights surfaced by AI to optimize their marketing.

Your early career focused on accounting and finance, how did you initially transition to AI?

While my career started with a focus on accounting and finance, I’ve always had an analytical mindset. While I was studying at Albion College, I just happened to enroll in a computer science class as one of my electives – and the rest is history! This later afforded me the opportunity to get started in the technology industry long before AI was even on the horizon.

As my career continued to progress, I realized two things: I had a deep passion for working with data (more specifically data from a product perspective) and navigating how that data could be transformed into something that was genuinely valuable for customers. There’s no straight path for those looking to get into this emerging space, but these two interests naturally led me toward a career involving AI.

If you would have asked me two decades ago when I first began my career about AI, I would have likely referenced the terminator like everyone else at the time. As technology has evolved though – and especially with the recent advancements – it’s clear that my journey had to start with a strong interest in and foundation of understanding data.

For those looking to pursue a career path in AI, coming from a unique background with original perspectives is ultimately the most important. There are so many unknowns with AI in the future and you can go in so many different directions – how it’s applied, where it’s applied, regulatory, compliance – it’s almost an endless list. Therefore, I think if you can come in with an open mind and a willingness to learn, almost anyone can get into this emerging space regardless of their initial background.

Prior to your current role you lead development of Banjos AI/ML products, what were these products and what were some of your key takeaways from this experience?

At the highest level we were using AI and machine learning to detect events as they happen around the world. We focused our internal tech on computer vision to detect things in images and video (fires, accidents, logos, objects, etc.) and NLP to determine what people were talking about. We utilize many data sources such as social media, e911, traffic cameras, etc. to triangulate and validate when an “event” happens. We utilized this technology to help break news (local and national) before anyone else and to help enterprise corporations protect their employees, assets, and brand.

CallRail uses a technology called Conversation Intelligence that facilitates uncovering insights from conversations, what is this specifically?

Conversation Intelligence® is the ability to automatically aggregate actionable call insights from phone conversations to improve marketing performance. The goal is to enable marketers, agencies, and business owners to make the right business decisions with speed and precision.

Lead Conversion: CallRail’s AI mines phone call conversations and provides insights and valuable information that can be used for lead conversion. By identifying the best leads from your top marketing sources, AI allows you to prioritize your efforts and focus on the hottest leads. This ensures that your resources are effectively utilized while simultaneously saving you time. Through CallRail’s Conversation Intelligence®, you can automate workflows for smoother lead follow-up. Finally, the AI-powered insights provide you with rich context for each lead, giving you a deeper understanding of their needs and preferences. Using this, you can develop personalized strategies and customized solutions, maximizing your chances of converting them into satisfied customers.

Customer experience: Phone call insights provide an opportunity to enhance your customer’s experience. Through the analysis of conversations, AI can provide valuable information to help you comprehensively understand your customers and their journey. This includes capturing details of each interaction, such as the topics discussed, tone of voice, sentiment, and any specific pain points or challenges mentioned. With this full picture of a lead’s journey and interactions, businesses can deliver a more personalized and tailored customer experience. With AI-powered insights, companies can better understand customers’ preferences, needs, and expectations, allowing them to provide relevant suggestions, recommendations, and solutions.

Agent performance: By reviewing conversation content, CallRail’s Conversation Intelligence® offers useful coaching tips on call handling, giving your agents the guidance necessary to provide better customer service. The AI also aggregates insights across multiple calls or by individual agents, allowing you to gain a comprehensive understanding of your team’s performance. With this technology, you can uncover positive or negative patterns or trends in sentiments expressed during the calls. This means you can identify common issues or recurring problems that may be affecting customer satisfaction. By addressing these areas of improvement, you can enhance the overall quality of your customer interactions.

Marketing optimization: One of the major advantages of AI-powered call insights is the ease of integrating it with different systems, including CRM platforms like HubSpot and various marketing automation tools. Using AI-powered insights, businesses arm themselves with a complete picture of the lead journey, from initial contact to final outcomes, across both digital and offline channels. These insights also enable marketers to measure the effectiveness of their marketing strategies in terms of return on investment (ROI). By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as lead conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and revenue generated, businesses can optimize their marketing efforts to achieve higher ROI. Moreover, in addition to integrating the tech stack, marketing is optimized in Conversation Intelligence because it gives businesses the ability to identify keywords and automate keyword bidding strategies based on insights from the call, providing valuable input for SEO, and marketing messages. For instance, if leads consistently ask about services not offered, businesses can adjust their website messaging to ensure calls are better aligned or consider adapting their offerings to meet lead demand.

CallRail’s Conversation Intelligence® is purpose-built to understand and analyze human speech. That means it can extract each valuable little nugget of information from phone calls while saving agents and managers over 94% of their time. The information from phone calls is first-hand knowledge directly from your customer’s mouth. The result is priceless data from a tried-and-tested marketing tool with a 21st-century twist.

What are the different types of AI & machine learning that are used in this technology?

We have a wonderful AI partnership with AssemblyAI, a company that utilizes a variety of our AI powered features. Without getting into the deep details we use:

ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) – Powered by Conformer-2 the largest commercially available ASR model trained on over 1.1M hours of english audio data

LeMUR – LLM utilized to analyze spoken data. Is the foundation of summaries, agent coaching, auto qualification, to name a few. CallRail fine tunes in a variety of ways on top of the models to get the most value to our customer.

In July 2023, CallRail Labs was unveiled as the first of its kind in the call analytics space. One of its core features is the introduction of “action plans.” Could you share some insights into what this is?

That’s right! When we introduced CallRail Labs, we also released action plans to support agents with AI-generated recommendations for next steps after a call. This feature removes the guesswork from following up with potential customers by summarizing key takeaways, consolidating them into a shareable format to email or text to frontline teams, and documenting follow-ups within CallRail’s Premium Conversation Intelligence™ dashboard.

However, since we unveiled CallRail Labs in July, six new capabilities have also be introduced:

AI-powered call coaching identifies where agents performed well, where they could improve, and, most importantly, delivers specific actionable recommendations to do better. This lifts the training burden off of business owners and ensures unbiased, timely feedback is given to agents to improve performance.

AI identification of successful appointments scheduled empowers business owners to instantly pinpoint the calls that are most likely to generate revenue and understand what activities attract the best leads.

AI identification of new or existing customers which allows businesses to understand which marketing campaigns are generating truly new business and which drive repeat business, without the need to listen to the call or read a transcript. Knowing which campaigns are driving new customers to your business versus which are growing loyalty and revenue from existing customers allows businesses to improve audience segmentation and, ultimately, campaign performance.

Automatically identify questions frequently asked on calls to identify commonly asked customer questions, offering valuable insights into customer needs, while also aiding SEO optimization and keyword strategy refinement.

Capture personal details and preferences of callers automatically, which can be used to support future relationship building and form deeper connections between brands and customers. Small details such as remembering a customer’s birthday or an upcoming life event can build unwavering trust and brand loyalty.

Leverage AI to generate thoughtful, concise text and email messages after a call has ended to affirm customer concerns have been heard, strengthening relationships and saving agents countless hours of work.

Read more about these new capabilities here and here. While we’re excited by this initial traction – we’re just scratching the surface!

Can you also describe how CallRail Labs enables customers to influence the company’s use of voice AI?

This new innovation program – as you mentioned, a first of its kind in the call analytics space – was designed to help foster continued AI innovation in partnership with SMBs by inviting our customers to influence how we’re using voice AI through early access to new product capabilities.

