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The articles have been confusing - I guess they’re announcing a physical location, but also it’s a digital archive you can access on a website. Don’t know why they have a landing page that doesn’t clearly link to it: https://archive.gamehistory.org/
They may just have taken down the link because it’s getting hugged to death.
Unfortunately, maintaining hacked forked versions of specific apps is even more time consuming for devs than it is for us to just spoof our security environment on our phones. Popular apps like YouTube have such versions but that’s only because the userbase is there.
I’ve seen some XDA discussion on hacking apps but you’re actually just learning to become a programmer/hacker at that point. If you have a specific app, and you’re not able to hack it yourself, unfortunately spoofing via Magisk & Tricky Store is the only sustainable way.
There are three levels of security, and it depends on what your app will check for.
Basic: This is essentially unsecure at this point, and any app that checks for security will almost certainly check for a higher level. If you root your phone, you likely will just show “basic.” Netflix will be low quality and most banking apps will not work, even if you use the default root features to hide your root.
Device: This is considered the norm for security checks and current peak efficiency point for accessing secure apps. You can spoof this level of security with Magisk if you are rooted (optionally unlocked), plus Play Integrity Fix as a plugin to Magisk. Note that you have to keep it updated - it is based on spoofing a device fingerprint that is shared at the plugin-level, and which Google periodically blocks. You can also learn to find your own fingerprint if you are tech savvy, but it could still be blocked and can be time-consuming. This is the minimum level to use Google Wallet NFC payments and most banking apps. If done right, Netflix will stream high quality as well.
Strong: This is the highest level of security, which an app thinks will only be present if you have a fully locked bootloader and are unrooted. Some banking apps require this now, but a year from now, it likely will be the norm. A year ago, this wasn’t able to be spoofed, but now there is something called Tricky Store that can spoof this and show Strong security to apps even when unlocked and rooted. However, it is much more complicated to set up - be prepared to join sketchy Telegram groups and scrounge for elusive security files.
Jensen Huang said a few years ago in an interview that Moore’s law is effectively dead, and that they are focusing now on optimizations rather than transistor count.
I suppose that means optimizing their pricing structure for maximum profit, and optimizing ways to improve performance metrics without significantly improving actual performance, like these frame generation routines.
That’s been the elusive key to nostalgia that half of these remake projects (80s and 90s franchise revival movies in particular) don’t understand.
It’s about recreating the experience of doing that thing the first time that people want, not the experience of doing the exact same thing. To recreate that first time experience, you have to understand where your audience is now, and also give them a comparable “new” experience to what they had originally.
Conjecture: I wouldn’t be surprised if the TeraLeak in question wasn’t planned out by Nintendo and Game Freak, to distract people from the fact that Nintendo is trying to harass a competitor out of the market and suing emulators back and right.
Sorry, but at its worst, Nintendo is lawful evil. There’s no way this is intentional.
I’m initially feeling, “Great, now do Apple.”
But I do wonder how some of this ruling will be implemented. Forcing Google Play to host other app stores seems like it may be excessive.
Let me download F-Droid or whatever, drop anti-competitive barriers to it, don’t prevent anyone from using their device how they want. But I am savvy to the risks. There are a lot of non-techie people for whom the Google Play walled garden more keeps out threats than keeps them imprisoned, if we’re being honest. It’s one thing for Google to host an app it can scan for malware and designate as safe. Hosting an app store is impossible to verify is safe, I think.
Good overall, but I think Google isn’t entirely acting in bad faith in promising to appeal.
Hmm, it’s been awhile since I set up my Switch. Yup, if the user must agree to this at Switch setup, then you’re right.
That said a good lawyer would argue every game purchase is by default covered by its own right-of-first-sale and backup copy case law foundation, so would require a click wrap agreement affirmation to contravene that. Definitely that is required for each new game. So I think Nintendo’s not on reliable legal ground at the very least.
Is there a Nintendo license agreement? I’m looking at a Switch game right now and see no “by opening you agree to TOS” language on the box. When I started the new Zelda a few days ago, there was no TOS acceptance.
While most software today has a license, and Nintendo’s online store is different, unless I’m missing something it looks like only basic rules of law apply to the carts.
