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Showing posts with label Sony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sony. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Some Electronics Repairs Rundowns, Random Stuff, and More

Roland TD-20 Drum Machine with faded screen:
- bought one with a dead screen. Fixed temporarily by putting pressure on relevant input ribbon cables into screen. After reinsertion of the relevant ribbon cables it worked fine
Roland td-20 teardown
https://www.vdrums.com/forum/general/the-lounge/16245-the-td-20-problems-repaired-thread
https://www.vdrums.com/forum/advanced/diy/980755-display-td-20-display-repair
https://www.roland.com/us/support/by_product/td-20/
https://www.vdrums.com/forum/general/products/1209736-roland-td-20-fading-lcd-screen
https://www.vdrums.com/forum/advanced/diy/980755-display-td-20-display-repair
How to Fix The Roland TD-12 VDrum LCD Screen for FREE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Cr3UQOTw0
https://www.youtube.com/@Sciencenme

Nintendo Gameboys with lines on screens:
- you can fix by strategic pressure via pieces of cardboard of blu-tac/play-doh or else reflow which looks completely insane but actually works.  You can replace screens but they're often expensive so not worth it in many cases
Easy Fix: Nintendo GameBoy with lines in the screen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8uwzqzO3As
https://www.youtube.com/@PghGameFix
How to FIX Vertical Lines on a DMG Gameboy Screen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OEXhxoTIvY&t=8s
https://www.youtube.com/@KyleAwsm
how to fix vertical line gameboy pocket issue
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/8asm77/help_needed_gameboy_pocket_has_vertical_lines/
https://classicgamesblog.com/repair-and-modding/how-to-repair-gameboy-common-problems/
nintendo gameboy horitzontal line
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/72xgj6/repairing_gameboy_dmg01_screen_with_horizontal/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/75ibwy/how_i_have_fixed_the_horizontal_dead_lines_on_dmg/
https://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/18976/successful-horizontal-line-repair/
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/931161/screen+displaying+a+horizontal+line+after+I+changed+the+polarizer+film
get rid of gameboy dmg horizontal line
https://www.instructables.com/Fix-Lines-In-Your-Gameboy-Screen/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/72xgj6/repairing_gameboy_dmg01_screen_with_horizontal/
https://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/18976/successful-horizontal-line-repair/
https://www.valoroso.it/en/how-to-repair-gameboy-monitor-vertical-lines/

Nintendo Gameboys that would intermittently turn on:
- dry soldering issue combined with battery acid leakage. Had to clean up latter and resolder former to fix

Ender 3 V3SE 3D Printer with multiple problems:
- bought a 3d printer online for cheap whose owner said it created more problems then it was worth. Ironically, it was due to modifications that they had made to it which caused it to become unreliable
- first error was fixing a CR touch error which was showing up constantly after re-calibration. Replaced with a spare BL-Touch I had lying around and all errors went away
ender 3 v3 se cr touch error
https://www.reddit.com/r/ender3/comments/18c9wke/crtouch_error_please_contact_customer_service_on/
- next error was black filament blobs which would show up periodically. Turned out that the original hotend was replaced with one that was designed for the Ender 3 V3KE which didn't quite fit perfectly. After replacing it with the ooriginal nozzle for the Ender 3 V3SE it worked fine
Hotend Upgrade For Creality Ender 3 V3 and V3 Plus Printers (Micro Swiss FlowTech™)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNGZXczccEo
https://www.youtube.com/@ModBotArmy
Service Tutorial Ender 3 V3 SE Replacement hotend kit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-HNS4-mfLg
https://www.youtube.com/@crealityafter-sale5706

Nintendo DS Lite with white screen issue:
- bought a cheap DS Lite that wasn't working. F1 and F2 fuses were blown so replaced them. The next problem was that there was nothing on screen. Found out that simply bending the ribbon cable worked to get the screen going again. I found out something interesting in my investigation. The BIOS is stored on the Wifi card so replacing that will often fix this same problem too
nintendo ds lite stylus stl file
https://www.printables.com/model/154829-nintendo-lite-ds-stylus
Nintendo DS Lite Stylus Pen
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:172284
nintendo DS Lite just black screen most common reason
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/45455/Low+Screen+and+Upper+Screen+are+Blank
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/47554/DS+Lite+won't+turn+back+on+after+replacing+bottom+screen.
https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/Nintendo_DS_Lite_Troubleshooting
why would both fuses blow on nintendo ds lite
https://gbatemp.net/threads/ds-lite-blown-fuse.325804/
https://www.freemansgarage.com/index.php/2011/01/20/nintendo-ds-lite-repair/
circuit-board pen
https://www.reddit.com/r/diypedals/comments/1mxdtqg/is_a_conductive_pen_usable_on_a_blank/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/196gr51/how_to_mark_a_pcb_with_a_pen_so_that_it_doesnt/
https://www.auselectronicsdirect.com.au/silver-conductive-pen
nintendo ds lite just green light nothing on screen
https://www.reddit.com/r/consolerepair/comments/g8x9sl/is_it_possible_to_repairreplace_the_wireless/
https://www.reddit.com/r/nds/comments/10c4a98/ds_lite_will_show_green_light_but_no_sound_or/
what is stored on nintendo ds lite wifi card
https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoDS/comments/1h3ap33/is_there_a_reason_there_isnt_more_modding_done_on/
https://www.reddit.com/r/nds/comments/ea6l39/use_dsi_without_wifi_card/
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Nintendo+DS+Lite+Wi-Fi+Board+Replacement/4758
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Wi-Fi_Connection
https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/nintendo-ds/
only white on top nintendo ds screen
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/39992/My+ds+top+screen+is+white+bottom+screen+works+perfect
https://www.reddit.com/r/consolerepair/comments/ukq6ns/swapped_my_ds_lite_shell_and_now_the_speakers/
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/856697/Top+screen+flashes+white+when+I+try+to+turn+my+DSi+on

Dell Latitude 7450 with semi faulty keyboard:
- keyboard was basically working for most keys but not some. Possible with expensive equipment to make new cable by scanning and etching things basically. You need backing, abrade and then solder. Unrealistic and overly expensive for most repair shops. I normally just try and use a blunt pointed pen, pencil, or screen driver to bridge the connection of whatever is left over of the broken connection and then use tape to keep it in place and get things working again. Replacement of cable is obviously possible too but is ironically very expensive
how to fix broken ribbon cable
Damaged ribbon cable - is it possible to repair?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blzp7SZVbUA
https://www.youtube.com/@SpareTimeRepair
How I Fixed A Broken FLEX CABLE INSTANTLY! | Mr Biomedical
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozY_WNWXKbY
https://www.youtube.com/@MrBiomedical
Flexible flat cable FFC cable repair methods
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXEfidsHGNA
https://www.youtube.com/@chazj1976
Film Kablo Tamiri - Flexible Flat Cable Repair
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNOzbpfSpec
https://www.youtube.com/@TberbatT
Broken Flex Repair #mobilerepair #electronics #microsoldering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNcNoYCAVMA
https://www.youtube.com/@idealinstitutealigarh

Playstation 3 Game Controllers with various issues:
- if you repair controllers watch out for quality of repair parts as you'll be in a cycle of failure if they are of low quality, Keep a multimeter handy as battery replacement can often help deal with lots of issues. Keep the inside clean especially when dealing with membranes as this can cause intermittent contact issues
https://www.ifixit.com/Device/DualShock_3
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Fix-Prevent+Joystick+Drift+on+a+DualShock+3/151813
https://www.ifixit.com/Device/DualSense
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/PS5+Controller+Trigger+Teardown/158397
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Fix+Stick+Drift+for+a+PlayStation+Dualsense+Controller+V1/168202
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/DulaShock+4+CUH-ZCT2+Potentiometer(s)+Replacement/168194
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Repair+a+Water-Damaged+DualSense+Controller/144876
- drift issues can generally be dealt with via cleaning or replacement of the actual potentiometer
How to Fix Analog Drift or Analog Stutter on PS3 / PS4 / PS5 Controller (Cleaning Solution)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LePBsn3vkA
https://www.youtube.com/@alexjbeezy
ps3 controller potentiometer knob stuck positions
https://www.reddit.com/r/Controller/comments/1lly9wn/my_original_ps3_dualsocks_ls_stuck_in_leftright/
- you can use basic tools to test controllers via USB even you don't have a game console lying around
jstest-gtk
evtest

WikiReader which showed only black screen on start:
- turns out a resister blew off/up off of the PCB when overcharged batteries were inserted. Once re-soldered everything worked fine

Hand Vacuum Cleaner that wouldn't turn on:
- dry soldering issue on switch that had to be soldered. Once fixed, worked fine 

