8 ms·

GameBoy Workboy

228 points by tosh 5mo ago

calmworm 5mo ago
Site blocks VPN users.
- deadbabe 5mo ago
  This is why you should self host your VPN.
  - retired 5mo ago
    Does that not defeat the anonymity aspect?
    - deadbabe 5mo ago
      VPNs even from big public providers have not been a reliable way to protect anonymity for a while now. Use VPNs for cryptographic security and circumventing region control.
    - DANmode 5mo ago
      You mean pseudo anonymity, from advertisers mostly?
  - Retr0id 5mo ago
    But where do you self-host it? Most sites that block VPNs also block VPSes
- ErroneousBosh 5mo ago
  Many of us only like legitimate users, and therefore block VPNs.
  - lxgr 5mo ago
    What makes a VPN user inherently “illegitimate” in your view?
    - mschuster91 5mo ago
      The problem is the whack-a-mole game with hackers and script kiddies. It used to be the case that banning known colo ASNs was enough to get rid of nuisance by STROs, then there was a flood of hacked routers being used for DDoS that was really annoying to get rid of, and then came "residential IP" VPNs and commercial VPNs, both of which get routinely abused by AI scrapers and frankly, the AI scrapers are a worse enemy than the skiddies of 10 years ago. They ruin everything. And you as a site operator can't really tell apart skiddies, griefers, AI scrapers and legitimate users apart any more.
      - deadbabe 5mo ago
        What are they doing exactly?
        mschuster91 5mo ago
        In what I have seen personally, creating absurdly more load by hitting "expensive" pages that no normal user would ever click in that frequency. The AI scraper bots are really, really dumb - they just follow everything that looks like a link. Another particularly annoying thing was when spam bots got brainy enough (if I were to guess with AI?) that managed to bypass our maths captcha. That one really still pisses me off because I don't like to torture users or having to use GDPR-violating services.
      - therein 5mo ago
        Almost as if you shouldn't be banning users because of their IP unless that IP specifically has openly attacked you. Or I guess you can just DENY ALL.
        ErroneousBosh 5mo ago
        If all the traffic you see from a particular netblock is people posting hate speech, you're probably not losing much by dropping everything from that whole range.
  - DocTomoe 5mo ago
    Well, you can just give me a list of the domains you operate, and I can put them in the network blacklist.
- Xkeeper 5mo ago
  Unfortunately true. I wrote about it early last year here: https://blog.xkeeper.net/uncategorized/tcrf-has-been-getting-ddosed/ https://blog.xkeeper.net/uncategorized/tcrf-has-been-getting... The story has not changed much. Every so often I will remove most of the blocks put in place, and within a few hours I'm back to having to block them. Many of the cheaper VPNs are also hosted on AWS / Google Cloud / Azure (or other cloud providers), which are also unilaterally blocked. I would much prefer we did not have to do this, but it is what it is.
ajdude 5mo ago
https://archive.ph/t3SI6 https://archive.ph/t3SI6
ant6n 5mo ago
The linked video seems to provide a much deeper story: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SZcrPM-jDqY&ra=m https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SZcrPM-jDqY&ra=m
- initramfs 5mo ago
  yes, amazing complement to a super rare non-release (but protoype) exists.
dgellow 5mo ago
Access seems pretty strict —— 403 Forbidden You are unable to access this site. Sorry, you are not allowed to access tcrf.net right now. If you are using a VPN, try disabling it first. We block many VPNs because of abuse. If that does not work, the block may be due to one of the following reasons: You are connecting using a network we have blocked. Your connection is still using a VPN or proxy (incl. Apple Private Wi-Fi, CloudFlare relays, etc.) You are a badly-behaving or unwelcome bot (ChatGPT, bingbot, yandex, etc.) You are using a badly-behaving extension (eg. Imagus, etc) that is trying to load every single version of a file in the background If you were able to view pages before, and this error message has suddenly appeared in place of what you were expecting, make sure you are not running any extensions or tools that are attempting to download everything at once. It is possible you were manually blocked, and it might be removed soon. If not, well, sorry. If this page always apppeared, there is likely not a lot you can do. If you are using a VPN, turn off your VPN and try again. Sorry for the trouble. We have been under a long-running DDoS attack.
- free_bip 5mo ago
  That's weird, I can connect just fine over mullvad.
  - MrDrMcCoy 5mo ago
    I'm on Mullvad and got blocked.
- willXare 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- echelon 5mo ago
  30 out of 34 comments are about the content blocking. Only four comments are about the content of the article, and none of them really go into depth. This has been at the top of HN all day. If people can't see it, what gives?
  - Xkeeper 5mo ago
dbalatero 5mo ago
When I try to share this page on iMessage it unfurls the link as "LLM / AI Standard Test Page" so I guess I won't share it!
- DANmode 5mo ago
  You can choose to display the text of the link, instead of letting your device’s defaults decide who you are, and then telling all of us about it.
  - DANmode 5mo ago
    Downvoters: Just press and hold, lol…
- tedmiston 5mo ago
  you can do the period trick: > . http://example.com http://example.com . https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/03/15/how-to-send-links-without-preview-imessage/#Use-the-period-trick https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/03/15/how-to-send-links-w...
