Pinboard (jm) https://pinboard.in/u:jm/public/ recent bookmarks from jm Distributed terrorism as ARG 2026-06-05T10:54:49+00:00 https://mastodon.social/@adrianhon/116696642949969646 jm The recruitments follow a similar pattern: young people are usually approached on online channels which are well-hidden and hard to track: from Telegram to TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and Discord. They are offered money, commonly cryptocurrencies, in exchange for completing tasks. Their recruiters depend on anonymity; many work for criminal groups which, like cyber hackers, may be independent from the state but co-opted by intelligence agencies for covert operations. Gaming sites — the most widely consumed entertainment media among 13- to 24-year-olds — have become an obvious hunting ground for potential saboteurs with a proven interest in problem solving. In Ukraine, the chat function in the popular online game World of Tanks is commonly used as a recruitment portal, from which agents then move the conversation to Telegram. Some state-backed agents, especially those working for Russia, also invoke the mission format and “quest” mentality of online games to entice young people to move beyond the virtual battlefield to real-world action. It is, says one western military official, “like a game of Pokémon Go, but with air defence systems”. Adrian Hon, an ARG designer, comments:
I don't think this is the work of some evil genius FSB game designer. They're throwing shit at a wall and they found that: - 1. Making teens feel cool and special - 2. Giving them clear tasks escalating in difficulty - 3. Paying them £500 in crypto sticks! It is FUN to imagine you are a spy going out on a secret real world mission, getting messages from a handler. The money helps, but the main thing is that it's free, unlike practically every comparable form of real world immersive experience/pervasive game. Average British reaction: "Why teenagers spend their lives glued to screens and on non value-adding activities idk. [Buy] them footballs and chess sets and send them outside." Yes, so they can play football on the non-existent pitches that now cost money to play on and they can't get to. Everyone is like, kids should get away from screens and go outside. Motherfucker that is EXACTLY what these teen FSB recruits are doing!! They are going outside taking photos, collecting wifi SSIDs, sneaking around. I literally design games like this, except I have a fraction of their budget!!! And when I design pervasive games, we have to get public liability insurance and local govt permission and pay fees and do risk assessments. I don't make them for under-18s because god knows the red tape is a mile long. mfw we're getting outcompeted by foreign intelligence agencies
]]> fsb russia spying espionage args gaming games teens arg crypto https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:bf1072980cd4/ peon-ping 2026-02-13T15:03:19+00:00 https://github.com/PeonPing/peon-ping jm gaming games warcraft sfx sounds cli claude coding ux funny https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:68bdc204a261/ Gigantic interactive board game recreating January 6 2025-06-13T13:59:48+00:00 https://www.timeout.com/london/news/a-new-immersive-theatre-show-in-central-london-allows-you-to-recreate-january-6-060925# jmthe show is the brainchild of multimedia performance company The American Vicarious, with design by Games Workshop legend Alessio Cavatore. There are two teams: red – representing the attackers – and blue – representing the defenders. Up to 20 audience members can pay the higher ticket price to actually participate in the game, guided by a games master into making decisions that will shape the outcome of the assault as thousands of miniatures are moved around a gigantic 14-foot model of the building itself. The remaining audience members pay a much lower ticket price to spectate. ]]> insurrection maga january-6 boardgames games fight-for-america events theatre london https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3fc3d902a847/ RGG Studio’s test automation setup 2025-05-06T09:17:57+00:00 https://automaton-media.com/en/interviews/how-do-like-a-dragon-games-come-out-so-fast-one-of-rgg-studios-secrets-is-a-highly-efficient-testing-and-debugging-cycle-that-starts-as-soon-as-development-does/ jmAt first, we only dabbled in automated packaging and automated error detection, but we made the tools we needed to go further during the development of Yakuza 6, when we started automating the analysis of in-game logs and the issue tracking system for keeping track of bugs and tasks. Then, by the time Yakuza: Like a Dragon was released in 2020, we created the catchy sounding “fully automated bug detection system” (laughs). This is how it works – the history of actions you performed when playing the game manually (where you travelled, who you talked to, what items you used, etc.) is converted into commands and recorded, then automatically output as replay data (scripts) which you can edit manually and run as automated tests. Replay data continues to be recorded when running automated tests, and if a bug occurs during an automated test, the replay data gets saved, so you can run it back later to encounter the bug yourself. It often happens that you can’t reproduce a bug just by warping to its coordinates. This is because you also need to recreate the steps leading up to it – that’s why it’s important to record each step. Also, I’d like to mention that just implementing automated testing doesn’t mean much on its own, because you won’t know what the results of the tests are. That’s why we needed a crash report function to