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| tomman |
Posted on 21-11-25, 02:28 in I still HATE smartdevices
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Dinosaur
 Post: #1021 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
6 hours with this phone, and I already want to commit arson and chemical warfare. Setup a custom ringtone: - On a classic Moto/Nokia: copy ringtone to phone, open the gallery, select the file, "Use/Apply as ringtone", done. - On modern Android: Depending on your phone OEM, it could be all the way from trivial to "install a file browser". - On KaiOS: Impossible, unless you install a very specific file manager just called "Explorer", and then you don't get a chance to preview whatever ringtone you're about to choose. The WiFi seems to be flaky too: sometimes the browser (which due to the Firefox OS heritage on KaiOS, is the ENTIRE PHONE UI) will refuse to load pages from the Internet, which causes all sorts of breakages on apps, from a web browser that does nothing when requested to load a page, to the KaiOS store getting stuck at 69% at startup. The workarounds are "reboot the phone" and "cycle WiFi OFF/ON". Pathetic. Oh, speaking of webshit, if one of those apps hangs or gets stuck in a endless loop or whatever, so does THE ENTIRE PHONE... leaving you with no option to pull out the battery, or if you're lucky and already had debug-enabled your device, adb reboot. Map apps are useless: the only one that works is Google Maps, except that without a working GPS, it's not that useful. Tried three different OpenStreetMap clients, and... ugh, all I got were bizarre network errors and getting stuck in UI loops where the only way out was to powercycle the phone. The more I use this phone, the more I regret my purchase. KaiOS is by far the WORST CELLPHONE PLATFORM I've ever had the disgrace of using! And I've used plenty of terribad phones, from early Korean camera phones (which were an UI/UX nightmare) to anything with Verizon firmware (back in the dark dumbphone ages, Verizon were the masters of lock down, disabling everything from custom ringtones to memory card slots to tethering in the name of greed). Looks like whoever designed KaiOS' UI either had never used a cellphone in its life, or hated cellphones so much that they devised the most diabolic plan ever to break the phone addiction: develop a cellphone platform SO BAD that people will get mad as soon as they power on their phone. Seriously, failing at very basic UI/UX features that even the cheapest and shittiest of dumbphones easily excelled 15 years ago requires actual effort to be THAT terrible. Unfortunately, my other options on the 3G dumbphone arena in the local market were equally unobtanium $30 Blu craptacular basement-tier Spreadasstrum/Unicrud 2003-spec 2G platforms with a 3G radio duct-taped on top (A120, Zoey Flip 3G) Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 21-11-25, 20:40 in I still HATE smartdevices (revision 1)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1022 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
More - Not only setting a custom ringtone requires the extra Explorer app, there is NO WAY to change the SMS ringtone from whatever default your specific OEM/telco have set, and this is why that in its infinite wisdom, KaiOS messaging app decided to use its own internal, UNCHANGEABLE ringtone instead of using whatever the user has set for notifications. I wish I were making this up, but god damn it, even my long-lost 2001-spec TDMA Nokia 3320 allowed to setup separate calling and SMS ringtones!!! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, ASSHOLES!?!?! Haven't you ever used a cellphone!? - Since your phone UI is nothing but a big fat Gecko view, forget any semblance of multitasking. OK, most old true dumbphones couldn't multitask either (the best you could get was suspending J2ME midlets), but come on... with the botched handling of the END key on Blu's firmware, even singletasking gets annoying. - 256MB was overkill for cellphones 15 years ago (not even smartphones had that much), but KaiOS is a bloaty sluggish pig in such a modern starved setup. Conveniently, there is a Free Memory option on Blu's power button menu (what a weird place to put it) which plays a cute animation, and then displays an OK! checkbox. No way to actually tell how much RAM is free (this was a BUILT IN feature on BREW CDMA phones with the BREW App Manager, i.e. almost all of them!). And even the OK! screen doesn't give an obvious hint on what to do next (sometimes hitting END doesn't go back to the homescreen right away) - WiFi stalls a lot on this thing. If the "browser" refuses to open pages, or the KaiOS Store stalls at 69% on startup, go back to the homescreen, press UP, and toggle WiFi off-then-on there. I've seen this issue on Spreadasstrum phones which are about to die :/ - Managed to get GPS working - turns out the GPS setup on this thing is very weak, so I had to go outside to let the phone actually find those satellites. Even then, Google Maps for KaiOS is more useless than the J2ME version, and all 3 apps that I tried for OSM ended doing nothing, or softlocking my phone. Yay. Not that I have any real use for GPS in my rather small city, but man... how do you even?! - Found a 2048 port (made by the KaiOS team) on the Store, since every cellphone, no matter how dumb or smart it is, needs some form of gaming for extreme emergencies, and 2048 is perfectly suited for pretty much every device that can run code and has a display and input peripherals. Wow, a 2048 version with a frickin' LOADING SCREEN. WTF is this, a 3DO!? - Of course, battery life is comparable to my shitty Alcatel, that is, miserable. I've done nothing but minimal webshit usage, a couple