Asfand2099 5mo ago
[flagged]
- montag 5mo ago
  Where are you seeing this?
  - iamjackg 5mo ago
    It's probably a bot account that tried to read the article to come up with a reasonable comment, but TCRF likely serves a "you're a bot, go away" static response page when it's accessed by bots. Pretty funny.
    - iamjackg 5mo ago
      I take that back! It seems to be happening to multiple people using VPNs. My bad. I should have been more charitable.
      - lxgr 5mo ago
        There do seem to be annoying false positives, but this particular account really is a bit strange. Months of silence after signing up, and then this non sequitur…
        rcxdude 5mo ago
        The style is also very LLM-y, though not a complete slam dunk.
      - girvo 5mo ago
        Funnily I think you are still right re. the specific account under discussion.
willXare 5mo ago
[flagged]
- asdff 5mo ago
  Four AA
- retired 5mo ago
  Anywhere with enough ambient light.
- pfannl 5mo ago
  10 AA
marcosscriven 5mo ago
Blocking Apple iCloud privacy is pretty extreme.
- retired 5mo ago
  It’s basically “give me your IP address before you can continue so we can better data mine you”
  - LRDEV111 5mo ago
    ooo free data!
  - as1mov 5mo ago
    Yeah, the community run TCRF wiki is banning VPNs just so they can mine your data along with the luxurious $400/mo they're getting from Patreon. And not because they're constantly being besieged by rampant bots that they have to resort to such drastic measures.
    - retired 5mo ago
      I don’t know anything about TCRF or what they do as their website blocks me. I do see trackers from multiple big corporations on tcrf.net. What bots are using Apple Private Relay?
      - Telaneo 5mo ago
        > I don’t know anything about TCRF or what they do as their website blocks me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cutting_Room_Floor_(website) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cutting_Room_Floor_(websit...
        deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
      - Xkeeper 5mo ago
        This is fascinating to me, because you just said you can't see it, but also that there are "trackers from multiple big corporations". Can you tell me what those are? I ask primarily because we explicitly don't use any trackers, to a degree I actually pride myself on running a website that doesn't contact anything else: https://mini.xkeeper.net/private/C58L77azpY.png https://mini.xkeeper.net/private/C58L77azpY.png The sole exceptions are YouTube embeds, afaik. I even switched out the MediaWiki and CC badges to be local.
remywang 5mo ago
I had some good fun writing non-gaming apps for the playdate console including a browser [1] and Kagi news mirror [2] and feel the device has great potential as an alternative to android/iOS duopoly [1]: https://github.com/remysucre/ORBIT https://github.com/remysucre/ORBIT [2]: https://github.com/remysucre/cranky-news https://github.com/remysucre/cranky-news
- xstas1 5mo ago
  I had never heard of the Playdate but it looks like a very interesting device... and... I want it? Would you suggest getting one?
  - archargelod 5mo ago
    I would've got one if it wasn't so pricey for these specs. You can get a cheap Anbernic for 40-60$ running linux, with decent ARM CPU and a good backlighted screen.
    - cl3misch 5mo ago
      ...but what do you do with it? Play emulators? The Playdate has bespoke games designed for it, and many people say it's worth the price. Tbh I find it a bit weird to talk about leisure devices like a handheld in terms of pure specs as if it was a server for number crunching. I use it to have fun, and (for me at least) a huge part of that is UI and ease-of-use.
      - gilrain 5mo ago
        > ...but what do you do with it? Play emulators? Yep! > The Playdate has bespoke games designed for it … Not quite as many as [every 2D home or portable console]. For instance, I enjoy [dozens and dozens of Nintendo games], but there are thousands of others to choose from.
      - archargelod 5mo ago
        > but what do you do with it? Yes, emulators up to PS1/NDS. There are also many bespoke and commercial linux games that run on these devices via portmaster[0] (for commercial games you need to provide your own files). I use my 34XX clamshell to listen to podcasts and audiobooks in rockbox [1]. If you take some time to setup alternative OS (e.g. MuOS) there is a good video player and even terminal emulator available with root shell. And of course, you can write your own games and apps to run on it (SDL, pico8, Godot, Love2D, etc). [0] https://portmaster.games/ https://portmaster.games/ [1] https://portmaster.games/detail.html?name=rockbox https://portmaster.games/detail.html?name=rockbox
daniel_iversen 5mo ago
Here’s a nice YouTube video about GameBoy WorkBoy; a hardware addon and software productivity apps for the game boy,’unreleased and recently recovered https://youtu.be/1Y98jj3Kn84?si=dMII3mTmeDI0XrCn https://youtu.be/1Y98jj3Kn84?si=dMII3mTmeDI0XrCn Sorry if it’s in the article, I can’t access it either
marethyu 5mo ago
Does anyone know where can I find contents for the 2020 gigaleak?
- marethyu 5mo ago
  nvm, I found it in archive.org
MBCook 5mo ago
I remember this being shown in Nintendo Power. As the kind of kid who liked computers and gadgets I really wanted one, and read the article many times. But of course it never came out.
- pinheadmz 5mo ago
  Me too. I even cut out the pictures from the magazine and pasted on to cardboard to pretend I had it already. I can't believe the YouTube guy got one ...?!
snvzz 5mo ago
Applaud the preservation.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