Traktor X1 MK1 with liquid damage and some non-functional keys:
- liquid damaged normally has white powdery substance around it. Had to clean up liquid damage using isopropyl alcohol on the Loop A In/Out buttons. It is repairable in spite of what some people say
Lenovo P16s Gen 2 no power, not charging - How a coil can ruin your laptop
Hp 17-cn004na board repair - Nearly fooled me :D ...very tricky
will ultrasonic clean in distilled water clear corrosion
will ultrasonic clean in isopropyl water clear corrosion
- had clear up some dry soldering issues in the same rough area before it would work fine
- tested via aseqdump Linux CLI based utility and some bridging utilities which converted the signals back into MIDI compatible signalling. You may need to run cd traktor_x1; sudo ./virtual_x1 first and then disconnect and then run cd x1-mk1-usb2midi; sudo cargo run afterwards for it to work properly. For some reason it just doesn't work well/properly from out of the box on my version of Linux
traktor kontrol x1 mk1 used under linux

- if you were interested in this post you'll probably be interested in my other repair blog posts:
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2026/07/ender-3v2-and-ender-3vse-3d-printer.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2026/03/hp-pavilion-x360-convertible-model-14.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2026/01/winter-jacket-purchaserepairdesign.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2025/01/3d-printing-background-random-stuff-and.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2023/10/vacuum-filter-troublesplanned.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2023/07/international-manufacturing-youtube.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2023/06/youtube-car-repair-channels-random.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2025/11/large-learning-models-background.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2023/05/future-of-artificial.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2021/11/recyclingunlockinghacking-devices-for.html
...
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2025/12/computerelectronics-data-drive-recovery.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2025/12/where-are-jobs-in-economy-random-stuff.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2025/01/3d-printing-background-random-stuff-and.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2024/03/tpe-sd2000i-inverter-petrol-power.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2024/03/fixing-cheap-hurricane-gen850-and.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2024/03/repairing-troy-bilt-tb525ec-whipper.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2024/02/repairing-and-maintaining-victa-2.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2019/08/servicingfixing-my-briggs-and-stratton.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2023/10/vacuum-filter-troublesplanned.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2023/09/conversion-from-physical-to-virtual_10.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2023/07/international-manufacturing-youtube.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2023/06/youtube-car-repair-channels-random.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2021/11/recyclingunlockinghacking-devices-for.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2019/11/a-sea-of-fakery-random-stuff-and-more.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2018/04/hp-4520s-laptop-teardown-random-stuff.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2011/04/apple-ibook-g4-logicboard-fixes.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2010/10/asus-1005p-disassembly.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2010/07/replacing-lcd-on-toshiba-nb200.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2013/02/laptop-thermal-design-convergence-and.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2012/05/fujitsu-stylistic-st4120-recovery.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2011/10/nvidia-laptop-graphics-chip-repair.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2013/03/laptop-hacking-and-hardware-workarounds.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2015/08/apple-icloud-device-locking-and-general.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2013/03/repairing-laptop-power-bricks.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2011/08/unlocking-your-phonemodem.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2015/08/apple-icloud-device-locking-and-general.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2015/07/ableton-and-ableton-push-hacking.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2012/09/windows-and-android-arent-that_5901.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2012/08/funky-firmware.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2012/07/if-only-reading-were-easier.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2011/11/playing-with-android.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2015/06/repairing-musical-instrumentselectrical.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2015/06/custom-midi-hardware-and-software.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2012/12/network-traffic-analysis-laptop-power.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2013/02/laptop-thermal-design-convergence-and.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2012/10/more-security-oscilloscope-and-wireless_6750.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2011/11/hp-pavilion-dv2000-laptop-troubles.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2011/03/eeepc-recovery-without-recovery.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2018/11/lost-dell-recovery-disc-youtube.html

Random Stuff:
- as usual thanks to all of the individuals and groups who purchase and use my goods and services
http://sites.google.com/site/dtbnguyen/
http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com.au/
- latest in science and technology
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3368750/china-offers-15-year-research-grants-worlds-brightest-young-scientists
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3368055/alibaba-open-sources-medical-ai-model-can-detect-cancer-and-nearly-150-conditions
https://www.mindstudio.ai/blog/alibaba-radar-medical-ai-cancer-detection
https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-has-been-keeping-thumbnails-of-all-your-deleted-photos-for-yearsheres-how-to-fix/
https://www.gaialink.app/
https://gaiasystems.ca/
- latest in finance and politics
https://www.news.com.au/finance/markets/dividend-bonanza-for-aussie-investors-as-40-billion-windfall-hits/news-story/dbc69dc94e074e6c60d7e5d1ae34fbe6
- latest in defense and intelligence
https://www.smh.com.au/world/africa/yes-the-un-is-terrible-but-right-now-we-need-it-desperately-20260927-p610t0.html
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/the-monster-behind-russia-s-global-effort-to-evade-western-sanctions-20260927-p610dr.html
- latest in animal and environmental news
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/the-fight-to-save-borneos-orangutans/tpgazor0j
- latest in music and entertainment
https://www.sportbible.com/football/la-liga/real-madrid/roberto-carlos-lost-99-of-137-million-earnings-from-career-615080-20260927
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/restaurants-bars/adelaide-chef-fires-back-after-blogger-criticises-495-degustation-menu-and-confusing-entrance/news-story/8d86ba3317d9d0d5a2d2cfecb037f529

