dexotaku - Slashdot User

Submission + - THE LOST AMIGA CD64 - After the CD32... - A Commodore History Documentary

Submitted by Mike Bouma on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @04:51PM

Mike Bouma writes: Lady Decade talks about the fate of the Amiga CD32 after Commodore's demise, as well as covers what could have been the successor to the short-lived Amiga CD32 (which was the world's first true 32-bit CD based home console), the Amiga CD64.

The Amiga CD32 released in Europe on September 16, 1993 and on March 1, 1994, Commodore Business Machines announced: "First launched in Europe this past fall, Commodore reports to have sold over 100,000 units in Europe in just three months prior to Christmas. By outselling Sega four to one and claiming 38% market share of all CD ROM drives sold in the UK (according to the Gallup Weekly Report), the Amiga CD32 has established itself as the undisputed leader of the 32 bit machines." Operations in Germany and the United Kingdom were still profitable, but Commodore was not able to meet demand for new units because of component supply problems and could not release the (already made) Amiga CD32 stock in the United States due to a legal patent issue .Commodore declared bankruptcy on April 29, 1994 causing the CD32 to be discontinued only eight months after its debut. (source: wikipedia and Amiga Report)

The Amiga CD32 still has more than 100 games released for it. Sadly most of them were straight A500 conversions to CD format without any or little improvements technically. IMO the most impressive game released for the system was Super Stardust by Bloodhouse, published by Team17. It was the sequel to Stardust for the Amiga 500 and Atari STE. Bloodhouse merged with Terramarque (famous for their impressive Amiga 500 game Elfmania) to form Housemarque, which is still making games as of today.

Submission + - Poll suggestion 2

Submitted by shanen on Monday October 25, 2021 @09:36PM

shanen writes: Current poll already seems to be dead, so here's a suggested 2-D poll for Windows 11 upgrades:

How my upgrade to Windows 11 went:

(1) Feels faster and has other improvements, too.
(2) Feels faster, but otherwise no better.
(3) Feels no faster, but has some compensating improvements.
(4) Feels no faster and also nothing else improved.
(5) I'm waiting for Cowboy Neal's report on the upgrade to his beowolf cluster quantum computer.

Giving too much priority to speed? But I think that's where the hardware requirements focus.

Details in comments obviously appreciated.

Comment Re:End of support must come with end of copyright (Score 3, Insightful) 264

by dexotaku on Thursday September 23, 2021 @03:25AM (#61823261) Attached to: 'We Need Software Updates Forever'

This. If you're going to orphan hardware you should be required to provide the info needed to write fully-functional drivers (as in using hardware to its fullest, not merely having basic functionality) for whatever the thing is.

Comment Re:WP paywalled (Score 1) 6

by dexotaku on Thursday September 23, 2021 @03:18AM (#61823235) Attached to: #epikfail, Anonymous dumped more than 150 gigabytes of of Epik's customers' data

thank you both

Submission + - SPAM: Forever Lifetime Support and Updates for Software

Submitted by joshuark on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @01:00PM

joshuark writes: The creator of Virtual Reality Modeling Language and founder of the first virtual reality startup, Mark Pesce in a piece in IEEE Spectrum opines that we need software updates forever.
Link to Original Source

Comment WP paywalled (Score 1) 6

by dexotaku on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @02:19AM (#61819809) Attached to: #epikfail, Anonymous dumped more than 150 gigabytes of of Epik's customers' data

Washington Post paywalled.

Submission + - Texas Governor signs internet censorship bill (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by inode_buddha on Saturday September 11, 2021 @10:26AM

inode_buddha writes: In Texas, the party of small government has struck again, signing a bill to "....stop social media companies from banning users or nixing posts based solely on political opinions — the latest salvo by Republicans, who claim that these tech giants are censoring conservative users". Any guesses as to when will the Supreme court get involved and explain the Constitution to the politicians?
Link:https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-social-media-censorship-bill-signed-law-governor-abbott/

Submission + - Poll: have you received a COVID vaccine? (slashdot.org) 5

Submitted by Anonymouse Cowtard on Friday August 06, 2021 @06:25AM

Anonymouse Cowtard writes: - No, not yet — No, never — One shot — Two shots — Two or more boosters

Submission + - DeJoy Is Hell-Bent on Wrecking the Postal Service — and Maybe Your Life (vortex.com) 1

Submitted by Lauren Weinstein on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @02:01PM

Lauren Weinstein writes: While we’re all still reeling from the recent horrific, tragic. and utterly preventable incidents of mass shooting murders, inside the D.C. beltway today events are taking place that could put innumerable medically-challenged Americans at deep risk — and the culprit is Louis DeJoy, the Postal Service (USPS) Postmaster General and Trump megadonor.

