#ask aetherspoon

[aetherspoon]

Hi total stranger here sorry to jump into your inbox but I saw you mentioned a drive that allowed you to bypass the truly awful 4K uhd settings that I've literally only just heard about?

Oooo, my first ask!

So, I'll post the short version here and the long version under a cut.

The short version is simple - I have a USB UHD (4k) BluRay drive from LG. At the time I bought it, it had firmware that could be upgraded to some unofficial firmware that can avoid that garbage. That drive isn't recommended anymore, which is why I'm not bothering to give you the model number, but if you look at this site:

It will give you the list of drives that ARE recommended for this type of thing. You can even buy some pre-flashed drives from people if you don't want to mess with that.

My drive has worked fine for me, but admittedly I've only used a few UHD discs on it (and a whole lot of normal blu-rays and DVDs).

Now, the longer version is under the cut, including one of my patented totally normal (blatant sarcasm tag here) analogies that still somehow work.

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I'm going to use an analogy here, because that's how I explain tech.

Let's pretend your Blu-Ray (regardless of whether it is UHD/4k or not - see my notes at the end for a fun fact) is a VIP performing at your exclusive club called Blu-Ray Drive. You'd think that, because you own the club, you can watch the VIP perform, right?

Wrong.

You see, the club has a bouncer by the name of AACS. Every VIP insists on one of their bouncers being at the club, deciding who to let in and what they get to do. The bouncer doesn't actually work for you, they work for the VIP, and no VIP will come to your club if you don't have one of their bouncers.

Also, just for more paranoia, every VIP will have its own list of who and what to allow, along with where they're allowed to stand. Each time you have a new VIP come to your club, they give their own list; if the bouncer sees the list is newer, they throw away all of the old lists and only keep the newest one. On top of that, AACS is a nationalist asshole that decided to only allow people from their own country in, because the VIPs want to charge people differently based on their nationality.

The VIPs even require some fancier clubs to have a courier continually delivering them new lists (this is where that UHD/4k Internet connection thing comes from).

All of the stuff you want is inside of that club, but the bouncer won't let you in because you're not on the list (and might not even from the right country). And you can't just sack the bouncer because then no VIP will play at your club.

You heard of another problem at a similar club (Club DVD), where their more local VIPs required them to hire a bouncer named CSS. However, CSS wasn't paid very well, was near sighted, and never bothered to update the list; all of your friends just called themselves "Maria Wang" and CSS let them in. Your VIPs know about that though, so they insist on the updating list thing and giving their bouncers eye exams. So what do you do?

Simple. You call a buddy and they kool-aid man through the back wall of your club shouting OH YEAH!, of course.

This is a completely logical analogy, I know. I should really commission an artist to draw this.

This buddy is called LibreDrive. Your VIPs still have their bouncer - anyone who doesn't know about the secret entrance still goes through the bouncer. The people who do know - including you and your friends - just go through the secret entrance instead. The VIP company is none the wiser.

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Now that my completely logical analogy is over, what does this actually mean tech-wise?

The way DVDs work is by using an encryption technology called CSS. However, in late 1999, someone figured out how to break the encryption, mostly because they did a really lazy job in making it to begin with. This is DeCSS. There were huge lawsuits, poetry made using source code, a whole lot of weird things. Today, we don't even need DeCSS; the encryption on DVDs are so bad that a modern computer can brute force decrypt it in seconds.

Fundamentally, both DVDs and blu-rays work the same way. There is a portion of the disc (DVD or blu-rays) that no drive is allowed to directly read. This contains the encryption information for the rest of the data on the disc. That encryption information is used by the player as to what is and isn't allowed to read the disc and what parts they ARE allowed to read. This is also where region locking comes in, where it checks what region your drive is set to and allows/denies discs to play based on that region; this is called CSS. If you are old enough to remember the bad old days of WinDVD and PowerDVD, those applications had encryption keys allowed by the DVD drive to play back the video content on the drive.

Anyone remember those cheap knock-off "region free" DVD players that used to be really common in the 2000s? They just ignored CSS entirely; the drives themselves can still read all of the data on the disc, it was just CSS telling the drive what it could or couldn't read.

