asie

@asie@mk.asie.pl

Programmer at day, part-time cursed knowledge seeker at night. Retro computing, ZZT, weird hobby trivia, et cetera.

Opinions mine only and not those of my employers, friends, family members and/or guardian angels.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

asie, to random

So apparently Stripe banned "Transactions that provide compensation to creators without an underlying piece of digital content associated" recently.

But they still brag about GitHub Sponsors, a service which is predominantly used for exactly that, as a key client of theirs: https://stripe.com/en-pl/customers/github

What?

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

this is how i control heating in this place now

asie,

@whitequark how many times has your heater meowed so far

NovaSquirrel, to random
@NovaSquirrel@chitter.xyz avatar

I like magical girl stuff a lot and I want to get some intuition for how to write it so I can use it in roleplays. I'm guessing a lot of that is just making sure I have a lot of exposure to the genre while also trying to actually pay attention to tropes and how they do things, though adapting stuff from anime into a format that's purely text seems nontrivial. There's gotta be fanfics at the very least that I can look at to get a hint for how to approach that.

asie,

@NovaSquirrel Why not see how especially light novels and also comics, both more text based than animation, do it?

asie, to random

PSA: On April 15th, 2024 around 19:00 UTC, the Minecraft mod OpenComputers will be publishing patches and a security advisory concerning a vulnerability found in the mod.

asie,

I apologize for the previous post having the wrong date.

NovaSquirrel, to random
@NovaSquirrel@chitter.xyz avatar

It does feel kind of fitting in a weird way that my last hours spent online on 3DS involved me assuring people that yes, it's not scary or hard to hack a 3DS, and you're not likely to brick anything. Taking the "it's easy to hack a 3DS" meme all the way to the official end of the 3DS.

asie,

@NovaSquirrel even though online is no longer functional, it is still incredibly easy to hack a 3DS

GossiTheDog, to random
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social avatar

Pretty funny - Nintendo Network shut down today finally and Wii U and 3DS device support ended.

Pretendo, an effort to keep devices online via homebrew, kept quiet an SSL bug which enables them to spoof being Nintendo Network via just a DNS server change 🤣🫡
https://mastodon.pretendo.network/@pretendo/112238381209517548

asie,

@GossiTheDog The wild part is that this exploit was introduced in a firmware update in 2021, with seemingly no actual usecase other than to be exploited?

https://github.com/PretendoNetwork/SSSL/

"As of 5.5.5, CA's crafted in a specific way may take a newly introduced alternate path for verification. This allows for a CA's signature to not be verified correctly. Instead, the Wii U simply checks if the CA matches one already known by the system, but not the signature or contents of the CA. We have no idea why this change was made, as it does not benefit Nintendo at all. It almost feels intentional."

asie, to random

Finally, I will learn how to draw!

NovaSquirrel, to random
@NovaSquirrel@chitter.xyz avatar

It's unfortunate that by the time I was able to afford to buy consoles myself they stopped coming in fun colors and designs. At least emulator handhelds are still doing that (there's lots of fun FunKey S colors for example) but I'm not very into those.

I want the electronics I get to have cool translucent designs or at least be brightly colored instead of being black or white.

asie,

@NovaSquirrel Doesn't the Switch play with colors somewhat thanks to the side controllers and themed docks?

drewdevault, to random
@drewdevault@fosstodon.org avatar

It's fun to watch Apple bitch and moan and act like a petulant child because the EU told them to open their devices up, and I hope that the EU bitch slaps them into full compliance

Also I'm pretty sure you can argue that the DMA should apply to opening up the walled gardens of video game consoles

asie,

@drewdevault Does any console meet the DMA's (rather high) marketshare requirement? Apple sells more iPhones in a year than Nintendo sold Switches, total.

EU courts have already hinted at a critical but supportive stance regarding homebrew in Nintendo v PC Box Srl, at least with regards to devices that may need to circumvent its security to do so. (The "critical" part refers to them not being fooled by a piracy device vendor trying to use homebrew as a smokescreen: see paragraphs 49-51 at https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsessionid=AE86951070333A0E2E82D0CBD6006BAD?text=&docid=141822&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=2945625#Footref13 )

asie,

@drewdevault As far as I understand, not under the current requirements. Nintendo would have to "[provide] a core platform service that in the last financial year has at least 45
million monthly active end users established or located in the Union and at least 10 000 yearly active business users
established in the Union".

