I recently came across a colorization that turns the original black and white/green version of Pokémon Red for the GameBoy into a proper GameBoy Color title. This sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, but the sheer number of hacks that have been made over the course of several decades is slightly overwhelming, so I'd love to get a decent first selection by hearing which are your favorites that have improved or transformed console and handheld games in meaningful or entertaining ways.

Thanks in advance!

Python security developer-in-residence decries use of bots that 'cannot understand code'

Software vulnerability submissions generated by AI models have ushered in a "new era of slop security reports for open source" – and the devs maintaining these projects wish bug hunters would rely less on results produced by machine learning assistants.

Seth Larson, security developer-in-residence at the Python Software Foundation, raised the issue in a blog post last week, urging those reporting bugs not to use AI systems for bug hunting.

"Recently I've noticed an uptick in extremely low-quality, spammy, and LLM-hallucinated security reports to open source projects," he wrote, pointing to similar findings from the Curl project in January. "These reports appear at first glance to be potentially legitimate and thus require time to refute."

Larson argued that low-quality reports should be treated as if they're malicious.

As if to underscore the persistence of these concerns, a Curl project bug report posted on December 8 shows that nearly a year after maintainer Daniel Stenberg raised the issue, he's still confronted by "AI slop" – and wasting his time arguing with a bug submitter who may be partially or entirely automated.

In response to the bug report, Stenberg wrote:

We receive AI slop like this regularly and at volume. You contribute to [the] unnecessary load of Curl maintainers and I refuse to take that lightly and I am determined to act swiftly against it. Now and going forward.

You submitted what seems to be an obvious AI slop 'report' where you say there is a security problem, probably because an AI tricked you into believing this. You then waste our time by not telling us that an AI did this for you and you then continue the discussion with even more crap responses – seemingly also generated by AI.

Spammy, low-grade online content existed long before chatbots, but generative AI models have made it easier to produce the stuff. The result is pollution in journalism, web search, and of course social media.

For open source projects, AI-assisted bug reports are particularly pernicious because they require consideration and evaluation from security engineers – many of them volunteers – who are already pressed for time.

Larson told The Register that while he sees relatively few low-quality AI bug reports – fewer than ten each month – they represent the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

"Whatever happens to Python or pip is likely to eventually happen to more projects or more frequently," he warned. "I am concerned mostly about maintainers that are handling this in isolation. If they don't know that AI-generated reports are commonplace, they might not be able to recognize what's happening before wasting tons of time on a false report. Wasting precious volunteer time doing something you don't love and in the end for nothing is the surest way to burn out maintainers or drive them away from security work."

Larson argued that the open source community needs to get ahead of this trend to mitigate potential damage.

"I am hesitant to say that 'more tech' is what will solve the problem," he said. "I think open source security needs some fundamental changes. It can't keep falling onto a small number of maintainers to do the work, and we need more normalization and visibility into these types of open source contributions.

"We should be answering the question: 'how do we get more trusted individuals involved in open source?' Funding for staffing is one answer – such as my own grant through Alpha-Omega – and involvement from donated employment time is another."

While the open source community mulls how to respond, Larson asks that bug submitters not submit reports unless they've been verified by a human – and don't use AI, because "these systems today cannot understand code." He also urges platforms that accept vulnerability reports on behalf of maintainers to take steps to limit automated or abusive security report creation.

Yes, I know, you knew already. Don't tell me - tell your friends and any politician, exec or other person not in the know who are still thinking of AI as the solution to all of our problems instead of for the limited number of applications it's actually good for.

Previous video comparing visual differences (with a screenshot of the summary table and a very good comment on the whole topic by coyotino):

https://beehaw.org/post/16695979

Radeon 7900 XTX performance cost of good RT configurations at 4K:

https://i.imgur.com/x1qpE92.png

Geforce 4090 performance cost of good RT configurations at 4K:

https://i.imgur.com/kVhNWiY.png

Comparison:

https://i.imgur.com/gOJbFYM.png

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It's called Champions Tactics and it sure looks like...something.

Three years ago, Ubisoft promised it would start making its own blockchain games. Now it appears to have done it, having stealth-launched a full-blown web3 game last week called Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles on PC.

Champions Tactics is billed as a "PVP tactical RPG game on PC", and is both developed and published by Ubisoft. It involves collectible figurines of various warriors from the in-game fantasy world of Grimoria, which players assemble into squads of three and then battle in turn-based combat that looks oddly reminscent of Darkest Dungeon, of all things. It's not evident from the trailer that this is a web3 game at all, but a quick glance at the game's website or even its official X/Twitter page reveals this immediately.

The web3 comes into play as a method of collecting figurines to battle with. When you first start the game, you're given some temporary figurines to play with, but you'll eventually need to either purchase actual figurines, aka NFTs, from other players using either in-game gold or cryptocurrency, or craft your own using the "Forge" system which also requires either in-game currency or crypto. At the time of this piece, five days after launch, the in-game marketplace has figurines for sale ranging from around $7 to a whopping $63k for something called a "Swift Zealot". That said, just because a figurine is listed for that much doesn't mean people are paying that much. The next-highest listed champion currently runs around $25k, and while a handful more cost thousands the high-end stuff mostly appears to be capping around $335.

Champions Tactics is free to download, though you have to have a Ubisoft account and a supported blockchain wallet to actually play it. While it appears you can technically play the game entirely for free without ever engaging with NFTs using in-game currency, the viability of this strategy is likely going to be dependent on how the prices for actually powerful characters fluctuates over the game's lifespan. It's a PvP game, with no campaign and no PvE beyond a "Training" mode, so free-to-play players will inevitably be at the mercy of people willing to engage with the NFT marketplace and spend real money to buy or forge the absolute best champions — a real pay-to-win dilemma.