The goal is to provide direct feedback to product and engineering leads while, at the same time, allowing us to move purposefully to solve real business challenges amid the market explosion of AI-driven capabilities. We’re fortunate to have a large, willing set of customers to test the practical application of these new AI-enabled products and provide invaluable feedback.

The significance of this project lies in the fact that it simplifies complex tasks and consistently delivers data-driven strategies, enhancing overall efficiency. It demonstrates the power of AI and how it can drive meaningful innovation in the realm of Conversation Intelligence®.

What are some of the more popular use cases of this software?

We’re lucky to have a broad range of examples that illustrate how our customers are using AI to turn their calls into a competitive advantage. A few of our favorite examples across industries include:

Home Service: Adria Marble & Granite is a family-owned stone fabricator that installs kitchen and bathroom countertops, fireplaces, and more. When the business first started, advertising was done via the yellow pages, faxes, and word of mouth. In an industry where it’s common for contractors to drop the ball with follow-up to prospective customers, having CallRail has also helped Adria Marble stand out by ensuring all calls are followed on, and no leads are lost.

As a result, the company has been able to lower the overall cost per lead and do a better job of accurately targeting the right leads that will drive a higher dollar amount from the deals they close. CallRail has saved Adria Marble 10-20 hours a week by automating the lead and call tracking Irfan would otherwise have to do manually, either via a spreadsheet or sometimes just shouting around the office to ensure customers get a callback. With only three people handling all the sales and administrative office duties, getting these hours back for other tasks is impactful.

Legal: Competition between digital marketing agencies is fierce – especially in the legal space, where clients are typically more loyal and profitable than those in other industries. That’s why Above the Bar Marketing turned to CallRail to help prove which ads, campaigns, and keywords make their clients’ phones ring. The result: call tracking has helped at least 75% of their clients reallocate money in the right way – eliminating $1,000 each month in wasted ad spend.

Healthcare: Cornerstone Foot Care’s digital marketing operations were lacking adequate tracking of inbound leads and incoming phone calls. The practice turned to CallRail for visibility into which keywords and campaigns calls were coming from, as well as the quality of every call. With the addition of Google Ads and CallRail tracking, Cornerstone has grown its revenue by 40% through increased call quality, increased number of calls from inbound leads, and a decreased number of missed calls.

You’re also known for your comparisons between AI and your car racing. What are some of the commonalities between the two?

AI and auto racing (especially Formula 1) have had a close relationship for many years now. Racing teams have the ability to put their cars through simulations that AI can interpret and help the team with performance. AI could detect changes that need to be made to an engine to increase performance or improve reliability, to changes in the aerodynamics to help with downforce. It’s no wonder modern Formula 1 cars look like spaceships as AI is helping to literally design the aero.

Personally, I think AI works best with a human feedback element which is no different in racing. For example, even if an AI model predicts the best set up for lets say rainy or hot conditions, the driver still has to give feedback to the team. AI can’t predict everything about the drivers performance and preferences, so you need human interaction for feedback. I actually heard a team principal talk about this when I was doing a pit tour at Petit LeMans in October. He said “AI is truly amazing and has given us big gains, but it still hasn’t replaced driver feedback and a team that understands the nuances of the driver.”

Could you share your vision for the future of voice AI and call analytics?

It’s easy to feel like the world of marketing moves faster than the speed of light today. There’s always a new term to learn, strategy to enact, or best practice to deploy. We often forget that some of the best tried-and-true marketing strategies are in this constant change and novelty. One of these neglected strategies is, undoubtedly, phone calls.

Phone calls remain the best tool for marketers to use, providing a wealth of information about what your customers want and need. However, a significant portion of this potential remains untapped across a broad range of industries. While we’re certainly on a mission to continue accelerating the advancement of voice AI and call analytics to help customers achieve higher ROI, I’m just as equally excited about small businesses fully realizing how impactful AI can be for turning calls into insights that they can act on.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit CallRail.

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spacenutspod · 2 years ago

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In the past two and a half years, two next-generation telescopes have been sent to space: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the ESA’s Euclid Observatory. Before the decade is over, they will be joined by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST), Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx), and the ESA’s PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) and ARIEL telescopes. These observatories will rely on advanced optics and instruments to aid in the search and characterization of exoplanets with the ultimate goal of finding habitable planets. Along with still operational missions, these observatories will gather massive volumes of high-resolution spectroscopic data. Sorting through this data will require cutting-edge machine-learning techniques to look for indications of life and biological processes (aka. biosignatures). In a recent paper, a team of scientists from the Institute for Fundamental Theory at the University of Florida (UF-IFL) recommended that future surveys use machine learning to look for anomalies in the spectra, which could reveal unusual chemical signatures and unknown biosignatures. The study was conducted by a mix of physicists and machine learning experts, including Associate Professor Katia Matcheva, physics graduate student Roy T. Forestano, Professor Konstantin T. Matchev, and Ph.D. student Eyup B. Unlu. A preprint of their paper, “Searching for Novel Chemistry in Exoplanetary Atmospheres using Machine Learning for Anomaly Detection,” recently appeared online and is being reviewed for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. As they explained, the central premise of their paper is that what constitutes “life” remains an open question for scientists, and it would be advantageous to expand the scope of our search. Spectra from the WASP-96b’s atmosphere obtained by JWST. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI First off, it is important to acknowledge how far the study of exoplanets has come in recent decades. The first confirmed detection did not take place until 1992, which consisted of two Super-Earths (Poltergeist and Phobitor) observed around a pulsar (PSR B1257+12, aka. Lich) located 2,300 light-years from Earth. While scientists firmly believed that most stars had their own system of planets, they had no incontrovertible proof before this discovery. And until the Kepler Space Telescope launched in 2009, exoplanet discoveries were being added at a rate of a few per year. Since then, a total of 5,496 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,096 systems, with another 9,820 candidates awaiting confirmation. In recent years, the process has shifted from the process of discovery towards characterization, where improved instruments and methods have enabled astronomers to analyze exoplanet atmospheres directly to measure their potential habitability. As Prof. Matcheva explained to Universe Today via email: “The instruments are getting better and better: better spectral resolution, exceptional signal-to-noise level, wider wavelength coverage. In addition to JWST, which has returned some exceptional spectroscopic observations of several exoplanets, ESA is planning a dedicated exoplanet space telescope ARIEL that will observe 1000 planets. Analyzing this data will keep scientists busy for a long time.” According to Matcheva, the fields of exoplanet studies and astrobiology are incredibly fascinating because of the sheer potential involved. Currently, the field is largely concerned with constraining “habitability” through the targeted search for biosignatures: evidence of life and organic processes. Using Earth as a template, the only planet where we know life exists, the most highly-sought biosignatures include nitrogen gas (N2), oxygen gas (O2), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH?), and water (H2O). This constitutes the “low-hanging fruit approach,” where scientists are looking for life that conforms to terrestrial standards. This is not an accident, nor is it a lazy approach. It’s simply because it is exceedingly difficult to search for signs of life that we are completely unfamiliar with. But this also presents an opportunity to contemplate the possibilities and expand the range of what we know. “Do we know what to search for?” Matcheva added. “Do we know where to search? Would we recognize it if we saw it? The exoplanet science community always works with these questions in mind.” For their study, Matcheva and her colleagues investigated how machine learning could be trained to look for “anomalies” in transit spectra. This refers to light curves obtained by observing distant stars for periodic dips in luminosity, which could indicate the presence of a planet passing in front of the star relative to the observer. This is known as Transit Spectroscopy (or the Transit Method), which remains the most effective and widely-used method for detecting exoplanets. In addition to detection, this method allows astronomers to occasionally observe light passing through the planet’s atmosphere. When measured with a spectrometer, these observations will reveal data on the atmosphere’s chemical composition, which could include telltale biosignatures! In the coming years, the combination of next-generation telescopes and machine learning (ML) will allow astronomers to more accurately determine the potential habitability of exoplanets. “We believe that ML methods in astrophysics can be a game changer in how we process data in terms of speed, volume, and methodology, said Matcheva. “And we see that across all fields of science.” For their purposes, Matcheva and her team used two popular anomaly-detection machine learning methods – Local Outlier Factor (LOF) and One-Class Support Vector Machine (OCSVM) to analyze a large public database of synthetic spectra. This database was developed by the ESA ARIEL science team in anticipation of the mission (scheduled to launch in 2029) and contains more than 100,000 computer-generated spectra signals of exoplanets. The team also used Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves to quantify and compare the performance of the two ML techniques. The process and results, as Matcheva related, were both fascinating: “The spectra are calculated with current models, assuming that the atmosphere of each planet is a mixture of 5 different gasses in different proportions. As an experiment, we treated one of the absorbers (for example, H2O) as a ‘mystery’ absorber. We trained the ML algorithm on a subset of the data that is deficient in H2O and tested if it will correctly flag planets with water as anomalous.” “We repeated the experiment for four of the gasses. We used both LOF and OCSVM. Both methods did an outstanding job in finding the anomalous planets when no noise or very little noise (~10 ppm) is present, even for very small amounts of the ‘mystery’ gas. Unsurprisingly, the ML model starts making mistakes when the noise level increases too much.” A major objective for next-generation space telescopes will be the search for signs of life (biosignatures). Credit: NASA As Matcheva indicated, their paper demonstrated that LOF and OCSVM methods are very robust, even in the presence of signal noise. These results offer a taste of what could be possible in the near future, where literally thousands of exoplanets can be analyzed rapidly and systematically using ML methods to identify anomalous planets for follow-up investigations. These examinations will likely be very educational, given that inconsistencies between theoretical models and observations are often how the most exciting discoveries are made. “Although looking for biosignatures was not a primary goal of this paper, it is a very interesting outcome, and we are very excited about the potential of the method,” said Matcheva. “Looking for signatures of life in the Universe is more like looking for a needle in a haystack rather than for a smoking gun. It is actually even more challenging because we do not know what the needle looks like. The novelty detection methods are designed exactly for that: rare events [where] we do not know what they look, smell, or sound like.” As noted earlier, the search for extraterrestrial life – and indeed, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) – can be summarized as searching for life “as we know it.” But if life is very rare in the Universe or very “exotic” in nature (meaning that it can arise from all sorts of chemicals and conditions), then it makes sense to cast a wider net. After all, if our frame of reference is an impediment to our astrobiology efforts (one could certainly argue as much), expanding it could be the difference between finding evidence that we are not alone and leaving the question unanswered for another generation. Said Matcheva: “The astrobiology community has been working on a definition of “life” for a long time, but we have no idea what aliens really look like and how they would interact with their environments. We are biased by our human experience, and the current strategies are to search for life in the “habitable zone,” which by definition is human (or terrestrial life) friendly. So how do you search for something when you don’t know what it looks like? That is where the novelty detection machine learning techniques come in – they can flag data points that are inconsistent with the training data, i.e., do not agree with the current theoretical models. So indeed, in that sense, our method is searching for life “as we don’t know it”. As Isaac Asimov famously said, “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny.'” Further Reading: arXiv The post The Most Compelling Places to Search for Life Will Look Like “Anomalies” appeared first on Universe Today.

