Website hit 20k views!

Today I was happy to find out my website has hit 20k views!
This is quite a milestone and I thank all of you for visiting and showing interest.

Love you all, muahhh!

Fun Paradise V has officially launched!

Fun Paradise V is actually my 6th Minecraft server I am running if I include the very first 'Waterworld'. The official launch was on Monday, November 17th 2014. This time it runs my own custom modpack for Minecraft 1.7.10 with a lot of Magic, Exploration and only a few fun Tech mods. This time PvP outside of the Spawn dimension is allowed, which is a first time we actually have PvP enabled on the server. The modpack is stable enough to play with, although plenty of bugs still need to be fixed by mod developers. Updates will be scheduled every two weeks for now.

More info can be found on the forum.
If you wish to join, just contact me ;-)

Streaming poker with/without using delay - The options.

    Ever wondered how to approach Live streaming poker without others taking advantage of it? Stream sniping or 'ghosting' is something you might be worried about. Totally understandable, because you do not want others to watch your stream and see your cards and take advantage of it.

    Well, there are basically three options:

• Cover up! With the streaming software you use, you basically screen-capture a picture or something to cover your hole cards. Simple as that. You can still see them, but on the outputting stream they are covered.
• Pro: No delay at all, direct interaction with your audience
• Con: Might not be interesting to watch, since viewers see nothing and have to guess. You could still explain of course with re-plays of your hands, removing the 'cover' or possibly use an other scene or screen-capture.
• Full delay! Most streaming software like OBS or XSplit has the possibility to add delay to the full stream output. Audio delay adjustment is also possible. However, it is most likely that you can not add delay to the captured video sources alone, keeping the audio sort of 'real time' for viewer interaction as well as the 'face cam' if used in that case.
• Pro: You have full delay enough to prevent stream sniping (2-4 mins. usually). This is mostly done and is actually interesting to watch and learn from.
• Con: Interaction with the viewers using mic (and cam) is delayed as well, making it hard. The text chat next to the video on most streaming sites should still be without any significant delay. So typing for more direct interaction can then be an option.
• Separated delay! With VLC (love it), possibly other software or even hardware like some capture cards, you are capable of delaying the video source(s) while adding no delay to other sources like mic or cam. This way the game you play can be delayed for stream, while the audio/cam is still more or less 'live'. With VLC you basically choose your Video source (or even Audio source if you wish), set the framerate (usually 30 or 60 fps) and set the delay in milliseconds. You then play that source within VLC and capture that VLC source from within your streaming software :-)
• Pro: Now your game is delayed, preventing stream sniping, while still being able to have full live interaction with your audience using your mic/cam.
• Con: Takes getting used to, since you now have the delay yourself when commentating the game you play. Actions you do in-game take time to show for your audience, before you can actually commentate 'live' on it. Many streamers however have a separate computer/device to monitor the stream, making this a bit easier.

Hope this is useful for some of you out there, have fun!

Viewbotting

    For a long time I have been wanting to explain, give some insight and share my opinion on viewbotting. Considering I have been live streaming on and off for about 7 years on several different websites like Ustream, Justin TV, Twitch and Hitbox I have seen it start, adapt and sadly enough grow very popular over the last few years. In this post my main focus will be on Twitch, because that's where I had my most recent experiences, with Twitch being the world leading live online streaming service at the moment and having been part of their community for over 2 years. Viewbotting is however certainly not limited to Twitch, it happens with other streaming services as well, just to make that very clear. With coding being one of my hobbies and a history with companies involving security in online gambling, I can clearly see how viewbotting is being done. I am however amazed to see how even the biggest streaming service fails to implement security measurements to prevent this from happening. Although this makes me wonder why, lets not forget this is the internet, full of money hungry people making multi millions of dollars go round and plenty want a piece of it. As long as complaints can be kept to an acceptable minimum and the big companies get their fair share this is probably going to be 'tolerated' for a long time. The majority is ignorant and the internet is shady as fuck, who gives a shit, enjoy the ride!

Muted VoDs Twitch

    On August 13th I posted about a way to grab any muted VoDs directly from Twitch's source servers where the audio was still saved with the video. The method used a simple json script provided by the Twitch API itself to get the direct link from the content servers. Things have changed a bit since August 6th and that method no longer works to get VoDs with the audio included. Twitch simply removes the audio completely from the stored video. Similar method to watch any live stream (as well as VoD) in VLC still works however and includes all of the encoding options (audio, source, high, low, medium and mobile).
    I don't really care much about Twitch anymore but I was still curious what happened to the audio on muted VoDs, so I decided to briefly look into it once more. Twitch simply can't just delete the audio part since they might get a legit appeal to reinstate the audio in case it had been falsely flagged by Audible Magic's software. Even though I can kind of understand why Twitch would remove the audio from the publicly available content servers, the audio must still be stored somewhere in case they are forced to undo their actions. Well, I can assure you that the audio is still stored separately for limited duration (14-60 days) and can easily be re-added to the video. This is all part of the new VoD system Twitch implemented and actually not even all that hard to achieve. However, the way to get the audio yourself is tricky to say the least. The old method was easy and would not get me into any kind of trouble. Methods to retrieve the audio now however requires a lot more skill and ways I doubt I can get away with. I spent a few hours looking into Audible Magic's code as well as Twitch's implementation and ways they store video after being 'flagged' and came to the conclusion it is most likely possible, but I am NOT interested in actually trying to prove it can actually be done. A few hours spent well to be honest though, since I learned a lot ;-), but as much as I dislike Twitch, I am not a hacker, it's not worth my time and I am certainly not going there. I'll leave it at that ... I suggest you either abide by Twitch's ToS making sure you have all rights for the audio, record locally to not rely on Twitch's terms, or to find another service to stream your content. If you insist however, I bet someone will eventually figure it out for you. Happy hunting :-)