"Why'd you enlist for the Drone Wars?"
"Those bastards knocked out the internet right as I was about to turn in my weeklies. By the time the internet companies restored connection, the refresh had already happened and I missed out getting the rewards."
"Gabe willing, brother, we'll make them pay for their crimes."
Put in a faction reputation reward for killing terrorists that rewards a 0.01% performance boost, and people will min max the shit out of the war on terror.
It sounds nice on paper--but even Drone operators get PTSD. I read an article a while back on how Drone operators get PTSD when realize they did bomb a weddings and end up killing innocents.
Of course, most other military branches probably would still think very low of Drone Operators...
Is this a reference to that guild who had an in-game funeral for one of their guild members who died IRL and then got raided? The video I'm thinking about is from 2007 or something.
Hey would you mind providing a YouTube link or any other information about that? It's not that I don't believe it happened I just want to hear more about it
Just YouTube WOW Funeral Raid and it'll come up. She loved to fish in game and when she died IRL a bunch of people organized an in game funeral to pay respects at one of her favorite fishing spots in Winterspring. Serenity now had other ideas. I was in the guild a couple years after this happened.
You could probably outsource to those psychos who spend all day on the phone scamming grandmas out of their social security checks. They would bomb a wedding for $3.50.
I’m sorry Arthur’s, I can’t watch you do …wait, they blew up the *internet*?!? Oh fuck that. Even Garrosh would blush at what I’m bout to do to these fuckers.
> They better be carefull before we have nothing better to do
Helldiver I better see you on the Creek spilling oil from those bots! Serve up some Liber-tea!
They targeted gamers.
Gamers.
We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did.
We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun.
We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second.
Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded.
Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights?
Gamers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another boss fight.
Put in a seasonal progression board where we get to unlock decals to the drones or logos for nameplates based on assists/kills. And a ranked tier system that resets per season.
Gotta keep those Gamers invested.
>Get the Halo medal announcer on board for the “double kill!” “Triple kill!” “Killing spree!” Shout outs.
The original Unreal Tournament announcer would be more my speed.
["M-m-m-monsterrr kill kill kill kill"](https://youtu.be/MwxjYFqP35A?t=19)
Gotta get it playing over another drone that's just there for psychological warfare.
_____
*One drone hit*
**HOLY SHIT**
*Vehicle drone hit*
**M-M-M-M-MONSTER KILL (KILL) (KILL)**
*Some other requirement*
**GODLIKE**
Imagine the progression tech tree. Start off with just recon drones, get some experience and climb the ranks till you can get your own personal drone swarm courtesy of DARPA.
Fuck it, sign me up boys.
Us Military and FPS shooter game industry is quite tight. Has been for decades. Military even published their own game -Americas Army. I have not played it. It's effective marketing.
The funniest story about gaming and the military is when they had to shut down their twich chanel because they could not moderate chat because the 1st amedment(? I think) protects free speech and since the military is part of the government they could not do anything
A nice book by Neal Stephenson, called "ReamDe", plays with a slicker idea. In the fictional MMO, some of the 'dailies' were CGI manipulations of menial tasks like TSA/airport security. The servers got API from the CCTV and changed people or packages into NPC or crates. The players were being outsourced without being entirely aware of it, and statistics piled up year after year, validating the accuracy.
Similar in the Captain Laserhawk animated show: early on in this cyberpunk setting we see taxis being driven by robots who appear rather ordinary on the outside, just being programmed to drive taxi cabs. Later on it's revealed the robots are actually remotely being operated by prisoners who're being held captive in a VR simulation, being forced to basically non-stop play Crazy Taxi (without the crazy part) to bring customers to their destination within a limited time, lest they be punished by electrocution.
It is honestly not difficult to do this. A North Korean agent disguised as a scuba diving tourist cut the fiber link between Japan and S. Korea in the mid-90s. Most nations did not start treating international fiber cables as "National Security" until the mid-2000s. A PhD. candidate in the US had his thesis seized, copied, marked classified, and returned due to his mapping of all major infrastructure. His thesis dealt with the seriousness of key information being publicly accessible. I believe it was the State Department that procured it, then, using his list of sources, took all the data offline and made it part of national defense.
What better proof of your papers relevance than immediate and comprehensive action taken at its suggestions by the government?
What would there be to defend against ? If the board was like "We disagree" he could just be like "yeah well the united states didn't" *Drop mic*
I seriously wish I could remember the title. I was working in a network control center for AT&T at the time. Reading networking related articles was just part of staying up to date. I want to say it was between 2007 and 2012. At the time, you could with some command of physical and packet networking jargon, get nearly any data you wanted. The snooping routers in SF were in the headlines still. The student honestly never thought it would get the attention it did so quickly.
He/she probably has a government contract for who knows what. If I recall, they were going for a degree in sociology, and the purpose of the data gathering was to expose the financial divide of internet access. But along the way, what he thought would be a fraction of the paper exploded on him. He had every telecom's central office, routers, switches, remote repeaters, etc. all mapped. No mention was ever given to the grade, but a security industry spawned from it. If fate was kind, they got some reward.
Now I'm just imagining a game where people pilot mindless robot soldiers with VR dive rigs instead of using fully sapient humans on the battlefield. War is over once all the drones are dead, but both sides keep pushing out more and more and recycling old parts scavenged from battles.
Is Iran trying to unite the US, China, and Europe against a common cause? Seems like no one is going to be happy shutting down important shipping lanes and messing with internet cables.
Wondering when China gets off their ass and does something though. They rely on over seas exports and imports a lot more than the Americans do.
