kfwyre's recent activity
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Comment on RomM: an open source, self-hosted cloud emulation platform in ~games
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RomM: an open source, self-hosted cloud emulation platform
4 votes -
Comment on Afterplay: a cloud emulation platform in ~games
kfwyre (edited )LinkI just tried this out and am very impressed. I got it working on my Linux desktop, the web, my Steam Deck*, and my phone. As much as I adore my beloved RetroDECK, it being on just my Steam Deck...Your library and saves sync across iOS, Android, desktop, and the browser. Multiplayer with voice and video chat, a store of indie games, and 30+ consoles.
I just tried this out and am very impressed. I got it working on my Linux desktop, the web, my Steam Deck*, and my phone.
As much as I adore my beloved RetroDECK, it being on just my Steam Deck can be a bit limiting. Sometimes I want to play retro games on my phone or PC too! Up until now, I’ve just kept things separate.
That said, the further I go in life, the more I appreciate the convenience of hardware-agnostic solutions. I have this with my reading setup via BookFusion and now potentially my emulation setup via Afterplay.
I’ve only played around with it for a bit, but it’s quite feature rich. It’ll automatically match BIOSes and ROM files, putting them where they need to go and downloading their metadata and whatnot. The UX is great on mouse & keyboard, though it could use some controller-specific improvements for the Deck (though you can just use the touchscreen like a mouse and that works fine). It even supports RetroAchievements, which I love.
Also, you don’t play the games themselves via streaming. When you launch a title it instead downloads the rom and emulator directly to your device, so they’re actually running natively (which is good for input lag).
One thing I really like about it is that it has an official homebrew store. So, right from the app you can buy titles from indie devs who make their own games for old consoles.
I can’t give a full endorsement since I’ve only just tried it out, but I plan to stick with it for a bit (I already plunked down the $25 for the yearly subscription). It can’t fully replace RetroDECK since there are a lot of systems I play there that aren’t available here (pretty much Dreamcast and beyond). But I do love the idea of being able to game on my phone while waiting for an appointment then pick up where I left off from my Deck (and vice versa).
If anyone’s curious and wants me to test anything out, let me know and I’m happy to do so.
*Steam Deck Note: The AppImage wouldn’t run for me when added to Steam directly. I had to install Gear Lever which then “installs” the AppImage itself. Once I did this, I was able to add Afterplay to Steam and have it run correctly in Game Mode.
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Afterplay: a cloud emulation platform
4 votes -
Comment on Easily discover partner libraries with new Libby update in ~books
kfwyre (edited )LinkThis is awesome! I have several available to me. Now, it would be really cool if they incorporate libraries with paid non-resident cards right into the app. I used to subscribe to Houston’s and...This is awesome! I have several available to me.
Now, it would be really cool if they incorporate libraries with paid non-resident cards right into the app. I used to subscribe to Houston’s and Fairfax’s libraries (and maybe Brooklyn? I can’t remember), but managing my accounts and renewing them was a pain. If I could do it right in Libby though…
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Comment on Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker in ~tech
kfwyre (edited )Link ParentI was in high school at the time, and the computers in our computer science lab were easily re-imageable. It couldn’t be done by the students (as far as I knew), but our computer science teacher...I was in high school at the time, and the computers in our computer science lab were easily re-imageable. It couldn’t be done by the students (as far as I knew), but our computer science teacher had a reboot option that produced a fresh install. It took only a few minutes.
With this in mind, my small advanced CS class (there were maybe 6 of us?) decided to create “spyware competitions.”
The rules were:
- You can only visit sites in Internet Explorer.
- You can’t directly install anything (no downloading Bonzi Buddy!).
- 5 minutes before the end of the period, everyone closes IE, then reopens it. Whoever has the most popups on start wins.
Basically, it was a rush to see who could acquire the most malware simply from visiting the wrong sites (like what happened with your banner ad). For those that weren’t around back then: Internet Explorer was deeply hooked into Windows, probably as an anti-competitive measure, but this also meant that it was deeply, horrifically vulnerable. Malware and popups were RAMPANT. It wasn’t a matter of “oh I clicked the wrong download button and ran the executable.” Merely loading a site in IE was enough to get actual, full-fat adware on your machine. I don’t remember when it released, but Google released a toolbar for IE and it was noteworthy not because it made search easier but because it blocked popups, and EVERYONE wanted to have that.
