https://blog.k3can.us/index.xml

Can IPv6 play a role in resisting internet censorship?

Background

Earlier this week a user on the Fediverse noticed that a website titled “w-social.eu,” recently went offline. Looking into its records, it appears that w-social.eu was a small typo-squatting website that encouraged visitors to use Mastodon if they wanted a free, trusted, and transparent social media service, instead of the highly controversial and intentionally anti-privacy platform, “W”.

Using historical DNS records, however, I was able to find that the site was actually still alive; it was only the domain name itself that was taken down. In other words, the site still existed, but you couldn’t use the w-social.eu name to get to it.

The most likely explanation here is that whomever registered the w-social domains (there were a handful of tlds) were either asked by the real “W” to sell the domain, or were threatened with some sort of legal action. From a business standpoint, this would make sense; users will be W’s product, so every user who decides to use an alternative service will be money that W doesn’t get.

Importance of DNS

The internet that most people interact with relies on a service known as Domain Name Service (DNS). The service itself is multilayered, but to simplify, DNS connects the dots between (“resolves”) a human-friendly domain name, like Google.com, and its computer friendly IP address, like 142.251.40.238.
As humans, it’s much easier for us to share a word or name than a series of seemingly random numbers, and DNS is the most common way to connect the two. If you’re old enough to remember phone books, DNS is like the phonebook for the internet, matching names to numbers.

DNS is incredibly important; in fact, if you connect to a wifi network on a smartphone but the phone cannot complete a DNS request on the network, it will typically tell you that the network does not have internet access at all. Many times, this can be an outright lie, but because we rely so heavily on DNS, it might as well be true.

Here, a user tried to access w-social.eu and concluded that “the site must be down” because the DNS request failed. This is the response nearly every internet user would have in this situation, but it’s not always an accurate conclusion. In this case, the server was still fully functioning, but because DNS did not resolve the domain name, it might as well have been gone entirely.

DNS and internet censorship

Shutting down a server is difficult, even for Law Enforcement. If you have access to the DNS records, though, seizing/poisoning the domain name is much easier and accomplishes nearly the same thing. In the US, this is most frequently seen when federal Law Enforcement seizes a domain which was previously being used for serious illegal activity, like human trafficking or sharing Metallica mp3s. In those cases, the DNS record is updated to point to a server run by a federal agency and anyone who attempts to visit the site is greeted by a page like this:

The original webpage might still be publicly available on a server somewhere, but because the DNS link was broken, the page has, for most practical purposes, ceased to exist.

This same process can theoretically be used to effectively censor any website. In the US, speech (including written expression online) is considered a fundamental human right and is explicitly protected by the constitution. These same protections do not always exist in other areas of the world, however, and many countries utilize censorship for far less ethical reasons. In the EU, European Parliament passed the Digital Services Act in 2022 which requires the censorship of content deemed to be “misinformation”. Germany passed the Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz in 2017 making online insults and, again, “misinformation” potentially illegal. Many middle-eastern countries censors LBGT content or content that displays women as equal to men. The list goes on.

For a large site like Google, instead of relying on DNS, you could bookmark the IP address itself (142.251.40.238) and ignore DNS entirely. For a smaller site, like this blog, however, the same technique won’t work for long. Because there are more servers than there are IPv4 addresses, many of these addresses get recycled and re-used. The DNS record for “blog.k3can.us” actually needs to get periodically updated as the IPv4 address of my server changes (known as “dynamic” DNS). This is done automatically with a small computer script, but it means that accurate DNS records are VERY important. When you try to connect to “blog.k3can.us”, it should always work because you’ll always get the current IP address. On the other hand, if you bookmarked this blog’s IPv4 address, 74.69.228.165, that bookmark would no longer work; that IP address is now assigned to someone else. This makes smaller sites particularly vulnerable to DNS-based censorship (even accidentally). If the DNS records of k3can.us were tampered with, there would be no practical way for you to reliably reach this site over IPv4.