Anyway, the movie studios, seeing their "beautiful creation" get ripped apart like that, wanted to make sure that it didn't happen the same way with their next technology.

Where blu-ray differs from DVDs is how it isn't using CSS at all, but something called AACS instead. It makes this list into a continually updating list; every time your drive (whether it is in a computer or a standalone player!) sees a new disc, it checks that hidden encryption information for a list of what is and isn't allowed to access the drive. If the list on the disc is of a newer version than what the drive currently has in its firmware, the disc will actually flash the firmware of your blu-ray drive with the new allow/deny list. Then it checks again - does the firmware match what the disc has? If so, it continues. If not, it refuses to play no matter what. From there, the rest of the process is basically the same, checking any player for a list of keys allowed to play it. If it sees a key not allowed (say, your ripping software), it says no and stops everything from reading it.

Unlike DVDs with CSS, these keys are actually pretty darn secure... and even if they weren't, studios would just release an updated allow/deny list and suddenly your computer can't rip discs anymore because the latest version of Frozen came out.

UHD (4k) blu-ray players take this one step further and just continually update that allow/deny list across the Internet rather than waiting for new discs to update that allow/deny list. This is why a standalone UHD blu-ray player needs WiFi, by the way. It isn't used for anything else.

So... how to avoid it? You could use a leaked key and basically hope that it isn't updated. This is how most blu-ray ripping software works, which is also why they need continual updating while movie studios play cat and mouse. And with UHD content, that's a really tiny window of time that you can do unauthorized things with the drive.

Remember our surprise tool - the drive itself still has to be able to read everything, it is just AACS stopping us. If we can somehow just get a drive to not care about AACS, we'd have access to everything we care about.

LibreDrive is a custom firmware that basically lets all of the above still happen, but any program aware of LibreDrive can just use it to access the full disc. It acts as an intermediary between the physical drive itself and software on your computer, similar to AACS itself. Like the analogy said, you're kool-aid manning a security hole into the drive's encryption. AACS is still happy because it can still update its firmware allow/deny list, you just bypass AACS entirely. Every byte of data on the blu-ray is accessible to whatever programs know about this security hole, which includes programs like MakeMKV and anything using the open source (and illegalish - see below) LibDriveIo library. Fun fact, you can just copy that library in to VLC and it'll use it.

Unfortunately, you can't just flash LibreDrive onto any drive. Basically, someone needs to be able to read the existing firmware on a drive in order to know what to modify to open up that security hole. This means you need specific drives on specific versions of firmware to flash LibreDrive.

The industry, however, caught on to this. They started requiring drive manufacturers to encrypt their firmware, so some newer revisions of drives that used to work now don't - this is the case with my drive.

And that's... the rest of the story.

Now, my notes:

You know how I said UHD/4k and regular blu-rays work the same? Yeah, it isn't just that they work the same - sometimes they're actually the exact same drive. Some regular blu-ray drives can actually read UHD discs, they're just not allowed to by AACS because "fuck you that's why". LibreDrive can work around that, too.

Illegalish? Well, circumventing copy protection isn't allowed under the US's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), outside of specific scenarios. And the US's copyright laws tend to get copied over to a lot of other countries as a result of the trade deals they make with each other, hence "illegalish". You make your own moral call, my morality says that personal use to rip your own media should have always been legal and I should be able to play a Brazilian version of the Phantom Menace if I want to.

Some additional source reading material: https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18856 for "What is LibreDrive", which explains the same thing I did but without my fun analogy and using more technical terms. It also includes the full list of drive firmware that works with LibreDrive.

[thewhiteboardofkanjisan]

Hmmm...how about 1-30? :-P ["I don't know" is a perfectly valid answer to ones you may not have an answer for yet, and so is guessing.]

Hi @prionailurus​!! :D

1. What’s the first game system ( __ Edition D&D, Rifts, GURPS, Shadowrun, etc.) you ever played?

5th edition D&D! I sat in on a Pathfinder campaign once but didn’t actually get to play.

