As an adult, when I entered a redesigned MacDonald’s it did not appeal to me at all. It was like being inside the architectural embodiment of depression.
Not that it matters. MacDonald’s didn’t seem to mind Trump associating himself with their brand, so I won’t be eating anything from there ever again anyway (ignoring the myriad of other reasons to avoid them as well).
These days this should not be an issue for emulation, but unfortunately it is since the solution takes a small amount of education, and because there are no legal, official places to buy roms other than the rare packaged emulator re-release that some companies make.
I’d guess most people here already know how to verify a checksum, but the average computer user does not. It’s a skill that should be taught in schools.
But roms don’t have an official distribution channel, so to know that one is good, you have to rely on community projects like Redump and No-Intro. Compare your hashes to theirs, and you should be good. A tl;dr: just do a search of “myrient”, as that’s the most recommended place to get correct roms these days.
There are practical purposes beyond avoiding malware too. The RetroAchievements project makes it possible for people to earn achievements in emulators, but for it to work properly you need to use exactly the right versions of a rom that each game supports. RA relies heavily on RetroArch, and RetroArch uses it’s own method for hash verification, so here’s a guide for getting started with that.
I am at a weird-feeling place at the moment. I got too comfortable buying things from Amazon, so my brain doesn’t know how to shop now. But I canceled my Prime soon after the inauguration, and I’m thinking I need to delete my account all together to kind of force myself to start working on using alternatives.