detect bugs. There’s also a function that records information needed to investigate detected bugs, as well as a way to check the status of successful tests. Then, by implementing a system that gives us a visualization of performance, we were able to make iteration more efficient, increasing the overall efficiency of the development process. ]]> automation testing yakuza games coding tests test-automation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:6337ae2e5588/ "A Canticle for Leibowitz" inspired "Fallout" 2025-03-18T11:19:50+00:00 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32271122 jm leibowitz scifi sf books fallout games gaming hugo-awards https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:fdb844163e47/ The history behind "Assassin's Creed: Valhalla" 2025-03-05T11:09:37+00:00 https://pca.st/cdx8ls7x jm history podcasts ireland britain vikings assassins-creed videogames games https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5fff2a3a6e7e/ A treasury of Zork maps 2024-08-22T10:10:40+00:00 https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/02/a-treasury-of-zork-maps.html jm zork gaming history games interactive-fiction infocom art posters maps https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:78d921e2aad2/ Pokémon Go Players Invent Fake Beaches on Real Maps to Catch Rare Wigletts 2024-05-03T11:52:11+00:00 https://www.404media.co/pokemon-go-players-invent-fake-beaches-on-real-maps-to-catch-rare-wigletts/ jm games weird pokemon openstreetmap osm mapping crowdsourcing side-effects exploits https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:859e3730dc4f/ The Not So Hidden Israeli Politics of 'The Last of Us Part II' 2023-12-04T20:57:25+00:00 https://www.vice.com/en/article/bv8da4/the-not-so-hidden-israeli-politics-of-the-last-of-us-part-ii jmThe Last of Us Part II focuses on what has been broadly defined by some of its creators as a "cycle of violence." While some zombie fiction shows human depravity in response to fear or scarcity in the immediate aftermath of an outbreak, The Last of Us Part II takes place in a more stabilized post apocalypse, decades after societal collapse, where individuals and communities choose to hurt each other as opposed to taking heinous actions out of desperation. More specifically, the cycle of violence in The Last of Us Part II appears to be largely modeled after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo. (via Alex)]]> vice commentary ethics games hate politics the-last-of-us israel palestine fiction via:alex https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d186b719864f/ 29 best games on Xbox Game Pass (August 2022) - Polygon 2022-08-17T11:26:16+00:00 https://www.polygon.com/best-games/22372750/best-game-pass-games-xbox jm games gaming xbox game-pass https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b2a515a8977a/ Roblox 73-hour outage write-up 2022-01-24T10:56:22+00:00 https://blog.roblox.com/2022/01/roblox-return-to-service-10-28-10-31-2021/ jmThe root cause was due to two issues. Enabling a relatively new streaming feature on Consul under unusually high read and write load led to excessive contention and poor performance. In addition, our particular load conditions triggered a pathological performance issue in BoltDB. The open source BoltDB system is used within Consul to manage write-ahead-logs for leader election and data replication. Also worth noting: 'We are working to move to multiple availability zones and data centers.']]> postmortems outages roblox games ops consul boltdb replication uptime https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3f5e3d936d4b/ GeyserMC 2021-04-09T15:04:11+00:00 https://geysermc.org/ jm kids minecraft interop bedrock papermc switch games https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c87668e34684/ A game in a font 2021-03-19T10:52:12+00:00 https://www.coderelay.io/fontemon.html jm fonts pokemon bizarre games coding hacks ligatures https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ad7f5c80f1df/ How Competitive Matchmaking and Rating Works In Overwatch 2021-02-26T11:50:09+00:00 https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/how-competitive-matchmaking-and-rating-works-season-26/581181/9 jm matchmaking overwatch gaming games pvp player-rating https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7aa7f9ae7399/ Gnome launched into space in a real-life reenactment of a Half Life 2 achievement 2020-11-25T10:08:44+00:00 https://www.usgamer.net/articles/half-life-2-episode-two-a-13-year-old-game-gets-new-achievement-for-a-real-life-rocket-launch jmA new achievement called "Gnome Alone" was added to [Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Half-Life: Alyx, and Left 4 Dead 2], and the description sums up exactly what's going on. "If you are reading this achievement, Gabe Newell has successfully launched Gnome Chompski into space. If you did not also receive the achievement 'Manufacturing Ascent', Newell has abandoned his plans to shoot Noam Chomsky into space." ...There's an Amelie-inspired achievement for picking up the gnome at the start of [Half Life 2: Episode Two] and bringing it all the way to the rocket at White Forest Base, an arduous task involving lots of item juggling and repeated cramming of the gnome into a crevice in Episode Two's muscle car. Similar challenges made their way into Alyx and Left 4 Dead 2 as well. ]]> garden-gnomes gnomes funny noam-chomsky achievements games half-life history gabe-newell rockets space https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a726c3dc3437/ This War of Mine to be added to school reading list in Poland 2020-06-18T14:17:54+00:00 