of test calls, and it's down to 53% since I had unplugged it from the charger this morning. FWIW, this thing has a 1000mAH battery, suspiciously similar to Nokia batteries of ye olde ages... - For whatever reason, the Google Maps app shortcut loses its icon, switching between it and a rocket icon (which I guess it's KaiOS' default) very often. Doesn't seem to happen with everything else (be it default, Store apps, or sideloads) - KaiOS 3.0 was released last September, but of course, in true industry fashion, the Zoey Smart is part of the family of phones already disowned by its OEM (mine was made in October 2020, but last firmware build is from late '19... and that's for KaiOS 2.5.1, which was long obsolete by then) - Did I mention that KaiOS 2.5 is based off Firefox 48? Yup, that means half of the Internet will give you scary warnings about expired root certs because half of the Internet is using Let's Encrypt, and sadly that means KaiOS just fell victim of The Great DST Root X3 Expiration. Android might not give a fuck, but FF (and by extension, KaiOS) do. And since there has never been a way to upload/update certs on dumbphones, well... we're fucked. Millions of cheap phones screaming in agony as their owners now need to add exceptions for nearly every site they visit. Yay. - Only the SIM1 slot takes MiniSIMs (the main reason I ended buying this phone instead of giving Movistar dealers $10 for a 4G triple-cut SIM). SIM2 slot takes MicroSIMs, but it's ridiculously tight - an old AT&T nanoSIM that came with my Alcatel on a Movistar micro->nano adapter had some trouble sliding in, but a Movilnet microSIM I borrowed for testing nearly ripped off the metal retainer on the slot! Be VERY careful swapping SIM cards on this thing. This seems to be very common on Blu (and other made-of-chinesium™) phones, so SIM slot failures on these cheapo PoS are not unheard of... Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 21-11-26, 02:41 in I still HATE smartdevices
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Dinosaur
Post: #1023 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
Thankfully there is a solution for The Great DST Root X3 Expiration on our disowned B2G/KaiOS shitphones: https://opengiraffes.top/en/manually-import-new-root-ca/ You've got root, use it for good! Oh, found another stupid gotcha: if you set your default multimedia storage to the SD card (if your phone has one, and chances are it has given the paltry storage on phones like the Zoey Smart), Wallace Toolbox temporary root WILL NOT WORK! (at first it will appear to work, but you'll still not get rooted, and any successive attempt will fail with a NoModificationAllowedError). If you get stuck there like me, here is the fix: 1) Delete tmpbin.bin from the root of the SD card. Don't use ADB (you don't have permissions there yet), instead use the File Manager app. 2) Set the default multimedia storage to Internal memory (make sure to have at least 1MB free!): Settings->Storage->Default multimedia location 3) Try rooting again. It should work this time 4) When you're done, reboot your phone to un-root and set multimedia storage back to the SD card. 5) Buy a refurbished late-gen S40 Nokia and forget that KaiOS ever existed Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 21-11-26, 03:53 in Happy thanksgiving!
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Dinosaur
Post: #1024 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
Thanksgiving and eating turkey remains to be non-starters in Soviet Venezuela. ...but for whatever stupid reason, "Black Friday" (in English) has now became a tradition here... sorta. At least the "fake scammy deals you can't afford" are there! Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 21-11-26, 20:36 in I still HATE smartdevices
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Dinosaur
Post: #1025 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
More annoyances of the Blu Zoey, which at this stage I consider a big mess with bits of cellphone scattered inside: - The FM radio has an internal antenna, which means you don't need headphones to tune in to the radio. So far, so good. Except that the internal antenna is tiny, which doesn't help with many local stations with weak signals, so you need to plug headphones. OK, no big deal, can't blame the phone for stations having low powered/defective transmitters. But then, while reception noticeably improves after plugging headphones, you're also forced to listen to the radio on the headphones, since there is no way to switch between headphones and internal speaker, unlike pretty much every other phone with FM radio tuner I've ever used - from my Alcatel to that ancient Nokia 6276 I still have on a drawer. - Speaking of weak signals, I don't know if I got a dud, or if all Spreadtrum/Unisuck cellphones have shitty WLAN chipsets, but WiFi is definitely broken on mine: it works for a couple minutes, then the phone stops sending/receiving data completely. Even ping fails with heavy packetloss... when the phone actually replies! The solution is to either powercycle the phone, or toggle WiFi off-on, then you get a few minutes of WiFi until it goes silent again. As I've said on earlier posts, last time I saw that on a Spreatrum-based phone, it was on that piece-of-shit Advance L4 from $AUNT that eventually died due to overheating. Since I didn't bought this for its so-called "smart" features, I'm not bothering to get the phone swapped/refunded, but damn... This also means that disabling the buggy broken WiFi greatly improves battery life on this thing, to the actual life expectations of a honest-to-God dumbphone. - Opening any website more complex than this board (particularly anything with many images) often causes low memory alerts from the phone. - According to Unisuck, the SC7731ef is a dumbphone platform for 3G networks, but there are many free-with-fries smartdevices with other SoCs of the same SC7731 family. It seems that the "ef" variant is exclusive for KaiOS devices, as it is only found on such phones so far. And then, most hackers basically only focus on Nokia/Alcatel phones, which use Qualcomm Snapdragon 2xx chipsets instead... So while in theory custom ROMs are possible for most (if not all) KaiOS phones, the reality is that unless you got a bananaphone (the Nokia 8110 4G), you should not bother. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 21-11-27, 02:46 in I still HATE smartdevices (revision 2)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1026 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
