[IACR] ePrint Report: Cryptographic Reverse Firewalls For Interactive Proof Systems---or---Interactive Proofs On Untrusted Machines

ePrint Report: Cryptographic Reverse Firewalls for Interactive Proof Systems---or---Interactive Proofs on Untrusted Machines

And The Streak Continues!

What's going on everyone!?

Today for the #2019gameaday challenge I played a solo game of Colt Express and didn't do so well. 

As each round went on I would feel like I got this. 

Then I would worry that I hadnt.

And by the time the game was over I placed 3rd unfortunately.  But the game was still fun!

As always, thank you for reading and don't forget to stop and smell the meeples! :)

-Tim

Going Beyond Video Games

I was recently in Loyola, on a brief pilgrimage to the birthplace of the holy founder of the Society of Jesus, St. Ignatius. While I was there I was able to take in the 'chapel of conversion' where Iñigo famously moved beyond the romantic and chivalrous works of fiction he so loved and found lasting happiness in the lives of the saints and of the saviour himself.

The works of fiction weren't evil, Iñigo wasn't reading trashy novels or pornography magazines, he was reading tales that were essentially about virtue, great human qualities, but ultimately forces solely directed to worldly ends, transient goods that pass and fade with the evening.

The hunger that they instilled in him for adventure, for limit experiences, for romance, these desires weren't bad, but they weren't an end in themselves, they prepared him for something greater, and when he found the thing that was the greatest, the One Who is the greatest, He was able to find the answer to the thirst that God had placed within Him, and which the novels ultimately had helped him appreciate.

So, with this in mind, I turn to computer games and I realise that the best a video game can ever be is a distraction from the mundane of this life which serves to remind me that life is about adventure, only the greatest adventure is the adventure of holiness, of striving for sanctity, of snatching souls from the fire and of desiring to traverse the whole world in order to bring great glory for Almighty God.

Ignatius put down the novels and He started living an adventure greater than anything he had found in them. Switch off the XBox, unplug the Playstation, shut down the Nintendo Switch. We might not be called to the same soaring heights of sanctity as Ignatius of Loyola but we can certainly learn from Him where true heroism lies and how the greatest of human virtues and talents and fantasies that we cultivate must be channeled towards the absolute and fundamental course in life- the Way of the Lord Jesus Christ.

 Fr Mark Higgins

Game 357: The Dungeon Of Danger (1980)

The game efficiently blends its title screen with character creation.

         

The Dungeon of Danger

United States

Written and published as code in the Mostly BASIC series by Howard Berenbon
Versions released in 1980 for the Atari 800, 1981 for the Apple II and TRS-80, 1983 for the Commodore PET, 1984 for the Commodore 64
Date Started: 7 February 2020

Date Ended: 7 February 2020

Total Hours: 1

Difficulty: Very Easy-Easy (1.5/5)

Final Rating: (To come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (To come later)
           
And here's a final (for now) quick entry to clear up another "game" that made its way onto MobyGames recently. We already had a discussion, relative to The Devil's Dungeon (1978) as to whether a book of type-it-yourself code constitutes a "game." Having not reached a satisfactory conclusion, even in my own mind, I decided I might as well play this one.

                     

Yep, another one of these.

          

Dungeon of Danger is a lot simpler than even The Devil's Dungeon, and to be honest I think I could argue that this lacks enough elements to be considered an RPG. The problem is that to investigate a game this simple is the same thing as playing it, so I figured I might as well toss up an entry. Putting a "rejection" in the status column isn't satisfying to anyone.

             

A random encounter with a good wizard offers the only graphic in the game.

          

You start the game. You enter a difficulty level. You enter your name. You get dumped into a two-level dungeon with 64 rooms per level arranged in an 8 x 8 grid. Your goal is to collect as much gold as possible and get out. You do that by finding your way to one of the stairway squares on Level 1. The rooms are randomized between north-south passages, east-west passages, caverns, and chambers. Any one of them might contain one of a couple dozen monster types and a couple hundred pieces of gold. You can fight or flee them.

          

Killing a dragon and getting its gold.

         

When combat comes, you and your enemy exchange blows until one of you is dead. The rolls are all randomized (roughly 1d8). You start with more hit points than any enemy in the dungeon and you can replenish them with healing potions and encounters with a friendly wizard, so you have the edge. You need to find enchanted keys to climb levels and a map on each level to actually see the 8 x 8 grid, which reminds me a bit of The Wizard's Castle from the same year.

         

A map of the level. The fuzzy bit in the seventh column is my current position.

