Podcasts about Assembly language

Book club returns this week, now that we've both read id Software founder John Romero's memoir, Doom Guy: Life in First Person. Join us for an extremely nerdy chat about Romero's early days as a teenage Apple II developer learning 6502 assembly, the pre-id team's blistering one-game-a-month output at Softdisk, technical innovations that led to id's most groundbreaking games, the internal strife that ultimately split the company, retrospective thoughts on a very different mid-'90s Doom 3 than the one we got later, and a bunch more.Pick up Doom Guy: https://www.amazon.com/Doom-Guy-Life-First-Person/dp/141975811XRomero's fan mail to Jordan Mechner: https://twitter.com/jmechner/status/1253777950299873283 Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, a monthly bonus episode, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

In this episode, we explore the intersection of individual ingenuity and nature-inspired technology. We discuss the solo development of the 1999 hit RollerCoaster Tycoon in Assembly language, delve into the quirky origins and comparisons of K3s and K8s in tech, and examine the early days of computer security with the first password hacks. Lastly, we look at how biomimicry has influenced technological advancements, showcasing the seamless blend of nature's designs with modern innovation.Stay updated with new weekly episodes every Thursday – and don't forget to subscribe! For more behind-the-scenes content, follow us @justshiftleft on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Privacy Badger blocks trackers on news sites and prevents browser exposure to unwanted domains like TikTok and Datadog. No major updates on EU's controversial Article 45 in eIDAS 2.0. Industry pushback continues as implementation would threaten encryption. Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex lost $130M in a hot wallet hack, the 14th largest crypto theft. Decentralized finance platform Raft lost $3.3M due to an exploit. Crook operated website iotaseed.io to generate wallet seed phrases, then recorded and stole them. New Intel processor vulnerability called Downfall leaks encryption keys and sensitive data between users on shared systems. Russia moves to formally ban all VPN use in the country. Two new flaws found in OpenVPN software, one allowing memory access. SpinRite development paused as DOS and Windows versions are complete. Understanding assembly language helps malware analysis and exploit development, but high-level decompilers also useful. Quantum-safe symmetric cryptography is limited compared to asymmetric crypto. EU's Article 45 allows transparent decryption and traffic interception, supposedly for security purposes. "Windshield Barnacle" parking enforcement device uses suction cups and 1000 lbs of force to immobilize vehicles until parking tickets are paid. Sci-fi book series Aeon 14 by M.D. Cooper offers fun military space opera adventure. 27-year-old theoretical crypto attack now shown practical. Passive network observers can steal SSH RSA keys if faulty signature generated, allowing impersonation. Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-948-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Sponsors: kolide.com/securitynow bitwarden.com/twit GO.ACILEARNING.COM/TWIT

Privacy Badger blocks trackers on news sites and prevents browser exposure to unwanted domains like TikTok and Datadog. No major updates on EU's controversial Article 45 in eIDAS 2.0. Industry pushback continues as implementation would threaten encryption. Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex lost $130M in a hot wallet hack, the 14th largest crypto theft. Decentralized finance platform Raft lost $3.3M due to an exploit. Crook operated website iotaseed.io to generate wallet seed phrases, then recorded and stole them. New Intel processor vulnerability called Downfall leaks encryption keys and sensitive data between users on shared systems. Russia moves to formally ban all VPN use in the country. Two new flaws found in OpenVPN software, one allowing memory access. SpinRite development paused as DOS and Windows versions are complete. Understanding assembly language helps malware analysis and exploit development, but high-level decompilers also useful. Quantum-safe symmetric cryptography is limited compared to asymmetric crypto. EU's Article 45 allows transparent decryption and traffic interception, supposedly for security purposes. "Windshield Barnacle" parking enforcement device uses suction cups and 1000 lbs of force to immobilize vehicles until parking tickets are paid. Sci-fi book series Aeon 14 by M.D. Cooper offers fun military space opera adventure. 27-year-old theoretical crypto attack now shown practical. Passive network observers can steal SSH RSA keys if faulty signature generated, allowing impersonation. Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-948-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Sponsors: kolide.com/securitynow bitwarden.com/twit GO.ACILEARNING.COM/TWIT

Privacy Badger blocks trackers on news sites and prevents browser exposure to unwanted domains like TikTok and Datadog. No major updates on EU's controversial Article 45 in eIDAS 2.0. Industry pushback continues as implementation would threaten encryption. Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex lost $130M in a hot wallet hack, the 14th largest crypto theft. Decentralized finance platform Raft lost $3.3M due to an exploit. Crook operated website iotaseed.io to generate wallet seed phrases, then recorded and stole them. New Intel processor vulnerability called Downfall leaks encryption keys and sensitive data between users on shared systems. Russia moves to formally ban all VPN use in the country. Two new flaws found in OpenVPN software, one allowing memory access. SpinRite development paused as DOS and Windows versions are complete. Understanding assembly language helps malware analysis and exploit development, but high-level decompilers also useful. Quantum-safe symmetric cryptography is limited compared to asymmetric crypto. EU's Article 45 allows transparent decryption and traffic interception, supposedly for security purposes. "Windshield Barnacle" parking enforcement device uses suction cups and 1000 lbs of force to immobilize vehicles until parking tickets are paid. Sci-fi book series Aeon 14 by M.D. Cooper offers fun military space opera adventure. 27-year-old theoretical crypto attack now shown practical. Passive network observers can steal SSH RSA keys if faulty signature generated, allowing impersonation. Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-948-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Sponsors: kolide.com/securitynow bitwarden.com/twit GO.ACILEARNING.COM/TWIT

Privacy Badger blocks trackers on news sites and prevents browser exposure to unwanted domains like TikTok and Datadog. No major updates on EU's controversial Article 45 in eIDAS 2.0. Industry pushback continues as implementation would threaten encryption. Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex lost $130M in a hot wallet hack, the 14th largest crypto theft. Decentralized finance platform Raft lost $3.3M due to an exploit. Crook operated website iotaseed.io to generate wallet seed phrases, then recorded and stole them. New Intel processor vulnerability called Downfall leaks encryption keys and sensitive data between users on shared systems. Russia moves to formally ban all VPN use in the country. Two new flaws found in OpenVPN software, one allowing memory access. SpinRite development paused as DOS and Windows versions are complete. Understanding assembly language helps malware analysis and exploit development, but high-level decompilers also useful. Quantum-safe symmetric cryptography is limited compared to asymmetric crypto. EU's Article 45 allows transparent decryption and traffic interception, supposedly for security purposes. "Windshield Barnacle" parking enforcement device uses suction cups and 1000 lbs of force to immobilize vehicles until parking tickets are paid. Sci-fi book series Aeon 14 by M.D. Cooper offers fun military space opera adventure. 27-year-old theoretical crypto attack now shown practical. Passive network observers can steal SSH RSA keys if faulty signature generated, allowing impersonation. Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-948-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Sponsors: kolide.com/securitynow bitwarden.com/twit GO.ACILEARNING.COM/TWIT

Privacy Badger blocks trackers on news sites and prevents browser exposure to unwanted domains like TikTok and Datadog. No major updates on EU's controversial Article 45 in eIDAS 2.0. Industry pushback continues as implementation would threaten encryption. Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex lost $130M in a hot wallet hack, the 14th largest crypto theft. Decentralized finance platform Raft lost $3.3M due to an exploit. Crook operated website iotaseed.io to generate wallet seed phrases, then recorded and stole them. New Intel processor vulnerability called Downfall leaks encryption keys and sensitive data between users on shared systems. Russia moves to formally ban all VPN use in the country. Two new flaws found in OpenVPN software, one allowing memory access. SpinRite development paused as DOS and Windows versions are complete. Understanding assembly language helps malware analysis and exploit development, but high-level decompilers also useful. Quantum-safe symmetric cryptography is limited compared to asymmetric crypto. EU's Article 45 allows transparent decryption and traffic interception, supposedly for security purposes. "Windshield Barnacle" parking enforcement device uses suction cups and 1000 lbs of force to immobilize vehicles until parking tickets are paid. Sci-fi book series Aeon 14 by M.D. Cooper offers fun military space opera adventure. 27-year-old theoretical crypto attack now shown practical. Passive network observers can steal SSH RSA keys if faulty signature generated, allowing impersonation. Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-948-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Sponsors: kolide.com/securitynow bitwarden.com/twit GO.ACILEARNING.COM/TWIT

Privacy Badger blocks trackers on news sites and prevents browser exposure to unwanted domains like TikTok and Datadog. No major updates on EU's controversial Article 45 in eIDAS 2.0. Industry pushback continues as implementation would threaten encryption. Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex lost $130M in a hot wallet hack, the 14th largest crypto theft. Decentralized finance platform Raft lost $3.3M due to an exploit. Crook operated website iotaseed.io to generate wallet seed phrases, then recorded and stole them. New Intel processor vulnerability called Downfall leaks encryption keys and sensitive data between users on shared systems. Russia moves to formally ban all VPN use in the country. Two new flaws found in OpenVPN software, one allowing memory access. SpinRite development paused as DOS and Windows versions are complete. Understanding assembly language helps malware analysis and exploit development, but high-level decompilers also useful. Quantum-safe symmetric cryptography is limited compared to asymmetric crypto. EU's Article 45 allows transparent decryption and traffic interception, supposedly for security purposes. "Windshield Barnacle" parking enforcement device uses suction cups and 1000 lbs of force to immobilize vehicles until parking tickets are paid. Sci-fi book series Aeon 14 by M.D. Cooper offers fun military space opera adventure. 27-year-old theoretical crypto attack now shown practical. Passive network observers can steal SSH RSA keys if faulty signature generated, allowing impersonation. Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-948-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Sponsors: kolide.com/securitynow bitwarden.com/twit GO.ACILEARNING.COM/TWIT

Privacy Badger blocks trackers on news sites and prevents browser exposure to unwanted domains like TikTok and Datadog. No major updates on EU's controversial Article 45 in eIDAS 2.0. Industry pushback continues as implementation would threaten encryption. Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex lost $130M in a hot wallet hack, the 14th largest crypto theft. Decentralized finance platform Raft lost $3.3M due to an exploit. Crook operated website iotaseed.io to generate wallet seed phrases, then recorded and stole them. New Intel processor vulnerability called Downfall leaks encryption keys and sensitive data between users on shared systems. Russia moves to formally ban all VPN use in the country. Two new flaws found in OpenVPN software, one allowing memory access. SpinRite development paused as DOS and Windows versions are complete. Understanding assembly language helps malware analysis and exploit development, but high-level decompilers also useful. Quantum-safe symmetric cryptography is limited compared to asymmetric crypto. EU's Article 45 allows transparent decryption and traffic interception, supposedly for security purposes. "Windshield Barnacle" parking enforcement device uses suction cups and 1000 lbs of force to immobilize vehicles until parking tickets are paid. Sci-fi book series Aeon 14 by M.D. Cooper offers fun military space opera adventure. 27-year-old theoretical crypto attack now shown practical. Passive network observers can steal SSH RSA keys if faulty signature generated, allowing impersonation. Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-948-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Sponsors: kolide.com/securitynow bitwarden.com/twit GO.ACILEARNING.COM/TWIT

Privacy Badger blocks trackers on news sites and prevents browser exposure to unwanted domains like TikTok and Datadog. No major updates on EU's controversial Article 45 in eIDAS 2.0. Industry pushback continues as implementation would threaten encryption. Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex lost $130M in a hot wallet hack, the 14th largest crypto theft. Decentralized finance platform Raft lost $3.3M due to an exploit. Crook operated website iotaseed.io to generate wallet seed phrases, then recorded and stole them. New Intel processor vulnerability called Downfall leaks encryption keys and sensitive data between users on shared systems. Russia moves to formally ban all VPN use in the country. Two new flaws found in OpenVPN software, one allowing memory access. SpinRite development paused as DOS and Windows versions are complete. Understanding assembly language helps malware analysis and exploit development, but high-level decompilers also useful. Quantum-safe symmetric cryptography is limited compared to asymmetric crypto. EU's Article 45 allows transparent decryption and traffic interception, supposedly for security purposes. "Windshield Barnacle" parking enforcement device uses suction cups and 1000 lbs of force to immobilize vehicles until parking tickets are paid. Sci-fi book series Aeon 14 by M.D. Cooper offers fun military space opera adventure. 27-year-old theoretical crypto attack now shown practical. Passive network observers can steal SSH RSA keys if faulty signature generated, allowing impersonation. Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-948-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Sponsors: kolide.com/securitynow bitwarden.com/twit GO.ACILEARNING.COM/TWIT

Summer's in full swing, and this week both Elliot and Dan had to sweat things out to get the podcast recorded. But the hacks were cool -- see what I did there? -- and provided much-needed relief. Join us as we listen in on the world of bats, look at a laser fit for a hackerspace, and learn how to make an array of magnets greater than -- or less than -- the sum of its parts. There'll be flying eggs, keyboards connected to cell phones, and everything good about 80s and 90s cable TV, as well as some of the bad stuff. And you won't want to miss Elliot putting Dan to shame with the super-size Quick Hacks, either, nor should you skip the Can't Miss sweep with a pair of great articles by Al Williams. Check out the show notes on Hackaday for the links if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Halloween passes quickly this year; Eric finishes his kitchen magnetic board project, and Jon finally sets up the laser engraver. Three years later (was episode 70!) Amazon finally builds Eero into 5th gen Echo devices. An act may pass to help the government use open source software better, the FTC takes steps against Drizly CEO to enforce better security practices, and Android droppers found on Google Play. For fun, we have a nearly 2km long train in Switzerland and an obituary for Kathleen Booth, an early computer pioneer and inventor of Assembly Language. 0:00 - Intro 11:26 - Eero+Echo 12:25 - Securing Open Source Software Act 16:50 - Drizly CEO Ordered 22:27 - Android Droppers 27:22 - Not a Short Train 32:21 - Thanks for Assembly, Kathleen!

