Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Jason Scott Profile picture
@textfiles
Dec 16, 2020 • 8 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
Stick with me, even if you don't believe me: In vintage and old-school computer fanboy circles, there were these ridiculous territorial fights over ... screenshots.

Not some specific screenshots and their meaning, or what the screenshots contained... but screenshots. Image
People (ok, mostly guys) were REALLY REALLY REALLY

REALLY

REALLY

REALLY possessive over "their" screenshots being used. Like, they'd have them up, and if you hotlinked, or even copied them, you were S T E A L I N G them. Image
Which, I get, I mean all that hard work of booting a disk or cartridge in an emulator, and then taking a screenshot and...

...well, actually, that's all the work was. So people were crazy possessive of these and they'd WATERMARK them, like they were the Sacred Papers of Zot. Image
This ridiculous, petty and useless grubby territorialism always rubbed me the wrong way, so once I got emulation working at Internet Archive, I wrote scripts that played All The Games, took screenshots, and just made them available to everyone, as many as they wanted. Image
My audience and reach has grown significantly since I first did this, so I am once again bringing attention to it. There's a dataset album called CITY OF SCREENSHOTS that has them:

archive.org/details/city_o…
And here are the flickr albums if you just want the art to wash over you. (You can download any you want from them, of course.)

flickr.com/photos/textfil…
flickr.com/photos/textfil…
flickr.com/photos/textfil…
flickr.com/photos/textfil…
flickr.com/photos/textfil…
flickr.com/photos/textfil…
And more!

flickr.com/photos/textfil…
flickr.com/photos/textfil…
flickr.com/photos/textfil…
flickr.com/photos/textfil…
In all, nearly half a million screenshots are out there, and we recently renovated how screenshots are being done so I expect many, many more to go up over time.

Thus ends, definitively, the most ridiculous fight I ever saw.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Jason Scott

Jason Scott Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @textfiles

Jason Scott Profile picture
Feb 29, 2024
The policy of the archive as long as I've been there is that if an unhoused person is non-disruptively sleeping on the steps of the archive, especially because it looks like a church and faintly has the words "church" on it, they are left in peace.
There was a long-time outside sleeper named Thomas Hooker who was on the corner across from the Archive for years and the way it was discovered he died was an employee brought extra food over to him the next morning after a yearly archive celebration.

sfchronicle.com/bayarea/nevius…
When the archive's front doors were open before COVID, one nearby homeless person would come in and expertly play arcade games on the Internet Archive arcade machine to pass his days. Image
Read 4 tweets
Jason Scott Profile picture
May 29, 2023
Watching people debate about AI-Company-vs-User. Here's some other things you might not know (we do this all day, it's our job).
We've had plenty of researchers, and even individuals come to grab materials at scale. Ideally, that's fine, after all, we're the Access people. But in this case, we were seeing 10,000+ requests a second blasting across dozens of AWS IPs. So we ended up blocking them.
A researcher would then contact us through one of our contact numbers or e-mail addresses (info@archive.org is a good one) and try to work with us to get data without the downtime.

Am I making this up? No. Has happened dozens of times across many years.
Read 10 tweets
Jason Scott Profile picture
Nov 16, 2022
Not that anyone was clamoring for my statement on this, but I'm riding twitter down until it effectively dies. I don't think people should stick around just because I'm here - remember that my strolling through most sites causes people to realize terrible times are coming.
But don't worry - I was here at the beginning and I'll stick around until the end. Maybe I'll even unblock @jack so I can watch the flames the way they were meant to - reflected in his dewy eyes
ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Jason Scott Profile picture
Nov 15, 2022
Today was an interesting lesson.

First, you need to know I spend a lot of time cleaning up collections at the Archive. Moving stuff around, getting it easier to find, read, and so on. I've gone into some pretty deep piles and (I think) emerged with some cleaned-up spots.

But.
There was one collection that I had hoped to really clean up that has been around forever. It's called Old Time Radio and it's a complete mess. It's just a big top-level pile of over 8000 items. And some of those items are actually dozens or hundreds of radio shows in one item. Image
This is one of those miraculous, almost unbelievably popular areas within the archive. The ecosystem of it is deep and rich and for some people, it IS the Internet Archive, it's all we do and all we're good for.
Read 6 tweets
Jason Scott Profile picture
Nov 14, 2022
This was because originally it was considered important to know how the tweet was being generated, especially with a rich client ecosystem (which Twitter killed, then brought back). Since this place is doomed, yes, save those pennies musk
Now, I do find it rich that Emerald Mine is going "nobody seems to remember why this is in the case" like, less than a week after he fired 75% of the staff, but what do I know, I never took math past high school
It's funnier the more I see it because those people in tech who have dealt with large code/hardware/setting stacks have seen this happen before, but honestly, this is the difference between a singer at the front of a football game and an olympic opening ceremony in terms of scale
Read 4 tweets
Jason Scott Profile picture
Nov 13, 2022
I'll phrase this carefully.

Atari, the company, is a piece of garbage and has been for some time. It shares zero DNA with the company Atari as it grew in our hearts for the youth of the 1970s and 1980s.

But ATARI 50, created by Digital Eclipse, is a masterwork. Image
It is a shining example of engaging with your historical subject and making it relevant for the present day, both providing optional ease of use upgrades and ways to take it raw, and it was in its day, and switch effortlessly. It's also layers and layers and layers of reference.
I'm sad Curt Vendel didn't get a chance to see this.
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(