GameBoy Workboy

228 points by tosh 5mo ago

calmworm 5mo ago

Site blocks VPN users.

deadbabe 5mo ago
This is why you should self host your VPN.
- retired 5mo ago
  Does that not defeat the anonymity aspect?
  - deadbabe 5mo ago
    VPNs even from big public providers have not been a reliable way to protect anonymity for a while now. Use VPNs for cryptographic security and circumventing region control.
  - DANmode 5mo ago
    You mean pseudo anonymity, from advertisers mostly?
- Retr0id 5mo ago
  But where do you self-host it? Most sites that block VPNs also block VPSes
ErroneousBosh 5mo ago
Many of us only like legitimate users, and therefore block VPNs.
- lxgr 5mo ago
  What makes a VPN user inherently “illegitimate” in your view?
  - mschuster91 5mo ago
    The problem is the whack-a-mole game with hackers and script kiddies. It used to be the case that banning known colo ASNs was enough to get rid of nuisance by STROs, then there was a flood of hacked routers being used for DDoS that was really annoying to get rid of, and then came "residential IP" VPNs and commercial VPNs, both of which get routinely abused by AI scrapers and frankly, the AI scrapers are a worse enemy than the skiddies of 10 years ago. They ruin everything. And you as a site operator can't really tell apart skiddies, griefers, AI scrapers and legitimate users apart any more.
    - deadbabe 5mo ago
      What are they doing exactly?
      - mschuster91 5mo ago
        In what I have seen personally, creating absurdly more load by hitting "expensive" pages that no normal user would ever click in that frequency. The AI scraper bots are really, really dumb - they just follow everything that looks like a link. Another particularly annoying thing was when spam bots got brainy enough (if I were to guess with AI?) that managed to bypass our maths captcha. That one really still pisses me off because I don't like to torture users or having to use GDPR-violating services.
    - therein 5mo ago
      Almost as if you shouldn't be banning users because of their IP unless that IP specifically has openly attacked you. Or I guess you can just DENY ALL.
      - ErroneousBosh 5mo ago
        If all the traffic you see from a particular netblock is people posting hate speech, you're probably not losing much by dropping everything from that whole range.
- DocTomoe 5mo ago
  Well, you can just give me a list of the domains you operate, and I can put them in the network blacklist.
Xkeeper 5mo ago
Unfortunately true. I wrote about it early last year here: https://blog.xkeeper.net/uncategorized/tcrf-has-been-getting-ddosed/ https://blog.xkeeper.net/uncategorized/tcrf-has-been-getting... The story has not changed much. Every so often I will remove most of the blocks put in place, and within a few hours I'm back to having to block them. Many of the cheaper VPNs are also hosted on AWS / Google Cloud / Azure (or other cloud providers), which are also unilaterally blocked. I would much prefer we did not have to do this, but it is what it is.