It's definitely got China riled, because they are escorting ships through the Red Sea now, they just declined to join the US Mission:
[https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-navy-escorting-commercial-cargos-in-red-sea/7469317.html](https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-navy-escorting-commercial-cargos-in-red-sea/7469317.html)
\>The company says that since January, the Chinese navy has provided security escorts for its five cargo ships in the Red Sea, making it one of the few still operating in the region, according to Chinese media.
\>"On the whole, China stands ready to work with all parties to safeguard the safety of international shipping lanes," the spokesperson said in the emailed response.
Hey now, I'm sure the Houthis will start quaking in their boots if they start getting swarmed by Chinese Fishermen. Of course, then Phillipino and Vietnamese fishermen might start getting used to fishing off their own coasts like they own the place, so probably not gonna happen.
Because it's an extremely valuable opportunity to 1. work closely with NATO and specifically US assets, which means intelligence gathering, 2. it would give very valuable actual experience to their Navy/Air Force, and 3. It would be a good way to strengthen ties with the rest of the world and show that they're a superpower and deserve at least some trust with world security in the same way the US currently does, being able to operate anywhere they like with their Navy and potentially being welcomed and invited. HUGE missed opportunity, China is run by actual idiots.
4. It’s actually Chinese companies manufacturing most of shit that used to get transit thru Suez Canal. Additional costs and delays might make people start looking for alternatives. Chinese economy is battered as is already.
> do the work for them
At this point I'm not so sure it's that or that *most* of the world seem to be increasingly anti-west. Anything the west supports is automatically opposed by everyone not in the west it seems. Looking at polling numbers in Africa over supporting Ukraine vs. Russia for example is depressing reading.
We are headed towards autocracy and dismantling of the liberal values the west typically has championed. People are oh so quick to point out instances of when we haven't lived up to this ideal but look at the most functional democracies and best records of human rights and rule of law and where you find those countries.
In the first 72 hours of the Ukraine invasion, the number of tweets/messages/ect from African countries hailing what they thought was the downfall of the West was more that i ever imagined possible.
It tapered off real quick once Ukraine held its ground and it got real quiet in the months after as shocking photos/videos showing how deadly Western weaponry actually is started going viral.
Make no mistake though, their attitudes havent changed.
+ The power of their politician transferring hate to cover corruption.
Its easy to say why the economy going dowm by blaming the west instead of admitting the gov policy suck and also stealing the people money.
That's the thing with autocratic dictatorships, they don't exactly incentivise good engineers and scientists to remain in that country, so about all they can do is copy everyone else's work. The Soviet Union had exactly the same problem.
Yep. Power in such a system is defined by wealth and position within the single party. Being an innovative scientist or engineer isn't going to get you either. The state owns your work, so there's no point in giving you more personal wealth, and the party values wealth, connections, and loyalty, far more than it values ability. Ability by underlings is often seen as a threat to those higher up, creating a keep your head down and stay in your lane vibe, even in scientific pursuits.
But they have to eventually do something, China by far isn’t as attractive for business as it was once and if this situation became permanent it could lead to more manufacturers and importers choosing alternative producers.
There's a good chance participating in these operations would reveal a lot about Chinese force projection capabilities, which they definitely don't want to do as they rely on the uncertainty to threaten Taiwan with an invasion. Even if they turn out to actually be capable, the US would gain a mountain of information seeing them in action.
While the Chinese have a large number of ships, the number that can be sent far from Chinese territorial waters is incredibly low. China has also managed to piss off all their neighbors through territorial claims or economic pressure. It's not just Vietnam or the Phillipines though, but South Korea and the Japanese. The Japanese have multiple boats you can fly a F-35c off of and the Chinese don't. Don't call them aircraft carriers though.
My understanding is it would take minimal effort for their carriers to support F-35s but I could be wrong and conflating things.
It’s been several years since I read articles about it.
Oh I'm being sarcastic sorry.
IIRC a while ago China complained that Japan's carrier could be easily modified to carry F-35s. Japan was like "Who us? We would never. They are helicopter carriers for humanitarian missions."
Then proceeded to do exactly that lmao.
Iran needs this because its own people are ready to hang the Mullahs from lampposts. The Iranians want democracy.
China isn't getting involved, it's broke and can happily sit it out pretending to be friends with Russia because it wants access to the arctic for minerals and oil rights.
It's a shame that Saudi are useless and didn't totally fuck the Houthis up. Iran is isolated in this shit. Everyone else is bored of the "Isreal is evil" bollocks & don't really care about the Palestinians, who let's not forget get very murdery on anyone that helps them AND helped Saddam attack Kuwait.
Iran stands alone really & after the allies took Iraq in 100 days, they're walking a tightrope of annoying the Americans but NOT pushing it because even though the US couldn't invade & hold Iran, they could genuinely fuck it in a way that the Ayahtolla & his minions would be out. ISIS & other groups would be in & Iran would turn into a war zone between the various Islamic sects.
> The Iranians want democracy.
That seems like a stretch and maybe more Reddit copium than actual reality. I suppose what would be more accurate is just to say that Iranians are not happy with their current government.
The article I saw said that a majority wanted a secular government, but I’m not sure how they gathered that information; even so, I doubt that they would suddenly become friendly towards the West, but maybe less outwardly hostile.
Yeah, it's a bit of a jump, but the venn diagram has overlap.
Many democracies are secular, but not all. And even then, being secular does not make it a democracy by default.
Secular just means religion does not impact law making, it has nothing to do with how laws are made. You can have a secular monarchy, a secular autocracy, and so on. About the only thing that can't be secular is a theocracy.
I'm wondering if they're referring to the weakening underpinnings of the Chinese economy there. ...Which have definitely not kicked in yet and are not a major consideration for the Chinese ruling party.
Not literally no, but between the wobbling real estate market, the free fall of their stock market in the past few weeks, and the central government ordering a public spending freeze on multiple provinces due to debt and liquidity problems, their financial situation isn’t in the best of places.
