This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
My suggestion, get as many private copies of emulators you can before they go after all the Github ones. Seems to be more and more take-downs are happening lately.
It really is too bad we dont have a federated github alternative. I know theres some projects in development, but I can see the emulator scene getting harder and harder to get into if popular repos go down. Decades of work, gone.
We do have a federated GitHub alternative. Perhaps not too mature yet, but it does indeed exist. Forgejo
I just discovered that this is Codeberg - I've seen a lot of projects there and I had no idea that it was an instance of Forgejo
Originally, it wasn't. Codeberg used to run Gitea. Forgejo is a fork of that, which came later.
Not really federated. You can't, for example, raise issues or set PR requests from another instance.
They have been working on Federation: https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/pulls?q=&type=all&sort=&state=closed&labels=79349&milestone=0&project=0&assignee=0&poster=0&archived=false
Yep its not nearly done....but I have a server and running through testing. git itself is fairly federated, but the support structures (PRs/MRs, review process, easy wiki/issue tracking, etc...) is where the real work is at.
Git is a distributed version control system. There doesn't have to be a single copy of the repo on which everything depends. It's a choice, and an understandable one, to treat one copy as authoritative, but there's no reason to despair if it becomes unavailable. Any copy of it will do.
What GitHub provides that's hard to do without it is not the repository but the stuff that goes around it: issue tracking, communication tools, discoverability, etc.
So if people take the distributed nature of Git seriously and make sure they all have a local copy of the repo, we won't lose the repo itself to Nintendo's actions. But we may lose the tools that make it easy to coordinate work on the repo.
Before we had GitHub and issue trackers we had mailing lists and Usenet groups. Not as convenient, bit they allowed people to coordinate work on open source software without a central, corporately owned point of failure. Maybe we should be looking to the early days of FOSS for ideas about how to make these projects resilient against corporate persecution. Not for the exact tools but for decentralized ways of coordinating collaboration.
There are self hosted github alternatives, like Gitea for example. It takes 10 minutes to set up and it behaves like github/gitlab. So all to advantages can be kept.
If you (or anyone else) has any suggestions for emulators/tools to mirror, send them my way. I already have a few on my Forgejo server https://git.ngni.us/mirrors
Don't forget to mirror suitable versions of the scarce dependencies. Sirit, the SPIR-V assembler, for example.
Get a device or two, as well.
Your computer may very well get obsolete when it comes to software support.
A handheld or console meant to be an emulation console won't have to move through time. It'll be as it is after the day you're done setting it up, like a hacked console.
Your PC has to keep up with web standards, codecs, online goings on but dedicated, offline devices do not. I may choose an SBC to do this to, and make a copy of the partition housing the emulators and boot drive for safe keeping.
I also have two different raspberrypi emulation images. Since those are literally everywhere, it's a sure bet you'll be able to find one to put the sd card into, even years from now.
It really is too bad we dont have a federated github alternative. I know theres some projects in development, but I can see the emulator scene getting harder and harder to get into if popular repos go down. Decades of work, gone.
There is Radicle which is a peer-to-peer forge.
Edit: Don’t expect all the features of GitHub or Forgejo though.
Stop making me sad sir!!!!
Emulators should provide torrents for releases.
People are missing the point of this article a bit - It's not just about Nintendo trying to remove forks/backups of yuzu/ryujinx. It's that they are trying to subpoena Reddit as a corporation for user data. They want to pursue legal actions against anyone discussing Switch Piracy online. And then ask yourself - Do you trust Reddit as a corporation with your user data?
In addition to requesting records from Reddit, Nintendo's filing also makes appeals for information from other companies, including domain registrars such as Namecheap and GoDaddy, along with firms such as Cloudflare, Github, Google, and Discord.
Reminder, that you do not own your social media accounts and that corporations might end up sharing whatever you post online with whomever. Privacy and anonymity are not guaranteed.
So, Lemmy is a better place?
Depends on which instance you use for your client, I would say. For me only discuss.tchncs.de gets to see my IP address, and Milan Ihl, our admin, as well as his Lemmy server, are in Germany.
This means two things:
But I've probably doxxed myself with personal stories. Pretty sure a dedicated person could find my employer, the team I'm in, and my age.
Well… it’s all public anyway so no need to make a request. Just scrape it.
I have several copies of Yuzu in multiple backup locations. They're all local. Fuck Nintendo.
The big ones:
Now Nintendo is seeking the court’s approval to actually subpoena Reddit for user records. These records, if shared, could identify additional moderators or users tied to the r/SwitchPirates subreddits. Nintendo argues that these records are critical to building their case against others in the alleged piracy ...
In addition to requesting records from Reddit, Nintendo's filing also makes appeals for information from other companies, including domain registrars such as Namecheap and GoDaddy, along with firms such as Cloudflare, Github, Google, and Discord.
