This might be a silly question, but how does this even happen?
I would have thought they’d finalise the game, get a ‘master’ of sorts and then send it to a mass production facility - how would the deleted archive end up on the master? Did they accidentally copy it over, then remove it before shipping?
Edit: definitely should have read the comments here before adding my own!
Yeah, Duplication Houses usually duplicate the disk sector-by-sector, instead of on a file system level. (This makes a lot of sense, because it allowed the disk to contain any file system). But that also means that data that was still on the physical sectors of the disk got copied as well, regardless of whether the file system on the disk was still referencing that data.
>Yeah, Duplication Houses usually duplicate the disk sector-by-sector
I think they went even deeper. From the vintage computing nerds I saw on YouTuber, I think the duplication houses were replicating the raw magnetic flux off the disks as-is, since game studios were implementing some crafty low level anti-piracy measures on the golden disks to ensure that if you did sector level copies at home you wouldn't be able to run the game.
In some cases this would be a sort of DRM, sure. But it certainly wasn't universal. Most smaller-midsize distribution houses just used something like this:
The TRS-80 Color Computer's "Sands of Egypt" employed this very strategy. They planted a glitch on a certain sector of the disk. If memory serves, you could copy the disk, but doing so would "fix the glitch." The game checked for the presence of the glitch on the disk and wouldn't run without it.
That makes sense, I do remember some Commodore 64 games that even a Nibbler couldn't properly duplicate, and how some people modified their 1541 drives to have a different timing to work with some of that stuff.
I wonder if anybody ever made an analog flux reversal-level disk copier out of consumer floppy drives. I'm not an electronics person but it sounds like it would something like a "dubbing" tape deck. Provided the reading and writing drives' spindle motors and heads were synchronized (which, presumably, could be done with an encoder on the reading drive) I would think it would be a fairly simple device. All the analog circuitry for reading and writing would be in an off-the-shelf floppy drive.
I'm not aware of any direct copier, most disk duplicators that were sold to regular people were just a bunch of floppy drives with regular disk copy software.
These days, there is the delightfully named Greaseweazle (https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle) and similar devices to _read_ disks at a magnetic level, but I'm not sure if there is something to _write_ disks. I don't see any reason why such a thing couldn't exist, I'm just not aware of it.
> ...similar devices to _read_ disks at a magnetic level...
It's not, though. It's reading the disk after the drive's analog-to-digital converter has had its way with the analog flux transitions coming off the head. There's auto gain control circuits in there, and a pre-amplifier, and finally the ADC. Greaseweazel and its ilk are closer to the flux than just reading the disk in the conventional manner but it isn't actually sampling the raw flux reversals.
The Domesday Duplicator is closer to what I'm taking about. You can do software-defined manipulation of the sampled analog signal. In its case, it's a software-defined laserdisk player. (One could do the same w/ VHS, for example.)
I'll try to dig up a good Vintage Computer Festival talk from a guy who was recovering analog signals from old tapes and reconstructing the data by building a software-defined "tape drive" and using signal processing algorithms that would be applicable in the software-defined radio domain.
It occurs to me that such an analog duplicator wouldn't need fancy FPGAs and high-speed digital signal processing that didn't exist back then. It would "just" need very clean analog circuitry and decent motor control.
It looks like the Applesauce[0] project does what I'm talking about. It's sampling analog signals from the drive, rather than the output of an old ADC. Very cool.
Yeah it'd be interesting to have a full analog floppy reader/writer for data recovery. Might as well make it fast enough to read early hard drives (at least through early IDE) too.
Probably could stuff quite a bit more data using today's methods on a disk, too, even though in the scheme of things it'd be pretty pointless... but why should that stop someone? ;)
The hardware you're talking about you can buy today. It's used by retro computing geeks working in SW preservation. Pretty sure it also existed back in the day. The point wasn't to make copying impossible, it was to make it impossible for home users.
> The hardware you're talking about you can buy today.
Only sort of. The Greaseweazel and its ilk are sampling digital data. They're "seeing" the data after the analog front-end on the drive has processed it.
I'm talking about something that's more like reading the raw magnetic flux reversals in the analog domain, amplifying the signal, and writing it to another disk w/o ever leaving the analog domain. Exactly like a dubbing tape deck.
Edit:
I wrote this in another comment up-thread but, for completeness:
The Applesauce[0] project seems to do what I'm talking about. It samples analog signals from the drive, rather than the output of an ADC in the drive. No doubt the clever architecture of the Disk II drives is what allows for this.
Hence the cracking scene: home users would get pirated version of the games, with the copy protection removed from the code.
