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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months

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“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”

20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:

https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html

I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/

I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.

But I was right. The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations. Inkjet printers were always a sleazy business, but once these printers got directly connected to the internet, companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Now, this scam wouldn't work if you could just put things back the way they were before the "update," which is where the DRM comes in. A thicket of IP laws make reverse-engineering DRM-encumbered products into a felony. Combine always-on network access with indiscriminate criminalization of user modification, and the enshittification will follow, as surely as night follows day.

This is the root of all the right to repair shenanigans. Sure, companies withhold access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be extracted and parts can be cloned. The real teeth in blocking repair comes from the law, not the tech. The company that makes McDonald's wildly unreliable McFlurry machines makes a fortune charging franchisees to fix these eternally broken appliances. When a third party threatened this racket by reverse-engineering the DRM that blocked independent repair, they got buried in legal threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Everybody loves this racket. In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NEWAG boobytrapped their trains to try and detect if they've been independently serviced, and to respond to any unauthorized repairs by bricking themselves:

https://mamot.fr/@[email protected]/111528162905209453

Poland is part of the EU, meaning that they are required to uphold the provisions of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive, including Article 6, which bans this kind of reverse-engineering. The researchers are planning to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg this month – Germany is also a party to the EUCD. The threat to researchers from presenting this work is real – but so is the threat to conferences that host them:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/

20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You're paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can't rely on, without making that clear to you.

But it's worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

Adobe blamed this on Pantone, and there was lots of speculation about what had happened. Had Pantone jacked up its price to Adobe, so Adobe passed the price on to its users in the hopes of embarrassing Pantone? Who knows? Who can know? That's the point: you invested in Photoshop, you spent money and time creating images with it, but you have no way to know whether or how you'll be able to access those images in the future. Those terms can change at any time, and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.

This keeps happening and it's gonna keep happening. Last week, Playstation owners who'd bought (or "bought") Warner TV shows got messages telling them that Warner had walked away from its deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, and so all the videos they'd paid for were going to be deleted forever. They wouldn't even get refunds (to be clear, refunds would also be bullshit – when I was a bookseller, I didn't get to break into your house and steal the books I'd sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table).

Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery. Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff than he stood to make by releasing them:

https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership

Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!

But without Sony's complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav's war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn't been released yet. Thanks to Sony's awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn't even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.

The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades. Anyone who was paying attention should have figured that out in the GW Bush administration. Anyone who does this today? Absolute flaming garbage.

Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over an anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.

Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing":

https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

Image: Alan Levine (modified) https://pxhere.com/en/photo/218986

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic #playstation #sony #copyright #copyfight #drm #monopoly #enshittification #batgirl #road runner #financiazation #the end of ownership #ip

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ms-demeanor · 1 month

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Friends, I think we need to talk about Covid.

I want to get a few caveats out there before I start:

I am aware that there are people who need to exercise extreme caution about Covid; I live with someone who has two solid organ transplants and who is at the most immune compromised level of immune compromised. *I* have to be extremely cautious about covid.

Masking does prevent a certain level of transmission, and people who think they may have covid should mask and people who are concerned that they may be at high risk for covid should mask.

You should be vaccinated and boosted with the most recent vaccines that are available to you; covid is highly transmissible and very serious, you do not want to get covid and if you do get covid you don't want it to be severe and if you do get covid you don't want to give someone else covid and up-to-date vaccinations are the best way to reduce transmission and help to prevent severe cases of Covid.

We should be testing before going to any gatherings, and informing people if we test positive after gatherings, and testing if we suspect we have been exposed.

It is bullshit that there aren't good protections for workers who have covid; you should not be expected to go to work when you are testing positive

It is bullshit that people who are testing positive are not isolating for other reasons; if you have Covid you should not be going out and exposing other people to it even if you are experiencing mild symptoms or no symptoms.

We do need better ventilation systems for many kinds of spaces. Schools need better ventilation, restaurants need better ventilation, doctor's offices and hospitals and office buildings need better ventilation and better ventilation can reduce covid transmission.

I want to make it clear that Covid is real and there are real steps that individuals and systems can take to prevent transmission, and that there are systems that are exerting pressures that needlessly expose people to covid (the fact that you can lose your job if you don't come in when you're testing positive, mainly; also the fact that covid rapid tests should be ubiquitous and cheap/free and are not).

All of that being said: I'm seeing some posts circulating about how we're at an extremely high level of transmission and the REAL pandemic is being hidden from us and, friends, I'm pretty sure that is just incorrect and we're spreading misinformation.

