TankedThomas

Interesting, I heard it no longer works. Will have to try it myself. Thanks for the tip! Also, your son chose the correct distro. 😛 (Seriously though, Arch rocks).

There was a useragent workaround that was blocked by Netflix. That's the only method I'm aware of. Firefox and Chrome can both run Netflix on Linux now, as of last year, but that's about it. I really wish they'd sort this out. It only encouraged people to pirate instead.

Haven't figured out how to/if I can move quotes around on my phone so just going to make this a separate post to save myself trouble (and because I'll probably forget if I leave it until I'm on my computer). Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on this stuff, just an enthusiast and hobbyist, but I'm going to try to break down what Rob Wyatt was talking about and why it could be problematic if this remains true. Incoming technobabble shite (still makes more sense than half of Voyager's dialogue though). First, as someone else mentioned, without a traditional bootloader, theoretically the only way to boot in Atari OS, if your SSD has other operating systems on it, will be to remove the SSD. Sounds amazing. But since it's all Linux, I don't see any reason you couldn't put a bootloader such as GRUB or rEFInd on it. In fact, if you install another Linux distro that isn't Atari OS, it'll typically ask you to install a bootloader anyway. Bootloaders these days are mostly automatic and easy to use but they can still cause issues or be a pain to deal with from time to time, especially when Windows (or macOS) is involved. Not the best idea for people with the mental capacity of a toddler... Anyway, next point is he says that Atari OS will be a heavily modified Linux kernel. Now, this is either misleading or he's an idiot (or both). Whilst the kernel is technically the (main part of the) operating system, the distro itself is what we usually think of as the operating system. But regardless, a heavily modified version is technically allowed according to the GPL open source license. Whether they abide by that is another question (doubtful though). Still, that doesn't magically make it not Linux, and I doubt that a heavily modified kernel is something they're even capable of, unless we're talking about Atari rolling their own kernel with optimisation patches and such. I guess with enough of those, it could be considered "highly modified", but that'd be a weasely way to word it at best. ([url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_(operating_system)]Info on kernels here[/url]) The main point here though is that Rob is confusing Atari OS (theoretically should be a Linux distro) with a kernel. So which is it? Is Atari OS its own full distro (possibly with a custom Linux kernel), or is it just the kernel? He makes it sound like it's just the kernel. Either that, or he has no idea what he's talking about, because the distro isn't the kernel nor vice versa (though a distro typically contains a kernel). To clarify: Rob is saying Atari OS will be a modified kernel. Does that mean Atari OS is ONLY a modified kernel (for an existing distro?), or does he not know the difference between the two...? Finally, based on what he said, it sounds like that last bit is about Secure Boot. This is a major red flag (as if we needed more). I'm a bit of a newbie to Secure Boot but let me give a quick run-down of how it works: Secure Boot is enabled in UEFI (colloquially called BIOS, but technically they're two separate things - UEFI is basically our modern replacement for BIOS, becoming commonplace ~10 years ago). Secure Boot requires an OS to be signed with a key it recognises in order to boot said OS. Every time the OS has a kernel update (Windows and Mac have these too), the key bust be regenerated. This process can be automated but, at least for Linux, this requires manual setup before it can then be automated (not the most straightforward task but it's doable). If there is no traditional UEFI (such as on Mac), Secure Boot (for additional operating systems added by the user, anyway) isn't possible to my knowledge - macOS has its own implementation on newer devices with the T2 chip - though this can be turned off (for now), it's locked to any OS that Apple signs - you cannot sign them yourself, which is a trick Atari could copy if they wanted to do so. In other words, as far as I'm aware, if the UEFI cannot be written to, you cannot tell it which keys are valid. In this case, I would assume it already has the Atari OS key and is capable of regenerating it when the OS is updated. But if you tried to install another OS and it couldn't write its key to the UEFI, Secure Boot would fail and your other OS wouldn't boot. Which would mean Sandbox Mode is a no-go. There are always workarounds, of course, but that's besides the point. Now, that's a big IF. I doubt anyone could screw up this big. It's possible to do this though, even though my specifics may be a little off (like I said, newbie on the subject, and I'm tired, so please forgive me if I made any mistakes). If anyone is more knowledgeable on kernels and Secure Boot and such, please feel free to chime in and correct me. But as far as I can tell, Rob's implementation at least has the potential to completely kill Sandbox Mode. Some further reading on Secure Boot I'd recommend if anyone is interested in learning more (and stuff I'll undoubtedly be re-reading to brush up): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#Secure_boot https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Secure_Boot (great wiki even for non-Arch distros) http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/secureboot.html (Rod is an absolute genius on this stuff) http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/controlling-sb.html

