xeross@alfa ~ [ ping thepiratebay.org
PING thepiratebay.org (194.71.107.50) 56(84) bytes of data.
^C
--- thepiratebay.org ping statistics ---
140 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 139003ms

At this moment in time I have no new information on the appeal and where it stands at the moment. Also all ISPs that BREIN has sent requests to to block The Pirate Bay have refused and are awaiting the appeal.

Sources/related links:

• TorrentFreak: Dutch Pirate Bay Blockade Goes Live
• TorrentFreak: Dutch ISPs Refuse To Block The Pirate Bay
• TorrentFreak: Dutch ISPs Ordered To Block The Pirate Bay

After this victory BREIN is also trying to get other ISPs to also block The Pirate bay, using the court ruling as leverage. However these will wait to see if XS4ALL and/or Ziggo will appeal, before going through such drastic measures.

The following IP addresses and domain names are ordered to be blocked (Source: Tweakers.net):

Stichting BREIN has also been given permission to supply additional IP addresses and domain names to be added to the blockade, which is worrying as they can be added without any proper review of what is being blocked, however they are held liable if IP addresses or domain names they provide aren’t directing to The Pirate bay.

Something Interesting

One thing of particular interest is that Stichting BREIN had to prove that people using XS4ALL and Ziggo as their ISPs are using The Pirate Bay. To do this they sampled 50 movie torrents. This gave them 11,105 IPs exchanging the movies, of which 5,143 Dutch IPs of which in turn 1,477 (28,7%) are Ziggo IPs and 240 (4,7%) are XS4ALL IPs. However it is unclear if this sample provides an accurate average.

Then, to determine how many people using these ISPs have downloaded from The Pirate Bay they extrapolated the results, using data from AdPlanner (Note that it isn’t very that accurate), which estimates the amount of unique visitors from the Netherlands per month at 500,000. This leads to an estimate of 143,500 Ziggo customers and 23,500 XS4ALL customers that supposedly exchange copyrighted material through TPB. Note that they are extrapolating IPs collected from trackers on torrent downloads with website visits, while they are unrelated.

The judge based on this concurred that 30% of Ziggo customers and 4.5% of XS4ALL customers have recently downloaded illegal material from The Pirate Bay. This is crooked because the torrents could’ve come from someplace else, the material isn’t necessarily copyrighted (Free and open source software, and alike). Plus downloading movies and music both aren’t illegal in the Netherlands, which is completely ignored, partially because BREIN asserted that, even though you can disable uploading, no one actually does this.

Updates

January the 11th 2012: XS4ALL has officially announced to appeal the court ruling, their CEO stating the court ruling is “Censorship” and that this is “A dark day in internet history”
January the 12th 2012: Ziggo has also officially announced to appeal the ruling.

Further Reading:

• https://torrentfreak.com/dutch-isps-ordered-to-block-the-pirate-bay-120111/
• http://www.cyberguerrilla.info/?p=3778
• (Dutch) http://tweakers.net/nieuws/79266/ziggo-en-xs4all-moeten-the-pirate-bay-blokkeren.html
• (Dutch) http://tweakers.net/reviews/2446/brein-vs-punt-pirate-bay-internet-naar-de-haaien.html
• Stichting BREIN being hypocritical idiots: https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-corruption-scandal-surrounds-anti-piracy-campaign-111201/

So they don’t support SOPA? No, they do support it, as they’re all members of the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) which supports SOPA as can be seen in the official list of supporters (Mirror).

If you want to check whether a tech company is supporting SOPA don’t forget to look at the list of members of the ESA and the BSA (Business Software Alliance) who also support SOPA.

The vulnerability lies in the hashing algorithms used by a variety of programming languages (including Python, Ruby, PHP and Java). When collisions happens these algorithms will take up large amounts of CPU cycles to deal with them (From what I understand).