I'm thinking of this video in particular, in which the claim is made that "your mystery illness is covid" in spite of negative tests. The guy in the video says that there's nothing else that millions of people could be getting a day, and that he predicted this because a wastewater spike in December meant that there was a huge spike in cases.

I've also seen people saying that deaths are where they were in 2021-2022, and that we're still at "a 9/11 a week" of excess deaths and friends, I'm not seeing great evidence for any of these claims.

I know that we (in the US, which is where the numbers I'm going to be citing are from) feel abandoned by the CDC and the fact that tracking cut off in May of 2023. But that only cut off for the federal tracking.

I live in LA county and LA county sure as shit is still tracking Covid.

If you want a clearer picture, you can see the daily case count over time compared to the daily death count:

Okay, you might say, but that's just LA.

Alright, so here's Detroit:

Right, but maybe that's CDC data and you don't trust the CDC at this point.

Okay, here's fatalities in New York tracked through New York's state data collection:

It's harder to toggle around the site for South Dakota, but you can compare their cases and hospitalizations and deaths for early 2022

To cases and hospitalizations and deaths from early 2024

And see that there's really no comparison.

Okay, you might say, but people are testing less. If they're testing less of course we're not seeing spikes, and they're testing less because fewer tests are available.

Alright, people are definitely testing less than they were in 2021 and 2022. Hospitalization for Covid is probably the most clear metric because you know those people have covid for sure, the couldn't not test for it.

Here are hospitalizations over time for LA:

Here are hospitalizations over time for New York:

As vaccination rates have gone up, cases, deaths, and hospitalizations have gone down. It IS clear that there are case spikes in the winter, when it is cold and people are indoors in poorly ventilated spaces and people are more susceptible to respiratory infections as a result of cold air weakening the protection offered by our mucous membranes, and that is something that we will have to take precautions about for the forseeable future, just as we should have always been taking similar precautions during flu season.

So I want to go point-by-point through some of the arguments made in that video because I'm seeing a bunch of people talking about how "THEY" don't want you to know about the virus surge and buds that is just straight up conspiracism.

So okay, first off, most of what that video is based on is spikes in wastewater data, not spikes in cases. This is because people don't trust CDC data on cases, but I'd say to maybe check out your regional data on cases. I don't actually trust the CDC that much, but I know people who do tracking of hospitalizations in LA county, I trust them a lot more. Wastewater data does correlate with increases in cases, but this "second largest spike of the entire pandemic" thing is misleading; wastewater reporting is pretty highly variable and you can't just accept that a large spike in covid in wastewater means that we're in just as bad a place in the pandemic as we were in 2022. We simply have not seen the surge of hospitalizations and deaths that we would expect to see in the weeks following that spike in wastewater data if wastewater data was reflective of community transmission.

The next claim is that "there is nothing else that is infecting millions of people a day" and covid isn't doing that either. The highest daily case rates were in January of 2021 and they were in the 865k a day range, which is ridiculously high but isn't millions of cases a day.

But what we can see is that when people are tested by their doctors for Covid, RSV, and the Flu, more tests are coming back positive for the Flu. Covid causes more hospitalizations than the other two illnesses, but to be honest what the people in the video are describing - lightheadedness, dizziness, exhaustion - just sound like pretty standard symptoms of everything from covid to the cold to allergies. There are lots of things your mystery illness could be.

The video goes on to talk about the fact that people aren't testing, and why their tests may be coming back negative and I'd like to point out that the same things are all true of Flu or RSV tests. People might be getting tested too early or too late; getting a negative test for the flu isn't a good reason to assume you've got covid, getting a negative test for covid isn't a good reason to assume you've got the flu, and testing for viruses as a whole is imperfect. There are hundreds of viruses that could be the common cold; there are multiple viruses that can cause bronchitis; there are multiple viruses that can cause pneumonia, and you're not going to test for all of these things the moment you start feeling sick.

He then recommends testing for multiple days if you have symptoms and haven't had a positive test (fine) and talks about the location of the tests (less fine). Don't use your rapid tests to swab your throat or cheek unless it specifically says that they are designed to do so. Test based on the instructions in the packet.

He points out that the tests probably still pick up on the virus because they're not testing for the spike protein, they're testing for the RNA (good info!)

The video then discusses something that I think is really key to this paranoia about the "mystery illnesses" - he talks about how covid changes and weakens your immune system (a statement that should come with many caveats about severity and vulnerability and that we are still researching that) and then says that it makes you more susceptible to strep or mono and that "things that used to clear in a day or two now hit you really hard."