Welcome, fellow hater and troll! 😉 At only 4GB, it could be a RAM issue, but the real issue is really just Ryzen Embedded. Besides, I'd assume they've cheaper out with a single SODIMM slot. If they have, you'll need to buy a single stick and won't have dual-channel memory. But I guess we'll see... DON'T FORGET ABOUT THE SPE- Well okay then. Guess you remembered about that fantastic movie tie-in after all. 😉 I feel bad for whoever the Hollywood goon was who made that marketing choice. And I hate Hollywood. Hopefully nobody pees on Atari's one though. I can't BELIEVE you'd forget about the 2500 and XT! ARE YOU EVEN A TRUE FAN? It may be internal, but it's still a separate part you need to buy separately. See, if you'd said League of Legends or DOTA, I might have agreed. Rocket League will run like crap (but should be playable at toaster quality), but I highly doubt Overwatch will ever run well enough on Ryzen Embedded to play it properly. Keep dreaming. To be fair, the M.2 slot is visible on their prototype board. I believe I was the first person to point it out. But as a fan of M.2 SSDs due to the speed and convenience (for my use cases, anyway - I do video editing, among other stuff, which actually benefits from NVME speeds), I don't understand this choice from a consumer point of view. Sure, it takes up a lot less space, but they cost more. Plus, if they used a regular 2.5" SATA connection like on the PS4, you could use an SSD OR a hard drive, with the latter being significantly cheaper for more storage. Why not build or buy an existing PC that is more powerful for the same price or less, such as the AliExpress ones I pointed out a couple of days ago? If this is a product you want, why not spend the same amount of money on getting a better product than the VCS? If it is released, then yes, it could be all of things. The question is: would you wantit to be any of those things? My answer: hell no. If you want an ad blocker, either use PiHole (Raspberry Pis are way cheaper) or use software on your modem/router. Personally, I just use custom firmware and Entware on my ASUS router to run Skynet (firewall) and Diversion (ad blocker) - it basically works the same as a PiHole setup but it's on my existing device, so it costs me nothing but a bit of maintenance/setup time. If you want a NAS, build or buy a dedicated NAS. Nobody sane uses a single M.2 drive and some NAND flash as a NAS. As for a VPN server, most people don't even need VPNs, especially if they're not doing (confidential) business and the like. If they do... You can just set it up on any old PC you could buy for a few dollars on eBay or at a flea market or such. For a media server, you preferably want something that is powerful enough to transcode well (which would be a given in this case because you specified Plex). Ryzen Embedded isn't going to be up to that task. Finally, as a web developer myself, I would never, ever, ever, ever run a web server on such a crappy machine. Hell, I'd sooner run one on a Raspberry Pi. As I said previously, slapping Atari's name on Debian's Synaptic Package Manager doesn't magically make it their own Atari Store. The former may be possible depending on the code used. The latter is not. If it's Linux, it has to be open source, and thus yes, anyone can download it and install it on their own computer. See SteamOS as an example. This one glitched the hell out. Will have to re-quote and edit my post shortly. Smartphones sure are dumb despite the name...