ajdude 5mo ago

https://archive.ph/t3SI6 https://archive.ph/t3SI6

ant6n 5mo ago

The linked video seems to provide a much deeper story: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SZcrPM-jDqY&ra=m https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SZcrPM-jDqY&ra=m

initramfs 5mo ago
yes, amazing complement to a super rare non-release (but protoype) exists.

dgellow 5mo ago

Access seems pretty strict —— 403 Forbidden You are unable to access this site. Sorry, you are not allowed to access tcrf.net right now. If you are using a VPN, try disabling it first. We block many VPNs because of abuse. If that does not work, the block may be due to one of the following reasons: You are connecting using a network we have blocked. Your connection is still using a VPN or proxy (incl. Apple Private Wi-Fi, CloudFlare relays, etc.) You are a badly-behaving or unwelcome bot (ChatGPT, bingbot, yandex, etc.) You are using a badly-behaving extension (eg. Imagus, etc) that is trying to load every single version of a file in the background If you were able to view pages before, and this error message has suddenly appeared in place of what you were expecting, make sure you are not running any extensions or tools that are attempting to download everything at once. It is possible you were manually blocked, and it might be removed soon. If not, well, sorry. If this page always apppeared, there is likely not a lot you can do. If you are using a VPN, turn off your VPN and try again. Sorry for the trouble. We have been under a long-running DDoS attack.

free_bip 5mo ago
That's weird, I can connect just fine over mullvad.
- MrDrMcCoy 5mo ago
  I'm on Mullvad and got blocked.
willXare 5mo ago
[flagged]
echelon 5mo ago
30 out of 34 comments are about the content blocking. Only four comments are about the content of the article, and none of them really go into depth. This has been at the top of HN all day. If people can't see it, what gives?
- Xkeeper 5mo ago

dbalatero 5mo ago

When I try to share this page on iMessage it unfurls the link as "LLM / AI Standard Test Page" so I guess I won't share it!

DANmode 5mo ago
You can choose to display the text of the link, instead of letting your device’s defaults decide who you are, and then telling all of us about it.
- DANmode 5mo ago
  Downvoters: Just press and hold, lol…
tedmiston 5mo ago
you can do the period trick: > . http://example.com http://example.com . https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/03/15/how-to-send-links-without-preview-imessage/#Use-the-period-trick https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/03/15/how-to-send-links-w...

Asfand2099 5mo ago

[flagged]

montag 5mo ago
Where are you seeing this?
- iamjackg 5mo ago
  It's probably a bot account that tried to read the article to come up with a reasonable comment, but TCRF likely serves a "you're a bot, go away" static response page when it's accessed by bots. Pretty funny.
  - iamjackg 5mo ago
    I take that back! It seems to be happening to multiple people using VPNs. My bad. I should have been more charitable.
    - lxgr 5mo ago
      There do seem to be annoying false positives, but this particular account really is a bit strange. Months of silence after signing up, and then this non sequitur…
      - rcxdude 5mo ago
        The style is also very LLM-y, though not a complete slam dunk.
    - girvo 5mo ago
      Funnily I think you are still right re. the specific account under discussion.

willXare 5mo ago

[flagged]

asdff 5mo ago
Four AA
retired 5mo ago
Anywhere with enough ambient light.
pfannl 5mo ago
10 AA

marcosscriven 5mo ago

Blocking Apple iCloud privacy is pretty extreme.