To give you an idea of the extent of this problem I’ll quote the PDF linked in the advisory, take for example PHP:

On an i7 core, the 60 seconds take a string of multi-collisions of about 500k. 30 seconds of CPU time can be generated using a string of about 300k. This means that an attacker needs about 70-100kbit/s to keep one i7 core constantly busy. An attacker with a Gigabit connection can keep about 10.000 i7 cores busy.

Or Ruby:

A typical POST size limit in Ruby frameworks is 2 MB, which takes about 6 hours of i7 CPU time to parse. Thus, an attacker with a single 850 bits/s line can keep one i7 core busy. The other way around, an attacker  with a Gigabit connection can keep about 1.000.000 (one million!) i7 cores busy.

This allows someone to take down almost any webserver with (very) limited resources. Possible workarounds are: limiting CPU time, limiting the POST size, or limiting the maximum amount of POST variables.

I’m currently waiting for the first PoCs and exploits to be published and will post an update when I get my hands on one (Which will also confirm if I understand the exploit correctly).

Update: I can see how this will ruin your day

Update 2: Go here for an easy to understand explanation.

Just today (The 25th of December) the counter is standing on 28,656 domains transferred out as seen on DailyChanges, and the amount just keeps climbing, day after day more and more domains are being transferred away.

GoDaddy has now retracted their public support for SOPA but the damage has been done, not to forget that they helped write SOPA, not just support it. I have no idea how long this will keep going and how many people will move away but it’s gonna hurt (It’s already hurting actually). GoDaddy is even begging for people to stay.

I’m sure more companies will face the wrath of the public because of their SOPA support, and various companies are already retracting their support for it, some companies never even explicitly supported SOPA “they agreed with Floyd Abrams’ analysis of SOPA. That’s it. They didn’t say their firms supported SOPA”.

Merry #LulzXmas to everyone http://imagebin.org/190224 Stratfor rooted. All your base are belong to us. <3 #Anonymous

This tweet just went out from the @AnonymousIRC Twitter account (First occurance of the tweet I could find), a mirror of the defacement can be found on Zone-H. The Stratfor website is down as I write this.

Stratfor is a large private intelligence corporation having fortune 500 companies and international intelligence agencies as their clients (source). A full list of clients can be found here.

Edit: there’s also this:

Over 90,000 Credit cards from LEA, journalists, intelligence community and whitehats leaked and used for over a million dollars in donations

- By @AnonymouSabu

So one million dollars from compromised credit cards, from what I can understand of later tweets they only used corp execs credit cards, who wont feel it that hard in their pockets, but not sure if I’m very fond of this action.

The Video Posted

‘Twas the night before Caturday, closed were the pools
Vids of Saint Rickrollas posted by trolls
I, in my Guy Fawkes mask, her, licking my sack,
Had decided to hate people of skin coloured black
I heard a loud CRASH and put down my liquor
Was our home being robbed… by a nigger?
I threw open the door and who should I see
But Raptor Jesus eating a baby
Sweet Raptor Jesus, the Almighty Reptile
Was clutching an uzi, looking hostile
“O Raptor Jesus!” I fell to my knees
He undid his pants and yelled, “Bitch, suck on THESE!”
Within moments his sacred love juice came a-gushing
But it was not gay, for our balls were not touching
“Where is your god now?” he said with a grin
Blessed dino spooge dripping from my chin
“I don’t GIVE gifts,” he explained to me
“I offer a system of barter, you see”
He did up his pants and pulled out a bag
Full of win, torrents, and hentai mags
Pedobear plushies! Codes that trip!
/d/elicious caek! Handmade Mudkips!
He gave me my gifts: a bottle of lube
And a Weighted Companion Cube
“Your girlfriend,” he asked, “Is she hot?”
She appeared in the doorway; he yelled “JACKPOT!”
He stretched out her vag, once tight and narrow
in exchange for copypasta with oregano
We smiled and waved as he went on his way
Knowing that, in nine months, my girlfriend would pay
As he ventures through the night, Raptor Jesus sings
“This is why we can’t have nice things.”