The Switch sold about 34 million units total across Europe, and that probably includes the United Kingdom, which is not part of the EU. That's the same ballpark, but far from the required number; even if it reached 45 million users (perhaps with the release of a compatible successor), there's still the requirement of having business users, made clear by the rationale behind this requirement: "it provides a core platform service which is an important gateway for business users to reach end users".

As such, I don't think the DMA cares about platforms with a highly restricted set of publishers (so far below ten thousand) like video game consoles. There could be an act which expands it, of course.

eggboycolor, to random
@eggboycolor@mastodon.social avatar

I need to rewatch that one interview video between Nasir Gebelli and John Romero sometime. I remember some rather ridiculous parts going over the way Nasir would program most of his games, in a sort of "live fashion" patching over the existing program binary and then updating hex addresses for the other programmers to use, and not really having source code as such. Something to that effect, but I may be misremembering. Either way, I want to re-watch that particular clip heh.

asie,

@eggboycolor @rainwarrior Hmm. It'd take some work (automatic completion, etc) to make the UI usable, but the idea of an on-console mini-programming-language is kind of cool.

I know Jeff Frohwein made a BASIC interpreter for the Game Boy back in the day: https://hh.gbdev.io/game/gb-basic

asie,

@eggboycolor @rainwarrior That's what I was picturing too, though I'd consider having a more graphical way to mark things like branches (arrows - think how disassemblers show them sometimes).

Frohwein also made a tool similar to DOS's DEBUG - one of the first Game Boy homebrew programs in fact, from all the way back in 1995... https://hh.gbdev.io/game/gb-debug

NovaSquirrel, to random
@NovaSquirrel@chitter.xyz avatar

Having another go at trying some DS flashcarts (actually following a guide for advice this time) and hopefully I can get one that works reliably, unlike the one I currently have. I ordered four different kinds since they're so cheap, to try and raise the odds that at least one turns out to be good.

I wanna play with MoonShell and DSOrganize again and maybe play around with writing a program or two. But I need a flashcart that I don't have to insert a few times in order to do that.

asie,

@NovaSquirrel the EZ-Flash Parallel is coming out soon and should be somewhat more dependable

asie,

@NovaSquirrel The DSOne new old stocks have a high DOA rate, yes

NovaSquirrel, to random
@NovaSquirrel@chitter.xyz avatar

I think most of the actual nostalgia I have for older consoles is focused on DS, GameCube and Wii (and maybe PS1/PS2?) That's the window where I actually experienced enough stuff to make an impact (versus having Sonic 3 & Knuckles be my only exposure to Genesis for a long time) but where I didn't keep playing those games a ton later on.

For DS specifically there was also a now-missing social aspect tied to it where I did a lot of DS Download Play and PictoChat, and I used DS homebrew a lot but my phone does most of the things it did a lot better so I haven't had a reason to go back to it except to look back.

But for something like NES games, I played them on an NES, in Nesticle, in FCE Ultra, in PocketNES, in nesDS, on NES emulators for Wii, in Mesen, and it's not from a specific part of my life because it's just always been there. Nintendo themselves keep referencing it and rereleasing games from it too.

asie,

@NovaSquirrel You can produce DS carts with your own homebrew on them, technically. There's two problems:

  1. They won't work on an unmodified DSi or 3DS,
  2. Manufacturing the cartridge casing itself is somewhat tricky.
asie, to random

Just say it's a labor dispute. "Stolen datasets" rings hollow if you're using ML upscalers, ML translation software, and ML face tracking software - most of whom have also been trained non-consensually and/or in violation of the expectations of the data's authors or rightsholders.

It's hard for me to agree with the current "AI" "art" hate train for this reason. Never seen as many people react to literal art theft than they do to LLM-generated content. I've heard of people complaining about "AI" on piracy websites which reproduce the work of independent artists they claim to stand with.

People are even complaining about usecases where using someone else's artworks en masse was already accepted - like inspiration/references. I don't understand - LLMs, to me, are best understood as highly imprecise/hallucinatory search engines, and I consider their output similarly "tainted" in a copyright sense.

Making the discourse about copyright will backfire. Adobe is already trying to get their LLMs cleared. Companies like Apple and Getty are in a position to. The thing about copyright law is that the house always wins.