https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-06-18-this-war-of-mine-will-be-added-to-polish-schools-reading-list jmThis War of Mine, which was first released in 2014, drew on the experiences of the Bosnian people during the Siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s. It won widespread acclaim for its realistic portrayal of the human cost of war, and had sold more than 4.5 million units in April 2019. The game will be included in the Polish reading list for the 2020/21 academic year, but will only be available to students aged 18 and above due to its age rating in the country. It will be recommended for those studying sociology, ethics, philosophy, and history, and will be available to students of those subjects for free. ]]> war history bosnia sarajevo games gaming poland school https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3ab29b1397a8/ The Board Game Remix Kit 2020-03-27T09:40:49+00:00 https://bgrk.itch.io/the-board-game-remix-kit?fbclid=IwAR1O9YPzEYVzPFJ2-V3wltUADjwWDn-LPBn4713DSB_ujkiVo74eEnY_a0M jmNew rules for old games! The Board Game Remix Kit is a collection of tips, tweaks, reimaginings and completely new games that you can play with the board and pieces from games you might already own: Monopoly, Cluedo, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit.  (via Macker)]]> via:macker games boardgames trivial-pursuit cluedo scrabble monopoly remixing https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5b5939cfd5ba/ How to crossplay Minecraft on PS4 with Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PC 2020-03-13T14:40:00+00:00 https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/02/08/how-to-crossplay-minecraft-ps4-with-nintendo-switch-xbox-one-pc/ jmHowever, while the new snapshot is extremely neat, so too is the ability for PlayStation 4 players to crossplay with mates on Nintendo Switch, PC and Xbox One. This feature was introduced to Sony's version at the tail-end of last year, and in this article you'll find out how to play with your mates on other devices. ]]> minecraft crossplay ps4 switch gaming games kids https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:2feababcfbe3/ Sprouts 2020-02-24T10:51:25+00:00 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprouts_(game) jmSprouts is a paper-and-pencil game that can be enjoyed simply by both adults and children. Yet it also can be analyzed for its significant mathematical properties. It was invented by mathematicians John Horton Conway (*that* Conway) and Michael S. Paterson at Cambridge University in the early 1960s. ]]> games paper sprouts kids fun https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ac8d2376eae2/ The Truth Behind The Theory That Control Was Inspired By The SCP Foundation 2020-02-11T13:05:31+00:00 https://kotaku.com/the-creepypasta-community-that-influenced-control-1838283594 jm“I just had this warm fuzzy feeling throughout the game, seeing the cultural influence of something I’ve spent eight years of my life kind of doing as a hobby,” Pierce said. “I think in fairness, they clearly had the inspiration [from us], but they took it in their own direction. They did something with it that we could not do in a thousand years.” This is fantastic -- the SCP Wiki is behind so many great SF/horror tropes over the past decade. what a legacy. And "Control" is in itself a fantastic game.]]> scp scp-wiki wikis collaboration art writing horror science-fiction control games https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:6c42dbb574b1/ Not able to configure more than 3 PS Move controllers on a Macbook Pro Retina 13 inch, Early 2015 :: Sportsfriends General Discussions 2019-12-05T11:37:53+00:00 https://steamcommunity.com/app/277850/discussions/0/154641879455478145/ jm joust sportsfriends games bluetooth tips osx macos https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:01ace6a0e2e2/ THE HISTORY OF GAMING MAGAZINES: A GALLERY - DIGITISER 2019-10-09T11:11:13+00:00 https://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/the-history-of-gaming-magazines-a-gallery jm gaming magazines funny retrogaming arcade-games games parody digitiser https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a79dd8a83719/ The history of Tetris randomizers 2019-09-10T20:29:08+00:00 https://simon.lc/the-history-of-tetris-randomizers jm tetris algorithms coding games prng random randomness https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:50cb39f93bb5/ Minecraft now publishing deobfuscation maps 2019-09-05T09:25:45+00:00 https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraft-snapshot-19w36a jmIn an effort to help make modding the game easier, we have decided to publish our game obfuscation maps with all future releases of the game, starting today. This means that anyone who is interested may deobfuscate the game and find their way around the code without needing to spend a few months figuring out what’s what. It is our hope that mod authors and mod framework authors use these files to augment their updating processes that they have today. These mappings will always be available, instantly and immediately as part of every newly released version. This does not, however, change the existing restrictions on what you may or may not do with our game code or assets. The links to the obfuscation mappings are included as part of the version manifest json, and may be automatically pulled for any given version. ]]> minecraft obfuscation microsoft mods modding community coding games https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5211c2f6d1cd/ twitter thread on how same-sex romance was added to The Sims back in 1998 2019-07-25T09:28:24+00:00 