IPv6

While IPv4 addresses ran out long ago, IPv6 addresses are expected to last for centuries (granted, the same was assumed about IPv4 40 years ago). Here’s the IPv6 address for this blog: 2601:188:cb7c:5585:be24:11ff:fe84:d47c. While IPv6 is far more difficult for a human to read and parse, it does make address recycling unnecessary1, meaning that IPv6 addresses typically remain static, even for small, self-hosted servers. With IPv6, you could record the IP address of your favorite website and then continue to access it even if the DNS record was out-of-date, removed or re-directed. For example, this command will fetch this blog post without requiring any DNS requests2:

curl --ipv6 -k --header 'Host: blog.k3can.us' \
https://[2601:188:cb7c:5585:be24:11ff:fe84:d47c]:443/posts/2026/may/dns-ipv6-censorship/

Obviously, this is far less convenient than just typing blog.k3can.us into your address bar, but the fact that it can work reliably without DNS is an important distinction.

Of course, direct IP access only helps if users already know the address. DNS remains the internet’s primary discovery mechanism, but once an address is known and shared, it becomes harder to erase access simply by modifying DNS records.

Better, but not immune

That all said, IPv6 does not make a site immune to censorship, but it does weaken the dependency on DNS, which can help prevent one mechanism of censorship3.

As the internet evolves, governments around the world are working day and night to find new ways to further control and restrict this vast universe of information.
For a more robust solution to the problem of internet censorship, sites should consider making their content available through purpose-built solutions, like I2P and Tor. Both are designed to resist common censorship methods and to protect the identities of their users.

This blog is available on both TOR and I2P, using the links at the top.

You might ask why I host this blog on I2P or TOR, though. I don’t live in an oppressive country or take part in illegal activity, so why should I care about privacy or censorship?

• First, providing another website or blog via these services gives people a reason to use them, and it helps to normalize the idea of a privacy-focused internet.
• Second, “boring” content like this provides “noise” on the network. If the only people using TOR were whistle-blowers, undercover reporters and oppressed peoples, then the presence of TOR traffic would beacon their activity. But, if the majority of TOR users are just reading about why they should use RSS or are looking at photos taken on a Nintendo 3DS, then the presence of TOR traffic becomes scarcely more interesting than any other random internet noise.
• And third, it’s just fun. TOR and I2P are bandwidth restricted, so it feels very much like the early days of the internet. Sites are small and personal, and there’s far fewer ads and data harvesters.

Conclusion

I’d like to stress that the disappearance of w-social.eu likely was not censorship in the political sense, but it does demonstrate how fragile online presence can be when reachability depend entirely on a few centralized services.

IPv6 doesn’t solve that problem completely, but it does restore something the early internet had more naturally: the ability to reach a system directly, even without DNS.

And, if you have a small personal site, yourself, please consider making it available via TOR and I2P, too!


Until next time, netizens.

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1. This doesn’t mean that IPv6 aren’t recycled, though. My ISP does not guarantee that my address will remain the same, but there’s little reason for them to change it. ↩︎

2. You might notice that the Host field still shows the human-readable domain name, but that’s only there so that my server knows which site to serve you; i.e. it tells my server that you want my blog, not my homepage.
   There is also the matter of SSL/TLS. That command will fetch this post through an encrypted connection, but it does not guarantee that you receive the page exactly how I intended. ↩︎

3. For a great (albeit somewhat dry) summary of known internet censorship mechanisms and how they work, you can see RFC 9505 ↩︎

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This will just be a quick post to share the cable I built for interfacing PC audio with my Xiegu G90 for digital radio modes.

Following the pin out provided in the G90 manual, I spliced a Mini DIN8 connector to a TRRS plug, which I can then plug into a tiny USB soundcard (as pictured)

Mini DIN8 TRRS AF In Tip Not Connected Ring Ground Ring AF Out Shield

I initially intended to break open the USB soundcard and attach the Mini DIN leads directly to the headers, but using the TRRS plug provides a little more flexibility. The TRRS plug is quite snug, so I can use it like a direct USB to G90 cord most of the time, but still separate it if I ever want to plug the G90 directly into a different audio interface, or if I want to temporarily use the USB soundcard for something else. This essentially replaces the CE-19 board, which, itself required building custom audio cables, anyway. This does not replace the serial connection, which is still required if you want to use CAT controls. By manually setting the frequency and using VOX, however, you can operate most digital modes with just this single cable.

