July 2024
Newsbytes archive for June 2024
Posted by Anon on Fri 5 Jul 2024 - 13:54Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, GreenReaper, and Sonious.
How long did you spend in Anthrocon 2024's registration line?
Posted by Sonious on Sat 6 Jul 2024 - 12:52Furality's 8th gathering brings together 21,000 furs to VRChat event raising $42,269 for charity
Posted by Sonious on Tue 9 Jul 2024 - 20:06 Furality finished its eighth gathering on the second weekend of June 2024. When the VRChat-based congregation had finished it had shown continual growth hitting 21,000 attendees registered and raising over $42,269 for charity. It has shown that in spite of the naysayers who thought that online only furry events would die down in the wake of waning 2020 pandemic restrictions, online conventions held in virtual reality spaces show no signs of slowing and are now clearly a new staple in fandom activities.
Being in attendance myself this year, I go over the strengths and weaknesses that these events have over their real-world counterparts. The article will also cover some highlights of the events such as the eclipse and firework show. In short, what we find is that while Furality has taken events and formats inspired by in-person conventions, it is clearly an entirely different beast.
e621 bans "explicit young human and human-like content"
Posted by GreenReaper on Sat 13 Jul 2024 - 02:11Mostly-furry imageboard e621 has banned explicit art of human and essentially human children:
Due to challenges stemming from changes in the political and legal environment, both offline and online, we have had to adjust our content guidelines to preserve access to our site. As a result, any content featuring young human or humanoid characters in explicit situations is now prohibited and will be deleted. This change also applies retroactively, and we have already removed all existing submissions featuring such content.
Administrator NotMeNotYou later clarified that "busineses partners" had demanded the change, which related to their ability to make money, and that on-site adverts were not the issue:
There is no single law we can point to as the tipping point, and while we were sitting pretty unaffected by most things, the same can't be said to a bunch of our business partners who did not appreciate the heat we attract. And since we can't function in a vacuum we have had to adjust.
Things change, they were okay with it previously and now they aren't. They want to continue making money and we're stuck with the consequences. And no we can't just stop business with them, there's no way in hell we would be able to cover the gap that would cause, be it donations or otherwise.
Guess what put pressure on some of our partners? That's right, governments.
Guess who would like to continue doing business in places where those governments are? That's right, our business partners.
romaniaglory said:
The last thing you ever wanted to admit was censoring your website to appease advertisers.Nah, all our ads are handled directly by us and as far as I am aware none of them had any issue with the contents we host.
A Heritage Foundation executive threatens prison and sexual assault to SiegedSec furry hacker after Heritage hacked
Posted by Sonious on Sat 13 Jul 2024 - 22:12Following a hack by a self-referred "gay furry hacker" organization named SiegedSec, the Heritage Foundation found that two gigabytes of their internal data leaked to the internet. The Heritage Foundation is a right wing think tank within the United States known for their stances against trans rights and abortion. The organization has recently published a manifesto for America known as Project 2025 which catalyzed this hack.
At first the Foundation denied the attack and indicated that the only information obtained was public facing, per a Cyberscoop article, while ironically still calling the action as criminal.
[SiegedSec] stumbled upon a two-year-old archive of The Daily Signal website that was available on a public-facing website owned by a contractor. The information obtained was limited to usernames, names, email addresses, and incomplete password information of both Heritage and non-Heritage contributors, as well as article comments and the IP address of the commenter.
[The story of a hack] is a false narrative and an exaggeration by a group of criminal trolls trying to get attention.
The best furry games to try out this summer
Posted by Wolfmanfur on Sat 20 Jul 2024 - 22:37If you have time this summer, now is a good time to try out some furry games. Below is a list of items that I found that are all available on the Steam platform with a short blurb on each one. Click the title text to open each game's page.
Digging Up Positivity July 2024
Posted by Pegla on Sun 28 Jul 2024 - 22:35In this episode!
- An exclusive interview with the force behind Brok the investigator
- Last month's furry charities
- What makes a fursuit really stands out!
- The results of the Pride Shirt give-away and how to get one yourself
But first, the latest charity news from the fandom in this July edition of Digging Up Positivity!
Animalities to return to 'Mortal Kombat'
Posted by 2cross2affliction on Mon 29 Jul 2024 - 21:22![Mortal Kombat animailty](http://www.flayrah.com/sites/default/files/u/2cross2affliction/mortalkombatanimality.jpg)
The fighting game series Mortal Kombat is a venerable title in the world of video games, with over two decades of history and even a dedicated competitive scene (of which the furry fandom's own SonicFox is a champion player). However, what really set it apart from the slew of other arcade fighter games back in 1992 was its ultra-violent "finisher" moves, known as Fatalities. Variations soon followed, and Mortal Kombat 3 introduced Animalities, basically allowing the characters in the game to violently maul each other with their fursonas.
The most recent game, Mortal Kombat 1 (actually the 12th mainline title, but part of a continuity reboot of sorts), will be releasing a series of DLC known as "Khaos Reigns". Besides a new story line and a few new characters (none of which are particularly furry), Animalities will be returning to the series September 9 of this year, as a free update. The trailer for "Khaos Reigns" is available on YouTube, and only YouTube; it is age restricted, and therefore unembeddable, for extreme, over the top violence.
'Bloomburrow' – a furry expansion for 'Magic: The Gathering'
Posted by Rakuen Growlithe on Wed 31 Jul 2024 - 12:31Magic: The Gathering (MTG) is one of the world's most popular trading card games. First released in 1993, there are now millions of players and billions of cards in the world. One way in which MTG differs from games with standard playing cards is that there are numerous cards of differing rarity, creating an incentive to collect and trade cards. The game is also constantly evolving with new rules, concepts and expansion sets with themed decks.
Their upcoming expansion, Bloomburrow, has been getting attention in the furry fandom as it's focussed on anthropomorphic woodland creatures! The official release trailer shows a young mouse—accompanied by a slightly older mouse, an otter and a frog—trying to master magic. Their antics in the peaceful woods are cut short when they find part of it burning and a massive wolf emerging from the smoke and flames. The three older critters are quickly defeated and, when the younger mouse stands up to the wolf, a deer, presumably the forest guardian, appears and the wolf backs down.