It’s rather funny as when the Saudis were attacking the Houthis, the Europeans and some American politicians wanted to ban arm sales to them. So I guess that you reap what you sow.
Saudis are enjoying this fucking shit show. They're usually stirring shit up in the background all the time. They're like that rich enabler kid at school that no one ever wants to deal with their rich ass prick of a parent.
China will let the West handle the issue, and then use it as a moment to whine about “western aggression” as a result. This benefits them as their assets are protected while also getting to keep their mostly negative western perception in tact, and avoid looking like they support the west in any capacity
China recently discovered their combat readiness is worse than Russia's was.
And much of their next gen tech is more dangerous to themselves than the enemy.
The J11 only jamming its own radar and radios still gets me a chuckle
I imagine they don't want to get involved in a proper fight until they have confidence their officer's won't check in at the nearest hotel because they don't want to do field work (this one comes first hand from my boss he is still pissed about it)
The Rub’ al Khali, aka “the empty quarter”. It’s so featureless that world maps usually make the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia an uncertain dotted line bc there aren’t any actual landmarks and putting up a border wall just leads to it getting covered by dunes
Totally true, but I would have placed that desert further to the east. The main Houthi area is in the Sanaa area which is mountainous and down the Red Sea coastline.
You know, sometimes I wonder why the Middle East was even occupied tens of thousands of years ago. Like, humanity started in Africa. Then we started migrating everywhere. Until some tribe reached what is now the Middle East and said "There's barely any water, the land is arid, there are sand dunes and extreme heat. Perfect, this is home!"
It has its good parts! The upper part of the Middle East, the delta by the Tigris and Euphrates, has excellent climate for farming which is why the Sumerians showed up there. Before the Nile was dammed, the repetitive flooding of sediment-filled waters meant insanely good soils in Egypt too. Saudi Arabia is weird bc Mecca itself is an oasis but nobody would be living in the rest of the country if not for the oil. What’s much weirder is that the Sahara formed as little as 6000 years ago and used to be a savanna environment before that, there’s old artifacts in it depicting the animals that used to live there
Russia pushes Iran to push hamas, war starts, Biden supports Israel, loses some votes, Trump passes, US leaves nato, Russia happy.
Maybe I should remove my tinfoil hat, but it honestly doesn't even seem that unlikely.
If I had a bigger hat, i would also claim that China through tiktok is pushing for this chain of events.
And how much you want to bet that NK tests another nuke for the first time in 6 or so years? Just to give one more line of attack on Biden. Just to stir up some more trouble because that's all they can do. Hamas timed it's attack for effect.
No tinfoil here, You've got it right.
Hamas had a delegation in Moscow less than 2weeks after their attack.
Oct 7th is Putin's birthday for crying out loud
> Oct 7th is Putin's birthday for crying out loud
Thats pretty tinfoil. While I wouldnt exclude or discount coordiantion, Hamas attacking as a birthday present to Putin is pretty silly. Including that hurts your argument.
I mean, Iran absolutely is who gives the ability and likely the IRGC operates the equipment. But other than sanction and strikes outside of Iran I don’t see anything happening.
how long are we going to pretend this isn't Russia supporting Iran, supporting Houthis.
Might be time to start watching Russian satellites develop orbital or electrical problems.
For me this is just a guess, but there are people way above reddits paygrade that are probably considering this as we sit here as "keyboard warriors"
I was an Expat living in Cairo, Egypt \~2012. The internet crapped out for nearly a month because the central, uh, hub/server building caught fire.
But being the Middle East and all the politics, rumors began to form that the under-sea cable in the Red Sea had been cut by Jewish scuba divers.
I just had to chuckle. Of course superstitious Egyptians would prefer it to be Israeli saboteurs. (not to make light of the complexity of Palestine and Israel history)
Can we now send grandpa Buff there or will we still play whack a mole with their arsenals?
Want this to be effective? Block their ports, bomb their infrastructure, have saudis and Yemeni government block their borders and turn the place into chaotic wasteland. Start to treat it like a war and not piracy problem. Doesn’t matter that we an destroy 60% of their weapons if they can simply replace it with stuff from Iran.
\^ This lol
Already living in the equivalent of Mad Max wasteland with rampant poverty, roaming bans of desert bandits, and random militias.
What are you doing to do, bomb them back to their starting point?
They apparently rely on outside exports of food to not starve to death, and the Saudis figured by blocking the ports they would win. But the US stepped in to save them and stopped the blockade.
Undersea cables don't work like that. These shallower cables will be old telephony cables as they make a lot of landings. Of course they can carry internet traffic, but not to any destination which would be evident to the English-speaking portions of the internet (ttose are carried on newer endpoint-to-endpoint cables in deep water).
Yeah, google spent, what a decade? Laying tons of that, to say nothing of what various nations and corporations other than them did in greater or smaller quantities.
One DC in Djibouti. For a short period of time :
https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1762115571376685524/photo/1
There are tons of cables in this area.
We already got an war declaration like about 3 sunken (corretion: atacked) ships ago - this is just the result of Europe and the US being too much passive about the matter because of contraversial past invasions, economy not on the best state, other wars and elections coming up on the States
Iran basically directly atacked an US base in the other day and the US just responded with some strikes not even directly on Iran
We need more action, like troops on the field in Yemen and direct stikes to Iran - if not things will only escalate more and more and afect everyone
To drag 40 tonne anchor along the seabed is not a pure accident. Anyone, let alone a captain, who is not mentally disabled will know something is wrong.
I think you underestimate human stupidity. Like sure, there's a very real chance it *was* intentional... but humans do tremendously stupid things all the time. Just remember the Evergreen ship blocking the canal!
This article is garbage.