It’s admittedly a pretty simple project to dedicate a blog post to, but I think it’s always worth showing that you don’t need to pay for a fancy, purpose-built “TNC” when PC audio interfaces are a dime-a-dozen these days. For extra points, you can throw a small USB isolator into your radio bag in case you ever need to plug into a noisy USB port, and you’re good to go.

Until next time, netizens!

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The homepage for the EveryHam Amateur Radio Contest is now live at EveryHam.org!

A trial contest was run on 18 April, thanks to the help of KD3BTG, M0CUV, N3VEM, N3CAN, and K3QB. I would consider the trial contest to be a success; it helped expose some bugs my ADIF parsing script and taught me some important lessons.

In addition to that announcement, I also wanted to share my thoughts and learnings on both designing the website itself, and on the code behind the scenes.

Website Design

Just how the contest itself was designed to be friendly towards the average ham, I wanted to take a similar approach to the web design.

• The main page immediately shows the most recent contest, how long submissions are accepted for, and when the next contest will be held.
• Rules have their own page on the site, no need to download a PDF.
• Contest logs, in the standard ADIF format, are uploaded right on the website. No special forms or emails.
• A dedicated page on the site provides instructions on how to export an ADIF file from several popular logging programs (currently QRZ and Wavelog) for operators who are new to the process.
• When a station submits their log, they immediately see their score and their callsign appears in the leaderboards. No need to wonder if they submitted it correctly or to the right email address.
• If a station accidentally submits a few too many QSOs the site still happily accepts the log and just drops the extra QSOs1. If they accidentally submit too few, they can just upload a new log and their score will be updated.

This was done in an effort to make the contest easy and accessible, even to hams who have never participated in a contest before.

Behind the Scenes

I initiated intended to create a static site using Hugo (like this blog) which would get updated after each contest period with the results. My initial idea for a workflow would have gone something like this:

1. Station emails their log to me
2. I save the adif to a directory
3. At the end of the contest submission window, I run a script to ingest all the logs and update static site files with the scores.

While this approach is very efficient from a server resource standpoint, it requires manual action (ew) and lacks any interactivity.

Instead, I decided to take a more dynamic and user-friendly approach, and scripted out the entire website in perl using Dancer2. Static assets are cached and served by my reverse proxy, but everything else is generated on-the-fly. While I was already familiar with perl and html, this was my first time using Dancer2 and my first time creating a dynamic website from scratch. All of my past websites have either been static (like this blog) or used an existing publishing application.

ADIF Files (Nerd Alert!)

My ADIF parser was initially based on a script I found online. I figured I could re-use a lot of its logic to save myself some time. I eventually learned that this parser made a couple interestingly choices that would end up biting me in the end…

First, the parsing script I found started by skipping the ADIF header by seeking the <eoh> tag. Second, it discarded the ADIF value length and took whatever followed a field’s closing > as the value.

These both seemed like reasonable decisions at the time, so I copied this logic into my script. I did not bother to read the ADIF specs.

Everything worked fine in my private testing, but the very first log uploaded during the public test immediately failed to score correctly. Distance was calculated correctly, but no multipliers were applied. I had not written my script to save a copy of the uploaded log, however, so I had to review the DB entries and try to work backwards to determine what had failed. It soon became apparent what caused the issue: each of the fields had additional whitespace at the end2. The whitespace prevented the scoring logic from correctly assigning a scoring multiplier, causing it to fallback on the 1x default.

My initial reaction was to just wrap the values in a trim() function to account for the obviously “wrong” whitespace in this ADIF file, but what if I was wrong and the whitespace was ADIF compliant? Might there be other possibilities that I would need to account for as well?
Time to actually read the specs, I guess…

Oh my.