Kinda weird that I'm rooting for reddit, a company I hate, against Nintendo, a company that usually brings me joy.
But here we are.
Any time Nintendo is involved in a legal case, you can pretty safely assume they're probably wrong.
On the other hand, r/switchpirates is transparently a community for the express purpose of pirating Nintendo games for their current system. It’s one of the rare cases where I think they probably can make a slam-dunk legal case to shut it down.
To shut it down, sure. To get information on accounts simply for posting there? They can fuck off.
Nintendo is definitely overstepping with that request, but I can't say I feel bad for the subset of Redditors shitting their pants because they admitted to distributing* ROMs. Trusting a corporation to protect you from the consequences of your actions is a level of stupidity beyond deserving sympathy.
*Specifically distributing. Not downloading. Not discussing. Distributing.
They used to be pretty strict about posting links. If that's still the case, it's literally just a discussion forum discussing and promoting something illegal and not necessarily doing anything illegal. I'll wager that the judge would only sign off on information from users that Nintendo already has enough evidence against. But I guess we'll see.
As a lifelong Nintendo fan, I've been rooting against them in pretty much everything for close to a decade at this point.
Subpoenaing Reddit for user records because some guy emulated a videogame made for your crappy handheld console.
Target them all you want, the links are on gdrive and mega and the owners will just move to advertising them somewhere else, Tumblr, throwaway eBay listings, Spotify playlists,... here.
Entire romsets for gb, gbc, gba, N64, SNES, etc have all been on piratebay for over a decade, not to mention the 4-5 300Gb+ curated sets out there... wherever they are.
Good luck there, Nintenbros. Keep swinging that axe. We'll keep growing heads.
It also helps that the golden age is over and each system now only gets around 10 or so exclusives worth a shit so there's less Switch games needed for a good set compared to past generations. Thanks, Nintendo. Quality over quantity.
The main thing they are trying to do is make it more difficult to find this stuff via google, which tbh is still easy without reddit.
But even Switch homebrew has been a pain. Most of it is one off software made years ago because no sane dev wanted to actually keep up with all the firmware releases and limited control of CFW. Github/Gitlab repos keep getting banned left and right for tools not even related to piracy.
3DS has full fledged apps with teams behind everything and HShop which makes it very easy for everyone. Switch still doesn't have a definitive method of handling NSP/XCIs, and all the auto download internet repos are invite only to hide from Nintendo.
I'm really hoping someone finds some serious hardware bypass in their next console after what they did to the emulation scene. They really deserve to go through the insane R4 piracy age all over again for nuking everything online.
I don’t think that it is illegal to talk about illegal stuff 🤔 but maybe in some countries, it is, who knows, at least not where I live
"Conspiracy to ___"
Conspiracy to blank requires at least one overt action, demonstrating that you intend to fulfill your commitment to blank.
We could talk about doing blank all day, make plans to blank. Draw up little blank maps and assign blank duties. Until someone actually does something, it's all just talk.
So, who wants to plan the next presidential assassination?
Those dumbass mods at /r/piracy censoring the shit out of everyone to not post links and be uselessly vague to prevent from being taken down, and still get taken down even after all that stupid self censoring, is catharsis for me and ironic for them because it was useless to everyone that tried to look for help there since they deterred anyone from directly linking or name dropping sites or discord channels to locate piracy content. Even their wiki was dogshit useless.
So, good. Fuck them. They deserve it. Don't self censor, don't be vague, don't discourage actual piracy. Which is what they did there. Fuck them. Fuck reddit.
Yeah I don't get certain sub rules. For example on the VPN subreddit you couldn't ask about or name ANY VPN companies. Like, what!? Then what the hell are we here for!?
I wonder if their intent was to help people find a good VPN or to be the place people who want to find a VPN go and then give up looking for one.
Seems like the best way to get people to hate something isn't by going around telling people that they should hate it. It's by becoming a spokesman for that thing and telling people they should love it while making them hate you (and everything associated with you).
Nintendo goes on to claim that this subreddit has played a central role in fostering Switch piracy,
Piracy has been long ago defined to be a service problem. Nintendo should be suing themselves. I hope the lawyers eat it all up.
So what? Nintendo expects us to wait for their lazy asses to release older games?
At full price and only in the switch
And don't pirate it please we are the good guys here
-Nintendo probably
Not only that. In South America, it is impossible to legally purchase digital Nintendo games. The only options are: overpriced physical copies (like, 2 or 3 times the original value), or create a US account (so, lying in the personal data) and buy prepaid cards online (also severely overpriced).
For some people, piracy is the only option.
maybe they're just real pirates who like to top and bottom. ever think about that nintendo?
Cut off one head and two more shall take its place, business as usual
