The Spam Thread!

[cpd2009]

Lets take a trip down memory lane to around 11 years ago...



...from the time where every tech company big or small was cashing in on the sudden popularity of the iPad. Ashens reviewed a few tablets like this, but the most interesting is the WPad, an iPad clone with Windows 7 on it. It makes me pine for the days of Windows 7, which I consider to be the best Windows ever.

You can also see the odd touch screen functionality that Windows 7 had, originally designed for stylus input. I guess this is why MS was keen on making Windows 8 so "tablet friendly" but we all know how that backfired.

[huckleberrypie]

One of my cousins actually had a knockoff iPad before, and like many of the early examples, they utilise a cheaper resistive LCD screen. It didn't take long for capacitive panels to surge down in price tho.

[cpd2009]

My first ever tablet was a Pandigital Novel, which was designed as an eReader, but a firmware update later made it into an Android tablet of sorts. It kinda sucked since it had no Google Play, but some sketchy "SlideME" market. Next tablet was a cheapo Polaroid running Android 2.3, and then a Curtis "Klu" tablet with Android 4.x. The Polaroid was rather decent but still had the resistive screen. So did the Klu.

And a friendly reminder to check the Li-Ion batteries in your devices if they are accessible. I have been meaning to replace the battery in my New 3DS XL for a while now, and I did order one in December from the official Nintendo online store. It appeared the battery life was quickly dropping off after around 3 hours of use. The battery is the original one that came with my New 3DS XL, purchased in April 2017. I got around to replacing it tonight, and lo and behold, the old battery is just starting to swell. You can only feel the bloat with your finger, but it's there. New battery is flat on both sides.

Bought the battery since Nintendo has very few replacement parts for 3DS left in stock. I'm still hating myself for not finding a replacement Wii-U gamepad battery when they were still in stock, but I do believe iFiixt has some of those.

This makes me think about all the modern devices that no longer let the user replace the batteries. At some point, all those batteries will swell, and that could become a rather dangerous eWaste trend.

[huckleberrypie]

Blame it on Apple being the trend-setter for all the wrong reasons.

[cpd2009]

Blame it on Apple being the trend-setter for all the wrong reasons.

Ironically, I remember seeing a video (forgot exactly which one) where the guy was going over what not to look for when buying a used iPod Classic. He notes if the LCD appears to have some kind of weird dark blob on it, that is a surefire way of knowing the battery has swollen. And once it's swollen, it's nearly impossible to safely take apart the iPod Classic due to the way the shell was designed to prevent servicing. 

The danger comes from the tight cases these batteries are packed in. Who knows if some of these batteries will go off like a firecracker after just being forgotten in storage, and the end user won't know anything about it.

The only way is to force tech companies to give up on making things ever thinner for the sole purpose of making the batteries user replaceable again. Would the tech companies lose money because people will hold on to their devices longer? Perhaps, but the current trend of creating locked down devices is unsustainable. At some point, these companies will have to face the music with either Right-to-Repair lawsuits or legislation, or the climate damage all our eWaste is generating.

[huckleberrypie]

So I did this tutorial after making a bunch of mods for the recently-released beat-em-up Sifu:

Not sure if Wade would like this due to its difficulty, but since he played beat-em-ups lately I don't think he'd mind.

[cpd2009]

It's been way too long, as usual. Tried accessing the site about a month ago, got an error message, and forgot about it.

Gigastone USB flash drives are the slowest I've ever used. Right now, I'm still transferring over 2GB of screencaps to an 8GB Gigastone drive... which started nearly 12 hours ago. It's rather shocking since their SD cards generally have good performance, and one I use for my Samsung HD camcorder works well. I also have a 128GB Gigastone drive, but I rarely use it due to said slowness.

I should have just used my excellent Unirex 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive, but I misplaced it when I needed to start the file transfer. :/

[huckleberrypie]

It's been way too long, as usual. Tried accessing the site about a month ago, got an error message, and forgot about it.

Gigastone USB flash drives are the slowest I've ever used. Right now, I'm still transferring over 2GB of screencaps to an 8GB Gigastone drive... which started nearly 12 hours ago. It's rather shocking since their SD cards generally have good performance, and one I use for my Samsung HD camcorder works well. I also have a 128GB Gigastone drive, but I rarely use it due to said slowness.

I should have just used my excellent Unirex 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive, but I misplaced it when I needed to start the file transfer. :/

I ought to upgrade the site to a much better server soon; it's just that I need the funds to keep this gig running.

As for the flash drives, could it be due to premature degradation? I've had otherwise perfectly fine drives die out on me sooner than expected.

[cpd2009]

It's been way too long, as usual. Tried accessing the site about a month ago, got an error message, and forgot about it.

Gigastone USB flash drives are the slowest I've ever used. Right now, I'm still transferring over 2GB of screencaps to an 8GB Gigastone drive... which started nearly 12 hours ago. It's rather shocking since their SD cards generally have good performance, and one I use for my Samsung HD camcorder works well. I also have a 128GB Gigastone drive, but I rarely use it due to said slowness.

I should have just used my excellent Unirex 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive, but I misplaced it when I needed to start the file transfer. :/

I ought to upgrade the site to a much better server soon; it's just that I need the funds to keep this gig running.

As for the flash drives, could it be due to premature degradation? I've had otherwise perfectly fine drives die out on me sooner than expected.

Not sure. The 128GB drive has been sluggish since I bought it new last summer. The 8GB I've had had for awhile, but it hasn't seen much use. Maybe once I get the files moved to the Macbook I will reformat it as ExFat and see if that helps.

[huckleberrypie]

It's been way too long, as usual. Tried accessing the site about a month ago, got an error message, and forgot about it.

Gigastone USB flash drives are the slowest I've ever used. Right now, I'm still transferring over 2GB of screencaps to an 8GB Gigastone drive... which started nearly 12 hours ago. It's rather shocking since their SD cards generally have good performance, and one I use for my Samsung HD camcorder works well. I also have a 128GB Gigastone drive, but I rarely use it due to said slowness.

I should have just used my excellent Unirex 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive, but I misplaced it when I needed to start the file transfer. :/

I ought to upgrade the site to a much better server soon; it's just that I need the funds to keep this gig running.

As for the flash drives, could it be due to premature degradation? I've had otherwise perfectly fine drives die out on me sooner than expected.

Not sure. The 128GB drive has been sluggish since I bought it new last summer. The 8GB I've had had for awhile, but it hasn't seen much use. Maybe once I get the files moved to the Macbook I will reformat it as ExFat and see if that helps.

It could be due to a shoddy controller, idk.