One other limiting factor in playing Champions Tactics is its age rating. Ubisoft lists the game as Adults Only, and restricts players who have not confirmed they are 18 or older from playing. Oddly, while Ubisoft is using the ESRB's rating category, Champions Tactics doesn't appear in the ESRB's online database listing all games with ratings and why those ratings were issued. IGN has reached out to the ESRB for comment and clarity on what's happening here.

Despite the fact that Ubisoft is doing basically exactly what it said it was going to do, it seems odd that the company is going all-in on web3 like this now. Whatever gamer enthusiasm for NFTs and blockchain there was in 2021 has died down significantly, with companies like Mojang and Valve outright rejecting them, EA backpedaling on an initial enthusiasm, Sega determining it's boring, and GameStop's own efforts outright failing. Even Ubisoft's own past efforts with NFTs have largely failed to resonate and subsequently gone quiet.

All of which maybe explains why Ubisoft has been, not necessarily secretive, but not exactly loud about this game in front of what most would consider mainstream gaming audiences. Champions Tactics was announced back in June of 2023 and various news items have floated out over the last year about its progress, largely reported at outlets focused on web3 and NFT news. But it wasn't exactly headlining with this game at Ubisoft Forward or anything.

Our shared goal is to explore new ways to play alongside bringing more value to players based on empowerment and ownership

Even the companies who are still pushing the technology have yet to answer ongoing concerns about its frequent use in and as scams, its potentially massive environmental impact, and perhaps most critically for gaming, how blockchain technology is good or useful for video games in the first place. Ubisoft, to its credit, has expressed concerns before about the environmental impact of NFTs, and the blockchain that Champions Tactics uses (Oasys) claims to be "environmentally friendly". But fundamentally, Ubisoft's perspective on the tech seems surprisingly bullish; the vice president of its Strategic Innovation Lab seems to think gamers just "don't get it." Whether or not they can be made to "get it" via games like Champions Tactics remains to be seen.

We reached out to Ubisoft for comment on the game ahead of this piece's publication. We asked them for any information on the Adults Only rating and its absence from the ESRB website, as well as for general comment on why Ubisoft is continuing to pursue a web3 strategy and if it intends to continue to do so in the future. Francois Bodson, studio director at Ubisoft Paris, responded as follows:

The team inside the Ubisoft Paris studio developing Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles partnered with Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab and Oasys to ensure that our use of blockchain was done in service of delivering new and innovative gaming experiences for our players. Our shared goal is to explore new ways to play alongside bringing more value to players based on empowerment and ownership. Champions Tactics offers deep strategic gameplay featuring unique in-game assets and several exciting innovations. These include millions of procedurally generated figurines, each with distinct stats, assets shaped directly by players' choices, and an open marketplace letting players compose their teams on a peer-to-peer basis —much like a physical trading card game. For months, we have collaborated closely with our community through events and beta phases to build and refine Champions Tactics. We’re excited to keep expanding and enhancing the experience together.

Ubisoft as a whole has been having a rough several years, weathering a steady cadence of game delays, three rounds of layoffs in the last year, a series of AAA releases failing to meet expectations, and general investor frustration. The company recently announced it was disbanding the Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown development team, shifting the team to work on Beyond Good and Evil 2 (a game announced in 2008), and exploring a new Rayman game that would involve series creator Michel Ancel, who departed Ubisoft amid reports (which he denied) he contributed to a toxic workplace at the company. Ubisoft will report its quarterly earnings this Wednesday.

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"This fails the needs of citizens in favor of a weak sauce argument from the industry, and it's really disappointing"

A three-year fight to help support game preservation has come to a sad end today. The US copyright office has denied a request for a DMCA exemption that would allow libraries to remotely share digital access to preserved video games.

"For the past three years, the Video Game History Foundation has been supporting with the Software Preservation Network (SPN) on a petition to allow libraries and archives to remotely share digital access to out-of-print video games in their collections," VGHF explains in its statement. "Under the current anti-circumvention rules in Section 1201 of the DMCA, libraries and archives are unable to break copy protection on games in order to make them remotely accessible to researchers."

Essentially, this exemption would open up the possibility of a digital library where historians and researchers could 'check out' digital games that run through emulators. The VGHF argues that around 87% of all video games released in the US before 2010 are now out of print, and the only legal way to access those games now is through the occasionally exorbitant prices and often failing hardware that defines the retro gaming market.

Still, the US copyright office has said no. "The Register concludes that proponents did not show that removing the single-user limitation for preserved computer programs or permitting off-premises access to video games are likely to be noninfringing," according to the final ruling. "She also notes the greater risk of market harm with removing the video game exemption’s premises limitation, given the market for legacy video games."

That ruling cites the belief of the Entertainment Software Association and other industry lobby groups that "there would be a significant risk that preserved video games would be used for recreational purposes." We cannot, of course, entertain the notion that researchers enjoy their subjects for even a moment. More importantly, this also ignores the fact that libraries already lend out digital versions of more traditional media like books and movies to everyday people for what can only be described as recreational purposes.

Members of the VGHF are naturally unhappy with the decision. "Unfortunately, lobbying efforts by rightsholder groups continue to hold back progress," the group says in its statement, noting the ESA's absolutist position that it would not support a similar sort of copyright reform under any circumstances.

"I'm proud of the work we and the orgs we partnered with did to try and change copyright law," VGHF founder and director Frank Cifaldi says on Twitter. "We really gave it our all, I can't see what else we could have done. This fails the needs of citizens in favor of a weak sauce argument from the industry, and it's really disappointing."