It is important for the programmer importing ADIF data to note that any number of characters of any value may follow the actual data in a field[…] There is nothing in the specifications to prevent an exporter from placing a comment after the actual data.

Yikes. Not only was that extra whitespace completely in compliance with the ADIF spec, but there could be almost ANYTHING following the data3!

So, while <CALL:5>CH3AP is most typical of an ADIF field,
<CALL:5:c>CH3AP This ham owes me $5! is still technically valid.

Instead of the simple my ($key, $val) = split('>', $_) from the original script, I realized that I needed something a bit more clever.
I eventually settled on this:

my ($key, $length, $val) = $_ =~ /(\w+):(\d+)(?::\w+)?>(.+)/;
trim(substr($val, 0, $length)).

Instead of discarding the length data, this uses that data as intended to identify the significant portion of the field’s value. I kept the trim() for good measure, though.

In practice, it first breaks up the entry like this:

Key Length Type Value CALL 5 c CH3AP This ham owes me $5!

Then uses the Length to determine the important part of the value.

1 2 3 4 5 Ignore everything else C H 3 A P This ham owes me $5!

As far as I can tell, this should accurately account for any unusual ADIF entries, and is presumably exactly why the length data exists in the first place. After applying that fix, the log in question parsed correctly and everything was good.

…Until two submissions later when another log failed to parse at all. Luckily, I now had my script saving a copy of the uploaded file, at least, so I was able to review exactly what was submitted. This log was a hand-typed file and contained only the minimum fields required by the contest (calls, grids, band, mode).
It was a fully ADIF-compliant file, yet my script failed to parse a single entry. Ugh.

This was also a result of me referencing a script I found instead of fully reading the ADIF spec. You may recall that the script I was using for reference skipped the header by seeking out the “end of header” tag.
Well, according to the ADIF spec, the header itself is entirely optional. Since this log did not contain a header, it didn’t include the <eoh> tag, and since it didn’t have an <eoh> tag, my script just kept skipping lines until it hit the end of the file, recording 0 QSOs.
After figuring out another fix (and actually reading the entire ADIF spec), I resubmitted the log and it was parsed and scored correctly.

Summary

I’m not sure if the website’s style is finalized, but I think I have some solid design principles to guide it. I addition to the design principles of being a friendly introduction into Contesting, I’m also trying to remain conscious of traditional web accessibility standards by using semantic HTML and higher-contrast colors.

Building the site has been a fun, but challenging experience. I enjoy coding, but don’t often find excuses to do so. Creating the EveryHam site has provided a great opportunity to work my brain, play with some perl, and learn new things.

The trial contest uncovered bugs in my code, which was one of the key purposes of the trial in the first place. In that sense, I would consider this a success. In retrospect, those bugs could have been caught beforehand had I actually read the specs of what I was trying to parse instead of just following someone else’s process4.

The next EveryHam contest is scheduled for 09 May 2026, and for the second Saturday of each month going forwards.
If you’re a ham who is interested in contesting but wants a more friendly and casual contesting experience, give it a try!

Until next time, Netizens.

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1. Within reason. Excessively large logs will be rejected by the server due to bandwidth limitations. ↩︎

2. When comparing text in very a literal context, "SSB" is not the same as "SSB ", nor " SSB". ↩︎

3. I also learned that there is an optional character that can define the type of data contained in the value, too. ↩︎

4. I think this goes to show that the “blind-leading-the-blind” problem, heavily associated with LLMs these days, really isn’t unique or new. ↩︎

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I love the concept of radio communication; from playing with 27mhz “walkie talkies” as to kid, to CB and LMR as a teen, and then finally licensed amateur radio as an adult.

I’m just a nerd; learning about and experimenting with radio frequencies is just plain fun.