And that's where I think this anxiety is coming from.

Strep throat lasts anywhere from three days to a week. A cold takes about a week to clear. The flu lasts about a week and can knock you on your ass with exhaustion for weeks depending on how bad you get it. Did you get a cough with your cold? Expect that to take anywhere from three to eight weeks to clear up.

I think that people are thinking "i got a bad virus and felt really sick for a week and haven't gotten my energy back" but that just sounds like a bad cold. That sounds like a potent allergy attack. That doesn't even sound like a bad flu (I got a bad flu in 2009 and thought i was going to straight-up die I had a fever of 103+ for three days and felt like shit for three days on either side of that and took six weeks to feel more like myself again).

Getting sick sucks. It really, really sucks. But if you're getting sick and you're testing for covid and it's coming back negative after you tested a few times, it's almost certainly not covid.

The video then says "until someone provides evidence that it's not covid, it should be assumed to be covid because we have record levels of covid it's that simple" but that's not simple. We don't have record levels of covid and he hasn't proved it. We have record high levels of wastewater reports of covid, which correlates with covid cases but the spike in wastewater noted in december didn't see a spike with a corresponding magnitude of cases in terms of either hospitalizations or deaths, which is what we'd have seen if we had actual record numbers of covid.

He says that if you want to ignore this, you'll get sick with covid, and that about 30-40% of the US just got sick with covid in the last four months (which is a RIDICULOUSLY unevidenced claim).

He says that we need to create a new normal that takes covid into account, which means masking more often and testing more often and making choices about risk-avoidant behaviors.

Now, I don't disagree with that last statement, but he prefaces the statement with "it doesn't necessarily mean lockdown" and that's where I think the alarmism and paranoia is really visible here. We are so, so far away from "lockdown" type levels that it's absurd to discuss lockdown here.

What I'm seeing right now is people who are chronically ill, people who are immune compromised, and people who are experiencing long covid (which may not be distinct from other post-viral syndromes from severe cases of flu, etc, but which may be more severe or more notable because of the prevalence of covid) are talking about feeling abandoned and attacked and left behind by society because covid is still out there, and still at extremely high levels.

I am seeing people who feel abandoned and attacked because the lgbtq+ events they are attending don't require masking. I am seeing people who are claiming that it is eugenicist that their schools don't have a negative test policy anymore.

And this comes together into two really disconcerting trends that I've been observing online for a while.

The claim that the pandemic is still as bad as it's ever been and in fact may be worse but we can't know that because "they" (the CDC, the government, capitalist institutions that want you back in the office, the university industrial complex that wants your dorm room dollars) are covering up the numbers and

Significant grievance at the fact that people are acting like number one is not true and are putting you at risk either out of thoughtlessness (because they don't realize they're putting you at risk) or malice (because they don't care if the sick die).

And those things are a recipe for disaster.

I think I've pretty robustly addressed point one; I don't think that there's good evidence that there's a secretly awful surge of covid that nobody is talking about. I think that there are some people who are being alarmist about covid who are basing all of their concern on wastewater numbers that have not held up as the harbinger of a massive wave of infections.

So let's talk about point number two and JK Rowling.

Barnes and Noble is not attacking you when it puts up a Hogwarts Castle display in the lobby. Your favorite youtuber isn't trying to hurt you when they offhandedly mention Harry Potter.

If you let every mention of Harry Potter or every person who enjoys that media franchise wound you, you are going to spend a lot of your time wounded.

People are not liking Harry Potter at you.

Okay.

People are also not not wearing masks at you.

You may be part of a minority group that experiences the potential for outsized harm as a result of majority groups engaging in perfectly reasonable behaviors.

There are kind, well-meaning, sensible people who go out every day and do something that may cause you harm and it's not because they want to hurt you or they don't care about whether you live or die, it is because they are making their own risk assessments based on their own lives and making the very reasonable assumption that people who are more concerned about covid than they are will take precautions to keep themselves safe.

We are not at a place in the pandemic where it is sensible to expect people with no symptoms of illness to mask in public as a matter of course or to present evidence of a recent negative test when entering a public building in their day-to-day life.

I think now is a really good time to sit down and ask yourself how you expect things to be with covid as an endemic part of our viral ecosystem. I think now is a good time to ask yourself what risk realistically looks like for you and for people who are unlike you. I think now is a good time to consider what would feel "safe" for you and how you could accomplish feeling safe as you navigate the world.