Why does the history of computing matter? Joël and Developer at thoughtbot Sara Jackson, ponder this and share some cool stories (and trivia!!) behind the tools we use in the industry. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake (https://airbrake.io/?utm_campaign=Q3_2022%3A%20Bike%20Shed%20Podcast%20Ad&utm_source=Bike%20Shed&utm_medium=website). Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Sara on Twitter (https://twitter.com/csarajackson) UNIX philosophy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy) Hillel Wayne on why we ask linked list questions (https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/linked-lists/) Transcript: JOËL: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Joël Quenneville. And today, I'm joined by fellow thoughtboter, Team Lead, and Developer Sara Jackson. SARA: Hello, happy to be here. JOËL: Together, we're here to share a little bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Sara, what's new in your world? SARA: Well, Joël, you might know that recently our team had a small get-together in Toronto. JOËL: And our team, for those who are not aware, is fully remote distributed across multiple countries. So this was a chance to get together in person. SARA: Yes, correct. This was a chance for those on the Boost team to get together and work together as if we had a physical office. JOËL: Was this your first time meeting some members of the team? SARA: It was my second, for the most part. So I joined thoughtbot, but after thoughtbot had already gotten remote. Fortunately, I was able to meet many other thoughtboters in May at our summit. JOËL: Had you worked at a remote company before coming to thoughtbot? SARA: Yes, I actually started working remotely in 2019, but even then, that wasn't my first time working remotely. I actually had a full year of internship in college that was remote. JOËL: So you were a pro at this long before the pandemic made us all try it out. SARA: I don't know about that, but I've certainly dealt with the idiosyncrasies that come with remote work for longer. JOËL: What do you think are some of the challenges of remote work as opposed to working in person in an office? SARA: I think definitely growing and maintaining a culture. When you're in an office, it's easy to create ad hoc conversations and have events that are small that build on the culture. But when you're remote, it has to be a lot more intentional. JOËL: That definitely rings true for me. One of the things that I really appreciated about in-person office culture was the serendipity that you have those sort of random meetings at the water cooler, those conversations, waiting for coffee with people who are not necessarily on the same team or the same project as you are. SARA: I also really miss being able to have lunch in person with folks where I can casually gripe about an issue I might be having, and almost certainly, someone would have the answer. Now, if I'm having an issue, I have to intentionally seek help. [chuckles] JOËL: One of the funny things that often happened, at least the office where I worked at, was that lunches would often devolve into taxonomy conversations. SARA: I wish I had been there for that. [laughter] JOËL: Well, we do have a taxonomy channel on Slack to somewhat continue that legacy. SARA: Do you have a favorite taxonomy lunch discussion that you recall? JOËL: I definitely got to the point where I hated the classifying a sandwich. That one has been way overdone. SARA: Absolutely. JOËL: There was an interesting one about motorcycles, and mopeds, and bicycles, and e-bikes, and trying to see how do you distinguish one from the other. Is it an electric motor? Is it the power of the engine that you have? Is it the size? SARA: My brain is already turning on those thoughts. I feel like I could get lost down that rabbit hole very easily. [laughter] JOËL: Maybe that should be like a special anniversary episode for The Bike Shed, just one long taxonomy ramble. SARA: Where we talk about bikes. JOËL: Ooh, that's so perfect. I love it. One thing that I really appreciated during our time in Toronto was that we actually got to have lunch in person again. SARA: Yeah, that was so wonderful. Having folks coming together that had maybe never worked together directly on clients just getting to sit down and talk about our day. JOËL: Yeah, and talk about maybe it's work-related, maybe it's not. There's a lot of power to having some amount of deeper interpersonal connection with your co-workers beyond just the we work on a project together. SARA: Yeah, it's like camaraderie beyond the shared mission of the company. It's the shared interpersonal mission, like you say. Did you have any in-person pairing sessions in Toronto? JOËL: I did. It was actually kind of serendipitous. Someone was stuck with a weird failing test because somehow the order factories were getting created in was not behaving in the expected way, and we herd on it, dug into it, found some weird thing with composite primary keys, and solved the issue. SARA: That's wonderful. I love that. I wonder if that interaction would have happened or gotten solved as quickly if we hadn't been in person. JOËL: I don't know about you, but I feel like I sometimes struggle to ask for help or ask for a pair more when I'm online. SARA: Yeah, I agree. It's easier to feel like you're not as big of an impediment when you're in person. You tap someone on the shoulder, "Hey, can you take a look at this?" JOËL: Especially when they're on the same team as you, they're sitting at the next desk over. I don't know; it just felt easier. Even though it's literally one button press to get Tuple to make a call, somehow, I feel like I'm interrupting more. SARA: To combat that, I've been trying to pair more frequently and consistently regardless of if I'm struggling with a problem. JOËL: Has that worked pretty well? SARA: It's been wonderful. The only downside has been pairing fatigue. JOËL: Pairing fatigue is real. SARA: But other than that, problems have gotten solved quickly. We've all learned something for those that I've paired with. It goes faster. JOËL: So it was really great that we had this experience of doing our daily work but co-located in person; we have these experiences of working together. What would you say has been one of the highlights for you of that time? SARA: 100% karaoke. JOËL: [laughs] SARA: Only two folks did not attend. Many of the folks that did attend told me they weren't going to sing, but they were just going to watch. By the end of the night, everyone had sung. We were there for nearly three and a half hours. [laughs] JOËL: It was a good time all around. SARA: I saw a different side to Chad. JOËL: [laughs] SARA: And everyone, honestly. Were there any musical choices that surprised you? JOËL: Not particularly. Karaoke is always fun when you have a group of people that you trust to be a little bit foolish in front of to put yourself out there. I really appreciated the style that we went for, where we have a private room for just the people who were there as opposed to a stage in a bar somewhere. I think that makes it a little bit more accessible to pick up the mic and try to sing a song. SARA: I agree. That style of karaoke is a lot more popular in Asia, having your private room. Sometimes you can find it in major cities. But I also prefer it for that reason. JOËL: One of my highlights of this trip was this very sort of serendipitous moment that happened. Someone was asking a question about the difference between a Mac and Linux operating systems. And then just an impromptu gathering happened. And you pulled up a chair, and you're like, gather around, everyone. In the beginning, there was Multics. It was amazing. SARA: I felt like some kind of historian or librarian coming out from the deep. Let me tell you about this random operating system knowledge that I have. [laughs] JOËL: The ancient lore. SARA: The ancient lore in the year 1969. JOËL: [laughs] And then yeah, we had a conversation walking the history of operating systems, and why we have macOS and Linux, and why they're different, and why Windows is a totally different kind of family there. SARA: Yeah, macOS and Linux are sort of like cousins coming from the same tree. JOËL: Is that because they're both related through Unix? SARA: Yes. Linux and macOS are both built based off of different versions of Unix. Over the years, there's almost like a family tree of these different Nix operating systems as they're called. JOËL: I've sometimes seen asterisk N-I-X. This is what you're referring to as Nix. SARA: Yes, where the asterisk is like the RegEx catch-all. JOËL: So this might be Unix. It might be Linux. It might be... SARA: Minix. JOËL: All of those. SARA: Do you know the origin of the name Unix? JOËL: I do not. SARA: It's kind of a fun trivia piece. So, in the beginning, there was Multics spelled M-U-L-T-I-C-S, standing for the Multiplexed Information and Computing Service. Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson of Bell Labs famous for the C programming language... JOËL: You may have heard of it. SARA: You may have heard of it maybe on a different podcast. They were employees at Bell Labs when Multics was being created. They felt that Multics was very bulky and heavy. It was trying to do too many things at once. It did have a few good concepts. So they developed their own smaller Unix originally, Unics, the Uniplexed Information and Computing Service, Uniplexed versus Multiplexed. We do one thing really well. JOËL: And that's the Unix philosophy. SARA: It absolutely is. The Unix philosophy developed out of the creation of Unix and C. Do you know the four main points? JOËL: No, is it small sharp tools? It's the main one I hear. SARA: Yes, that is the kind of quippy version that has come out for sure. JOËL: But there is a formal four-point manifesto. SARA: I believe it's evolved over the years. But it's interesting looking at the Unix philosophy and seeing how relevant it is today in web development. The four points being make each program do one thing well. To this end, don't add features; make a new program. I feel like we have this a lot in encapsulation. JOËL: Hmm, maybe even the open-closed principle. SARA: Absolutely. JOËL: Similar idea. SARA: Another part of the philosophy is expecting output of your program to become input of another program that is yet unknown. The key being don't clutter your output; don't have extraneous text. This feels very similar to how we develop APIs. JOËL: With a focus on composability. SARA: Absolutely. Being able to chain commands together like you see in Ruby all the time. JOËL: I love being able to do this, for example, the enumerable API in Ruby and just being able to chain all these methods together to just very nicely do some pretty big transformations on an array or some other data structure. SARA: 100% agree there. That ability almost certainly came out of following the tenets of this philosophy, maybe not knowingly so but maybe knowingly so. [chuckles] JOËL: So is that three or four? SARA: So that was two. The third being what we know as agile. JOËL: Really? SARA: Yeah, right? The '70s brought us agile. Design and build software to be tried early, and don't hesitate to throw away clumsy parts and rebuild. JOËL: Hmmm. SARA: Even in those days, despite waterfall style still coming on the horizon. It was known for those writing software that it was important to iterate quickly. JOËL: Wow, I would never have known. SARA: It's neat having this history available to us. It's sort of like a lens at where we came from. Another piece of this history that might seem like a more modern concept but was a very big part of the movement in the '70s and the '80s was using tools rather than unskilled help or trying to struggle through something yourself when you're lightening a programming task. We see this all the time at thoughtbot. Folks do this many times there is an issue on a client code. We are able to generalize the solution, extract into a tool that can then be reused. JOËL: So that's the same kind of genesis as a lot of thoughtbot's open-source gems, so I'm thinking of FactoryBot, Clearance, Paperclip, the old-timey file upload gem, Suspenders, the Rails app generator, and the list goes on. SARA: I love that in this last point of the Unix philosophy, they specifically call out that you should create a new tool, even if it means detouring, even if it means throwing the tools out later. JOËL: What impact do you think that has had on the way that tooling in the Unix, or maybe I should say *Nix, ecosystem has developed? SARA: It was a major aspect of the Nix environment community because Unix was available, not free, but very inexpensively to educational institutions. And because of how lightweight it was and its focus on single-use programs, programs that were designed to do one thing, and also the way the shell was allowing you to use commands directly and having it be the same language as the shell scripting language, users, students, amateurs, and I say that in a loving way, were able to create their own tools very quickly. It was almost like a renaissance of Homebrew. JOËL: Not Homebrew as in the macOS package manager. SARA: [laughs] And also not Homebrew as in the alcoholic beverage. JOËL: [laughs] So, this kind of history is fun trivia to know. Is it really something valuable for us as a jobbing developer in 2022? SARA: I would say it's a difficult question. If you are someone that doesn't dive into the why of something, especially when something goes wrong, maybe it wouldn't be important or useful. But what sparked the conversation in Toronto was trying to determine why we as thoughtbot tend to prefer using Macs to develop on versus Linux or Windows. There is a reason, and the reason is in the history. Knowing that can clarify decisions and can give meaning where it feels like an arbitrary decision. JOËL: Right. We're not just picking Macs because they're shiny. SARA: They are certainly shiny. And the first thing I did was to put a matte case on it. JOËL: [laughs] So no shiny in your office. SARA: If there were too many shiny things in my office, boy, I would never get work done. The cats would be all over me. MID-ROLL AD: Debugging errors can be a developer's worst nightmare...but it doesn't have to be. Airbrake is an award-winning error monitoring, performance, and deployment tracking tool created by developers for developers, that can actually help cut your debugging time in half. So why do developers love Airbrake? It has all of the information that web developers need to monitor their application - including error management, performance insights, and deploy tracking! Airbrake's debugging tool catches all of your project errors, intelligently groups them, and points you to the issue in the code so you can quickly fix the bug before customers are impacted. In addition to stellar error monitoring, Airbrake's lightweight APM helps developers to track the performance and availability of their application through metrics like HTTP requests, response times, error occurrences, and user satisfaction. Finally, Airbrake Deploy Tracking helps developers track trends, fix bad deploys, and improve code quality. Since 2008, Airbrake has been a staple in the Ruby community and has grown to cover all major programming languages. Airbrake seamlessly integrates with your favorite apps to include modern features like single sign-on and SDK-based installation. From testing to production, Airbrake notifiers have your back. Your time is valuable, so why waste it combing through logs, waiting for user reports, or retrofitting other tools to monitor your application? You literally have nothing to lose. Head on over to airbrake.io/try/bikeshed to create your FREE developer account today! JOËL: So we've talked a little bit about Unix or *Nix, this evolution of systems. I've also heard the term POSIX thrown around when talking about things that seem to encompass both macOS and Linux. How does that fit into this history? SARA: POSIX is sort of an umbrella of standards around operating systems that was based on Unix and the things that were standard in Unix. It stands for the Portable Operating System Interface. This allowed for compatibility between OSs, very similar to USB being the standard for peripherals. JOËL: So, if I was implementing my own Unix-like operating system in the '80s, I would try to conform to the POSIX standard. SARA: Absolutely. Now, not every Nix operating system is POSIX-compliant, but most are or at least 90% of the way there. JOËL: Are any of the big ones that people tend to think about not compliant? SARA: A major player in the operating system space that is not generally considered POSIX-compliant is Microsoft Windows. JOËL: [laughs] It doesn't even try to be Unix-like, right? It's just its own thing, SARA: It is completely its own thing. I don't think it even has a standard necessarily that it conforms to. JOËL: It is its own standard, its own branch of the family tree. SARA: And that's what happens when your operating system is very proprietary. This has caused folks pain, I'm sure, in the past that may have tried to develop software on their computers using languages that are more readily compatible with POSIX operating systems. JOËL: So would you say that a language like Ruby is more compatible with one of the POSIX-compatible operating systems? SARA: 100% yes. In fact, to even use Ruby as a development tool in Windows, prior to Windows 10, you needed an additional tool. You needed something like Cygwin or MinGW, which were POSIX-compliant programs that it was almost like a shell in your Windows computer that would allow you to run those commands. JOËL: Really? For some reason, I thought that they had some executables that you could run just on Windows by itself. SARA: Now they do, fortunately, to the benefit of Ruby developers everywhere. As of Windows 10, we now have WSL, the Windows Subsystem for Linux that's built-in. You don't have to worry about installing or configuring some third-party software. JOËL: I guess that kind of almost cheats by just having a POSIX system embedded in your non-POSIX system. SARA: It does feel like a cheat, but I think it was born out of demand. The Windows NT kernel, for example, is mostly POSIX-compliant. JOËL: Really? SARA: As a result of it being used primarily for servers. JOËL: So you mentioned the Ruby tends and the Rails ecosystem tends to run better and much more frequently on the various Nix systems. Did it have to be that way? Or is it just kind of an accident of history that we happen to end up with Ruby and Rails in this ecosystem, but just as easily, it could have evolved in the Windows world? SARA: I think it is an amalgam of things. For example, Unix and Nix operating systems being developed earlier, being widely spread due to being license-free oftentimes, and being widely used in the education space. Also, because it is so lightweight, it is the operating system of choice. For most servers in the world, they're running some form of Unix, Linux, or macOS. JOËL: I don't think I've ever seen a server that runs macOS; exclusively seen it on dev machines. SARA: If you go to an animation company, they have server farms of macOS machines because they're really good at rendering. This might not be the case anymore, but it was at one point. JOËL: That's a whole other world that I've not interacted with a whole lot. SARA: [chuckles] JOËL: It's a fun intersection between software, and design, and storytelling. That is an important part for the software field. SARA: Yeah, it's definitely an aspect that deserves its own deep dive of sorts. If you have a server that's running a Windows-based operating system like NT and you have a website or a program that's designed to be served under a Unix-based server, it can easily be hosted on the Windows server; it's not an issue. The reverse is not true. JOËL: Oh. SARA: And this is why programming on a Nix system is the better choice. JOËL: It's more broadly compatible. SARA: Absolutely. Significantly more compatible with more things. JOËL: So today, when I develop, a lot of the tooling that I use is open source. The open-source movement has created a lot of the languages that we know and love, including Ruby, including Rails. Do you think there's some connection between a lot of that tooling being open source and maybe some of the Unix family of operating systems and movements that came out of that branch of the operating system family tree? SARA: I think that there is a lot of tie-in with today's open-source culture and the computing history that we've been talking about, for example, people finding something that they dislike about the tools that are available and then rolling their own. That's what Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie did. Unix was not an official Bell development. It was a side project for them. JOËL: I love that. SARA: You see this happen a lot in the software world where a program gets shared widely, and due to this, it gains traction and gains buy-in from the community. If your software is easily accessible to students, folks that are learning, and breaking things, and rebuilding, and trying, and inventing, it's going to persist. And we saw that with Unix. JOËL: I feel like this background on where a lot of these operating systems came but then also the ecosystems, the values that evolved with them has given me a deeper appreciation of the tooling, the systems that we work with today. Are there any other advantages, do you think, to trying to learn a little bit of computing history? SARA: I think the main benefit that I mentioned before of if you're a person that wants to know why, then there is a great benefit in knowing some of these details. That being said, you don't need to deep dive or read multiple books or write papers on it. You can get enough information from reading or skimming some Wikipedia pages. But it's interesting to know where we came from and how it still affects us today. Ruby was written in C, for example. Unix was written in C as well, originally Assembly Language, but it got rewritten in C. And understanding the underlying tooling that goes into that that when things go wrong, you know where to look. JOËL: I guess that that is the next question is where do you look if you're kind of interested? Is Wikipedia good enough? You just sort of look up operating system, and it tells you where to go? Or do you have other sources you like to search for or start pulling at those threads to understand history? SARA: That's a great question. And Wikipedia is a wonderful starting point for sure. It has a lot of the abbreviated history and links to better references. I don't have them off the top of my head. So I will find them for you for the show notes. But there are some old esoteric websites with some of this history more thoroughly documented by the people that lived it. JOËL: I feel like those websites always end up being in HTML 2; your very basic text, horizontal rules, no CSS. SARA: Mm-hmm. And those are the sites that have many wonderful kernels of knowledge. JOËL: Uh-huh! Great pun. SARA: [chuckles] Thank you. JOËL: Do you read any content by Hillel Wayne? SARA: I have not. JOËL: So Hillel produces a lot of deep dives into computing history, oftentimes trying to answer very particular questions such as when and why did we start using reversing a linked list as the canonical interview question? And there are often urban legends around like, oh, it's because of this. And then Hillel will do some research and go through actual archives of messages on message boards or...what is that protocol? SARA: BBS. JOËL: Yes. And then find the real answer, like, do actual historical methodology, and I love that. SARA: I had not heard of this before. I don't know how. And that is all I'm going to be doing this weekend is reading these. That kind of history speaks to my heart. I have a random fun fact along those lines that I wanted to bring to the show, which was that the echo command that we know and love in the terminal was first introduced by the Multics operating system. JOËL: Wow. So that's like the most common piece of Multics that as an everyday user of a modern operating system that we would still touch a little bit of that history every day when we work. SARA: Yeah, it's one of those things that we don't think about too much. Where did it come from? How long has it been around? I'm sure the implementation today is very different. But it's like etymology, and like taxonomy, pulling those threads. JOËL: Two fantastic topics. On that wonderful little nugget of knowledge, let's wrap up. Sara, where can people find you online? SARA: You can find me on Twitter at @csarajackson. JOËL: And we will include a link to that in the show notes. SARA: Thank you so much for having me on the show and letting me nerd out about operating system history. JOËL: It's been a pleasure. The show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. This show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or even a review on iTunes. It really helps other folks find the show. If you have any feedback, you can reach us at @_bikeshed or reach me @joelquen on Twitter or at hosts@bikeshed.fm via email. Thank you so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. Byeeeeee!!!! ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.