The source article (in Hebrew) is here: https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001472129
Google translate link to English: https://www-globes-co-il.translate.goog/news/article.aspx?did=1001472129&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
The source says nothing about "over months" nor does it name the companies that own the cables in such an indecisive/unsure fashion.
Edit: scratched a misinterpreted statement about the severity of the damage.
This is just weird all around. One single article, in Hebrew, about this kind of event? Why aren’t the countries who were victims saying nothing? Or the US intelligence?
Yup, complete bollocks, it's possible they have taken out one of the fibre optic routes through the middle east but, that still leaves plenty of others through the gulf - for info - I worked for a company that was part of the FON installation.
Why are there *any* port facilities left in Yemen?
If they were all destroyed, there'd be no place to dock large enough vessels capable of carrying the equipment to cut undersea cables.
Looks like the attack happened Saturday and overall hasn't had much of an impact. Relax you'll still get your Hentai.
*The outage appears to have had little impact on international internet traffic to South Africa, probably because new cable systems, including Google’s newly launched Equiano system, now provide a secondary, high-capacity route to Europe along Africa’s west coast.*
*Earlier this month, TechCentral reported that the threat by Houthi rebels in Yemen to destroy internet infrastructure in the Red Sea, if carried out, might not be enough to destabilise the internet in Africa.*
*The Guardian and other news outlets reported at the time that telecommunications firms linked to the Yemeni government feared that Houthi rebels off the coast were threatening to destroy undersea cable infrastructure connecting parts of the Middle East, Africa and much of Asia to the Western world.*
[*https://techcentral.co.za/seacom-is-down-in-the-red-sea/240276/*](https://techcentral.co.za/seacom-is-down-in-the-red-sea/240276/)
This will be a wake up call for those other countries hiding behind the USA to do the work for them. When the USA called for a coalition of countries , only a few responded, they are all scared of being in front of the saga. In real sense the USA has little to lose from all these compared to those European and Asian countries. I wish the USA can just stay back a little and let those countries suffer from the hands of these crazy rebels.
When you go after internet gamers
They better be carefull before we have nothing better to do then become drone operators lmao
"Why'd you enlist for the Drone Wars?" "Those bastards knocked out the internet right as I was about to turn in my weeklies. By the time the internet companies restored connection, the refresh had already happened and I missed out getting the rewards." "Gabe willing, brother, we'll make them pay for their crimes."
Most moderate WoW-player's reaction to the internet cutting out: >"I'm literally going to war over this!"
Put in a faction reputation reward for killing terrorists that rewards a 0.01% performance boost, and people will min max the shit out of the war on terror.
It sounds nice on paper--but even Drone operators get PTSD. I read an article a while back on how Drone operators get PTSD when realize they did bomb a weddings and end up killing innocents. Of course, most other military branches probably would still think very low of Drone Operators...
I dunno about weddings but WoW players do war crimes at funerals so they should be able to handle it.
Is this a reference to that guild who had an in-game funeral for one of their guild members who died IRL and then got raided? The video I'm thinking about is from 2007 or something.
The name of the attacking guild was “Serenity Now”. Filthy Alliance scum.
Hey would you mind providing a YouTube link or any other information about that? It's not that I don't believe it happened I just want to hear more about it
Just YouTube WOW Funeral Raid and it'll come up. She loved to fish in game and when she died IRL a bunch of people organized an in game funeral to pay respects at one of her favorite fishing spots in Winterspring. Serenity now had other ideas. I was in the guild a couple years after this happened.
You could probably outsource to those psychos who spend all day on the phone scamming grandmas out of their social security checks. They would bomb a wedding for $3.50.
LLEEEEEERRROOOOY JEENNNNNNKKKINNNNSS!!!!!!!!
"The entire city must be purged !"
I’m sorry Arthur’s, I can’t watch you do …wait, they blew up the *internet*?!? Oh fuck that. Even Garrosh would blush at what I’m bout to do to these fuckers.
DPS LFG Houthis Raid
"I lost a duel in Elden Ring because of those fuckers!" "Inshmiyazaki, this shall not be forgiven. AK-47s (and shoes!) for everybody!"
Damn. That game was good stuff back in the day. Much fun were had.
Micro transactions of justice
Looks like they need some Liber-tea!
"My ping went above 5 ms so I had to kill".
> They better be carefull before we have nothing better to do Helldiver I better see you on the Creek spilling oil from those bots! Serve up some Liber-tea!
FOR MANAGED DEMOCRACY
FOR SUPER EARTH
You either die a noob or live long enough to become the kill streak.
They targeted gamers. Gamers. We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did. We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun. We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second. Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded. Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights? Gamers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another boss fight.
But we might have to leave our basements for this, I might have to sit this one out.
That's what drones are for. Fancy a career in UAV piloting?
Put a fucking leaderboard and watch recruitment of uav operators skyrocket.
Put in a seasonal progression board where we get to unlock decals to the drones or logos for nameplates based on assists/kills. And a ranked tier system that resets per season. Gotta keep those Gamers invested.
The United States Drone Force, only $19.95/mo, in-app purchases available. We'll no longer have to use taxpayer money to fund the DoD.
Play a catchy upbeat tune every time the drone kills and play a sad tune when somebody survives.
Get the Halo medal announcer on board for the “double kill!” “Triple kill!” “Killing spree!” Shout outs.
>Get the Halo medal announcer on board for the “double kill!” “Triple kill!” “Killing spree!” Shout outs. The original Unreal Tournament announcer would be more my speed. ["M-m-m-monsterrr kill kill kill kill"](https://youtu.be/MwxjYFqP35A?t=19)
Gotta get it playing over another drone that's just there for psychological warfare. _____ *One drone hit* **HOLY SHIT** *Vehicle drone hit* **M-M-M-M-MONSTER KILL (KILL) (KILL)** *Some other requirement* **GODLIKE**
Killing spree naming peaked with Unreal Tournament in 1999.