Anyway, the main strategy for our spyware competitions was to spell well-known sites incorrectly (e.g. something like
gooogle.comoraskjeves.com). Nearly all of these domains were parked and had massive malware payloads.We didn’t hold the spyware competitions daily or anything — they were much more sporadic, and really would only happen when we were all finished with everything else and had some downtime. Our teacher turned a blind eye to it in part because it was so easy to fix (she could have the computers re-imaged and ready for the next class very easily) and also because we were genuinely good students who weren’t doing it out of meanness but were, in proper CS fashion, exploring the parameters of what we could do with the technology in front of us.
The spyware competitions were, admittedly, probably the least “instructive” thing we did, but we were always coming up with little challenges or concepts that became mini-projects in the class. We had a surprising amount of agency, and I think the teacher saw our natural curiosity and intrinsic motivations, so she, most of the time, let us go for whatever we were thinking, often giving us guidance or mini-lessons along the way. It was a really great class.
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Comment on US President Donald Trump cannot strip Obamacare protections from trans people’s healthcare, judge rules in ~lgbt
kfwyre LinkA federal judge has struck down a Trump administration rule that would have prevented some gender-affirming care from being treated as an essential health benefit under the Affordable Care Act.
Senior U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton, who was appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush, ruled Friday that the Department of Health and Human Services exceeded its authority when it barred insurers from treating certain forms of gender-affirming care as essential health benefits.
A coalition of 20 states and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro sued the Trump administration last year over several provisions of the rule. They argued that the changes were unlawful and would increase premiums and out-of-pocket expenses while causing people to lose health insurance. State officials cheered Gorton’s decision to grant them summary judgment on the gender-affirming care provision.
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US President Donald Trump cannot strip Obamacare protections from trans people’s healthcare, judge rules
29 votes -
What's something that's more challenging for you than it is for others?
I've enjoyed reading the What game are you terrible at? topic, and it gave me the idea of making the question a bit more general. Not "what are you bad at?" but what is something that's more...
I've enjoyed reading the What game are you terrible at? topic, and it gave me the idea of making the question a bit more general.
Not "what are you bad at?" but what is something that's more difficult for you specifically. Like, I'm bad at a ton of different things, but that's because I don't put effort into them or never learned them or whatnot.
But there are certain things that I do that I find I have to put a lot more effort into to even be passable, while for other people it comes easy. That's the sort of thing I'm interested in hearing about.
- What's something that's tougher for you than it is for others?
- Why do you think that is?
- How does it impact you/others?
31 votes -
Have you ever been outed?
This is a tough question. I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad or relive trauma, but I want to give people a space to talk about it and share their stories if they need to. Have you ever been...
This is a tough question.
I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad or relive trauma, but I want to give people a space to talk about it and share their stories if they need to.
- Have you ever been outed by someone else/accident/circumstance?
- What happened?
- Who/what outed you?
- Why?
- How did it turn out?
Also, while some people will undoubtedly have serious answers to this, I also think there are some stories that are less grave and more lighthearted or positive. Those are fine to share too.
26 votes -
Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of August 16 in ~games
kfwyre LinkDigiphile RTS Renaissance Bundle RTS games aren't my genre at all, but I figured I'd share this here in part because I want to see Digiphile succeed and also I'm curious if we have any RTS...Digiphile RTS Renaissance Bundle
RTS games aren't my genre at all, but I figured I'd share this here in part because I want to see Digiphile succeed and also I'm curious if we have any RTS aficionados here who can share their thoughts on what's on offer.
It's also worth noting that Digiphile's VR Bundle from last week is still up as well.
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Comment on What game are you terrible at? in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentGenerally speaking, if I stick with something I'll improve by default. Whether or not I get better than my friends is debatable though (but, of course, that's heavily dependent on the specific...Generally speaking, if I stick with something I'll improve by default. Whether or not I get better than my friends is debatable though (but, of course, that's heavily dependent on the specific game). There are definitely some that "click" with me more than others.
A good example is Inkbound. We played this together in my multiplayer group, and I was WAY behind the curve on making sense of it. For the initial playthroughs I was just sort of confusedly tagging along.
I stuck with it though, ended up falling in love with the game and its mechanics, and thus kept playing it solo long after we stopped playing it as a group. It got to the point that I was able to confidently plow through the game on its most difficult settings by myself, which was legitimately impressive to my multiplayer group (both for the face value difficulty and also because it was me specifically doing it XD).
That said, there are some genres where I'll just hit my own skill ceiling. In FPS games, for example, I am just bad at aiming (and believe me, I've practiced!). I actually played Overwatch for years, and despite being a better-than-average Support main, I'd be absolute deadweight if I had to play DPS. Likewise, husband and I really love Wingspan, but he absolutely smokes me every time we play it. My ability to strategically plan my plays and make decisions simply cannot match his.
