Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Seoc 🎶🏹

Jabby 🍉2026 IS THE YEAR OF THE OC!!!

@jabby.bsky.social

ocs are at their peak when you are having FUN and they're FOR YOU. i'm talking "this doesn't exist in media and i want it to" "i like this character trope/archetype" "i love these colours" "i love this style of fashion" "i love when pairings are like this" TAKE IT ALL AND PUT IT INTO A BLENDER

January 8, 2026 at 7:43 PM

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antiacida - moving from twt 🌩️

@artantiacida.bsky.social

free catboy — {2023}
#grahatia #ff14 #ffxiv

January 8, 2026 at 5:51 PM

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Narney

@narney.bsky.social

Little gift of Vessel for my very precious and dear @helsdemon.bsky.social ♥♥

[ #art ]

January 9, 2026 at 12:24 AM

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롸구나

@garbagepaper.bsky.social

Prompto

January 9, 2026 at 12:05 AM

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Philipp "Soma" Urlich

@somartist.bsky.social

Hello!

January 9, 2026 at 12:22 AM

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🌸 han 🌸

@bunnalien.bsky.social

Gimme gimme!! 🐾

I made stickers of this funny little guy, by popular demand! Come grab them over on my shop 👉 www.etsy.com/listing/4432...

#xivmerch #ffxivart

A handmade (and cricut assisted) sticker of the gimme cat from FF9 in a cute and fun pose. The text around the gimme cat roughly translates to "gimme gimme" in Japanese.

January 9, 2026 at 12:17 AM

Reposted by Seoc 🎶🏹

ciph/kris @ "ShB", source: Me

@ciphox.bsky.social

two rough colored digital sketches arranged vertically
top sketch: imitating the look of a romance anime screenshot, minfilia smiles at a bashful wol. closed captions read:
- I will be making you mine!
- M.. my lady antecedent...
bottom sketch: both minfilia and wol in miner gear in a mine. minfilia is still smiling. wol looks unimpressed. a speech bubble for wol reads: Girl what the Hell

January 8, 2026 at 11:05 PM

Reposted by Seoc 🎶🏹

✧✦✧read my comic✧✦✧

@fragments.gay

January 8, 2026 at 7:17 PM

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shiho

@shihoran.bsky.social

pschlop #ffixiv

January 7, 2026 at 11:01 AM

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tali (sumire hanamitsu) @ 7.3

@demoniofleurs.bsky.social

I stumbled upon a thread on the FFXIV subreddit that I encourage everyone who is frustrated with the DDoS’ to read, as it goes over why this is a complicated issue with no real easy solution

www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comm...

Title: Irrational Attackers and you: A (potential) explanation for why you keep getting 90k'd

Is this actually a DDOS? Or does SE just have bad servers?

There is no reason to believe it is anything other than a ddos attack

In the last few weeks FFXIV has been kicking people off NA servers with 90k errors, this is confined to NA, and even if there have been some on EU/OCE/JP, it is orders of magnitude less common. There is no logical reason to assume the server software is different in each region, and since it it possible for both JP and NA to visit OCE, that is vanishingly unlikely.

Earlier today, when world first racers were getting 90k's they tried to data center travel to Materia to raid. The 90k errors then stopped on NA, and started on OCE. Once they gave up and returned to NA, so did the 90k's.

This is as close to evidence of a ddos attack as anyone who doesnt work for square enix can get.

That also means it is provider agnostic, as NTT America does not operate in Australia.

So that's the "how", now for the "why"

In threat modeling, there are two kinds of attackers, rational, and irrational.

Rational attackers are great (well, in terms of prevention), they are easy to understand, and can even be worked with at times, they are typically limited to actual hacking/unauthorized access attacks, but a rational attacker ddos could be "im ddosing you, pay me 3 million in bitcoin and I will stop"

This isnt very likely, as typically those demands are public to put pressure on the target company, but it is possible if they just sent SE the ransom directly... but again, unlikely.

