A Hypervisor bypass came out recently, and since then a lot of Denuvo games from years past have been released by a scene group known as DenuvOwO (I think, either that or DenuvOwO is the name of the crack).

Much more reliable than the Empress cracks in their time as these seem to work for every denuvo game instead of being on a case-by-case basis.

Unfortunately only Windows compatibility for now as it requires bypassing some kernel-level features and drivers. So I haven't tested these cracks myself. You could, by all accounts, prepare a dual-boot partition with Windows in it. Probably. (Hoping it doesn't break GRUB or something).

Usually the release comes with a script that you have to run once/every time you want to launch the game, restart your computer, then run the game through 'hypervisor_launcher.exe". Then once you exit the game it reverts the changes it did to your computer.

I wouldn't be able to go into the details but it does make some pretty unrecommended changes to how Windows handle things, including installing unsigned drivers, so it's safer that it reverts these changes, even if you have to reapply the patch and restart your computer every time you want to play the game.

The process is a bit involved but at least Denuvo has been cracked, and I think that's a big victory and is probably making the parent company sweat lol.

Interestingly it seems that for Steam Denuvo games on Linux, because of the Steam Deck popularity, it just phones home to a denuvo server to authenticate the license so you can play denuvo games. So I wonder if you could somehow fake that call or spoof the info it sends so that it thinks you are simply reinstalling the game on the same device. It's probably been attempted tbh but I remember this used to be a cracking method for some games back in the day.

Just gauging interest for now. It's a question we've thrown around internally before but never settled.

As a reminder 'anons' (people without an account) can edit wiki pages like on wikipedia, but they go into a moderation queue that the stewardship checks and approves/rejects accordingly. They don't instantly appear.

On the one hand, more books.

On the other hand, there is a small process to it (adding the infobox and proper categorization) and the big part imo is we have to trust that people will upload the book exactly as it is in the source, which I'm not sure we can even do (and therefore won't do). It's easy to add a vandalizing sentence in the middle of a chapter.

So would you be interested in uploading books to PW if it was available?

I don't see people discussing this enough. But in my opinion this is big, and needs to be amplified.

The Chinese are by and large irreligious, and yet they are trying to send money to the Islamic Republic to the point that the embassy in Beijing had to release a statement saying basically 'thank you but we're not seeking donations at this time'.

Meanwhile western 'marxists' can't help but preface whatever they have to say about Iran with "but remember guys it's a theocratic fascistic regime". To their 10,000 twitter followers who all hail from Langley, Virginia, because that will surely change the tide.

Now, where did these netizens get the idea from that they support Iran? It doesn't come out of nowhere. People who live/have been to China will be able to say more on this and how world politics are represented in Chinese media, but we see that even as the PRC takes a step back so to speak on the world stage (at least publicly), the masses in China still know what's what. Nobody in the west wants to send money to the Islamic Republic right now, I can tell you that much (not that we could, it's illegal in most western countries.)

China is very diplomatic in how they talk. They trade with 'Israel', because they will trade with anyone (and the Chinese will be quick to point out that trading is a neutral act). And conversely, the PRC is not very public about what they do behind the scenes. During this war, we have seen Chinese satellite imagery of the strikes against US bases. What's interesting is that these were released publicly, likely as a flex to say "FYI if you were thinking of attacking us this is some of what we can do."

This has led some to speculate that China is helping Iran in some ways, but that's the thing: they're not flashy about it. The White House publicizes every strike they make because they want to strike fear in your hearts, while China works diligently at the desk. That's the difference. That's why we think everything is resolved through bombs and guns - that's just what we grew on.

When Yemen announced a blocus through the Gulf of Aden, Chinese and Russian ships were the only ones they allowed through. It has been reported that it is the same situation in Hormuz but the situation is still foggy so don't jump to conclusions too quickly. IR mission to the UN denied that Iran blocked the Strait just earlier.

Still this doesn't prevent the ever-so-righteous western communists from saying 'but China does nothing, but China is not helping'.