I'm probably going to continue masking in most indoor spaces for years. Maybe forever. There are accommodations that SHOULD be afforded to people who have to take more precautions than others (remote learning, remote visits, remote work, etc.), and we should demand those kinds of accommodations.

But it is going to poison you from the inside out if you are perpetually angry that people who don't have the same medical limitations as you are happy that they get to go shopping with their faces uncovered.

So now I want to talk to you about my father in law.

My father in law had a bone marrow transplant in 2015. That's the most immune compromised you can get without having your organs swapped out.

The care sheet for him after the transplant was a little overwhelming. The list of foods he couldn't eat was intimidating and the limitations on where he could go was depressing. It cautioned against going to large events, it recommended outdoor gatherings where possible but only if he could avoid sunlight and was somewhere with no history of valley fever. It said that he should wear masks indoors any time he was someplace with poor ventilation and that he should avoid contact with anyone who had an illness of any kind, taking special note to avoid children and anyone recently vaccinated for measles.

It was, in short, pretty much what someone immune compromised would need to do to try to avoid a viral infection. Sensible. Reasonable. Wash your hands and social distance; wear masks in sensitive contexts and don't spend time in enclosed places with people who have a communicable illness.

This is what life was always going to be like for people who are severely immune compromised, and it was always going to be incumbent upon the person with the illness to figure out how to operate in a society that is not built with them in mind.

It is not the job of every parent I encounter to tell me whether their child has been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months. That isn't something that people need to do as part of their everyday life. However it IS my responsibility to check with the parents I'm hanging out with whether their children have been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months so I know if it's safe for my immune compromised spouse to be around them.

If you want an environment in which you feel safe from covid, at this point in the pandemic (when the virus is endemic and not spreading rapidly as far as we can see from case counts) it is your responsibility to take the steps necessary to make you feel safe. Some of those steps will involve advocating for safety improvements in public spaces (again, indoor ventilation needs to be better and I'm personally pretty extreme about vaccination requirements; these are things we should be discussing in our school board meetings and at our workplaces), some of those steps will involve advocating for worker protections, guaranteed sick time, and the right to healthcare. But some of the things you're going to need to do to feel safe are going to come down to you.

If you are concerned about communicable diseases you have to be realistic about the fact that our society doesn't go out of its way to prevent communicable diseases - norovirus among food service workers pre-pandemic is pretty clear evidence of that. You are going to have to be proactive about your safety rather than expecting the world to act like Covid is at 2021-2022 levels when it is measurably not.

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some-other-number · 7 months

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maybe this will be a controversial post but I hate how the russo-ukrainian war has conditioned me into hating anything to do with ukraine or to a lesser extent russia. because everyone suddenly wanted to show support they started posting all about ukrainians and their [insert thing here] I just immediately recoil because it's overly popular to do so and to an extent not genuine

#redboots speaks #it's nothing to do with my opinions on the war. it's literally just because people are. being weebs about it in a way #you are disingenuously posting about a foreign culture because it's a hot button issue #and I'm not saying everyone does it but I feel like it's defo a thing #and it's also because I didn't see this happen with say afghanistan in 2021. for example #I don't think it's done out of actual appreciation but instead because it's usually trending #and I say that there's a lesser extent of this on my reaction to russia mentions because it typically doesn't apply as often #and also like. it's not just a this-topic thing. there was a painting depicting homelessness due to the housing crisis here that won an #award and I felt a bit upset by it because I felt like it only won because the judges wanted to be. topical and seen to do the right thing #and because I'm homeless technically the fact that I felt even a little bit like it was disingenuous was. upsetting to say the least #of course had to start this off with 'maybe this will be controversial' even though I'm 99% sure nobody will see this post yet alone give #a flying fuck about it is because of That post.

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foone · 4 months

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Have you heard about the Polish Train company, Newag, and the bullshit it turns out they got up to?

So, the regional rail operator Koleje Dolnośląskie bought some Newag Impuls back in 2016 . In late 2021, some of them need to have major maintenance done, as they've been in service a while. So the company SPS (Serwis Pojazdów Szynowych) gets the contract to fix them. They basically take the train apart, replace a bunch of it, following all the rules in the documentation Newag gave them, and... it won't move. The train says everything is fine, the brakes are off, there's plenty of power, but you push the throttle up and it won't move.