P.S: if I'm not mistaken in some cases original, legit, disks were physically damaged on purpose (for example with a hole being physically punched at a precise location) and then the copy-protection would try to write something at that spot and re-read it. If the write/re-read succeeded, they knew the floppy was good and hence they knew it couldn't be an original disk.
That doesn't make sense, no? Most of these disks had their read-write tab blocked and so the floppy drive would just operate in read-only mode anyways.
> That doesn't make sense, no? Most of these disks had their read-write tab blocked and so the floppy drive would just operate in read-only mode anyways.
You are right that that doesn't make sense so I may be remembering incorrectly.
I'm nearly sure the disk physically had holes, on purpose, though. So maybe the copy-protection was simply trying a regular read, expecting it to fail... And if it didn't throw an error, then it'd know it was a copy.
I have the original release of Leander. There are no holes in the disks. The code on the disk doesn't write anything besides hiscores. There is a protection routine exactly where he says there is, however what it does is check for a long track. It waits for the index pin, reads lots of data from the track, then looks to find two sync marks in the data it read, and they're at least a certain distance away from each other. No lasers, no holes, no writing. Standard long track protection. Here's the whole routine: https://pastebin.com/c1wnaJBP
If you watch the original video, the person OP is talking about referred to an arbitrary hole that they added themselves/the disk producers added. The index hole is a normal feature of floppy disks that are "flippy" (usable on both sides).
In addition, OP wasn't talking about the index hole, which was only used on a few platforms. They're referring to the index PIN, which is one of the signal wires that comes out of the floppy device.
The index pin gives you information on what sector is currently under the head, but after reading the code OP posted and the Amiga documentation, you're correct that this was specifically referencing the index hole in the CIA's flags. So my apologies, you were correct and I'm eating crow.
I remember downloading some kind of commercial digital forensic software that, came with cracking instructions: A PDF or image with measurements for where to drill a hole into your disk and at what size :D Never tried it, so I don’t know if it would have worked, but I’ll always remember it.
I'd love to see the same for optical media. So many early sample and loop packs stored on weird ass mixed cd file systems with equally arcane DRM that are on the verge of disc rot.
In England we definitely use wood in pretty much all houses. The roof trusses, the partition walls, the floorboards, beams to hold the ceiling/upstairs, fixtures (kitchen and bathroom fitted cabinets), doors etc.
I would guess the person you’re responding to doesn’t mean the hidden bits, as I’ve spent time in Spain and definitely come across wood in new buildings.
A potential reason for less obvious wood, Spain has less requirement for insulation than the UK and would benefit from slimmer walled, brick/concrete houses with no wooden partitions holding insulation for cooler temperatures during their peak heat.
It seems like a pretty basic breakdown, imo. I don’t know much about Flutter or Kotlin but I was expecting a lot more detail in an article hitting the front page.
Bit of a nothingburger really, given what we already know about the device.
I wish them the best with their product, and hope it improves, but I don’t think it’s worth it right now if you expect to get a really good tool - it’s a gimmicky, early days product from what I gather.
Edit: reminds me of my neighbour who dropped his motorbike because a car pulled out on him from a fuel station. I asked how fast he was going, he said with absolute conviction he was doing no more than 5mph.
When I told him that was too fast he couldn’t wrap his head around it.
Oh my god. As someone who can't see well enough to get a license, but somehow can see bollards just fine as a passenger: If you can't see them, you shouldn't be fucking driving.
I’m a bit late responding, but thanks for accepting that you are unable to drive.
As someone who hits the road most days, whether in a car or on a motorbike it’s absolutely crazy to witness the state of affairs going on on the roads.
My uncle, who isn’t far off 80, but very fit and healthy has given his licence up this year after some pressure from family - I’ve been in the car with him driving and he isn’t safe, he can drive for sure, but he isn’t fast enough to respond to a bad move by others, nor if there is an accident ahead.
I’ll be personally removing my mother’s car when she is unfit to use it too. I don’t care what it costs in taxis or public transport, I don’t want her risking someone else’s life, nor her own, over the ability to get up and go immediately, rather than wait 10 minutes for a driver.
I’m grateful that they are willing to accept this and agree, I’d like to think my mother has another 10 years or so in her at this stage, but the moment it’s clear she’s not fit, that vehicle is gone.
It's not really a matter of accepting it or not - my eyesight is poor enough that I couldn't get a license if I tried.
I was also lucky enough to grow up in a place that provided generous benefits to people who couldn't see well enough to get a license - free public transport and 50% subsidised taxis. Having access to this mitigated the loss of economic opportunity significantly. Where I'm living now I don't get those benefits, but I'm in a position where I no longer need them.