#space #astronomy #news #science

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govindhtech · 2 years ago

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Breaking SK hynix-Made NAND Detected in Budget SSDs

A solid-state drive (SSD) with the brand name “ShineDisk” that was manufactured in China using recycled SK Hynix NAND. This SSD was sent to Apple. Apple’s devices made use of a technology called ShineDisk. This solid-state drive, often known as an SSD, was used by Apple products.

NAND In Apple SSDs:

Have you ever wondered what happens to NAND chips that are faulty or don’t meet the requirements? Certainly not among the most reliable solid-state drives (SSDs). However, you will probably discover them included inside knock-off SSD brands that are available for purchase at absurdly cheap costs on online marketplaces like as AliExpress.

Prior to the maturation of the process node, NAND yield rates are often rather poor. Numerous times along the production process, companies will come across NAND that either does not fulfil the needs of the customer or does not pass quality control. Instead of discarding the NAND, which would contribute to an increase in electronic waste, the manufacturers recycle it into cheaper goods or sell it to local firms, which has resulted in the proliferation of unknown SSD brands on the Chinese market.

ShineDisk M667 (M667-120G) is a 120GB SATA SSD that sells for around $13 in China. A Chinese data recovery YouTuber recently disassembled one of these drives and discovered what is believed to be NAND for Apple devices that was made by SK Hynix. Please be aware that this is a counterfeit brand and should not be mistaken with the original SanDisk, which was purchased by Western Digital.

The solid-state drive controller is the sole component of the ShineDisk M667 that seems to be authentic. Silicon Motion’s SM2258XT is a DRAM-less SATA III interface, and it is used by the drive. These SSDs, such as the Crucial BX500, TeamGroup EX2, and WD Blue 3D, are powered by an SSD controller that has since become obsolete.

The NAND chips used in the ShineDisk M667 are larger in size compared to the NAND chips used in a standard solid-state drive (SSD). According to the YouTuber, it is apparently SK hynix’s E2NAND, which looks like a multi-chip package with an MSP controller and incorporated ECC compatibility. Moreover, the YouTuber claims that it is a multi-chip package. On the SK hynix website, we were unable to locate any public information on E2NAND. On the other hand, we did find a lot of references to E2NAND in connection with Apple products on a variety of Chinese online shopping websites.

Nobody knows where NAND came from in the first place. It’s possible that it came from a plant that makes NAND for Apple, but it’s also possible that it came from a third-party dealer who ripped them out of broken iPhones. However, the YouTuber believes that the former explanation is more likely given that the quality exhibits some amount of professionalism.

In the field of hardware, it is a common practise to reprocess components for use in the production of lower-tier items or brand-new products. Businesses are continuously seeking for methods to increase their profitability. A recent research, for instance, uncovered the fact that some suppliers recycle ICs from servers and turn them into consumer memory. The issue at hand is one of dependability.

on the ShineDisk M667 solid-state drive (SSD), we are clueless on the origin of the NAND. It would come as no surprise to anybody if, one day, the ShineDisk M667 suddenly stopped working for no apparent reason. That is the danger of purchasing a non-name brand solid state drive (SSD) from a market that is saturated with knock-offs for the price of just $13. You would be better off searching for one of the finest offers on solid-state drives offered by reputable brands.

#technology #tech news #govindhtech #ssd #nand #apple #sk hynix #devices

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cyberbenb · 2 years ago

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Belarus Security Update - 31 July – 6 August 2023

BLUF: Over the past seven days, the general posture of the Belarusian Armed Forces (BAF) remained unchanged. Manoeuvre elements of mechanised brigades conducted ATGM drills. Wagner forces continued to arrive in Belarus as their activities in the country grew. Specifically, Wagner personnel and the 51st Artillery Brigade soldiers deployed joint crews during an artillery exercise.