- Credits go to whomever wrote this fine piece of art.

They were playing doctor, he, the girl and her brother. The mother says she found her daughter with her skirt and underpants around her ankles and the boy sitting underneath her penetrating her with his finder. Yet the girl herself says he only touched her on the outside of her body. There’s also an unconfirmed claim that would explain why the boy saw this as “What doctors do”, as that he apparently had some sort of (ongoing) medical condition that required rectal examinations.

This all is blown out of proportion thanks to the girl’s father being some kind of well known political figure in Grant County. Perhaps someone went powermad and this is the result.

Although the boy, now 7, is too young to be prosecuted or named in a juvenile delinquency petitition, Madison.com reports, county officials are using the felony charge to force his parents into accepting “protection or services” for him. The lawsuit says that once he turns 18, he will be listed as a sex offender.

Apparently the person prosecuting has a severe lack of logical reasoning, not only is this kid way too young to even know what sexual assault is but is now also psychologically damaged thanks to this whole ordeal.

The boy, who is now 7 and has a developmental disability, has been diagnosed with stress disorders that medical professionals attribute to the defendants’ actions, according to the suit. He has experienced fear of going to jail, as well as anxiety, depression, sleepless nights, vomiting, crying and missed school time.

Luckily the boy’s parents are suing and trying to get Lisa Riniker (The D.A. that charged the boy) dismissed from her position as D.A, plus to dismiss any charges against him.

Sources/Links:

• Long detailed article about this case and the counter-case
• Brief article of the parents suing the D.A.
• Summary/Overview on the SomethingAwful forums

HOIC (High Orbit Ion Cannon) attacks were started on the main site but proved to be unsuccessful, after a while SlowLoris was suggested which was used on the 9GAG store with success, taking it down for an hour.

Joining and voting were turned off shortly after the attack started, so we lost that method of attack.

Note that this was only the initial strike, plans are being forged and executed as we speak, this isn’t a one-shot operation, this is an extended campaign.

Join us on irc://irc.anonops.li/op9gag

Update: The 9GAG store has been taken offline completely, the link is removed from the website and its URL apparently also redirects to their main website.

Balancing/Tweaks

Crafting/Related

Graphics

Other

------
Xeross
------
Dox:
    Name: Justin Brunk
    Born: December 2nd 1992
    Location: Noord-Brabant, Netherlands
    E-Mail: trutherton@wehaslinks.com

Computer:
    IP: 94.210.96.100 (5ED26064.cm-7-3b.dynamic.ziggo.nl)
    OS: Fedora

Profiles:

http://twitter.com/Xeross

http://twitpic.com/photos/Xeross

http://stackoverflow.com/users/327687/xeross

http://www.youtube.com/user/Xeross

http://steamcommunity.com/id/xeross155

Sites:

http://theelitist.net/

Notes:
    Gay furry programmer (literally) that wears Guy Fawkes masks to parties
    Still plays pokemon on gameboy
    Writes WoW fanfiction ( http://theelitist.net/the-battle-for-undercity )
    Dox confirmed by reddit, website

- Source

This was posted quite a while ago (1-2 months I think), but I didn’t have the time to write a response.

Now they’ve been moderately accurate, but I can’t help but feel for the poor sod(s) whose name/email address was used in this document. The name Justin Brunk was obtained from the YouTube account Xeross which as you might’ve guessed isn’t me, I’ll help them along a bit by pointing to my Youtube Account.

Next up, the email address I have no idea where they got that from, perhaps they wanted to bother whomever is managing WeHasLinks.com. Also interesting is that they deem Reddit a reliable source for dox.

The last discrepancy there is to point out is that I supposedly wear Guy Fawkes masks to parties, I don’t, the photos they’re talking about were of some guys we ran across at Reverze  2011 who indeed did wear Guy Fawkes masks.