Random Quotes:
- But the truth is murkier than just Pakistan meddling in neighboring Afghanistan and the US’ kid-gloves treatment of the former. As part and parcel of the anti-Taliban counter-insurgency, American occupation forces in Afghanistan patronized a variety of local warlords, private militias, paramilitaries and ethnic entrepreneurs who were extremely brutal, abusive and lawless.
According to a forensic accountant cited in the Washington Post, out of $106 billion worth of US Defense Department contracts given out, “about 40 percent of the money ended up in the pockets of insurgents, criminal syndicates or corrupt Afghan officials.” To boot, the investigator specified that “18 percent of the contract money went to the Taliban, Haqqani, other insurgent groups.”
On one hand, there were American diplomats and military personnel attempting to shore up the fledgling Afghan state and ward off the jihadist threat of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, but on the other hand was the war economy in Afghanistan and the mindboggling corruption wherein elements of the American state structure enabled warlords who kept the Afghan state weak and incapable of governing the whole country.
As the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) mildly rebuked in 2016, “the US government should limit alliances with malign powerbrokers and aim to balance any short-term gains from such relationships against the risk that empowering these actors will lead to systemic corruption.”
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/493759-us-russia-afghanistan-taliban/
- With education a suggested solution to issues surrounding Aboriginal incarceration rates, it begs the question; how is one supposed to succeed in a world that treats their identity like a secondary source?
With children still taught in school that European explorers "discovered" this wonderful nation, how are these children expected to thrive in a society where the history books do not even acknowledge their existence?
As the old African proverb goes, "The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth".
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-03/in-my-blood-it-runs-indigenous-youth-detention-child-removal/12416462
- Beasley said today 821 million people go to bed hungry every night all over the world, a further 135 million people are facing "crisis levels of hunger or worse," and a new World Food Program analysis shows that as a result of COVID-19 an additional 130 million people "could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020."
https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/world-on-brink-of-a-hunger-pandemic-20200422-p54lzc
It’s my judgement – and I am not alone in thinking this – that many elites in the FBI have committed serious crimes. FBI Director James Comey lied to FISA judges by signing several FISA warrants when he knew these warrants contained outrageous unsubstantiated claims. Comey used these FISA warrants to weaponize the FBI against Hillary Clinton's political opponent.
Comey, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page illegally spied on Americans, including Trump and those involved in his 2016 presidential campaign, and then lied about it in a cover-up more extensive than Nixon’s Watergate one. Many others in the intelligence services were involved in this attempted coup d'état of Trump, such as James Clapper and John Brennan.
While many more were involved, all roads point to Hillary Clinton, and the trail of breadcrumbs, via Susan Rice (Joe Biden's likely VP hopeful should Michelle Obama reject Dementia Joe’s advances), goes all the way to Obama's desk. Some of these people will likely face indictments from US Attorney for DC John Durham later this summer.
This is not unique to America. The same “one size fits all” attack is happening around the world, which just goes to demonstrate how our ruling elites say anything to get elected for four years or longer, only to do the opposite. The politicians screw the voters who elected them while selling out to the highest corporate bidders. At the same time, most of the mob remains hypnotised, watching the shiny objects dangled by the fake news media pundits.
Just remember: the liberal left are inclusive, diverse, tolerant and accepting – UNTIL you offer an opposing viewpoint, at which point they become part of the violent, intolerant mob.
Mob rule never ends well, and this time will be no different. The takeaway: Never trust legacy politicians, and no matter what the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, a civil war in America is likely.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/494087-new-york-blm-civil-war/
- For racing, human jockeys were once used, but as technology evolved and camel racers became aware of the dangers associated with riding, the switch was made to robots that now sit atop the camel as it runs.
Camels, like horses in the West, can go for a hefty sum for quality animals. Sale prices can range from $2,700 to around $815,000, the New York Times reported. Females tend to sell for more as they are faster, with CNN reporting that the Crown Prince of Dubai Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed paid $2.7 million for a female race camel at a beauty pageant.
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/gulf/2020/07/08/Largest-camel-hospital-in-the-world-opens-in-Saudi-Arabia
The two batteries of Russian-made S-400 air defense systems are deployed at the Myurt airbase. They were tested at least three times on American stealth fighters. AviaPro news agency indicates that not only F-35 aircraft, but also more classified F-22s appeared in the detection range of systems.
The “targeted” American fifth-generation fighters were sent to rotation in the Middle East through the Black Sea and directly Turkey. Their route ran approximately 170-200 kilometers from the Turkish Air Force Airbase of Myurt. Therefore, the Turkish side had a great opportunity to test its S-400s for aerodynamic purposes. This was not the first test of Turkish S-400 over American fighter: in November 2019, video footage appeared showing the testing of the S-400’s radar on F-16s and F-4E Phantoms. So, Turkey has crossed ‘another red line’ by starting tests of the radar detection system it purchased from Russia as part of the S-400 missile defense system, U.S. Senator for Maryland Christopher Van Hollen said.
The United States wanted to buy S-400 missile systems from Turkey to exit the impasse regarding the participation of Ankara in the program for the production of F-35 Lightning II. Turkey declined the offer, to the relief of Russia.
https://armyrecognition.com/defense_news_july_2020_global_security_army_industry/turkey_has_tested_its_s-400_missile_system_to_track_f-22s_and_f-35s.html
- Chou Tzu-yu (born June 14, 1999), known mononymously as Tzuyu, is a Taiwanese singer based in South Korea. She is the youngest member of Twice, a K-pop girl group formed by JYP Entertainment.[1][2][3]
In 2015, a televised appearance in South Korea in which she was shown holding the flag of Taiwan sparked controversy in China. A video of Tzuyu apologizing for the incident, subsequently released by JYP Entertainment on January 15, 2016, sparked further public outrage in Taiwan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzuyu
- Professor Gregory believes a lack of focus on unemployment in the recovery after 1991's recession drew out the process. That mistake shouldn't be made again.
"Some things recovered quick, like the share market, but other things took a long time to unwind," he recollects.
"So, what we were doing in year one was having implications for employment in year three, four."
That recession hit male full-time workers particularly hard. Many never worked again. This downturn is culling jobs and industries dominated by women, including retail and tourism, and part-time work.
The evidence is clear: women have been hit hardest by the COVID-19 recession, with the lowest paid and most insecure workers bearing the brunt of the downturn.
Australia moved out of recession quickly in 1991. But the recovery took years as businesses, spooked by the crash, didn't take on workers. A persistently high unemployment rate created its own problems in the housing market and through crushing consumer confidence.
"If I go back to '91 and '92 we peaked at 11 per cent (unemployment). But it took us 3 years to get back to 8.3 per cent. And that in itself, there's a big difference.," says Mr Samuel.
The Australia Institute's Richard Denniss said there's no 'snap back' coming. At best, with the problems we'd accumulated before the coronavirus, it's going to be a claw back.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-08/1990s-recession-shows-there-is-no-quick-road-to-recovery/12431398
Some numbers suggest that food may be as addictive as drugs, and in some cases more so. About 30% of people who try heroin become addicts; the same goes for about 16% of cocaine users. One study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that, when the definition of addiction is explained to obese or overweight subjects, up to 29% of them describe themselves as addicted to food. That takes its toll: more than 40% of Americans who are obese and the overall 71.6% who are overweight—which suggests at the very least an unhealthy dependency on food is common in the U.S.
https://time.com/5718798/food-addiction/
- So what’s the secret? If this version of the Japanese diet has positive effects, it might be down to how meals are prepared as well as any particulars of nutrients, Tsuduki points out. Meals are made up of several small dishes, providing a variety of flavours. Ingredients are more often steamed or simmered than fried. As well, they are seasoned with small amounts of intensely flavourful substances, rather than excess salt or sugar.
In short, it may be that the benefits of the Japanese diet are not due to some magical quality of seaweed or soy sauce, but rather a focus on eating a variety of foods cooked in healthy ways in moderation, along with an emphasis on vegetables and legumes. Advice, in other words, that anyone can use.
But modern Japan has its own problems following this advice. Rates of diabetes have risen in recent years, in part because of a greying population, but also because of rising obesity. It is possible that Japan’s days as the home of the most centenarians are numbered.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200626-should-we-eat-more-like-the-japanese
- A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two people, with matched weapons, in accordance with agreed-upon rules. Duels in this form were chiefly practiced in early modern Europe with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period (18th to late 19th centuries, if not beyond) especially among military officers.
During the 17th and 18th centuries (and earlier), duels were mostly fought with swords (the rapier, and later the small sword), but beginning in the late 18th century in England, duels were more commonly fought using pistols. Fencing and pistol duels continued to co-exist throughout the 19th century.
The duel was based on a code of honor. Duels were fought not so much to kill the opponent as to gain "satisfaction", that is, to restore one's honor by demonstrating a willingness to risk one's life for it, and as such the tradition of dueling was originally reserved for the male members of nobility; however, in the modern era it extended to those of the upper classes generally. On occasion, duels with pistols or swords were fought between women.[1][2]
Legislation against dueling goes back to the medieval period. The Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) outlawed duels,[3] and civil legislation in the Holy Roman Empire against dueling was passed in the wake of the Thirty Years' War.[4] From the early 17th century, duels became illegal in the countries where they were practiced. Dueling largely fell out of favor in England by the mid-19th century and in Continental Europe by the turn of the 20th century. Dueling declined in the Eastern United States in the 19th century and by the time the American Civil War broke out, dueling had begun to wane even in the South.[5] Public opinion, not legislation, caused the change.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duel
Laos has not fully recovered from the impact of the U.S. bombing of the country: 2.5 million tons of U.S. bombs dropped on Laos between 1964 and 1973, with the soil in many parts of the country polluted for generations.
http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2020/07/laos-has-tackled-covid-19-but-it-is.html
- The Navy has a history of bringing back to life warships that have been badly damaged by enemy attacks, but it is rare that vessels that have burned extensively from non-combat-related fires can be rebuilt so they are battle-ready, according to experts.
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/chief-of-naval-operations-to-visit-san-diego-to-talk-about-fire-on-uss-bonhomme-richard/2367440/
- Canadian entrepreneur Herb McDonald is credited with launching the first 24-hour all-you-can-eat buffet, called the Buckaroo Buffet, in the 1940s in Las Vegas.
A flyer advertising the restaurant boasts that for only one dollar, a patron can eat "every possible variety of hot and cold entrees to appease the howling coyote in your innards".
McDonald's model was quickly replicated up and down Sunset Strip as every hotel and casino strove to offer a buffet to tourists.
The appeal of all-you-can-eat food, with no waiter there to judge your food pairings or quantity, led the Washington Post this month to describe buffets as an "offer [of] public gluttony at an affordable price".
But despite the new precautions, most analysts agree it will be quite a long time before Americans can return to the buffet line for seconds (or even thirds... who's watching?).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53410931
- US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is fond of shooting his mouth off, castigating this nation and that, or this company and that, in his bid to show that the US can dictate terms of behaviour to the rest of the world.