retired 5mo ago
It’s basically “give me your IP address before you can continue so we can better data mine you”
- LRDEV111 5mo ago
  ooo free data!
- as1mov 5mo ago
  Yeah, the community run TCRF wiki is banning VPNs just so they can mine your data along with the luxurious $400/mo they're getting from Patreon. And not because they're constantly being besieged by rampant bots that they have to resort to such drastic measures.
  - retired 5mo ago
    I don’t know anything about TCRF or what they do as their website blocks me. I do see trackers from multiple big corporations on tcrf.net. What bots are using Apple Private Relay?
    - Telaneo 5mo ago
      > I don’t know anything about TCRF or what they do as their website blocks me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cutting_Room_Floor_(website) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cutting_Room_Floor_(websit...
      - deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
    - Xkeeper 5mo ago
      This is fascinating to me, because you just said you can't see it, but also that there are "trackers from multiple big corporations". Can you tell me what those are? I ask primarily because we explicitly don't use any trackers, to a degree I actually pride myself on running a website that doesn't contact anything else: https://mini.xkeeper.net/private/C58L77azpY.png https://mini.xkeeper.net/private/C58L77azpY.png The sole exceptions are YouTube embeds, afaik. I even switched out the MediaWiki and CC badges to be local.

remywang 5mo ago

I had some good fun writing non-gaming apps for the playdate console including a browser [1] and Kagi news mirror [2] and feel the device has great potential as an alternative to android/iOS duopoly [1]: https://github.com/remysucre/ORBIT https://github.com/remysucre/ORBIT [2]: https://github.com/remysucre/cranky-news https://github.com/remysucre/cranky-news

xstas1 5mo ago
I had never heard of the Playdate but it looks like a very interesting device... and... I want it? Would you suggest getting one?
- archargelod 5mo ago
  I would've got one if it wasn't so pricey for these specs. You can get a cheap Anbernic for 40-60$ running linux, with decent ARM CPU and a good backlighted screen.
  - cl3misch 5mo ago
    ...but what do you do with it? Play emulators? The Playdate has bespoke games designed for it, and many people say it's worth the price. Tbh I find it a bit weird to talk about leisure devices like a handheld in terms of pure specs as if it was a server for number crunching. I use it to have fun, and (for me at least) a huge part of that is UI and ease-of-use.
    - gilrain 5mo ago
      > ...but what do you do with it? Play emulators? Yep! > The Playdate has bespoke games designed for it … Not quite as many as [every 2D home or portable console]. For instance, I enjoy [dozens and dozens of Nintendo games], but there are thousands of others to choose from.
    - archargelod 5mo ago
      > but what do you do with it? Yes, emulators up to PS1/NDS. There are also many bespoke and commercial linux games that run on these devices via portmaster[0] (for commercial games you need to provide your own files). I use my 34XX clamshell to listen to podcasts and audiobooks in rockbox [1]. If you take some time to setup alternative OS (e.g. MuOS) there is a good video player and even terminal emulator available with root shell. And of course, you can write your own games and apps to run on it (SDL, pico8, Godot, Love2D, etc). [0] https://portmaster.games/ https://portmaster.games/ [1] https://portmaster.games/detail.html?name=rockbox https://portmaster.games/detail.html?name=rockbox

daniel_iversen 5mo ago

Here’s a nice YouTube video about GameBoy WorkBoy; a hardware addon and software productivity apps for the game boy,’unreleased and recently recovered https://youtu.be/1Y98jj3Kn84?si=dMII3mTmeDI0XrCn https://youtu.be/1Y98jj3Kn84?si=dMII3mTmeDI0XrCn Sorry if it’s in the article, I can’t access it either

marethyu 5mo ago

Does anyone know where can I find contents for the 2020 gigaleak?

marethyu 5mo ago
nvm, I found it in archive.org

MBCook 5mo ago

I remember this being shown in Nintendo Power. As the kind of kid who liked computers and gadgets I really wanted one, and read the article many times. But of course it never came out.

pinheadmz 5mo ago
Me too. I even cut out the pictures from the magazine and pasted on to cardboard to pretend I had it already. I can't believe the YouTube guy got one ...?!

snvzz 5mo ago

Applaud the preservation.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]