https://twitter.com/ItsTheShadsy/status/1151868012707962881 jm don-hopkins games history the-sims design romance 1990s https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b0a787e27996/ PUBG players arrested in Gujarat 2019-05-28T10:29:44+00:00 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/pubg-video-game-arrests-india-ban jmTheir strategy was simple, said two police officers involved in the arrests in Ahmedabad who asked not to be named: They swooped down on all groups of boys they saw with their heads buried in smartphones held in landscape mode. More often than not, they struck gold. Some of them were let off with stern warnings. Others had charges slapped against them, were convicted in court, and fined. A 19-year-old college student from Rajkot spent a night in jail before being bailed out the next day. Singh, the police commissioner, compared the severity of the PUBG arrests to a traffic offense, but to those arrested, the consequences are personal. “I feel tainted by this incident,” one of the boys who was arrested told BuzzFeed News. “My parents were mad I got into trouble with the police when they found out. They’re okay now, but sometimes, my relatives and cousins will still tease me about it and I don’t like that.” ]]> pubg gaming videogames games gujarat india hysteria https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:df978fe21a91/ Brian Moriarty - "I Sing the Story Electric" 2019-04-26T16:23:16+00:00 http://ludix.com/moriarty/electric.html jm geniac kinoautomat borges narratives non-linear branching interactive-fiction games gaming ludology history stories storytelling talks https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:68321979bf37/ "Baba Is You" is Turing-complete 2019-03-25T10:37:04+00:00 https://twitter.com/mattar0d/status/1109987662608384000 jm baba-is-you games turing-completeness computing https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:2fef7b9b10f4/ The right-wing history of the urban models which inspired SimCity 2019-01-31T10:11:27+00:00 https://logicmag.io/06-model-metropolis/ jmLargely forgotten now, Jay Forrester’s Urban Dynamics put forth the controversial claim that the overwhelming majority of American urban policy was not only misguided but that these policies aggravated the very problems that they were intended to solve. In place of Great Society-style welfare programs, Forrester argued that cities should take a less interventionist approach to the problems of urban poverty and blight, and instead encourage revitalization indirectly through incentives for businesses and for the professional class. Forrester’s message proved popular among conservative and libertarian writers, Nixon Administration officials, and other critics of the Great Society for its hands-off approach to urban policy. This outlook, supposedly backed up by computer models, remains highly influential among establishment pundits and policymakers today. ]]> simulation cities society politics history simcity games jay-forrester will-wright sociology https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:96baa15de88a/ PRNG-predicting bot ascends in Nethack in 7 minutes 15 seconds 2019-01-11T10:12:44+00:00 https://pellsson.github.io/ jmSo, we could now go from starting inventory to RNG-seed in no time, but we still had to ascend. While we could write a simple “wish”-bot, get +127 Magicbane and then ascend by hand from there, achieving both fastest realtime and lowest turn count in the same game would not be easy. First idea was to start a NAO game, fetch the seed, then saving and perfecting the seed offline. It was quickly ruled out though as the game is reseeded each time it is started (i.e. when you load your game). Loooong story short, we wrote a bot. You had to play the first turns (offline) and move her to a non-magic fountain located next to a wall. If you died, no big deal, just retry on the same seed. This is why SWAGGINZZZ stood still for 6 minutes, we had absolutely horrible RNG when trying to get the specific fountain needed on dlvl2. The fountain is required for wishes. The wall is required to be able to offset the random state without advancing the game state – every time the character attempts to walk into a wall, it calls random() without wasting any in-game time. From the fountain, the bot ascends completely on her own. ]]> nethack random prng games hacks cheats nao amazing https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:607a62e9d57b/ Your Kid’s Apps Are Crammed With Ads - The New York Times 2018-10-31T15:44:29+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/style/kids-study-apps-advertising.html jmIn apps marketed for children 5 and under in the Google Play store, there were pop-up ads with disturbing imagery. There were ads that no child could reasonably be expected to close out of, and which, when triggered, would send a player into more ads. Dancing treasure chests would give young players points for watching video ads, potentially endlessly. The vast majority of ads were not marked at all. Characters in children’s games gently pressured the kids to make purchases, a practice known as host-selling, banned in children’s TV programs in 1974 by the Federal Trade Commission. At other times an onscreen character would cry if the child did not buy something. “The first word that comes to mind is furious,” said Dr. Radesky, an assistant professor of developmental behavioral pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School. “I’m a researcher. I want to stay objective. We started this study really just trying to look at distraction. My frustrated response is about all the surprising, potentially deceptive stuff we found.” brb, installing Pi-Hole.]]