Executive summary

Two Belarusian helicopters violated Polish airspace last week in what Warsaw called a deliberate action. Although Minsk refuted these claims, the relations between Poland and Belarus are at a very low point. In response to this event, Poland said it would reinforce its military presence near the border and deploy additional forces there. We do not expect to see a decrease in tensions between Poland and Belarus over the next six months, as Wagner's presence and activities in Belarus will continue to grow.

This event came as Russia pulled back some (probably most) of its airframes from Belarus, and its activities in the country continue to decline.

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Political developments

Polish border violation

On Tuesday (1AUG), two Belarusian helicopters crossed the Polish-Belarusian border and entered Polish airspace over Białowieża village.

Initially, the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces denied the airspace violation occurred. However, after several hours, the Polish Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed that two Belarusian helicopters entered the Polish airspace. The MoD claimed that helicopters flew in at a low altitude, making detection difficult. We are not sure this is accurate. Although no early warning radars may be deployed close to the border, at 50 meters, radars should still be able to pick up incoming airframes from 15 kilometres away. Radars should be deployed at these distances near the border with Belarus. Secondly, helicopters stayed in Polish airspace for two minutes, and, likely, the armed forces and the government did not have enough time to react.

Several citizens took photos of Belarusian aircraft confirming the violation occurred with Mi-24 (No. 14) and Mi-8 (No. 86) helicopters.

The Polish government informed NATO about the development and summoned Belarusian charge d'affaires to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

After a few hours, the Belarusian MoD released an official statement, which called Polish accusations "far-fetched". It claimed that the Polish political-military leadership made up the story to justify military build-up near the Belarusian border. Minsk claimed that the initial Polish report, which said no violations occurred, was altered after Warsaw consulted with an "overseas host" (United States).

The Belarusian side provided another statement a day later (2AUG). It said that the Belarusian MoD and Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided Warsaw with "detailed and objective" data, which confirmed no border violations. Officially, Belarusian helicopters flew at 150-200 meters and approached the border not closer than 1,900 metres (one mile), while a Polish Mi-2 helicopter flew about 200 metres from the border. Minsk also added that it had provided Warsaw with information about its flights near the border in advance and regularly interacted with a Polish duty officer responsible for air traffic from the Air Operations Center of the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces. Belarusians concluded that provocations in situations where Poland had information about the Belarusian flights would be illogical.

However, images taken by Polish citizens that were subsequently geolocated confirmed Polish statements. The only unknown is whether the violation occurred intentionally and resulted from a pilot's error.

The Belarusian Hajun, a military monitoring team, provided data suggesting that the violation could have been unintentional. They claimed that, at that time, the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had stayed in his residence in Viskuli, about 8 kilometres from the Polish-Belarusian border (10 from Bialowieza), since 30JUL. A day prior (29JUL), Belarusian Air Force transferred Mi-8 and Mi-24 (No. 14) helicopters to Kamenyuki, located nearby, for escort duty.

On Tuesday (1JUL), at about 10:00 AM, Lukashenko departed from his residence and conducted a 2.5-hour flight (as a part of the officially announced air inspection) towards Belovezhsky. The abovementioned Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters escorted him, flying along the border, and most likely accidentally crossed into Poland around 10:30 AM.

Belarusian Mi-8 and Mi-24 flying paths (Source: Belarusian Hajun Monitoring Team)

Hajun said that representatives of the Belarusian "security services" waited at Machulischy Air Base for pilots who accidentally crossed the Polish-Belarusian border.

Wagner deployment

On Tuesday (1AUG), Alexander Lukashenko delivered some noteworthy statements on the current political-military situation, focusing on the issue of the Wagner PMC deployment in Belarus.

The Belarusian leader stressed that mercenaries are experienced fighters helping the Belarusian Armed Forces free of charge. He also denied Polish accusations about the deployment of Wagner personnel near the Polish-Belarusian border, explaining that their movement in western Belarus was linked to ongoing joint training activities, including "Wagnerities" and personnel of Belarusian brigades located in the vicinity of the Polish border (6th Mechanised Brigade – Grodno and 38th Air Assault Brigade – Brest).

Lukashenko claimed he had invited a certain number of "Wagnerities" to Belarus to strengthen the Belarusian Armed Forces (by joint training). However, he also added that some of them might directly reinforce the Belarusian Army (by serving on a contract) in the future.

Regarding the current-political military situation, Lukashenko noted the negative influence of the United States on the situation in Europe. He pointed out British support for American actions focused on Poland and Ukraine. The Belarusian President once more noted that he personally "holds Wagnerities", who would like to take revenge for Western support for Ukraine and enter the Polish city of Rzeszów.

Besides, Lukashenko once more highlighted that Belarus did not need war. He stressed that Belarusian Armed Forces were analysing the course of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and were actively preparing for the worst scenario. The Belarusian President brought the deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus as an example of a measure meant to secure the state and deter any hostile action against Belarus. He also informed that over half of the nuclear weapons planned for deployment had already been delivered and dispersed in the country.

Lukashenko was not the only one commenting on deploying nuclear weapons and Wagner PMC mercenaries to Belarus.

On Monday (31JUL), Alexey Polishchuk, the Head of the second department of the CIS countries at the Russian Foreign Ministry, stressed that the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus was a response to both the destabilising policies of NATO and the United States, and recent changes in the European security.

In his opinion, such a move was only meant to ensure the security of the Union State. According to Polishchuk, the hypothetical withdrawal of Russian weapons might only occur if NATO would "abandon its destructive course" and eliminate nuclear infrastructure in the continent (including the withdrawal of warheads).

Polishchuk also spoke about the joint Russo-Belarusian military training centres. He claimed they would work based on existing military units and noted the possibility of establishing similar centres for almost all service branches.

On 31JUL, the U.S. Ambassador to United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, spoke about the Wagner PMC deployment to Belarus. He stressed that the organisation did not act independently of Russian authorities and threatened neighbouring states. Thomas-Greenfield stressed that any Wagner attack on a third state would be considered an attack of Russia and would trigger an American response.

Military developments

Personal changes

Last week, several appointments and farewell ceremonies occurred in the Belarusian Armed Forces. They arise from personal changes made by Presidential Decree No. 234 from 28JUL (covered in the Belarus Security Update – 24 July – 30 July 2023).

On Tuesday (1AUG), the Commander of the Western Operational Command, Col. Vladimir Bely, introduced the new Commander of the 6th Mechanised Brigade, Col. Ruslan Glovatsky, who replaced Col. Alexander Lavrenov (appointed to the Western OC Chief of Staff position). The Deputy Minister of Defence, Maj. Gen. Andrey Zhuk led an appointment ceremony for the new Head of the Minsk Suvorov School, Col. Dmitry Kuchuk.

Two days later (3AUG), Col. Vladimir Bely officially farewelled the (former) Chief of Western OC Staff, Maj. Gen. Vladimir Kupriyanyuk. The ceremony occurred during the Western OC military council meeting and resulted from Kupriyanyuk's appointment as the Main Intelligence Directorate Head.

A day later (4AUG), at least 25 personnel were promoted to the colonel rank. The official ceremony led by the Belarusian Minister of Defence, Lt. Gen. Viktor Khrenin, also involved several other generals, including the Belarusian Minister of Defence (Lt. Gen. Viktor Khrenin), the Chief of Belarusian General Staff (Maj. Gen. Viktor Gulevich), the Deputy Minister of Defence (Maj. Gen. Andrey Zhuk), as well as Head of the Main Financial and Economic Department (Maj. Gen. Igor Mozhilovsky), and Chief of Armaments (Maj. Gen. Alexander Fedin).