Anyway, thanks for the laugh BR1CKSQU4D, try harder next time

~Xeross the gay furry programmer

$this->forward(sfConfig::get('sf_secure_module'), sfConfig::get('sf_secure_action'));

To set the HTTP status code to 403 you would use (Again from the controller):

$this->getContext()->getResponse()->setStatusCode(403);

This should give you a 403 response with the configured permission/access denied page.

Note: I haven’t worked with Symfony a lot so there might be a better way, yet I haven’t been able to found one, if there’s a better way, let me know in the comments!

Anyway, as I’ve been searching for a way to revert to 1.1 without having the files myself and having finally found these files I wanted to share them, and thank the people that uploaded them, so without further ado:

• Instructions + files
• Direct link to the files
• Mirror

The services database has been obtained by the hacker(s), this includes nickserv passwords, memo’s and channel passwords. The passwords were hashed, but if you used  a short or weak password it has probably already been found.

AnonOps has already started dropping nickserv registrations as a precautionary measure, so you’ll have to re-register. Also for the people that have re-used the password they used on AnonOps, I suggest you change those passwords ASAP.

~Xeross

Installation

Installation went quite smoothly, I extracted all the files into the Skyrim folder with Phoenix  (Probably not the proper way but it worked). Running the Steam pre-load after this only took about 10-20 minutes, verifying data and downloading anything missing.

Graphics & Animation

I can’t say anything other than that the graphics simply look great, they aren’t the pinnacle of textures/graphics quality, but the style is consistent and it’s up to par with today’s standard.

The feel/style has changed quite a lot since Oblivion. Skyrim feels more like Morrowind to me, everything is a darker and more serious compared to Oblivion. This isn’t bothersome though, for me it makes Skyrim more immersive and I prefer it over the “happy happy” graphics in Oblivion.

However the animations are still behind compared to other games, Bethesda has been known to not always be up to par with other games and this game is no exception. The most bothersome thing is that the facial expressions (Well the lack thereof). Next to that there are some small clipping issues but those aren’t that bothersome.

Sound/Music

I can’t say much about this, the music is solid (produced by Jeremy Soule so no surprise there), and the sounds, well I can’t really judge them, they fit.

Combat

The combat system has been changed compared to Oblivion, you can now equip an item/spell per hand and attack with either using the left or right mouse-button. And when you dual-wield spells (needs a perk in the specified tree) the resulting cast is more powerful.

There are also satisfying finishing moves, kind of similar to some of the Deadly Reflex finishing moves in Oblivion, however without any limbs actually being separated.

Controls/UI

The controls work good, not many complaints, though not all key bindings are properly configurable.

There’s some small annoyances with the UI, if you change a keyboard shortcut the old key will still show in the UI, and if you want to hotkey things you need to add them to a favourites list first, then open that list, and use that to assign hotkeys to them.

Levelling System

The levelling system has been changed again from Oblivion, and they’ve simplified it. You don’t pick a class in the beginning, so no minor/major skills, and no birth-signs either. The total amount of skills has also been reduced to 18.

Instead of having major/minor skills help you level up, all skills will help you. And instead of the old attribute system you now choose whether you want to improve your magicka, health or fatigue, and you get a point to put into a perk for a skill (Which gives you all kinds of bonuses for that skill).

Quests

I’ve only played a handful of quests, so I can’t speak for the quests as a whole, but the ones I did complete play I enjoyed. The quests on average feel more interesting than the ones in Oblivion. There’s the “Radiant quest” system they implemented that is supposed to make quests more dynamic but as this is my first playthrough I can’t judge how that works.

Other Changes

A list of some other changes:

• Lockpicking now uses the system that was also used in Fallout 3
• No barter when trading (discounts depend on speech level/perks)
• Persuade/intimidate/bribe/brawl dialogue options like in Fallout 3 (The Oblivion disposition system is gone)

Conclusion

Even though the animations could use some improvements, and even though they simplified the levelling system I am still very much impressed by this game, and at the moment I consider it just as good as, and perhaps even better than Oblivion. So if you enjoyed Oblivion and/or Morrowind I can definitely recommend this.