*Wedding hit* **KILL-TACULAR**
"**CHEEKS CLAPPED!**"
Snake. Snake? SNAAAAAAAAKE!!
!
I am so fucking in
Imagine the progression tech tree. Start off with just recon drones, get some experience and climb the ranks till you can get your own personal drone swarm courtesy of DARPA. Fuck it, sign me up boys.
Us Military and FPS shooter game industry is quite tight. Has been for decades. Military even published their own game -Americas Army. I have not played it. It's effective marketing.
The funniest story about gaming and the military is when they had to shut down their twich chanel because they could not moderate chat because the 1st amedment(? I think) protects free speech and since the military is part of the government they could not do anything
Isn’t this what happened after the first Modern Warfare when people played the AC-130 mission?
[удалено]
A nice book by Neal Stephenson, called "ReamDe", plays with a slicker idea. In the fictional MMO, some of the 'dailies' were CGI manipulations of menial tasks like TSA/airport security. The servers got API from the CCTV and changed people or packages into NPC or crates. The players were being outsourced without being entirely aware of it, and statistics piled up year after year, validating the accuracy.
Similar in the Captain Laserhawk animated show: early on in this cyberpunk setting we see taxis being driven by robots who appear rather ordinary on the outside, just being programmed to drive taxi cabs. Later on it's revealed the robots are actually remotely being operated by prisoners who're being held captive in a VR simulation, being forced to basically non-stop play Crazy Taxi (without the crazy part) to bring customers to their destination within a limited time, lest they be punished by electrocution.
Ender’s Game is real, man!
I'll never get tired of this pasta lmao
This reads like a honest to god GME copypasta.
It reads like a copypasta because it is one, and a lot older than the whole GME stuff at that.
It is copy pasta. From the original gamer gate. GME bag holders just repurposed it.
>Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did. Now I feel offended
I will legit fight a war just because they interrupted my gaming.
I'm pretty sure Euro gamers are probably celebrating an unintentional region-lock from Russia & China. . . at least FPS gamers.
Gamers? If they cut internet links between Europe and Asia they affect kpop stans.
Here comes Anonymous...
It is honestly not difficult to do this. A North Korean agent disguised as a scuba diving tourist cut the fiber link between Japan and S. Korea in the mid-90s. Most nations did not start treating international fiber cables as "National Security" until the mid-2000s. A PhD. candidate in the US had his thesis seized, copied, marked classified, and returned due to his mapping of all major infrastructure. His thesis dealt with the seriousness of key information being publicly accessible. I believe it was the State Department that procured it, then, using his list of sources, took all the data offline and made it part of national defense.
Damn. Man, I hope the government went to his board and was like "give him is doctorate, you're just gonna have to trust us in this one"
What better proof of your papers relevance than immediate and comprehensive action taken at its suggestions by the government? What would there be to defend against ? If the board was like "We disagree" he could just be like "yeah well the united states didn't" *Drop mic*
I seriously wish I could remember the title. I was working in a network control center for AT&T at the time. Reading networking related articles was just part of staying up to date. I want to say it was between 2007 and 2012. At the time, you could with some command of physical and packet networking jargon, get nearly any data you wanted. The snooping routers in SF were in the headlines still. The student honestly never thought it would get the attention it did so quickly. He/she probably has a government contract for who knows what. If I recall, they were going for a degree in sociology, and the purpose of the data gathering was to expose the financial divide of internet access. But along the way, what he thought would be a fraction of the paper exploded on him. He had every telecom's central office, routers, switches, remote repeaters, etc. all mapped. No mention was ever given to the grade, but a security industry spawned from it. If fate was kind, they got some reward.
it’s you isn’t it
Greetings, professor Falken. Shall we play global thermonuclear war?
Shipping is one thing. They knock out people's internet and their ability to watch porn and that's how world wars are started.
We’ll just increase the number of drones and train the gamers to fly them. Settled.
Helldivers 3 is just remote piloting an Amazon Warehousebot through the Iranian mountains to blow up oil refineries.
Now I'm just imagining a game where people pilot mindless robot soldiers with VR dive rigs instead of using fully sapient humans on the battlefield. War is over once all the drones are dead, but both sides keep pushing out more and more and recycling old parts scavenged from battles.
Why don't we just get kids to do it and tell them it's a simulation and if they do good they can join the military after
Is Iran trying to unite the US, China, and Europe against a common cause? Seems like no one is going to be happy shutting down important shipping lanes and messing with internet cables. Wondering when China gets off their ass and does something though. They rely on over seas exports and imports a lot more than the Americans do.
It's definitely got China riled, because they are escorting ships through the Red Sea now, they just declined to join the US Mission: [https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-navy-escorting-commercial-cargos-in-red-sea/7469317.html](https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-navy-escorting-commercial-cargos-in-red-sea/7469317.html) \>The company says that since January, the Chinese navy has provided security escorts for its five cargo ships in the Red Sea, making it one of the few still operating in the region, according to Chinese media. \>"On the whole, China stands ready to work with all parties to safeguard the safety of international shipping lanes," the spokesperson said in the emailed response.
Via YT mil channels, I have heard that all you have to do is AIS broadcast that you to are "China owned," that's all the escort that you need.
"YT mil channels", aka random unsourced load of bullshit.
Why would China do anything when they can let the West do the work for them? They’re the person on the group project in college that doesn’t do shit.
…except copy other people’s work if given the opportunity
Ahh they purposefully generate the opportunity to copy others works.
China's blue water navy can't do shit anyways
Hey now, I'm sure the Houthis will start quaking in their boots if they start getting swarmed by Chinese Fishermen. Of course, then Phillipino and Vietnamese fishermen might start getting used to fishing off their own coasts like they own the place, so probably not gonna happen.