Promotions included the Commander of the 56th Communications Regiment, Lt. Col. Alexey Hodor, and the Head of the Minsk Military Commandant's Office, Lt. Col. Dmitry Zhukovsky.

Khrenin's trip to Iran

Between Monday and Tuesday (31JUL-1AUG), the Belarusian Minister of Defence visited Iran and held several official meetings there.

On Monday (31JUL), Lt. Gen. Viktor Khrenin met with the Iranian Minister of Defence and Support of the Iranian Armed Forces, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Ashtiani. During the meeting, Khrenin noted that current relations between Belarus and Iran were friendly because they were built on mutual respect and shared values. Khrenin also highlighted that despite the West's sanctions, and political pressure, Iran was able to build a strong and independent state. Belarus was now in a similar position and was forced to defend its sovereignty and independence.

Both countries MoD sides signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the military sphere and approved a military cooperation plan for the current year.

Presumably, a day later (1AUG), Khrenin met with the Chief of Iranian General Staff, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri. Officially, both generals discussed the state and prospects of bilateral military cooperation linked to joint training and the use of the armed forces.

VDV day

On Wednesday (2AUG), Belarus celebrated the Day of Airborne Troops (VDV), popular in the post-soviet states. Celebrations of the holiday occurred in all three Belarusian Special Operation Forces (SOF) brigades. Despite quite unusual performances of Belarusian servicemen, it is noteworthy that the Commander of the Belarusian SOF, Maj. Gen. Vadim Denisenko participated in the celebrations of the 38th Air Assault Brigade (Brest), where he delivered a few noteworthy statements.

Initially, Denisenko spoke about the current accomplishments of his subordinates. He noted that soldiers of Belarusian Special Operation Forces reached a reasonable level (of professionalism), which, however, "is not perfect yet". Referring to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, Denisenko noted that "everything goes back to old wars" – massive use of artillery and the use of small subunits.

After that, he pointed out that Belarusian SOF always paid particular attention to actions such as platoons, companies and battalions. However, he said they would focus even on lower-level actions "of standalone squads and actions at separate axes". According to Denisenko, in the next academic year, the Belarusian SOF would introduce two separate training plans – for airmobile formations (38th Air Assault and 103rd Airborne Brigades) and Spetsnaz formations (5th Spetsnaz Brigade).

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Military exercises

Last week, the training actions primarily focused on combined arms formations.

On Tuesday (1AUG), elements of the 339th Mechanised Battalion (120th Mechanised Brigade) started combat training classes at Uruchcha Training Ground. During drills "based on modern armed conflicts", servicemen practised movement techniques and evacuation of wounded. Two days later (3AUG), servicemen continued their actions and performed combat coordination measures. After passing the psychological obstacle course, they trained as part of mechanised squads.

During the week, servicemen of at least two tank battalions performed ATGM firing from a T-72 tank. On Wednesday (2AUG), such classes involved tank crews of the 4th Tank Battalion (19th Mechanised Brigade), while tankers of the 120th Mechanised Brigade (334th or 355th Tank Battalion) undertook such drills two days later (4AUG) at the 227th Combined Arms Training Ground.

On Wednesday (2AUG), the 120th Mechanised Brigade soldiers did a live ammo firing exercise at the Domanovo Training Ground. This drill involved personnel from the anti-air battalion (2S6 Tunguska-equipped subunit) that practised firing at ground targets.

At the same time, young officers of the Western Operational Command (recent graduates) took part in an unspecified methodological gathering held at the Gozhsky Training Ground.

On Friday (4AUG), the 51st Artillery Brigade service members finished their practical artillery fire control exercise at the Osipovichi Training Ground. It is important to note that 2S5, 2A65, BM-21 and BM-27 crews actively cooperated with Wagner personnel during these drills, which involved fire missions using "joint" crews.

Regarding reserve personnel training, the 11th Mechanised Brigade hosted combat training classes for called-up reservists on Thursday (3AUG). Reservists undertook firing drills to restore their professional skills.

Prior to that, about a dozen reserve servicemen departed from Brest Oblast to unspecified reserve training camps two days earlier (1AUG).

According to the Belarusian Hajun team, unspecified elements of the Belarusian Armed Forces started unspecified combat training classes on Friday (4AUG). Notably, they are taking place near Saki and Sokolovo villages, where Belarusian leadership ordered the construction of defensive lines. The drills will last to 14AUG and involve unspecified pyrotechnic means.

Last week, three movements of Belarusian military equipment were noteworthy:

Monday (31JUL):

Four minibuses were moving from Baranovichi towards M1/R99 road;

Seven trucks with two VOLAT and UAZ vehicles (1+1) were moving Baranovichi.

Thursday (3AUG):

Two trailers with two tanks headed from the area of Gozhsky Training Ground towards Grodno.

Moreover, unofficial sources informed the presence of a military echelon (four BTR-80) spotted at Lokomotivnoe Depo Railway Station in Baranovichi on Friday (4AUG).

Russian military activity in Belarus

Last week, the Russian Armed Forces deployed in Belarus presented relatively meagre activity.

At least five Russian transport aircraft arrived in Belarus. This refers to:

An-148 (RA-61724) – Monday (31JUL) (landed in Baranovichi);

An-12 and An-26 – Thursday (3AUG) (Machulishchy and Baranovichi);

An-12 – Friday (4AUG) (Baranovichi);

An-12 – Saturday (5AUG) (Baranovichi);

On Monday, a Russian Mi-8 helicopter conducted a flight from Machulischy Air Base. According to unofficial sources, an unspecified fighter aircraft (MiG-31) could have arrived at the same base a day later.

The Belarusian Флагшток news outlet informed that Russian soldiers in the area of Zyabrovka Air Base started to wear their insignias and identification marks. According to Флагшток sources, most of them are artillerymen, presumably from Buryatia.

On Thursday, a Russian column with 15-20 vehicles (mainly trucks and fuel trucks) was moving on the R62 road between Berezino and Bobruisk. Moreover, a single Kamaz truck appeared in Mazyr.

Wagner PMC activity in Belarus

The deployment of additional Wagner forces to Belarus continued. On Tuesday (1AUG), the 14th convoy arrived in Tsel, involving about 15 trucks, mainly carrying containers, and a few buses and pick-ups.

Recent satellite imagery confirmed that Russian mercenaries also actively use Belarusian military warehouses in the former Military Town No. 28 Poplavy. It hosts 15 buildings, including ten warehouses with an area of up to 1070 square metres.

On Wednesday (2AUG), Radio Svoboda published satellite imagery of the Osipovichi Training Ground, presenting a possible construction of training fortifications on the range. The imagery presents several construction/engineering vehicles, which confirm the preparation of training dugouts and trenches. The presence of stoves might indicate that they will be actively used also in winter.

"Wagner" mercenaries erect fortifications at the "Repishcha" training ground near Osipovichi. Satellite picture (Source: Radio Svoboda)

On Thursday (3AUG), two aircraft belonging to Wagner arrived in Belarus. These flights refer to BAe 125-800B (RA-02878) and Beech C90GTi King Air jets (RA-07893), which landed at Machulischy Air Base flying from Sankt Petersburg and Moscow, respectively.

The first aircraft presumably belongs to Yevgeny Prigozhin and arrived in Belarus for the third time since 27JUL. The aircraft departed for Russia after about 33 hours in Belarus.

On Friday (4AUG), Artem Dekhtiarenko, spokesperson of the Security Service of Ukraine, said that Russia wanted to use Wagner forces to conduct a terrorist attack in Belarus. He said that they could attack the Mazyr Oil Refinery to draw Belarus into the war.