> children kids ads advertising apps android google ftc games iap https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:0ee970b2c02b/ archive.org C64 software library 2018-10-05T21:10:24+00:00 https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_c64?and%5B%5D=emulator%3Avice-resid&sin=&sort= jm c=64 history commodore vice web internet-archive gaming games https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:713bf268fbab/ Anatomy of a tabloid Fortnite front page story 2018-08-10T13:10:49+00:00 https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-08-01-anatomy-of-a-tabloid-fortnite-front-page-story jm fortnite pokemon-go gaming tabloids uk newspapers truth the-sun games https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:9795b42fa526/ The best Mario Kart character according to data science 2018-06-15T14:17:49+00:00 https://medium.com/civis-analytics/the-best-mario-kart-character-according-to-data-science-7dfb65d4c18e jmUnless you’re going all-in on acceleration, it looks like a heavy character is the way to go; the two heaviest character classes (Wario and Donkey Kong) account for 11/15 of the Pareto-optimal configurations. Wario/Sports Bike/Slick or Wario/Gold Standard/Slick get the top billing! ]]> wario nintendo mario-kart games wii switch https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:06f36c20d7b9/ How the Game Genie worked 2018-02-09T11:26:03+00:00 http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-09-24-game-genie-declassified-that-summer-i-played-230-game-boy-games jm"Sometimes it was really easy to find cheats, because the code was very straightforward, and sometimes it was a massive pain in the arse," recalls Jon. "In simple terms, if a game started you with three lives I'd set up the logic analyser to stop when it found the value three being written to RAM. Then I'd use the Game Genie to change that 3 to say a 5, reboot the game and see if I started with 5 lives. If not, then I'd let it find the next time it wrote 3 into RAM and try that. "Infinite lives codes were always the best. Once I'd found where in RAM the lives value was stored I'd then monitor when it got decremented. What I was looking for was where the game's original coder used -most likely - the DEC A (&H3D) instruction after reading the lives value from RAM, and then storing it back into RAM. If I found this then all I had to do was swap out the DEC A (&H3D) decrement operation with a NOP (&H00), which performed no operation. So the lives value would be left as-is and voila the player had infinite lives." ]]> games gameboy game-genie via:its logic-analysers reverse-engineering history hacking https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7f2bfe0006e2/ European Commission study finds no link between piracy and lower sales of digital content 2017-09-25T10:06:51+00:00 https://www.finder.com.au/eu-piracy-study jmAccording to the report, an average of 51% of adults and 72% of minors in the EU have pirated digital content, with Poland and Spain averaging the highest rates of all countries surveyed. Nevertheless, displacement rates (the impact of piracy on legitimate sales) were found to be negligible or non-existent for music, books and games, while rates for films and TV were in line with previous digital piracy studies. Most interesting is the fact that the study found that illegal game downloads actually lead to an increase in legal purchases. The report concludes that tactics like video game microtransactions are proving effective in converting illegal users to paying users. The full report goes in-depth regarding potential factors influencing piracy and the challenges of accurately tracking its impact on legitimate sales, but the researchers ultimately conclude that there is no robust statistical evidence that illegal downloads reduce legal sales. That's big news, which makes it all the more troubling that the EU effectively buried it for two years. ]]> piracy eu studies downloads ec games movies books content https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ce0babb6cff3/ 'Hey #gamedev, tell me about some brilliant mechanics in games that are hidden from the player to get across a certain feeling.' 2017-09-22T12:46:43+00:00 https://twitter.com/gaohmee/status/903510060197744640?lang=en jm games gaming cheats tweaks game-mechanics til twitter https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:273fe12f954d/ Determinism in League of Legends 2017-06-21T10:43:57+00:00 https://engineering.riotgames.com/news/determinism-league-legends-introduction jm clock realtime time determinism testing replay games league-of-legends via:nelson https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:14fb1751e281/ Reverse engineering the 76477 "Space Invaders" sound effect chip from die photos 2017-05-02T11:32:34+00:00 http://www.righto.com/2017/04/reverse-engineering-76477-space.html jmRemember the old video game Space Invaders? Some of its sound effects were provided by a chip called the 76477 Complex Sound Generation chip. While the sound effects1 produced by this 1978 chip seem primitive today, it was used in many video games, pinball games. But what's inside this chip and how does it work internally? By reverse-engineering the chip from die photos, we can find out. (Photos courtesy of Sean Riddle.) In this article, I explain how the analog circuits of this chip works and show how the hundreds of transistors on the silicon die form the circuits of this complex chip. ]]> space-invaders games history reverse-engineering chips analog sound-effects https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:08ec1c5c9802/ Fans of chess