The Spam Thread!

[huckleberrypie]

Wow... my mom's home internet is blazing fast. Her house got hooked up with fiber internet a couple years ago. One of those half-hour long commercial blocks at 1280x920 60fps only took about seven minutes to upload, compared to the three or four hours with my apartment DSL. I will do a SpeedTest and gather results.

I also came across another one of those awful YT comment bots, with a twist. Instead of getting something along the lines of "Wanna be friends?", I instead get "I'm Lonely" with a love emoji and sad emoji, and a profile icon of an Asian girl that looks like it was taken from an adult film. I turned off image loading in Vivaldi, and checked this profile out. The page is just a massive link farm to a whole bunch of other spammy YT channels streaming porn.

I reported the comment to YouTube and we'll see what happens. You can't report a whole channel anymore. Figures.

Yeah I've encountered those lately. Most of them try to dodge detection by linking to adult sites or scam sites in the most subtle way possible. And it only goes to show how the current YouTube CEO is viewed by the community as an imbecile whose crew went batshit over paedophilia and kids' videos yet couldn't do anything about spam, scams, clickbait and edgelords.

[cpd2009]

So here is the SpeedTest results for the fiber internet at my mom's place...



25mbps download and 25mbps upload. Amazing.

Test was done on the iMac (yes, I lugged Periwinkle along with me since I want to work on my art). Cat-6 cable was connected from Periwinkle to the router behind my mom's HP AIO. It would also be a fairer comparison to when I test my DSL back at my apartment. Periwinkle is connected via ethernet there too.

[huckleberrypie]

Not bad actually. How much does she pay for it per month tho?

[cpd2009]

Not bad actually. How much does she pay for it per month tho?

My mom has to check first as she can't recall off the top of her head. It's tied to her landline phone bill. I should have the price by tomorrow or Saturday.

HP is really starting to skimp on the Mac drivers. My mom is letting me take home an HP Deskjet F4580 that she insists is making weird noises. I've tested the printer myself, and so far, I haven't heard the loud banging noises she is describing. I've decided to just give her my now unused Canon MG2520 inkjet printer in exchange since I know that printer works well. 

One neat feature is that this particular Deskjet has wireless printing. As Periwinkle already has another HP printer setup with USB, I wanted to use this Deskjet for my other computers on my home network. Turns out the software you need to set up the printer's Wifi is no longer included with the current macOS driver set. Earlier versions used to place an HP Utilities set in the Applications folder that had the tool necessary to configure the wireless printer, but it never appears after installation. I tried with the iMac and my Macbook and got the same result. HP's newest offering, "HP Smart" is touted as their new app for wireless printing, but alas, it's not compatible with the F4580. 

I had to connect the printer to my mom's HP AIO and install the Windows drivers to set up the wireless features. Unlike the macOS drivers that just use the system Installer app, the Windows package guides you through printer setup and lets you choose a USB or Wireless configuration path. 

Now I will know what to do when I need to set up the Deskjet with my home Wifi.

[huckleberrypie]

I miss the wireless printing we had with the Brother printer, though such printers tend to be expensive as hell anyway so I had to ghetto my own solution.

Oh and some more recognition for that LineageOS build my friends and I did: https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/15/l...og_tablet/

[cpd2009]

So, who want's a Nintendo 4DS? Seriously, the Surface Duo, when closed, really does look like a next gen DS. There are some unfortunate things about the Duo, so I'll let the video explain. In reality though, this is a first gen Duo, so if it's successful otherwise and they patch the bugs, the second gen could be much better.

Speaking of Nintendo, they have officially discontinued the 3DS, ending production of the console. Expect me to try and find loads of good eShop games before they pull the plug completely.

[huckleberrypie]

So, who want's a Nintendo 4DS? Seriously, the Surface Duo, when closed, really does look like a next gen DS. There are some unfortunate things about the Duo, so I'll let the video explain. In reality though, this is a first gen Duo, so if it's successful otherwise and they patch the bugs, the second gen could be much better.

Speaking of Nintendo, they have officially discontinued the 3DS, ending production of the console. Expect me to try and find loads of good eShop games before they pull the plug completely.

It's inevitable that some would load up Drastic on that thing, though the device's width may present an issue with holding it like you would on a DS.

And yeah, I guess it's an end of the line for the 3DS. Doubt that we'd be receiving any more firmware updates though it doesn't matter especially if your console's been homebrewed like mine.

[cpd2009]

Remember when I said I didn't really care for the new 3D Mario collection? Well...