One of his recent over-the-top statements was about the Communist Party of China breaking its Paris climate Agreement commitments and also violating its promises about not militarising the South China Sea.
The issue was raised at the daily Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing on Thursday by the Global Times which was probably not prepared for the blast that came back from spokeswoman Hua Chunying.
"Actually, I don't want to comment on this. I don't want to turn our MFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] press conferences into special briefings debunking Pompeo's lies," Hua replied.
"But since he made these comments, I have to respond to them. I have noted his intensive remarks in the past few days attaching and smearing China. China's position on climate change and the South China Sea is crystal clear. As he's been talking about China violating international law or treaties, I think it might be interesting to see how many groups the US has withdrawn from."
And with that introduction, she embarked on what seemed to be a never-ending list of broken promises by Washington, without even pausing to draw breath.
"In 1982, to maintain its maritime hegemony, the United States refused to sign the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), of which it is still not a party," Hua said.
"In 1984, the United States formally withdrew from UNESCO, dissatisfied with the gradual erosion of its cultural control by developing countries. After returning to the organisation in 2003, it once again withdrew in 2017 on the so-called ground of saving funds and urging reform.
"In 1985, the United States refused to recognise ICC's compulsory jurisdiction the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ)after Nicaragua complained that US armed intervention violated its sovereignty.
"In 1995, the United States withdrew from the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation and refused to pay arrears by claiming domestic budgetary constraints.
"The United States has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol since 2001, saying it was not in its national interest to meet relevant environmental obligations.
"In 2001, the United States withdrew from the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance after failing to prevent discussion of Israeli military action against Palestinians.
"In 2001, to strengthen its military advantage, the United States formally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1972.
"In 2002, the United States withdrew from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, citing unfavorable terms for American soldiers, diplomats and politicians.
"In 2017, the United States announced its formal withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) because it believed that multilateral trade agreements were not in its best interests and hindered its "America First" policy.
"In 2017, the US government announced its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, believing that it hindered the economic development.
"In 2017, the United States withdrew from the United Nations Global Compact on Migration, and cast votes against the UNGCM at the UN General Assembly.
"In 2018, despite the fact that the IAEA confirmed Iran's fulfillment of its JCPOA commitment and that the United States had no clear evidence to show Iran conducted nuclear tests in breach of the deal, the United States withdrew from the JCPOA, which has been endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, and imposed economic sanctions against Iran.
"In 2018, the US announced its withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council claiming it failed to effectively protect human rights.
"In 2018, the United States withdrew from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, concerning the Compulsory Settlement of Disputes relating to the jurisdiction of the ICJ in order to avoid a Palestinian complaint filed legitimately to the ICJ.
"In 2019, the United States withdrew from the INF Treaty to develop short- and medium-range missiles without restraint.
"In 2020, under the pretext of alleged Russian violations of the Open Skies Treaty, the United States announced steps to exit the Treaty.
"In 2020, the US government, looking for scapegoats for its botched response to COVID-19, announced its withdrawal from the World Health Organisation. It should be noted that the United States still owes more than US$200 million in assessed contributions. Will it pay it off before exiting?"
Hua was not done yet. "Before criticising other countries of failing to comply with international law and treaties, the US should first reflect upon its own record of exiting at every turn whenever its interests are not served," she added.
"It exposes its hypocrisy, stark hegemony and double standards. Will the US rejoin these treaties and groupings before attacking China? I hope the US can act like a truly responsible major power and honour international law and treaties it has joined like small and medium countries."
Ouch!
https://www.itwire.com/open-sauce/pompeo-gets-a-dose-of-his-own-medicine-from-chinese-foreign-ministry-spokeswoman.html
- Another relationship is possible. To realise it, Western capitals need to discard any lingering assumptions that Moscow views the world in the same way they do. Accepting this does not necessarily mean greater hostility is inevitable. One lesson from the Cold War – and this is not a new Cold War – is that it is possible for Moscow and the West to view the world differently while coexisting. But the reality is that Western values and interests are not reconcilable with those of the Russian state.
Until our decision-makers acknowledge this and begin to grapple with the difficult policy choices that follow, there is no reason to suggest that the West’s response to the poisoning of Navalny – like so many international crises before it – will fundamentally change anything. And this means more Russian aggression and hostility in the future.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/09/its-time-for-the-west-to-ditch-its-russian-playbook/
- The dissolution was followed by a severe drop in economic and social conditions in post-Soviet states,[60][61] including a rapid increase in poverty,[62][63][64][65] crime,[66][67] corruption,[68][69] unemployment,[70] homelessness,[71][72] rates of disease,[73][74][75] demographic losses,[76] income inequality and the rise of an oligarchical class,[77][62] along with decreases in calorie intake, life expectancy, adult literacy, and income.[78] Between 1988/1989 and 1993/1995, the Gini ratio increased by an average of 9 points for all former socialist countries.[62] The economic shocks that accompanied wholesale privatization were associated with sharp increases in mortality. Data shows Russia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia saw a tripling of unemployment and a 42% increase in male death rates between 1991 and 1994.[79][80] In the following decades, only five or six of the post-communist states are on a path to joining the wealthy capitalist West while most are falling behind, some to such an extent that it will take over fifty years to catch up to where they were before the fall of the Soviet Bloc.[81][82]
In summing up the international ramifications of these events, Vladislav Zubok stated: "The collapse of the Soviet empire was an event of epochal geopolitical, military, ideological, and economic significance."[83] Before the dissolution, the country had maintained its status as one of the world's two superpowers for four decades after World War II through its hegemony in Eastern Europe, military strength, economic strength, aid to developing countries, and scientific research, especially in space technology and weaponry.[8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union
- Mr Skinner told the hearing on Monday that when he made a mistake at work, his boss would clap at him even though he told her it was inappropriate.
"She was trying to get my attention and trying to yell at me," he said.
He said the role was affecting his anxiety and his psychologist decided to accompany him to work, which angered his boss.
"That night, I had a mental breakdown and I was admitted to hospital because of what happened that day by the boss," he said.
Mr Skinner left soon after because of the wages and the way he was treated, and now has his own business running workshops and teaching AUSLAN to businesses.
Inclusion Australia CEO Catherine McAlpine told the hearing about segregated employment through Australian Disability Enterprises where people with intellectual disability only work with other people with intellectual disability.
"Unfortunately there are well polished pathways from segregated education into segregated employment," she said.
"We hear too often of people who are in special schools, who either never get work experience, never talk about work at all, or if they do, they go only to an Australian Disability Enterprise because it is presumed that is the only place they will ever work."
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/an-employee-with-disability-was-unaware-his-job-paid-11-per-hour-until-after-several-shifts-inquiry-told
- Anand Giridharadas has years of practice criticising billionaires and philanthropy.
In fact, he wrote the book on it.
His "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World," from 2018, documented what he described as the "charade" of the highest-income people donating to the very inequities they may have helped create, and its themes have resonated stronger and stronger since. A self-described "flamethrower by temperament," he recently made waves when he criticised the work (and inaction) of attendees at the National Association of Corporate Directors' annual summit, leading some to threaten to cancel their memberships and "rage quit" the organisation.
Once a consultant at McKinsey, Giridharadas used his subsequent platform as a journalist and fellow at the Aspen Institute to give a provocative keynote speech in 2015, where he said the elites in the audience had never been called upon to do less harm. That speech became "Winners Take All," which was reviewed favourably in The New York Times by the Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and has led to a multiyear run of Giridharadas as a general billionaire scourge.
...
Well, we don't need the richest and most powerful people in the society to give more. We need them to take less. We don't need them to make a difference. We need them to stop making a killing at the society's expense. We don't need them to increase their generosity. We need them to reduce their complicity and injustice.
We don't need them to talk about changing the world. We need them to change themselves so that they stop exploiting the world. So the most important thing any ultrawealthy reader of Business Insider reading this, with bulging eyes and minor shivers, is to think about â€" instead of asking what you can do or how you can step up and contribute â€" to ask what you've been doing, how does your company pay people?
What investments do you have, and how do those investments potentially fuel climate change or assist the theft of wages and increasing precariousness visited upon workers? How is your money complicit in the rigging of the power structure of this country, through campaign contributions and lobbying, so that you end up with bottle-service public policy, where you and your friends get public policy that's good for them, but it doesn't benefit most people?
We've seen companies put black squares on Instagram in what frankly amounts to corporate blackface, while refusing to actually pay Black people or any other people more than they do now, while refusing to pay proper taxes into the kind of programs that benefit Black people and all people. We've seen companies make a big spectacle about COVID donations, and food-pantry donations, while using this pandemic to shed workforces.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/inequality-flamethrower-anand-giridharadas-on-why-billionaires-shouldn-t-exist-and-his-hopes-for-the-biden-administration/ar-BB1bK4lM?%25253Bocid=spartanntp
- The truth is not easy to find, but federal sources do provide an answer: No. According to Freedom House’s rating system of political rights around the world, there were 49 nations in the world, as of 2015, that can be fairly categorized as “dictatorships.” As of fiscal year 2015, the last year for which we have publicly available data, the federal government of the United States had been providing military assistance to 36 of them, courtesy of your tax dollars. The United States currently supports over 73 percent of the world’s dictatorships!
https://truthout.org/articles/us-provides-military-assistance-to-73-percent-of-world-s-dictatorships/
https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_supported_by_the_United_States.html
- Chief executive Elon Musk has begun his testimony in a class action brought against him by Tesla investors with a stunning attack on Wall Street, claiming “sharks” in the trading world wished his EV manufacturer would “die”.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/wanted-tesla-to-die-elon-musks-shock-claim-in-tesla-class-action/news-story/3fea435f07fa1b2860123ab5a0b3c4d3
Paul Haskell-Dowland, an expert in computing and security from Edith Cowan University, said the filter would work like the ones that sift spam from your email inbox.
"It will look at volumes of messages to see if thousands of messages are originating from one mobile phone number," he said.
"And it will look at the content of the message and determine whether it's a format it's seen before and classified as spam."
Messages that prove hard to automatically classify may be manually checked, he added.
If that happens, Telstra said, "the details of the recipients will remain masked".
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-04-07/telstra-rolls-out-scam-message-filter-surge-dodgy-texts/100973582