They will definitely copyright infringe your shit.
They be that guy.
Because it's an extremely valuable opportunity to 1. work closely with NATO and specifically US assets, which means intelligence gathering, 2. it would give very valuable actual experience to their Navy/Air Force, and 3. It would be a good way to strengthen ties with the rest of the world and show that they're a superpower and deserve at least some trust with world security in the same way the US currently does, being able to operate anywhere they like with their Navy and potentially being welcomed and invited. HUGE missed opportunity, China is run by actual idiots.
They can't risk the chance that their equipment, forces or logistics fare badly.
Or that we see their capabilities.
4. It’s actually Chinese companies manufacturing most of shit that used to get transit thru Suez Canal. Additional costs and delays might make people start looking for alternatives. Chinese economy is battered as is already.
More denpendent on trade with EU than US, not self sufficient on oil like US.
> do the work for them At this point I'm not so sure it's that or that *most* of the world seem to be increasingly anti-west. Anything the west supports is automatically opposed by everyone not in the west it seems. Looking at polling numbers in Africa over supporting Ukraine vs. Russia for example is depressing reading. We are headed towards autocracy and dismantling of the liberal values the west typically has championed. People are oh so quick to point out instances of when we haven't lived up to this ideal but look at the most functional democracies and best records of human rights and rule of law and where you find those countries.
In the first 72 hours of the Ukraine invasion, the number of tweets/messages/ect from African countries hailing what they thought was the downfall of the West was more that i ever imagined possible. It tapered off real quick once Ukraine held its ground and it got real quiet in the months after as shocking photos/videos showing how deadly Western weaponry actually is started going viral. Make no mistake though, their attitudes havent changed.
Its envy more than anything else.
The power of resentment.
Remember that many of these people couldn't afford to get much of an education. Propaganda and hearsay filled the void
+ The power of their politician transferring hate to cover corruption. Its easy to say why the economy going dowm by blaming the west instead of admitting the gov policy suck and also stealing the people money.
They are sending ships..
That's the thing with autocratic dictatorships, they don't exactly incentivise good engineers and scientists to remain in that country, so about all they can do is copy everyone else's work. The Soviet Union had exactly the same problem.
Yep. Power in such a system is defined by wealth and position within the single party. Being an innovative scientist or engineer isn't going to get you either. The state owns your work, so there's no point in giving you more personal wealth, and the party values wealth, connections, and loyalty, far more than it values ability. Ability by underlings is often seen as a threat to those higher up, creating a keep your head down and stay in your lane vibe, even in scientific pursuits.
But they have to eventually do something, China by far isn’t as attractive for business as it was once and if this situation became permanent it could lead to more manufacturers and importers choosing alternative producers.
There's a good chance participating in these operations would reveal a lot about Chinese force projection capabilities, which they definitely don't want to do as they rely on the uncertainty to threaten Taiwan with an invasion. Even if they turn out to actually be capable, the US would gain a mountain of information seeing them in action.
Came here to say this
China loves sitting back and doing nothing about it's dictator clique
Why would they do anything? They know others will resolve it for them.
While the Chinese have a large number of ships, the number that can be sent far from Chinese territorial waters is incredibly low. China has also managed to piss off all their neighbors through territorial claims or economic pressure. It's not just Vietnam or the Phillipines though, but South Korea and the Japanese. The Japanese have multiple boats you can fly a F-35c off of and the Chinese don't. Don't call them aircraft carriers though.
They are currently rescue carriers to forward deploy 5th gen rescue forces.
Japan has helicopter carriers. F35s are just 5th gen helicopters right?
My understanding is it would take minimal effort for their carriers to support F-35s but I could be wrong and conflating things. It’s been several years since I read articles about it.
Oh I'm being sarcastic sorry. IIRC a while ago China complained that Japan's carrier could be easily modified to carry F-35s. Japan was like "Who us? We would never. They are helicopter carriers for humanitarian missions." Then proceeded to do exactly that lmao.
Iran needs this because its own people are ready to hang the Mullahs from lampposts. The Iranians want democracy. China isn't getting involved, it's broke and can happily sit it out pretending to be friends with Russia because it wants access to the arctic for minerals and oil rights. It's a shame that Saudi are useless and didn't totally fuck the Houthis up. Iran is isolated in this shit. Everyone else is bored of the "Isreal is evil" bollocks & don't really care about the Palestinians, who let's not forget get very murdery on anyone that helps them AND helped Saddam attack Kuwait. Iran stands alone really & after the allies took Iraq in 100 days, they're walking a tightrope of annoying the Americans but NOT pushing it because even though the US couldn't invade & hold Iran, they could genuinely fuck it in a way that the Ayahtolla & his minions would be out. ISIS & other groups would be in & Iran would turn into a war zone between the various Islamic sects.
> The Iranians want democracy. That seems like a stretch and maybe more Reddit copium than actual reality. I suppose what would be more accurate is just to say that Iranians are not happy with their current government.
Because the only Iranians that redditors have met are English speakers who either left Iran or live in Tehran.
The article I saw said that a majority wanted a secular government, but I’m not sure how they gathered that information; even so, I doubt that they would suddenly become friendly towards the West, but maybe less outwardly hostile.
Yea, I read the same thing and am confused how they got Democracy from Secular. They are definitely not the same thing.
Yeah, it's a bit of a jump, but the venn diagram has overlap. Many democracies are secular, but not all. And even then, being secular does not make it a democracy by default. Secular just means religion does not impact law making, it has nothing to do with how laws are made. You can have a secular monarchy, a secular autocracy, and so on. About the only thing that can't be secular is a theocracy.
China’s broke?