Leadership, Tenacity, and Staying Curious.In this episode of The Outspoken Podcast, host Shana Cosgrove talks to Roxanne Wood, President and CEO at Boeing Intelligence & Analytics. Roxanne discusses her experience becoming CEO and why we should all lean into leadership roles. She also explains the path that she took to rise up the ranks, focusing on her commitment to complete the task by learning from those around her. Roxanne has always been fearless when taking on new challenges, and she discusses everything from computer science to riding horses to playing music. Lastly, Roxanne tells us where she hides her power tools - it's not where you'd expect! QUOTES “They told me, ‘give that up you'll never get finished, you don't come from smart stock.' I was like alright, that is really a game on for me.” - Roxanne Wood [14:20] “I think everybody is your mentor - everybody's your safety net, you're their safety net, everybody is your mentor. You take the good pieces from everybody that you meet, and you make that part of your own.” - Roxanne Wood [25:59] “I think that everybody can do everything. I think when people say ‘oh I can't do that, I'm not flexible enough' - baloney! You can do anything that you want to do as a person. You just gotta do it.” - Roxanne Wood [44:13]   TIMESTAMPS  [00:04] Intro [01:53] Meet Roxanne Wood [03:07] What Boeing Intelligence and Analytics (BIA) encompasses [05:27] How Roxanne Became CEO [07:09] Searching for Team Members [08:00] Main Differences as CEO [11:43] Should you Avoid Leadership Roles? [13:45] Why Roxanne Majored in Computer Science [17:20] Working After College [19:10] Living in Maryland [22:28] Working at Lockheed Martin [24:54] What is the Secret to Climbing the Ranks? [27:58] Struggles that Roxanne Pushed Through [31:34] Shana's First Time Meeting Roxanne [36:12] Advice for People Starting Out [37:55] Impactful Books [39:39] Roxanne's Surprising Fact [40:58] What's Next for Roxanne [42:15] Roxanne's Fashion [43:44] Riding Horses and Playing Music [45:48] Outro   RESOURCES https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/whollyownedsubsidiary.asp (Wholly Owned Subsidiary) https://www.socom.mil/ (United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM)) https://www.dia.mil/ (Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)) https://www.nga.mil/ (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)) https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us (Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)) https://www.dhs.gov/ (Department of Homeland Security (DHS)) https://www.energy.gov/ (Department of Energy (DOE)) https://slack.com/ (Slack) https://www.towson.edu/ (Towson University) https://www.ccbcmd.edu/About-CCBC/Locations/CCBC-Catonsville.aspx (CCBC Catonsville Campus) https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/assembly-language.asp (Assembly Language) https://fortran-lang.org/ (Fortran Programming Language) https://www.britannica.com/technology/Pascal-computer-language (Pascal Computer Language) https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/security/glossary/what-is-zero-trust/ (Zero Trust) https://www.boeing.com/defense/b-1b-bomber/ (B-1B Lancer) https://www.military.com/equipment/m1a2-abrams-main-battle-tank (M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank) https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/index.html (Lockheed Martin Corporation) https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104492/c-5m-super-galaxy/ (C-5M Super Galaxy) https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104506/f-22-raptor/ (F-22 Raptor) https://www.java.com/ (Java Programming Language) https://livebaltimore.com/neighborhoods/westport/ (Westport, Maryland) http://places.baltimoreheritage.org/structure/hanover-street-bridge/ (Hanover Street Bridge (Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge)) https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariarosemarinelli/ (Maria Marinelli) https://eblingroup.com/products/the-next-level/ (The Next Level by Scott Eblin) https://www.amazon.com/Nice-Girls-Dont-Corner-Office/dp/1455546046 (Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner...

Today's guest is the incredible Ed Smith - one of only two known African American engineers who worked on the design of video games in the 1970s and the first African American to work in the design of a personal computer, and the only hybrid video game/personal computer ever released. In this episode, Ed talks me through his childhood, growing up in one of the toughest neighbourhoods in Brooklyn, New York and his desire to create a better life which he found through tech. A voracious reader and into electronics, Ed studied Computer Science before getting a job working on traffic control signals at Marbelite. Whilst there, Ed got the opportunity to go to Fairchild and learn early microprocessor-based circuit design which put his skills in high-demand. He soon landed at APF Electronics where he immediately starting work on the hardware design and built the prototypes, joystick and port design for the MP1000 video game – one of very few cartridge-based video game systems at the time. Two years later, Ed and the APF design team leveraged the processing power of the MP1000 and Ed's hardware designs to create the Imagination Machine personal computer which was the first combined home video game console and personal computer.This episode is inspiring and uplifting with many lessons from Ed on how to strive, thrive and find your role in tech.-----Mentioned in this interview:Ed's book  Imagine That!: The story of one of the first African Americans to work in the design of video games and personal computers can be bought from Amazon UK here and Amazon US here.Benj Edwards Fast Company interview with Ed Ed Smith And The Imagination Machine: The Untold Story Of A Black Video Game Pioneer-----Let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.-----Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnhamEd website / Twitter @slicer114-----This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng. 

Are you a programming student? Have you faced such a situation? If yes, then take help from our online Assembly Language Expert.

