The Spam Thread!

[huckleberrypie]

> Trillion-dollar company
> Couldn't fix their servers
> wtf

Fitgirl's some individual who gained notoriety for taking scene releases and compressing it losslessly for those with limited bandwidth. It's a shame that legitimate distribution platforms such as Steam haven't explored such options though I guess it's the matter of installation time and overhead association with highly-compressed game releases.

Apple could learn a thing from MS. Windows does have P2P abilities built into Windows Update which is supposed to help speed up the distribution of patches. My guess is Apple thinks all P2P technologies are insecure and prone to piracy. Or at least, go the Fitgirl route and losslessly compress the install files for easier downloading. Not everyone has blazing fast fiber internet.

Slowly, earlier this evening, people were able to retry downloading of Big Sur, including me. It's nearly done now. DSL makes this take nearly four to five hours in total. Installation itself will also take a while too. Maybe I'll get some screen grabs before the update prompts a reboot.

Reminds me of when I had to download those game rips which by itself takes six to twelve hours to do at 100-120 kilobytes per second. Even more so with GTA IV which took me over a week to get from some now-defunct warez site. Funny enough, I still have the ISOs for posterity's sake even though I already have a legitimate copy on my Steam library.

[cpd2009]

It is done. Took much longer than I wanted, but my MBP is now on Big Sur. No real show-stopping bugs yet and the upgrade went very smoothly once the download completed.





I'd imagine longtime Mac users will need to take time and get used to the visual changes, and many who use Macs for work probably shouldn't upgrade right away until they know their software (like Adobe suite) will run. The UI is now much more minimalistic, similar to Windows 10, and made to look more in line with iOS. Nearly all the icons for the built-in apps share the same square design, but not every app will follow that guideline, shown by the iMovie icon and third-party apps in the dock.

My desktop background is an HD screen grab from The Fox and the Hound, when Tod was still a young fox kit.

[huckleberrypie]

Kind of odd that your MBP ran off LPDDR3 despite being a 2020 model lol.

[cpd2009]

Kind of odd that your MBP ran off LPDDR3 despite being a 2020 model lol.

Just noticed that too.  I don't really do anything intensive with my MBP, so LPDDR3 is no problem. If one was working with 4K video though, then it may start becoming a bottleneck, but you'd probably want a MBP or PC laptop with a dedicated GPU for that.

[huckleberrypie]

So I tried out this EKA2L1 emulator which ran Symbian/Series 60 games, particularly those written for the N-Gage handheld:

I never had the opportunity to own the OG N-Gage back in the early 2000s, though if there's any consolation, I got my hands on a Nokia 5320 in 2009 which ran games for its successor, the N-Gage 2.0 platform. I'm glad there are still those who care about this underrated platform, which was ambitious in its goals of smartphone gaming but was hampered by its price, awkward design flaws such as the sidetalking gimmick and the juggernaut that is Nintendo, which to this day has emerged undefeated despite competition from Sony and many others.

[cpd2009]

So I tried out this EKA2L1 emulator which ran Symbian/Series 60 games, particularly those written for the N-Gage handheld:

I never had the opportunity to own the OG N-Gage back in the early 2000s, though if there's any consolation, I got my hands on a Nokia 5320 in 2009 which ran games for its successor, the N-Gage 2.0 platform. I'm glad there are still those who care about this underrated platform, which was ambitious in its goals of smartphone gaming but was hampered by its price, awkward design flaws such as the sidetalking gimmick and the juggernaut that is Nintendo, which to this day has emerged undefeated despite competition from Sony and many others.

I was far too young to even have a cellphone during the N-Gage's time on the market, and even if I did, cellphone service in our area was still rather spotty and provider choice was limited. I heard of the N-Gage via web coverage and the odd tech magazine, but never seen it sold locally as I never ventured into a cellphone store or kiosk in my small town. LGR did a good video on the N-Gage that is worth a watch, and yeah, the flaws were very apparent and hence the name "Taco Phone" due to how it was shaped and how you had to old it up to your ear to take calls.

I've been getting into AI generated music, or specifically, having an AI try to continue popular songs leading to hilarious and sometimes creepy results. Below is one of the funniest I've seen, an AI trying to continue the Spongebob theme song.

[huckleberrypie]

I was far too young to even have a cellphone during the N-Gage's time on the market, and even if I did, cellphone service in our area was still rather spotty and provider choice was limited. I heard of the N-Gage via web coverage and the odd tech magazine, but never seen it sold locally as I never ventured into a cellphone store or kiosk in my small town. LGR did a good video on the N-Gage that is worth a watch, and yeah, the flaws were very apparent and hence the name "Taco Phone" due to how it was shaped and how you had to old it up to your ear to take calls.

I've been getting into AI generated music, or specifically, having an AI try to continue popular songs leading to hilarious and sometimes creepy results. Below is one of the funniest I've seen, an AI trying to continue the Spongebob theme song.

Another nail in the coffin was the lack of a CDMA or AMPS version especially as Verizon, which is historically CDMA, is ruling the roost there to this day. That would've called for yet another variant of the N-Gage just for the American CDMA market alone.

Though apparently in other countries such a India, having such a cellphone is a status symbol, as even if the N-Gage did flop elsewhere it didn't matter as the idea of playing games with PS1-grade graphics on the go is something that's sought after.

[cpd2009]

I took a look at your emulation video, and it appears to run very well. Did you run the EKA2L1 emulator on your phone, or with something like Bluestacks? And if it was on your phone, how did you get a capture of it?

I normally don't like on-screen game controls due to the lack of tactile feedback so if I were to use my phone for emulation, I'd buy a cheap bluetooth game controller and just use that.

[huckleberrypie]

I took a look at your emulation video, and it appears to run very well. Did you run the EKA2L1 emulator on your phone, or with something like Bluestacks? And if it was on your phone, how did you get a capture of it?

I normally don't like on-screen game controls due to the lack of tactile feedback so if I were to use my phone for emulation, I'd buy a cheap bluetooth game controller and just use that.

It was on my Realme C3, and the phone had screen recording built in which was nice as it also allowed users to record the device's audio internally as opposed to doing it ghetto-style via the microphone.

[cpd2009]

So remember when Apple servers went down during the Big Sur release? Well, turns out one particular security researcher was able to take a look at Gatekeeper, macOS' built in app checking system that also had issues the very same day, resulting in delayed launches of third party apps. According to this researcher, this apparently lets Apple log all the apps and supposedly can keep track of where you are in the real world. Detailed below:

https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/

But, another researcher from Italy wrote up a rebuttal, saying the article above is essentially a misunderstanding of how Apple's use of OCSP works:

https://blog.jacopo.io/en/post/apple-ocsp/

One thing is for sure... having that app certificate information transmitted unsecured is a risk in itself. Apple needs to come forward and explain what is really going on as there's two differing views on this situation.