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Is the "Nintendo Classics" collection a good value?
Nintendo Classics is a collection of hundreds of retro video games from Nintendo (and Sega) consoles from the NES to the GameCube. Nintendo Classics is included with the
Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) subscription, which starts at $20/year (~$1.66/month) for individual users.Looking at the prices of retro games these days, this seems like an incredible value for players that want to play these games. This post is sharing a dataset that I've curated about
Nintendo Classics games and mapping their value to actual physical prices of the same games, with some interesting queries.
Winning a bet about “six”, the Python 2 compatibility shim
Exactly five years ago today Andrey Petrov and I made a bet about whether “
six”, the compatibility shim for Python 2 and 3 APIs, would still be in the top 20 daily downloads on PyPI. I said it would, Andrey took the side against.Well, today I can say that I've won the bet. When the bet was placed,
sixwas #2 in terms of daily downloads and todaysixis #14.
GZipped files and streams may contain names
It's just another day, you're sending a bunch of files to a friend. For no particular reason you decide to name the archive with your controversial movie opinions:
$ tar -cf i-did-not-care-for-the-godfather.tar *.txt $ gzip i-did-not-care-for-the-godfather.tar
SCREAM CIPHER (“ǠĂȦẶAẦ ĂǍÄẴẶȦ”)
You've probably heard of stream ciphers, but what about a scream cipher 😱? Today I learned there are more “Latin capital letter A” Unicode characters than there are letters in the English alphabet. You know what that means, it's time to scream:
Infinite Precision CVSS Calculator
CVSS is a scoring system for the severity of a software vulnerability. The scores range from 0 to 10, but that doesn't mean it's a “10-point system”. A single value after a decimal (“8.7”) is allowed too, meaning there are 100 potential CVSS scores. But what if we need more precision?
Extracting NES & N64 ROMs from Zelda Collector's Edition
Gaming as a hobby is about to become much more expensive in the United States due to tariffs. I cannot recall a time in the past where a console's price has increased during its generation, and yet the
Xbox Series X & S , theNintendo Switch , and most recently thePlaystation 5 have had price hikes.These are not normal times. So here's another entry in my mini-series (#1, #2) of extracting ROMs from GameCube games, this time the
“Zelda Collector's Edition” which contains 2 NES and 2 N64 Zelda titles.
Draft SMS and iMessage from any computer keyboard
If you're like me, you don't love the ergonomics of writing long text messages on your mobile phone keyboard. We own an “Arteck HB066” Bluetooth keyboard for this use-case which works great and costs $45. But I'm not interested in spending money today.
What if I could write text messages, both SMS or iMessage, using any computer keyboard?
The vulnerability might be in the proof-of-concept
I'm on the security team for multiple open source projects with ~medium levels of report volume. Over the years, you see patterns in how reporters try to have a report accepted as a vulnerability in the project.
One pattern that I see frequently is submitting proof-of-concept code that itself contains the vulnerability. However, the project code is also used, so the reporters try to convince you that the vulnerability is in the project code.
SMS URLs
Did you know there is a URL scheme for sending an “SMS” or text message, similar to
mailto:? SMS URLs are defined in RFC 5724 and are formatted like so:
sms:<recipient(s)>?body=<body>
Extracting Genesis & Game Gear ROMs from SEGA GameCube collections
The GameCube library had multiple SEGA game collections: Sonic Mega Collection, Sonic Adventure DX, and Sonic Gems Collection which all contain ROM files for the Genesis and Game Gear (among others).
We'll extract the ROMs from each collection and then compare these GameCube collections to modern SEGA game collections like Sonic Origins Plus and the Genesis collection for Nintendo Switch Online.
How many RSS subscribers do I have?
RSS is super rad way to consume internet content (“like a newspaper”). This blog gets syndicated via RSS and an email newsletter. Unlike with my newsletter, it's not clear how many people are reading my blog using RSS compared to my newsletter. That's a good thing, privacy is important and I don't need to know who you are to enjoy my blog :)
But what if I was interested in a rough number of subscribers to the RSS feed?
What first-party GameCube titles are available on Nintendo Switch Online?
Nintendo just announced that the GameCube game “Chibi Robo!” would be coming in exactly one week to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack (NSO+). Chibi Robo is known for being a hidden gem in the GameCube library, and thus quite expensive to obtain a physical copy. This made me think about what other games Nintendo had announced for
NSO+ “GameCube Classics” , and I noticed an interesting trend...Many of the most expensive first-party GameCube titles are either planned or already available on NSO+.
Transferring “UTF8.XYZ”
I'm transferring the UTF8.XYZ domain and service to Trey Hunner, a friend and beloved member of the Python community. Trey and I have talked about making this transfer many times at
PyCon US's across the years, and now it's finally happening!
Extracting 20+ NES & Famicom ROMs from Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing for the GameCube was a game far ahead of its time and one of my personal favorites growing up. One of the most beloved features was the addition of playable NES games as rare collectible furniture items.
This feature was implemented by including NES and Famicom Disk System emulators and the actual game ROMs on the Animal Crossing disk. The NES emulator included with Animal Crossing is frequently referenced as being one of the most accurate NES emulators available, but comes with the requirement of playing or emulating a GameCube to access the feature.
Nintendo Switch 2 physical game price differences
Last week I was able to purchase a Nintendo Switch 2. The console was due to arrive on Monday, so I also picked up a physical copy of Mario Kart World for $80 USD (compared to $70 USD for digital). This is the first time I can remember that Nintendo had a different price for an identical game, just based on the medium. At first glance this seems like a $10 USD difference, but there's a detail that gets obscured by comparing sticker price alone: who is paying storage costs.
Email has algorithmic curation, too
Communication technologies should optimally be reliable, especially when both parties have opted-in to consistent reliable delivery. I don't want someone else to decide whether I receive a text message or email from a friend.
I associate "algorithmic curation" with social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, or Instagram. I don't typically think about email as a communication technology that contains algorithmic curation. Maybe that thinking should change?
Setting Discord status from physical GameCube console
Have you ever seen one of your friends playing a game or listening to music in their Discord “status”? That feature is called “Rich Presence”.
What if you want to show your Discord friends that you're playing your GameCube? and I don't mean an emulator like Dolphin, I'm talking about a physical console from 2001.
Open Source Security work isn't “Special”
To understand why security is special, we have to take a look at why open source is an amazing thing. For many components of open source, users that have the time, desire, and expertise are able to contribute meaningfully to projects. As a maintainer of an open source project, this is awesome!
Hand-drawn QR codes
I really like QR codes. Recently I purchased a new sticky-note-like pad from a new local stationery store in Minneapolis. The sheets have a 10x10 grid and 2x10 grid.
UN Open Source Week 2025: Security for the Long-Haul
This page was used during the United Nations Open Source Week "Maintain-a-thon" hosted by the Sovereign Tech Agency and Alpha Omega. Thanks to both the Sovereign Tech Agency and Alpha Omega for supporting my attendance at this event and Alpha Omega for supporting security in the Python ecosystem.
Pikmin 2 International Treasure Hoard (DONE)
Pikmin 2 is a game about collecting "treasure" from Earth in the form of mostly human-made products and items. One of the distinguishing features of the game is that the treasures sometimes model real-life brands like Duracell and Dr. Pepper.
Pikmin 2 has three distinct regional treasure hoards, each with unique treasures: US, JP, and PAL.