Submission + - Has all of RSA Encryption just been Broken? 2

Submitted by heretic108 on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @12:51AM

heretic108 writes: If a recent paper by German mathematician and cryptographer Claus P. Schnorr is true, then it would appear that Schnorr has just broken the entire RSA cryptosystem, by drastically reducing the computational effort to factor integers as large as 2^800 to just 10billion arithmetic operations, well within the reach of even modest desktop computers.

Comment Re:Donny Darko (Score 1) 118

by dexotaku on Monday February 22, 2021 @12:52AM (#61088614) Attached to: After a Boeing 777 Rained Failed-Engine Debris on Neighborhood Below, More Planes Grounded

I was coming here to say something about the rumour I heard of a reboot or sequel to Donnie Darko and this as a tie-in..

Submission + - The Big Lie About "Cancel Culture" and Demands to Change Section 230 (vortex.com) 4

Submitted by Lauren Weinstein on Monday February 15, 2021 @03:32PM

Lauren Weinstein writes: However, even a casual inspection of these claims suggest that the actual issues in play are hate speech, violent speech, and dangerous misinformation and disinformation — not political viewpoints, and formal studies reinforce this observation ...

Submission + - How far right uses video games and tech to lure and radicalise teenage recruits (theguardian.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo on Sunday February 14, 2021 @06:27AM

AmiMoJo writes: John was 15 when a member of his Facebook group volunteered to become Britain’s “first white suicide bomber”. Another advocated attending Friday prayers at the local mosque and “slaying people where they stood”. Another wanted to firebomb the place of worship. John became increasingly radicalised by an online barrage of far-right disinformation. “Posts of homeless British soldiers were set against Muslim families being given free homes. Now I know the posts were all fake, but the 15-year-old me didn’t bother to fact-check.”

Researchers identified the online game creation-system Roblox as having been used by rightwing extremists to recreate playable versions of infamous far-right atrocities. Tech Against Terrorism researchers found users being invited to roleplay Anders Breivik’s 2011 attack on the Norwegian island of Utoya, the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the 2019 terrorist attack in El Paso, Texas. Significantly, the rapidly growing UK white-nationalist group Patriotic Alternative is actively targeting younger recruits and recently started Call of Duty gaming tournaments for its supporters.

“Young people have found a low-cost outlet to appear extreme and get disproportionate influence and fear in other members. It doesn’t matter if it’s a 13-year-old or a 30-year-old,” said Hermansson. He added: “It’s easy to dismiss as posturing but these kids do damage, they run far-right campaigns, they produce propaganda and they radicalise other kids.”

Comment Update from Element blog (Matthew Hodgson) (Score 1) 2

by dexotaku on Saturday January 30, 2021 @08:17PM (#61010468) Attached to: Google bans federated chat app Element from the Play Store

Published update on the Element blog by Matthew Hodgson: UPDATE: At 2020-01-30 23:17 UTC we received a call from a VP at Google who apologised for the bad communication from Google and explained the situation, which related to some extremely abusive content which was accessible on the default matrix.org homeserver. Our Trust and Safety team had already identified and acted on this content to enforce the server's terms of use, and so we've explained how Element and Matrix works, established a channel for communication over any future moderation concerns, and expect the app to be restored shortly.

Submission + - Google bans federated chat app Element from the Play Store (element.io) 2

Submitted by morphon on Saturday January 30, 2021 @01:45PM

morphon writes: Google just banned Element, the generic client for accessing Matrix servers. Even though the default Matrix server has a strict ToS and a full "Trust and Safety" team, Google is banning them for "abusive content" — apparently because the client could connect to other Matrix servers that do not have similar moderation policies. This is the equivalent of banning an email client because it could be used to access a mail account on an non-Google-approved server or banning a web browser because it could be used to access a site that Google thinks is "abusive".

Deplatforming has now come to generic clients.

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