The Spam Thread!

[huckleberrypie]

Here is what I find rather interesting on Instagram in regards to Inktober...

Within five minutes after I post my Inktober drawing of the day, I get at least five to six likes from completely random artists that I've never come across. Some of them are okay, but others aren't even into Inktober, or post artwork that is weird. I imagine these people happen to load up one of the several Inktober hashtags right after I post my work, hence why I get so many likes in such a small timeframe. These are probably the people who just look at the thumbnails, push the like button and go on down the page.

Likes from established children's artists that actually follow my account don't come until much much later, since my artwork gets buried in the thousands of other Inktober drawings later on.

Haven't come across spam accounts so far.

'Tis a badge of honour whenever a high-profile person like the children's artists you speak of approve of your works.

And it dawned on me that I've had buyer's remorse over getting that Ryzen 3 2200G. Mafia: Definitive Edition stutters like mad on quad-cores and lower, and it seems like the recourse would be to get a newer processor with more cores and/or threads like a Ryzen 3 3100 at the very least.

[cpd2009]

We all know what a privacy nightmare the My Friend Cayla doll was, even leading to the toy becoming illegal to possess in Germany. Now, let Chadtronic show you with an overview of the controversy and an actual demo of the doll.

[huckleberrypie]

We all know what a privacy nightmare the My Friend Cayla doll was, even leading to the toy becoming illegal to possess in Germany. Now, let Chadtronic show you with an overview of the controversy and an actual demo of the doll.

Illegal to possess as in treat it like any sane person would with child pornography or bomb-making instructions. I'm kinda irked at how toy companies put gimmicks first and leave security as an afterthought, thinking that there's no value for less savoury individuals (e.g. paedophiles, spies, bullies, etc.) to pwn devices aimed for children.

Case in point VTech whose customer databases got breached by a grey-hat hacker who uncovered reams upon reams of private data belonging to kids and their parents. Said hacker was upset about what he uncovered (private chats between kids and their parents, kids' photos, etc.) and the lack of security both on part of parents and the provider itself. OEMs should do their part e.g. implement strong encryption and 2FA on their kid-oriented services, whilst parents should do the same thing as well rather than use "1234" as a password or unwittingly post potentially-compromising media of their kids like what you recalled with the Flickr incident some time ago.

[cpd2009]

Thanks to yet another Chadtronic video, I'm intrigued by Hasbro's line of "ThinkChip" Pokemon battle toys from the early 2000s. There was the Battle Stadium, a talking Pokedex, a talking Ash, and several companion Pokemon figures. Each little Pokemon had a little chip inside that gave their "personality" to Ash, along with providing real battle stats with the Stadium setup. The figures have two contacts on their bottoms which plug into the Stadium, or onto the opened Pokeball on Ash's hand. So yes, Ash can now easily hold up an entire Charizard with just one hand. Amazing!

I never recall seeing this advertised on TV, and it dropped into stores at peak Pokemon popularity in 2000/2001. For the time, it was a very intriguing and forward looking concept, foreshadowing the infamous Amiibo craze. Though the ThinkChip stuff never evolved (pun intended) beyond Pokemon, it did provide a little depth to imaginary Pokemon battles outside of the games.

Then there's the money making aspect of this. Produced by Hasbro, the Battle Stadium set only came with a Squirtle and Geodude, meaning that the battles would be very one-sided, with the Water Pokemon having a big advantage over the ground Pokemon. To get a fairer battle, you had to purchase other figures to diversify your Pokemon types. Need to heal your Pokemon after a battle? Then you also need the separate Ash figure, which can heal and rest your Pokemon, along with the also separate Talking Pokedex. Your parents had to sink a LOT of money into this ThinkChip system just to get the full experience of the toys. The Battles themselves though are very shallow. All you do is place your figure on the Stadium's sockets, and both players take turns just pressing the attack buttons, and trying to make the moving LED hit the center of the meter, which is what you need for a strong attack. I guess trying to time your button press is the key, but apparently some kids did have fun with this back in the day.