Sunday, March 31, 2024

Sony Playstation Gaming Emulators, Game Console Emulators, and More

- I'm not really a gamer but occasionally there is a title I'm interested in. The trouble with this is that keeping your PC in the proper shape for gaming can be a chore (hardware specifications, operating system version, libraries, etc...). Moreover, product activation is a pain especially when you have legitimately purchased the game but the activation process isn't working properly. That's where emulators come in. They give you the stability and ease of use of Console platforms but the flexibility of PC systems. I only realised that Sony Playstation had decent emulators recently after doing research for other projects (use of gaming consoles in clustering and high performance computing):
playstation clustering
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster
https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html
https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20984028/playstation-supercomputer-ps3-umass-dartmouth-astrophysics-25th-anniversary
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/the-playstation-supercomputer/
https://www.reddit.com/r/PS4/comments/hjyi0j/anyone_remember_this_ps4_cluster_scene_from_the/
https://www.govtech.com/products/playstation-3-providing-supercomputing-to-universities.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2023/05/future-of-artificial.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2021/02/living-without-google-random-stuff-and.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2020/01/data-science-pattern-matching-hpc.html
- first step is downloading and installing a suitable emulator. I'm interested in Playstation because games are cheap on the secondary market, there are lots of games for this platform, many games on this platform are of decent quality, etc...
most popular gaming console
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles
ps2 emulator
https://pcsx2.net/
https://pcsx2.net/downloads/
https://pcsx2.net/compat/
https://pcsx2.net/docs/
https://wiki.pcsx2.net/Main_Page
https://wiki.pcsx2.net/Complete_List_of_Demos_and_Tool_Discs
https://fantasyanime.com/emuhelp/pcsx2#loading-a-real-ps2-game-you-own
ps3 emulator
https://rpcs3.net/
https://rpcs3.net/quickstart
https://rpcs3.net/download
https://rpcs3.net/compatibility
https://www.makeuseof.com/best-ps3-emulators-for-pc/
ps4 pc emulator
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_4_emulators
https://rpcsx.com/
https://pcsx4.com/
game emulator linux distro
playstation 4 emulator
xbox 360 emulator
https://xenia.jp/
https://github.com/xenia-project/xenia/wiki/Quickstart
xbox one emulator
https://xemu.app/
https://xemu.app/docs/faq/
https://xemu.app/docs/download/
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_One_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Emulators_on_Xbox_One
nintendo wii emulator
https://dolphin-emu.org/
https://cemu.info/
https://www.emulatorgames.net/emulators/nintendo-wii/
jaycar nes emulator
https://www.jaycar.com.au/set-up-a-retro-gaming-system
- then install firmware/BIOS into the emulator. It's strange seeing the BIOS/firmware of so many systems dumped out there on the Internet? That said, they're often available on the websites of the console manufacturers themselves?
https://rpcs3.net/quickstart
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps3/system-software/
https://support.xbox.com/en-AU/help/hardware-network/console/offline-system-update
nintendo switch firmware download
https://www.reddit.com/r/SwitchPirates/comments/r7xuec/where_to_download_switch_firmware/
https://darthsternie.net/switch-firmwares/
ps2 bios dump pcsx2
https://pcsx2.net/docs/setup/gather
https://www.reddit.com/r/Roms/comments/ccegdk/can_anyone_give_me_the_bios_for_pcsx2/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Roms/comments/t5aibr/where_can_i_find_the_ps2_bios_for_pcsx2/
ps4 firmware
https://archive.org/search?query=playstation+bios
https://archive.org/search?query=nintendo+bios
https://archive.org/search?query=xbox+bios
https://archive.org/search?query=sega+bios
- you can download games or else purchase games. Ironically, purchasing the game (from online and offline marketplaces, pawn shops, op shops, using games from your existing collection, purchasing from specialist gaming stores or retailers, etc...) is probably less costly (from $0.50 to ~$20 per game when used/second hand. It sounds cheap but you need to realise that we're dealing with platforms that are really, really old) and less likely to get you into trouble as well then going down the piracy route. One thing I didn't realise is how prevalent pirated games are. I was looking for information on how to dump discs from my own collection not pre-dumped discs but found heaps online. Even if it looks legitimate there's a chance it may be pirated/copied? Note, how more piracy occurs in poorer countries then wealthier ones? What's also interesting is perspectives on piracy. In a lot of people and organisations I've come across they say they'll pirate until they can afford to pay basically no matter their background or industry. What's interesting is that it's rare for there to be "pure/ideological pirates" who don't believe the original maker doesn't deserve anything for their effort (or else this is a reflection of the type of people I hang around with?)?
https://www.playstation.com/en-au/
https://www.playstation.com/en-au/playstation-network/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation
rpcs3 demo disc dump
http://wiki.redump.org/index.php?title=PlayStation_3_Dumping_Guide
http://wiki.redump.org/index.php?title=Redump.org
ps2 game dumps
https://www.reddit.com/r/opendirectories/comments/6haqbq/every_ps2_game_iso_ever/
https://archive.org/details/playstation-2-game-dumps
https://archive.org/search?query=ps3+dump
https://archive.org/search?query=ps2+dump
ps2 disc dump pcsx2
https://www.reddit.com/r/PCSX2/comments/qf2oty/beginner_needs_help_with_ripping_ps2_roms/
https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/comments/gmcfop/ps2_cdrom_games_can_be_dumped/
console games retailers melbourne
https://www.ebgames.com.au/
https://thegameexperts.com.au/
https://maxxgaming.com.au/
https://superretro.com.au/
https://www.trippytrades.com.au/
https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p4432023.m570.l1313&_nkw=ps2+games&_sacat=0
https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p4432023.m570.l1313&_nkw=ps3+games&_sacat=0
https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p4432023.m570.l1313&_nkw=ps4+games&_sacat=0
https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p4432023.m570.l1313&_nkw=ps5+games&_sacat=0
https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p4432023.m570.l1313&_nkw=wii+games&_sacat=0
piracy video games statistics
Below are some facts-
38% people across the globe acquired or accessed digital content illegally in 2017.
52% of online users watch pirated videos.
59% people are aware that downloading or streaming pirated videos is illegal.
67% of digital piracy sites are hosted in North America and Western Europe
Nearly 24% of the global Internet bandwidth is used for online piracy.
98.8% of data transferred using P2P networks is copyrighted
28 million users download and share files through P2P networks every day.
91.5% of filed available for download on Cyberlockers sites (Rapidshare, Megaupload,etc) are copyrighted
Only 1 out of 10,000 pcs of the most popular content on the OpenBitTorrent tracker is non-copyrighted
Worldwide Visits to Piracy Sites in 2020:
- 130.5 billion visits to piracy websites in 2020
- 357 million visits per day
- 248,287 visits per minute
Breakdown of Visits to Piracy Sites:
Streaming sites: 57%
Direct download portals: 27%
Torrent sites: 12%
Stream rippers: 4%
$9.8 billion in revenue losses in 2018 due to piracy in the music industry.
$29.2 billion revenue losses in the US every year due to online video piracy.
$51.6 billion in economic losses due to online TV & movie piracy by 2022.
$300 million in lost publisher income each year due to e-book piracy.
230,000 to 560,000 jobs lost in the United States every year due to online video piracy.
37% of software running in the world are unlicensed.
$46.3 billion of software running in the world are unlicensed.
2 out of every 5 copies of software running in the world are unpaid.
20% of pirated software are running in North America.
Illegal streaming constitutes 80% of online video piracy.
24% of users download music from illegal sources.
26% of online users download a film or a TV series from illegal sources.
13% of users download an e-book or an audiobook from illegal sources.
21% of users download games from illegal sources.
https://www.go-globe.com/online-piracy-in-numbers-facts-and-statistics-infographic/
Unfortunately, the popularity of gaming also attracts bad actors looking to take advantage of the amount of money and users within the industry. Gaming piracy is on the rise. About 25% of all gamers pirated more than 50 games through the years.
https://www.redpoints.com/blog/gaming-piracy/
https://www.pcgamer.com/study-finds-over-87-percent-of-games-are-unplayable-without-resorting-to-piracy-scavenger-hunts-or-travelling-to-an-archive/
https://gamehistory.org/study-explainer/
https://www.pcgamer.com/pc-piracy-survey-results-35-percent-of-pc-gamers-pirate/
- an interesting argument is that emulation encourages piracy. The obvious irony is that a lot of games companies use it themselves, the practice itself seems to be legal when you own the actual game (the license conditions on older games make absolutely no mention of this), well known retailers sell emulation devices nowadays, etc... The games manufacturers seem to be trying to force exclusivity of their platform in order to make money via licensing fees for games (the only problem with this policy is that they make more profit if they don't have to sell the platform)? Business model for console games similar to printers, cars, mowers, and vacuums? Namely, the platform doesn't really make money/profits as does consumables, other royalties, rents, etc... for the platform?
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2023/10/vacuum-filter-troublesplanned.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2024/02/repairing-and-maintaining-victa-2.html
game console emulator
https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=emulator+console&ref=mr_referred_us_au_au
https://www.reddit.com/r/consoles/comments/150mhlj/best_emulator_console/
https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p4432023.m570.l1313&_nkw=game+console+emulators&_sacat=0
https://openemu.org/
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/best-emulators/
https://www.etsy.com/au/market/emulator_console
https://www.creativebloq.com/buying-guides/best-retro-gaming-consoles
Emulation and piracy