Aside from the fact that they haven't been selling the PS4 at a loss for almost 6 years, they've more than made up for it with their (sadly now garbage) PS+ subscriptions and video game sales, not to mention the fact that they've sold approximately 100 million PS4 consoles now (and they're still selling, so I wouldn't say they have excess inventory - production costs have got cheaper over time and so they have lowered the price, among other things). I don't even like Sony nor would I want to defend them, but you're not even correct on this point, and just like the weirdos on Reddit, you only respond to the arguments you think you can still win, which is cowardly. Here's a source, if you don't believe me: http://www.vgchartz.com/article/251629/playstation-4-no-longer-sold-at-a-loss/

We got a smart TV recently. That thing can run RetroArch. It can already do everything the VCS can do, except install another operating system (though I'm sure you could have it to do that if you really wanted, but frankly, the "smart" features are a pain enough as it is). Now allow me to blow your mind (or not): you can already get a PC-in-a-box that's about as powerful and capable as the VCS purports to be, for the same price or less. This is just the first example I grabbed, but there are dozens more, if not hundreds, just like it: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32831520597.html Granted, it uses DDR3 (DDR3L, specifically) RAM, runs Intel so therefore has approximately five trillion security flaws, and AMD's Vega graphics are better than Intel's HD Graphics integrated GPUs, but it's got two more USB ports (USB 2.0 vs 3.0 doesn't matter for controllers), a VGA port (not that anyone cares) and 1two 3.5mm jacks (one for a mic, the other for headphones). It also has more internal memory plus more expansion support. But most importantly: it's already on sale. You can buy it right now. Heck, there are others around the same price which are even more powerful, such as this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33026539698.html And that's just the tip of the iceberg. So who is the target audience for the VCS again? Oh, right. Suckers. EDIT: Here's more of the actual iceberg: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000072044221.html The cheapest configuration is in-between the price of the two VCS models and utterly murders both of them in specs. This is literally the first thing I found on Aliexpress when searching for "Ryzen mini PC". Suck it, Atari SA. I thought his hand looked suspiciously empty. Thanks for posting the unedited version! Also, here's a bonus from my "Atari VCS specs" Google search (I couldn't be bothered searching the thread, and then I realised that was easier than searching Atari's BS for answers): Just remember: someone paid for this. (And if you refresh it, there are other variants).

I agree but in this case (no pun intended), I was referring to the innards - that is, assuming that was part of an assembly line and they were indeed in China all that time to oversee the production of these units, wouldn't they make sure they included at least a single photo of the inside with the board mounted and all? It'd sure help make it look more legitimate. But instead, we just saw the plastic case from a few angles. In addition to what @H.Hannig said, it's very hard to make a direct comparison here. There are lots of other factors at play, such as the motherboard design and size (size affects layout, which in turn affects a whole range if things such as potential interference from different components, power delivery, signal integrity, etc.), memory topology (which probably won't matter too much here but on AMD's 7nm Zen 2 chips, the preferred topology appears to be daisy chain), and even seemingly simple things like RAM frequency/quality and what the motherboard has been qualified with ( guarantee Atari won't have any QVLs for the VCS, so even though the RAM may be upgradeable, there's no guarantee your new RAM will work well, if at all). Heck, I'd be concerned about the length of the traces on the VCS PCB, just for starters. They're PROBABLY fine, but we don't actually know that for sure. That's another thing people are forgetting - it's one thing to be okay with it being a basic PC for cheap despite there being other options, but we don't know if the VCS will even be a good computer. There's a reason some computers and computer parts cost more than others (and I'm not counting "premium" brands like Apple). That, and I guarantee you that most of the people excited about their AtariLinuxBox don't even know what Linux is, let alone how to use them. They've probably never heard of M.2 SSDs either. And once you go down that rabbit hole, you may as well just go build your own PC. With enough sales and maybe some second-hand parts, you could probably build a decent little system for ~$US500-600, and it'll be way more powerful than the VCS.