were outraged when the queen piece was added 2017-04-12T08:45:43+00:00 https://twitter.com/Lawrence_Miles/status/851630819131224065 jm gamergate funny 16th-century history chess gaming games queen https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7051c120c6a3/ The Lord British Postulate 2017-03-15T22:28:04+00:00 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_British#Assassination_of_Lord_British jmOne of the most famous attributes of Lord British is that he is almost invincible. In every Ultima game in which he has appeared, he is designed to be almost impervious to a player's character predations. However, there are ways for a player thinking outside the box to assassinate him. This phenomenon is the origin of the Lord British Postulate which states: "If it exists as a living creature in an MMORPG, someone, somewhere, will try to kill it."[7] Virtually every MMO game displays numerous instances of this, with players attempting to kill (or, in the case of friendly NPCs, cause the death of) virtually every NPC or monster, howsoever powerful, meek, friendly, or ethereal. ]]> npcs gaming games lord-british murder rules mmorpgs https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b1a7e7c2f6b0/ Fides Raising Gamers (age 2 - 5) | BoardGameGeek 2017-03-13T11:41:49+00:00 https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/193078/item/4577451#item4577451 jm games gaming boardgames kids children reviews https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:186f16c041b5/ Dinosaur Escape - BoardGameGeek 2017-03-13T11:39:56+00:00 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/175497/dinosaur-escape jmThe object of Dinosaur Escape is to get all three dinosaurs safely to Dinosaur Island before the volcano erupts! Work together to move the dinosaur movers around the board and uncover the matching dinosaurs under the fern tokens. On your turn, roll the die. If you roll a number, move any dinosaur mover the indicated number of spaces any direction on the path. Then turn over one fern token anywhere on the board. If you reveal rocks, bones or other items, flip the token back over. If you reveal a dinosaur, and the dinosaur mover of the same species is in the same habitat area, move the dinosaur moved and matching token to Dinosaur Island. You just helped a dinosaur escape! If you reveal a dinosaur but the dinosaur mover of the same species is not in the same habitat as the token, flip the token back over. Dinosaur movers and matching tokens must be in the same habitat to help a dinosaur escape! If you turn over the T-Rex, RUN! Move each of the dinosaur movers in play back to a start space. If you roll a volcano, place volcano piece number 1 in the stand on the board. If you can find and help all three lost dinosaurs escape to Dinosaur Island before completing the 3D volcano puzzle, you all win! ]]> boardgames reviews kids children co-op games gaming https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:31ae6d3b556f/ a digital clock in Conway's Game of Life 2017-03-10T17:19:54+00:00 http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/88783/build-a-digital-clock-in-conways-game-of-life/111932#111932 jm life games alife conways-life gliders hacks cool https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8f9329e09710/ Parable of the Polygons - a playable post on the shape of society 2017-02-09T11:13:52+00:00 http://ncase.me/polygons/ jmOur cute segregation sim is based off the work of Nobel Prize-winning game theorist, Thomas Schelling. Specifically, his 1971 paper, Dynamic Models of Segregation. We built on top of this, and showed how a small demand for diversity can desegregate a neighborhood. In other words, we gave his model a happy ending. ]]> games society visualization diversity racism bias thomas-schelling segregation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d1cb75dc3622/ OK, Bear With Me: What If Mario And Wario Are The Same Guy? 2017-01-13T12:19:52+00:00 https://kotaku.com/ok-bear-with-me-what-if-mario-and-wario-are-the-same-1791132939 jm silly theories mario nintendo wario kotaku games gaming https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:035126b90698/ Final Fantasy 7: An oral history 2017-01-10T11:25:41+00:00 http://www.polygon.com/a/final-fantasy-7 jmTetsuya Nomura (Character and battle visual director, Square Japan): OK, so maybe I did kill Aerith. But if I hadn’t stopped you, in the second half of the game, you were planning to kill everyone off but the final three characters the player chooses! Yoshinori Kitase (Director, Square Japan) No way! I wrote that? Where? Tetsuya Nomura (Character and battle visual director, Square Japan) In the scene where they parachute into Midgar. You wanted everyone to die there! ]]> games history gaming aeris final-fantasy square-enix ff7 stories https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:297c5a38ed8d/ We planned for Brexit at Football Manager. So why did no one else? | Miles Jacobson | Opinion | The Guardian 2016-11-24T16:33:48+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/14/football-manager-anticipated-brexit-why-not-government?CMP=fb_gu jm brexit uk games gaming football-manager forecasts simulation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:eaef981e060c/ Video Games Are Boring 2016-11-08T11:55:36+00:00 http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-11-07-video-games-are-boring jmI'm not remotely interested in shockingly good graphics, in murder simulators, in guns and knives and swords. I'm not that interested in adrenaline. My own life is thrilling enough. There is enough fear and hatred in the world to get my heart pounding. My Facebook feed