Historically, video game companies have blamed video game emulators for piracy, despite the fact that anyone can create their own legal ROM image from the original media.[13] Concerning this demonization of emulators, video game historian Frank Cifaldi attributed it to the Connectix Virtual Game Station. Released in 1999, this commercial emulator enabled the play of Sony PlayStation games on Macintosh computers. However, it was easily cracked by hackers to play pirated ISO images of PlayStation games, leading to a lawsuit from Sony. Companies continued to fear that emulators would encourage piracy.[14] This has created a long-running debate over emulation, since many out-of-print video games can only be played via ROM, making emulators the only replacement for defunct video game consoles. Additionally, modern remasters and remakes can significantly alter a game, sometimes in a manner that changes the entire gameplay experience.[14] For example, Crash Bandicoot N-Sane Trilogy had a rewritten physics engine, requiring players to make more precise jumps.[15] Such gameplay changes give importance to emulators, which may be able to run the original game.
Some companies still consider emulators copyright-infringing. In 2017, Atlus attempted to take down the Patreon page of a PlayStation 3 emulator, RPCS3, arguing that the ability to play Persona 5 on it made it illegal software. However, Patreon disagreed with the company's stance, and allowed the page to remain, as long as references to Persona 5 were removed.[16] Furthermore, Nintendo has taken decisive action against the emulation of its games in recent years. In 2018, the company sued a handful of large ROM sites, forcing them to remove ROMs of their older console games, for what they called "brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo's intellectual property rites".[17] The distribution of copied ROM files online is illegal, but this move by Nintendo was interpreted by the emulation scene as an attack on the emulation of older games.[18] In November 2020, Nintendo issued a cease and desist order to The Big House, an annual Super Smash Bros tournament. The Big House ran SSB games on the Dolphin emulator, and it was the addition of the mod Slippi, which enabled online play, that caught Nintendo's attention.[19]
Despite longstanding criticism of emulators in the game industry, companies themselves have used emulation to run commercial games. Nintendo operated the Virtual Console, which allowed people to buy and play certain games via emulation.[14] In 2017, the PlayStation 4 was found to contain a functioning internal PSP emulator. Hackers discovered that PaRappa the Rapper Remastered was actually the 2007 PSP version, running with upscaled textures. This emulator was later reverse-engineered and used to play other PSP games.[20] Additionally, Microsoft's Xbox One console uses a proprietary emulator in order to play games released for the original Xbox, and the Xbox 360.[21]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_piracy
how do game console companies make money
Video game consoles are usually sold on a 5–7 year cycle called a generation, with consoles made with similar technical capabilities or made around the same time period grouped into one generation. The industry has developed a razor and blades model: manufacturers often sell consoles at low prices, sometimes at a loss, while primarily making a profit from the licensing fees for each game sold. Planned obsolescence then draws consumers into buying the next console generation. While numerous manufacturers have come and gone in the history of the console market, there have always been two or three dominant leaders in the market, with the current market led by Sony (with their PlayStation brand), Microsoft (with their Xbox brand), and Nintendo (currently producing the Switch console). Previous console developers include Sega, Atari, Coleco, Mattel, NEC, SNK, Fujitsu, and 3D0.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_video_game_console_generations
- if you decide to purchase or acquire original discs you'll need a way to dump and decrypt the games. Note, you can only dump from a PC if you have a compatible drive or have a console which will enable this. You'll need to be online to grab the encryption keys. Newer formats are encrypted which means you'll need a decrypter of some sort while older formats can be dumped using any old disk drive imaging software such as Nero, ImgBurn, CDBurnerXP, Brasero, etc...
https://www.redfox.bz/en/
https://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnyDVD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libdvdcss
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2019/12/financial-data-acquisition-blu-ray-vlc.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2024/03/repairing-troy-bilt-tb525ec-whipper.html
rpcs3 dump ps3 game using pc
https://wiki.rpcs3.net/index.php?title=Help:Dumping_PlayStation_3_games
https://rpcs3.net/quickstart#compatible_drives
https://flexby420.github.io/playstation_3_ird_database/
http://redump.org/
https://notabug.org/necklace/libray
- add the game image/dump to your emulator and then try playing it
- you may need to fiddle around with keyboard, mouse, and gamepad configuration details as the defaults aren't natural? You're better off getting off control interfaces that replicate the original console as best as possible to make it "feel right"
- another issue may be performance. There seem to be lots of hacks around but they have varying degrees of success. If you've watched the gaming scence for a while you'll realise that most gaming consoles are souped up computers. Morevoer, they're often ahead of the curve to allow them to remain competitive for several years, and often subsidised (like phones) and even sold at a loss to provide a platform for game makers to distribute their work on. That means the underlying hardware is often pretty decent. This also means that to get comparable levels of performance to the console you often need to get a similar hardware spec on your PC on which you're running your emulator
rpcs3 software optimisation
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpcs3/comments/kdy4w7/suggestions_for_optimizing_rpcs3_for_performance/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/tjfz7o/rpcs3_what_settings_seem_to_work_best_how_have/
https://rpcs3.net/blog/2020/08/21/hardware-performance-scaling/
skylake cpu socket
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake_(microarchitecture)
ps2 emulator hardware requirements
https://pcsx2.net/docs/usage/setup/requirements/
https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/fu1fmh/minimum_pc_setup_for_ps2_emulation/
Hardware requirements
Hardware requirements are largely game-dependent. Due to the demanding nature of emulation, PCSX2 is much more likely to perform well with modern mid-range to high-end hardware, with lower-end systems likely to experience less than full performance. The performance bottleneck in most cases is the CPU rather than the GPU. This is especially the case in software mode, in which only the CPU is used for emulation. In hardware mode, the GPU emulates the graphics, but can still be a bottleneck if the internal resolution is set too high. Some games may also run slower due to unoptimized graphics code or weak video cards. As computer hardware has continued to advance with time, the likelihood of performance issues with PCSX2 has experienced a corresponding decrease.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCSX2
https://pcsx2.net/docs/setup/requirements/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan
Requirements
As of September 15, 2023, the emulator requires a 64-bit version of Windows 10 or later, a modern Linux distribution, macOS 12.0 or later, or a modern BSD distribution. The PC must have at least 4 GB of RAM, 8 GB recommended, an x86-64 CPU and a GPU supporting one of the supported graphics APIs: OpenGL 4.3 or greater, or Vulkan, the latter being recommended. Apart from the game itself to be run, the emulator requires the PlayStation 3's firmware, which can be downloaded from Sony's official website.[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPCS3
https://rpcs3.net/quickstart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_emulators
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(emulator)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cemu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citra_(emulator)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_system_emulators
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console_emulator
- PS4 emulation isn't going anywhere fast at the moment. A lot of them won't even compile if you try to pull code from Github. You have to hack just to get progress on compilation. The obvious problem with non-trivial software is that you have to understand the code/what you're dealing with to be able to make inroads a lot of the time. If you're reverse engineering something that you've never really looked at this isn't easy.
- your graphics drivers are very important for perfomance. The problem is that sometimes it takes multiple goes for it to be registered by RPCS3 as can be seen by accounts of other people online. It also took me multiple goes at reinstalling NVIDIA drivers to get it working
remove nvidia binary driver fedora
rpcs3 only device llvmpipe
- once installed, I kept on getting this error until I changed the framelimit setting to native PS3. There's limited documentation unfortunately regarding a lot of stuff and I only guesstimated that this would make a difference. Basically, if you have trouble try to recreate the environment of the console as best as possible
rcps3 double free or corruption (out)
This Setting Fixes Broken Graphics in RPCS3
- I've obviously dealt with emulators (and similar technologies such as virtual machines, containers, etc...) before. It helps with learning and not having to maintain a separate Virtual or Physical Machine is a big bonus. Just like others in the gaming industry have said (I think it was Nintendo?), it's about enjoyment of gameplay not necessarily just pure graphics, smooth performance, etc... when it comes to games. It's remarkable how little has changed in some ways
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2023/09/conversion-from-physical-to-virtual_10.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2012/10/more-security-oscilloscope-and-wireless_6750.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2011/12/vmware-vcp-research-notes.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2011/12/virtualisation-options.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2010/10/macosx-g4-on-pc-via-pearpc.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2019/07/offline-cloud-aws-gcp-azure-etc.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2011/12/wining-on-linux.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2018/04/dealing-with-legacy-applications-random.html
https://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2015/09/more-jsf-thoughts-theme-hospital-george.html
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=super+mario+show+song
The Super Mario Bros Super Show Title Theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkQTgjGboWQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games