Charles Marslett, MYDOS and FastChip Charles Marslett wrote floppy disk and hard drive drivers for Percom, and was the creator of MYDOS, a disk operating system for the Atari 8-bit computers that offered support for double density sectors, subdirectories, and hard drives. He also created FastChip, a hardware add-on for the Atari, sold by Newell Industries, that claimed to speed up floating point routines by 300%. He also created the A65 Assembler, a macro assembler. He has released the source code for MYDOS and FastChip. This interview took place on July 13, 2020. Charles' web site MyDOS at AtariWiki MyDOS 3.0 User Guide A65 Assembler at AtariWiki ANTIC Interview 212 - Wes Newell, Newell Industries ANTIC Interview 7 - The Atari 8-bit Podcast - Bill Wilkinson, OSS ANTIC Interview 11 - The Atari 8-bit Podcast - David Small ANTIC Interview 22 - The Atari 8-bit Podcast - Kathleen O'Brien, OSS Michael Abrash Zen of Assembly Language by Michael Abrash

Craig fires some questions at Ron Lichty, co-author of “Managing the Unmanageable” and the “Study of Product Team Performance“: Author of machine Language programming books “Programming the Apple IIGS in Assembly Language” and “Programming the 65816“ Managing the Finder team at Apple – hired for stellar C++ coding ability and customer empathy Software development is … Continue reading →

Special guest time! Digital Eclipse's Mike Mika joins us to talk about the early days of programming video games, how not to get murdered by your arcade machine, reverse engineering classic games without source code, the coming CRT apocalypse, and what the new console hardware means for old games.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

محتويات الحلقة موضوع الحلقة Assembly Language الأسمبلي اخبار متفرقة مؤتمرات الرد على اسئلة وتعليقات المستمعين الحضور : بدر ، معن الضيف : محمد الغامدي

Welcome to the fourth episode of Cybertalk! My co-host is Cristi Vlad and together where we will be covering all your questions related to Infosec and Cyber-security. If you want your question answered/featured in the next episode, you can post them in the Google form linked below. In this episode, we discuss IDA Pro, assembly language for malware analysis and useful python libraries for penetration testing and cybersecurity. Books: The IDA Pro Book: https://www.amazon.com/IDA-Pro-Book-Unofficial-Disassembler/dp/1593272898 The Art of Assembly Language: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Assembly-Language-2nd/dp/1593272073 Malware Samples: https://crackmes.one/ https://dasmalwerk.eu/ Listen To CyberTalk: iTunes:https://podcasts.apple.com/ke/podcast/cybertalk/id1490558117 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j0RhRiofxkt39AskIpwP7 Google form (Post your questions here): https://forms.gle/hK5o7ucQy7iNuz8p7

Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan CacheFly Panel Jaim Zuber Andrew Madsen Dave Delong Joined by Special Guest: Derek Selander Summary Derek Selander introduces himself and how he got started.  The panel discusses debugging strategies and debugging with LLDB. The discussion moves to Hopper and using it to see what the UIKit is doing. Assembly Language differences between Swift and Objective and the effect on ABI stability are considered. The panel endorses Derek’s book as a great resource for developers. Derek shares how having this knowledge has helped him as a developer. Links https://www.hopperapp.com/ https://www.hex-rays.com/products/ida/debugger/index.shtml https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach-O https://www.raywenderlich.com/615-assembly-register-calling-convention-tutorial https://github.com/nygard/class-dump https://github.com/derekselander/ https://twitter.com/lolgrep Picks Andrew Madsen Afuri Ramen in Tokyo, Japan Dave Delong _ivarDescription _methodDescription https://github.com/nygard/class-dump Derek Selander Ivars _shortmethoddescription https://github.com/derekselander/lldb

Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan CacheFly Panel Jaim Zuber Andrew Madsen Dave Delong Joined by Special Guest: Derek Selander Summary Derek Selander introduces himself and how he got started.  The panel discusses debugging strategies and debugging with LLDB. The discussion moves to Hopper and using it to see what the UIKit is doing. Assembly Language differences between Swift and Objective and the effect on ABI stability are considered. The panel endorses Derek’s book as a great resource for developers. Derek shares how having this knowledge has helped him as a developer. Links https://www.hopperapp.com/ https://www.hex-rays.com/products/ida/debugger/index.shtml https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach-O https://www.raywenderlich.com/615-assembly-register-calling-convention-tutorial https://github.com/nygard/class-dump https://github.com/derekselander/ https://twitter.com/lolgrep Picks Andrew Madsen Afuri Ramen in Tokyo, Japan Dave Delong _ivarDescription _methodDescription https://github.com/nygard/class-dump Derek Selander Ivars _shortmethoddescription https://github.com/derekselander/lldb

Assembly language on OpenBSD, using bhyve for FreeBSD development, FreeBSD Gaming, FreeBSD for Thanksgiving, no space left on Dragonfly’s hammer2, and more. ##Headlines Assembly language on OpenBSD amd64+arm64 This is a short introduction to assembly language programming on OpenBSD/amd64+arm64. Because of security features in the kernel, I have had to rethink a series of tutorials covering Aarch64 assembly language on OpenBSD, and therefore this will serve as a placeholder-cum-reminder. OpenBSD, like many UNIX and unix-like operating systems, now uses the Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) for its binary libraries and executables. Although the structure of this format is beyond the scope of this short introduction, it is necessary for me to explain part of one of the headers. Within the program header there are sections known as PT_NOTE that OpenBSD and other systems use to distinguish their ELF executables - OpenBSD looks for this section to check if it should attempt to execute the program or not. Our first program: in C! It’s often a good idea to prototype your assembly programs in a high level language such as C - it can then double up as both a set of notes and a working program that you can debug and compile into assembly language to compare with your own asm code. See the article for the rest on: Our first program: in x86-64 Asm (AT&T/GAS syntax) Our first program: in inline x86-64 assembly Our first program: in x86-64 asm (NASM syntax) Our first program: in ARMv8 AArch64 assembly ###Using bhyve for FreeBSD Development The Hypervisor The bhyve hypervisor requires a 64-bit x86 processor with hardware support for virtualization. This requirement allows for a simple, clean hypervisor implementation, but it does require a fairly recent processor. The current hypervisor requires an Intel processor, but there is an active development branch with support for AMD processors. The hypervisor itself contains both user and kernel components. The kernel driver is contained in the vmm.ko module and can be loaded either at boot from the boot loader or at runtime. It must be loaded before any guests can be created. When a guest is created, the kernel driver creates a device file in /dev/vmm which is used by the user programs to interact with the guest. The primary user component is the bhyve(8) program. It constructs the emulated device tree in the guest and provides the implementation for most of the emulated devices. It also calls the kernel driver to execute the guest. Note that the guest always executes inside the driver itself, so guest execution time in the host is counted as system time in the bhyve process. Currently, bhyve does not provide a system firmware interface to the guest (neither BIOS nor UEFI). Instead, a user program running on the host is used to perform boot time operations including loading the guest operating system kernel into the guest’s memory and setting the initial guest state so that the guest begins execution at the kernel’s entry point. For FreeBSD guests, the bhyveload(8) program can be used to load the kernel and prepare the guest for execution. Support for some other operating systems is available via the grub2-bhyve program which is available via the sysutils/grub2-bhyve port or as a prebuilt package. The bhyveload(8) program in FreeBSD 10.0 only supports 64-bit guests. Support for 32-bit guests will be included in FreeBSD 10.1. See the article for the very technical breakdown of the following: Network Setup Bridged Configuration Private Network with NAT Using dnsmasq with a Private Network Running Guests via vmrun.sh Configuring Guests Using a bhyve Guest as a Target Conclusion The bhyve hypervisor is a nice addition to a FreeBSD developer’s toolbox. Guests can be used both to develop new features and to test merges to stable branches. The hypervisor has a wide variety of uses beyond developing FreeBSD as well. ##News Roundup Games on FreeBSD What do all programmers like to do after work? Ok, what do most programers like to do after work? The answer is simple: play a good game! Recently at the Polish BSD User Group meetup mulander was telling us how you can play games on OpenBSD. Today let’s discuss how this looks in the FreeBSD world using the “server only” operating system. XNA based games One of the ways of playing natively is to play indie games which use XNA. XNA is a framework from Microsoft which uses .NET, for creating games. Fortunately, in the BSD world we have Mono, an open source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET Framework which you can use to run games. There is also FNA framework which is a reimplementation of XNA which allows you to run the games under Linux. Thomas Frohwein, from OpenBSD, prepared a script, fnaify. Fnaify translate all dependencies used by an FNA game to OpenBSD dependencies. I decided to port the script to FreeBSD. The script is using /bin/sh which in the case of OpenBSD is a Korn Shell. I didn’t test it with many games, but I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t work with all the games tested by the OpenBSD guys. For example, with: Cryptark Rouge Legacy Apotheon Escape Goat Bastion CrossCode Atom Zombie Smasher Open-Source games In FreeBSD and OpenBSD we also will find popular games which were open sourced. For example, I spend a lot of time playing in Quake 3 Arena on my FreeBSD machine. You can very simply install it using pkg: # pkg install ioquake3 Then move the files for the skins and maps to the .ioquake3 directory from your copy of Quake. In the past I also played UrbanTerror which is a fully open source shooter based on the Quake 3 Arena engine. It’s is also very easy to install it from ports: # pkg install iourbanterror In the ports tree in the games directory you can find over 1000 directories, many of them with fully implemented games. I didn’t test many games in this category, but you can find some interesting titles like: openxcom (Open-source re-implementation of the original X-Com) openjazz (Free re-implementation of the Jazz Jackrabbit™ game engine) corsixth (Open source re-implementation of Theme Hospital) quake2 openra (Red Alert) openrct2 (Open source re-implementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2) openmw (Open source engine reimplementation of the game Morrowind) All those titles are simply installed through the packages. In that case I don’t think FreeBSD has any difference from OpenBSD. Wine One of the big advantages of FreeBSD over OpenBSD is that FreeBSD supports wine. Wine allows you to run Windows applications under other operating systems (including mac). If you are a FreeBSD 11 user, you can simply fetch wine from packages: # pkg install i386-wine To run Windows games, you need to have a 32-bit wine because most of the games on Windows are built on 32-bits (maybe this has changed – I don’t play so much these days). In my case, because I run FreeBSD-CURRENT I needed to build wine from ports. It wasn’t nice, but it also wasn’t unpleasant. The whole step-by-step building process of a wine from ports can be found here. Summary As you can see there are many titles available for *BSDs. Thanks to the FNA and fnaify, OpenBSD and FreeBSD can work with indie games which use the XNA framework. There are many interesting games implemented using this framework. Open source is not only for big server machines, and there are many re-implementations of popular games like Theme Hospital or RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. The biggest market is still enabled through wine, although its creates a lot of problems to run the games. Also, if you are an OpenBSD user only this option is not available for you. Please also note that we didn’t discuss any other emulators besides wine. In OpenBSD and FreeBSD there are many of them for GameBoy, SNES, NeoGeo and other games consoles. ###FreeBSD For Thanksgiving I’ve been working on FreeBSD for Intel for almost 6 months now. In the world of programmers, I am considered an old dog, and these 6 months have been all about learning new tricks. Luckily, I’ve found myself in a remarkably inclusive and receptive community whose patience seems plentiful. As I get ready to take some time off for the holidays, and move into that retrospective time of year, I thought I’d beat the rush a bit and update on the progress Earlier this year, I decided to move from architect of the Linux graphics driver into a more nebulous role of FreeBSD enabling. I was excited, but also uncertain if I was making the right decision. Earlier this half, I decided some general work in power management was highly important and began working there. I attended BSDCam (handsome guy on the right), and led a session on Power Management. I was honored to be able to lead this kind of effort. Earlier this quarter, I put the first round of my patches up for review, implementing suspend-to-idle. I have some rougher patches to handle s0ix support when suspending-to-idle. I gave a talk MeetBSD about our team’s work. Earlier this month, I noticed that FreeBSD doesn’t have an implementation for Intel Speed Shift (HWPstates), and I started working on that. Earlier this week, I was promoted from a lowly mentee committer to a full src committer. Earlier today, I decided to relegate my Linux laptop to the role of my backup machine, and I am writing this from my Dell XPS13 running FreeBSD vandamme 13.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 13.0-CURRENT #45 881fee072ff(hwp)-dirty: Mon Nov 19 16:19:32 PST 2018 bwidawsk@vandamme:/usr/home/bwidawsk/usr/obj/usr/home/bwidawsk/usr/src/amd64.amd64/sys/DEVMACHINE amd64 6 months later, I feel a lot less uncertain about making the right decision. In fact, I think both opportunities would be great, and I’m thankful this Thanksgiving that this is my life and career. I have more plans and things I want to get done. I’m looking forward to being thankful again next year. ###hammer2: no space left on device on Dragonfly BSD The Issue hammer2 does not actually delete a file when you rm or unlink it. Since recovery of the file is possible (this is the design of hammer2), there will still be an entry taking up data. It’s similar to how git works. Even with 75% usage listed here, the filesystem could still have filled up. If you are using it as your root filesystem, then attempts to clean up data may fail. If the kernel panics over this, you will see something like this. The Fix If you have a recent enough version of the rescue ramdisk installed, on bootup you can press ‘r’ and access the rescue ramdisk. Your provider will have to offer some sort of remote interface for interacting with the operating system before it boots, like VNC or IPMI. You can then mount your filesystem using: [root@ ~]# mkdir /tmp/fs [root@ ~]# mount_hammer2 -o local /dev/vbd0s1a /tmp/fs If you receive an error that /sbin/hammer2 is not found, then your rescue ramdisk is not up to date enough. In that scenario, download the latest 5.2 iso from dragonflybsd.org and boot from the cd-rom on your virtual machine or physical device. Just login as root instead of installer. If the mount does succeed, then all you have to do is run the following twice: [root@ ~]# /sbin/hammer2 bulkfree /tmp/fs If you do not have enough memory on your machine, you may need to mount swap. Add your swap partition to the /etc/fstab and then do: [root@ ~]# swapon -a Once you have ran the bulkfree command twice, the usage reported by df -h will be correct. However, there is a chance on reboot that a core dump will be placed in /var/crash/ so be prepared to have plenty of space free in case that happens. You should also delete any files you can and run the bulkfree operation twice afterwards to clear up additional space. ##Beastie Bits BSD Pizza Night - Portland bsd@35c3: …the place for you…*NIX! Project Trident PreRelease Image now available Play Stardew Valley on OpenBSD GUI Wrapper for OpenBSD mixerctl qtv - QuickTextViewer ##Feedback/Questions Ron - Ideas for feedback section Paulo - SDIO Firmware Dan - Some fun ZFS questions about labels Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv

