Dusting off my molotovs

[[7]]

For those who know, I was Takeikin on &T, where I posted sparsely, and Jack on &Z where I posted a little bit more, but not to where I'd think anyone would really remember. No BI kidiot stuff here except I liked nightops. Mostly BLTC and the tech boards I guess.

Anyway, I play Rocket League (plat) and CS:GO (silver/wood), and I used to play and operate some servers for AssaultCube, which resembles CS 1.6 but probably less interesting.
I always play competitive and take it incredibly seriously but I also have grown to enjoy the learning process of failure. This is fortunate, as I've probably peaked and plateaued by now, lol.

 

[Arnox]

Welcome to Sanctuary!

I'm going to admit, I have some major reservations when it comes to old &T members. BUT as long as you follow all the rules, you are definitely welcome here.

So, were you around then when Zoklet finally shut down or did you leave the site earlier?

 

[[7]]

Yeah, I've read that and some other posts. I don't plan to bring any of that here, but then I was never that kind of poster anyway.

Let's see, Sept 2014? I suppose I would have still been around, but probably not very active as I would have been busy with a new job I'd started at the beginning of the year and I think I didn't have consistent access to a decent device at the time. I tried to follow the splinters later but pretty much gave up. NIS is overall underwhelming, a bit tragically tryhard.

 

[Arnox]

NIS is overall underwhelming, a bit tragically tryhard.

The members certainly are. Admin though isn't trying hard enough. lol But then again, after 5 splinter sites and none of them being able to manage that userbase with any degree of rules, the current zoo that they have is probably the absolute best thing for them. Another thing is how old TOTSE members are treated like royalty there. Sort of. There's an awful lot of, "Oh, I visited TOTSE once when I was in kindergarten so I'm a real OG totsean," going around. It's very reminiscent of the medieval times where people would grasp at any possibility that they were of noble blood, no matter how ridiculous the claim was or how far removed they were. And then, of course, there's the fact that people at NIS are laughably trying their hardest to look like they don't care about anything.

It's a fucking clown world. And it makes me sad.

Ah well. In any case, we at Sanctuary are moving on and moving forward. TOTSE was an amazing thing, but sadly, no longer with us and will never truly be again. But that doesn't mean we can't learn from the past and begin anew with something fresh, and new people to indoctrinate teach. This is the way forward. Not sulking in the past.

 

[[7]]

It has a place in my heart but it was given notice to vacate my head quite a while ago. I'm also more interested in the freedom of speech and preservation of useful information than hax/dox/phreax/shoplifting, lol. So it seems this is conveniently the place where the intended spirit is to be found. I bet the Hacker's Manifesto resonates with this crowd just as well. I'm not sure about "Da Art of Burging" though, seems like that one could go either way.

 

[Arnox]

I bet the Hacker's Manifesto resonates with this crowd just as well.

I used to love it back when I was a kid. Now I find it too edgy, but the core point, that misjudgement too often happens to those who are seeking to broaden their horizons and learn more about the world and about people, is definitely a good one. Instead though, in terms of inspirational written works for Sanctuary, I will point to a letter penned by Jeff Hunter to the Contra Costa Times about an article that decried TOTSE as a dangerous terrorist site.

Jeff's Letter to the Editor of the Contra Costa Times

To Whom It May Concern:

As the System Operator of & the Temple of the Screaming Electron and
the network co-ordinator for NIRVANAnet(tm) I wanted to thank your
paper for the extra publicity that Michael Liedtke's sensationalistic
article "MODEM OPERANDI: Tips On Crime Go On-line" has provided for our
BBS network.

I helped to start NIRVANAnet(tm) four years ago because I wanted to
create a computer network where ideas, any ideas, could be freely
exchanged between people. I wanted to create a network that was open,
free, and easily accessable.

When you exchange messages with people on NIRVANAnet(tm), you do not
know the age, gender, race, religious affiliation, political party,
hair length, mode of dress, or sexual orientation of the person you are
talking to. Because of this, people cannot be pigeon-holed into neat
little categories and you end up learning an amazing amount about the
thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of a much wider array of people than
you would encounter in everyday life. On our network teenagers talk to
grandparents, bikers talk with born-again Christians, and Socialists
talk to Republicans. These people would never speak to one another if
they met on the street, but because they can use computers, they freely
exchange thoughts, ideas, dreams and hopes.

Mr. Liedtke stated that we are "Using the First Amendment as a legal
shield" and that "The bulletin boards remain open by straddling a fine
line between the legal definitions of free speech and criminal
behavior."

I'm surprised that a newspaper reporter, of all people, has such a
callous disregard for the First Ammendment. There is no "fine line". We
are not engaged in criminal activities, period. We are engaged in
speech, period. Speech is protected, period. When the day comes where
people can be imprisoned merely for what they say or what they think,
it's time to move to another country. As Pacific Bell spokesman Craig
Watts stated in the article "You can't prosecute someone for bad
thoughts."