I think that also sounds pretty scary. Seeing the state of drivers in the UK, without knowing what they’re under the influence of, if anything, it’s a pretty damning sight.
There is probably some form of bias here, as I don’t remember all of the good drivers, but not a day goes by where I don’t see drivers wandering into other lanes, performing dangerous undertakes, lane changes, or generally being terrible drivers, and you have to wonder why.
A lot of phone drivers, for sure, a lot of ignorant pricks too, but I’d bet on a lot of inebriated drivers given their conduct.
Example of a shocker I had today, I was turning right out of a resi street, a car with no indication stopped to let me out on my right, but it wasn’t safe (very tight, little visibility) so I waved him along. I stayed there for appx 30 seconds until I realised he wanted to turn into the street I was pulling out of. He didn’t indicate once. Just a completely wild disregard for any form of road etiquette, not to mention the Highway Code.
I’ll report it from my dashcam, but I doubt anything will be done by my local police force.
I think we need far more stringent fines and forced retests (along with removal of licence if they can’t meet the standard of a learner) for anyone committing a road traffic offence or blatantly breaching the Highway Code out of sheer ignorance.
Nice to see you're still working on it! I've used it a couple of times since I first saw it a few months ago (albeit only for short amounts of time) - I'm looking forward to the future updates based on your Github and lore doc.
Yeah, it's still nowhere near a point where I use it. I got the basics of a "top-down" perspective with pheromone trails going somewhat recently. Now I'm trying to learn how to design more engaging game mechanics, but it's really challenging to know when I'm going in a good direction or just inventing convoluted ideas.
Thanks for the words of encouragement though, I appreciate it.
John Hammond - Cyber security/ethical hacking. He explains what he's doing well enough for even someone like me, with very little cybersec knowledge, to follow along and understand.
Someone else also commented Nathan Baggs, also a great explainer of what he's doing (and he hacks some fantastic old school games too).
What a pedantic take. I’m sure you would prefer a lot of things, but changing the title of an article you didn’t write or publish is a stretch. The articles showing off a very interesting aspect of nature and ‘one of [the] cleverest inventions’ is a fine headline without questioning how many other ‘inventions’ have occurred that might also be clever in the hopes of changing it. They’d also be ‘one of the cleverest’ if and when they get their own article.
I thought this was a aaron comment at first, then I saw a reply button, and whitewashed comment below.
Strong agree on the advising of such matters, as for forwarding, how the hell would a teacher have access to the image to forward to the parents?
That’s an insane overreach which could easily lead to abuse, they shouldn’t be accessing children’s phones, especially under the premise of ‘I need that image for safeguarding purposes’ - absolutely fucking not.
> how the hell would a teacher have access to the image to forward to the parents?
By accident? The teacher and the and the other teen have the same first or last name, or the next one in the contact list, or the autofill rearranged just before clicking, or just one missclick... there are so many ways it could have happened.
Then report it to the police, don’t forward a naked image of someone’s child to them? Not only is it likely distribution of CP, it’s also an insane thing to do. As Doreen said, she doesn’t want to see her lads nudes. I’m pretty sure my mother doesn’t want to see my knob either, who in their right mind would forward that to anywhere but law enforcement?
Not to mention your absolute stretch of a scenario. Do kids typically have their teachers phone numbers in their contacts? Have them added on Facebook? Follow them on Insta? These are all genuine safeguarding issues in themselves, imo (granted I haven’t been in school for 10-15 years). I feel you’re being disingenuous here.
> It’s more complicated than that. Due to a new law in Germany, a teacher getting to know that these images are floating around and forwarding them to the respective parent could be charged for distributing child porn.
I was only adressing how this hypothetical teacher could have had access to it, not what they should do about it, since you were making very strong suppositions about it.
> Do kids typically have their teachers phone numbers in their contacts? Have them added on Facebook? Follow them on Insta?
Is it that rare for some teacher (even in high school) to receive some of their students work online? And didn't the Covid situation with remote classes, Zoom, etc, made it possible for such a thing (students having some way of contacting their teachers online) to be way more common now than before?
Anyway, not sure anything I can say could change your mind.
Edit: About what should the teacher do in that case, this was my assumption, I may be wrong, but I think when @pflenker was mentionning this law, they only tried to put it in a scenario in relation with the thread were we could think that child pronography wasn't involved, similar to when @DoreenMichele was mentionning the fact that a teenager sharing (with consent) a nude with other teenagers should not be charged and labeled as CP.