SPS spends a while trying to figure out what the fuck is wrong, with no luck. So they hire some hackers from the Polish security group Dragon Sector. Dragon Sector figures out how to get into the code of the computer system that runs the train, and OH MY GOD.

So it turns out there's a secret train-lock system. If it's on, the train won't move. This will be triggered in some situations you might think are normal: the clocks are wrong, the serial numbers of the various parts have changed, and a firmware mismatch between the main computer and the power system. Now, the fact that it makes sense to not run the train in these situations until someone can check it? that doesn't extend to the fact the train uses a SECRET lock system, rather than just popping up an error message telling you what's wrong. There's also the problem that while these are all potential error problems, they can't be cleared by anyone with the technical manuals, which are supposed to cover everything about how to run these trains. Only Newag themselves can reset this system.

Which, you know, keeps SPS from properly fixing them. Only Newag can fix them now, but not because SPS lacks any technical ability, but because Newag sabotaged their own trains. But don't worry: it gets worse.

So now that Dragon Sector knows what's happening, they get to look at other trains. It turns out the trains aren't all running the same software, and there are other tricks in there.

One of them is a "how long has the train been stopped?" check. If the train hasn't hit 60 km/h in 10 days, the train locks itself and won't move until Newag can clear it. So, like, if a train is ever out of service, like it's going to a repair place... it'll break itself. Unless the repair place is owned by Newag.

But two of the trains go further: See, these trains have GPS built in, right? You may be able to guess where this is going...

THEY JUST MAKE THE TRAIN CHECK IF IT IS PARKED AT THEIR COMPETITORS' REPAIR YARD AND BREAK ITSELF IF IT WAS.

The sheer audacity of this move. This is frighteningly bullshit anti-competition self-sabotage.

This has, obviously, made some parts of the Polish government to start investigating this. Newag may be (and hopefully will be) in a lot of trouble.

For more info, there's a great video of a presentation by the three people from Dragon Sector who did the hacking, which was presented at the 37th Chaos Communication Congress in Germany.

Ars Technica also has an article on it, but it predates the presentation so it doesn't have some of the later details.

Anyway, the good news is that in the end the hackers at Dragon Sector were able to unlock most of the trains: A few had additional trickery that they didn't want to hack around, because it might break the train's certification. For the others, they discovered undocumented "cheat codes" in the software that they could use to bypass the secret lockouts... presumably the same ones that Newag would have used when they "repaired" trains.

#trains are blameless holy creatures #computer security #reverse engineering

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hazelfoureyes · 2 months

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The Radio Demon fucks a Human Sacrifice (part two)

This is part two! Here is part one. I lied, there is a bit of smut! Oopsie daisy. Inspired by @moonmark98 ‘s story idea of reader trying to forget Alastor and failing. I hadn’t planned a second part initially so I hope you like it 🥺

⟢ part1♡̶sidestory♡̶part2♡̶part3♡̶part4 ⟣

You return to earth and spend a year trying to crawl out from under the memory of Alastor. When an employee tells you a terrible past trauma, you end up right back where you started.

minors DNI

“Ooh my, this is highly unusual. Charlie is right, you really shouldn’t be here.” Stolas fretted over you. “Uuunfortunately I don’t have my book at this particular moment however I can just snag it from Blitzy and be back soon.”

“What’s a blitzy?” Angel looked around the room to no one in particular.

“What isn’t he?” Stolas cooed.

“Wait a minute!” Husk snapped his fingers, “Is that the imp who burned down loo loo land?”

“The very one!”

“He also takes hits out on people on earth, doesn’t he?” Husk gave Stolas a sideways look. Alastor hummed in acknowledgment.

“Ah haha yes” Nervously chuckling, Stolas scratched at the feathers behind his neck, “Anywho! I’ll return shortly and get you back where you belong, little one.” He flashed his kind smile to you before bowing to Charlie and portaling out of the room.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Charlie sat beside you on the edge of the bed. You’d been escorted immediately to an empty room upon arrival, sat down while the core staff of the hotel flitted about wildly upon hearing Angel’s recounting of events.

“You smell dirty”, the tiny maid cackled and ran to you before being lifted by her apron by Husk.

“That is a”, you rubbed your wrists nervously, “complicated question…”

“There’s nowhere safer in all of hell than this room. With Vaggie and me and Alastor”, Charlie brought her hands to her mouth, “or— not Alas- I mean” She looked at Vaggie, “What do I mean??”

“Nothing and no one will lay a finger on you here.” Vaggie was staring at Alastor when she said it.