First of all: a- did Yemen and Iran even ask China to participate in the war? No, they did not. And b- why should China help and not you? Is it because you don't want to be on the receiving end of a bombing run? Well neither do the Chinese. So why should they die on your western word?

Frankly at this point anyone in the west that still follows the routine is not worth listening to anymore. They have become utterly irrelevant, just like that. Western marxism will not save us, it never has. It's never produced anything other than, well, nothing. If your opinions begin with "well Iran is not great but-" I don't wanna hear it. Everything that you say will be nonsense.

This goes for those highly-theoretical communists that think China is revisionist or dogmato-liberal-scato-whatever too. You have become completely irrelevant, just living in a very peculiar niche of "I think I'm helping!" but also "how come we can never rally more than 10 people who want to form a cult before exploding??"

Meanwhile the people in China know exactly what's going on. Do you think they receive top-class political education in school? No, like every other student in the world, they just coast by until the exam and then promptly forget the material. And yet they still arrive at the correct conclusion.

If you want to be a marxist in the west, become an eastern marxist. that's what 'western marxism' means: the ineffectual, CIA-approved ant mill that keeps you running in circles until you die of exhaustion.

Oh and this goes for ignorantly believing whatever western media prints about China too when it fits your preconceptions and stereotypes.

So I was sent a Bloomberg piece, reprinted here by the Financial Post because the original one is paywalled.

The original title was "China Gas Buyers say Beijing Pushing Iran to Keep Hormuz Open"

Big title and of course it instantly catches attention. They since changed it to a milder one "China Calls on All Sides to Protect Ships Transiting Hormuz" which is very different as we'll see but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, it's common to change headline afterwards for a variety of reasons.

Here's the crux of the article:

That's it. Out of 576 words, only 43 (less than 10%) are important. Everything else is filler that positions China as somehow being the only buyer of oil and LNG in the world. Know who else is a big buyer of oil? Literally every country in the world.

So we get two usable statements out of this: That Foreign Minister Spokesperson said something, and that "chinese gas buyers" also "said" something.

1- On the statement - that's normal. Everyone urges peace and resolution. Before you think that's damning, keep in mind China so far has kept a very clear pro-Iran stance in diplomatic statements, refusing to blame them for the strikes going on and reminding that it is US and "Israeli" aggression that caused this. There's accounts that China also provides satellite intel to Iran but ehhh I couldn't say about that. One thing is clear just because China doesn't send the nukes every time something happens (Posadas?) doesn't mean they're not doing things, it's just not flashy.

2- on the gas buyers... like I put in the picture, which ones? where? for which companies? how did bloomberg come across the information? It may be true, but they'll have to give me more than that to make me shut up.

Overall imperial propaganda rating? Super subtle, but it does have some signs that this isn't a completely innocent update they published. They call China the "top polluter" later below, and push the line - by focusing solely on China - that only China is the one that wants or needs LNG and oil. Literally every African country where people use generators to supplement power outages also needs oil, I'm sure China is concerned about that too (considering all they did for the GS during covid and with BRI), but of course Bloomberg wouldn't tell you that. Literally less than 10% of the article is for what actually happened.

So Square Enix did it again... they sprang one of the best games of the last few years without any noise and made Paranormasight 2 (The Mermaid's Curse). Amid 7 years of nonstop RPG releases and remakes, these two titles stand out as something you'd never guess they'd do, especially since it's a limited budget game (there's only about 20 names in the credits, compare to the AAA size that usually involves hundreds of people).

What can I say? They nailed it again. If you remember I talked about paranormasight 1 a few months ago here, contrasting Famicom Detective Club to it.

Paranormasight 2 hits just as right - and it's no surprise, considering how closely it follows the formula. Yet even as I thought I knew how to watch out for the tricks the game would pull, I still found myself taken by surprise most of the time.

It's a game that engages you, the player, to participate in its story and not just consume it. It rewards your deductions even if they're wrong or incomplete yet, and then likes to recontextualize them - what you thought you knew for sure turns out to be something else, things like that. This hasn't changed from the first game, and the enigmatic Storyteller even makes a return to carry you through this story. Although I will say I did make some correct deductions far before the game needed me to, but it really didn't spoil or ruin anything.