People visiting from the EU should experience reduced load times (Statistics show +/- 500ms saved), and for US people it probably loads slower (Or BuyVM was so slow that it still loads just as fast).

I still need to set-up our caching server so you aren’t waiting for PHP to do its business.

Tag Clean-up

I also just went through the entire tag list, renaming tags, removing tags that were too generic and re-assigning some, and with this I also fixed some mistakes in various posts.

I also noticed tags aren’t showing on posts, and because of the clean-up they’re actually useful now, so I’ll also need to correct that in the future.

~Xeross

This week has primarily been a “Get 3 hours of sleep a day and catch up on wednesday” week, coffee helps with it too. It’s unhealthy as fuck but at least I feel like I can actually do the stuff I want to.

~Xeross

Just after work I get a text “You can now pick-up your pre-order for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” so I race to the games retailer and pick it up. I arrive home and eagerly insert the disk into my computer. But not before unplugging the internet and setting the date to 11-11-11 (Risk reduction and all).

So insert the disk, fire up the installer, click “Install”…

Steam pops-up “Cannot connect to Steam servers”, FUCK! Set my date back to normal, and enabled the nets again, connect to Steam enter serial “Game activated” it says, “Click next to download”, so I press buttan…

“ERROR: Can’t install, not released yet” great, okay, unplug internet, kill ALL the steam processes, punch date forward to 11-11-11 again. Relaunch Steam, fire up the installer again, well FUCK! again, seems it isn’t fooled this easily.

So yeah I now have the physical disk, I can see the fucking files on the disk god damned, yet I can’t play.

Yes yes I know today is not the release date, but if I have a physical disk I want to fucking use it, even though the retailer shouldn’t even have started handing them out yet.

So now we wait, well we won’t wait, well be kicking Mehrunes Dagon’s ass for the coming 2 days, after that, dragons beware.

Installing From DVD

As Dragoon48 pointed out in the comments, this is how you can install it from DVD

Updates

Update (10/Nov/11 22:44): the game is now pre-loaded, the waiting game begins…

Update (11/Nov/11 0:22): ”Approx. 1 hour remaining”

Update (11/Nov/11 1:03): Decrypting…

Update (11/Nov/11 1:04): Installing pre-reqs…

Update (11/Nov/11 1:08): Aaaaand we’re in!

I’ve been reading dozens and dozens of stories about people having issues with Battlefield 3: getting triple billed, unable to activate or unable to join games. These are all serious problems and I hope that EA fixes them and prevents them in the future Knowing EA the prevention wont happen), however you only ever hear the bad stories.

In my case I bought Battlefield 3 on Friday, went home, downloaded and installed it. Launched Battlelog, joined a server and started playing. Servers are a bit glitchy left and right, and sometimes lag a bit but other than that it’s smooth sailing.

I really hope everyone that is having problems gets them resolved ASAP. I figured I’d also show that it isn’t fucked up for everyone.

~Xeross

However now they are firing 20% of their staff because of their continued fuck-ups. And during a stroke of brilliance someone decided that they should fire part of the community team (Which includes Fallout, Wrangler, Zymurgist and Pann).

Regardless of who is getting fired, this is a difficult time for both the people fired and the people that have to tell them the news. However it is just stupid that they are firing people that are doing a good job, and that were responsible for communicating with the playerbase. Not to forget that this is a PR failure as, logically, the community team is well known by, well, the community.

I regained hope, and felt like CCP finally got their shit together, but now I just realized they’ll never, and that they’ll continue to make shitty decisions.

To Fallout, Wrangler, Zymurgist, Pann, Maidensteel and everyone else that got laid off. I wish you the best of luck, may you find a new (And hopefully similarly/moor awesome) job.

~Xeross

I’m happy I could resume working at my old internship, so it’s the same team, I do the same things, and I’m getting paid \o/

Well figured I’d just give this quick update.

Xeross out.