We're back with Video episode 81 of CoCoTALK! and we'll jump right in with Assembly Language part 12, continuing what Steve Bjork has been laying down for us, we're going to progress from moving 1 dot, to moving 3 balls! Download the ASM source code and disk image for the demo here:http://haunthackers.com/data/lesson12.zip We also had William Culver join us and talk about his retro interests, podcasts, and the Vectrex which shares the same CPU as the CoCo! Check out all of William's links: https://www.facebook.com/VectrexRadio/ https://www.facebook.com/Intarivisions/ https://www.facebook.com/ColecoVisionsPodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/TheAtari5200SuperCommunity https://www.facebook.com/TheToyTomb https://www.facebook.com/ArcadeUsa/ https://www.youtube.com/user/SVT512?fbclid=IwAR1OpxVrHUa7RKh7BS-X2P7p3_LMQL_-RAWu77FmiG_Uc_D2aeNlhBw8VCA CoCoTALK!Email any suggestions you have for the show to cocotalk@cocotalk.live Join us for daily conversations on Discord: https://discord.gg/4J5nHXm CoCoTALK! airs live, right here on YouTube each and every Saturday at 2:00 PM EDT! We are also available for replay and podcast listening! For all things CoCoTALK! visit http://cocotalk.live Regular segments:Panel introduction, review of how our week in the retro hobby transpired. Feed back review:We go over previous episodes, how many views have they received, what's our current podcast download count, who sent us comments, email feed back, all those and more will be discussed and shared. Community activity reviews:Review of news and postings from the Facebook group and the Color Computer mailing list. Question of the week:Grant Leighty will bring us a question of the week occasionally for us to discuss. TechTALK!L. Curtis Boyle and David Ladd provide us with some more depth on technical discussions CoreDUMP! Nick Marentes will host technical discussions about software development, and hopefully not only raise questions, but provide answers for our CoCo devs Ron's Garage!Ron Delvaux offers us a peek into the past by showing of his impressive retro computing collection, each week we'll see some new items and talk about them. Why did They/Tandy do that?We'll ask the hard hitting questions of why things were (or weren't) done that could have possibly changed the course of history (hey that sounds like a great premise for a series!) Interviews, News, Reviews, and more! CoCoTALK! is the nation's leading live talk show featuring the Tandy Color Computer. For all things CoCoTALK! visit http://cocotalk.live Custom artwork designed by Instagram artist Joel M. Adams:https://www.instagram.com/artistjoelmadams/ Custom CoCoTALK! and retro merchandise is available at:http://8bit256.com Consider becoming a patron of the show:https://patreon.com/ogsteviestrow  

We're back with episode 81 of CoCoTALK! and we'll jump right in with Assembly Language part 12, continuing what Steve Bjork has been laying down for us, we're going to progress from moving 1 dot, to moving 3 balls! Download the ASM source code and disk image for the demo here:http://haunthackers.com/data/lesson12.zip We also had William Culver join us and talk about his retro interests, podcasts, and the Vectrex which shares the same CPU as the CoCo! Check out all of William's links: https://www.facebook.com/VectrexRadio/ https://www.facebook.com/Intarivisions/ https://www.facebook.com/ColecoVisionsPodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/TheAtari5200SuperCommunity https://www.facebook.com/TheToyTomb https://www.facebook.com/ArcadeUsa/ https://www.youtube.com/user/SVT512?fbclid=IwAR1OpxVrHUa7RKh7BS-X2P7p3_LMQL_-RAWu77FmiG_Uc_D2aeNlhBw8VCA CoCoTALK!Email any suggestions you have for the show to cocotalk@cocotalk.live Join us for daily conversations on Discord: https://discord.gg/4J5nHXm CoCoTALK! airs live, right here on YouTube each and every Saturday at 2:00 PM EDT! We are also available for replay and podcast listening! For all things CoCoTALK! visit http://cocotalk.live Regular segments:Panel introduction, review of how our week in the retro hobby transpired. Feed back review:We go over previous episodes, how many views have they received, what's our current podcast download count, who sent us comments, email feed back, all those and more will be discussed and shared. Community activity reviews:Review of news and postings from the Facebook group and the Color Computer mailing list. Question of the week:Grant Leighty will bring us a question of the week occasionally for us to discuss. TechTALK!L. Curtis Boyle and David Ladd provide us with some more depth on technical discussions CoreDUMP! Nick Marentes will host technical discussions about software development, and hopefully not only raise questions, but provide answers for our CoCo devs Ron's Garage!Ron Delvaux offers us a peek into the past by showing of his impressive retro computing collection, each week we'll see some new items and talk about them. Why did They/Tandy do that?We'll ask the hard hitting questions of why things were (or weren't) done that could have possibly changed the course of history (hey that sounds like a great premise for a series!) Interviews, News, Reviews, and more! CoCoTALK! is the nation's leading live talk show featuring the Tandy Color Computer. For all things CoCoTALK! visit http://cocotalk.live Custom artwork designed by Instagram artist Joel M. Adams:https://www.instagram.com/artistjoelmadams/ Custom CoCoTALK! and retro merchandise is available at:http://8bit256.com Consider becoming a patron of the show:https://patreon.com/ogsteviestrow  

Manuel Oblitas was born and raised in Lima, Peru, South America. Both Manuel and his older brother Javier were exposed to the business world in the early stages of their life as their dad was involved in the mass production of clothing in Lima. Manuel co-founded Visual Net Design (VND) back in 2002 in San Antonio, Texas as a two-man show (his brother Javier is the co-founder), specializing in building desktop applications. Their experience dates back to Assembly Language programming on the Commodore 64 back in the late 80s. Prior to starting VND (1998), they ported DOS based software to Windows 98 compatible, building a large distributed application for the apartment locating industry. They launched VND as a web development firm in 2002, providing web design and development, desktop software development, web marketing, SEO, server hosting and IT Services. Since then, VND has worked on projects ranging from University websites to Internet of Things (IOT) projects with embedded devices for startups. Currently, they serve clients such as Keller Williams, Texas State University, Vantage Bank, Friedrich Air Conditioning and Discovery Networks. Manuel provides executive oversight at Livecomm across all operations. He oversees production, marketing, and software update requests. He has a background in software development and currently is a partner at www.vndx.com, a software company he founded with Javier Oblitas in 2002. What you’ll learn about in this episode: How the idea for Livecomm.com got started What Livecomm.com is and why it matters for entrepreneurs today Some of the most popular features LiveComm offers to entrepreneurs Ways you can use LiveComm to generate competition among people who handle your sales How using LiveComm allows entrepreneurs to take advantage of the surprisingly high open rates for text messages – especially when compared to open rates for emails – and transform that into leads and ultimately into sales The value of creating automated text replies to keep your leads engaged An upcoming LiveComm feature that is expected to transform your customer service by automatically recording calls to see how you or your sales staff handle customer support, service, and the sales process Why this is an excellent tool for ensuring that your sales personnel are following scripts and the system you’ve worked hard to create Why lead generation is so vital for sales in any industry, including real estate How to use recordings with the LiveComm system to generate leads for your business The power of importing your existing list of contacts into the LiveComm system to offer greater flexibility for relationship building and lead generation on multiple fronts The reason LiveComm offers you the opportunity to send individual text messages to potential leads instead of a mass email to 10,000 people that everyone receives a response from and why that matters How entrepreneurs who use LiveComm can, in turn, recommend the product to others to earn money on a product you’re already using, familiar with, and believe in Tips for maximizing your efforts and results with LiveComm How using recorded messages can help keep sales professionals fresh and excited rather than burned out by weeding out tire kickers and curiosity seekers Resources: LiveComm Free 30 Day Trial Offer: email sales@livecomm.com LiveComm Phone number 210-672-1717 REInvestorSummit.com/Livecomm REInvestorSummit.com/privatelenders REInvestorSummit.com/Grow REInvestorSummit.com/101 REInvestorSummit.com/Coaching

Assembly Language for Beginners [pdf] — and My adventures getting Disney’s Moana island scene to render well with Pbrt

Allan Moose, Atari Assembly Language Programmer's Guide   Allan Moose was co-author of the book Atari Assembly Language Programmer's Guide, which was published by Weber Systems in 1986. He wrote the book with his wife and writing partner, Marian Lorenz. She passed away in 1992. The two also wrote many articles for Antic and A.N.A.L.O.G. Computing magazines.  Their articles included many about display list interrupts and vertical blank interrupts, and pretty mathematical graphics routines.    This interview took place on May 12, 2018.   "...pretty much a joint, cooperative effort in writing articles. Sometimes I would have an idea and would sketch something out. Other times Marian would have an idea."   Scan of Atari Assembly Language Programmer’s Guide   Allan's articles in Antic magazine   Allan's articles in A.N.A.L.O.G. Computing magazine   Article in Art & Science Journal    Display Lists Simplified (work in progress article) 

Today on CoCoTALK! we start a new segment on Assembly language presented by Color Computer video game living legend, Mr. Steve Bjork. The first lesson will explain a bit about how numbers work, the difference between decimal, binary, and hex numbers, and specifically, how the Color Computer's 6809 processor handle's numbers via it's Assembly language! This is going to be good! On the panel: Grant Leighty, D. Bruce Moore, James Diffendaffer, James Gerie, John Linville, L. Curtis Boyle, Mark D. Overholser, Nicholas Marentes, Rick Adams, Ron Delvaux, Simon Jonassen, Steve Bjork. Hosted by Steve Strowbridge Join the discussion live! Add cocotalk@cocotalk.live as a Skype contact and call us to talk! 00:00:00 - Lead In and Opening.00:01:23 - Going around the room...00:03:36 - The CoCoCREW!, "State of the CoCo" Round-Table.00:06:54 - Updates: (Nitr)OS9, Easy of Use ( EoU ) Project.00:11:33 - Updates: CoCoForever! Project.00:21:02 - Updates: CoCoTALK! Status.00:21:30 - Updates: ogStevieStrow.00:32:14 - Sponsors Recognition.00:33:56 - Bio Break.00:36:47 - Programing in Assemble ( 6x09 version ): Lesson #01.01:29:25 - Commercial Break.01:31:23 - Jim Gerry - MC-10 Programmer.01:33:12 - Ron Delvaux's Artwork/Old Magazines. Email any suggestions you have for the show to cocotalk@cocotalk.live Join us for daily conversations on Discord: https://discord.gg/4J5nHXm Help support the show by becoming a patron https://www.patreon.com/ogsteviestrow Retro SWAG sales help support operating costs and make you look cool http://8bit256.com CoCoTALK! is the nation's leading live talk show featuring the Tandy Color Computer. For all things CoCoTALK! visit http://cocotalk.live Custom artwork designed by Instagram artist Joel M. Adams:https://www.instagram.com/artistjoelmadams/ Custom CoCoTALK! and retro merchandise is available at:http://8bit256.com Consider becoming a patron of the show:https://patreon.com/ogsteviestrow