“I don’t think its fingers anyone’s worried about”, Angel shifted his gaze from Alastor to you and back.

Alastor turned his head slowly to meet Angel’s eyes, “Did you say something, Angel Dust?”

He shook his head and quickly left, Niffty and Husk in tow.

“I think you should leave, too.” Vaggie crossed her arms.

Alastor replied by taking a step closer to you, gesturing with his microphone, “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. She is safe and sound, barely a bruise on her.” He looked over you, the side of your face still slightly pink from the way you hit the ground hardly an hour ago. He could hear your body sliding across the wooden cabin floor still, what a strangely exciting noise. What else could he drag you across? What surfaces could he slide your over? What noises would they make? What noises would you make?

“You took her fucking soul, Alastor. In a coerced deal!”

“If I remember correctly, that is exactly what I had been asked to do.” He grinned, taking his monocle off and cleaning it on his sleeve. Vaggie looked to Charlie, who shrunk from her horrified face. “Plus, she’s still alive. Who knows if the deal even counts. I’ve never made one with a living person.” With an exaggerated shrug, Alastor took a seat on the sofa opposite the bed, legs crossed. “Either way, she isn’t anywhere near Val anymore.” His eyes met yours, for the first time since…

You looked away. He wanted to grab your chin and force you to see him. He wanted to read what was written on your face. Shame? No…yes, but something more. Embarrassment. Confusion. Ah— You clenched your jaw, finally returning his stare. Anger. “Did I not do exactly what I had promised I would? What I had warned you I would?” Your lips curled over your teeth. “While yes, I hadn’t explicitly stated the number of times-“

“Stop talking! No, no. Enough of that.” Charlie waved her arms as if she could dissipate the very topic away, “Alastor could you please give me a moment alone with her?” She looked at him with big, worried eyes, “Please?”

Through gritted teeth Alastor acquiesced, “It is your hotel, Princess. I’ll be just outside the door.” The last sentence was for you, you could feel it like you could feel his shadow still ghosting over your legs.

As soon as the door shut, she closed the distance between you, looking to Vaggie who offered her a supportive nod.

“Seriously, are you hurt? Did he— Did he hurt you?”

Oh, you wish he had. That’d be easier to say. Easier to process. You wish he’d knocked you around like Val had done earlier. That left you indignant, enraged. But this — whatever this was — you couldn’t find purchase on a reaction. You didn’t even want to think the things bubbling under your consciousness.

“Just my pride. Uhh,” you shifted, your thighs and cunt sore to the touch, “He really did warn me. Got my okay, kind of. And he didn’t hurt me, except dragging me around and flipping me but-”, You noticed Charlie’s alarmed expression, “I’m physically fine.”

She nodded, her expression still oozing concern, “Well that’s good, then.”

“What… You both seem humanish, but what exactly are-“ You tipped your head in the direction of the door.

“Well I think Angel is some kind of spider…Husk, not entirely sure honestly”, Charlie looked up as if searching for a memory, “Alastor is a deer. It’s all tied to how people lived and died, I think.”

A deer? You shook your head, “Nothing about that man resembles a prey animal.”

“His death sure did.” Vaggie commented.

“So if I have some weird death I’ll end up here? If I drown… I’ll come back as a fish?” You were mostly thinking out loud, and hadn’t expected Charlie to nod in agreement.

“But don’t think about that! You might still go to heaven. Like Al said, he isn’t even sure the deal is binding.” She beamed and clapped her hands together.

It felt binding.

When that green light had erupted from beneath you, you thought you could feel him. Not the tentacles, or the memory of his hand. It felt like he was in the light itself, casting shadows on the ceiling in the shape of you. It felt alive, every ray of light a breathe washing over you.

You looked down at the robe, white and silky. Where were your clothes? Where was your fucking aunt? What about your phone? You had a car, too. Wait, no… did you drive to her house? Or did she…You hadn’t slept since being dragged to hell. Staring at the hem of the sleeve, you tried to focus your mind but suddenly you were wading in cognitive mud.

Shadows gathered near the foot of the bed before you saw Alastor rise out of the cluster. Charlie said something, Vaggie said something but sharper. It sounded far away already. Your body was beginning to feel heavy, an ache settling across your back and thighs.

“Perhaps you should lie down, my dear.” His voice cut through the murky waters of your thoughts. The bed sunk beside you as he pressed a hand down, the other lifting your chin to force eye contact. Vaggie made a loud noise, Charlie a smaller one, a longer one. Was it words? Were they speaking? Your lids were heavy over your eyes, Alastor’s face beginning to blur. His smile looked strained, eyebrows knitted together in an emotion almost recognized. Concern? His grin threw it off. You raised your eyebrows to try and open your eyes wider but the effect was minimal.

