8 ms·

> Data mining revealed the strings "SNESticle" and "Copyright (c) 1997-2004 Icer Addis" (Addis being Sardu's real name) on the game disc. This raises a lot of q

by geoah 5y ago

> Data mining revealed the strings "SNESticle" and "Copyright (c) 1997-2004 Icer Addis" (Addis being Sardu's real name) on the game disc. This raises a lot of questions, perhaps most importantly (and unanswerably): did he really have SNESticle ready to go back in 1997 and then chose to sit on it just to spite the people who were bugging him for it? Or is the 1997 date just a joke, to spite the very same people now? Or is the whole thing a joke? Who knows, ... Author of this emulator really sounds like a man with an insane amount of skills and an even larger grudge assuming he actually did either of the two things just out of spite. Got to respect his dedication either way.

justinator 5y ago
I mean: this is how you do it. Better than posioning a popular js library and just being an annoyance.
- franga2000 5y ago
  Totally different motivations and goals, but also, the JS stuff was hilarious too. And more importantly, like with left-pad, if your software delivery pipeline is that fragile for mission-critical systems, you got what you deserved. Better learn your lesson from downtime now than leak a bunch of user data because the developer of is-uppercase.js lost a thumb drive with their github keys and somebody pushed a backdoor in a package update.
anonbanker 5y ago
He didn't make NESticle or Genecyst or Callus for anyone but himself. That much should've been obvious by the UI for each emulator. Obviously, he wanted to write a 65(C)816 and SPC700 emulator in 1997, so he did. Considering how badly his privacy was violated during the late 90's, it's not even a little surprising that he never released it.
- csdvrx 5y ago
  > Considering how badly his privacy was violated during the late 90's, it's not even a little surprising that he never released it. It seems people never learn: just look at the effort to find who Satoshy or _why_ are. This is not respectful: they gave you something cool and asked to be left alone. Their work is theirs and they generously shared it with you. Why do they believe they are owed anything else? Why can't some people take "please stop" for a response? Why do they keep trying their best to alienate the very people who accomplished miracles way beyond their capabilities? It seems self destructive in any way I take it, and driven only by spite/jealousy/beggar-chooser spirit.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    Satoshi likely became filthy rich off of his invention, so you'll have to excuse me if I'm not particularly sympathetic in that particular case.
    - csdvrx 5y ago
      > Satoshi likely became filthy rich off of his invention Should I do like you and exclude from the sympathy due to every human being those who are filthy poor if I don't like the poors? Or will you invoke some special exemption clause making it totally ok, like it's ok to punch up but not down? If I should not, maybe you should ask yourself if respect should exclude those who you dislike, because other people may dislike those you like... or even yourself.
      - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
        Perhaps I phrased that poorly. It's not Satoshi's wealth that matters, but rather the source of his income—he became rich from his invention. I believe that should open him up to scrutiny, for the same reason that publishing investment advice should open you up to more scrutiny than publishing sports trivia. (I don't want to imply that Satoshi did anything untoward, because I don't think he did. However, it's a valid thing to want to investigate.)
        5y ago
bitwize 5y ago
The 90s emu scene was full of soap-opera-tier drama. Mr. Foo was mean to Barbazzz one time in IRC, so Barbazzz takes down the beta of his extremely promising Casio Loopy emulator and cancels any future emulation projects. In retaliation, Mr. Foo disbands his emu group, known throughout the web as a great emulation resource, with the stated reason being to avoid well-poisoning by lamers like Barbazzz. That sort of thing. Look up what happened to Damaged Cybernetics and VSMC. The emu scene still has lots of drama, but it's different and I won't get into why on Hackernews. EDIT: In fact Damaged Cybernetics, which was indeed the group to go to for emulation news and information back in the day, was disbanded because of the backlash against its leader, who had the friendly nick "MindRape". MindRape stole and released the source code to... NESticle, leading to Sardu's withdrawal from the scene and the lack of a SNESticle we can all enjoy.
- vmception 5y ago
  lamers, thats a throwback
- shortformblog 5y ago
  This was exactly what happened with NESticle.
- tasha0663 5y ago
  If there's any program you'd like to see the source to, it's NESticle. I get it that we live in an era now where you can't even trust Norton AV with spare cycles, but in it's heyday we're talking about an emulator for running (I don't think it's a stretch to say) mostly pirated binaries. Which also happened to have dripping bloody menus and a severed hand for a cursor. It didn't exactly look harmless! Would have been nice to see under the hood.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    NESticle, as I recall, had plain blue menus (but it did have the severed hand cursor). It was Genecyst that had the bloody menus. Back in the day, we didn't really worry about software like this being malicious just because of the author's gruesome sense of humor. It was all part of the fun. Back in the 90s, people were edgy like that. It's not like today where you're suspected of cryptofascism for not properly reciting the right nostrums. If it were malicious, someone would've found out, word would have spread around the scene, and the author would be branded the worst of lamers. People had reputations to uphold and good will to farm out of the community, even when running quasi-legal programs to play pirated ROMs.
LocalH 5y ago
The scene of the time hacked his computer to swipe the source code. I'd be pissed too.
- rasz 5y ago
  AFAIR he ran windows share on public IP with no firewall (default on win95), someone got his IP from IRC? hmm <furious googling> there it is https://patpend.net/articles/zd/article2.html https://patpend.net/articles/zd/article2.html "Sardu was running Windows 95 at the time. He made the mistake of leaving drive sharing on (which should not have been on by default, but for some reason, it was on). MindRape was then able to mount Sardu's hard drive (since drive sharing was enabled) with Samba. Pretty clever, right? Regardless, he did this and not only was he able to retrieve the NESticle source code, he was able to look through all of his drives. His Zip drive. His hard drive. His CD-ROM drive. Whatever he wanted. Such an invasion of privacy is ridiculous, but this is what transpired."