It's a LABOR dispute. The problem is the erosion of creative LABOR, not copyright. Almost nobody minded the copyright violation potential (waifu2x, all the VTuber tracking programs derived from non-commercial use restricted datasets, etc) until the LABOR was threatened.

asie, to random

I received a birthday gift from my friends. They're great friends lol

NovaSquirrel, to random
@NovaSquirrel@chitter.xyz avatar

Sometimes I get really worried that maybe the things I want and like are just so niche that there isn't actually going to be an active community out there where I can meet people like me, no matter how patient I am. Like I've been trying to find a roleplay group I fit into for over a third of my life already, and it makes me sad when I think about how I could be looking for another few decades and still never find something, because it might not exist.

asie,

@NovaSquirrel As someone who is in that hole myself, sometimes you just have to build your own community - and show that sparkle in your eyes to other people. It's hard. It's really, really hard, and it requires the kind of charisma and marketing skills many would denounce as "cheating". But it's not.

NovaSquirrel, to random
@NovaSquirrel@chitter.xyz avatar

I think it's silly when a romhacking community makes you share patches instead of ROMs, but the patches are allowed to have as much copyright infringement as you want.

Super Mario All Stars NES is easily the most blatant example I've seen because the patch has multiple entire Mario games in there.

asie,

@NovaSquirrel On one hand it's silly, on another this is the unwritten line which seems to be either acceptable or too bothersome to try and enforce from the licensors' side. Nintendo in particular even leaves game decompilations alone, so long as the final result has to be assembled yourself...

Technically, any fan translation is copyright infringement, as the patch contains a derivative version of the game's entire script.

drewdevault, to random
@drewdevault@fosstodon.org avatar

Terribly sorry to all of the gamers to whom I pointed out that your big PC gaming rig and/or expensive high-end gaming console is an extravagant Western luxury that participates in a great deal of carbon emissions across the industry compared to simpler gaming platforms like the Switch. I wish you a peaceful gaming session tonight, where this fact definitely should not weigh on your mind and affect your ELO or whatever.

asie,

@drewdevault I don't like the framing here; older computers are generally more power-hungry for the same amount of performance, and non-Western countries are generally more likely to be working with older computers (especially as they're general-purpose devices rather than luxurious purpose-specific hardware like the Switch (which isn't even properly available without a major markup in a lot of regions).

The other question: does that mean I should buy a Mac as my next computer? My desktop, with slapdash parts from different manufacturers, certainly uses more watts for the same amount of labor as compared to a highly vertically-integrated solution like Apple's...

mos_8502, to random

$41.14USD. That's the BOM cost, in single quantity, from Mouser, for the eight chips which make up the new design. $41.14 in chips to make a computer which is, to be honest, flat out superior in capabilities to the Commander X16, and probably much closer to the design the guy had in mind at first to boot, before too many cooks came into the kitchen and fucked with the broth.

Obviously that BOM cost does not include passives or PCBs. The per-unit BOM price goes down as batch size goes up, too.

asie,

@mos_8502 I mean, it's the only one I'm aware of that currently exists that's not stuck in the 1990s, not limited to the //gs, and actually implements substantial optimizations, so not much choice there.

However, I've been involved with LLVM-MOS development myself, so I pledge my allegiance there. It has fairly good support for the 6502 and partial support for most of its 8-bit derivatives (including oddballs like the Sony SPC700 architecture), but unfortunately, designing a good compiler backend for the 65C816 is rather challenging =)

asie,

@mos_8502 As for learning more, I'm mostly just curious about project updates. I'm certainly excited about the idea of a well-designed hobbyist retrocomputing platform based around the 6502/65816 family which is closer to the Agon Light than the MEGA65 in pricing.

asie,

@mos_8502 My intent was not to use "well-designed" as a contrasting adjective. A design which does what it's supposed to with few issues and a low cost is a good design to me. Engineering is utilitarian.

A lot of retro hardware design at this price bracket appeals to nostalgia. I think that explains a lot of such decisions which don't make as much sense from an engineering standpoint.

asie,

@mos_8502 I was born in a year when the Amiga was already on its way out and the Pentium was dominating. It's not the nostalgia for me, but the challenge, personally, as well as the simplicity of being able to hold the entire hardware model in your head.

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