disclaimer: I haven’t actually looked… but…

Historically, it is those large “complete collection” torrents that survive on public trackers… and probably still exist.

Thus, (sorry to be blunt) why I think this project wouldn’t really provide a lot of “additional value”.

The fundamental problem with using torrents to share small files (which old ROMs are), is that content is only shared while seeding or leeching.

A torrents health works best, when people are actively leeching. You’re not going to get that for 1 MB files.

You’ll basically need to force people to seed and not just seed two copies (the default), but like 10:1, which means forcing all the users to chance their settings - which I’m doubtful of this happening on a large enough scale.

… and the pdfs proposed solution is:

3.2. The Retro Rush Event Torrents will rely on a community of active players and archivists. To prevent obscure games from having slow download speeds or freezing, a weekly community event will be announced and shown to encourage preservation efforts from the community.

Goal: The community unites to seed their favourite or obscure titles. This creates a predictable time where download speeds skyrocket, ensuring that even the rarest games remain available.

I don’t think a rally of specific games is going to be enough to keep these torrents alive.

You’d basically need to run this as a private torrent, with upload/download credits and credit “boosts” for struggling torrents.

Or, as was rejected in the pdf, you use tor and create an “anonymous service” and host these small files, but the pdf is right in that tor is not the best tool for multi-MB files.

Anyway, I share your concern regarding the archiving of old games, but I’m doubtful this will help in a meaningful way.

I’m often reluctant to upgrade firmware. Often because I like to tinker and upgrading firmware (now-a-days) doesn’t allow downgrading. Which is kinda silly (from a technical perspective) as it “forces” you to keep chasing the next updates for hardware I own.

If my network printer works and addresses all my needs (works on windows, apple, Linux, and Android) - I don’t gain a lot by upgrading the firmware, but I do risk a lot (in terms of compatibility) if I do upgrade (with no downgrade path).

Like wise with my controller firmware. I only update if it’s something in the internet (printer doesn’t count as it’s firewalled off) or if something is broken/I’m not happy with the device.

Wow, thank you for such a generous offer and help making this community better.

I’ve got quite a backlog, so I’m good on games this year - but really thank you for doing this! It’s a fantastic idea.

I can confirm, K&R is the book written by Kernighan and Ritchie. It is/was the Bible of the C language.

Amazon link if you’re interested in the reviews.

Thanks for sharing!

Based on the trailer alone… this looks like Doom VR but with a Starfleet skin.

Couldn’t they have modeled it after No Man Sky or something where you actually need to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations?

… and force push.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where rebase or a force push seems to be the solution, take a step back, clone your repo in a new directory and copy the changes into you’re new checkout - ‘cause you gon’ and screwed somethin’ up, son.

trunk?

… I bet they’d be able to work remotely if they switched to Slack :P

Take a look at ssh-agent. It’s bundled with ssh-client and designed to solve this problem.

The quick usage is, create a terminal and run:

eval `ssh-agent`
ssh-add /path/to/your/encrypted/key1
#type in password
ssh-add /path/to/your/encrypted/key2
... 

# all commands in this terminal will use the keys above w/o asking you for a password 
git clone [email protected]...
git push... 
etc

So, basically you type your credentials once during the life cycle of your terminal.

If you really want to go full power-user, simple run ssh-agent (without the eval) and you’ll see it just sets some env-vars, which can be imported into any terminal/shell you have open.

So, if you put some logic in your shells rc file, you can effectively share a single ash-agent between all your shells, meaning you just need to type your password for your keys once when you log into your system… and your now passwordless for any future terminals you create (this is my setup).

Also, if you’re interested take a peek at the man pages for ash-agent. It has a few interesting features (ie: adding a password lock for your agent, removing keys from the agent, etc).

The handful of us have moved onto Crystal Lang. It’s a statically type checked and compiled dialect of Ruby. Crystal is fun to write code, but the compiler is slower (compared to go-lang/rust)… because… well it’s a ruby dialect (with DSL’s)… and the 3rd party libraries are limited.

How do you think this technology would be abused?

If the device included full audio and video surveillance - I’d totally agree. However, the device does not include video (and it would be a real hard sell to include that).

If all parties are aware that monitoring will occur (maybe include a sign in the door), I’d argue that minors are aware of what this means.

Perhaps, it would mean that students “finish up” faster, rather than loitering and vaping (or bullying, etc)… and if that’s the case, I guess the device has fulfilled it’s purpose.

The article did mention how a hacked device could be used to “play sounds” or trigger false calls for “help”, or gunshots. But I’d argue this would be the modern day equivalent of falsely pulling the fire alarm.