Random Stuff:
- as usual thanks to all of the individuals and groups who purchase and use my goods and services
http://sites.google.com/site/dtbnguyen/
http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com.au/
- latest in science and technology
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-24/thargomindah-power-outages-damage-white-goods/103573922
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-24/why-do-children-laugh-it-s-not-always-because-they-re-happy/103619620
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/new-theory-might-explain-our-suns-wacky-rotation/ar-BB1kIldF
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/millions-at-risk-as-common-contraceptive-increases-chance-of-deadly-brain-tumours/news-story/ea43255c27dd2dbe5f0b0275dc5a30a1
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/sludge-creates-dead-zone-in-idyllic-moreton-bay-study-finds/news-story/4c29abc377b366427c2d0c1aa9d33965
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/29/ukraine-antarctic-scientists-climate-crisis-vernadsky-base
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/27/ai-apocalypse-could-take-away-almost-8m-jobs-in-uk-says-report
https://itwire.com/business-it-news/security/alert-developer-may-have-saved-linux-users-a-world-of-pain.html
https://itwire.com/science-news/space/astronomers-locate-49-new-galaxies.html
- latest in finance and politics
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https://www.news.com.au/national/western-australia/everyday-australians-turning-to-homelessness-services-for-the-first-time/news-story/908174603f185a985e17c8b5a80bffe1
https://www.racv.com.au/royalauto/news/where-cars-are-stolen-from-victoria.html
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/hack-to-turn-annual-leave-into-extra-cash/news-story/22b398317471b883825264412d85267e
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/29/us-says-palestinians-are-close-to-changing-pay-for-slay-program-00149734
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/mar/25/i-bought-a-vehicle-from-a-used-car-yard-more-and-more-problems-emerge-with-it-what-can-i-do
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https://www.news.com.au/technology/motoring/motoring-news/huge-challenges-toyotas-dire-warning-on-new-car-rules/news-story/25b3223ec300fd7a5cd6562d6108d113
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-25/defence-to-trial-drone-killing-lasers-which-use-directed-energy/103631182
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-25/rumours-of-leadership-change-melbourne-italian-mafia-ndrangheta/103619610
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-05/drones-used-by-ukraine-and-russia-are-revolutionising-warfare/103186820
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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/25/the-pet-ill-never-forget-buddy-the-rescue-dog-whose-final-walk-brought-him-so-much-joy
- latest in music and entertainment
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/30/lost-phones-a-sex-swing-and-dozens-of-deodorants-queenslands-rubbish-rambler-on-15-years-of-roadside-finds
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/dating/an-aussie-radio-host-has-called-out-aussie-hookup-culture/news-story/b8a682573a6038427942a56a21ddd33a
https://www.news.com.au/sport/motorsport/formula-one/aston-martin-table-big-money-contract-offer-to-poach-red-bull-star/news-story/8dc83d9b6938b016b813c9ddf0531fed
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/an-english-worker-is-thrilled-by-australias-holiday-pay-rates-for-casual-staff/news-story/2efa53c33341c2e87767961ad2eabd98
https://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/scary-burglar-flees-home-with-pork-roast-under-his-jumper-in-terrifying-ordeal-for-mum-and-three-children/news-story/d0189819add5f4dbdcae5c051a42695c
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/sex/nurse-reveals-why-she-is-going-back-to-porn-after-quitting-in-2008/news-story/e9d8d8fd0cc1f2f9cdc715ccb62267ed
https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/leaked-coles-memo-prepares-staff-for-possibility-of-card-only-transactions-this-easter/news-story/881b84d0fa6263677cc57e1d45313cb7
https://www.news.com.au/national/crime/celebrity-chef-captures-haunting-scenes-on-camera/news-story/5ba6918298ec19b2ff5f9af12919e0a9
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-25/fernando-alonso-handed-penalty-for-george-russell-crash/103626884
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/dramatic-footage-as-federal-police-raid-p-diddys-homes/news-story/a8f32987c346162a9e5f22ddce3c69a3
https://www.news.com.au/technology/motoring/motoring-news/genesis-unveils-new-models-from-magma-sub-brand/news-story/f67bef63c65d86ac6e26eaae36f328ce

