Month: April 2020

How SNES emulators got a few pixels from complete perfection

From the archives: Revisit the work of a classic gaming emulation titan who died this week.

We're so close to having an emulator that can perfectly recreate every single function of real SNES hardware and software.

Enlarge / We're so close to having an emulator that can perfectly recreate every single function of real SNES hardware and software. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Update, June 28, 2021: Ars was saddened to learn that the author of this piece, who also used the handle Near in online interactions, reportedly took their own life over the weekend. We're republishing this piece today in memory of their towering contributions to the classic gaming emulation community and to Ars. You can also read their 2011 piece on the quest for accuracy in bsnes development.

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, or reach out to a similar international hotline. We'd also encourage readers to donate to the American Federation for Suicide Prevention if they're so moved.

As the lead coder of bsnes, I've been attempting to perfect Super Nintendo emulation for the past 15 years. We are now at a point where that goal is in sight, but there we face one last challenge: accurate cycle timing of the SNES video processors. Getting that final bit of emulation accuracy will require a community effort that I hope some of you can help with. But first, let me recap how far we've come.

Where we are

Today, SNES emulation is in a very good place. Barring unusual peripherals that are resistant to emulation (such as a light-sensor based golf club, an exercise bike, or a dial-up modem used to place real-money bets on live horse races in Japan), every officially licensed SNES title is fully playable, and no game is known to have any glaring issues.

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Disney Deletes Print-on-Demand Sale Claiming Rights to Denmark’s The Little Mermaid Statue

A woman who uploaded one of her own photographs to print-on-demand site RedBubble says she has been hit with a takedown notice by Disney. The photograph, which features the 107-year-old The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, apparently violates Disney’s rights. According to a copy of the complaint, the statue depicts one of “Disney’s Princesses”.

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

With the world in turmoil right now, today is not the ideal time for jokes, pranks, and frivolity usually associated with April 1. That being said, US-resident Dani Payson could be forgiven for thinking that someone was yanking her chain this morning.

Payson (who uses the handle Andrea Marie on Twitter) operates a store on Australia-founded print-on-demand site RedBubble. She’s currently selling printed mugs, shower curtains and phone cases – plus t-shirts, of course. Visitors to her page today, however, will discover a notable omission – the removal of a photograph of the world-famous Copenhagen statue The Little Mermaid.

According to Payson, she took the photograph herself with her own DSLR camera during a visit to Denmark and uploaded it to RedBubble so that people could have it printed to an item of their choice. Given the subject matter, the photograph is similar in many respects to thousands of others online, as this image of the listing shows.

The problem for her is that the listing has now been deleted by RedBubble following a takedown request by a rightsholder.

“We’re sorry, but we had to remove some of your artwork from the RedBubble marketplace because it may contain material that violates someone’s rights,” RedBubble told the entrepreneur. “We identified this material in your artwork based on guidance provided to us by the owner of those rights.”

The owner of the rights in question was none other than Disney Enterprises, Inc. The basis for the movie giant’s claim is that Payson’s image depicts one of its “Disney Princesses”.

“Because Disney likes to show how evil they can be they’re trying to remove my personal photos from the internet of this statue stating they own it,” Payson complained this morning.

The claim is laughable, of course. Not only is Payson the copyright holder of the image in question, but the subject matter is a statue that is 107-years-old, is not animated, and is not owned by Disney. Only adding to the ridiculous mix are several other awkward facts.

The statue was unveiled in Copenhagen to celebrate the fairy tale ‘The Little Mermaid’ that was published in Denmark by Hans Christian Andersen on April 7, 1837 – almost 183 years ago. Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ was released in 1989 and is actually based on the original story by the Danish author.

It’s noteworthy that despite claiming the rights to an image that has nothing to do with them, Disney paid absolutely nothing to Hans Christian Andersen for his story because his book fell into the public domain long ago. The same is true for Disney’s ‘Frozen’, which is based on Anderson’s ‘Ice Queen’.

These movies, based on someone else’s work, have together made hundreds of millions of dollars and will be vigorously protected, by Disney, for decades to come. This is the basis upon which Disney took down the RedBubble listing, which was probably actioned following a basic and bungled keyword search.

April Fools…..

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

MongoDB’s Field Level Encryption protects private data—even from DBAs

Solving the dreaded sysadmin problem, one protected field at a time.

Coffee mugs with MongoDB logos on them.

Enlarge / Encrypted coffee is likely poisonous and should never be consumed raw. Decrypt and validate responsibly before human consumption. (credit: Brett Hoerner / Flickr)

In December 2019, popular document database MongoDB added a fairly radical new feature to the platform: field-level database encryption. At first glance, one might wonder whether this is a meaningful feature in a world that already has at-rest storage encryption and in-flight transport encryption—but after a little closer analysis, the answer is a resounding yes.

One of MongoDB's first customers to use the new technology is Apervita, a vendor which handles confidential data for well over 2,000 hospitals and nearly 2 million individual patients. Apervita worked side-by-side with MongoDB during development and refinement of the technology.

Since reaching general availability in December, the technology has also been adopted by several government agencies and Fortune 50 companies, including some of the largest pharmacies and insurance providers.

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