and Twitter feed are enough for that. Walking outside in summer clothing is enough for that. I'm interested in care, in characters, in creation, in finding a path forward inside games that helps me find my path forward in life. I am interested in compassion and understanding. I'm interested in connecting. As Miranda July said, "all I ever wanted to know is how other people are making it through life." I want to make games that help other people understand life. We are all overwhelmed with shock, with information, with change. The degree of interactivity in our lives is amazing and wonderful and I wouldn't exchange it for anything, but it is also shocking and overwhelming and it's causing us to dig in and try to find some peace by shutting each other out. On all sides of the political spectrum we've stopped listening to each other and I fear we are all leaning toward fascist thinking. We should be using this medium to help us adapt to our new, interactive lives. This is how we become relevant. ]]> essay feminism society culture games gaming life art https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:23d3685d0a2e/ Cloudy Gamer: Playing Overwatch on Azure's new monster GPU instances 2016-10-20T09:47:37+00:00 http://lg.io/2016/10/12/cloudy-gamer-playing-overwatch-on-azures-new-monster-gpu-instances.html jm gaming azure games cloud gpu overwatch streaming https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:17e5c6788e78/ Is Pokémon GO down or not? 2016-07-20T10:14:40+00:00 http://ispokemongodownornot.com/ jm datadog games monitoring pokemon-go pokemon uptime https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a69910d88699/ 'Virtual nose' may reduce simulator sickness 2016-05-31T11:15:55+00:00 http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2015/Q1/virtual-nose-may-reduce-simulator-sickness-in-video-games.html jm Anecdotal evidence has suggested simulator sickness is less intense when games contain fixed visual reference objects - such as a racecar's dashboard or an airplane's cockpit - located within the user's field of view.  "But you can't have a cockpit in every VR simulation," Whittinghill said. His research team was studying the problem when undergraduate student Bradley Ziegler suggested inserting the image of a virtual human nose in the center of the video display. "It was a stroke of genius," said Whittinghill, who teaches video game design. "You are constantly seeing your own nose. You tune it out, but it's still there, perhaps giving you a frame of reference to help ground you." The researchers have discovered that the virtual nose, or "nasum virtualis," reduces simulator sickness when inserted into popular games. ]]> virtual-nose nose vr simulator-sickness nausea vr-sickness games https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a60b342153d8/ For World’s Newest Scrabble Stars, SHORT Tops SHORTER 2016-05-20T19:51:27+00:00 http://www.wsj.com/articles/for-nigerian-scrabble-stars-short-tops-shorter-1463669734 jm“ ‘What would the robot do?’ is now the key question in Scrabble,” said Mr. Fatsis. Often, he said, the robot plays five letters: “There are inefficiencies in the game that you can exploit by having a mastery of those intermediate-length words.” ]]> games scrabble nigeria ai word-play strats https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:05b073e3118f/ SNES Code Injection -- Flappy Bird in Super Mario World 2016-03-28T23:32:52+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0 jm games hacks exploits buffer-overflow snes code-injection amazing flappy-bird seth-bling video youtube https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a9e5be1705d2/ League of Legends win-rates vs latency analysed 2015-12-15T12:02:11+00:00 http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/page/ping-winrate-and-vayne-probs jmIt appears that more mechanically intensive champions are more affected by latency, while tankier champions or those with point-and-click abilities are less affected by latency. (via Nelson)]]> games league-of-legends latency ping gaming internet via:nelson https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:fc8a4454ba09/ PICO-8: 2015-11-04T09:55:41+00:00 http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php jmPICO-8 is a fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs. When you turn it on, the machine greets you with a shell for typing in Lua commands and provides simple built-in tools for creating your own cartridges. So cute! See also Voxatron, something similar for voxel-oriented 3D gaming]]> consoles games gaming lua coding retro 2d pico-8 https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:fd0e7c8a7944/ GTA V - Graphics Study 2015-11-03T16:28:03+00:00 http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/11/02/gta-v-graphics-study/ jm games graphics coding gta gtav 3d rendering gfx https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d1391bcf733f/ Little Drummer Boy Challenge 2015-09-21T22:05:51+00:00 http://littledrummerboychallenge.com/ jm ldbc games funny xmas christmas music songs cheese https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:77bbc3a0bf3d/ The Alternative Universe Of Soviet Arcade Games 2015-09-07T10:56:16+00:00 http://io9.com/the-alternative-universe-of-soviet-arcade-games-1729012559 jmUnlike machines in the West, every single machine that was produced during Soviet-era Russia had to align with Marxist ideology. [...] The most popular games were created to teach hand-eye coordination, reaction speed, and logical, focused thinking. Not unlike many American games, these games were influenced by military training, crafted to teach and instill patriotism for the state by making the human body better, stronger, and more willful. It also means no high scores, no adrenaline rushes, or self-serving feather-fluffing as you add your hard-earned initials to the list of the best. In Communist Russia, there was no overt competition. ]]> high-scores communism russia cccp ussr arcade-games games history https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ec3a87c954a2/ Revised and much faster, run your own high-end cloud gaming service on EC2! 