It also has a physical keyboard which makes writing large amounts of text a lot easier than using an on-screen keyboard, so perhaps I can now start writing blog posts whilst on the bus, etc.

~Xeross

I finally have Battlefield 3 Beta working, it turned out to be a bug with folder names containing an è, apparently characters with accents aren’t well liked.

Regardless, the fix:

1. Go to the folder where Origin installed BF3 Beta, this is usually:
   32bit: C:\Program Files\Origin Games
   64bit: C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games
2. Rename the Bèta Battlefield 3 folder to Beta Battlefield 3
3. Start regedit , browse to the following key:
   32bit: HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SOFTWARE\EA Games
64bit: HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WoW6432Node\EA Games
4. Change the InstallDir path to:
   C:\Program Files\Origin Games\Beta Battlefield 3
5. Change the GDFBinary path to the following, while keeping the stuff after the last \ intact (the last bit starts with GDFBinary and ends with .dll):
   C:\Program Files\Origin Games\Beta Battlefield 3
So in my case that would be
   C:\Program Files\Origin Games\Beta Battlefield 3\GDFBinary_en_US.dll


Source: http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-3/1432752-win7-x64-bf3-exe-crash-fix.html

NOTE: I have not been able to verify the 32bit values so they might be incorrect, a solution if you can’t find the registry key is to search for “Battlefield 3” and check if the location is similar to the above ones.

Lemme know if it works

Today during the “Solidarity March” protesters were kettled by the NYPD, and they’ve been (and still are) arresting people one by one, seemingly at random (Including children/teenagers), looking at the live feed I can see no reason for the arrests, people are just standing there getting picked off one by one. Now the real reasons are unknown so I can not comment on whether these are lawful or not.

I also can’t help but think that this is a strange coincidence; the arrests of (mostly) harmless protesters (protesting against the banks) and the biggest donation to the NYPD in their history (by one of those banks).

The livestream (well it was live, their battery went dead as I’m writing this, currently previously recorded footage is played) currently has 20,000+ viewers and is still increasing rapidly, the people are watching.

If the NYPD ignored the whole thing and acted rationally rather than randomly arresting and macing people this would’ve gotten nowhere near the attention it is now getting, so I guess we have to thank them for that.

TL;DR/Just Facts Version

NYPD received $4.6 million donation from JP Morgan (Update: At the beginning of 2010), press release (mirror) states “the largest donation in the history of the foundation”

Protesters were kettled (contained/corralled) during the “Solidarity March” and are one by one arrested for an as of yet unknown reason.

Livestream has over 20,000, growing rapidly, the world is watching.

Follow #OccupyWallstreet On

• Twitter
• Livestream
• Unofficial official website
  

Update: It seems that JP Morgan has changed the statement on their website, the image mirror I put up is the original message

I recalled that I experimented with message queues before with various pieces of other software and that a message queue might just provide the functionality that’s similar to hook.io that I wanted.

So after some researching I decided to settle on RabbitMQ, it’s fast, simple to set-up and has a nice status/admin plugin that is helpful both during development and a live environment.

I also decided to use Gevent for this rewrite rather than Twisted which I’ve always used for my previous bots. Sure asynchronous code can be written clearly, but the clarity and ease-of-use of blocking/synchronous code is just way better in my opinion. And with Gevent I can write synchronous code (And use blocking libraries) and it’ll make them async in the background (Thanks to how Python generators work).

The basic functionality version of the new bot is finished, I currently have a few node types (Processes with a certain task) implemented:

• A proxy: this just connects to an IRC server, registers and pushes any packets onto the message queue (And listens for packets to send too), so now rebooting the bot won’t make it close all connections.
• A client: does the actual IRC interaction and hands the proxy packets to send to the server.
• A logger: simply outputs all messages sent between the nodes
• A command line interface: a simple command line application that implements some basic IRC commands (PRIVMSG, JOIN, PART) to send to the client manually

It’s all very basic, the proxy and client need to be changed so that they manage multiple IRC servers, a management node will be implemented that will orchestrate everything and plugins, etc. will also be their own nodes.