The Ragchew

The fact that I can communicate with stations across the country and around the world is fascinating… But I’ve found that I just don’t like actually talking on the radio. It’s not that I’m anti-social, I just find the conversation style itself to be very tiring.
I’ve noticed that a conversation on a radio (a “ragchew QSO”) tends to consist of dueling monologues; that is, one station talks for a solid minute or more on one or more topics, then the receiving station responds with their own minute or longer transmission1. As someone who has a hard time remembering a name or callsign that I just heard, trying to mentally store and then form a response to the verbal equivalent of an entire page of a novel is incredibly draining.
Combine my poor recall with the fact that I never became particularly proficient in writing, yet alone shorthand, and these conversations turn radio into a chore rather than a joy.

Contests

“Contests” are antithesis to ragchew-style QSOs, and I quite like them for that fact, but they also come with their own issues. In a hobby filled to the brim with nerds, it’s unsurprising that these little contests are packed with pages of arcane rules. When you start talking about classes, grid-squares and station points, one could reasonably question whether you’re discussing amateur radio or D&D2.
That’s not the problem, though, I’ve DM’d TTRPGs and the Field Day rules are still way simpler than the tomes of Pathfinder. For me, the problem is that I don’t have (and likely never will have) the space and money that would be required to construct a competitive station.

Field Day

Looking at a previous Field Day contest I participated in as an example, even within only my specific class, my score of just under 200 was the 7th lowest in the class, with the top station in my class scoring over 3,700. The top score in the entire contest that year was over 32,000.

Some of the contest is absolutely skill, but a lot of it comes down to logistics. The top scoring stations had teams of operators, and resources like commercial canopy tents (think outdoor wedding), power distribution networks, dozens of PCs and radios, multiple radio towers, porta-potties, and even catering… all in a contest that’s supposed to be about “field-expedient” operations. Compared to my single, battery-powered HF radio and a wire antenna I tossed into a tree, I didn’t stand a chance.

I absolutely don’t object to those teams, though. I think it’s awesome that they’ve got a team of committed folks who can spare the time and money, and at least one or two with the experience and know-how to coordinate all of the logistics that goes into such a set-up (even if it maybe misses the spirit of the event a bit). It’s a seriously impressive effort …But it’s also little discouraging.

The other discouraging aspect of the bigger contests is scheduling. Radio contests are what a gamer might call “a collectathon speedrun.” The objective in most contests is to collect as many “contacts” (two way communication with another station) as possible in finite amount of time. Depending on the contest, contacts might be worth different points based on a number of factors, but the general idea is the same: whoever has the most points at the end of the contest wins. For a big contest like Field Day, the contest period stretches out over days. Big teams can cycle operators over the entire period, like shift workers at a 7-Eleven. Even if a solo station treated a contest like a job and put in 8+ hours a day, they’d still be at a significant disadvantage.
On the other hand, some contests are very quick, lasting only an hour. These don’t require multiple shifts, but missing even 5 minutes of the contest can set a station back in their rankings and that one hour period might fall early in the morning, late at night, or in the middle of a work day depending on your location. Low-power stations might be ignored entirely, too, since any extra time trying to hear them takes time away from potential points.

Either way, I can’t help but feel like winning, or even ranking, is entirely unachievable for an “average” ham.

The EveryHam Contest

For me, I’d like to see some sort of “every ham” competition. Set a power limit that is widely accessible, like 25 watts, and set the time period to 24 hours. Multipliers are determined by band and mode, and points are based on distance.
This sounds typical enough, but here’s the catch: you can only submit 5 contacts.
Now the contest is focused on really pushing that 25 watts and digging into the noise. You could blast out RF for the entire 24 hours and collect hundreds of contacts, but you’re still only submitting five. Someone who carefully chooses their frequency and greyline timing could potentially work their radio for only 30 minutes and still win. Longer hours certainly increases the chances that you’ll get a high-scoring contact, but it doesn’t make you unbeatable. Same goes for team size: running several operators at a time gets you more contacts to choose from, but you’re still only submitting your best five.

I think this would help address a lot of the “issues” I have with most contests. Money and resources might help you score higher, but they don’t determine the winner. With a 24-hour window, almost anyone, regardless of location or occupation, can turn their radio on an hour (or even 30 minutes) and still have a chance for a competitive score. The extra time also allows stations to try to pull in those weaker signals.

