doesn't [random person] have an enormous quantity of prototype hardware and software that hasn't even been publicly cataloged? Is it just going to get tossed in a landfill if he unexpectedly dies?
That's one possible option... as are the new owner enjoying them themselves, or selling out (
in good faith or as a scalper)
I didn't even realize the original owner had stepped down.
He indeed nominally did, after mentioning in a different post (I wasn't able to find in the ~2 hours I took to write the article) that his psychological condition made him unable to continue participating - but more than one person called bluff, with the new and not-better-identified admin also "not doing anything for most of the year then doing unpopular things for the week he's there", posting in a very dry tone, and ignoring even constructive criticism...
I actually tried to register 3-4 months ago, because a large load of current PS2 developments (Popstarter, FMCB/wLaunchELF, HDLGameInstaller, the DVD Player hacks, very comprehensive discussions on HDDOSD/PSBBN/the hard drive format itself) is there!
Makes me think of the last days of Home of the Underdogs, when the site administrator was long gone, the only people left were just trying to keep the lights on, and the forums started getting weird.
I guess it mirrors what happened to animalcrossingitalia.com (at the time one of the 2 leading Italian forums for the series) - founded by the rather active Luca Poni (bastard666 with some punctuation I don't remember), in 2013 or so he just disappeared and didn't reply to site-related questions on social networks, the (phpbb 2) forums started breaking down and becoming unusable (at least we still had some moderators, I guess) and the domain was about to expire, so I started a replacement forum on free hosting (mainly used as a stopgap hosting for guides and other original content, which were mostly manually transferred by other volunteers - right between the imageshack and photobucket apocalypses, just to add
entertainment value), most of the activity stayed on the existing and separately-staffed Fecesbook group, and we got a Telegram group too;
of course we're nowhere as big as the old website was in its heyday*, though we probably are bigger than its last months/years when it had flagrant issues even more evident than Assembler's lack of staff and new accounts
* and we'll never know how much of that is due to rampant attempted centralization of the internet into commercial social networks, how much due to people moving to competing websites because their former favorite became broken, how many simply got bored with the series (especially with New Leaf having very unstable online multiplayer), ...
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$120 a month, how many monthly users did they have, seems like they could've got that down to probably $20 or so >.>; (unless they were a major site I just never heard of)
As recently as 2012, Amazon's hosting wasn't cheap (
https://blog.codinghorror.com/building-servers-for-fun-and-prof-ok-maybe-just-for-fun/) - granted, that's not exactly a bottom barrel and/or no name solution (and it's certainly not the one involved in this case), but it wouldn't surprise me too much if it was simply a very old plan designed around very old costs, still ongoing...
...and/or as someone pocketing the money (there's no evidence reasonably supporting this idea, but let's say administration, calls for donations included, haven't exactly been transparent for a long time)
