Some of you might have noticed a thread here today called "A warning about MiSTerKits (zerohimself)" which linked to a tweet from SmokeMonster, and you might be wondering where it went and, more importantly, why it's gone. In this post I'll try to explain both of those points, as well as give as much context as possible in a fair way. Of course, I'll also leave this post open to comments, discussion about the topic, as well as any related meta discussion if people want to get into that.

First, let me just start out by saying that from the moment that people started joining this subreddit (that I originally made basically just to keep track of FPGA gaming posts across various forums), I have wanted to run and moderate it differently than the typical subreddit by reserving moderation for things that are objectively off-topic or flat-out toxic in my view. I've never wanted to enforce my opinions on others or tip the scales of what the community here talks about and how. I've always felt like up/down voting would be a good enough tool for this community to decide what types of [on-topic] content they want to see. I still feel that way.

But still, after taking way too much time considering what I should do, I decided to remove the "A warning about MiSTerKits (zerohimself)" thread. Here's why:

SmokeMonster's tweet is hearsay or, in other words, unsubstantiated rumor. It is a statement from one person who claims to be "getting reports of" a serious claim from some other person or people who aren't named. Then there is also the extremely vague addition of "among other things" and a nother tweet where he's "hearing reports" from other "people" below...

For context, here is a link to SmokeMonster's full twitter thread. Please keep in mind that these claims are, for now, unsubstantiated and should absolutely be taken with a grain of salt.

I don't personally know SmokeMonster or zerohimself and I've never spoken with either of them, but I think they've both been widely considered valued members of this community. I bought a RAM module from zerohimself years ago; I paid, it was shipped, and it was as good of a transaction as you can hope for. I also like SmokeMonster's content and I think he's constantly been a great spokesperson for FPGA gaming, the MiSTer and the retro scene at large. While SmokeMonster may be acting in good faith and trying to do the right thing by alerting the community of a potential issue with MiSTerKits (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), it's ultimately just not responsible for any member of this community to peddle unsubstantiated rumors about another community member. His heart may very well be in the right place here, but nobody can deny that there are a hundred better ways to go about it than the old 'many people are saying' routine, right?

I can't say for sure whether MiSTerKits is a safe place to buy from right now or not, because like the rest of you the only thing I have to go on is some tweet that says a whole lot of nothing, and I think that's an unfortunate limbo for this community to be in. We can only hope that zerohimself is alright and will make a statement in response to the rumor and hope that it brings us somewhere closer to objective fact.

What I do know is that WE as a community absolutely have a responsibility to protect each other from scams and bad actors, but we ALSO have a responsibility as a community in an age of disinformation and quite frankly, mass bullshit, to deal in the truth, backed up by objective and verifiable fact. Let's try to live up to that responsibility by holding each other to higher standards and rejecting the temptation to amplify as-of-yet baseless rumors and accusations that could easily wind up making things worse for everyone.

And before this gets misinterpreted, let me be clear that I'm not calling SmokeMonster or anybody else out here. There could very well be a real problem (or multiple) with MiSTerKits, and the sooner the community gets some concrete information about this the better. Let's give people the benefit of the doubt for now, taken rumors with a grain of salt, be cautious, and hope that all parties involved in this situation are acting in good faith, are doing OK, and that any potential wrongs will be righted.

I have the ram module, DE10, micro SD and WiFi dongle. I think all I really need now is a usb hub and PSU. Can anyone recommend one from Amazon? I was going to use Mister addons but they’re sold out.