e9924ff9e8
Last iteration I blamed four failed runs on the probe sampling every ~41 s, slower than the title screen lasts, and withdrew three earlier conclusions on that basis. Building the fix tested the claim and killed it. The speedup is real and control-verified. One long-lived ffmpeg x11grab stream, raw RGB, glyph counted in numpy -- no per-sample process startup, no PNG encode, no convert -crop: wrapper `screenshot` 3.98 s per sample (emulator running) import -window root -> PPM 1.20 s long-lived x11grab stream 0.29 s 13.7x The counter is byte-identical to is_title.py: 753 on the committed title capture, 327 on the main menu. Pointed at a running game it says the opposite of what I expected: 332 frames in 85.3 s = 3.89 fps; max glyph 0 1674 frames in 420.0 s = 3.99 fps; max glyph 0 1674 consecutive samples over seven unbroken minutes, four per second, zero green-(A) pixels. Sampling rate was a real defect that happened not to be the cause. So "neither locale reaches the interactive title without a pad press" -- withdrawn last iteration for want of evidence -- is reinstated, now as a dense measurement, with its reach stated: a MID-RUN window only, silent about the boot title. Leading hypothesis, unconfirmed: the PRESS (A) plate appears only in the boot title window and the attract loop's title carries none, which is exactly what title_states_capture.sh was written to test. The experiment is to start the fast probe from t=0 rather than attach to a run already in progress. METHOD: fixing the instrument is how you test the explanation that blamed it -- a plausible mechanism is a hypothesis, and the fix is its experiment, not its proof.