Mostly I just play games to relax, have fun, and engage in number-go-up/check-all-the-boxes fantasies. I'm not someone who particularly enjoys games that ask a lot of me (e.g. Soulslikes), so I tend to gravitate towards games that don't require a lot of effort or learning.
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Comment on What server location should I use for a VPN? in ~tech
kfwyre Link Parentcc: @bitwyze Basically what you said. I'm in the US where ISPs are awful with their customer data. I figure my home internet, where I spend the bulk of my time, has a LOT to say about me as an...cc: @bitwyze
Basically what you said. I'm in the US where ISPs are awful with their customer data. I figure my home internet, where I spend the bulk of my time, has a LOT to say about me as an individual, so shifting the trust from my ISP (a known bad actor) to a (hopefully trustworthy?) VPN company feels like the right thing to do.
I don't really use it to get around geoblocks or anything like that. It's essentially entirely because I don't trust my ISP.
Like you identified, I often have to drop it or change servers on account of services blocking VPNs, but I figure, even then, 90% VPN usage is better than 0%.
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Comment on What game are you terrible at? in ~games
kfwyre (edited )Link Parent🤝 You are not alone! It is a running joke with my friends that I am genuinely bad at games, and they're 100% right. I'll watch them play something and it's like I can see everything falling into...🤝
You are not alone!
It is a running joke with my friends that I am genuinely bad at games, and they're 100% right. I'll watch them play something and it's like I can see everything falling into place for them: their mastery of the controls, their understanding of the mechanics, etc.
When I play, the opposite happens. I'm clumsily making my way around; I don't fully understand how everything works together. I play nearly every single game on easy/casual difficulty, if it lets me. Even then, I still sometimes have trouble.
I've actually thought a lot about why this is, and I've settled on four different complimentary theories:
- I'm fairly uncoordinated.
In real life, in games, in general -- I'm clumsy. I'm whatever the opposite of "graceful" is. This is especially true when things get tense, so when the action ramps up, or there's a boss fight or whatnot, I tend to do even worse.
- I've got bad working memory.
I'm amazed at people that can like, take in a lot of information, process it, and hold on to it concurrently. I'll learn a board game with my friends, and we'll be 30 minutes in and they've already mastered the mechanics and strategies, all while I'm still just trying to remember the basics of what to do and how to play. If a video game tutorial shows me something once (e.g. a special move or something) and doesn't come back to it for a bit, you'd better believe that I'm going to forget about it. I genuinely have to give myself a conscious mental narration for when I'm learning a game to try to help remind me about what options are available to me.
- It's hard for me to mentally "shortcut" information.
Back when Slay the Spire came out, a friend was getting us into it so we hotseatted it and took turns playing. The group found my playthrough EXCRUCIATINGLY slow because I had to read each card each time -- even when I had already read the card multiple times before and knew what it did. All of them were very good at seeing, say, "Shiv", processing it once, and then incorporating that information into their wider understanding of the game. When "Shiv" came back up, they automatically knew and understood its use. Meanwhile, I had to sort of process all the information given to me each time in order to make an informed decision. It wasn't enough for me to just go "oh, that's a Shiv" because I had to evaluate my understanding of that card against the different cards in my hand each time, or the new enemies that I was facing, etc. The same goes for every other card. There was too much information for me to hold on to, which was why I had to "refresh" that information each time.
I think this is basically just an extension of what I talked about in #2 because I think it's also a product of my working memory. My friends can just sort of slurp up a whole bunch of info all at once and convert it into a shorthand that they can work with, whereas I have to deliberately focus on different things to make them make sense. My visual metaphor for this is they've got a desk full of papers, all facing up, and they know where everything is and how to access whatever they need immediately. Meanwhile, I've got a stack of papers, and I have to shuffle and read to even find the right one in the first place. Despite all my attempts, I'm never able to lay them all out at once like they seem to be able to do. They'll stay stacked, and I'll always have to spend time shuffling through them.
- Something is up with my (family's) perception.
My husband always makes fun of me (in a loving husband sort of way) for not being able to find things. I will open the fridge to find, say, the ketchup. I know what the ketchup looks like, and where it is likely to be, and yet it will still take me some genuine effort to locate it. At other times, I'm genuinely unable to locate it. Meanwhile, if I ask him where the ketchup is, he will be able to tell me exactly where it is. From the couch. Without even looking.