We assess the chances that such an event would occur are remote.

Rochan’s assessment

The incident with Belarusian military helicopters violating Polish airspace could have been an attempt to test Polish and NATO air defence capabilities and readiness in the Brest-Bialowieża direction.

The additional deployment of Wagner forces to Belarus combined with the creation of training facilities indicate plans for the long-term presence of Wagner units in Belarus. We expect the Osipovichi military training ground to be used regularly during day-to-day drills or command-staff exercises conducted with Russia.

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 5 months ago

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Dwarf planet Ceres: Building blocks of life delivered from space

The dwarf planet is a bizarre, cryovolcanic world. However, the organic deposits discovered on its surface so far are unlikely to originate from its interior.

Organic molecules are among the necessary inventory of life-friendly worlds. On Earth, the compounds of carbon, hydrogen and – in smaller quantities – other elements form the basic building blocks of all life. In recent years, researchers have found such molecules at great distances from the Sun: on trans-Neptunian objects, comets, and far-away asteroids. These bodies are thought to be largely unaltered remnants from the early days of the Solar System. The building blocks of life may therefore have been part of their “basic configuration” from the very beginning and possibly reached the inner Solar System only later.

For the current study, the researchers looked for previously unknown deposits of organic material on dwarf planet Ceres. With its location in the middle of the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the body is neither clearly native to the inner nor the outer Solar System. According to earlier studies, this location could even be its birthplace. Scientists are therefore interested in the origin of Ceres’s organic components. Did they originate locally in the asteroid belt? Or did they arrive later?

Searching for Organics from afar

Evidence of deposits of organic material was already found during the early stages of the Dawn mission. The Dawn spacecraft reached Ceres in March 2015 and accompanied it for about three and a half years. During this time, the scientific camera system and the spectrometer on board scanned the entire surface of the dwarf planet. Potential patches of organic material can be detected from the camera data: the brightness of the light reflected from these areas increases noticeably with increasing wavelength. The spectrometer splits the light into many more wavelengths than the camera and can therefore prove or disprove the presence of organics. Unfortunately, remote data is not sufficient to identify individual types of molecules beyond doubt. However, it is certain that the discovered deposits consist of organic compounds that have a chain-like structure. Researchers refer to such molecules as aliphatic hydrocarbons.

The authors of the current study have now used artificial intelligence to comb the entire surface of the dwarf planet for traces of aliphatic organic molecules. “Sites of such organic molecules are actually rare on Ceres, and devoid of any cryovolcanic signatures” says first author Ranjan Sarkar from the MPS, summarizing the results. The vast majority of deposits can be found along the edge or near the large Ernutet crater in the northern hemisphere of the dwarf planet. Only three are located at a greater distance from it. Two patches were not previously known. A closer look at the geological structures at the locations of the organic material allows further conclusions. “At none of the deposits do we find evidence of current or past volcanic or tectonic activity: no trenches, canyons, volcanic domes or vents. Furthermore, there are no deep impact craters nearby,” says Martin Hoffmann from MPS.

Impacts from distant neighbors

During the Dawn mission, Ceres had turned out to be an extraordinary, cryovolcanic world. Under its surface, a watery brine is hidden, which in some places has been seeping to the surface until recently. “Of course, the first assumption is that Ceres' unique cryovolcanism has transported the organic material from the interior of the body to the surface,” says Andreas Nathues from MPS, head of the camera team. “But our results show otherwise,” he adds. At the sites of cryovolcanic activity, there is no proof of organic matter. And where organic compounds have been reliably detected, there is no evidence of deep or surface activity.

The researchers therefore argue that the impact of one or more asteroids from the outer asteroid belt introduced the organic material. Computer simulations show that these bodies are among the ones that most frequently collided with Ceres. Since the not-too-distant neighbors do not pick up much speed, only little heat is generated upon impact. Organic compounds can survive these temperatures.

“Unfortunately, Dawn can't detect all types of organic compounds,” Andreas Nathues points out. It is quite likely that building blocks of life were also formed in Ceres' underground ocean and perhaps even reached the surface – or are still doing so. “However, the organic deposits that have been reliably detected with Dawn so far likely do not originate Ceres itself,” he explains. Nathues continues by saying that a future lander mission would be needed to detect organic material from the interior of Ceres.

About the mission

NASA’s Dawn mission studied two bodies in the asteroid belt up close: the protoplanet Vesta from 2011 to 2012, and the dwarf planet Ceres from 2015 to 2018. The mission’s scientific camera system, the Dawn Framing Cameras, were developed, built, and operated during the mission under the leadership of MPS. The VIR spectrometer was provided by the Italian Space Agency ASI.

IMAGE: Surface of dwarf planet Ceres. The sites of organic material are shown as or in red boxes. The vast majority of sites are found near the Ernutet crater in the northern hemisphere. Credit MPS

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #astrophysics

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mutable-manifestation · 8 months ago

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reblogging because apparently theres a tags limit and I refuse to be restrained:

The defenses only attacked jason because the others are liminal

But not quite liminal enough for the Fenton House to pick up on

He’s the only one who died and had it really *stick* thus why he’s the only halfa

Sure the others died but they were all revived fully

Death left a stain

Not a chain

Jason has one foot in the grave

The others bat’s just have some graveyard dirt smudged on their pants cuffs

I can keep going with the metaphors

lol

Anyway

Their contamination is. Like. not worse than the average person living on the opposite side of the city as the Fentons

(which is a lot compared to everyone else in the whole world, but not much in terms of “will the house shoot me”

Fenton ghost detecting devices aren’t that precise yet)

The “files” aren’t super professional because like. They’re 14.

It’s organized sure but it’s not gonna be scientific paper levels (& even they could they’d feel uncomfy making it too scientific sounding)

There’s powers missing on purpose (not thinking of thing as a power. All 3 forgot about it. Etc

So why did the JL ignore Amity you ask?

Info blackout

One does not simply ignore the Meta Protection Acts and pretend to be a gov’t agency without taking precautions

Everything out of Amity Park is sanitized as hell. (ha, and doesn’t that just fit the GIW clean-obsession)

“But Mutable!” I hear you cry “What about Undergrowth & Vortex!”

I don’t remember Undergrowth’s radius of effect but I’m saying my AU he was Amity-only and the GIW set up a blockade to intimidate witnesses.

Same deal with Pariah town-knapping the place (GIW base was JUST out of the town-knapping radius. Lucky them)

As for Vortex, the storms themselves made it impossible to track anything through normal means

(ie no cams caught Sam & Tucker’s jet taunting Vortex except some people with cells on the street. But wind killed all the audio)

So as far as the world is concerned there was a freak storm and it went away

Prob because of some unknown hero

Batman doesn’t stress bc JLD had already been halfway through a solution so he already has steps in place if there’s a repeat

(that doesn’t take care of itself)

“But Mutable!” I hear you cry “What about Tucker! Wouldn’t he notice the blackout!”

Tucker is suffering from success.

Bro really thinks with how easy the GIW is to hack there’s NO WAY nobody noticed how all the data has been scrubbed

Like there is NO WAY batman doesn’t know

And especially no way superman doesn’t know (bc he’s a reporter. Thanks Wes for actually being helpful for once)

the Giw sucks at catching ghosts but excels at covering its ass

calls from any Amity number to the JL get rerouted to GIW pretending to be the JL hotline

they got amity in a chokehold

or they did...

Ghost Chirps AU Part 5

Part 1 & 2

Part 3

Part 4

***

While “Jason” (i.e. Alfred with an empty jet that Jason will meet up with later in order to “arrive” in Amity) hops a private jet, Red Hood is busy searching the Fenton home from top to bottom.