You jest, but the backers won't be laughing when they unwrap capture cards next year. In all seriousness though, I'm still not even convinced that what's inside the plastic shell is a motherboard. If they were doing assembly and spent months in China overseeing the "pre-production", surely we would have a photo of a system being assembled. Instead, we have a bunch of photos showing the same thing over and over again. Why? Did they forget to take photos until the last minute? Or is a plastic shell and some ports on the back (which may not even be attached to anything inside) all they had to show?

Really hard to tell. If you look at the left side, it matches up better. It could absolutely be lighting... or it could be a separate front panel, which may be how they're doing the different front pieces. Assuming they've thought that far ahead.

Ah, really? But their whole marketing thing was "we called it Unity because it was made in Unity". Did they lie? Are they Atari? Was I misled? AM I JOHN PHELAN? DEAR GOD. (And yes, for some reason, I held that mistaken belief since the game first launched. Whoops). My thoughts exactly. Weird that they seen to be doing packaging rather than testing at a testing station, though... If I had the money (and his address), I'd just build a system for John to play games on at this point. I feel bad for the guy, but I'm glad that he's finally caught on. Surprisingly, some other still haven't. Or maybe not surprisingly. I don't know, people are dumb, I guess. I recommend staying away. The sheer level of insanity is off the charts. Last I checked, there was one thread with Lucas and co. just having some tribal-tier circlejerk. It's almost unbelievable. Almost. I started insulting AtariArtist (guaranteed the dude's off his rocker), and realised I had taken it way too far so I just stopped looking. Too little, too late in that regard, but he just kept going and I let myself get suckered into a crazy yelling match. Yeesh... Oh man, I didn't exactly have a high opinion of that guy, but I didn't hate him. But knowing that those two are one in the same... That's actually kinda scary. Guy seems like he belongs in an asylum. And he thinks I have pink hair. I barely even have hair any more. Cheers, much appreciated!

Something else I noticed is that there's someone standing between the second and third factory workers with their arms crossed. Maybe it's Mike, getting briefed by factory workers? 😉