And like I said in my review of the first game, this isn't a game about the supernatural. At its core, this is a story of human drama and correcting the errors of the past. It starts with a young man wanting to find a mermaid because he believes his mother, who has disappeared five years ago during a storm at sea, might have been one. But then it turns out there's also in folklore "fish-mermaids" and "human-mermaids" - and yes, the difference is important. It is said that eating a mermaid's flesh can grant anyone immortality (apparently this is true in Japanese folk stories), but actually it might only be 800 years and actually there might be other conditions as well, possibly. Maybe. Also there's dead bodies washing up on shore after an underwater pit opened up, and an unknown girl mysteriously arrived on the island where most of the game takes place just two months ago... also you should probably learn the Heike clan's lineage and some centuries later an island in the bay of Ise disappeared under the waves never to be seen again. I'm sure that's nothing though right?

And this is just the prologue, I'm not even spoiling anything. This is how the game starts you, and it's up to you to figure everything out piece by piece. It starts with a very strong supernatural/horror vibe (don't worry there are no jumpscares), but that's really not where the meat of the game is. I like this approach; the supernatural serves to sublimate and elevate the underlying story, not to pull a red herring like many other games do. In the first game, you the player learned that curses that could kill people were real because the prologue had you use them liberally. It left no doubt in your mind that you had to suspend disbelief and whatever the game was throwing at you was going to be the truth. In the second game, they expedited this a little and there is some dissonance in the beginning, where people who would have no reason to believe in the supernatural instantly believe you.

Still, the dialogue hits all the right notes. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make your heart palpitate. You can be having a completely normal conversation in one moment when it suddenly turns into a tense standoff.

The story chart has come back, this time with 4 pairs of protagonists instead of just 3. It was a bit harder to follow in the beginning especially with all the history you're suddenly fed with, but it mellows out as the game goes. This is a series that plays with what a game means, and although there is less of that in this sequel (the first game had you actually use video game mechanics to progress), the story chart remains relevant. But it did get confusing a little in the beginning trying to put events in their linear order, when you're jumping all around both in time and protagonists.

The game definitely strings you along exactly as it wants to, and you're just here for the ride. But you gotta trust that it will bring you where you need to be in due time. It's a beautiful story, much like the first game, and very bittersweet. I remember reading a while back we don't like finishing things because it means it has ended and we have to move on. We'd like things to remain in a metaphysical state, never budging, so that we don't have to say our goodbyes.

Mind you, I haven't actually finished the game yet - I decided to pace myself for this one, and play a couple hours a day. Judging from the steam reviews it seems to be around 12 hours long like the first one, and I'll reiterate what I said about the first one too: I am ready to play 12 hours more lol. But I guess this is what the game teaches you in a way, things can't last forever. Even immortals die eventually.

Well, a big theme of the games like I said is correcting the errors of the past, i.e. having agency to change things. Which I think is a powerful message to convey; too often protagonists are passive in the face of what happens around them, being carried by the waves without even attempting to swim against the current. So it's refreshing to have a story that says, it's never too late to make things right. This is why Paranormasight is about deeply human stories at the end of the day even if they rely heavily on the paranormal.

And that's where I am too. I'm in what I believe to be the final stretch of the game, and half of me wants to finish it as soon as possible and the other half wants to take my time so I don't have to move on too quickly. Mind you as a mostly visual novel-type game, you won't have a lot of gameplay either and it's a lot of reading, so it's perfectly fine to take breaks and chip slowly at it. Otherwise it is a lot of sitting there and pressing A to continue.

Oh one last thing. I don't think it has much bearing really but, the island they say is fictional is actually real and the pictures are clearly taken from there lol. Here's a reddit post: https://old.reddit.com/r/ParanormasightHonjo/comments/1rg2wkz/the_completely_fictional_kameshima_island/. I think it was more of a liability thing to rename it and treat it as fictional but I think it's also a caution against not treating all the historical elements the game tells you as true lol.