by geoah 5y ago

justinator 5y ago

I mean: this is how you do it. Better than posioning a popular js library and just being an annoyance.

franga2000 5y ago
Totally different motivations and goals, but also, the JS stuff was hilarious too. And more importantly, like with left-pad, if your software delivery pipeline is that fragile for mission-critical systems, you got what you deserved. Better learn your lesson from downtime now than leak a bunch of user data because the developer of is-uppercase.js lost a thumb drive with their github keys and somebody pushed a backdoor in a package update.

anonbanker 5y ago

He didn't make NESticle or Genecyst or Callus for anyone but himself. That much should've been obvious by the UI for each emulator. Obviously, he wanted to write a 65(C)816 and SPC700 emulator in 1997, so he did. Considering how badly his privacy was violated during the late 90's, it's not even a little surprising that he never released it.

csdvrx 5y ago
> Considering how badly his privacy was violated during the late 90's, it's not even a little surprising that he never released it. It seems people never learn: just look at the effort to find who Satoshy or _why_ are. This is not respectful: they gave you something cool and asked to be left alone. Their work is theirs and they generously shared it with you. Why do they believe they are owed anything else? Why can't some people take "please stop" for a response? Why do they keep trying their best to alienate the very people who accomplished miracles way beyond their capabilities? It seems self destructive in any way I take it, and driven only by spite/jealousy/beggar-chooser spirit.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Satoshi likely became filthy rich off of his invention, so you'll have to excuse me if I'm not particularly sympathetic in that particular case.
  - csdvrx 5y ago
    > Satoshi likely became filthy rich off of his invention Should I do like you and exclude from the sympathy due to every human being those who are filthy poor if I don't like the poors? Or will you invoke some special exemption clause making it totally ok, like it's ok to punch up but not down? If I should not, maybe you should ask yourself if respect should exclude those who you dislike, because other people may dislike those you like... or even yourself.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      Perhaps I phrased that poorly. It's not Satoshi's wealth that matters, but rather the source of his income—he became rich from his invention. I believe that should open him up to scrutiny, for the same reason that publishing investment advice should open you up to more scrutiny than publishing sports trivia. (I don't want to imply that Satoshi did anything untoward, because I don't think he did. However, it's a valid thing to want to investigate.)
      - 5y ago

bitwize 5y ago

The 90s emu scene was full of soap-opera-tier drama. Mr. Foo was mean to Barbazzz one time in IRC, so Barbazzz takes down the beta of his extremely promising Casio Loopy emulator and cancels any future emulation projects. In retaliation, Mr. Foo disbands his emu group, known throughout the web as a great emulation resource, with the stated reason being to avoid well-poisoning by lamers like Barbazzz. That sort of thing. Look up what happened to Damaged Cybernetics and VSMC. The emu scene still has lots of drama, but it's different and I won't get into why on Hackernews. EDIT: In fact Damaged Cybernetics, which was indeed the group to go to for emulation news and information back in the day, was disbanded because of the backlash against its leader, who had the friendly nick "MindRape". MindRape stole and released the source code to... NESticle, leading to Sardu's withdrawal from the scene and the lack of a SNESticle we can all enjoy.

vmception 5y ago
lamers, thats a throwback
shortformblog 5y ago
This was exactly what happened with NESticle.
tasha0663 5y ago
If there's any program you'd like to see the source to, it's NESticle. I get it that we live in an era now where you can't even trust Norton AV with spare cycles, but in it's heyday we're talking about an emulator for running (I don't think it's a stretch to say) mostly pirated binaries. Which also happened to have dripping bloody menus and a severed hand for a cursor. It didn't exactly look harmless! Would have been nice to see under the hood.
- bitwize 5y ago
  NESticle, as I recall, had plain blue menus (but it did have the severed hand cursor). It was Genecyst that had the bloody menus. Back in the day, we didn't really worry about software like this being malicious just because of the author's gruesome sense of humor. It was all part of the fun. Back in the 90s, people were edgy like that. It's not like today where you're suspected of cryptofascism for not properly reciting the right nostrums. If it were malicious, someone would've found out, word would have spread around the scene, and the author would be branded the worst of lamers. People had reputations to uphold and good will to farm out of the community, even when running quasi-legal programs to play pirated ROMs.

LocalH 5y ago

The scene of the time hacked his computer to swipe the source code. I'd be pissed too.

rasz 5y ago
AFAIR he ran windows share on public IP with no firewall (default on win95), someone got his IP from IRC? hmm <furious googling> there it is https://patpend.net/articles/zd/article2.html https://patpend.net/articles/zd/article2.html "Sardu was running Windows 95 at the time. He made the mistake of leaving drive sharing on (which should not have been on by default, but for some reason, it was on). MindRape was then able to mount Sardu's hard drive (since drive sharing was enabled) with Samba. Pretty clever, right? Regardless, he did this and not only was he able to retrieve the NESticle source code, he was able to look through all of his drives. His Zip drive. His hard drive. His CD-ROM drive. Whatever he wanted. Such an invasion of privacy is ridiculous, but this is what transpired."