Today on CoCoTALK! we start a new segment on Assembly language presented by Color Computer video game living legend, Mr. Steve Bjork. The first lesson will explain a bit about how numbers work, the difference between decimal, binary, and hex numbers, and specifically, how the Color Computer's 6809 processor handle's numbers via it's Assembly language! This is going to be good! On the panel: Grant Leighty, D. Bruce Moore, James Diffendaffer, James Gerie, John Linville, L. Curtis Boyle, Mark D. Overholser, Nicholas Marentes, Rick Adams, Ron Delvaux, Simon Jonassen, Steve Bjork. Hosted by Steve Strowbridge Join the discussion live! Add cocotalk@cocotalk.live as a Skype contact and call us to talk! 00:00:00 - Lead In and Opening.00:01:23 - Going around the room...00:03:36 - The CoCoCREW!, "State of the CoCo" Round-Table.00:06:54 - Updates: (Nitr)OS9, Easy of Use ( EoU ) Project.00:11:33 - Updates: CoCoForever! Project.00:21:02 - Updates: CoCoTALK! Status.00:21:30 - Updates: ogStevieStrow.00:32:14 - Sponsors Recognition.00:33:56 - Bio Break.00:36:47 - Programing in Assemble ( 6x09 version ): Lesson #01.01:29:25 - Commercial Break.01:31:23 - Jim Gerry - MC-10 Programmer.01:33:12 - Ron Delvaux's Artwork/Old Magazines. Email any suggestions you have for the show to cocotalk@cocotalk.live Join us for daily conversations on Discord: https://discord.gg/4J5nHXm Help support the show by becoming a patron https://www.patreon.com/ogsteviestrow Retro SWAG sales help support operating costs and make you look cool http://8bit256.com CoCoTALK! is the nation's leading live talk show featuring the Tandy Color Computer. For all things CoCoTALK! visit http://cocotalk.live Custom artwork designed by Instagram artist Joel M. Adams:https://www.instagram.com/artistjoelmadams/ Custom CoCoTALK! and retro merchandise is available at:http://8bit256.com Consider becoming a patron of the show:https://patreon.com/ogsteviestrow

