That's really fascinating!

Er, but from the timestamps on the YouTube videos, this looks like they were uploaded several years ago?

> they could deploy anubi

The Free Software Foundation's position (from the linked-to article)...

"Anubis makes the website send out a free JavaScript program that acts like malware. A website using Anubis will respond to a request for a webpage with a free JavaScript program and not the page that was requested. If you run the JavaScript program sent through Anubis, it will do some useless computations on random numbers and keep one CPU entirely busy. It could take less than a second or over a minute. When it is done, it sends the computation results back to the website. The website will verify that the useless computation was done by looking at the results and only then give access to the originally requested page.

"At the FSF, we do not support this scheme because it conflicts with the principles of software freedom. The Anubis JavaScript program's calculations are the same kind of calculations done by crypto-currency mining programs. A program which does calculations that a user does not want done is a form of malware. Proprietary software is often malware, and people often run it not because they want to, but because they have been pressured into it. If we made our website use Anubis, we would be pressuring users into running malware. Even though it is free software, it is part of a scheme that is far too similar to proprietary software to be acceptable. We want users to control their own computing and to have autonomy, independence, and freedom. With your support, we can continue to put these principles into practice."

As other Slashdot readers vote your story up or down, the color changes. And the colors are ordered by how much "heat" they suggest, with red being the "hottest" and blue being the coolest. (There's more details in the official Slashdot FAQ.)

"The colors serve as a rough quality rating for entries in the firehose. You can sort for colors by using the color-picker next to the filter field. Red is the most popular, black is the least popular, and story submissions enter the firehose at blue. Your nods and nixes affect this, so the more often you vote, the more useful color sorting becomes. The lower your color threshold, the more content you'll see."

Interesting story. Thanks for submitting it to Slashdot!

But didn't we cover this one already?

Wait -- so you're saying my statistics are better than your statistics? :)

The real question is how many users are left on WT Social...

Both these stories came out this week... Probably because of the new announcement last week that "the rate of fraud through stolen identities has reached a level that imperils the federal student aid programs."

To make it more clear that this is new information, I'll go back in and add that to the very top of the story. (Although this was in the first version of Slashdot's post....) .

The issue has become so dire that the Department of Education announced this month [June] that it had found nearly 150,000 suspect identities in federal student-aid forms and is now requiring higher-ed institutions to validate the identities of first-time applicants for Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms...

That's amazing.

I just went in and added that detail to the story... Apparently as the plane was coming down, he jumped out of the emergency exit.

> Why post articles from a marketing slop blog?

The Washington Post began covering videogames, considering them an emerging new beat for their arts and media reporters. After a round of layoffs (that also hit Vice's Waypoint, Inverse, GameSpot, and other independent gaming-news sites), laid off professional videogaming journalists formed an independent, worker-owned gaming news site. To ensure their integrity, they refused all offers of advertisements. They're entirely and solely supported by their readers (who pay to subscribe).

That's the site this article came from. I mean, they can actually document that they aren't taking any money from the products they're covering. (I'm guessing people didn't know that...)

I think the real problem is some people just don't like seeing an article that's about one specific product unless there's a really negative faceplant that people can pile onto. (And it's really easy to then declare it's "marketing!" or an "advertisement".) It's not -- call it was it is; it's just an article that's about one single product. It's interesting; it's newsworthy. If it's not interesting to you that's fine.... But that doesn't make it marketing.

I honestly think people know that already, and it's just more fun to accuse Slashdot of secretly sabotaging your free news feeds. I should probably just get out of here and let y'all get back to the great Slashdot Konspiracy Cosplay. I'll even help get you started. When I say I'm the editor who chose this story, and it's not advertising, you say...

"Yes it is!"

Not an ad.

Have a great weekend!

Beats me. I've never seen one....

You're right that this really doesn't need to be about politics. But (as the editor who selected this story), I just want confirm that no, it's not an ad. (When there's a story about one specific product, I often see comments complaining it's an ad... But Slashdot really, truly doesn't work that way.)

For over 25 years Slashdot has had dedicated topic icons for both "Role Playing Games" and for "Star Wars". So "a role-playing game, based on Star Wars"... has to be doubly News for Nerds.

No politics. No advertising. Just.... Star Wars fun. It's a three-day weekend in the U.S. Why not chill with some good geeky conversation about Star Wars and role-playing games?

The em dashes are mine.

Bleep bleep bloop. This is a recording...

That's a real interesting study!

I think it's the same study from this Slashdot story. Always a topic worth keeping an eye on. Thanks for submitting the story!

That's such an interesting story...

I think https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.slashdot.org%2Fstor...">we cover this already.

Yeah, sorry about the errant line of "@" symbols. (I cut-and-pasted the wrong line from the file where I'd been pasting quotes from the announcement by the Open Source Institute.) Although I thought about saying...

"It's a congregation of Open Source maintainers, as they'd appear when gathering together in a game of NetHack."