         

There are some special encounters in the dungeon:

            

• Rooms with pools of water that might freeze you, do nothing, or burn you

• Thieves who may steal your gold or drop theirs

           

That could have been worse.

          

• Vapors that might knock you out, causing you to awaken in a random part of the dungeon

• Trap doors that might dump you to the next level (or into a pit if already on Level 2)

             

All of these events are delivered with maddening pauses between short bursts of text, as if the entire game were narrated by William Shatner. 

           

Every one of those sets of ellipses is accompanied by a pause as the text loads.

       

If you make it to the exit, the game gives you a score based on your gold, how many enemies you killed, and how long it took you. It took me less than an hour to get the highest level (Dungeon Master) on "expert" difficulty. 

            

I won. I hope someone, somewhere, is happy.

          

The Dungeon of Danger appeared as 12 pages of code in a book series called Mostly BASIC by Michigan hobbyist Howard Berenbon. It specifically appeared in the "Book 2" volume for each platform. The earliest seems to be for the Atari 800 in 1980; editions for the Apple II, TRS-80, Commodore PET, and Commodore 64 followed over the next four years. 

            

The initial lines of code for The Dungeon of Danger.

        
There's no character development, combat is based on random rolls and not any intrinsic attributes, and there's no inventory, meaning that the game fails all my criteria for an RPG. (Frankly, it fails MobyGames's definitions, too, but it's easier to write an entry than to get them to change incorrect information.) It thus earns only a 5 on my GIMLET.
         
That catches us up to where we were before someone with too much time on his hands decided that The Devil's Dungeon, Knight's Quest, and The Dungeon of Danger needed to be preserved in our memory. Back to Ragnarok and the final entry on Blade of Destiny.

****

Note: An earlier version of this entry, accidentally published before I was ready, was a lot angrier. I was trying to make a joke by which my entries got progressively more ranting and incoherent over the last three games, culminating in my basically frothing at the mouth on this one. I had scheduled all three games a few days in advance. I later decided that people wouldn't get the meta-joke, which was only a little funny in the first place, and removed the setups from the first two entries but neglected to edit the third before it automatically published yesterday. I quickly took it offline to edit out the more irate language. Sorry if you got the premature edition; it would have been confusing.

        

Out of all the privacy-focused products and apps available on the market, Brave has been voted the best. Other winners of Product Hunt's Golden Kitty awards showed that there was a huge interest in privacy-enhancing products and apps such as chats, maps, and other collaboration tools.

An extremely productive year for Brave

Last year has been a pivotal one for the crypto industry, but few companies managed to see the kind of success Brave did. Almost every day of the year has been packed witch action, as the company managed to officially launch its browser, get its Basic Attention Token out, and onboard hundreds of thousands of verified publishers on its rewards platform.

Luckily, the effort Brave has been putting into its product hasn't gone unnoticed.

The company's revolutionary browser has been voted the best privacy-focused product of 2019, for which it received a Golden Kitty award. The awards, hosted by Product Hunt, were given to the most popular products across 23 different product categories.

Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt said:

"Our annual Golden Kitty awards celebrate all the great products that makers have launched throughout the year"

Brave's win is important for the company—with this year seeing the most user votes ever, it's a clear indicator of the browser's rapidly rising popularity.

Privacy and blockchain are the strongest forces in tech right now

If reaching 10 million monthly active users in December was Brave's crown achievement, then the Product Hunt award was the cherry on top.

The recognition Brave got from Product Hunt users shows that a market for privacy-focused apps is thriving. All of the apps and products that got a Golden Kitty award from Product Hunt users focused heavily on data protection. Everything from automatic investment apps and remote collaboration tools to smart home products emphasized their privacy.

AI and machine learning rose as another note-worthy trend, but blockchain seemed to be the most dominating force in app development. Blockchain-based messaging apps and maps were hugely popular with Product Hunt users, who seem to value innovation and security.

For those users, Brave is a perfect platform. The company's research and development team has recently debuted its privacy-preserving distributed VPN, which could potentially bring even more security to the user than its already existing Tor extension.

Brave's effort to revolutionize the advertising industry has also been recognized by some of the biggest names in publishing—major publications such as The Washington Post, The Guardian, NDTV, NPR, and Qz have all joined the platform. Some of the highest-ranking websites in the world, including Wikipedia, WikiHow, Vimeo, Internet Archive, and DuckDuckGo, are also among Brave's 390,000 verified publishers.

Earn Basic Attention Token (BAT) with Brave Web Browser

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