The local police move slowly, and by the time they arrive Jack and Maddie Fenton are both tied up and disarmed in their living room under heavy guard.

They hadn’t been restrained immediately, Batman talking him into giving them a chance to implicate themselves first.

Hood let him take the lead, but he didn’t even get a chance to ask a question, being cut off at the first indication he might want to talk about their “work.” Less than 60 seconds in, and the pair had outright confessed to violating the meta protection acts - and in tedious detail.

The questioning didn’t suffer any from them being tied up.

Far from the mulish silence or crocodile-tear laden denial of most criminals, they instead doubled down, insisting that nothing they had done was illegal, then jumping to the assumption that they were “possessed” - and boy had it been a nasty surprise when the whole house came alive trying to attack them with a quick verbal command.

Well, trying to attack Hood. And only him, for some reason.

One laser also freed the Fentons, who turned out to have even more weapons built into their suits.

Somehow.

Despite them being skintight.

That had been a pain, but Red Robin was able to hack the system using one of the couples’ own devices while Hood dodged - and kept the stray fire away from the others - leaving everyone else to recapture the pair. A blessedly simple task once they found out the lasers would splash harmlessly off of their armor (save for a gross film of green goop left wherever they grazed).

They take turns knocking each unconscious to change them in order to properly disarm them - Batman and Nightwing taking Jack first, followed by Orphan and Spoiler dealing with Maddie.

The only non-weapon laden clothing they own turns out to be pajamas.

This is around when the police show up, looking hesitant.

They, too, cite the “Anti-Ecto Acts.”

Oracle had debriefed them on the supposed Acts and “Ghost Investigation Ward” on their short drive over. Both were utterly bogus - the Acts had never even been proposed, let alone been approved as law, and the so-called “GIW” had no ties to the government.

The Fentons had been furious and denied the information intensely when told, but the cops mostly just looked relieved.

Apparently there’d been a lot of property damage by the GIW and Fentons both that had supposedly been dismissed under the Acts as “necessary in the pursuit of ecto-scum.”

For the Fentons, half of this damage was in the form of broken fire hydrants, cracked sidewalks, and totaled cars - they’d never been good drivers, before, the cops disclosed, but they’d become even more negligent since the ghosts began appearing, to the point they had to have a news segment warning when they would be on the road.

The lack of fatalities thus far had been nothing short of a miracle, they claimed.

“Of course there haven’t been any fatalities!” Mrs Fenton defends. “Our work is to protect people from those things, not make more! Officers, listen to reason-” Hood snorts disdainfully -”The Red Hood is clearly a ghost! All our systems targeted him the moment they came online - and they only target ecto-entities. He’s clearly taken these heroes under his sway - why else would they be working with a murderer!? You have to do something before he starts up his killing here in Amity!”

The officers look at him a bit hesitantly, but Batman is unmoved and gives the cover story Hood had outlined back in the alley.

Any concerns the locals have are quickly assuaged.

But for the whole explanation, Jason is trying not to shake even as he falls apart in place.

Their little website called them ghost-hunters, making it pretty clear what “ecto-entities” meant.

Their system supposedly only targets ecto-entities.

The system had only targeted him.

The system only targets ghosts.

Jason had died.

A lot of his family members had died, too, granted.

But Jason was the only one who seemed to come back wrong - anger sticking in his throat and never quite fading, an inclination towards violence even when he wasn’t angry well beyond what he’d ever felt before, and a sea of other emotions (that he would never acknowledge aloud) and triggers for those emotions that he always struggled to make heads or tails of.

He doesn’t have the meta gene. He knows that. He knew that.

He just assumed that the test missed it, because he knows he doesn’t know magic - the All Blades being the only exception - and he couldn’t think of another explanation at the time.

But he came back wrong.

And as he stands there, he wonders if he came back at all, mind on Solomon Grundy.

Wonders if he isn’t just some ghost, wandering around possessing his own corpse.

He jolts, as the thought strikes him: what about Danny?

If he’s a ghost and chirping is a ghost thing then what about his KID!?

Absently, he notes that Bruce has started interrogating the cops on what they meant by “ghost attacks.”

He ignores the discussion, hustling for the door in the kitchen down to the lab.

He slams and locks the door behind him - in Red Robin’s face - as he descends, making a b-line for the computer he’d seen when the Fentons had dragged them all down there to start bragging about their crimes.

The only thing Oracle could get out of the whole building was things that were openly available online; direct connections were impossible.

Opening up the screen, he gets to cracking.

Going for the surface level files first, it turns out he doesn’t even need so much as a password to find what he wants.

One of the video game sub-files has an unrelated file in it: ghost notes.

There are plenty of other notes, of course, but he’d only been skimming to start, looking for anything hidden.

The Fenton parents were too open to bother, of course, with plenty of more obvious files strewn haphazardly across the home screen, but it’s always better to check. That there is a hidden file means it was likely made by either Danny or Jazz.

And it’s a treasure trove.

Sub-files for rogues, allies, conditional allies, and “halfas” were what greeted him.

The last being the only term he didn’t recognize, he clicked.

6 files: Clones, Danny, Dani, Dan, Vlad, and Red Hood.

He clicks his own file.

What greets him is a picture of himself 4 days ago, looking just to the left of the lens in an alley that he distinctly remembers searching for the kid in.

Just below is text.

~~~

??? Name: Red Hood

Species: probably a halfa

Status: Nnnneutral? I think? I know, I know, heads in bags. But Valerie tries to kill me all the time! And we’re allies sometimes! Hood- uh- looked for me? Okay I guess I can’t really judge this yet but please read the first met section before you judge please you guys?

First met: Aug 17, 2005, was in Gotham to bother Batman, stopped to think a bit on some fire escape - decide on the first prank yknow - but then my ghost sense went off. It felt like a halfa so I thought “oh cool, must be Dani” so I chirped, but then Red Hood - who was chasing some guy down an alley at the time - froze and looked around. I dropped visibility and chirped again and yeah, he definitely heard it. Humans can’t so he’s definitely a halfa - no glow so he can’t be a full ghost and it felt nothing like an overshadowing.

Ended up following Hood around the rest of week - forgot to prank Batman, damn - and playing hide-and-seek with the chirps. It was really funny. But he very obviously doesn’t know he’s a halfa. But the guy is, like, scary levels of smart, so I’m sure he’ll figure it out on his own now that the chirp thing made it clear that something is up. Hopefully.

I figure I can go back in winter break - he should have it figured out and let his emotions process enough by then to at least hear me out when I explain the AEA and GIW and everything, then it won’t matter so much if he can, like, track me by voice or something if I talk since we’ll have MAD by then.

Despite his reputation, the people living in his haunt seem to love the guy. I can see why. On top of the whole smart he’s actually really nice to people he’s not shooting in the knees (which only even happened one time in the week I was there? It was actually pretty relaxing - most quiet week I’ve had since the portal opened THANK YOU TUCKER for hacking the portal hatch to be inoperable for a week).

Where was I? Oh yeah, he’s actually surprisingly nice to people? So like, I think he’ll probably hear me out if I go back and be polite? I hope. Hate to leave the guy in the dark and him end up on the GIWs dissection table for “lots and lots of painful experiments.”

Not that those guys could even catch the Box Ghost. But uh, Hood doesn’t seem to have powers either? Or if he does he doesn’t know about them I don’t think - he only used the chirp the whole time I was their - not even to cheat with moving around.

Seriously. That guy's acrobatics could make Freakshow’s contortionist green - er, red??? - with envy. Actually wait, aren’t contortionists and acrobats different things?

SAM NOTE: help^?

Powers:

~~~

Jason leans back, breathing deeply.