How to do things on KaiOS, the KrapOS Way™: Change the SMS ringtone: - On any ordinary cellphone with not-braindamaged firmware: Look for your audio file, select it, Apply as Notification Ringtone, done. - On some cellphones with mild braindamage: copy ringtone to special folder using supasekret phone filesystem tools, reboot phone, apply ringtone as usual. - The KrapOS Way™: you need to root the phone and hack the SMS crapp, because fuck you, that's why! Change the homescreen shortcuts: - On any ordinary cellphone with not-braindamaged firmware: go to Settings, locate Homescreen settings, modify the shortcuts, done. - On some cellphones with mild braindamage: No OEM/telco was THAT evil, so the same instructions still apply. - The KrapOS Way™: you need to root the phone and hack the launcher crapp, because fuck you, that's why! Change the alarm clock sound: - On any ordinary cellphone with not-braindamaged firmware: If you can use your sound file as a ringtone, you can use it as an alarm sound too. - On some cellphones with mild braindamage: copy ringtone to special folder using supasekret phone filesystem tools, reboot phone, apply alarm sound as usual. - The KrapOS Way™: you need to root the phone and hack the clock crapp (and the implementation varies widely between OEMs!), because fuck you, that's why! Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 21-11-29, 01:54 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1027 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
Posted by funkyass Headphones plugged in indeed, because it's a requirement for the FM radio, as this phone (like most) lack an internal FM antenna. BUT! You made me perform additional testing! From my Alcatel, games and media players send audio fine to my Debian box. But not the FM radio... and the PHONE. Yes, I can't use my laptop as an oversized Bluetooth handset! It seems the whole "use your phone from your PC" is still considered experimental on BlueZ, and it doesn't work alone. I followed these instructions (because of course such a silly feature is barely documented, in true Linux fashion): https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/291831/use-debian-laptop-as-bluetooth-headset (look for the second answer) http://moondragon.ilbello.com/en/ubuntu-telefonate-bluetooth-android-come-vivavoce/ (same steps, but missing the "add pulse user to bluetooth group" ... no dice. Radio remains confined to the phone, and I can't use my PC as a headset for phone calls. Everything else works fine. Apparently, I can blame Android, because as soon as it sees my PC as a PC, it refuses to believe that it can work as a phone handset too. BUT! Just for lulz, I tested with my new The stupid phone DOES allow me to redirect call audio to either phone itself (be it earpiece or speakerphone), or Bluetooth. YAY~! At first it didn't worked (everything would remain mute, and the HFP/HSP profile would say "Unavailable" on pavucontrol), but after restarting the Ofono daemon, I could indeed use my ancient PC as a oversized headset for my shitty new phone!!! There were some minor bugs (like DTMF tones being played on both PC and phone), but profile switching between HFP/HSP and A2DP was seamless: I could speak on the microphone attached to the PC, and the other calling party would hear my voice. After finishing the call, I could play music/videos from my phone to my PC. Another catch: FM radio wouldn't play over Bluetooth on this phone, too *sigh~* So yeah, while KaiOS doesn't give a fuck, Android does because PCs are the enemy, or something. A final catch: any attempt to pair devices MUST be initiated by the PC (in my case, from Blueman) - otherwise, the PC would never get the PIN input prompt, and the phone would fail to pair. Dunno why, but whatever - Bluetooth is a shitty tech which has barely improved after all these years :/ Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 21-12-08, 23:28 in I have yet to have never seen it all. (revision 2)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1028 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
Desperate for a PlayStation® 5? Wanna do anything for one? And when I say "anything", I really mean anything! Well... consider tourism to Soviet Venezuela, of course! Just saw this at one of our many local Honest Saddam's Overpriced Appliances And More stores:  Before you ask: yes, all price tags here are in AMERICAN DOLLARS, not whatever memetastic variety of the bolivar we have this week. This Japanese-spec (look carefully at the CERO A rating on the box) PS5 can be yours for the low, LOW bargain price of $1050! Or, 700 minimum wages - for the day when you can finally afford one, even your $30 KrapOS™ wristwatch will be able to emulate four of those simultaneously, and consoles will be extinct anyway... Better snag one of those $4.80 24-pak ballpoint pens and start selling those at the bus stop - at 50¢ a pen, you'll get that PS5 after selling your Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 21-12-09, 00:46 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
