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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • Flash was a security nightmare all round, not counting the security flaws. It was just designed without any security features. It was also terribly inefficient at its core job, that was supposedly vector animation. It filled a gap in a time where browser and standards where not that advanced.

    Over time, Flash issues where never resolved, but the bloatness of the software kept increasing. Along the way, HTML got better specs, JavaScript got vast improvement, especially in everyone adhering to roughly the same standard (thanks microsoft for finally caving in…), and so the flash interpreter was highly redundant with the browser itself.

    For a while flash editors could export in HTML5 and you’d get roughly the same result, but with a fraction of the resources requirements, so naturally there was little incentive to keep the flash player around.

    I’m not sure if “killing flash” could be attributed to their author, or to the loss of interest.

    Also note that alternative flash players exists to still play older swf files, and some sites uses them alongside with plain video conversion for flash animations that weren’t dynamic.











  • That’s the plan. Attack subject that are traditionally seen as taboo/sensitive/whatever, then extend. CSAM content, porn in general, even random bulletin board with cringey content these days, are used as the entrypoint. You target those, people are wary about defending their rights because of the flagship topic, so laws are changed to put some extra layers of tracking, surveillance, etc.

    Step two is claim whatever site/service the current government dislike falls under an imaginary category that allows using these layers of surveillance. And these are extra hard to remove once put in place, because nobody wants to break their surveillance toy.

    It’s never about the porn, it’s never about the kids, it’s never about our security when a proposal shows up and talks about breaking encryption, privacy, etc.







  • It is not illegal to emulate a game that you own.

    In a lot of place it is illegal to circumvent technical protection measures, which is technically required for almost anything starting from NES era. Making it impossible to “legally” rip your own games (yes, even in places where there IS a tax to allow private copy of content you bought). So the only way you can do that is by downloading it, where there is no “legal” way to distribute it in the first place, so “legally” you can’t download it either.

    I’m not defending the practice, I’m saying that if you’re going the “legal” defense, you’re going to have a bad time if it gets attention. Fortunately, suing every single gamer on earth is not an attractive prospect.


  • Mario. Zelda. Metroid. For a time the occasional Splatoon. Maybe a Wario once in a while too. Some Pikmin. Even the built-in (paid) list of emulator games are attractive.

    Also, you severely underestimate the convenience factor for a lot of people. Yeah, I have a Steam Deck, and 95% of the time, it’s a completely seamless experience. With consoles, it’s 100% of the time. People want a “I turn it on, I start a game”, not a “I turn it on, I might be able to start a game, and sometimes it needs a bit of fiddling, not much, but, more than zero. And sure, I could have this or that other thing by going there and running that, you know, sometimes”.