This update fascinates me, especially since the usual people are already using it as "evidence" (check out "AtariArtist" on the now-unofficial reddit page. Pretty sure he's wearing a tinfoil hat). I'm going to break it down just because I'm bored, so feel free to follow along and chime in, or just skip this inevitably lengthy post. 😉 First of all, Mike Arse (that's his name now, deal with it) talks about how "the Atari VCS design and engineering teams just returned from extended trips to China", as if the teams are more than two or three people, and as if anyone is actually left in engineering. I'm betting they just got the poor factory workers to figure the thing out for them, and paid them peanuts for it in return (probably literal peanuts, given Freddo Frog's reputation). Arse's next point is about why they switched to the AMD Ryzen SOC. Here's a hint: it wasn't because of the backers (you really think most of those guys know anything about hardware?), "internal user research" means literally nothing, device testing means "we had an AMD dev board this time last year and it required the least amount of work for us", and they have no development partners. Then they mention AMD pushing them. Here's what likely happened: AMD said "here's our new chips and they cost the same as the old ones, also we're not making the olds ones any more, also this email is going out to all our "partners" because we don't keep track of who most of you are, ATARI WHO?" Next point is how these units are just pre-production samples, worded in a way that makes it sound like they're the first of their production units. The most we can see in any single photo (assuming each of those stacked containers contains a VCS) is 24 units. That means they made 24 in pre-production. I'll take bets on this mirroring the Vega+ debacle (a win-win for me because I have no money, so nobody gets paid if I lose the bet 😉). Notice that whatever that little button was, on the opposite side of the PCB to the power button, is no longer present in the "final" version. Either it's obscured inside the shell, or the PCB we saw wasn't final (gasp! Say it ain't so). The next photo shows a bunch of factory workers putting things in anti-static bubblewrap bags. Okay. But what would they be putting in those? You don't put the PCB in that and then put it in the shell. Maybe they were taking them out? But they have a stack of empty bags and a roll of tape, and appear to be packaging it. Methinks this is the answer: the worker in the background appears to be putting protective film on (or just rubbing, I dunno) the plastic VCS shell. So the pink bubblewrap bags are... the packaging for Indiegogo backers? Maybe they couldn't afford proper packaging for $3m. Then, more stuff about controllers. Cool. Where are they? They're not in any of the photos. Software development? Final stages? But you guys haven't even got software developers on board, let alone started software development. Are you going to slap your logo on Linux and call it your own (and then inevitably not release your distro as open-source code so you can inevitably end up on a list of scumbags who break GPL licenses)? Nah, I think that's giving them too much credit. Just ship it with SteamOS, guys! It'll be fine. Backers are dumb - they won't notice! Ah, but they're using Unity, so I'm sure that will turn out well. Incidentally, I remember trying Assassin's Creed Unity (made in the Unity engine; surprise) and getting stuck in a wall. Then I found out that the demo wasn't a demo but the final game. Which isn't to say the Unity engine is bad (it's not) but even Ubisoft couldn't rush their software to market without it being a mess. And, of course, more announcements about announcements. Now where have we heard that before? Hmmm. TL;DR on the next point, they never intended to ship anything by December - they'd stopped caring and have been (poorly) targeting March 2020 since they last announced a delay, but thanks for the money, suckers! Oh, and they're still "testing" it (whatever that means) and are still working on certification. Guess they put that in there just for us. TL;DR on the next point is Nintendo's passive-aggresive BS "Please Understand", followed by even moreexcuses, including some nonsense about transparency (maybe they're talking about the Atari logo with the LED behind it). You know the boy who cried wolf? Well, even he thinks Fred and Mike are full of it. Oh God, there's still so much more... Uh... 4K 60fps HDR is not for gaming. It's for videos. My midrange PC I built this year can barely handle that (though it's of course dependent on the game). This toaster-quality SOC can't handle it, unless you want to play 4K60 Pong. The HDR makes the blacks and whites more... black and white. Also, running cooler than an inferno (thanks Intel) isn't really news. Then he talks about how they "subtly" changed the chassis. No, they made it taller to fit the damn CPU fan in. It'll still be a toaster either way - a system that small is going to suffocate even if you stick it in a freezer (I'm exaggerating, but the point is that they made it bigger for thermals, not to fit USB ports on the front - that's just a bonus, since those cost pretty much nothing). That level of last-minute redesign is a serious red flag. The talk about redesigning the controllers is probably a legal matter, more than anything else, especially given the vagueness