2. What’s the most recent one you’ve played?

Also 5e!

3. What’s your favorite system?

5eeeeeee

4. Is there a system you’d like to play but haven’t?

I’d like to play Pathfinder so I can try the Oracle class out. I’m also interested in another RPG called In Nomine.

5. Are there any systems you’ve tried and did NOT like?

Haven’t had the chance to try any unsuccessfully!

6. Do you have any house rules for the system(s) you play?

Not really? Mostly we have house-handwaves of certain aspects we’re too nooby to enforce, like spell components and rations, and spell prep. That Pathfinder session I watched left me with a house rule I’d love to implement though, that Barbarians can redo a bad roll by punching the table to “pop” the dice.

7. Do you DM/GM for your group?

Occasionally! In my group, I and two others take turns being the DM. Comparing notes without spoilers is a real thorn in the side.

8. Do you say DM or GM?

DM for D&D. I imagine that GM is more fitting for other systems.

9. Do you have a go-to setting?

If I understand the question right, my group’s running campaign is in an ever-expanding homebrewed world of no name, which canonically has an Austria and a New Orleans. There’s a LOT of misty coastal towns, because that’s in the aesthetic of all three DMs.

10. Have you ever run a game, or do you prefer to just play?

I’ve run three campaigns, and there’s a special magic to running, but I do really like playing and being able to get into character. DMing carries a lot of pressure, too.

11. Do you play with game mats and/or minis?

We have a wet-erase mat we keep forgetting to erase and a small set of minis for the party. NPCs and small monsters are played by Monopoly pieces, big bads are amiibos and other kitsch owned by the DM who hosts at his house.

12. How old were you when you first started gaming?

25 c: I’m new

13. How often does your current gaming group meet up?

Weekly, usually, but sometimes we skip a week or two because of scheduling conflicts.

14. How often would you LIKE to meet up for gaming?

Ideally weekly as a minimum. Twice a week would be rad. A week can be a long time to wait!

15. How long do your gaming sessions tend to be?

4 hours min to 6 max. Anything past 5 and people start to disengage and get sleepy because we start in the evening, because scheduling.

16. How long would you LIKE your gaming sessions to be?

I would love to have all-day games, at least for Big Plot Occurrence sessions. With snacks.

17. Have you tried/had any luck with Roll20?

I’ve been trying to connect with a group on there with no luck thus far. I want to use it to playtest some other characters I’ve brewed up.

18. What’s your preferred gaming beverage?

Whatever beer the host is willing to part with, hehe.

19. What are your preferred gaming snacks?

I don’t really snack, we get dinner during our game sessions. Usually sandwiches or pizza.

20. What are your superstitions or rituals regarding dice?

I named a few of my d20s (Rocky, Misfit, Elf One), and I switch between d20s depending on the task at hand. (Rocky is for strength, Elf one is for charisma, Misfit is for attack rolls, etc) I also have a REALLY SHARP d4 from a high-quality set I bought on sale, which I’ve dubbed the 𝕯4 𝖔𝖋 𝕯𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍 and keep it out for poking people when they have bad gaming etiquette.

Other than that, I mostly just put misbehaving d20s away and switch to my first d20, which rarely lets me down.

21. Do you know anyone with really good/bad/weird dice luck?

Yes! My good friend has NEVER rolled well on initiative in all the times we’ve played. He always rolls 8 or lower.

22. What would you say is your alignment?

Chaotic good, I’d like to think.

23. What is the class you’d like to be?

I’d love to be a bard. Magic and music and charm out the wazoo.

24. What class do you think you’d actually be?

Probably a fighter. I’m good at music, but charming I’m not. Brute strength is where I excel irl. (I do play rugby, after all.)

25. What weapons would you wield? [@thewhiteboardofkanjisan] (It me!)

Sword! I would love to wield any kind of sword.

26. If you could cast one spell, what would it be? [@thewhiteboardofkanjisan​]

Probably Fly, or maybe Polymorph.

27. What school of magic would you specialize in?

Either Divination or Evocation! 