An irrational attacker is FAR more likely, this doesnt mean somebody who is completely insane and has no reason, but someone who cannot be negotiated with, they just want to break things.

If a rational attacker is a burglar breaking into your home, an irrational one is a drunk teenager trying to throw a rock through your attic window.

In this case, I think its pretty clear whats going on. It is someone (or a group) that does not care about money, with no public ransom, and enough resources to repeatedly crash isp nodes (often multiple at a time) they are burning money to bring servers down for no gain. They are also willing to risk felony cybercrime charges (which this definitely counts as).

But why is it only ffxiv?

It isnt, its just that taking down any game costs a lot of money, so its very rare, even if you are just running a server for a few friends, you could be ddosed, it would just cost them far more to kill the server than it costs you to run it.

There are obviously DDOS solutions, but they really only work for website, and the solution for something that needs server connection is an active and ongoing problem, its (part of) why so many competetive games switched to peer-to-peer hosting, if you kill the host it only affects that one game, not the entire server.

Some more recent examples of non-ffxiv games taken down by ddos

Albion online, basically unplayable for several weeks in early summer last year after a mass ban of rmt accounts
World of warcraft earlier this week, im not sure why, but blizzard publicly acknowledged the cause on the launcher
League of legends also earlier this week, actually no clue on this one either edit: they forgot to renew client license, they did get hit with one ~3 months ago though that also took down steam
None of this is confirmed, I am just a third party with no insights into SE internals, using my experience with devops and cybersecurity to put pieces together

January 7, 2026 at 7:42 AM

Reposted by Seoc 🎶🏹

Tapling: Queer Zines 🏳️‍🌈

@taplingzines.bsky.social

Abi Stevens ( @abistevensart.bsky.social ) is making three gorgeous and colorful stickers for the We've Always Been Here kickstarter! They're pride themed, featuring various historical weapons. Like the rest of our Kickstarter merch, they will also be limited edition!

#PrideMerch #Stickers #LGBTQ

A digital art piece of a broken battle axe with the text 'battered barbarian' in a ribbon across the bottom. The layout is in a condensed shape to look like a sticker or pin design on top of a purple background. At the top is a small box that says "Merch artist" and at the bottom is a colorful banner that says "We've Always Been Here."

January 7, 2026 at 2:23 PM

Reposted by Seoc 🎶🏹

Puppetbomb

@puppetbomb.bsky.social

Like waving at someone who was actually waving at the person behind you.

Except you have a crush on them which makes you 100% more excited and 1,000% more embarrassing.

#estysayle

Estinien: A term of endearment? But why? Shit, I haven’t one for her yet f*uck f*uck f*uck

Estinien: H-hello, darli-
Ysayle: I’m Ysayle Dangoulain!
Orn Khai: Orn Khai!

Estinien: I’m a fool. Thank the fury she didn’t hear me. I shall expire from mortification.
Ysayle: what are you doing. Let’s go.

January 5, 2026 at 9:34 PM

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Khanter

@domitorsbane.bsky.social

#gpose #DBN-Khan

November 30, 2025 at 3:02 PM

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redwyrm

@redwyrm.bsky.social

Conversations with the 9yo DM:

9yo DM: People go on about how bad Stormtroopers are a shooting, but no one ever talks about how bad their armor is.

Me: Go on…

9yo DM: They wear this clunky armor, but I have never seen a Stormtrooper survive a single shot. What does it do?

January 7, 2026 at 3:26 PM

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maiza

@lucentflora.bsky.social

yotsuyu
#ffxiv #ff14 #ffxivart

January 7, 2026 at 4:53 AM

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Mike Okuda

@mikeokuda.bsky.social

Let's go exploring! It's been 30 years since the final installment of Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson. The imaginative antics of eternal six-year-old Calvin and his best friend, Hobbes, never fails to make me smile. (The last Calvin and Hobbes strip ran on December 31, 1995.)