There’s a lot that just vanish into the ether when someone doesn’t renew their little abandonware site they built and forgot about a decade ago. Maybe not the big names like Might & Magic, but the smaller titles most people have never heard of. Shit’s a bummer if the Internet Archive doesn’t get to it because then it probably only exists on a dozen 3.5" floppys in random desks that haven’t been cleaned out

I can see why the ESA would want to defend IP but it should sadden everyone that they’re basically taking thousands upon thousands of titles of abandonware hostage in order to protect a couple hundred that might possibly have some value on the Playstation or Nintendo store or as a bundle on PC at some point in the future.

I used to download abandonware from the mid 80s, monochrome CRPG type stuff, back in the late 90s. Kinda bummed that most of them are probably just gone at this point. CRPG and blobbers, bygone era.

Shame on the Entertainment Software Association, not giving a damn about software.

I’m bored at work so here’s a sequel and yes I want to see something like this happen lol:

Nic Cage is relaxing on a beach, gets a call from the top dog Nigerian Prince (Samuel L Jackson), apparently the Pakistani street gang is back and they’re aiming for a huge ransomware attack on the US Treasury in order to steal all the gold from Fort Knox.

Only North Korea has hackers skilled enough to decrypt such powerful ransomware, but in order to earn Kim Jong Un’s trust, he needs to acquire a wheel of the world’s most aged parmesan.

It’s in that artic vault full of seeds (“I suppose if you’re repopulating the Earth’s flora you’re gonna need a snack”). They spoof the IP at the seed storage so the Pakistani street gang thinks they finally found the gates to Fort Knox and opens it, at which point they discover that the street gang is actually Google (hence having all the Nigerian prince emails hitting the spam folder after Google robbed them).

Kim Jong Un gets the cheese, North Korean hackers decrypt all the US money, all of it, because it’s apparently one big file in plaintext (Samuel L Jackson: cackles and says “I’ve heard some shit in my day but you’re the dumbest motherfuckers I’ve ever met” Cage: “You’re just now realizing this?”).

Weird screenplay showerthought: Guy’s dinner plans fall through, decides to have a couple brandys at the bar and drunkenly responds to a spam email which turns out to be legit, responds to even more, every single spam email is legit, and ends up traveling the world in order to help a cabal of disenfranchised Nigerian princes recover 28 billion dollars from a Pakistani street gang full of tech-savvy hackers with samurai swords and really fast street bikes. Obviously starring Nicolas Cage

That’s the look when you lose 1 of the LCD panel screws in the carpet and knock the rest over when you lean forward to try to find it

Some games would simply not install on a second or third machine without getting permission from the publisher.

I remember binning DDR2 RAM on a test bench back in the day and Windows deactivated itself after about a dozen times lol

It’s pretty disingenious of them to frame this in such a way as to tout the virtues of plastic. We can make rectangular glass bottles and that not only takes less energy to transport but is also more environmentally friendly than PET, but they didn’t explore that option or even suggest it to the reader for consideration

But you think it’s uplifting the American public is being lied to a month before the election with a promise that has 0% chance of coming true?

Fiscal Year 2025 started October 1st, Congress approved a stop gap so they can continue appropriations. You think a president shouldn’t announce anything or do anything in the months leading up to an election?

Also, it’s lead pipes. We don’t use them anymore. Every pipe replaced is a step forward. Biden just announced a deadline.

They’ve been consistently disbursing funds for this and this time is no different. Here’s last May’s news : https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration-announces-3-billion-lead-pipe-replacement-advance-safe

Purely anecdotal but I tend to avoid any sensitive hardware purchases off of Amazon because they suck at packaging things a lot of times and I’ve had more than a few DOA components because they just tossed the box into an even larger box then apparently yeeted it down a flight of stairs

Edit: I should add that I live 10 minutes from a Microcenter which plays a large part in my overall pickiness, but that said, when I’m looking for something sensitive to handling and needs to be purchased online I stick to computer hardware retailers solely because they love packing peanuts and bubble wrap as much as the components love them