My brother-in-law experiences the same thing with my sister. They have a "game" called "Can I Point at It?" where she'll ask where something is, and he'll ask the titular question, which means that the item is literally within line-of-sight. She'll then stubbornly say "no" and insist on continuing to look at it herself.
At our most recent full-family vacation, my brother was looking for a specific drink. The place we were staying in had two different fridges, so he opened the first one, didn't see it, went to the second one, didn't see it, and then asked us where it was. My husband, again, from the couch, described where it was in the first fridge. My brother went back, opened it up, and, lo and behold, there it was. I excitedly said to my husband "see, it's not just me!"
Immediately following this, my dad walked into the room and asked where my mom was. My mom was sitting on a chair literally right in front of him. I grabbed my husband's arm excitedly and again said "SEE, IT'S NOT JUST ME!" We had a good laugh, and our in-laws then bonded over their shared experiences of dealing with my biological family's bizarre inability to find things.
As this pertains to games, well, it means that what's intuitively obvious to a lot of other people isn't necessarily the case for me. Instead, I'm often oblivious. Gamers will complain about things like obvious quest markers or lighting guiding your way, and, well, the devs probably put those in because of people like me who, for some strange and unexplained reason, somehow can't see what's right in front of them.
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What server location should I use for a VPN?
I'm asking "I" in the sense that I'd personally like an answer to this question, but really this is more about using VPNs in general. Currently, I just use the server with the lowest latency...
I'm asking "I" in the sense that I'd personally like an answer to this question, but really this is more about using VPNs in general.
Currently, I just use the server with the lowest latency because that gives me the least friction.
However, thinking about the GDPR in the EU, or California's data privacy protections: should I be strategically choosing a server based on those? Is there any benefit to having my traffic routed through a jurisdiction like that, or does that not really matter?
EDIT: To further clarify: will all the different websites out there log less data or treat my data differently if they believe my traffic is coming from the EU/California?
27 votes -
Comment on McDonald’s built a 515-page dossier on me in ~tech
kfwyre Link ParentI guess for me it's the idea that large stores of data like that are liabilities that only increase in size and potential "severity" over time. Like, right now it's just McDonald's doing...I guess for me it's the idea that large stores of data like that are liabilities that only increase in size and potential "severity" over time. Like, right now it's just McDonald's doing McDonald's things with our data, but if there were a breach, or if a data broker or AI company came along with the right price...
For example, Google just bought Spirit Airlines' data to train their AI. Granted, Spirit is defunct and the article claims that it doesn't include passenger information, but it still speaks to the idea that all this data could find itself somewhere else given the right circumstances, even if it currently isn't being used that way right now.
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Comment on CGA-2026-08 🗡️🛡️❤️🔺 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in ~games
kfwyre LinkThe latest version of Super ZSNES just came out and it features enhancements for this game. Might be worth looking into if anyone’s starting late.The latest version of Super ZSNES just came out and it features enhancements for this game. Might be worth looking into if anyone’s starting late.
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Comment on McDonald’s built a 515-page dossier on me in ~tech
kfwyre LinkAs a California resident, I have the legal right to access the data a company stores about me. So, I decided to request that information from McDonald’s to better understand what one of the major fast-food companies is collecting about its customers. A few days after I visited the McDonald’s Privacy Rights Center site and requested access, I received a 515-page file in my inbox with the iconic golden arches stamped across the top.
Much of my data report contains a detailed account of past McDonald’s transactions as well as offers the fast-food company sent me and how many loyalty points I accumulated. Essentially, every time I opened up the app to grab a bite to eat, it created a detailed record about when, where, and what I purchased. The log was even more thorough than I anticipated, including a record of every time I’ve scanned a code as part of its returning Monopoly sweepstakes along with the prize I received.
While the sheer amount of data McDonald’s stored over the years caught me off guard at first, the way it was used by the company’s predictive algorithms was what I found most concerning. The company predicted how often I would visit in the next six weeks (2.16 times), what I would spend on average ($13.49), and what I would spend in total ($29.15). One reporter at WIRED joked that McDonald’s had created a Minority Report-style dossier to predict my next snack wrap purchase.
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McDonald’s built a 515-page dossier on me
45 votes -
Comment on American Red Cross declares second-ever national blood supply crisis, urges immediate blood donations in ~health
I posted about Afterplay here, which is a paid rom emulation platform.
Meanwhile, this one is for those that prefer an open-source DIY version of the same concept.
I haven’t used it so I can’t recommend it personally, but I know we have a lot of people here with the knowhow to use something like this.