Random Quotes:
- Anyone who asks for nuance is met with a resounding dismissal: "Are you against the working people?" No, but what if I'm against the working class being appropriated as useful idiots for the causes of nationalism and a color revolution? What if I don't want to see Belarus torn apart by privatization and in the pits of poverty, as its citizens roam Europe looking for low-paid jobs as labor migrants? Which is what has happened in Ukraine.
But does anyone care about the working class more than they care about the promise of freedoms? About equality more than liberty? Aversion to serious talk from those who support the protests is often indicative of an unwillingness to investigate their bias about the Soviet Union and the underlining idea of class solidarity, a very crucial thing right now. Lukashenko is equated with the Soviet Union and communism. The red-and-white flag is used despite the Nazi association (as it was used during the occupation period) because the current red-and-green one is considered tainted by its Soviet origins.
It has become fashionable to consider yourself a leftist in the post-Soviet space, online especially. Still, the overwhelming majority of those doing it are reluctant to go deeper than just the label and shift from their liberal positions. Dialectics are too much work, reading Marx and Lenin is old-fashioned, and the rhetoric of freedom is more appealing than historical materialism. Unfortunately, that also means that attempts to re-examine Soviet history and culture from a lens free of the Western influence are overwhelmingly met with rejection. But one can't help but notice that the liberal media run by local oligarchs or foreign governments are not held up to the same level of scrutiny, even by those saying they oppose Western imperialism. This, in turn, makes it even harder to support the workers. The online and media fields are very much blurred by the liberal / Western / nationalist bias, and we can't see the workers' perspective through the red and white noise. It becomes essential to remain vigilant and not let the same biased groups co-opt the workers' agency in Belarus.
The violence on the ground in Belarus is real. The autocracy is real. There can be no doubts about that. But the neoliberal and nationalist tendencies seem to be as much of a threat to worker solidarity as the regime's wrongdoings. I am incredibly invested in observing the events unfolding in Belarus because I have seen all of it before, in Russia personally and in Ukraine from a distance. And I hate to see the worst repeat yet again, with the same stalwarts of neoliberalism at the helm, denouncing communism, virtue-signaling to nationalism.
As I watch this, already lonely in the shadow of the right-wingers dominating the debate, I want nothing more in life than for more people in the post-Soviet space to stop being afraid of socialism and start being afraid of capitalism, nationalism, and fascism.
https://www.rt.com/russia/498140-minsk-protests-similar-kiev-moscow/
- "The restrictions are ridiculous and so unnecessary for a virus with such a small death rate. My view is it's a real virus, but the exaggeration is massive," Joss says. "They call it a pandemic but pandemics are supposed to take at least five percent of the population and according to Doctor Dan Erickson it only has a 0.03 death rate – it's a tiny amount and it's not a pandemic."
California-based Dr Erickson's claims were among those removed from YouTube and Facebook and a video of his interview on FoxNews was also taken down due to claims of inaccuracy. While fatality rates are low on a population basis, most physicians advise measuring deaths based on the number of recorded cases. Using that basis, the global death rate is 3.5 percent. It's 14.8 percent in the UK, 3.2 in the US, 1.7 in Russia, 8.5 in Spain.
StandUpX are driven by the need to question what is being reported and why media, both social and traditional, have been given the power to overrule the opinions of medics and scientists.
https://www.rt.com/uk/498075-standupx-anti-mask-covid/
- An anonymous stock market gossip account followed by some of Australia's most prominent finance and business figures is being sued for defamation.
Melbourne mining entrepreneur Tolga Kumova has commenced legal action against the New Zealand-based owner of the Twitter account @stockswami – named in court documents as Tauranga man Alan Francis Davison – over an alleged ongoing smear campaign.
The former stockbroker turned minerals speculator, who has a reported net worth of $95 million, is seeking aggravated damages against Mr Davison over six series of tweets he claims are defamatory.
Over the past year, @stockswami has falsely accused the AFR Young Rich Lister of insider trading, involvement in pump-and-dump schemes, dodgy business dealings and misleading the share market, according to Mr Kumova's statement of claim filed in the Federal Court where the tweets were set out.
"Inside trading alive and thriving on the ASX pirate ship," @stockswami tweeted to his more than 6000 followers on September 20 last year.
"$EUC (European Cobalt), err cough cough, a Tolga Kumova special, goes into trading halt to explain a 33 per cent spike in (share price), and … oh … err … a material acquisition that they forgot to tell the market about."
The filing alleges Mr Davison's tweets were commented on, retweeted or reacted to by a number of his followers, creating a "grapevine effect".
In another tweet on April 24 this year, he wrote that Mr Kumova "certainly knows when to buy and sell a stock he is intimately connected with".
"Did it with $SYR (Syrah Resources), $NCZ (New Century Resources) and now $BGL (Bellevue Gold). Tolga Kumova also needs to update himself with ASIC laws."
In a series of tweets in June he falsely accused Mr Kumova of being part of a pump-and-dump "syndicate".
"Lock up your daughters and your money!" he wrote.
"Remember, a pump group is no different than a drug syndicate. The premise is the same. Find a source. Buy cheap. Network. Sell. Bling bling."
In the statement of claim, Mr Kumova lists prominent journalists who follow the @stockswami account including from The Australian Financial Review, ABC, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, although he doesn't single them out for retweeting the posts.
"By reason of the publication by Davison of the matters complained of, Kumova has been brought into hatred, ridicule and contempt and has been gravely injured in his reputation including his professional reputation as a trader and mining executive and has suffered and will continue to suffer loss and damage," the statement of claim says.
Mr Kumova is seeking aggravated damages against Mr Davison due to the "ongoing" nature of the campaign, his "failure to inform Kumova of the imputations he intended to publish before publishing", and his "failure to publish an apology and retraction once informed of the factual errors" by Mr Kumova's lawyers.
Mr Davison has previously discussed on his Twitter account how he became wealthy with an online business driving traffic to adult websites.
"I feel forever blessed and grateful for my luck," he tweeted in May. "It allowed me to raise my children while at home. It also allows me to sit here and disrupt the pump groups and ASX professional operators."
He also claims to have made $NZ1 million trading shares on the ASX.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/markets/australian-markets/melbourne-young-rich-lister-sues-anonymous-stock-market-twitter-account-for-defamation/news-story/bb0feea2b1d4474e506dbca6ba9b1959
- Some nickel-loving species like Alyssum murale, native to Italy, can take up to 30,000 micrograms of nickel per 1g dried leaf. Some, like Phyllantus balgoyii, found in Malaysia, have such a high nickel content that their sap is a remarkable bright blue-green colour. So far, around 450 species of nickel-loving plants have been documented worldwide. Most of these plants grow in countries with less plant diversity and lower nickel deposits than Indonesia, such as Cuba (130 species), southern Europe (45), New Caledonia (65) and Malaysia (24).
Curiously, very few of these plants have been found in Indonesia, which is one of the most biodiverse regions in the world and also has the largest nickel deposit in the world – just where you might expect to find a nickel hyper-accumulator. Tjoa says that this is largely because very few people have spent the time looking.
...
After four years of exploration, Tjoa at last spotted two species of indigenous nickel hyper-accumulators in 2008: Sarcotheca celebica and Knema matanensis. In the lab, she found that both of these native plants could store between 1,000 and 5,000 micrograms of nickel per gram of dried leaf.
It was a start, but Tjoa was still hoping for something more. Compared with nickel-loving plants found elsewhere, these two showed fairly modest powers of hyperaccumulation. "We're looking for plants that could accumulate at least 10,000 micrograms [per gram]," she says. At that threshold, it becomes economically viable to cultivate the plant for mineral extraction – or "phytomining".
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200825-indonesia-the-plants-that-mine-poisonous-metals
- For each Baltic state, Soviet rule effectively brought a cultural revolution. National elites were murdered or exiled. Hundreds of thousands were deported, executed, or starved to death. Collectivization destroyed the peasant farms that had been the backbone of Baltic economies and societies. Finally came the suffocation of national identity through mass immigration of Russian-speakers from other parts of the Soviet Union and the purging of books that might portray the era of Baltic independence in favorable terms. Estonia's leading novelist, the late Jaan Kross, remembered watching books from his country's main university library destroyed by an ax-wielding apparatchik.
What particularly aroused Russian ire (and still does) was that after the 1940-1941 Soviet occupation, Estonians and Latvians did not see the prospect of another one as "liberation." Indeed, from 1944 onward, many Baltic citizens fought hard against Soviet forces, even shoulder to shoulder with the Nazis at times. The bad blood still lingers, as seen two years ago when Estonia (or eSStonia, as Russian propagandists still call it) decided to relocate a Soviet war memorial from the center of Tallinn to a military cemetery on the outskirts of town. For Russians, the bronze statue was "Alyosha the Liberator"; for Estonians, it was "The Unknown Rapist." The result was a fierce diplomatic spat, the besieging of the Estonian Embassy in Moscow, and a mammoth cyberattack that briefly disrupted public services.
The bleakness of life inside the Baltic states during the occupation era was matched by overseas apathy, even hostility, toward their fate. Britain handed over to the Kremlin the Baltic gold reserves, which had been entrusted to the Bank of England for safekeeping. Dusty embassies in Washington and elsewhere maintained the vestiges of legal existence, and a dwindling band of elderly Baltic diplomats would gather for occasional meetings at the U.S. State Department, where their flags still hung in the lobby. It was a good way to annoy the Kremlin, but the cause of Baltic independence was all but dead. Those who persisted in raising it were seen as eccentric, out of touch, and irrelevant. Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish émigré poet and Nobel Prize winner, wrote in his seminal work on totalitarianism, The Captive Mind, that he could not stop thinking about the Baltic states, which he described as being "boiled down" in a pot with a "tightly closed lid." But he also said that others regarded his preoccupation as the epitome of futility: It would waste his life and awake the "wrath of Zeus."
After regaining independence in the early 1990s, the Baltic countries could easily have turned out like Moldova: semifailed states on Europe's periphery, corrupt, geopolitically hamstrung, and surviving on remittances. Their foreign trade was entirely tied to the collapsed Soviet economy. They had no independent institutions and no civil servants capable of running a modern state. Their politicians were a mix of wily but untrustworthy Soviet holdovers, unworldly professors (Lithuania's first post-Soviet president, Vytautas Landsbergis, was a musicologist), and inexperienced youngsters (Juri Luik, Estonia's representative to nato, entered high office at 26). All the while, the kgb used its cash, connections, and intimate knowledge of "the lives of others" to preserve and expand its influence—a task made easier by the unsolved question of how to deal with the hundreds of thousands of Soviet-era migrants and their descendants.
That combination of problems meant that few saw the Baltic states as future members of serious Western clubs. They were too flaky for the European Union, too geopolitically sensitive for nato, and too poor for the oecd. And many in the West told them so. As the Cold War wound down, Baltic leaders aspiring to independence received not warm words of encouragement from the West, but rebukes. Why were they so impatient? Why were they impeding Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms with their hard-line nationalism? A Finnish official even told me once that Estonian independence would be an economic and political disaster that would prove a "catastrophe"—for Finland! Such points went down badly in the Baltics, and not surprisingly. It was akin to telling a prisoner to consider his captors' feelings, rather than trying to escape.
So how did the Baltic countries do it, succeeding so brilliantly and so quickly? Part of it was luck: Russia was weak, and its potential for mischief was initially quite limited. In addition, the Baltic diasporas provided a serendipitous assortment of unlikely leaders. Lithuania's president, Valdas Adamkus, spent most of his life as a civil servant in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. His Estonian counterpart, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, was raised in the United States and educated at Columbia University. Former Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga spent most of her life in Canada as a psychology professor. Hundreds of lesser-known others in the 1990s helped rebuild everything from the diplomatic service to business.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/06/21/the-fall-and-rise-and-fall-again-of-the-baltic-states/

Becoming a Priest/Monk, Random Stuff, and More

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