Welcome to @ComradePupIvy@lemmygrad.ml to the lemmygrad admin team!

The decision was made by the adminship to add two new administrators to keep up with the growth of lemmygrad and its community over time. We set out to find users who were active on lemmygrad, made good-quality contributions and showed good conduct, and therefore could be trusted with admin perms, and Pup Ivy's name came up with a resounding yes. Our other pick was similarly approved but had to decline due to other commitments and we wish them the best, and will see if we need to fill in the second seat still.

Saved me for the second time in 6 months, holy shit.

Flatpak problems seem to keep happening on my machine, and this time I just couldn't do anything with flatpak at all. Apps wouldn't launch, terminal commands wouldn't work. No browser, communications, email, nothing since everything is now on flathub.

Thankfully I had backups set up. One is timeshift, which incrementally saves my system and boot files, and the other is the distro's own Backup tool, which is a bit slow but saves my entire home directory every few days.

I was able to restore the missing files from the backup, and everything works again. I'm now going through the issue to figure out how exactly it happened.

Last time flatpak decided to just delete its own PGP keys so it couldn't communicate with itself anymore. A timeshift backup fixed that - I have since set up hourly backups over 24 hours, since they're incremental they don't take up a lot of space and they delete the older ones automatically. Default home backup app takes a bit more space, I'm going to look at replacing it with something a bit leaner and faster if possible.

Still took a bit of time, but we're talking maybe 15 minutes instead of a potential multi-day or even week-long headache.

But if you're switching to linux, do yourself a favor and get a spare 1TB drive that you will use exclusively for backups. It's not optional, this will literally save you.

If you want to do cool shit you can even set up a NAS in your basement and backup on there, otherwise honestly even just an external drive you plug in is enough, as long as you remember to do at least daily backups.

A consequence of the centralization of the web into fewer and fewer providers and monopolies is that talks of piracy dwindled on the internet over the years. Then with the streaming boom of the mid-2010s it was completely dead.

Now piracy has become a dirty word that people fear to utter. You can be banned on social media for talking about it, and most people just avoid the topic entirely. It's like jaywalking (you probably know the history but it was a 'crime' started by auto manufacturers to claim the streets back from pedestrians).

Talks of "it's on the pirate bay" have been replaced with 'it's on netflix. it's on hulu with ads. it's on amazon prime and they have a deal right now.'

And yes, this was really things people said. They would readily tell you to go look for it on thepiratebay, you had entire websites that hosted episodes of your favorite shows for streaming. I remember watching the simpsons on wtso, literally watch-the-simpsons-online. It wasn't just the circles I was in back in the day, people really talked more openly about piracy. Even when as far back as the early 2000s there were attempts already by the RIAA to equate piracy with violent crime.

People use debrid services they pay for just to watch shows when you can still torrent things as easily as before. They rationalize it as being cheaper than paying for streaming services - but I pay 0$ for stremio+torrentio addon. Maybe debrid services have their extra uses but they just seem like kind of a luxury from the way people talk about them. And yes torrenting works perfectly fine on a VPN.

Even wilder (but not unexpected) there are people who tie their self-worth to paying for streaming services. Apparently you're 'poor' if you don't pay 20$ a month for netflix. Even in the era of DVDs we already knew it was ludicrous to ask someone to pay 20$ for a DVD. IP gatekeeps media from people, it doesn't allow it to be made.

The message is clear: if you don't have money, you don't deserve to experience culture.

The economic arguments had been thoroughly discussed and concluded back in the 2000s already; studies showed that people who pirate are not likely to buy the content so there was no 'lost sale'. Piracy also makes a copy, it doesn't remove the original, so it's not the same as stealing.

For a while this gained traction, and then monopolies emerged and completely shut down any talk of piracy in the public sphere.

There's a talk of convenience, that it's more convenient to open up netflix or steam and buy the game or movie there. But is it? You have to login, provide payment info, etc. At its hardest pirating a game consisted of downloading the torrent, installing, running keygen, and then going on cdfreeworld or whatever it was called to download the no-cd fix. Today it's even easier, most games come in a portable format.

