Hexbear is... I'm just old I guess, I don't understand. My instance is not defederated from them. Whenever I'm reading a post that originates from hexbear, I can always tell. Like it will just hit me and I will look at the source and yep, it's hexbear.

But I don't exactly understand why. I can't see that they have any particular worldview, they just have a unique (and contrarian) way of expressing... all worldviews, seemingly. It feels like an inside joke that I don't have enough information about to understand.

Doesn't seem like bots, Russian or otherwise. Too vague. Not enough of a directed agenda. Is it just trolls? They seem to earnest to be trolls.

Every Bethesda game since Skyrim (and arguably Skyrim, depending on who you talk to) has followed the exact same script: exponentially longer development time to shart out marginal graphics improvements, dumbed-down mechanics and vastly less engaging storytelling.

Up until Starfield I had managed to enjoy all of them for what they were (with modders' help of course). But Starfield is so aggressively dull I had a free 30-day trial of Microsoft GPU and could only manage maybe a week of playing it on the cloud before I was literally too bored to bother.

Given Bethesda's trajectory, I have to agree with you. ES6 is going to be pure shit.

Wow, you even corrected the fonts. Splendid work!

Now they just need a Factory to create more Factories and they...

I apologize, this is Factorio, not Java.

In reality she would have sacked half of them without even being in the room and had them escorted out by the same security that protects her. Ain't nobody getting anywhere near her with a guillotine.

If motherfuckers aren't scared shitless by this (even Christians, because this asshole is talking about imposing HIS brand of Christianity, can't wait to see what they do to the Mormons) then we are all going to get what they deserve.

For anyone curious, I'll save you a click. I don't think it's particularly funny, but Santos is an idiot, so more power to them I guess.

I'll try to give an ELI5 kind of answer here.

Before the Internet, "networks" were mostly one-offs you would dial into with a modem. Big or small, users would dial into the systems to enjoy whatever content was available on them.

The Internet was created as a way to connect multiple, disparate network nodes like these. Now, instead of just letting people access your content, you could now let them access other people's content as well.

There were lots of programs made to do this. IRC for chatting, Archie and Gopher for searching FTP sites for downloads you might want. There was also Usenet - a threaded discussion forum. The discussions looked a lot like Lemmy - there were subject lines and when you clicked on them there was threaded discussion you could read and participate in.

When this was all initially going on the Internet was mostly text-based. We may have been accessing Usenet from our Windows 3.1 laptops (I used a program called Agent), but all these programs were doing was trading text. Slowly though, bandwidth started creeping up.

As bandwidth began to creep up, people realized that huge text posts to Usenet could be used to post things like photos encoded to text. And thus was uuencoding born - and it didn't stop at photos. But because Usenet posts are limited in size, big files would get posted as multiple parchives - in multiple sections/posts that could be stitched back together into a whole again.

It was in this way that Usenet - a system designed for conversation - became a way to trade files.

Meanwhile the web happened. Discussion quickly moved to the web because you didn't have to download a separate program to view web forums. At the time, web forums were inherently inferior (they couldn't do threaded discussion) but they were also inherently superior (they could be moderated). Yeah, Usenet was unmoderated and because of this it was basically a huge pile of dogshit by the time the web got huge.

Usenet did continue to flourish though - as this sort of Frankenstein file-sharing system. The problem is that most Usenet servers were hosted by ISPs because they wanted to host discussions - not file-sharing. So they shut their Usenet servers down. But the file sharing was just too useful to die, so dedicated Usenet providers popped up and picked up the slack where the local ISPs left off. It wasn't hard. Usenet is just a protocol - anybody can adhere to it and create a node.

And clients changed too - from the readers I used like Agent, to new readers that recognized that people using Usenet aren't looking for discussion anymore. They're looking for an easy way to find the files they want and a program that will seamlessly stitch together all those PAR files behind the scenes for them to get it.

This was the purpose behind Newzbin, which was an elaborate way to access the remaining Federation of (now mostly dedicated, paid) Usenet servers and easily find and download all they had to offer. It was super easy and worked very well, so naturally, it was fucked into oblivion by Hollywood in 2010.

The great thing about Usenet though, is you can't kill it by killing off one node. The other great thing is that it's pretty stupidly complicated by today's standards, so it still exists because it's been largely forgotten while Hollywood focuses on stuff like torrenting.

If you want to access Usenet, you will need to purchase access to a company that runs a Usenet server and get client software that can help you find and stitch together those PAR files. I am out of the loop, so I am afraid I cannot help you any further with that. But hopefully if you know the history of it and how it works in theory, it should help.

Yeah, this guy was a real MAGA hater and totally not 100% sucked in by their nonstop obsessive conspiracy bullshit rhetoric. 🙄

"During the online tirade, Mohn describes his father as a federal worker and rails against the Biden administration and the border crisis while declaring himself the new acting US president under martial law. The video was removed over its graphic violence, YouTube said. "

In the YouTube video, the man identifies himself as Mohn and apparently reads from a written statement and at one point holds up what appears to be a bloodied head inside a clear plastic bag. He says his father, who was a federal employee for over 20 years, was a traitor to his country.

“America is rotting from the inside out as far left, woke mobs rampage our once prosperous cities,” he says in the video.

If I can't find something I want to pirate, I will sometimes break down and buy it, but always in physical media, which I immediately rip into my collection. I don't use physical media, it's too inconvenient, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay some megacorp so I can rent media and pretend I'm actually buying it.

Truthfully in a technical aspect: somewhat. But USENET is also largely unmoderated. So for the purposes of meaningful discussion, there is little comparison.

For anyone who wants to do this, use Kill Windows Update. It's simple. and it works. There's several million reasons why conventional wisdom demands that you NOT do it, but I don't give a fuck and if you don't either, then this program is for you.