[cpd2009]

https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/17/2152...oint-excel

MS is at it again, this time dropping shortcuts for Office web apps with monthly updates. Though not nearly as bad as the full screen Edge popup, it just proves that MS is turning Windows into a massive advertising space for it's own ecosystem. That alone isn't bad, but it's the way they are attempting to stuff their products into your face even if you choose to use LibreOffice or similar.

[cpd2009]

Well... there may be another audio sync issue with my HDMI setup, but it may not be the MacBook. It might be my particular AV-to-HDMI converter.

From what I've noticed so far, recordings off the cable box to the Macbook have perfect audio/video sync. Those are recorded in native 720p.. However, I noticed the VHS recordings made with the AV-to-HDMI box have intermittent sync issues. Sometimes the recordings are just fine, while other times, the audio is delayed just a little bit before the video before getting back to normal. It's nowhere near as bad as recording with the Windows PC, in which everything including cable box recordings had audio sync problems. But it's still noticeable enough to be annoying.

If I am able to find the AV-to-HDMI converter at fault, I'll have to shop around for a new one. They aren't that expensive off eBay, so I'll try one of those first. Failing that, I might have to spend a bit more to get a higher quality converter. I will need to double check the cable box footage, but I don't recall noticing sync problems with very long 1+ hour recordings.

[cpd2009]

Looks like a Mac OS downgrade may be in order for the iMac. For one, I set up my drawing area with the iMac for art and the 2009 Macbook, Bluebell, to my right for playing YouTube or podcasts. However, ElCap has been running into stability issues as of late. I'm hoping it's not the GPU since the KP backtraces do list the Nvidia drivers, and I am not experiencing graphical corruption yet. But the KPs seem to happen after watching YouTube for awhile either in Vivaldi or Safari. Since more of my studio web browsing is now being done with Bluebell, I'm tempted to downgrade to an earlier Mac OS just for art and music playback, and making the iMac an offline computer.

I have a spare hard drive I can test an older OS with, either Mountain Lion or Mavericks. FireAlpaca can run on OS X all the way back to 10.7 Lion, but I am unsure about the Huion drivers. Officially, Huion states you need 10.12 or above, but the drivers work fine with 10.11. After my artwork session, time to get to work assembling my spare HDD enclosure and doing some OS testing. The dealbreaker will be the Huion drivers, and whether or not they will work properly.

[huckleberrypie]

Seeing KPs in macOS often is more common on Hackintoshes than on real hardware lol. Since it's GPU-related I hope it's just the drivers or the OS considering the class-action suits Apple and Nvidia faced for a batch of defective chips.

[cpd2009]

Seeing KPs in macOS often is more common on Hackintoshes than on real hardware lol. Since it's GPU-related I hope it's just the drivers or the OS considering the class-action suits Apple and Nvidia faced for a batch of defective chips.

I'm guessing it's just ElCap not playing nice with the old GeForce 8800GS. Vivaldi has rendering issues, and the KP only occurs with YouTube videos, so far. I get no graphical errors or KPs if I'm drawing with FireAlpaca, and none have shown up during my little USB OS tryouts.

In regards to potential downgrades, OS X Leopard is a no go. I thought I had SL, but the iMac discs I got on eBay only have Leopard, and the Huion driver won't even start. FireAlpaca crashes right away. 

So I erased the Leopard setup and made a Mountain Lion USB stick, installing now. While I'm waiting for that, I'm watching some British documentaries on the dangerous ways Victorians and Edwardians lived. 

[cpd2009]

The old OS idea isn't going to work. FireAlpaca works as expected on 10.8, but no Huion drivers will work properly. My particular display tablet appears to have no real compatible drivers that will run on 10.8. I get basic ink capability but the calibration is way off and there's no way to set it.

I'll just stick with ElCap and just do basic web browsing, keeping YouTube on 2009 or 2020 MacBooks.