of his statement on them. Since you chimed in while I was writing this: I think those are the redesigned shells. The person at the rear holding a plastic thing appears to also be holding a VCS shell (you can make out the "ribbed" design on it), and they said they extended it to fit USB ports. Reminds me of some of the PS2s and PS3s in that regard. Also, I think the VCS is in that pink bubblebag - it just looks like it doesn't fit because of perspective. The systems aren't that big, and the bags are probably a bit bigger than we can see in the photo. Still crap either way~ Next question about social media (who is asking these questions, by the way? Is Arse looking in a mirror?) is just a bunch of nonsense. Moving on. And the next question is more nonsense. Watch them repackage Debian's Synaptic Package Manager (for those who aren't aware, a package manager on Linux works like an app store, except there's more than just apps available) and call it their app store. It'd technically be true. Does anyone really believe they're going to make one from scratch? If they do, it'll be a disaster of security vulnerabilities and bugs. If it works. Finally, they take a pot-shot at our friend Kieren without actually naming him (in other words, Arse has no balls). Then Arse dodges the question anyway and proceeds to imply that Netflix won't have a native app (or he just hasn't looked at the Debian repositories to see if one exists for Linux yet). He continues to say a bunch of "ifs" and "maybes" about apps actually being made, and then says Kieren is a liar. Nice bloke, that Arse. FYI, you don't normally create a UI in unity. I mean, if you're programming it, sure, but... maybe I'm just arguing semantics here. It just sounds like they grabbed Unity to play around with because it's relatively easy, and are hoping they get far enough to release a product that sort of, kind of works by the time their hardware is half-baked enough to ship out in pink bubblewrap. But it's okay, because the new UI is no longer just a mockup from E3 and it "feels like Atari". That feeling looks like this: Moving on (yes, there's still more), Mike Arse conflates digital downloads with streaming, then implies that you need something more than a modern toaster (literally, in some cases) to stream garbage like Stadia - your CPU/GPU/choice of taco doesn't matter. Of course it's compatible - just download Chromium and have fun. If Chromium runs it. I'm not sure. You might need the branded version (i.e. Google Chrome). In which case, it literally can't support Stadia. Do they know? Probably not. Do I care? Nope. Also, Apple Arcade has far more software than Atari and Antstream will ever have. And I hate Apple, so this isn't me defending them. But sandbox mode! Unprecedented freedom! Right, totally unlike my PC which I'm running Linux on right now, have Windows 10 (ugh) installed alongside it, and have multiple Linux virtual machines too. Or a Raspberry Pi, which lets you do the same. Totally different, guys. Totally. And you can use it as a media centre, as soon as you learn how to install and set up Linux (I mean, it's not hard, but do you really think someone like ol' John Phelan is going to have a clue how that works? Dude still plays Jaguar as one of his primary consoles, judging by his videos). Ooo, ooo, more about Atari OS! It's proprietary... even though it's based on Linux. So it's literally not proprietary then. Got it. I love how they say you can boot into another operating system and manage to list two. Windows, Linux, and uh... TacOS? What else, guys? WHAT ELSE? Someone needs to make TacOS now. Maybe I'll do it if I'm bored enough. The best part is that they want community feedback from their brainwashed cult. Those guys probably don't even know how to install Linux, let alone debug it. And I can't imagine anyone at "Atari" knows how to debug anything either. Also, the OS usually isn't the pre-release software, and early access quite literally means it's unfinished/incomplete (or they're a scumbag AAA company doing server tests instead of fixing all the bugs that are still in their games on launch day). So I know I said "finally" earlier, but I thought they would have been done by then. They weren't. But now we're up to the final question. If it wasn't Mike Arse staring in a mirror, it was probably Fred holding a gun to his head. Or just strapping Arse to a chair surrounded in really stinky cheese. But this might be the best question, because they claim they have a thriving business. I guess a stock price increase of €0.17 is now "thriving business". Of course, "the first-day response to the Atari VCS crowdfunding campaign in May 2018 ended up crashing the Indiegogo site", which honestly just says more about how crappy Indiegogo's site is than anything else. But guys, 11,000 backers! That's a lot! They all DEFINITELY bought a console, and the Atari VCS is second only to the PS4, which has only sold approximately 100m units. That's REALLY close! Then he ends with promises of their vacation photos. I don't want to see your stupid vacation photos. It's at this point (or, more accurately, the first sentence of this "update") where everyone simultaneously felt like this: (Yes, I got bored about halfway through and just started making some stupid images using other images I totally didn't steal from Google and about three hours later, I've finished writing all this trash).