In my opinion, this better captures the magic of amateur radio, gives stations of all sizes a fair competition, and allows operators to plan their radio time around their schedule instead of the other way around.

Does such a contest exist?

Let me know.

Until next time netizens!

Update: I’ve added a draft of the potential rules here.

Update to the Update: The official rules are now posted on EveryHam.org!

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1. This is likely a result of the half-duplex nature of most two-way radio; it stifles the more natural flow of a conversation. Do some hams still talk like this in real life? Probably… ↩︎

2. For those wondering, my station is a level 17, half-wave Sorcerer of the ICOM bloodline. I move to grid FN43 then cast “QSO Exchange” for 8d6 points in a 20m wavelength. ↩︎

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I just recently returned from Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) East this past weekend and just wanted to share a bit of my experience. This was my 5th or 6 PAX event, with my first being back in 2010 when PAX first came to the East Coast.

The expo focuses on everything “Gaming,” from table top RPGs and dice games, to arcade and video games (pinball games are notably missing, however).
There’s always a number of fun things to do at PAX, but this year there were also several things I managed to not do, as well; such as not coming home with a dozen additional dice that I’ll never use and not eating the sushi from a food truck again, no matter how good the pictures on the menu look.

One fun thing that I did decide to do this year was to bring my 3DS.

3DS

For those unfamiliar, the 3DS was a Nintendo-made handheld game console that came out in 2010. While it was still significantly underpowered compared to Sony’s handhelds of the time, it had a very special trick up it’s sleeve: a glasses-free 3d screen1. Along with the 3d screen, it also featured dual cameras for taking 3d photos.

The DS line of consoles also had a wireless communication feature known as “streetpass,” where two consoles would automatically exchange data (tag) when they passed close enough to each other. When two devices connected, each player’s avatar (Mii) was copied to the other player’s device and the Miis would meet in a digital plaza. Now that the console is outdated, however, the chance of running into another person carrying a console is fairly slim… Except at a gaming convention! During my two days at PAX, I received 99 streetpass tags!

I also decided to put the 3DS camera through its paces while I was there to see just how good (or bad) it really is. Several shortcomings were immediately noticeable: low resolution, grainy images, terrible low-light performance and abysmal dynamic range. However, given the right environment, it can produce some photos that are, at the least, fun.

Here are some of my photos that I thought showcased the 3DS’s cameras. I’ve converted them to red/cyan (for use with 3d glasses) but you can click on the image to save the oringal MPO file for viewing on a 3DS or other compatible 3d viewer. I highly suggest viewing the MPOs if you can; they look a lot better than the red/cyan versions.

PAX

As for PAX itself, the expo floor had the usual: vendors selling (occasionally dubious) gaming-related merchandise, indie devs showing off their upcoming titles, and nerds cosplaying as characters I have zero chance of recognizing.

Dice

There were plenty of vendors selling dice towers, dice pads, dice bags, dice cases, and of course, dice themselves. As I mentioned earlier, though, I managed to not buy any dice this year. I haven’t played D&D in the past decade, so I’ve been trying to convince myself that I don’t need to keep buying more dice… Even though they’re sooooo pretty.

Retro Games

There were at least three or four booths selling “retro” video games. The prices2 for used games seems to have leveled off recently, but I still can’t see myself dropping $350 for a used PS3 or Sega CD, especially without a return policy. The emulation consoles are always interesting to look at, though, such as ModRetro’s M64.

Mouse Pads?

Speaking of retro, something that I find funny is how popular mousepads have become again. I remember when mouse pads were a practically a requirement; mice had balls and the balls needed a pad. As optical mice became more popular, the mousepads started to disappear3. They were no longer needed and just attracted dirt, so why bother with the extra clutter?
Then, in the early 2020s, some computer accessory companies (SteelSeries et al) started marketing them again. But now, not only did your optical mouse suddenly needed a pad again, but your keyboard did, too! I’ll admit that you can make a case for a mouse pad if your desk has a highly reflective surface, but keyboards?! That’s just silly.
Anyway, there were tons of booths selling pads with graphics such as “legally distinct boy with legally distinct electric mouse”, and even more with just straight-up bootlegged IP and GenAI graphics. :-/

Indie Games

PAX seems to attract more independent developers than it does mainstream. Some indie games have been gems, like Stardew Valley and Palworld, but by their very nature, there’s always going to be a lot of rocks in the mix, too. On one hand, this is actually great; it gives new developers a chance to expose their new creation to an audience who paid specifically to look at new stuff. On the other hand, as the audience, there’s only so many “Smash Bros but looks like it was written in Scratch” clones you can see before they start to blend into the background.

