[X] My Assistant

Nah the new exploit that allowed people to scrape all the private details due to someone's coding bug.

Oh, fun.

This shit is pretty insane, they used a world champ speed runner in conjunction with a hardware TAS bot to restore the beta content to Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time on an unmodified Cart and console in order to patch and reconstruct the secret ending that was dropped from the game in development.

Basically they use automated controller inputs to execute arbitrary code and reconstruct parts of the game to acquire the triforce like was seen in the beta showcase at game shows and in magazines and do a speed run with a human.

This post has been edited by EsotericSatire: Aug 13 2022, 02:27

Just fixed that third party discord client ([github.com] abaddon) for big-endian computers. Now it decodes stupid glyphs (emoji, which discord stupidly bundles in a binary file with offsets saved in little-endian format instead of network format) correctly.

I've basically got my own side version of the program with an ever-increasing number of patches and tweaks to make it look and feel like I want it to on my systems, and occasionally I've made a pull request to bring one or two actual fixes upstream.

So far, that's big-endian support and a tweak to make the text entry box not resize crazily and break everything on all of my computers.

First time I think I've actually succeeded in fixing a big-endian/little-endian bug myself.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Aug 14 2022, 05:10

but why Discord?

but why Discord?

Because I had to use it to communicate with the staff of a goddamn addventure game to tell them about a bug in their plain HTML + CGI site from the 90s caused by a server move. And they don't have an IRC channel for some godforsaken reason.

And I was on the powerbook, which would have caught fire if I'd tried to run discord's web client on it. And it also would not have worked on account of the old mozilla version I'm stuck on.

I hated the UI of the program and noticed some extreme bugs, but I can admire someone who spends so much time reverse engineering and documenting an undocumented API and then builds a mostly functional alternative client using it. Also I enjoy violating TOSes. Also this client doesn't send back unnecessary data to their telemetry API.

I will be dragged kicking and screaming into the future while putting up as much fight as possible.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Aug 15 2022, 06:57

quad9 dns is blocking files.catbox.moe.

So if you were using it, don't. Or use the unfiltered addresses.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Aug 16 2022, 05:00

Until now, I thought when I pressed the button of my power stripe and things turned black that it could just be electric lights having a small blackout, but today my sources of light weren't only electrical elements, but also a good amount of daylight through the curtain.
So I know: what goes into a blackout is either my eyes, my brain or my whole body (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)

after updating a whole bunch of libraries on my system, firefox completely broke. All tabs crash; if I disable multiprocess stuff I can get tabs to work but random things like some of my addons are still broken.

This is without updating Firefox, BTW. Still on FF 89.
So I'm compiling it again.

And my seamonkey build from 2018 on my Powerbook still works, too. So it's just another modern firefox instability issue.

Hopefully my "view image in current tab" patch still works.

Also it's funny how FF 3.6 (pre-rapid release insanity) was when firefox adoption was at its peak and no one's thought "maybe we were doing something right back then."
Or rather, "maybe we're doing something wrong now."

Man, gotta love those hour-plus long compile times on four threads. Thanks, Rust.
Update: an hour ten minutes in; I am expecting it will take about 20 more.
This used to take about 30-45 minutes.

Update: done in an hour and thirty-five minutes.
The patch 99% worked. tweaked the one line that didn't by hand, and now I have "view image" (in current tab) back in ff 97. And clicking the URL bar doesn't select everything.

Now I get to look forward to updating this patch for FF 100something in the future.

I had already set up my userChrome.css for FF 90whatever in the past, so the UI looks basically like I had it before.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Aug 20 2022, 03:07

I modified my Sega Genesis (Model 1, revision VA6) to bypass the "TMSS" ("TradeMark Security System") "Licensed by SEGA" startup screen. I'd already added RCA jacks for RGB and a buffer chip for the syncrhonization pulse outputs on the back... also an S-Video output mod.

The VA6 was the generation that introduced the screen, as part of a lockout scheme to block unlicensed developers by forcing them to utilize Sega's trademark and claim that their game was "authorized by Sega" in order to make the console boot. Forcing them to lie to the consumer, in other words.
[en.wikipedia.org] Sega v. Accolade was the fallout from this, which Sega lost, thankfully.

Anyway, on account of all the mods I keep doing, this thing just looks scarier to me each time I open it up.

Click image for full size, if you dare. The mod chip for TMSS is the one on the green circuit board sitting on top of one of the surface-mount ASIC chips; it's just a 4066 analogue switch IC. The dark green (not light green), blue, and yellow wires were original Sega; all the rest are mine.
[i.imgur.com] (IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/bd0faPE.jpg)

The "oops" that I marked on one of the DRAM's and on the 68000 CPU (chip behind cartridge slot) is where I cut a trace next to the trace I was trying to cut while doing the TMSS disable mod. Was able to figure out the points that the accidentally cut trace was supposed to be connecting (pin 5 of the CPU to pin 11 of one of the DRAM's, and also one of the pins (I forget which) of the cartridge connector. The cart connector -> CPU line was fine, it was the trace running to the DRAM that was fucked.

I figured that out before trying to turn it on because I decided to continuity test the surrounding traces to the ones I had to cut right after doing the cutting. So I'm glad I didn't have that terrifying "oh shit I broke my console and I have no idea how" moment.