And yet it's never been easier to pirate things. Books, games, shows, are still just as accessible as they've ever been, maybe even more. Used to be emulating a nintendo DS at the time it was in production was out of reach of most people on their home computer, and you had to buy a super expensive microSD card that had maybe 256MB of space on it to run an R4 in your DS. Today, you can easily emulate the nintendo switch on a home machine. You can root your 3DS super easily by just following a guide, and even download games directly from an app on it (but I found it to be very slow bc of the wifi protocol the 3ds uses).

Not only that but piracy preserves material. All those IPs that holders just sit on and do nothing with because they might have a profitable idea for it down the line. All those books that don't get reprints that can still be read, and those games that can still be played when you can't find them in stores any longer.

Not only that but it creates fans who will go on to purchase media. It keeps licenses alive, so there's benefits to the capitalist corporations too. They just want to pretend it's a solved problem because they fear it hurting their bottom line. A lot of artists got discovered in the music industry by being widely pirated, which got them a record deal.

You also own your media this way; it's on your hard-drive. I remember when Steam became a giant in the video game selling business, people were worried about how you didn't really own the games. Steam can ban your account at any time and you'd lose everything you've ever bought from them. You have no recourse.

Emulators also help preserve games. Nintendo's own NES emulators aren't great, they fail at a lot of tasks. This is "just" the NES so they're pretty basic games, but this failure on tests means that emulation is not 1:1 accurate as if on a real machine and can start behaving strangely. Open-source emulators are better than the 'official' ones from the IP holders.

Even on here we self-censor about piracy and other topics so as not to draw attention to the lemmyverse. It's become a ubiquitous dirty word and in good company one must pretend not to know what piracy even is, because corporations demand it.

The bourgeois state makes laws for the bourgeoisie. Therefore, mechanisms exist for them that don't exist for us, that allow the bourgeois to report a 0$ income legally.

People like Jeff Bezos do it in various ways and we'll go through them simply. Firstly, you have to understand what exactly income is. For tax purposes, it's a very specific category of money you tangibly made -- I'm not familiar with US taxation but this is a given in pretty much any system.

Therefore, taking Bezos as an example, his assets are tied to Amazon stocks. He gets no salary for being the CEO/owner, he gets stock. Unless he sells the stock, he has made no income - the stock is capital, it's not income. The IRS calls it 'unrealized gain' because you don't tangibly have that money.

However, they never sell the stock, because that would count as income/capital gain. Instead, they get low-interest loans from specialized banks/funds and pledge the stock as a collateral. The interest is like 2-3%, much lower than the amount they'd have to pay in taxes.

Loans don't count as income either, so no taxes to report. You can even deduct the interest you pay into the loan. And more importantly, they don't repay the loan either. Instead when their stock grows they borrow more and use that to repay the previous loans. They also never pay the collateral (unless the company crashes spectacularly); they pay the interest until they can restructure.

It's as simple as that. Then once in a while do "philanthropy" (giving garbage nobody wants to people you don't care about) for another tax writeoff, or open a "charity" for another method of tax evasion. Some billionaires live on charity funds - their charity which they fund buys a mansion, lets the CEO live in it for free or a nominal fee, and in exchange he promises to rent it out for free one or two days in the year. Other times the company technically owns the assets and "allows" the CEO to use it.

The charity route also lets them give their kids a tax-free inheritance. Instead of giving them money directly, which is heavily taxed, they get their kids on the board of the charity to continue the scheme and give them trust funds backed by stock. This is why Bill Gates said some years ago that his kids would not get a single cent from him when he died. He didn't lie.

Ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer bought the Los Angeles Clippers because it's a tax writeoff, even if the team is profitable. He can report player contracts as a tax deduction, while the player has to pay taxes on the income he gets from this contract.

Real estate works in the same way. The IRS considers buildings to deprecate in value over time, so you can write off the deprecation each year. Even as the building gains value and you can rent it, it won't make as much money as deprecation "costs" them money. A 50 million dollar building deprecating over 30 years still allows them to write off 1.85 million in deprecation each year, and that's as much as they're allowed to make from the building.