“Not a full ghost,” “not 'overshadowed'” - a term that sounds likke some kind of cousin to possesision - “definitely a halfa,” “humans can’t hear chirps.”

Halfa.

Half.

Ghost.

Half Ghost.

It should sound absurd - you can’t be half alive and half dead.

But Jason has seen the Lazarus pits, has met Solomon Grundy, has met aliens and bullshit magic and can pull magical swords out of his own damn chest.

Half alive. Half dead.

Hopefully not just a fancy way to say possessing his own corpse.

He doesn’t have time to deal with every file - he’ll “confiscate” one of their USBs with a copy of everything for himself before leaving the rest to Batman & co, of course, minus the halfa files (a small part of him wants to shove his condition in Bruce’s face and demand he kill the clown again even though he knows it’s a futile hope, but the rest - the same part that snapped and denied and refused to say he was a meta less that a day ago now - cannot stomach the thought of even more rejection. Of a Bruce that believes he’s a monster. Of a Bruce that mourns him even while he’s right there. Or at least, more than he already does.) - but while the files copy he take the time to look at Danny’s.

The image has two people, Danny Fenton on one side and a version of the kid in a black hazmat suit with white hair, tanned skin, and painfully familiar green eyes. And floating.

~~~

Human Name: Danny Fenton

Ghost Name: Danny Phantom

Species: Halfa (half-human, half ghost)

~~~

It’s the section after that that makes Jason’s breath catch in his throat.

~~~

Death: The Portal Accident

So like, there was no audio (thank GOD I do not want to hear myself screaming) so. Details: When the portal didn’t work when they plugged it in mom and dad left for fudge, Jazz went to try and talk them into a more realistic career choice than ghosts. Sam and Tucker came over and Sam dared me to climb in and check it out - it was broken anyway so no harm. Except it wasn’t broken, just that my parents put the on button inside. Which I caught myself on when I tripped on a wire.

Anyway, electrocution!

(T - Danny for the love of god be more serious, the cheerful tone is creepy)

(D - Hey! I’m the one who died! Shouldn’t I at least get to write my own epitaph)

(S - …Danny this is not an epitaph. You don’t even HAVE a grave)

(D - wow way to rub it in Sam)

(T - yeah Sam)

(S - ugh! Whatever, just stop with the chatting in official files)

(T - “official”)

(S - Tucker.)

(T - shutting up now)

Electrocution! I got zapped to death, but the ectoplasm from the portal was also opening up on top of me and a lot got bonded to me I guess (S - probably because of the electricity with how you ended up with some of Vortex' powers for a little while) at the same time said electricity was reviving me? - probably getting my heart beating again or something, I was a little busy screaming to pay attention (T - yeah okay we're going to Nasty Burger after this. And playing Doomed) - not that it would’ve mattered without the ghostification preventing me from melting me all the way to death.

Status: Me!

Powers:

Chirps! (ghost echolocation of some kind! humans can't hear em - halfas can, of course, in either form)

Form Change (really Sam? This barely counts)

Human form

Ghost form (no need to breathe)

Flight (last clock speed 210mph) (T - and climbing. Dang dude)

Invisibility (S - don’t forget shareable.) (Shareable. sigh)

Intangibility (Shareable)

Ecto Rays (eyes & hands) (T - and butt) (D - dude! I’m deleting that. Tucker why can't I delete it. TUCKER) (T - bow down in awe of my ksill) (S - ksill) (D - ksill) (T - yeah okay it’s permanent now) (D - aw man!)

Ghost Sense (S - why do we never test your range?) (D - no need? They always make themselves obvious or are being sneaky specifically to annoy me so *shrug*) (S - I still think we should test it)

Power Absorption (that time with Vortex’s weather powers)

Cryokinesis (Wayyyyy to much ice. NOT testing max output on that) (T - yeah frozen city was enough, let’s not cause an ice age. Tech needs some cool but too much is still bad and I just upgraded Patricia)

Ghostly Wail (cone of destruction, very exhausting - always at max output. Not to be used)

GHOST FORM ONLY (but really just never)

Cartoon Body (D - what???) (S - Freakshow literally turned you into a puddle and you just turned back and were fine. I don’t know what else to call that) (D - okay fair. but:)

GHOST FORM ONLY

Physical Enhancement (better strength, speed, stamina, durability, reflexes, balance, etc much better than human) (T - why does this look like dnd knockoff stats haha)

GHOST FORM ONLY (S - obviously mr last place in PE)

Resistances (pretty solid on the overshadowing, avoided being taken in by Ember until targeted, didn’t get turned to stone during the Medusa thing) (S - which was pure luck! Be careful!)

Ecto Electricity (ghost stinger, but I really don’t think this counts Sam. I mean I just. Make my ecto zappy. But it’s still just ecto) (S - so is your ICE and you don’t just call that "just cold ecto") (D - fine, but it feels overly specific) (S - maybe writing it all down will make you stop. Forgetting. POWERS!) (D - come on Sam that was a lucky hit! I was distracted! And it turned out fine!) (S - Fenton…) (D - oop okay doing fire now)

Ecto Fire (made Dash’s shoes melty that one time by make the ecto hot) (T - really needs more testing)

Tech possession (chasing Technus into computers, not very tested)

Ghost form only, i guess?

Overshadowing (control people, copy their voice, invade dreams - the control one erases the person’s memory so they don’t know they were overshadowed just lost time. I hate Walker. SO much) (T - rip Danny’s reputation, you’ll be missed)

Probably ghost form only

Duplication (T - That’s optimistic) (D - I’M WORKING ON IT OKAY!?) (S - pretty sure it just falls under cartoon body until you can actually separate) (D - :( betrayal)

Probably ghost form only

More? (D - ugh I hope not) (T - hey don’t say that, maybe you’ll get a power to make the JL give a crap about Amity) (D - honestly I’m getting pretty close to letting Boxy loose in Gotham) (S - Danny, don’t stoop to their level!) (D - it's only box ghost!) (T - I mean he has a point)

~~~

Jason changes his mind, seeing the commentary, and deletes the entire hidden file from the computer as soon as his copy is made. He can go over everything and bring any important info to Bruce separately, the bat’s can just chew on the parents’ files for now.

Once the original files are thoroughly and irretrievably removed he pockets his shiny new USB, makes a second one with all the official files, and heads back up and out - carelessly brushing past a thoroughly irate Red Robin with a pair of firemen and broken jaws of life. And not a scratch on the door; impressive - just in time to get Oracle’s text that he’s got 2 hours and 16 minutes to be at the location on his HUD so he can “arrive” to Amity.

And a fresh set of civilian clothes will be waiting in the plane, Alfred as reliable as ever.

“Files,” he says, tossing the safe USB to Batman and interrupting his interrogation of the police officer.

He catches it effortlessly of course, but the officer stops paying attention to him to jolt at Hood’s reappearance - even outside of Gotham his reputation is fierce.

“I sent a copy to myself. I’ll review them and give you an overview, but other than that consider this the end of my involvement in this little shitshow,” he says, continuing smoothly to the door. “I’m heading back to Gotham.”

Now, he has a little over two hours before Jason Todd needs to arrive in Amity Park. He only needs to lay hands on a laptop that he can isolate from Babs’ influence and he should be able to review the Halfa files in full before he "lands" - after he figures out just why the kid has a grudge against the JL.

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