Month: September 2024

Final Fantasy 14 has been undergoing a series of DDoS attacks over the last few days, causing players to lag, be logged out at random, and even leaving some data centers inaccessible for hours. 

The attacks started on Monday, May 6, which was when the majority of problems were occurring for players. While North American and European servers appear to have bore the brunt of the issues, Japanese and Oceania servers were also impacted. The initial round of attacks lasted over 24 hours, from around 1pm GMT on Monday to 2:30pm GMT on Tuesday. 

Unfortunately for fishers, gardeners, and raiders, things aren’t over yet. A second wave hit the game yesterday, around 11pm GMT. That one is still ongoing, this time primarily affecting European, North American and Oceanic data centers. In a post on the Lodestone, Square Enix said it is “investigating the attack and taking countermeasures,” adding that “additional information will be provided as the situation develops.”

It’s a mighty unfortunate problem for the game to be going through, especially as hype ramps up for upcoming expansion Dawntrail. Many folk, like myself, are probably diving back in right now to do c…

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As reported by Czech publication Vortex, on September 7, Stalker 2 developer GSC Game World suffered a fire at the Prague office it moved into last year following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. GSC Game World employees have stated that no one was hurt in the incident, but one of the three floors occupied by the dev sustained heavy damage and requires “full restoration.”

Vortex reports that the other two floors used by GSC Game World were undamaged by the fire, but that the damaged floor may have been where the developer stored its backup servers. A GSC Game World representative confirmed that the fire occurred and stated that the incident was under investigation.

This was echoed by another GSC Game World employee with the handle Mol1t on the official Stalker Discord channel. Mol1t’s full message is as follows:

“It is true. Fortunately, none of the employees or office staff were injured in the accident. 

A fire broke out in our office in Prague on Thursday. Even though the fire was successfully put out, one of the office floors now requires a full restoration. Further details of the accident are still being investigated. <…

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The European Parliament just voted to adopt an EU Commission proposal to make the application of artificial intelligence safer. The new proposal, amended by Members of European Parliament (MEPs), aims to “ensure that AI systems are overseen by people, are safe, transparent, traceable, non-discriminatory, and environmentally friendly.”

The AI Act makes a lot of sense considering the state of the artificial intelligence discourse right now, though the first prohibited practice in the original proposal is giving off some real I, Robot vibes.

Among a long list of disallowed practices, is “the placing on the market, putting into service or use of an AI system that deploys subliminal techniques beyond a person’s consciousness in order to materially distort a person’s behaviour in a manner that causes or is likely to cause that person or another person physical or psychological harm.”

Of course, there’s always some grey area as to what constitutes physical and psychological harm. But that’s an opinion piece for another day.

European Parliament news gives the low down on the amended “risk based” AI Act, which passed into its draft negotiating stage wi…

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