On the downside, I am now officially out of cat5 cable to strip for project wire.

There's one other trace I accidentally cut (I couldn't find my usual knife, so I had improvised), but it was far less important since it was actually for the DE9 expansion port connector on the back of the console that absolutely nothing ever used except the Japan-only Sega modem. I fixed it anyway, though.

Edit:
The way the mod works is by making the system think I'm booting off of the side expansion slot (where the Mega CD is), since TMSS is only active on the main cartridge slot. It does this by mapping the cartridge into the address space usually used by the Mega CD. The only downside is that I can't have a cartridge plugged into the console at the same time as the Mega CD, so in order to get a region free Mega CD BIOS I can't just use a flash cart. I'll have to program a new EPROM and put it inside the Mega CD itself. And if I want to leave the Mega CD plugged in while booting cartridges I'll have to add a switch to the Mega CD so I can disconnect power from it. Totally worth it, though, since even Sega produced a few first-party cartridges that fail its own copyright/trademark check.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Aug 21 2022, 15:01

Was the music actually slower on Pal versions? I was watching people hardware mod to switch between then and the PAL setting sounded noticeably slower but I remember the music at the normal speed.

Hmmm on modded hardware with a pal switch Sonic 2 sounded way slower.

Listening to a pal hardware megadrive it is only a bit slower. I think their mod implementation must have been a bit wonk.

Was the music actually slower on Pal versions? I was watching people hardware mod to switch between then and the PAL setting sounded noticeably slower but I remember the music at the normal speed.

Depends on the game.

A lot of games would detect if they were on a PAL console and adjust accordingly.

Listening to a pal hardware megadrive it is only a bit slower. I think their mod implementation must have been a bit wonk.

Who's mod implementation?

And if they were using a PAL cart on an NTSC console, or an NTSC cart on a PAL console, that's the reason.

To get the same soundtrack Europe did for Sonic CD on American systems, there's a reason people patched the Japanese release instead of the PAL one.


This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Aug 23 2022, 03:55

I think I am used the US song boom theme.

also wtf BMW adding subscription to activate features already in the car like heated seats?

Heated seats are standard in cars over a certain price.

After market costs like $500, so how do they justify charging 180 a year.

"dealers could offer promotions like a free month of heated seats"


LOL wtf is this crap.



Edit: In tech scum news; overclocking tools like dram calculator are less useful because manufacturers are substituting chips on products without updating Skus or the SPD content.

Back to manual RAM overclocking and also potentially overpaying for kits.


Edit 2:

Asus has gone pretty shite lately. Their Armory Crate software is a piece of bloat ware crap. It caused system instability on my comp because it installs teh RGB drivers and software for EVERY ram manufacturer and they all conflict... Its so dumb. I also have to wait months after they release a bios due to paranoia that they have messed something up and it might brick my mobo (there have been too many cases of them screwing up releases).



This post has been edited by EsotericSatire: Aug 27 2022, 10:33

I think that all this illustrates is that we should never update something if it is currently working.

Got an exploitable Nintendo Switch; dumping the NAND now.

Finally fixed an issue of bookmarks on Firefox not having the favicon, that had been around forever.
After trying lots of unsuccessful things (some involving restarting the browser, yikes, yet I had still tried, and it was disgustingly unsuccessful), here is how I did it:
- Exported my bookmarks as html (too bad it cannot be done with a single bookmark and has to be all of them)
- For the bookmarks missing an icon, loaded the site to find the favicon url, then manually added a "ICON_URI" part with that url for that bookmark (looking at bookmarks properly having their image for syntax, "ICON" is unnecessary in that method)
- Imported the bookmarks.html file
- Confirmed my amount of bookmarks had almost doubled because they were appended to the end
- Confirmed that favicons were working in both the upper and lower versions of bookmarks
- Deleted the extraneous bookmarks (good thing they were appended to the end and not sorted or mixed)

The special folder "other bookmarks" wasn't replicated (or maybe it was as a normal folder) so maybe it would not have worked for bookmarks in there? I won't know, and I didn't have anything not working there.

Anyway, thought: "good riddance of that stupid issue"

usually bookmarks without icons get one if I click them to open the pages.

work

Just, but usually think whether I need to buy new disks to expend my storage.

I think that all this illustrates is that we should never update something if it is currently working.

The problem was that the mobo was 'working' just lacking many of the features it was supposed to have at launch. Also it was stable but was using relatively high voltages for everything.

I've activated resizable bar but literally no clue if it will actually help performance. Seems to be hit or miss.

The problem was that the mobo was 'working' just lacking many of the features it was supposed to have at launch. Also it was stable but was using relatively high voltages for everything.

I've activated resizable bar but literally no clue if it will actually help performance. Seems to be hit or miss.

If motherboard features depend on vendor specific proprietary windows-only software, they might as well not exist.

I considered getting one of the motherboards with the useless rgb odities that required dedicated windowswarez, purely to have a good weekend trying to get to it on linux. usually they're reachable through the i2c bus.
ultimately I never bothered and still have the motherboad I bought with a 2012 build, but maybe one day