You heard yourself groan as an arm hooked under your knees, another catching your shoulders as you fell to the side. It felt like you were floating. Your legs came down slowly, you could feel the robe adjusting around your waist. Your head went back before comfortably straightening. A warmth spread down your neck, leaving goosebumps to runaway down your shoulder. It was dark now, and in the haze you heard from somewhere so close it felt like maybe you had thought it yourself, “In perpetuity, mon cher.”

You didn’t recognize the room at first, but when you finally managed to lift yourself out of bed you sighed. Home. You only knew it had been real because of the robe and busted lip. Well, mostly sure.

No one noticed you were gone, which wasn’t shocking. Working backwards, you could piece together you had gone to visit your aunt on Saturday morning. You awoke early Monday in your own bed some 60 miles from your aunt's home. Your car had been found abandoned off an old dirt road way outside of town.

You tried to get back to life, get to work. But you were clearly only half there.

Your aunt was found dead the following weekend, half submerged in a swamp just outside of Tampa. Her funeral was funny. Not “haha” funny, “Say hi to Val for me” kinda funny. When they lowered her into the ground you wondered what she looked like. What's the animal manifestation of a selfish, raging bitch? What’s the most untrustworthy home appliance?

Probably a gerbil, or a toaster.

You found yourself doing that a lot, What will they look like in the afterlife?

It took a good six months for you to stop sleeping in the robe. You couldn’t trash it, it was evidence you had been spirited away. It smelled like smoke and baby oil. Like Angel. It was soft on your skin, like—

Oh. It took less time for the dreams to calm down. Maybe a month of waking up in a cold sweat.

At first they were stressful. Val backhanding you. The feeling of leather chafing against your wrists. The cabin. The real one, not the set.

But then one night they weren’t stressful. You could remember the dream like it had really happened. A large hand cupping your cheek, another roaming past your hips before hooking under your knee. The warmth of a breath on your neck, on your navel. More hands. Everywhere. Your back, your ankle, your neck.

You woke up and the first feeling you felt was disappointment. It hit you like a truck.

The dreams slowly ramped up until some nights you awoke mid-orgasm. Never in your life had you experienced wet dreams; you didn’t even know women got them.

And it wasn’t always him—- well, not at first. You’d be kissing someone, a stranger or your ex or whoever. You’d have your hands in their hair, enjoying the feeling of their tongue sliding over yours. You’d be positively humming into their mouth. They’d pull you forward, lie you down, tugging your pants down your legs.

When they’d kiss up your arm and nestle into your neck they’d whisper hottily into your ear, “My doe.”

Sometimes you woke up, but many times you didn’t. Many times you grabbed his face and kissed him, letting him take control and direct you. You’d shrink beneath him, allowing him to use your body as he pleased. You’d surrender, you’d melt. He’d fuck you into the ground of god-knows-where, nails cutting into the flesh of your ass as he pulled you up to meet each punishing thrust. There were trees and starlight and you felt the humidity on your skin.

You’d always squirm away, try to escape the pleasure and he would find joy in pulling you back onto his cock. It felt like a game where you both already knew the outcome. “Going to cum, sweetheart?”, would be the last thing you heard before the real life spasms of your release stirred you awake.

The first man you took home after returning to earth was sweet. Gentle. Too gentle. You’d try to direct him, to let him know you wouldn’t break but he’d shy away from asserting dominance.

Other partners were more in charge, but it didn’t sit right. If you were going to allow someone control over you, you felt like they had to deserve it. You needed to respect them in some capacity.

You tried choking during sex, while it did heighten the pleasure their hand felt so small it broke your concentration. Bondage was fun, you got a rush from shibari, but all it did was inform your dreams.

You tried femdom, and while it was impowering it didn’t scratch that itch. You tried being a sub, but like before you found the people over you as unworthy of you. You didn’t think so highly of yourself, it’s just that autonomy was precious and these people were, well, just people. Mortals.

Your friends enjoyed your hoe era, self titled, but it was short lived. It had been eight months since you returned when you bought your first real sex toy, and took up hiking. It felt nice to be outdoors, and the days you spent in the forests seemed to make for nights of less intense dreams.