Sergey Galyonkin was just trying to fix a problem at work when we accidentally revolutionized the way we understand video game sales. We uncover the fascinating story behind Steam Spy, the people who use it, and the insights it gives us.  Learn About Noclip: https://www.noclip.video Become a Patron and get early access to new episodes: https://www.patreon.com/noclip Follow @noclipvideo on Twitter Hosted by @dannyodwyer Funded by 4,197 Patrons.   -------------------------------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPTION; Danny: Hello and welcome to noclip, the show where we bring you the stories about the people who play and make video games. I'm your host, Danny O'Dwyer. Okay, I'm going to talk about European law for like 30 seconds. And I want you to trust me that it'll be worth your while. All right, 20 seconds, I swear. Okay? All right. Earlier this month, GDPR or the General Data Protection Regulation was introduced to law by the European Union. Its purpose is to protect people like you and me from the increasingly intrusive ways that our personal data is being used against us. The ramifications are already being felt with websites and online services around the globe scrambling to change their privacy policies. You've probably noticed all the emails about this in your spam box. So while all this has been going on, Steam, the biggest online marketplace for video games, has introduced a new privacy policy of their own. Valve, the company who runs Steam, had previously set it so that every person who had a Steam account had a list of all the games that they owned on their public profile. Sort of like a bookcase showing all the digital games you've collected. The new setting made it so that all of this, the bookcase, the collection, was automatically set to private. No big deal, right? It seems like a pretty sensible change to make. But sadly this has had a knock-on effect that has made an incredibly popular and useful data tool all but useless. Steam Spy is a website that used this public data to calculate game sales. You could type in a game's name and in an instant see everything from how many copies its sold to the countries its most popular and how often those players who own it, play it. Over the years this service has proved itself invaluable to people like indie developers trying to market their games, reddit users trying to learn about the industry, and games journalists mining for data. Steam Spy did something that was pretty important, it opened up a tiny window into an industry that had always been notoriously secretive about sales. Perhaps even suspiciously so. So, why did Valve do it? Did it have anything to do with GDPR? And what knock-on effects will it have on the industry? Welcome to noclip, Episode One, The Steam Spy. Sergey Galyonki was born in Lugansk in the USSR, a city located on the border between Ukraine and Western Russia. His family moved to Poltovwa, closer to the center of Ukraine. And it was here that he played his first video game. Sergey: My godmother, she used to work for a huge computer center, you know like a secret type of building, you know, so you can't get in unless you get a y'know pass or something. But because I was a kid, they would let me in with her. I was, I don't remember like, seven or eight. And she let me, she would take me to you know to her job and she would let me play with computers. And they didn't have many games, it was you know they were mostly to do with statistics and stuff like that, but they had Tetris and they had Kingdom Euphoria. And back then I totally hated Tetris. I didn't play it much, but I mostly played Kingdom Euphoria, which was a text based strategy game. Danny: Text based strategies appealed to Sergey. From a young age he enjoyed solving problems. He'd spend hours making small games on a programmable calculator. You see, the Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s had restricted access to most type of electronics. So the computers available to consumers was limited to Soviet manufactured machines, or expensive black market imports from the West. Sergey: I didn't play many video games until like maybe age of nine or ten. Because we didn't have any. We had only like you know those old Soviet arcades. But then the Z Spectrum came to our country and it was a revelation. It actually was the first mass computer in Soviet Union. Not just in Ukraine, in whole Soviet Union. And I bought the first one, not I bought it, my father bought it for me. And I actually assembled the second one myself. Because you could buy you know the scheme, you could buy everything, you know separately. And just solder it. And it was fairly easy back then and I saved a bunch of money, do it. Danny: Using his ZX Spectrum, Sergey would create games for himself. He didn't enjoy programming in BASIC, he found the code too restrictive. So instead he opted to program using Assembly Language. His love of programming continued through his teens and when it was time to go to university, he chose to study Computer Integrated Systems, with a focus on Neural Networks. Ukraine has always been ahead of the curve when it came to developing algorithms. For instance, the first Neural Networks used to detect fake dollar bills were prototyped in Ukraine. Sergey continued his education and worked a bunch of jobs. He did page layouts at a local newspaper, he spent some time at a game studio, focusing on edutainment. Eventually he'd find himself moving to Kiev and taking up a job at a games distributor responsible for selling games for some of the biggest publishers in the world. What were some of the popular games in the Ukraine around that time? Any stand out in particular? Sergey: Well, I mean, it's the usual, except for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. We were not distributing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was a different company. But you thought about S.T.A.L.K.E.R., right? That was the most popular game in Ukraine and I guess it's the only, see a lot of people, I guess playin' it. From our products I would say World of Warcraft was the most popular game ever. I mean, it was selling like hot cakes. That was just literally crazy. You know? We couldn't get enough of it, y'know? Into stores. That was unbelievable. Danny: Was there any games that were very popular in the West, that just were not popular at all in the Ukraine? Sergey: A lot of like, intellectual properties that are not familiar to Ukrainians were not selling well. Like 50 Cents video games that, y'know nobody, knew about 50 Cent back then in Ukraine. So didn't really sell well. Also was an awful game, to be honest. Danny: Not many copies of Blood on the Sand sold in Kiev? Sergey: Yeah, yeah. Danny: Sergey's greatest love was programming. He'd continued to code during his spare time. But there was something about the distribution business that excited him. Again, he was problem solving. Learning how customers made decisions and using data science to find answers. Well, that and simply watching people. Sergey: I enjoyed it immensely. Because you learn a lot about how people behave and how people consume games, by just doing a little distribution. And I sometimes, I would just spend like half a day in a store, one of our partner stores, just talking to people and trying to understand how they behave, you know how they're looking and products on the shelves, how are they buying, how they're making decisions to buy, and that helped a lot because, I mean, I like looking at stats and the numbers, but unless you talk to people it's sometimes really hard to understand how they actually think, y'know? Danny: Sergey would eventually take what he learned in distribution and bring it back to the world of development. He spent two years at Nival Interactive, creators of the Blitzkrieg series and the developers of Heroes of Might and Magic V. He enjoyed the job and life was good. Sergey was married now, he had children. But something bubbling under the surface in Ukrainian society was about to come to the boil. A few days after Valentines Day in 2014, the Ukrainian revolution would see rioters clash with police throughout the capital city. The tragic shooting of unarmed protestors would lead to the ousting of Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian invasion of Crimea, and the eventual war in Donbass which continues today. A frozen conflict taking place on an area half the size of the country. A proxy war where Russian funded proto-states fight Ukrainian government forces, thousands dead on either side. Sergey: I was in Kiev at the time. My family was still in Lugansk, so we had to move them out of the war zone. And, yeah. But me and my kids and my wife were in Kiev. Danny: Was it a difficult decision to leave during the war? Sergey: Well, not really. I mean, when people are shooting outside of your apartment, it's kinda like a natural decision. So, yeah, no. The moment they started shooting, y'know, in my area, I just packed my family and we left. A lot of people don't realize how, how the stuff affects game developers as well. I mean a friend of mine he was still living in Lugansk when the war started. And he would drive to his office and he would like he would hear bullets just flying past his car when he would drive to his office. And it continued for like maybe a week until he's like I'm crazy. There's a war going on and I'm going to a job making video games. So he left after that. But I mean, because it happened all of a sudden and you know you see it in the movies and you expect it to be like in the movies but it's not. It just, y'know, it's a new type of war. You don't see a lot of tanks just rolling in. You don't see like, you don't see the front lines. It just, it's just, people start shooting. So he left and a lot of people did around the same time. Danny: The conflict led to an exodus of Ukrainian Game Development. 4A Games, developers of the Metro series, relocated their studio to Malta. Sergey and his family left for the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The reason was simple, it was the closest country him and his family could move to without requiring visas. As it happens it was also one of the 20 or so global locations that developers Wargaming had offices. The Belarusian developer responsible for the wildly popular World of Tanks. Sergey: Yeah, Wargaming is an amazing company. It's huge and Wargaming is really different from any other companies I've ever worked for. And I've worked for Eastern European companies, not just for the Western companies. Its culture is really something. It's a conflict-driven company. Yes, you're expected to shout at other people in discussions. You're expected to disagree. You know like every time I go to a meeting with my friends at Epic, it's usually I agree with you, I respect your opinion, but in Wargaming you would start with the but part, y'know? You would not do any formalities. You would say well, this idea is incorrect because this and this and this and I don't like this because this. And it really saved a lot of time in discussions, because people know that everyone respects everyone, otherwise you would not be working, y'know? At the company. If you don't respect other people. And that let people express opinions kinda in a more aggressive way. We're getting also, it's really interesting because, the core gaming audience, people that don't usually play video games. So you look at people that play World of Tanks or World of Warships, they are over 40, most of them have families and kids and sometimes they have grandchildren, y'know? And they don't know much about other video games. And they don't consider World of Tanks or World of Warships to be video games. They just consider it to be y'know their hobby. Like they would consider fishing to be a hobby. And that is both amazing and really demanding. Because you know it's a different audience, gamers are used to certain rules in video games and gamers are used to change. And gamers are used to a lot of stuff being taken away. Like people do not complain when Call of Duty releases a new game every single year. You essentially have to re-buy it and they take away all of your progress, when you buy the new Call of Duty, right? Danny: Yeah. Sergey: Well imagine doing that to a bunch of 60s years old people, you know? Every year. They would probably not like it, right? On the other hand, you hear a lot about in online gaming. And while World of Tanks players are not, not the most pleasant bunch, they are way more polite than your average kids in Call of Duty. So that, likewas never a huge problem in World of Tanks, every time people come and talk about we are free to play game, you're supposed to have a toxic audience. Well, not really, I mean if you're 60 years old you probably know how to behave yourself, right? Danny: Sergey worked as a Senior Industry Analyst at Wargaming. Helping the team find in-roads into different markets. Aside from their core Wargames, Wargaming published games from other studios and even worked on experimental games, under different brands. Think mobile games about managing a coffee shop. It was varied work that Sergey found interesting. In the spring of 2015, like so many others in the international development community, Sergey took the annual pilgrimage to the Gamers Developers Conference in San Francisco. Here he attended panels, networked with other analysts, and met old friends. One panel he attended was presented by Kyle Orland, a journalist for the technology website Ars Technica. Kyle had created a program that could pull user data from Steam and using it he was able to calculate video game sales. He called it Steam Gauge. Kyle Orland talking at a conference: I'm Kyle Orland, I'm Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, and this is Analyzing the Steam Marketplace, using publicly derived sales estimates. Now I've been covering the game business for a little over a decade and anyone covering this industry, or following it, one major annoyance is the lack of reliable specific data about sales of games. Now it's not like this in most other entertainment media. It's just not a problem. Nielsen, for instance, provides ratings literally overnight for TV shows and makes the headline numbers very public in publications like Variety. Theaters and studios provide box office estimates every weekend for movies. There's billboard charts for music, there's The New York Times Bestseller list every week for books, et cetera, et cetera. So what do we have for games? For games we have this. This is what NPD, a US tracking firm sends to the media every month. It's a top 10 list based on their sampling of US retail outlets and now electronic sales. If you pay a lot of money you can get more details than this. You can get every game that they track and actual sales numbers, but people who get those numbers are contractually prevented from sharing them publicly. And NPD is pretty strict about enforcing it. You get occasional leaks. Danny: Back in Cyprus a few weeks later, Sergey was doing market analysis for Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars. Wargaming was publishing the game and Sergey was trying to determine market data around 4X Strategy Games. However, his VPN was down and he didn't have access to any of his data. It was then that he remembered Kyle's talk. Sergey: Well it was end of March, 2015 I was still working for Wargaming and the funny story behind Steam Spy that my VPN was down and the office was closed for an extended holiday. And I needed to look up some numbers and I didn't have access to my data and I like, well I need this data, because I have nothing else to do. And I was just came from GDC and I remember the presentation by Kyle Orland from Ars Technica, about Steam Gauge. And I said well, how hard would it be to recreate that? And he didn't give any y'know instructions or anything how to do that, but I mean you have internet it's fairly easy. So I spent couple of evenings writing it and by Monday I had all my data, I wrote my documents, required for the office, so by the end of Sunday and I was like, I was stuck with essentially Steam Spy. Without any interface. And I was like, well maybe I should just add interface and open that up to everyone. Danny: Sergey added that interface, gave it a web presence, and shared it with the folks who listened to his video games Podcast. Right away he saw indie developers flooding to it. This tool, something he was calling Steam Spy, was democratizing data in a way the PC market had never seen before. What Steam Spy was doing was incredibly clever. The Steam marketplace was the biggest online retailer for PC game sales and by default user profiles were public. Sergey's algorithm would poll data from between 60-70,000 profiles a day and using that extrapolate total game sales. It didn't poll every single person on Steam, but with enough data points his algorithm could get to within a few percentage points of accuracy. When NPD produced its top 10 charts, all that that was highlighting was which games were the most popular. But Steam Spy, with its repository of data, was far more powerful. For instance, you could look at trends and see how must more games sold when they went on sale. Or you could use the data to see how popular baseball games were in Portugal. Unlike NPD which just told you a specific thing, if you had an unanswered question about PC games sales, Steam Spy could help you get to the answer. Sergey had developed a tool for market researchers in the video games industry, but it seemed everyone wanted to play with it. It wasn't long before the games press started posting articles using data they had gathered from Steam Spy. Reddit was full of threads about games that were secretly incredibly popular. But it wasn't just hobbyists using it. Indie devs now had access to a powerful market research tool. And even large publishers were using Steam Spy. Were you at all worried that, I mean you were just using the Steam API, right? To pull this stuff? Sergey: Yeah, yeah, I was, I checked the rules. I mean I'm not a lawyer or anything, but I read the Uler, I actually read it. And I didn't find y'know that I'm breaking anything. They changed the Uler after that. But back when it, I launched it, I was not breaking any laws. And I guessed well, I mean, anyone can estimate anyone's sales, right? That's why we have a lot of research companies. And you have super data, you have Usuy, you have NPD. They all do an estimate and they all the publicize them y'know, online and it is completely legal. Anyone is allowed to do that. As long as you're not stealing someone's, y'know financial information, you are allowed to do estimates. Danny: And you weren't surfacing any individual's information, were you? Sergey: No, of course not. No, European laws about user privacy are way more stricter than American laws about user privacy. So all information from the beginning was already itemized. I was never storing anything that is, can be used to identify a user. Well, but coincidentally, it was mostly y'know gaming journalists, small indie developers, gamists, y'know, game enthusiasts, trying to understand how the market works. I was, after started adding more and more professional tools, into Steam Spy, like Cross Audience research, playtime distribution, and stuff that I felt is useful to me. And I've seen that the audience has shifted towards more professionals. And it's been, it's been interesting talking to people that actually use Steam Spy, at different conferences. Intel uses Steam Spy. Tencent uses Steam Spy. Electronic Arts uses Steam Spy. Ubisoft, Activision, you name it, I don't know a single gaming company that does not use Steam Spy right now. It became a tool that a lot of people in the gaming industry use, because it's not great, but it's good enough. And if you look into any other tools available, you know like SuperData Arcade is an amazing tool. App Annie is an amazing tool. But the precision is actually way worse than Steam Spy's precision. And accuracy is way worse than Steam Spy's accuracy. And people still use it, because having information that might be 50% off is still better than having no information. Danny: One of the things that Steam Spy did great was validating the market. For instance you could use the tool to see if fans of a certain genre bought lots of games in that genre. So, for instance Sergey found that MoBA players rarely played more than one MoBA. So during the height of DoTA2's popularity, when every developer under the sun was trying to make the next big MoBA, they were trying to sell to an audience that largely didn't want one. Sergey: On the other hand, you look at Survival Games, like DayZ and you see that people that enjoy survival games actually buy a lot of survival games. And that you know that makes it safe to launch a new survival game, like Conan Exiles for example. Y'know you look at the market, you realize well people will buy your game and you make leap of faith. People looking into trends obviously and it's harder to do with Steam Spy unfortunately, I'm using different tools myself, when looking for trends, but Steam Spy is decent at this. So you could look into what's growing y'know how games are changing what people are playing now verus what people were playing last year. If you look into audience for playing on battle grounds, you'll see that while some of them are coming from so that's good, a lot of them are, haven't never played anything before. So they are newcomers to the genre and it means that a lot of them will not leave the game because that's the only game they ever played or played in recent years. And that makes it really hard to compete with and Fortnite on the market, unless you're willing to do something radically different. And that's why I believe it's, a lot of innovation is gonna come from, y'know. People doing Battle Royale but in an unexpected way. Danny: I'm European. I grew up in Ireland, I lived in London for a few years, eventually found myself in California and now live in the woods on the East Coast. And one of the things I've enjoyed throughout my life, moving from country to country, is understanding the preferences of different people in different parts of the world. As it turns out, Steam Spy is really good at highlighting the types of games that certain countries like. I asked Sergey, what were some of the most interesting geographical trends that he came across. Sergey: Well my favorite part is the German admiration of anything that has similation in it. Like the farming simulator, anything that has to do with simulation, really. They will play it. Farming simulator is a phenomenon. And it was developed in Switzerland, but is mostly played in Germany. And you talk to anyone in America and the fact that they have a trolleybus simulator they have a trash garbage trash simulator. And people buy it and people play it and that's just crazy, but that's, that's how people in Germany particularly like to spend their time, y'know. Japan, back then was obsessed with zombies. Anything with zombies would sell really well in Japan. Danny: Was there any stuff that was very popular in America that just was not popular in Europe or vice versa that you kind of saw? Sergey: Well America is such a huge market and when Steam Spy started, was still the biggest gaming market in the world. So everything that is popular in America was pretty much popular everywhere else. So they have a, well back then they used to like royalgames and open world games. Not as much, like French people do not enjoy open world games as much as Americans. But French video gaming companies like PBSoft it's selling games they make recently, right? They only make y'know open world games. Danny: Steam Spy was cracking open the sales data of thousands of games. As somebody who worked in the games press, I couldn't imagine this was something that publishers were particularly happy about. The gaming audience is savvy. It cares about consumer rights and it's quick to react when publishers do things that take advantage of them. Steam publishes some data themselves, like concurrent live players. But the amount of data that Steam Spy was surfacing was on a whole other level. I had to imagine that publishers must have been lobbying Valve to do something to lock out Steam Spy. I asked Sergey if he had ever talked to Valve during any of this. I just wanted to know, what did they think of it all? Sergey: I used to, when I worked at Nivall, I used to work with them, because we published games on Steam and when worked at Wargaming, Danny: Right. Sergey: We also published some games on Steam. And they used to reply fairly quickly. But every time I would mention, well I would not write from my corporate email, of course I would write from a personal email, every time I would write about Steam Spy, they would just shut down. They would, I mean it would just literally, shut up and not reply to any of my emails or any of my communications. And I have couple of friends working there, not on Steam, on the Dotter team and it's the same situation. Every time we discuss something, you know like, gaming related or something like that launch plans or something like that, they talk, anytime I mention Steam Spy, they just shut up. I guess it might be an uncomfortable topic for them. Danny: Why do you think that is? Sergey: Well, I feel like Valve is a company that has no leadership. It has no management structure. So there's no one to make a decision. And they only make a decision when everyone agrees to that decision, or everyone on a team agrees to that decision. And there is no consensus about Steam Spy, I guess. And no one is senior enough, like in any other company you would have a head of whatever, head of Steam, come up and say, well that's my decision, we'll shut it down or we will let it go and everybody will, okay! I might disagree with that, but I will, y'know. I can live with that. Any time they make any decision, you will sit and wonder why did they make this decision? Every time they make something new, it feels like a compromise. Y'know what I mean? It doesn't feel like they are making any bold, unusual decisions and it's, to me it has been a probably the biggest disadvantage in the last several years, because they stopped experimenting, they stopped doing something really unusual or bold. Like I mean the trading card game in 2018, really? Danny: It's difficult to measure the effect that Steam Spy was having on the games industry. He heard anecdotally about games that were funded through market research derived from Steam Spy. He saw publishers like SEGA bring many of their classic games to PC once they saw there was market for them on Steam. But one of the big trends that Sergey noticed was how his tool allowed indie developers to more accurately price their games. Sergey: I feel especially if you're a young developer it's really hard to put a price tag on your game. You always feel like you haven't made everything you wanted to. You haven't achieved everything you wanted to with this title. So if you're releasing your first game and you feel like well, maybe I should just price it 9.99 because that's a no brainer. But actually your game is worth maybe, y'know 29.99, because if you look at the last games at that price points when they were released they were priced higher, so maybe you should price your games higher. Maybe your game is unique and it has no competition and it has no comparison points. And if it has no comparison points, maybe you should price it higher, because it's something unique that people are willing to pay more money for. People are trained to expect triple A quality from $60 titles and for $50 titles even, but you go below 50, you go to 40 to 30, and people expect it to be an indie game, maybe rougher on the edges, y'know, maybe y'know, better graphics than y'know, $5 game, but they expect it to be an indie title. They are willing to forgive a lot of quirks if the title is actually fun. This is the biggest fear of any game developer I believe. You're making something, you're sitting in a pretty much in a dark room, talking to no one but other fellow developers, from the same company and you always think well, maybe I'm not relevant anymore. Maybe people don't want to play city simulators and I've just spent four years of my life developing one. Maybe people want something to play something different. And maybe I should just under price it and put it for 9.99 and hope that well, maybe if I don't make a lot of money at least people will play it, y'know? Danny: Steam Spy ran for three years, helping indie devs price their games, helping large publishers do market research, helping journalists find sales figures, helping redditors prove their point. That was until a few weeks ago, when Valve flipped a switch. On April 10, 2018 Valve pushed an Update to every user's Profile Privacy Settings Page. Up until now if you created an account, your game ownership data was public by default. People could set this to private, but most didn't bother. Steam's update flipped this entirely. Not only would new accounts be automatically set to private, but it switched every account on the system to private, too. Without this data Steam Spy could not work. And Sergey quickly announced that the service was dead. At the time the update went live, the EU had just pushed through a new regulation on data security. GDPR or The General Data Protection Regulation was created to add new protections to user's personal data. As soon as it came through, online services around the world were changing their End User License Agreements to be in line with the law. Some services were having to push updates to get in line. One game, Monday Night Combat, would eventually have to shut down, as making the required changes to their backend would cost more than the game was bringing in. Everyone assumed that this was just Steam doing the same, falling in line. But after a few days, Sergey realized it had nothing to do with it. Sergey: Well it's not really related to GDPR, the latest change was not related to GDPR, because GDPR requires companies to do a bunch of changes to appoint a person responsible for User Privacy to change default settings, to change privacy settings, for underage people, under 18, and Valve did nothing. Like that. Valve still displays your friend list, your achievements, your groups, your screenshots, are publicly on your page. The only thing they hid were games. And GDPR actually does not require that. GDPR requires to hide everything else, that is still displayed. I don't believe it was linked to GDPR at all. I thought that it was like that when they made the change. But after looking into it, I don't think it was related to GDPR. Danny:  So if that's the case, then it must have been related to what you were doing, right, because is there anything else that's happening, that people are pulling from game data? Sergey: Well, I don't know, I mean, it's on one hand it's nice to think that Steam Spy was so disruptive they decided to shut it down. But it's really easy for them to shut it down. They just have to drop an email to me and I will stop it. I guess, bunch of companies are doing similar stuff to what Steam Spy does. Only keeping it to themselves. Or I've heard of other companies that charges like a thousand bucks per month for accessing the service that does this, similar to Steam Spy. Has a little bit more options, but mostly similar. And maybe they were unhappy about those guys and the only way they saw to shut it down was just shut it down completely, so no one could use it. I guess that's, that's one way to do it. But yesterday they shut, well they didn't shut down, but they made some changes, rendering the Store API useless as well. And the Store API is the API that provides information about the game price, game developer, like the basic stuff. Like genre and so on and a lot of sites were using that and it's now unavailable to them and I mean, what they did, they improved the store's privacy, or what? It just feels really odd to me. Danny: Without access to games lists and with the Store API changes, Steam Spy was unable to poll the data it required. This was a seemingly insurmountable problem, but Sergey, Sergey likes to solve problems. And in this case he used machines to solve the problem for him. Sergey: I no longer rely on information provided by an APT at all, I use a bunch of other parameters. As it happens I have an unfinished PhD in machine learning and topic my thesis was using unrelated, using loosely related information to predict economical outcomes. And that's what I'm pretty much using for the new algorithm of Steam Spy. My algorithm that I developed when I was still thinking about taking a science pass. And it works more or less. Danny: And this is probably like maybe it's a stupid question to ask because it's incredibly complex, but what is the machine learning doing to try and figure this out, if it's not pulling from statistics or from data and creating statistics out of it, how are you coming to these numbers? Sergey: Well, the thing is that, it is kind of hard to explain. It takes a really huge sample of data like I would say, maybe 15 million data points, and it goes through processing trying to filter out the data that is proven to be irrelevant and trying to amplify the data that is more or less relevant. Then it feeds it into a Neural network. And that Neural network does its magic. And the problem with Neural networks is, Neural networks tend to over feed. Neural networks are great for recognizing images, but are really bad for predicting outcomes that are outside of what they are recognizing. So, if you feed an image of a man to a Neural network and say, it's a man and you also feed an image of a dog to a Neural and say, it's a dog, Neural network will be able to distinguish between this man and this dog, but it's going to be really hard for the Neural network to, if it sees a woman. It will not understand if it's a, y'know if it's a man or a dog, because it does not fit into any of those categories. And in case of our Steam Spy, we're trying to predict well the game is, the Game A has 10,000 owners, the Game B has 20,000 owners, Game C doesn't have 10, doesn't have 20, it might have 30, it might have 40, please do an, predict that and Neural networks are really, really bad at it. But that was my PhD, testing this. Is preparing the data in a way that lets Neural networks actually work with this type of tasks. And it works more or less. It's not perfect, I'm not, I'm still not happy with it, but it is, it works. Yeah, based off of what I've heard from developers and I have a sample of maybe 100 games, y'know that provided me with actual data, it seems that for most of them, for maybe 95% of them, that used Steam Spy, it was within 10%. Give or take. So actually pretty good. For some of them, it is violently inaccurate. The last 5% I mean I've heard about a game that was the difference was 15 times. That was just staggering to me. But for everything else it seems to work. Danny: Steam Spy started while Sergey was working for Wargaming in Cyprus, but during the intervening years he moved around quite a bit. In early 2016, him and his family swapped Nicosia for Berlin as he became the Head of Publishing for Eastern Europe for an American company in the online shooter space. This company was responsible for some of the biggest shooters in the early 2000s, but they were struggling to find audiences for their suite of online games. One of those games was a third person MoBA called Paragon that would eventually shut down. Another was a remake of their classic arena shooter, perhaps you've heard of it, Unreal Tournament. And the third was a survivalcraft game that had been in development for the best part of a decade. It had sold well on launch, but the game was designed to be very malleable. With Sergey and Steam Spy's help, the team looked at the market research data and decided to take a swing at putting in a Battle Royale-style game mode. Seeing as Sergey was working with the headquarters in America so much, he would eventually move him and his family to North Carolina, to become Director of Publishing Strategy. The American company was of course, Epic. And the game was Fortnite. Sergey: Yeah, I was part of the team. I was part of making the decision and obviously we were looking at Steam Spy data to see how the genre is evolving. And with talking about Fortnite, original of the Wolf Fortnite, that's the reason I joined Epic. I visited Epic several years ago, they showed me Fortnite and I was blown away. I mean, that was a game that you could make into anything. It is so flexible, it is, I mean, well it didn't have Battle Royale mode, but it had several PBB modes back then. Experimental PBB modes and people you saw 50-versus-50, right? It is actually, well the idea for them all. You know, two teams building castles and fighting each other, was actually back then, in the original Fortnite. Obviously not 50-50, versus, smaller teams. But still. And Fortnite to me felt like a, y'know like a mold, you could make it into anything. Danny: And I mean even when you talk about Fortnite, it's like we don't know 'cause it's on the Epic, Epic launch, right? So we don't know how many people are playing Fortnite, we don't know how many people are playing World of Tanks, actually now that you mention it, either. So your games have been surprisingly hidden behind this. Sergey: Well, I'd have to, I mean have access to all the data, but somebody else could. Both of them have APIs that you can access. For World of Tanks, there's bunch of services, statistics services for World of Tanks. And there are several services for Fornite statistics, as well. So you can see the numbers. Actually, it's just Epic is a company that doesn't like to brag about numbers and when we publish numbers we, we've felt some pushback from, y'know from the gaming audience, because they felt like, well, we just were viewing them, gamers, as numbers not as people. And we are really sensitive about that. I mean we're trying, we're always trying to do the right by the gaming audience. So we decided to do it less. It not completely stop it, but just do it less often. After I was, I decided, I actually decided to shut Steam Spy down after all those changes, because I didn't feel like continuing. We also had a huge outage at Fortnite at work and I felt like, well I don't have enough time to, y'know do my day job. I also like to sleep sometimes. This didn't leave a lot of time for Steam Spy, but I thought I've received maybe, 200 emails from people using Steam Spy, asking for me to continue and I felt like, well I mean, yes it makes sense to do so, y'know, people really like it. And that's when I heard all those amazing stories about y'know peoples, companies starting a publishing business because they now were able to see the statistics for game that offered for publishing company getting small indie company from barely getting financing from the German government, because they were able to prove that well, the gamethat they were trying to make is gonna sell. And it did. It was really good. So I felt well, it provides a lot of fire to the market and I like that. And I'm not doing it for money or anything, I mean, at my current day job, I am well provided for. It's not that. It's, it's, the fact that I believe that informational asymmetry, asymmetry of information is unethical, in any business transaction. And Steam Spy is designed to remove informational asymmetry from business transactions or from any discussions. The gaming publisher, the big gaming publisher, have access to more information than a small gaming publisher or a small developer. Then if you're trying to sign a contract with a small developer, you can abuse your power. You have access to more information to get a better deal. That is not gonna be beneficial to the developer. And we've heard these stories about that so many times, y'know even before Steam Spy, like publishers abusing power or big developers abusing small developers. And having this removed actually helps the market whole. Danny: And do you feel like you're doing a service to the world of video games? Sergey: I feel like I'm doing more good than harm. In this case, yeah. Danny: My sincere thanks to Sergey for talking to us this week. You can learn more about Steam Spy and look up all your favorite games by visiting SteamSpy.com. You can also throw Sergey a few bucks a month for his efforts, by heading over to Patreon.com/SteamSpy. Thanks for listening to this first episode of noclip. We hope you enjoyed our first story. If you have any feedback or tips you can hit me up on Twitter @dannyodwyer. Or send us an email, podcast@noclip.video. Oh, and hey, if you liked the show, maybe subscribe, tell a friend, or leave us a review on iTunes. If you enjoyed this Podcast but you feel like your eyes are missing out, a friendly reminder, if you want to watch some high-quality video game documentaries for free, head over to YouTube.com/Noclipvideo. We recently traveled to Amsterdam to tell the story of Horizon Zero Dawn. And to Canada, where we filmed a documentary series on Warframe. All of our work is crowdfunded, so if you like what we're making, please consider becoming a patron of noclip. We have bunches of fun rewards, including early access to this Podcast, behind-the-scenes videos and much, much more. Head over to Patreon.com/Noclip to learn more. We'll be back with Episode Two in just a few weeks and we'll be focusing on a game. One of my favorite games, in fact. A game from my childhood. And the creative team who left Lionhead to make its spiritual successor. Whatever happened to Theme Hospital? Find out in our next show. Thanks again, see you then.

