RE: https://infosec.exchange/@david_chisnall/116160637051672728
the question you should be asking yourself is not “what's the best way to verify the age of every single computer user on earth”
but rather “why the fuck are we trying to verify the age of every single computer user on earth????”
and the answer to that is: fascism
stop. complying.
This one might be interesting to anyone interested in computer gaming history.
I spent the last couple of weeks finally finishing a project I started for Bletchley Park about 20 years ago. Recreating the original MUD and MIST on a mirror of the original Essex University system that finally closed in 1991.
Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle wrote the first online multi-user game (MUD) on Essex University's DECSystem-10 in 1978 and it ran till I closed it in 1991. I diligently backed everything up so I could potentially recover it one day, but as far as I can see, all the DECSystem-10's went to the great scrapyard in the sky, my backups were mostly stolen when my first museum was stolen, and I had huge issues recovering the Essex BCPL compiler to compile what I had left when I finally got a decent TOPS-10 emulator running on a VAX for Bletchley Park.
One good thing about being an unemployable whistleblower is free time, so I finally hunkered down to some 90 hour weeks and built a software replica of the Essex system I think reflects it well. It's running on a KS10 not a KL10 but I had to let some things slip.
I put the latest known versions of MUD and MIST on it, and miraculously found ROCK too.
So, to meander to the point, if you want to see and relive exactly what online multi user gaming was like from 1978 to 1991, you can go to:
And then follow the terse instructions from there.
In those days, you were generally faced with a "." prompt and left mostly alone, so for authenticity, I will leave it at that.
I should note that although they were, in their day, wildly popular games with a relatively huge community, this is a museum peice in snapshot-form at the moment. But I will leave them up and running to see what happens and as a useful reference. I wasn't going to, but Richard seemed happy to have MUD running, and former MIST players wanted it back, so...
Pop this a share if you know folks who might be interested.
** Update: I replaced all the annoying Guacamole stuff with a straight through path on a different machine. So it should work now and be more stable.
#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering
(don't try this on a phone!)
@openrightsgroup could? It will be used sooner or later against someone, be it LQBTQIA+, immigrants, people who disagree with those in power..
All power corrupts.. you know the rest.
@briankrebs senior AI reporter uses AI to do his job for him.. I am shocked!!
Seriously though, Ars has a decent reputation, @dangoodin is one of the journalist I'd trust the most in the tech space from them. This is hopefuly not the way things are going, but alas I have low hopes, LLMs seem to make everyrhing easy and people fall in to the trap.
Even though many times over we've seen that they are but enshittification anthropomorphised.
@thomasfuchs my 2019 midrange home built that I had planned to replace, because that newish indiana jones game looked nice, but needs more than my 2070 super can deal with, is going to be my trusty work horse for a few more years by the looks of things.
I thought i'd ober specced at the time but those 32G of DDR3 are still going strong. More minecraft it is then..
As an aside, you'd think game publishers would be mad a nvidia, making all this stuff for better games then pricing the cards out of the market ain't great for the dev biz..
Niléane
Lorry
Julia Evans