28. If you could have any creature - real or fictional - as a familiar, what would it be? [@thewhiteboardofkanjisan​]

Gonna agree with you, pseudodragon is the WAY TO GO! For a real animal, though, I’d pick a klipspringer antelope or a Honduran white fruit bat.

29. What was your favorite character to play? [@thewhiteboardofkanjisan​]

My currently-only character, Mariya, a CG half-elf ex-acolyte bard loosely based on Maria from The Sound of Music. Over time she’s grown away from the source material in a lot of ways. Depending on what the DM does with Mariya’s backstory, I might give her an alignment shift to LN and heavily multiclass in warlock for the second half of the levels.

30. Do you tend/prefer to play characters of your own gender/orientation?

I’ll shake it up with gender, but my group’s world tends to operate under the rule that Everyone Is Bi Always. One time a plot-hook NPC swapped genders mid-session with no in-world explanation just to make it a little gayer (Landon the lighthouse widower. Poor fellow. That’s a story for another day.)

31(Which I’m adding because I think you sent me the ask before this one got added).   What do you, primarily, get out of roleplaying? That is, is it for fun with your friends, to experiment with being people who you are not, or something else? [@aetherspoon​]

For me, D&D is both freeing and gives me validation I can sometimes miss in real life. I can be things the real world doesn’t allow, but I can also remind myself that Real World Daisy is talented, a good team member, has ideas worth sharing. D&D helped me make it through my final semester of grad school when a really bad semester-long group project was giving me hella anxiety. (I actually wrote an article for the student newspaper about why business students should play D&D. I’ll share it if anyone wants, though my name’s attached to it, but I’ve totes shared that info on here before so it’s nbd!)

[aetherspoon]

There are a couple of things that brought me to my love of geography, history, the various cultures of the world, and the differences between how people grew up. The gameshow of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? is the first of those two things.

Given the premiere date, I think I must have accidentally started catching the show right in the beginning of season 1; I remember watching it when I went to the neighbor next door to my grandparents’ house, and that would have been late 1991. It didn’t take long before my father got me a (pirated) version of the PC game. I was given a legit version of the deluxe game a year or so later.

It was the only thing that made me wish I was still living in New York City (where it was filmed), as it seems young-kid-aetherspoon was extremely good at understanding things like geography. Turns out, young-kid-aetherspoon (along with young-adult aetherspoon and current-day-aetherspoon, for that matter) hyper-focused in geography and history, with this being the first real exposure I had to the former. I loved it SO MUCH and always wished I had been on that show.

After watching the video, all of those memories came flooding back. I even started singing along with the songs that I had long since forgotten! I’m glad to see that there was no behind-the-scenes drama going on, or reasons why my favs were troubling, or anything other than “they messed up once and let the kid back on the next season”.

The second one of those things that brought me to my love of geography, for reference, was December of 1991 when my class put on a school pageant demonstrating the various winter holidays and traditions all throughout the world. We each were given countries of our respective ancestries - being of Irish and Native American* ancestry, I was to cover Ireland and the British Isles. Most of my classmates ended up covering locales in Central and South America, with some covering various other regions in the world that needed additional coverage by my primarily-latinx-or-black class. In addition, I gave the opening lines of Christmas and other Winter Holiday traditions in the pageant, being given a little booklet to say my lines out of instead of memorizing. Turns out, I memorized them anyway based on physical placement (young-adult-aetherspoon used this in theater later), so I memorized a few pages of lines and information and continued on.

My teacher, however, was worried for one student (I want to say her name was Janna?) who had come into class a bit late. She was born in Finland and didn’t know anyone in the class, so my teacher asked me if I was willing to do another country as well, joining Janna on stage during that section. I knew where Finland was on a map (because of watching Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, of course), along with the other countries of Scandinavia, so we covered all of them. I went down to the library to do research (which I’m pretty sure was useless, but the thought counts) on things, and performed in that pageant. 

Holding a candle, experiencing my first bit of pyrophobia in my life, but I performed!

Anyway, I thought I’d throw in a happy memory today for you all, from eight year old me. Yay. * DNA testing later on says this is false, but this was the family belief at the time.