My mom got this for me after our little week-long get together. I decided I wanted it after seeing some video reviews of it. Mario 64 has some visual upgrades such as clearer text and full 30fps rendering, and I now have the opportunity to play Mario Sunshine. I never had a GameCube, and I honestly don't know when or if I will get one second hand. Hence why I now have this collection.

And yeah, I do know of the various 60fps 1080p HD Mario 64 mods for the PC. I normally wouldn't play such mods (with Chaos Edition being the sole exception), but still, Nintendo could have provided the option of making Mario 64 run at 60fps on Switch. Limitations of the emulation? Nintendo's desire to try and keep Mario 64 "authentic"? Or is Nintendo going to pull an HD remaster out of the air in the coming months? Only they know.

[huckleberrypie]

It's quite disappointing to see the compilation being a cop-out hence the negative reception over the supposed remaster, er, emulation. And even more so considering the unofficial efforts by those who managed to make source ports of the original SM64 game.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I think the Prop. 65 warnings ("This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.") is a little cringy and alarmist when 1) it's known elsewhere besides California, and 2) it's a frivolous and meaningless warning which can also be abused considering the trigger-happy nature of lawsuits there in the States.

[cpd2009]

It's quite disappointing to see the compilation being a cop-out hence the negative reception over the supposed remaster, er, emulation. And even more so considering the unofficial efforts by those who managed to make source ports of the original SM64 game.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I think the Prop. 65 warnings ("This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.") is a little cringy and alarmist when 1) it's known elsewhere besides California, and 2) it's a frivolous and meaningless warning which can also be abused considering the trigger-happy nature of lawsuits there in the States.

The Prop65 warning on the back of the game must be a case of OurLawyersAdvisedThisTrope. Nintendo caters to kids quite a bit, so I imagine they put the warning on the back to try and fend off a possible lawsuit. They can say "Hey, the warning was on the back of the game case" in defense. But the way it's worded though, it screams "This game can give you cancer" when it definitely won't. They should have just said a generic Lead warning and then referred you to the URL. That could possibly save Nintendo from frivolous lawsuits.

I first came across the Prop65 warning nearly 20 years ago on strings of holiday lights, around 2001 or so. Before them the warning was never present on holiday lights at all, despite the law being passed in 1986.  Being a young middle schooler in 2001, this message naturally alarmed me. It always said "wash hands after use", so that is what I did and I felt better about it. I do admit, those wire coatings on newer light strings do tend to leave some sort of residue on your hands after, say, you've been setting up a lighting display for a couple hours. Even if that warning wasn't there, I'd still wash my hands just for the residue.

I guess the reason why nearly every light string and many other electronics now carry this Prop65 warning, even if you don't live in California, is costs. Rather than just make packaging and labels for one state, they just apply the warning to all products sold nationwide or even worldwide.

As for the game itself, yeah, it's emulation, but rather good emulation at that. Nintendo is known for good emulation of their older games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwYzYt1oKJ4

But yeah, they could have gone the whole nine yards with Mario 64 with a full blown HD Remaster with true visual upgrades and full 60fps framerate. They pulled it off with Mario Odyssey in both docked and handheld mode, and they could have just used the same engine. Hell, even using the Unreal engine could have produced similar results. I still plan on enjoying the games though. At least now you can read the text in Mario 64!

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I try not to post twice in a row very often, but every now and then, Wikipedia really gets annoying. No, it's not because of poorly researched edits or behind the scenes drama. It's their preference to guilt you into donating in the most annoying way possible.

About once or twice a month, Wikipedia starts displaying these large donation appeals on any articles you load. You can scroll away from the first one, but another will appear halfway through the article, either on the side or along the bottom. It's also worded in a way that attempts to guilt you into donating. Try to ignore the messages and open another article? The red box will keep track of how many appeals it tries to show you.




However, the macOS dictionary app doesn't display these at all. 



To be fair, once you click the X button, the box will go away and never return. But IMO, this box shouldn't be there in the first place. Instead, why not place the red box along the sidebar? It will be very noticeable there, and it won't interrupt your article. I hate it when sites have to resort to tactics reserved by commercial advertisers to try and get people to donate. Wikipedia doesn't run ads and does need donations to stay online, but forcing donation appeals into people's faces isn't going to get you more donations. Like me, it's only driving me to use the macOS dictionary app for Wikipedia searches now. It's cleaner, you get the full article content, and you never have to deal with these donation prompts. Just like online advertising, donation appeals also need to be created in a way that won't alienate or annoy the reader.