Your toy was, ashamedly, selected for its three points of contact. A pink little vibrator, big enough to need some work into you but not painful. The first time you used it you clung to your pillow, heart ballooning against your spiked blood pressure, and screamed a chorus of his name. The two points inside you vibrating in tandem with the small suction cup shape extending from the base doming your clit brought back delicious memories.

Every time, you felt embarrassed after. You could imagine him hearing you all the way in hell and chuckling at how pathetic you were. Satisfied at how empty you felt after.

It wasn’t just about the sex, you were never a very sexually needy person. You were chasing that feeling of surrender, of being both safe and out of control at the same time. The little bit of danger with the pleasure. But not, “local woman found dead in the woods” kind of danger. “Corrupt your soul and ruin your afterlife” kind of danger.

After a year of being earthside, life had finally calmed. Were you still fucked in your dreams? Yes, but a manageable once or so a month. Your toy was nice, but not necessary. A man, or anyone, hadn’t touched you in months. And that was alright. You felt almost normal, except the mornings you woke up hoping to see a pair of red eyes somewhere in the room.

You chalked it up to escapism.

Work had promoted you, twice, which helped distract you from boredom. While performing one of your monthly employee meetings, you met with a young man you’d recently hired. He was still in college, but he had a good head on his shoulders and made quick decisions. You were confident he’d be your equal within the year.

(Implied childhood trauma below the line; not graphic but it’s implied to have happened)

⊹˚₊‧───────────────‧₊˚⊹

“Tired?” He asked you while you logged back into your computer.

You nodded, yawning into the back of your hand, “Spent most of Sunday at Shallow Ridge. Scoping out a good camping spot for when it warms up.”

“No shit, my dad hunts out there. Every Sunday, too.”

“I didn’t take you for the hunting type”, You blinked away the exhaustion and opened his employee file.

“Nah I’m not.” He shook his head, “He used to take me all the time when I was little.”

You nodded, not looking at him and only half listening, “Aww, sounds fun.”

He scoffed. You found the audio file of his graded phone calls, double clicking it. The file seemed corrupted.

“Not fun?” You absentmindedly asked.

You opened the program to manually find the call file. The silence began to creep over you until you felt your chest heavy under the weight of it.

You finally looked at him. The look in his eyes was distant, the color from his face was gone.

“Hey”, your tone changed, your subconscious recognizing something before you did.

He snapped back up, looking at you now. His smile didn’t meet his eyes. You didn’t say anything, just pushed your chair from your desk and looked directly at him.

“What?” He averted his gaze.

“You know you can tell me anything, right? You’re not just a resource here. Hell, I see you more than my own flesh and blood.”

He nodded, and when he finally brought his eyes back to yours his composure cracked and tears fell down his cheeks in streams. “It’s fine” he forced a laugh, “It was like a million years ago.”

You took off the rest of the day, and after providing hugs and your own tears and information on company sponsored counseling and resources, you went home.

Well, first you went to the camping store. And then home. Your dreams that week were calm, as if they knew you couldn’t enjoy a romp in a field.

When Saturday night bled into Sunday morning, you drove your car to Shallow Ridge. You placed the keys on the front seat and left your phone under the seat itself.

You waited for four hours, but eventually a truck pulled up and the man you saw in various Facebook photos and tagged family Christmas cards made his way into the dense forest. You circled back on the trail, head dizzy.

You knew you couldn’t overpower him, but you weren’t trying to win. You just wanted to make him hurt. You’d met men like him before. You’d suffered men like him. Survived men like him. When you two crossed paths on the barely marked trail and you were a beat behind him, you stopped, took out the hunting knife you were told could cut bone, and brought it down into the crook of his neck with both hands.

He whipped around, shock and panic on his face as his hands came back from his shoulder bloody. When he scrambled for his gun you sliced at his chest, then again at his throat but it wasn’t deep enough to stop him.

As he advanced on you, fumbling with his shotgun, you tumbled backwards. He fell with you, pinning you down beneath the full weight of his body on your stomach. Twisting beneath him you almost got onto your side when you sunk the knife into his inner thigh, remembering the artery there from your mother’s surgery. He got the gun loaded, aimed it at your chest, “Crazy bitch!”

“Fuck you.”

He fired.

Your breath left steam as it flitted weakly from your body, frost still on the ground. Your mouth was open as blood held your face to the forest floor. As your vision darkened, you watched the man slump over and onto the ground beside you. His eyes were open and unmoving.

A burst of green erupted from beneath you, and you smiled as you sank down into the light.

“Did you miss me terribly, my little doe?”

(Part three)

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