Cybernation Uncensored

November 4, 2020November 26, 2020

3D Printed Weapons and other goodies

A few years back in 3d printing circles, there was talk about 3d printed guns. The kind of things that would blow up in your hands, because they were made using materials that couldn’t take the strain. Roll forward a few years, and things have changes a little with this example, a Glock 19 Clone With Clear Frame!

The clear plastic frame is not 3D printed, but created on a CNC machine. It’s a small step to use an injection mold with high density plastics. And a little further to using a robust plastic to create most of the gun shape with some specialist parts (ie barrel, spring, and firing chamber) machined out of metal.

How can you use this technology both in your game and for your tabletop?

October 24, 2020October 24, 2020

Clone Insurance Part VII

Jodie’s Basement Part 2

I was pretty sure I was dying. Jodie had done a lot of damage. It hurt to breathe. I guessed the lung was filling with blood or something else. I coughed weakly and it hurt so badly I cried. I was pretty sure that my shattered ribs was preventing my diaphragm from working correctly. If I couldn’t inhale deeply, pneumonia was SURE to set in. I was feeling like I was impossibly heavy. The pain was a dull controlled chaos as long as I didn’t move, she had drugged me with something different this time, but with what I have no idea. I experimented with moving my good arm and realized that I was strapped to the old hospital gurney I woke up on. It was adjusted so that I was sitting up.

October 22, 2020October 22, 2020

Fun with Hi-Tech Body Armors

Hi-tech body armor is a staple of Sci-fi & Cyberpunk. Goo-based Body Armour may seem like a great idea until the slow knife pushes through, it cops a freezing blast to become brittle, or you get blasted with some chemical that makes it flare like napalm.

So once you’ve read the sales pitch also look at the limitations of the tech to find how to break it. Most have to operate within a limited set of temperatures, but PCs also push themselves (& gear) beyond the limits. So how does it react to stuff?

October 19, 2020October 19, 2020

Clone Insurance Part VI: Cheapass pens

I woke with Masterson staring at me, smoking those goddamn MJ’s. What a shitty way to wake up. My mouth was dry. I sighed. “I was hoping that maybe you were a bad dream.”

He laughed irony not lost. “You wish. How do you feel?”

“Physically or emotionally? Physically I am thirsty. Emotionally I want some payback.”

Something in Masterson’s grin told me that I just sold my soul to the devil. I was unsure how to feel about that. I felt raw. It was inhuman. The enormity of what she did was nearly too much to comprehend. And what was I? At best a dead end. Would Masterson himself put me down when it was over? His large hands reminded me of DA’s. The time he choked me. My brain unable to cope hyper focused on the hands. I decided at that moment I hated them. Masterson picked up a plastic shopping bag and tossed it to me. “Get dressed.”

October 17, 2020October 17, 2020

Unlocking the Backdoors

The laws Australian changed back in 2018 to allow the government to break the encryption on software (and apps) that use it. In essence, to create a backdoor. Now, Five Eyes nations plus Japan, India call for Big Tech to bake backdoors into everything.

You don’t have to go back too far in history to find the creation of a similar backdoor and the problems it creates. The TSA (aka Transportation Security Administration), according to some sources they would cut off the locks to inspect baggage and had received 3,500 complaints in 2011. So TSA had a special set of locks manufactured with a set of eight master keys that could open them.

However, due to a photo of the keys getting out, people recreated them using 3D printing. By 2016 The last TSA master key has been hacked, but the TSA Doesn’t Care That Its Luggage Locks Have Been Hacked.

This form, of security relies on people not knowing the secret. Basically, the phrase is Security through obscurity. It’s a simple trick to ass these ideas to your game.

October 11, 2020October 12, 2020

Clone Insurance Part V

Part V(a)

I sat upright with a violent jerk. I knew I had just been cloned. My lungs always had a wet feeling to them…

I clutched my chest. I had just been shot, I was bleeding—my mind echoed the pain. I had trouble breathing. I sobbed. Jodie died and I was dying. Or I had just been.

It was dark and dank. So dark and dank it seemed to have a physical presence. It certainly wasn’t my clone lab. I don’t think that antibiotics would have made much of difference. I rolled to my side and hacked viciously.

October 7, 2020October 17, 2020

Jimmy responded “Oh Fuck”, as the round cracked the vials

Who needs new Bio plagues, when the old are still around. Hidden in the background of the Covid-19, pandemic, a familiar face pops up, the Bubonic plague. Following a Mongolian outbreak from earlier this year, china’s had to shut down some tourist hotspots. However, there are more waiting in the wings as the Earth heats up.

October 6, 2020October 6, 2020

A Chapter of an upcoming novel (By Rebecca Schmidt)

Bang! Bang! Bang! Startled, Kee jumped, looking up from the page she was colouring at the kitchen table. Someone was at the door. Twisting, she looked behind her to where her sister had disappeared into the bedroom they shared, but she didn’t see her.

Bang! Bang! Bang! More pounding made her gasp, and her hands clenched. The sharp snapping sound of the crayon she’d been holding made her look down at her right hand. Opening her fingers, she stared down at the two broken halves as they fell from her grip to land on the table with a little click, flakes of colour following. It was her favourite colour, the one she always chose first – Leaf Green. Tears welled up in her eyes as she stared at the broken pieces.

October 5, 2020October 7, 2020

Cyber-Avenger save the city in localized cyberwarfare

Ransomware seams to be a constant threat in the modern world, where hackers just encrypt your hard-drive and demand bitcoin or other digital currency for the key to decipher it. For most people unable to pay they lose data on the drive and have to start again. However, for mission critical business operations, like Hospitals.

It has been estimated to have costed the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), £92 million, in restoring data and systems. In the age of cyberpunk, it may well be cheaper to pay the ransom to recover the critical data. Which ever way the chips fall, it seems likely that various parts of the city may fail from data-corrupted infrastructure.

For the locals on the street is can be a mixed bag. On the one side, an attack on the Metro’s ticketing system causes a charge of $0. Although people will have to wait for the trains to come back online. However, having a power surge wipe out 5 city blocks in the height of summer is going to cost lives. As people slowly cook while trapped inside during the heatwave.

It’s in this environment that something like this might happen, The Cyber-Avengers Protecting Hospitals From Ransomware. A new form of vigilante group that helps protect the city. Facing off against cyber-criminals or the fallout from the latest covert corporate exchange.

October 4, 2020October 11, 2020

Clone Insurance part IV

I sat upright with a violent jerk. I knew I had just been cloned. My lungs always had a wet feeling to them… I clutched my chest. I had been shot, I was bleeding—my mind echoed the pain. I couldn’t breathe. I shook with emotion, remembering my own death. Jodie died in the explosion and someone shot me on the oilrig.

I had been dying just a moment ago; I looked down at my finger, hooked still trying to carry out the last order given to it. Pull the pin.