Capacitard

Windows 12 better not break the cycle just because it’s vibe coded

Let’s walk through how that courtroom drama plays out: Cheater: "Your Honor, Riot bricked my $6,000 PC!" Riot: "Actually, we just updated Vanguard to enforce standard Windows IOMMU security protocols. If they unplug the illegal hardware cheat device from their motherboard, the PC boots perfectly fine." Judge: "Wait, so your computer works, but your specialized cheating hardware doesn't?" Cheater: "Yes! It’s property damage!" Judge: [Bangs gavel so hard it breaks] "Case dismissed. Pay Riot's legal fees." You cannot sue a company because their security system successfully detected your exploit. Riot didn't destroy anything; they just rendered a cheating device useless for cheating. If you spent thousands of dollars on a DMA card just to click on heads in Valorant, your only legal recourse is to sue your parents for giving birth to someone so stupid.

Well, that escalated quickly. There’s been a wave of claims by cheaters about Vanguard “bricking” their PCs, so let’s clear that up: Vanguard does not damage hardware or disable your devices. The photo we posted is a picture of cheat hardware devices that are sold explicitly for cheating in VALORANT (not normal PCs or PC components). Through our latest updates, Vanguard now makes those devices worthless for VAL, but does not in any way brick PCs or PC components or PC software. Our latest update enforces standard platform security features, like the Input-Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU), on accounts identified as using Direct Memory Access (DMA) cheating devices. These protections are already part of modern systems and when enabled, they block DMA cheat devices (such as those shown in the photo) from accessing memory in downstream applications, like our games. If a cheat setup continues attempting to cheat after those protections are enabled, the system may generate hardware faults or instability. This is expected behavior under IOMMU when attempts are made to read protected memory. Disabling IOMMU allows the cheat device to function again, but IOMMU will still be required to play our games. This means the cheat device won’t work with our games, but your PC isn’t “bricked.” We would not, and cannot, impact your PC’s functionality in any other fashion. This functionality only applies to systems attempting to use DMA cheat devices, and players who are not using DMA-based cheat setups are not affected. We’ll keep investing in anti-cheat to protect competitive integrity, and we’ll keep being as transparent as possible about how those systems work.

These particular women were running a makeup company. Women's products. For centuries now there have been parallel industries of products for women, by women. And that's fine. If they want to dance around for TikTok, I don't mind it. The problem is that this created the perception -- not entirely incorrect -- that women in more serious industries, doing work for major software companies or working in support roles for industry, commerce and infrastructure, were doing "fake email jobs" that included little actual production. What we've learned is that a substantial share of our economy is unnecessary administrative overhead. Relatively useless people doing useless busywork. "As-per-my-last-email's" and time-wasting zoom calls full of brain-frying buzzword salads. Elon Musk buys Twitter, lays off 80% of personnel, and still has a working website. What were those 80% doing? Well, it probably looked something like this: Tiktok-dancing women doing fake email jobs and having buzzword sessions over Zoom. Men who work with their hands, who make a third of the money that these over-educated and over-socialized women were making, naturally resent the entire economic paradigm that led us to this condition. I think we really are at the "burn it all down" stage. How loyal do you feel? Do you love the status quo? Do you want this country to burn in cleansing fire, or do you want it to keep going as it is? Are you satisfied with the idea of slowly, MAYBE evolving toward more sensible government and more productive and merit-based business practices? Or would you rather see it all crash down, and try to rebuild something better from the rubble? If you're building calluses on your hands making less than $40k per year, I think I know your answer.