Some might say this is over-engineering, I’d call it flexibility and reliability. It does what I want and it does it in a clean effective fashion. Not to forget I learn more about using message queues which seem to be gaining popularity lately.

This is still long from being a working functional IRC bot but I already feel like I am making a cleaner and more organized start, and hopefully this will be the first one that actually runs in production fairly smoothly.

~Xeross

As I’ve lately got a preference for Battlefield over Call of Duty I was quite excited when I heard that there was an open beta for Battlefield 3.

So after downloading Origin and letting it install Battlefield 3 I fired it up, and it opened a website, okay not what I prefer for finding a match but it’ll do.

So I go find a random server with room and hit the join button, okay my mouse shows the loading graphic. Ok good origin says it’s starting Battlefield 3. Okay bf3.exe in task manager… poof, gone.

It seems in my case Battlefield decided that it will just crash during start-up, doesn’t even go beyond 30MB of RAM usage so it’s crashing really early in its start-up phase.

I updated my drivers, reinstalled it and rebooted my computer, nothing, and considering this is really a minimal windows install (Only games + game related software) it seems highly unlikely my OS install is the problem.

This is a shame as I was quite excited for it after watching some gameplay footage and commentaries.

Well guess I’ll try again sometime soon when it’s fixed, hopefully this is before the beta ends.

~Xeross

Update: fixed it!

Now it’s a matter of waiting until actually getting the degree (The physical object), I should be getting a letter about it in the mail somewhere around next week.

So on monday I will start searching for a part-time job to get a bit of money in to cover for expenses (Primarily health insurance), think I’ll be aiming for max 2-3 days of work a week, that should suffice for my expenses yet give me enough room for own/freelance projects.

~Xeross

What is Schemaverse?

Schemaverse is a space-based strategy game (SPAECSHIPZ!!) that runs completely in a PostgreSQL database. So when you create an account it gets created on the PostgreSQL server and you connect to that server to play.

Currently the actual gameplay is (in my opinion) quite limited, but still interesting enough and it gives you a chance to improve your SQL skills.

Tics

Schemaverse’s universe works on tics, each tic is roughly 60 seconds long and every tick the following things happen:

• Every ship moves based on the ships direction, speed and destination coordinates.
• All fleets run their fleetscript#() function if they have it enabled and have a runtime of at least 1 minute.
• Mining happens for all ships who ran the mine() command this tic.
• Some planets randomly have their fuel increased.
• Any damage/repair that occurred during the tic is committed to the ship table.
• Any ships that have been reduced to 0 health for the same amount of tics as the EXPLODED variable (currently 60 tics or approximately 1 hour) are set to destroyed.

Scripting

What makes this game (even more) interesting is that it actually allows and encourages you to write AI for fleets using PL/pgSQL code.

This allows you to for example write a script that automatically creates new ships, upgrades their mining capability and assigns them to a planet, repeating this every tick.

Open-source

Yep, Schemaverse is open source, and the entire source code is available on GitHub.

Security

Of course when you are running an entire game in an SQL server there’s the tricky task of preventing SQL injection.

A previous exploit for example was that you could execute any SQL query as a privileged user by injecting the SQL into the ship name, and then triggering a notification to be generated for that ship. Finding new exploits is encouraged, as there’s a trophy for SQL injections that you can only get by using such an exploit to add it to your list of trophies.

Okay where do I start?

You start by creating an account on schemaverse.com and then you can either use the basic webinterface to get you started, or you can use the command line PostgreSQL client and/or your favourite PostgreSQL utility (Navicat, etc.)

For more info on how to play currently the most up-to-date and complete guide is this PDF next to that there’s also the Schemaverse Wiki on GitHub.

NOTE: One small correction with regards to above guides, the event query should use READ_EVENT(id) not READ_EVENT(event_id).