Yeah, I had the same reaction - The puzzles were definitely “learn how to think a new way,” my favorite kind. I ended my play on one perspective-shifting pattern puzzle that I was so close to beating, so I kept pushing myself through the motion sickness, and just ended up disabled on the bed feeling ill and unable to move for two hours (without completing the puzzle).
I tried a bunch of things - permanent reticle in center of screen, disabling walk shake, etc. I still play high-motion FPS shooters with no issue. It’s just some games (The Forest was another). I am guessing it’s a middleware-introduced visual filter that adds 15-25ms delay to screen latency, just enough to mess with inner ear visual/motion sync in sensitive people.
Sorry, I’m not sure I understand where you’re getting your limitation on GOG and expansive interpretation on Valve.
GOG’s says a court order that “specifically entitled someone to your GOG personal account” is enough. Arguably a will that leaves “my personal GOG account,” recognized by a court determining estate, would suffice. Why wouldn’t it?
Conversely, Valve is specific that Steam accounts “cannot be transferred via a will.” Not only is Valve affirmatively denying a will qualifies, it seems Valve is likely relying on an interpretation that the account is not descendible in the first place.
Into the Breach is so good and well-made, but depressingly, I’m just not smart enough to get addicted to it.
By that I mean, it is legitimately challenging. Battles take a bit longer because I need to really think through my moves, and require long-term strategic planning so I can’t just put it down and pick it up with the limited 15-30 minute blocks I can spare for fun. If I was better at making quick, correct decisions or had better long-term memory for a detailed battle plan, I’d enjoy it a lot more. As it is, I just keep looking at it for month after month and thinking, “when I have more time.”
Yes, if you were to argue it later in court, you would argue that technically it was a judgment to enter the stipulation and dismiss. And the court may strike the “Judgment” wording in the proposed order. But Nintendo presumably wrote it as a “Judgment” knowing the value that such a designation has.
Further, most stipulated settlements don’t include substantive findings of fact, and again, Nintendo drafted that section explicitly to blur the line between a court’s finding of facts and mere approved stipulated findings of fact. With this order on the books, it will be up to the next case’s defendant to later argue that it wasn’t equivalent to any other trial findings of fact and order.
Yes, it doesn’t technically create precedent as a trial-tested findings of fact by the Court, but a competent litigation attorney would argue that it is probative of the factual issue and fudge the wording in a brief well enough to argue effectively the same.
Presumably forks remain public on Github at their own risk, but Nintendo may shift to a DMCA removal policy now that are about to have a judgment.
The judgment has two sections, one for people who have “privity” and more direct relationships with Tropic Haze, and another for “all third parties acting in active concert and participation with” Tropic Haze. The latter enjoins only sharing code and decryption keys. So it certainly sounds like this was drafted to capture, in the Court’s order, people who don’t have a relationship but are code-forking.
Nintendo doesn’t have nearly as clean legal leverage for randos and individuals that don’t have a company built around this emulator, but I actually predict they’ll do GitHub DMCA removals on forks based on a broad reading of the injunction.
The main link is to the motion paper. This is the link to the actual agreed-upon final judgment and injunction:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.56980/gov.uscourts.rid.56980.10.1.pdf
In short, Yuzu agreed to stop developing and distributing the emulator, cannot distribute source code, assign it to a new entity, encourage any IP violations, and must surrender their domain.
The findings also include admissions that the purpose of the Yuzu software was “primarily” designed to circumvent technical measures in violation of the DMCA.
So it appears Yuzu didn’t “win” in any real sense. Nintendo got a chilling amount of damages, effectively their full injunction, and also some agreed-upon “findings of fact” that may serve Nintendo in future litigation to justify claims that emulators are “primarily” designed to circumvent technical measures and circumvent the DMCA.
Good job with the link, but dear god, the instructions below… And it sounds like somehow that the levels still aren’t in the archive file and may disappear from remote URLs (maybe Nintendo servers):
There is no documentation of how this archive works, so I will explain how to use it here.
The archive contains a file called “courses.jsonl.zst”. This file is a database of every level’s metadata compressed with the zstd algorithm. Uncompress the database, and find the row of the level you want to download. This can most easily be done either by querying the database for its title under the “course_name” column, or by querying the database for its internal ID* under the “ID” column.