Whilst that's possible, they went to the trouble of creating a burner account just for the sake of posting it. Someone who posted the original link saw it but didn't save the image at the time (forgot who, and the search is frankly unreliable - @The Historian, perhaps?) so they should be able to at least tell us if it looked legitimate. Unfortunately, so far, I've turned up nothing as far as tracking down a copy. If it were up for six hours, you'd think SOMEONE would have nabbed it. I hate to suggest this, but maybe the Facebook cult got a copy they could "share". Then again, if they had it, they'd probably have posted it 20 times by now. You're killing us with the anticipation! (Also, it really says something when everyone and their mother is rooting for Hyperkin).

~Hypothetical Situation Time~ Since it hasn't been discussed much: I'm legitimately curious about that new PCB image of the reverse side that got removed from Reddit. Though it seems nobody managed to archive it (but maybe someone did), my bigger question is who leaked it, and why. Consider this: It's unlikely our friend Fred leaked it, so unless it's a disgruntled employee, who else does that leave? That's not impossible, but with the few employees he seems to have around, and not even necessarily in the same building (or even country) most of the time, I kinda doubt it. So who else? We know they had it to take photos for their last Medium post, but we don't know exactly when they took those photos, nor exactly when Rob Wyatt left. Here's my suggestion - and it's just a theory based on slim evidence, so I'm not going to parade my theories around like the truth; my last name isn't Werner: Rob Wyatt and Tin Giant still have the board, and the photos were taken right before Rob Wyatt left. Admittedly, the timeline on that isn't favourable, but hear me out anyway. One of them leaked the image as a sort of middle finger to Atari for not being paid, perhaps. But more importantly, if this were true (and again, conjecture - it might not be, we don't know, but it's an hypothesis I wanted to put out there), this would mean Atari doesn't have a prototype, working or otherwise. This would mean Rob Wyatt took the board with him. If Rob Wyatt wasn't paid, it makes sense not to hand over the goods. If that's the case and he has the board, Atari doesn't have anything at all (except for plastic shells). What I'm suggesting is that maybe, just maybe, this is an even bigger disaster than anyone currently realises. Having barely-working prototype hardware that they can't get to market any time soon would be an issue... but what if they don't even have any hardware to begin with?

And they're all VCS backers.

So, Taco Bell opened their first store in New Zealand a few weeks back. It's about half an hour from me so I haven't been yet but my brother said the queues are still about half an hour of wait time (though that was just over a week ago now, so it might be better). They're planning to open more soon (hopefully one a bit closer to home), but I'll go check it out next month because, unlike Atari, I know I can get my shitty products from Taco Bell whenever I want without (much) waiting. Plus, you know, tacos. I also have an idea on how to beat Atari to market (not that they'll ever make it that far - it took them almost three years to figure out how to light up an LED), but we'll see if/how that pans out.

Installing Windows on a USB drive is Mission: Impossible, and though it can be done with Linux, I'm not convinced any of these backers realise 1GB USB drives are no longer cutting-edge, nor do I believe they have an inkling of how to download and setup Linux. So, you know, if Fred and co. manage to get USB storage working (it works by default on any modern Linux distro, but I can't help thinking they'll find a way to still screw it up), then the three backers who know how to use it will get some benefit from it before they realise they could have bought a proper computer for the price and get one of those instead. It appears to be an M-key M.2 slot to me, so that would be NVMe. SATA M.2 is old and I don't even think it's being produced any more (though I believe some of the older MacBooks used them, including my own, but Apple's always a special case anyway). Besides, most motherboards never supported SATA M.2, the format never had the large storage sizes and speed that NVMe has, and as you pointed out, it's rather worthless now. If Atari SA used a SATA M.2 slot, the Tacobox would be even more dead in the water than it already is. As for using 2.5" SATA drives over NVMe, there are still legitimate use cases, especially when it comes to price. The faster 500GB NVMe drives are almost double the price of their SATA counterparts, and though there are similarly-priced NVMe drives, the SATA ones tend to go on sale more often. Once you get into the 1TB+ range, NVMe is pretty much double the price, period. Prices are coming down slowly but I wish they'd hurry up already. I had another hard drive fail on me a couple of weeks ago, and that was after I was already done with wanting to use HDDs. Anyway, sorry to get too technical and take it off-topic. The TL;DR is that Atari has basically done everything wrong. But then again, you all knew that already. I am determined to have tacos this week or next though.

