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
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.
I really like my playdate! Lots of indie games, and their Lua API is very good, coming from someone with no prior experience with Lua or games programming.
I was given one and it had some fun gimmicks but if doesn't really last beyond a few sessions. The ecosystem is strange and I just went back to a "real" device a bit after.
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
Sorry if it’s in the article, I can’t access it either
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.
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
The sole exceptions are YouTube embeds, afaik. I even switched out the MediaWiki and CC badges to be local.
uBlock Origin shows nothing out of the ordinary but Youtube, Google and Doubleclick, so Google, Google and Google, and I assume all of those are due to the embed.
If you mean the block page, yes, that's just the YouTube embed. You'll see the same results on any wiki page that has a YouTube embed for the same reason; it's not tracking or anything I have control over (other than outright not having YouTube embeds). But I think if anyone has concerns over that, they're better addressed at the local-user level by disabling all unauthorized iframes.
There are lightweight YouTube embeds like https://github.com/paulirish/lite-youtube-embed.
It’s lauded for faster page loads, but it likely has good privacy implications too since it basically just loads a thumbnail unless you click on it.
On the “ Sorry, you are not allowed to access tcrf.net right now” page I get tracked by Google, YouTube and DoubleClick according to the report by Safari.
I also have 924 kilobyte of data stored on my device after visiting tcrf.net without any consent.
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.
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.
I've never seen anyone using a VPN for anything other than disruptive behaviour. I had to block vast swathes of mobile broadband providers in a certain warlike Middle Eastern country because if I didn't I'd have anywhere from 100 to 1000 new users every single morning who'd all posted hate speech that won't post here for fear of triggering the right-wing apologists.
Now they just do that over VPNs, which makes keeping them out all the more difficult.
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.
> Almost as if you shouldn't be banning users because of their IP unless that IP specifically has openly attacked you.
There is no net benefit to allowing non-residential IP addresses by default, maybe add the Google search indexer to the exception list. And with residential IP addresses, unless you're international, it doesn't make sense to allow regions other than your target markets.
The only way to deal with the bot traffic plagueing the modern internet is to cut off as much traffic as you reasonably can.
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.
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.
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.
From my logging, most people can access it just fine.
As for "what gives", I have no idea. The article itself isn't interesting and doesn't contain much of value; the "game" itself is what is interesting, but that's not what the article is there to cover.
So my guess is it's just only the people who can't see it, because for others there's not really much to discuss. I don't know why this was even posted here, to be honest.
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.
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…
[1]: https://github.com/remysucre/ORBIT
[2]: https://github.com/remysucre/cranky-news
Sorry if it’s in the article, I can’t access it either
Ah, another domain for the blacklist.
What bots are using Apple Private Relay?
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
The sole exceptions are YouTube embeds, afaik. I even switched out the MediaWiki and CC badges to be local.
I’m not disabling my VPN if a website with multiple trackers asks me to.
I also have 924 kilobyte of data stored on my device after visiting tcrf.net without any consent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cutting_Room_Floor_(websit...
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.
I've never seen anyone using a VPN for anything other than disruptive behaviour. I had to block vast swathes of mobile broadband providers in a certain warlike Middle Eastern country because if I didn't I'd have anywhere from 100 to 1000 new users every single morning who'd all posted hate speech that won't post here for fear of triggering the right-wing apologists.
Now they just do that over VPNs, which makes keeping them out all the more difficult.
And you as a site operator can't really tell apart skiddies, griefers, AI scrapers and legitimate users apart any more.
Or I guess you can just DENY ALL.
There is no net benefit to allowing non-residential IP addresses by default, maybe add the Google search indexer to the exception list. And with residential IP addresses, unless you're international, it doesn't make sense to allow regions other than your target markets.
The only way to deal with the bot traffic plagueing the modern internet is to cut off as much traffic as you reasonably can.
> . http://example.com .
https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/03/15/how-to-send-links-w...
instead of letting your device’s defaults decide who you are,
and then telling all of us about it.
But of course it never came out.
——
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.
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?
But for people who can't see the article, it could be anything! For all they know, they're being kept out of the greatest content of all time!
As for "what gives", I have no idea. The article itself isn't interesting and doesn't contain much of value; the "game" itself is what is interesting, but that's not what the article is there to cover.
So my guess is it's just only the people who can't see it, because for others there's not really much to discuss. I don't know why this was even posted here, to be honest.