2015-07-10T22:49:32+00:00 http://lg.io/2015/07/05/revised-and-much-faster-run-your-own-highend-cloud-gaming-service-on-ec2.html jm gaming games ec2 amazon aws cloud windows hacks https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:aa886a192762/ Cover Story: “Playdate” - The New Yorker 2015-06-16T21:58:46+00:00 http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/cover-story-playdate jm minecraft chris-ware art kids play gaming games https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a3eeb101df0e/ Me vs An Post 2015-06-04T13:31:20+00:00 http://meversusanpost.tumblr.com/ jmI have decided to see what you can post [....] My first experiment was a dice [sic] with one line of the address on each side. An Post delivered two days later. They win this round Via JG]]> fun an-post post games funny tumblr via:johngilbert https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a4a0f20329b2/ Dong detection in LEGO Universe 2015-06-02T09:33:51+00:00 http://www.exquisitetweets.com/tweets?eids=SOlZp2L8I8.SOl4CsO6YC.SOmhNAiuES.SOmlJ2T2Gq.SOmpjeGn1w.SOmwta15gX.SOmB4207kO.SOmJPgkOFU.SOmOl1j08a.SOmW0jPTRA.SOm72fKFfE.SOncwNl2SP.SOnlkgH05k.SOntnuAhGw.SOqg0uZR8K.SOqkXGJtbU.SOqrXBJruS jm penis funny games lego lego-universe minecraft gaming mmo ugc https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5095a631e824/ Developer believes he can turn digital game into global hit 2015-05-18T11:25:42+00:00 http://www.irishtimes.com/business/developer-believes-he-can-turn-digital-game-into-global-hit-1.2214138 jm colm-larkin guild-of-dungeoneering games press https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:14d1abe1d6f0/ Run your own high-end cloud gaming service on EC2 2015-04-20T20:22:35+00:00 http://lg.io/2015/04/12/run-your-own-high-end-cloud-gaming-service-on-ec2.html jm aws ec2 gaming games graphics spot-instances hacks windows steam https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7df32acf0f2e/ Llamasoft 8-bit game images now available for download 2015-04-01T10:10:09+00:00 http://minotaurproject.co.uk/lc-8bit.php jm jeff-minter llamasoft yaks games history c=64 commodore vic-20 emulation via:shane https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:62c9e8afe966/ Sony PSN hacking horror story 2015-03-12T11:36:51+00:00 http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2yq8oq/my_psn_account_got_hacked_this_morning_sony/ jmMy account got hacked, running up over $600 in charges. Here's the conclusion after running through the Sony support gauntlet. They can only refund up to $150. I can dispute the charges with my bank, but that will result in my account being banned. I cannot unban my account, and will thus lose my purchases ("but you only have the Last of Us and some of our free games, so it's not a big deal") Whomever hacked my account deactivated my PS4, and activated their own. Customer support will only permit one activation every 6 months. I'm locked out of logging into my own account on my PS4 for six months. ]]> games sony psn playstation fail ps4 hacking security customer-support horror-stories https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8ff825ac5265/ Halcyon Days 2015-03-02T21:30:57+00:00 http://dadgum.com/halcyon/ jmHalcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers was released as a commercial product in March 1997. At the time it was one of the first retrogaming projects to focus on lost history rather than game collecting, and certainly the first entirely devoted to the game authors themselves. Now a good number of the interviewees have their own web sites, but none of them did when I started contacting them in 1995. [...] If you have any of the giddy anticipation that I did whenever I picked up a magazine containing an interview with Mark Turmell or Dan [M.U.L.E.] Bunten, then you want to start reading. ]]> book games history coding interviews via:walter https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f2cf5db2e5fb/ Embed-able Computers are a Thing. — February 12, 2015 2015-02-13T11:42:45+00:00 http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4588 jm sharing embeds html javascript emulation msdos burgertime games archive.org https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a789dc88f475/ The Pizza Party Where Everyone Got Fired 2015-02-12T23:49:22+00:00 http://kotaku.com/the-pizza-party-where-everyone-got-fired-1685455125 jmThe testers at [MAJOR PUBLISHER] had just finished wrapping up testing on a project we'll call "Biolands." And to congratulate them, the man in charge arranged a huge bowling/pizza party for the end of the week. Of course everyone is hyped for the event. So the day finally arrives and all the testers show up. They all start bowling and eating pizza. After a few hours of everyone enjoying themselves, the VP asks for everyone's attention. When he does manage to get the team to listen, he begins to thank them for their hard work and has the leads hand them their termination papers. And many other horror stories from the worst software industry of all -- games.]]> games software jobs bowling pizza fired horror-stories hr employment https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7bd7eda61ce9/