Because they don't know what it is. They just think it sounds cool. But really, what I want to know is what blockchain can do for tacos. Surely that's the more important issue here. Well, bootloaders and partitions aren't entirely beginner-friendly (even though they have improved a lot in that regard over the years), so it's entirely possible that they might damage it beyond their abilities to repair it (and considering the level of intelligence some of the VCS faithful have, that "might" is likely to be a "will"). Something else to keep in mind is that their stock OS is already Linux anyway, and as such will likely eat up at least 10GB (you can go lighter with Linux, obviously, but if anyone thinks those goons will do anything but slap Ubuntu or some other Debian derivative on there, stock apps and all, they have another thing coming). Though I hope they just stick an unconfigured Arch Linux on there just to mess with people. Anyway, the NAND/eMMC/whateveryouwanttocallit is 32GB at best, if I recall correctly. If there's a smaller storage size option (don't remember, don't care), that thing is going to be useless without an extra drive. Finally, something not mentioned about the prototype board that I keep forgetting to bring up is that it has an M.2 slot on it. That means your expandable storage must be an M.2 NVMe SSD. Now, I prefer those and try to exclusively use them for storage these days (too many failed HDDs), but they're more expensive than regular SSDs (usually), and significantly more expensive than hard drives. They're also overkill for most users. With no 2.5" drive support, that's already limiting expandability (and making it more costly). And then there's the other slot on the board which looks like a U.2 slot, which you'd use for a wireless card. Which means that they might not even have sourced their networking chips yet, and so it may not even be able to do WiFi and Bluetooth (the latter being required for the controllers) right now... assuming it can even power on, let alone POST or boot an OS. There is no way in hell this will ship in December. Winning the lottery whilst being struck by lightning is more likely.

Batman '66 is better quality than anything modern-day Atari can churn out. Even the continuity errors are higher quality than modern Atari.

Back on topic, I've only ever had standard taco shells - anyone got a killer recipe for those soft wrap-style tacos? I don't believe they're really a thing here like they are in the US. Also, that anyone thinks Atari has the leadtime to get their taco holder out by the end of the year is laughable. They haven't even had regulatory sign-offs yet let alone the plethora of other hurdles they have yet to overcome. Even a company such as Apple couldn't (easily) go from prototype to finished product and completed distribution in two months.

After watching this and the last interview posted with Fred, it seems to me that he's a decent businessman. Sure, what he says is fairly elementary, but he seems to understand marketing and such well enough. My point is that I'm having trouble deciding if he's just a con artist or if he's a scammer and an idiot. The latter seems less likely to me, but the state his company is in certainly doesn't look hot, so maybe I'm wrong. I have to wonder, if he had his own startup focused on something that he seems to be more "passionate" about (such as blockchain), would it be in the red like Atari SA or would he actually do a decent job? Or perhaps the question I should be asking is if he's intentionally doing a bad job for some reason or another. Or maybe he's just an idiot.

Yes and no. As someone pointed out earlier in the thread (sorry, forgot who), if we can prevent even one person from buying into this scam of a dumpster fire, we've helped someone (and hopefully put another nail in Atari SA's rotting coffin). Whilst it'd be nice to avoid it and give them no attention, if it weren't for some of the people in this thread, The Register and even on YouTube spreading the word, there may be more people misled by the taco-brained shell of a company behind this Ponzi scheme. I also wanted to add that, as much as we make fun of people like John Phelan and co. (look at Shawndell Rivers or whatever his name is, always in John's comments), some of them seem to be legitimately slow. Not to be disparaging though - on the contrary, it bothers me that at least some of these hardcore VCS supporters just don't know any better and are being taken advantage of by Atari, something infinitely easier to do if said people are already a few quid short, so to speak. That's just morally wrong. Not that Freddy Boy has any morals to begin with but, you know... I actually feel sorry for some of these people (obviously not including Werner Bros. Inc.). Others (guess who) are clearly just bad people though.

Maybe they'd have more success if it was a taco on the end of their stick?

Hey now, that's unfair. The Tiger Net Jet did better than the Tacobox will ever do. Then again, I bet even the R-Zone did better.

I think Brandon must live in an alternate universe where every day is opposite day.