In this the fifth episode of the series 'how computers work', I begin with a summary of some of the major methods of improving the performance of the central processing unit, including pipelining, cache memory, branch prediction, and parallel processing. Following a brief introduction to assembly langague and its relationship to the machine code, I then discuss the operating system and how it interfaces with the hardware to manage program memory, system calls, input/output, and processes.

CoCoTALK! #25 09-09-2017   CoCoTALK! Episode #25 - The Hurricane Irma edition!   People on the show and items discussed: John W. Linville - Host of the CoCoCREW! POD Cast. Glen Hewlett interview on CoCoCREW!, Hack-A-Day project mention Bill Nobel: Full Source Code for the Ribbs BBS for OS9, v2.03. The "original" Three Musketeers of NitrOS9, Curtis Boyle and Bill Nobel & Wes Gail. John W. Linville: Another Mashup of The CoCoCrew! and Trash Talk.. Pending Interview with Curtis Boyle and Bill Nobel & Wes Gail. Rick Adams' Bomb Threat cartridges for Tandy Assemble, 24 Units. ohn W. Linville: Facebook post with Bomb Threat cartridge, art by Joel Adams. John W. Linville: Retrochallenge 2017/10, http://www.retrochallenge.org Bruce Moore: Found an Easter Egg in OS9.. William Schaub: Wanting to start learning 6809 Assembly Language. Ron Delvaux's OS9 Group: Remembering OS9 on the CoCo. OS9 Easter Eggs. CoCo 3 Easter Egg. CoCopedia: Allen Huffman's http://www.cocopedia.com OS9 History by Bill Peirce. OS9 Resources ( Manuals ) on the OS9 Group. Different versions of the Color BASIC Manuals. Ron Delvaux's Garage: Four Videos of CoCos and CoCoSDC with a "real" Floppy. CoCo Mail List: https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco William Schaub: Background with the CoCo. William Schaub: First Assembly Language program. Grant Leighty's Newbie Talk: CoCo Pi, What is It, and How does it Work? Curtis Boyle and David Ladd with Tech Talk: Barry Nelson, Cave Walker for OS9 on NitrOS9 L2. Tandy Assembly check in: http://www.tandyassembly.com/. BREAKING NEWS: CoCo List, Toolshed v2.2 just released, HDB-DOS v1.5 just released. CoCo Mailing List: Overview of contents CoCo Sources of Information: Facebook, CoCo List, IRC, CoCoTALK! on Skype and Discord, Yahoo Group, and Fido-Net. CoCo Retro Pi: Dual DriveWire Servers with One shared Image to Exchange Files. CoCo to Drivewire cable.   Two different Cable Designs...   Which one is Correct?? Mark D. Overholser: Drivewire cable design, http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Getting_Started_with_DriveWire#The_DriveWire_Cable William Schaub: Windows File Sharing or WinSCP for Disk Sharing.   Links: Original livestream: https://youtu.be/-2gv7Unfkr4 CoCoTALK! On the web: http://cocotalk.live CoCoTALK! On YouTube: http://youtube.com/ogsteviestrow Merchandise/Retro Swag: http://8bit256.com OG Stevie Strow’s site: http://ogsteviestrow.com The CoCo Crew Podcast: http://cococrew.org CoCoFEST!  website http://www.glensideccc.com/ Tandy Assembly: http://tandyassembly.com

Lance Leventhal, Author of Assembly Language Books   Lance Leventhal wrote 25 computer books, spanning 1978 through 1992. His books include  6502 Assembly Language Programming, 6502 Assembly Language Subroutines, Z80 Assembly Language Programming, Z80 Assembly Language Subroutines, 6800 Assembly Language Programming, 6809 Assembly Language Programming, and Why Do You Need a Personal Computer?   This interview took place on August 25, 2017.   "Be careful about avoiding sidetracks. Don't go down them. There's always things you'd like to say and things you'd like to talk about. But they're not central to your topic and you've got to be brutal about not saying them."   Scans of many of Lance's books at Internet Archive

The convict labor of Black women [17:50] / Hungary isn't a dictatorship yet [1:02:38] / Unboxing Baudelaire [1:33:42] / Labor power in theory and practice [2:04:16] / On African American and Latino politics [3:11:04] / The supreme gamble [3:42:36]

Rodnay Zaks, Founder of Sybex Books Rodnay Zaks was the founder of computer book publisher Sybex Books, and is author of many classic computer programming books, including 6502 Applications (1979), Programming the 6502, Advanced 6502 Programming, and 6502 Games. He also wrote or co-wrote Programming the Z80, Programming the 6809, Your First Apple II Program, Programming the Apple II in Assembly Language, and other books. This interview took place on October 14, 2016. Rodnay on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodnay_Zaks Teaser quotes: "The first 5,000 books sold out, mail order, within a few days. So it was clear that there was more interest than we anticipated." "She said, 'There is a computer in this machine?' I said 'Yes.' And she went out screaming and never returned."

Scott talks to Erik Meijer about the idea that JavaScript is an assembly language. What assumptions can we make and how could this idea fundamentally change how we develop software on the web?

Figuring out how to map familiar high-level control constructs like 'while' and 'for' to assembly language.

  Retro is in!  News at 11! Welcome to Show 021!  This week we cover Assembly Language, the Happy Place for many 8-bit programmers. Topics and links discussed in the podcast... More episodes of the C64 Take Away Podcast!  Excellent! Be sure to send any comments, questions or feedback to retrobits@gmail.com. For online discussions on Retrobits Podcast topics, check out the Retrobits Podcast forum on the PETSCII Forums page! Our Theme Song is "Sweet" from the "Re-Think" album by Galigan. Thanks for listening! - Earl