Cosplay

PAX doesn’t attract as many cosplayers as some other conventions do, but there’s still a definite presence each year4. I really enjoy seeing the amount of effort people put into their costumes, but I always feel a bit guilty about how many of them I don’t recognize. They put all this effort into creating this amazing, real-world reproduction of something that was only intended to exist as pixels on a screen… and I don’t even know what the heck they are.

Events

While the expo floor is the flashier scene at PAX, the panels and events are the real content. This year, in my opnion, the panels were very hit-or-miss. If I had to rate them from 1 to 10, I’d say that that ALL of them were either 1-2 or 8-10. There were great panels and terrible panels, but nothing in between.

For example, there was supposed to be a panel on lost media in gaming, which is topic I quite enjoy. Out of the 60 minute session, however, the first 15 minutes was a video introduction to video games, then another 10 minutes of the single panelist introducing themselves. Finally they talked for 5 minutes about several lost games… Then filled the rest of the hour with gifs and memes. Incredibly disappointing. Have some respect for your audience.
1/10.

Conversely, since PAX East is held in Boston, there was a panel on the similarities between IRL Boston and the version of Boston seen in Fallout 4. The two panelist talked the audience through a virtual tour of the area, while providing screenshots and photos highlighting the differences. The visuals were simple, but the panelists were thoughtful and passionate. They might have lacked some polish, but they respected the audience and their topic. …And they promised to do a panel on trains in video games next year!
8/10 (at least).

Then were was the secret video game event. VHS cassettes were thrown. Fallen was preserved for future generations. Laura bit a DVD in half.
11/10.

Good and bad. Nothing mediocre.

Missing Vendors and Publishers

It seems like more vendors and publishers disappear every year. BeQuiet has been MIA for two years, and I can’t recall seeing corsair, EA, Rockstar, or Blizzard this year, either. The expo floor seemed noticeably lighter overall, but it appeared that the extra space was utilized for additional walkway space, which is a welcome thing, at least.
I think general attendance was down, too, though. We made it through the line at the Nintendo demos in about 15 minutes, compared to the hour wait they had last year (if you could even get into the line in the first place). I noticed that they were still advertising 4-day and Saturday passes on the first day of PAX, too, which traditionally would have sold out weeks before.

Conclusion

PAX
If you haven’t been and you have a interest in gaming, it’s worth attending if you can afford it. The price seems to go up every year, and the hotels in Boston are some of the most expensive I’ve ever stayed at, though.
It’s got a bit of everything related to gaming (except pinball) and the atmosphere is almost always positive. I think in some ways PAX might be losing its focus a bit, but it still remains a fun way to spend a day or two. Personally, I would not suggest the 4-day pass; for me, two days is enough to see most of what they have to offer and is the best “bang for the buck.”

Oof. That’s a long post.

Until next time netizens!

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1. There were a couple cell phones with similar displays, too, although they never became as popular as the 3DS did. Examples: HTC Evo 3d, LG Optimus 3D ↩︎

2. Growing up with “retro games” (just known as “games” at the time), it’s still a bit shocking how expensive things still are. Just the box to some of my old games is now worth 2-3x more than the game cost new. Remember your economics class, though: sellers drive market prices down, buyers drive market prices up. ↩︎

3. Technically, the early optical mice did require a special mousepad, but they weren’t needed by the time that the optical mouse became a standard PC device. ↩︎

4. There are some photos out there of my cosplay from last year, but I’m not going to link to them. :-P ↩︎

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