I'm quite confused how forwarding a naked picture of an underage person to literally anyone, except a dedicated law enforcement team, wouldn't have already been distributing it.
>Is it that rare for some teacher (even in high school) to receive some of their students work online?
It's been a while, but when I worked in the education sector we had systems for students to upload their work, get graded, feedback, reports etc. Yeah, you could upload .pngs and .jpgs but it's hardly 'the next contact in the list' or 'maybe they had the same first or last name' in those scenarios, you upload the work for specific classes/courses. Obviously that's a single system, I don't know the full scope of what schools use these days.
> Anyway, not sure anything I can say could change your mind.
No, nothing will change my mind that forwarding nude pictures of minors to literally anyone other than a law enforcement case handler is acceptable.
> It's been a while, but when I worked in the education sector we had systems for students to upload their work, get graded, feedback, reports etc. Yeah, you could upload .pngs and .jpgs but it's hardly 'the next contact in the list' or 'maybe they had the same first or last name' in those scenarios, you upload the work for specific classes/courses. Obviously that's a single system, I don't know the full scope of what schools use these days.
As you (unintentionally) point out, there's money to be made/data to be acquired in Education. A few years ago, before Covid, one of my siblings had to use a cloud offering because of school. I forgot which, Microsoft Team for Education maybe, or Facebook Education Groups. I just remember being disapointed. People are use to their interface, and they have the money to lobby and ads, easier to sell something "free" with easy onboarding to schools administrators.
It’s a weird market, I’ve mainly come across Moodle which was easily the most difficult integration I’ve ever worked on. I had the displeasure of using it several times for testing purposes and I had to wonder, how much money did a director get backhanded for buying that piece of crap?
I presume it’s a very difficult market to break into though for various reasons, a lot of which tech won’t solve any time soon, to the detriment of our new generations.
Edit: wait, Facebook education groups? Is this a thing that schools run, or something else?
I don't think it's insane for a teacher to forward evidence of problematic stuff happening with a kid to the kid's parents. After all, many parents think their kids are angels who can do no wrong.
Granted, in this case I agree that it's better judgment not to forward the picture for all the reasons you've mentioned - but calling it insane is a bit much.
I was molested as a child, so out of vested personal interest I've read a lot of research over the years.
If you're a teacher, it would be wise to assume the parents may be in some way part of the problem.
If you're a teacher coming up with excuses to share nudes of your students with other people, you are at risk of being investigated very seriously as a potential child molester or distributor of child porn.
This is a minefield for a teacher and I don't think it's really a stretch to say it's "insane" or "extremely stupid" or other similarly strong language.
It has bad idea written all over it in blinking neon letters.
Sure, but that's because you've clearly thought about the matter a lot. A sibling comment mentions that teacher go through mandatory reporter training -- if that's the case, then maybe you're right (depends on how frequently that's being refreshed etc.). Otherwise, I think the adjective "naive" is really way more appropriate than "insane".
(And that's part of the reason why some of the ways in which parts of society react to these things is so problematic. If you're reacting that strongly to something that most likely is just the result of naivety, then frankly you have a much stronger claim to being insane than the person who's being naive.)
If I was a teacher and inadvertently ended up with it somehow, I think I would be worried about the accusation so absolutely wouldn't go to the parents before taking some kind of advice or at least telling my superiors/union/law enforcement just to protect myself.
I don’t understand how the other commenters don’t see this! Immediately go to law enforcement and let them deal with it, forwarding to ANYONE is the wrong thing to do, legally and morally, imo.
Sending a nude photo of a child to the child’s parents is absolutely beyond any form of rationality. Discuss the concern with the parents, inform the police, get them to verify that their little angel did in fact take nudes and send them around.
It’s literally forwarding CP. Let the authorities deal with this, if the parent wants to see their kids nudes then… well, I don’t really know what to say other than let the authorities deal with it. They can show them for verification purposes or something, without sending this image to any more devices than it needs to exist on.
The teacher is absolutely going to be reporting it to the police, no matter what else they do. Teachers are mandatory repirters-- if they see anything that could indicate a child is being abused they must report it.
The police and social services, along with school district policy, will advise the next steps, including how parents are informed.
A guy from my old local pub was always very keen to tell us about the couple thousand pound payouts, while also being very keen on asking others to buy him a pint or four because he had no money.
I would have thought they’d finalise the game, get a ‘master’ of sorts and then send it to a mass production facility - how would the deleted archive end up on the master? Did they accidentally copy it over, then remove it before shipping?
Edit: definitely should have read the comments here before adding my own!
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