The information in the "criminal" text files that Mr. Liedtke refers to
can be found in any well-stocked library, or ordered from any number of
book publishers in this country. Many of our files were found on the
Internet, a worldwide government/university/industry network funded in
part by the National Science Foundation.

The article also stated that "The Times isn't publishing the phone
numbers of the rebel bulletin boards as a children's safeguard."
Another reason might be that people would actually call the systems in
question and find out that Mr. Liedtke did not tell the whole story,
and as everyone knows, the most effective way to lie is to only tell
part of the truth.

There are other replies to the news article as well that are pretty good too, but Jeff's response definitely stands out for me and sums up the rest of the replies.

 

[[7]]

Word.

You ever get any people from lainchan? I get similar vibes.

 

[Arnox]

Word.

You ever get any people from lainchan? I get similar vibes.

Nah. We've remained kinda small, sadly. I was going to pay for advertising the site, but recent financial circumstances have put a damper on that, so I try to spread the word that we exist through discussions, videos, and word-of-mouth. What really sucks though is that in order to keep my identity anonymous, I can't do any local advertising, which would be super easy and helpful, normally. So that's out.

As to the chans, nah, I don't really have a super great opinion of the format. Although it's ironic that you bring those up, because @Vendor-Lazarus here was telling me recently in the chatbox that a bunch of chans were getting spammed with CP (allegedly) in order to bring them down. Could be radical liberals. Could be the chans eating each other. Who knows? In any case, this was my response as to whether Sanctuary was vulnerable to such an attack:

Vendor-Lazarus:
You got any contingency plans for when/if this happens? https://communities.win/c/KotakuInAction2/p/15HvPlwLXZ/does-anyone-know-what-wakarimase/c

• 
  Arnox:
  This post is a little suspect. For one, people can't find a record of it anywhere it looks like. Further, these supposedly attacked sites are not given names whatsoever. Which sites are getting attacked? Which hosts are allowing them to be deplatformed? We don't know. Not keeping a log of IPs is also a little silly, but it could be plausible.
  Racial slurs are also used which... Is not a good look.
  Edited
  
  Sunday at 1:29 AM

• 
  Arnox:
  Nevertheless, the main point it brings up, attack through spamming CP, is a legitimate concern. The best way to beat this I think is through a combination of temporary registration lockdowns during attacks and scrubbing all accounts that have not made posts whatsoever so sleeper accounts cannot be implemented. Further steps can be taken as well on the database level if the bots are posting a single post in order to disguise sleeper accounts.
  
  
  Sunday at 1:32 AM

• 
  Arnox:
  Even further, should all that fail, we can fall back to full manual account registration as in, all new people need to be recommended to the staff first before an account can be created here. Not a full-proof way to stop ALL bots/sleeper accounts ever, but the point is to make it as annoying and as difficult as possible for the attackers. You want to spam the forums? Fine. Have fun getting every single account manually approved without arising suspicion and then having to manually do it all over again once the accounts get banned for spamming.
  
  
  Sunday at 1:35 AM

• 
  Arnox:
  No, the REAL concern is not necessarily with the software weapons at our disposal to fight this kind of attack, but instead at the host level. They need to be able to stop DDoS attacks (that's already a thing here and has been for a long time) and finally, they simply need to be understanding of the fact that if CP is posted here, it is NOT under our approval and will be removed ASAP. If they agree to that, then Sanctuary is safe in the long term.
  Edited
  
  Sunday at 1:37 AM

• 
  Arnox:
  Checking our host's policies, they do indeed allow their customers to be online AS LONG AS the customers remedy the violating content that gets reported to them (and it's already our policy to nuke CP and has been since forever). Further, counter-notices can be filed if the customer feels the claim is not legitimate.
  Edited
  
  Sunday at 1:49 AM

• 
  Arnox:
  Thinking about this a little further, these attacks it sounds like are 99% made on image boards. Where you can just post anonymously without any account creation.
  
  
  Sunday at 1:54 AM

• 
  Arnox:
  Sanctuary does not have that weakness. We DO allow guest posting, but it is only through my tolerance that that is allowed, and all guest posts need to be moderator approved anyway.
• 
  Arnox:
  All that said, such attacks are VERY tiresome. The good news is, we may be able to reverse the effects of such an attack and actually turn it to our advantage by making a story out of it and getting our name out there much more. After all, on the internet, attention is power.
  Edited
  
  Sunday at 8:15 AM
• 
  Arnox:
  Jeremy at the Quartering for example may take this up. If he actually responds. Now, I HAVE gotten responses out of him, but it's like pulling teeth. Also, I should say, we CAN prove that Sanctuary for at VERY LEAST two years straight has never allowed CP. And that gives us a LOT of ammo against such absurd accusations.

Sorry about the terrible formatting. It pasted that way and I'm too lazy to change it. lol

 

[Drathnoxis]

What makes you better than Hitler?