Where do they get the money to acquire the building and give it a large value from the get-go? With more of those collateral loans.

In this way they can say they "follow the law" and they're right, everything they do is legal. You won't find irregularities in their accounting unless they made a mistake - they have a team of accountants to do this for them. But they wrote the law.

Just saw the game came out yesterday and of course I had to try it. I finished the two tutorial missions and the first real one, which was more of a speedrun.

The game is more of a side-scrolling platformer. I only go by the first line usually before trying a game, so I was expecting more of a stealth/tactics game. Levels are divided into two parts: the casing, and the escape. During the casing you progress through the level and set up what you need for the escape. During the escape (after you grab the artifact) you are being chased by attack drones and have to leave through the escape route as fast as possible.

The platforming uses a parkour system in 2.5D where you gain a speed bonus if you press X while vaulting over an obstacle. It offers suitable verticality to follow alternate routes and get a better escape time.

The game gives short history lessons on the artifact and the culture to which it belonged, but nothing too deep. Could be a good primer into African cultures if you don't know anything about the continent, giving you a foundation to do further research.

The first real mission for example has you get back the silver bull of Dahomey, which you can see here https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/318416 in higher res than the game's (and yes this is the Met Museum lol)

I assume the gameplay opens up more later. The first three missions were a bit underwhelming: you have 2 tutorial missions (why?) and then the first 'real' mission can be escaped in 33 seconds, so it's kind of more tutorial. A lot of cutscenes too, hopefully they wind down later on. It's the old adage: show, don't tell.

The escape portion is kind of a speedrun, and you are rated on time taken to escape at the end of the level. So you better set up everything beforehand so you can escape as fast as possible. Reminds me of teardown in this regard. Apparently in later levels you have to grab more artifacts but the first one will trigger the alarm, so you have to figure out a route first.

The most unrealistic part really is the heist team has a French guy helping them lol.

If you play on linux: Unreal Engine doesn't play well with the compatibility layer. In your wine config, replace dll "winmm=n,b" (winmm.dll replaced with native, builtin) and the game should work. Thank you deepseek for finding a 10 year old Russian forum thread that had the fix lol.

you download game

but oh no game dont work on linux!

you download switch rom

now game work on linux!

emulator: Eden with 19.0.1 firmware and same production key (get on prodkeys website). Different emulators work differently, you can install a bunch, point to same games folder, and switch between them. It's on flathub.

get roms: add NSW Torrent Library bot to your telegram, type game name, it provide torrent file from their own website.

Not sure what to include or not, but I figure if you're not on twitter you might have missed it.

Lots of very disturbing new stories and details coming out. Basically the entire western elite is in on it. Details about using war-torn countries to traffic children too. They wrote guides about these countries, openly talked in emails about "bringing back some children" from their visits there.

More names, including of course a lot of Trump. Some perpetrators are still redacted but people are finding them out. Elon Musk, his brother Kimball, and Bill Gates are in it too.

Moot (of 4chan) had contact with Epstein and met him several times. Possibility that 4chan was created by "Israel" to stoke the modern far-right movement. Of course there's a lot of speculation and that's the problem with twitter, the cracked theories are lumped in with the actual facts and it gets hard to tell what's plausible or not. Lots of people want to get the views first so they find whatever they can and then form a theory even if they get facts wrong, just to be the first ones to get it.

An email from a redacted name saying they "are in China" dated last week of May 2009, and then "will be in the US for 2 weeks". People are trying to find who it could be, so far possibilities include Gates or Nethanyahu. They should cross-reference with the US mention though.

Oh yeah and that motherfucker Chomsky, pissed be his name, is also in the latest round.

You know who's not ANYWHERE in those files though? President of the goddamn People's Republic of China, Mr. Xi Jinping.

On the one hand it's nothing we didn't already imagined, but seeing it laid out like this from victim statements and emails is something else.

Are communist parties doing anything with this? They should.