An interesting article and tbh, I’d actually support the device (… and I’m usually very privacy focused).

According to the article the purpose of the microphone is to listen for certain keywords (ie: “help”, “call 911”, gunshots, etc) and to detect when people are vaping, etc.

I mean, I would never install one in my home, due to privacy and security concerns. But if you’re in a public place, like a school such features make sense.

If you’re being bullied or need help, having a facility member “hanging out” in the schools public bathroom would be weird, creepy, and more of an invasion of privacy than a mic in a smoke detector.

That said, students and facility should be aware of what this device is doing and why. However, this article does a very good job of summarizing that.

Yes, the devices security is rubbish, but was patched. It’s not the first IoT device to do that and it won’t be the last (unfortunately).

Thanks for sharing the article OP.

There was another thread (which I cannot find atm), which said that the author cannot make an Android port, because due to the nature of android (or Google?) the android app would not get the same level of privacy as in the iOS version.

edit: I found the link.

I hope that it’s fear-mongering.

I tried to justify the technical reasons here, but the tl;dr is it possible for windows 11 to verify that the OS and hardware are “unmodified” (aka “attestation”).

They tried to do this in the past, arguing that anything that wanted kernel-level access had to Windows API calls instead, however Windows Defender which was bundled with the OS was exempt from this restriction.

True but attestation is a different beast. It’s just a hardware check that “everything is unmodified”. Any/all software vendors can use it. Windows Defender was a “duplication” of functionality (hence the EU smackdown).

However, as Microsoft has already integrated attention into Windows 11 (restricted to verifying security patches, for the moment) - it’ll be easier for them to repackage attestation into a simple API that software vendors (games/apps/even websites) and use (if attestation.check('basic') == true; then run; else exit).

This “simple” check is what software companies have been wanting for years: a way to guarantee that users are running their software in the way that the software companies want you to be running it (meaning unmodified).

The OPs original question was about removing anti-cheat - which I’m confident will happen and will be replaced with attention (as it already exists for android, John deere, iphones, etc).

Your points about virus scanners is different: I think virus scanners, although technically not necessary (after attestation is mandatory) - they will still exist, simply because virus scanners is a 40+ Billion Dollar industry. Microsoft cannot/will not piss of those companies “just because they can” - it would be in the shareholders best interests for Microsoft to throw the virus scanner companies a bone, allow them an isolated space to do their thing, charge them for the privilege, and require that Microsoft verifies that the virus scanner is untampered.

Thanks for the well thought response, you made quite a few points, but let me try to clarify where I’m coming from:

Windows 11 requires all computers to have TPM 2.0. It’s a crypto chip used for allowing vendors (re: Microsoft) to add secure keys at a hardware level, which will then allow software to verify that the software, operating system, and hardware are “unmodified”.

In a nutshell this process for allowing software to ensure that the OS and hardware are not compromised nor modified is called “attestation”.

And it’s something Google has (successfully) introduced into Android and they’re now “turning the screws” .

This means that the Windows of the near future, will begin to “limit access” to the OS (ie: kick people out of the kernel), only allowed signed device drivers, etc.

The next step will be restricting “sideloaded apps” and funnel people through the “officially supported apps store”. Once that happens, sideloading will either be removed or crippled.

When it comes to gaming: there won’t be any need for anti-cheat measures, because Microsoft will know (and will disable itself or the app) if you’ve modified the OS or any app/game (this could include installing a game on a newer or older version of Windows)

This is the future of computing. It’s already happening to cellphones. I’d read a great article (that I, sadly, cannot find) that talks about how technology like attestation have software vendors treat the user as an untrustworthy person. The upshot, for the user, is that if they get infected will malware or a virus the OS will know and will react accordingly. The downside, for the user, is that the freedom we have today - to install or configure our OS to our liking will be a thing of the past.

These changes won’t happen overnight, but it has and will be a slow boil.

You realize this’ll occur at the expense of Microsoft treating the user as an untrustworthy enemy.

This means modding (even for offline play) will not be allowed. Heck, even modify ini files might be viewed as “hacking”.

I agree removing the need for anti-cheat in principal sounds nice, but this means archiving games or porting them to “unsupported platforms” will be relics of the past.

Yeah, I’m curious and concerned “how” Amazon did this.

I mean the first thing I’d do would be login (cause it’s necessary), enable adb, disconnect the internet, block firmware updates, and restrict dns then reconnect to the internet.

Is that what these people are doing? Or do they just grab the latest firmware, sideload their app(s) and hope everything will “just work” today/tomorrow/ and beyond?!?