After you find the row of the level you would like to download, find the link in the “URL” column. Put this link into the Wayback Machine, and select the only available entry. This will download a typeless file that contains the level data in a compressed format.
The file is actually four different files combined into one. Each of the four files starts with the bytes 41 53 48 30, or “ASH0” in ascii. The file can be split into its four segments either programmatically, or by manually copying and pasting each of the segments marked by the ASH0 opening characters into its own file with a hex editing program like HxD.
After the file is split, each segment needs to be decompressed. They are compressed with a poorly documented, proprietary compression format called ASH. To decompress them, download the command line utility from http://wiibrew.org/wiki/ASH_Extractor and run the program four times, each time with the directory of one of the four files as the argument. After they files are decompressed, rename them, in the order they were in the unsplit original file, “thumbnail0.tnl”, “course_data.cdt”, “course_data_sub.cdt”, and “thumbnail1.tnl”.
Move these four files into a folder titled “courseNNN”, where NNN is a number ranging from 0 to 119 (inclusive) that indicates which slot the level will occupy in your save file. From here, adding the level to your save file is as simple as moving this folder into the directory “mlc\usr\save\00050000\1018dc00\user\80000001” of your Wii U (requires homebrew) or Cemu MLC path.
*In Super Mario Maker, levels are indexed by an internal ID number. The internal ID is not to be confused with the in game ID, which is the internal ID written in the format NNNN-0000-XXXX-XXXX. NNNN is a checksum based on the internal ID and XXXX-XXXX is the internal ID written in hexadecimal. The algorithm for the checksum can be found here: https://github.com/kinnay/NintendoClients/wiki/Data-Store-Codes#super-mario-maker. Converting a levels internal ID to its in game ID requires using the algorithm found in the GitHub link. Converting a levels in game ID into its internal ID is a simple as taking the the last eight digits of the ID and converting them from hexadecimal to decimal.
DMCA § 1201 is the anti-circumvention clause. It makes it illegal to circumvent DRM, no copyrighted content reproduction needed.
Yuzu may have defenses if they clean-room broke the encryption, but it’s a fight that will be difficult because the statute itself is unreasonable - essentially outlawing using knowledge to circumvent access controls. To those of us who know about this statute and its history in attempt to lock-down content, it’s a serious scumbag move because they may actually win. The statute is terrible and has been since it was enacted in 1998.
They also seem to be asserting a secondary liability argument - i.e., the infringement of users is Yuzu’s responsibility because Yuzu allegedly facilitated piracy, or recklessly moved forwarded when it knew or had reason to know it would be used as such. This is harder to prove.
Even if Nintendo doesn’t win the suit (but they may win it), they already “won” by filing because this will have a chilling effect on legitimate emulation.
How is nobody talking about this, from the article?
It was also referenced that this will be the case for Jet Set Radio, which will also receive a remake of its own before securing a live service reboot. In an exclusive reveal, Midori claimed that the reboot will feature ‘shooting elements’ and will be like Fortnite in its design. It’ll reportedly feature an open-world ‘concept’ with a solid focus on exploration as an all-new story unravels.
So Jet Set Radio is going to get the same treatment? Wow. It’s hard to imagine my excitement for either game being killed so efficiently and instantly. Those MBAs sure got it all figured out.
Nexus and Steam and U.S.-based sites have § 230 protections that prevent liability unless/until they receive a takedown notice or are acting recklessly.
So they basically allow user-generated content until someone issues a DMCA notice. If they do not take down the content at that point, they can be sued. But at any point Disney or any other rightsholder can demand content to be taken down. If there is a fair use argument, the person posting it can respond to the service with a counternotice and demand it be re-enabled, after which the company has a choice to sue them directly.
Based on that, most user-generated spaces do not police content unless they are asked, since they have liability protection and can respond case-by-case to complaints. Also, they may be held to a higher standard if they conduct active enforcement. Sites like YouTube that have very mature fingerprinting and enforcement do so because it helps them have relationships with businesses, avoid large litigations, and sell ads.
It’s partially AI, but in all likelihood customers aren’t buying with AI as a high priority; instead, supply is constrained because most of the same production capacity is being used on AI-focused enterprise hardware.