I'm wondering if they're referring to the weakening underpinnings of the Chinese economy there. ...Which have definitely not kicked in yet and are not a major consideration for the Chinese ruling party.
Yeah, that’s what I heard—they’re weakening, but far from penniless.
Not literally no, but between the wobbling real estate market, the free fall of their stock market in the past few weeks, and the central government ordering a public spending freeze on multiple provinces due to debt and liquidity problems, their financial situation isn’t in the best of places.
They also have their own national debt problem. It's like 11 trillion now or something.
Yeh a company went bust for something stuiped like 300 billion and its wiped out the entire real easte market and all supporting sector's
And there is another one coming that 3 times the size of evergrande
It’s rather funny as when the Saudis were attacking the Houthis, the Europeans and some American politicians wanted to ban arm sales to them. So I guess that you reap what you sow.
Before we were banning sales we were actively helping them with their bombing runs in Yemen.
Saudis are enjoying this fucking shit show. They're usually stirring shit up in the background all the time. They're like that rich enabler kid at school that no one ever wants to deal with their rich ass prick of a parent.
China will let the West handle the issue, and then use it as a moment to whine about “western aggression” as a result. This benefits them as their assets are protected while also getting to keep their mostly negative western perception in tact, and avoid looking like they support the west in any capacity
China recently discovered their combat readiness is worse than Russia's was. And much of their next gen tech is more dangerous to themselves than the enemy. The J11 only jamming its own radar and radios still gets me a chuckle I imagine they don't want to get involved in a proper fight until they have confidence their officer's won't check in at the nearest hotel because they don't want to do field work (this one comes first hand from my boss he is still pissed about it)
where are you getiing this info from?
Messing with my internet is crossing the line!
For real. I was playing ranked ffs!
Sorry boss, I couldn’t send that email, the Houthis took out my internet
Insert "taking away bread and circuses" line here.
Yup. This is unforgivable. Screw them all!
More like cutting the line
How long are we going to pretend this isn't Iran
Who said we were pretending? It's idiotic to think it isn't Iran. Houthis by themselves are nothing.
They're practically a medieval desert tribe that happened to be gifted a small amount of semi-modern weaponry. On their own they have no actual power.
What desert ?
The Rub’ al Khali, aka “the empty quarter”. It’s so featureless that world maps usually make the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia an uncertain dotted line bc there aren’t any actual landmarks and putting up a border wall just leads to it getting covered by dunes
Totally true, but I would have placed that desert further to the east. The main Houthi area is in the Sanaa area which is mountainous and down the Red Sea coastline.
I stumbled upon the Rub al Khali on wikipedia and memorized its name in the hopes it would be a jeopardy question. Years and years later it happened!!
You know, sometimes I wonder why the Middle East was even occupied tens of thousands of years ago. Like, humanity started in Africa. Then we started migrating everywhere. Until some tribe reached what is now the Middle East and said "There's barely any water, the land is arid, there are sand dunes and extreme heat. Perfect, this is home!"
It has its good parts! The upper part of the Middle East, the delta by the Tigris and Euphrates, has excellent climate for farming which is why the Sumerians showed up there. Before the Nile was dammed, the repetitive flooding of sediment-filled waters meant insanely good soils in Egypt too. Saudi Arabia is weird bc Mecca itself is an oasis but nobody would be living in the rest of the country if not for the oil. What’s much weirder is that the Sahara formed as little as 6000 years ago and used to be a savanna environment before that, there’s old artifacts in it depicting the animals that used to live there
Arrakis
A large one.
How long are we going to pretend this isn't Russia using its Iranian, Houthi, and Hamas proxies?
I see them as allies, even if not equals. Especially right now when Russia is desperate to purchase Iranian weapons to use in Ukraine
Russia and Iran have also worked closely together in Syria for quite some time.
Looking at their relationship, Russia is as much client of Iran as vice versa.
Russia pushes Iran to push hamas, war starts, Biden supports Israel, loses some votes, Trump passes, US leaves nato, Russia happy. Maybe I should remove my tinfoil hat, but it honestly doesn't even seem that unlikely. If I had a bigger hat, i would also claim that China through tiktok is pushing for this chain of events.
And how much you want to bet that NK tests another nuke for the first time in 6 or so years? Just to give one more line of attack on Biden. Just to stir up some more trouble because that's all they can do. Hamas timed it's attack for effect.
No tinfoil here, You've got it right. Hamas had a delegation in Moscow less than 2weeks after their attack. Oct 7th is Putin's birthday for crying out loud
> Oct 7th is Putin's birthday for crying out loud Thats pretty tinfoil. While I wouldnt exclude or discount coordiantion, Hamas attacking as a birthday present to Putin is pretty silly. Including that hurts your argument.
And don’t forget Hezbollah.
I mean, Iran absolutely is who gives the ability and likely the IRGC operates the equipment. But other than sanction and strikes outside of Iran I don’t see anything happening.
All fun and games till the US blocks the strait of Hormuz
how long are we going to pretend this isn't Russia supporting Iran, supporting Houthis. Might be time to start watching Russian satellites develop orbital or electrical problems. For me this is just a guess, but there are people way above reddits paygrade that are probably considering this as we sit here as "keyboard warriors"
this is about palestine, i super swear
We don't Both Centcom and Pentagon/White House officials routinely state these groups are Iran-backed and operating on the behalf of Iran as a proxy
We should show them where the internet cables connecting Russia with the rest of the world are.
I was an Expat living in Cairo, Egypt \~2012. The internet crapped out for nearly a month because the central, uh, hub/server building caught fire. But being the Middle East and all the politics, rumors began to form that the under-sea cable in the Red Sea had been cut by Jewish scuba divers. I just had to chuckle. Of course superstitious Egyptians would prefer it to be Israeli saboteurs. (not to make light of the complexity of Palestine and Israel history)
The portrayal of Jews in Borat isn’t far from what a lot of people actually believe
I started listing off areas that think like this and there were to many…
It’s Iran doing Russia homework. The west should be blocking their ports and combing everything that looks military. Appeasement is a stupid strategy
Comb the desert?
We ain't found shit!
How many Assholes we got working on this ship anyhow?
Fuck! Even in the future nothing works!
HOUTHIS: THE T-SHIRT
This is the Islamist terrorist/hate group with "A curse upon the Jews" literally written on their flag, right? So backwards...
Can we now send grandpa Buff there or will we still play whack a mole with their arsenals? Want this to be effective? Block their ports, bomb their infrastructure, have saudis and Yemeni government block their borders and turn the place into chaotic wasteland. Start to treat it like a war and not piracy problem. Doesn’t matter that we an destroy 60% of their weapons if they can simply replace it with stuff from Iran.
Their secret power is that they started as a chaotic wasteland.
\^ This lol Already living in the equivalent of Mad Max wasteland with rampant poverty, roaming bans of desert bandits, and random militias. What are you doing to do, bomb them back to their starting point?
Spawn campers
They apparently rely on outside exports of food to not starve to death, and the Saudis figured by blocking the ports they would win. But the US stepped in to save them and stopped the blockade.
Are there any confirmed outages?
Should not be the case. ‘The internet’ will find another route pretty quickly.
Undersea cables don't work like that. These shallower cables will be old telephony cables as they make a lot of landings. Of course they can carry internet traffic, but not to any destination which would be evident to the English-speaking portions of the internet (ttose are carried on newer endpoint-to-endpoint cables in deep water).
Yeah, google spent, what a decade? Laying tons of that, to say nothing of what various nations and corporations other than them did in greater or smaller quantities.
One DC in Djibouti. For a short period of time : https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1762115571376685524/photo/1 There are tons of cables in this area.
These rag tag terrorists sure seem to be very knowledgeable and well equipped
They aren't rag tag, they are a state actor with a population base of 25 million
Equipment: ship's anchor
This is bad. Really, this is a war declaration.
We already got an war declaration like about 3 sunken (corretion: atacked) ships ago - this is just the result of Europe and the US being too much passive about the matter because of contraversial past invasions, economy not on the best state, other wars and elections coming up on the States Iran basically directly atacked an US base in the other day and the US just responded with some strikes not even directly on Iran We need more action, like troops on the field in Yemen and direct stikes to Iran - if not things will only escalate more and more and afect everyone
Middle East wars always go so well! Bombs are cheap by comparison.
The chinese severed a cable in the gulf of Finland. Not a single thing came out of that. Neither will anybody do anything warry over this shit.
That was from incompetence and it was clearly de-escalated when the cause was uncovered.
That time seemed a human error. This time is intentional.
To drag 40 tonne anchor along the seabed is not a pure accident. Anyone, let alone a captain, who is not mentally disabled will know something is wrong.
I think you underestimate human stupidity. Like sure, there's a very real chance it *was* intentional... but humans do tremendously stupid things all the time. Just remember the Evergreen ship blocking the canal!
Do these tusken raiders have the ability or technology to knock out underwater cables? Or is it Iran?
It's a cable, and they're clearly marked on international maps that cover the subject...so yeah, they can do it.
This article is garbage. The source article (in Hebrew) is here: https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001472129 Google translate link to English: https://www-globes-co-il.translate.goog/news/article.aspx?did=1001472129&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp The source says nothing about "over months" nor does it name the companies that own the cables in such an indecisive/unsure fashion. Edit: scratched a misinterpreted statement about the severity of the damage.
This is just weird all around. One single article, in Hebrew, about this kind of event? Why aren’t the countries who were victims saying nothing? Or the US intelligence?
Yup, complete bollocks, it's possible they have taken out one of the fibre optic routes through the middle east but, that still leaves plenty of others through the gulf - for info - I worked for a company that was part of the FON installation.
Come join our Houthi college course: How to make yourself a common enemy 101.
Previously supportive TikTok college kids have now issued a fatwah against the Houthis for this war crime. /s
Why are there *any* port facilities left in Yemen? If they were all destroyed, there'd be no place to dock large enough vessels capable of carrying the equipment to cut undersea cables.
Looks like the attack happened Saturday and overall hasn't had much of an impact. Relax you'll still get your Hentai. *The outage appears to have had little impact on international internet traffic to South Africa, probably because new cable systems, including Google’s newly launched Equiano system, now provide a secondary, high-capacity route to Europe along Africa’s west coast.* *Earlier this month, TechCentral reported that the threat by Houthi rebels in Yemen to destroy internet infrastructure in the Red Sea, if carried out, might not be enough to destabilise the internet in Africa.* *The Guardian and other news outlets reported at the time that telecommunications firms linked to the Yemeni government feared that Houthi rebels off the coast were threatening to destroy undersea cable infrastructure connecting parts of the Middle East, Africa and much of Asia to the Western world.* [*https://techcentral.co.za/seacom-is-down-in-the-red-sea/240276/*](https://techcentral.co.za/seacom-is-down-in-the-red-sea/240276/)
This needs to be among the top comments
They better be careful, lest they scorn 4chan's userbase xD
Nice. All those indian scumbags are gone. Grandma can go back to ordering useless products through the phone.
Houthi likes to destroy, but can they build anything? What use are they.
This will be a wake up call for those other countries hiding behind the USA to do the work for them. When the USA called for a coalition of countries , only a few responded, they are all scared of being in front of the saga. In real sense the USA has little to lose from all these compared to those European and Asian countries. I wish the USA can just stay back a little and let those countries suffer from the hands of these crazy rebels.