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Dinosaur
Post: #1029 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
Posted by CaptainJistuce I can peek a slot there, so yeah. Fun fact: the same store also sells pre-modded PS2s for $99. In 2021. WHY. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 21-12-12, 22:48 in I still HATE smartdevices
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Dinosaur
Post: #1030 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
If someone comes to you with a scAmazon Fire tablet demanding you to install Chrome just to get their bookmarks (because the lobotomized Chrome ripoff that ships with scAmazon advertising machines doesn't let you just import bookmarks from a file, LIKE AN ANIMAL FROM 1995), well, you're fucked. At least scAmazon now lets plebs install "dangerous 3rd-party" APKs on their crippled Android toys, and https://www.howtogeek.com/232726/how-to-install-the-google-play-store-on-your-amazon-fire-tablet/ Please kill me now. Any Chrome install assisted by me feels like I'm commiting a terrorist act against the health of the Internet. Alas, you can't win against normies :/ Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 21-12-23, 22:29 in I have yet to have never seen it all. (revision 1)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1031 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
Posted by tomman And just today: #5M: some VTuber waifu with... bloody boobs - December 23th, 2021 >6 years -> <4 years -> <3 years -> >2 years -> 17 months -> ???? The race for the 5Mth GET came with interesting side effects: as a good example, Touhou's latest and greatest fairy, Eternity Larva, got a truckload of new uploads (about 300 new posts, or well over half of the current post count for her tag a week ago!) in the last few days... all by the same uploader, who went on a rampage of scraping every single Pixiv and Twitter feed of Touhou artists he/she could find for art not yet uploaded on Danbooru. Can't complain, 'cuz bug fairies are cute~ Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 21-12-30, 00:47 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs) (revision 1)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1032 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
Posted by CaptainJistuce Decided to test your hypothesis. Turns out it's true, at least on my Alcatel: this phone can't redirect the FM radio tuner to anywhere else but the internal speaker or wired headphones. Listening to radio over Bluetooth headsets/speakers is out of the question (you may want to buy a more expensive phone which may or may not have a FM radio). And letting apps listen/record the audio is simply not possible on this phone, so forget about recording radio content over the air (the recorder app will only record silence), or using things like Shazam to identify songs (which is, y'know, the whole raison d'être of this application!) The best you can do is to adjust volume and switch between (hard)wired outputs, but that's all. Fun fact: At least on Android smartdevices, FM radio implementations are all proprietary - there is no standard Android framework for that, and every radio tuner requires OEM-specific native libraries. This also means that if your cellphone ships with a shitty FM radio tuner app, you're stuck with it forever (the best I've seen is a very outdated app on F-Droid that might not support your tuner chip, AND it requires a rooted device). Oh, and the On my KrapOS™ Blu, it's even worse, as you can't even switch between speaker and headphones should you have some plugged in (while the device has an internal FM radio antenna, it's pretty much useless for anything but ludicrously high powered stations). At least I'm still allowed to adjust volume on this one... So yeah... if you want to listen/record FM radio on your PC, either buy an USB dongle, or a good ol' patch cable. Or give up radio, who needs local news anyway in the age of Farcebook and Twatter? Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 21-12-30, 11:49 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1033 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
Posted by creaothceann And that's of course a non-starter in places like Soviet Venezuela: - Many local stations don't even have online presence (beyond a WhatsApp account), much less streaming channels - Our data networks are unreliable, as I've said countless times in the past: WLAN relies on a ISP, which for 90% of us is... CANTV. And 3G/4G is not only expensive, it's also unusable! FM radio doesn't need anything of that, plus it's free~ Yes, our radio is firmly stuck in the '80s, not only due to Communism™, but also because many station/network owners are pennypinching bastards that don't even bother buying a cheap $10/yr .ve domain. And... surprisingly, that seems to nicely fit their target audience! Fortunately the FM tuner on my Encore TV card is still alive, so I can easily record from it on my Debian setup, but come on - cellphones are the perfect recording devices for everything (plus they're handheld!), so why OEMs don't even bother!? Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-01-01, 04:09 in Happy holidays!
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Dinosaur
Post: #1034 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
First post of the 2022! Hope this new year doesn't suck as bad as the past one. If only we could end China Pest and Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-01-06, 00:25 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
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Dinosaur
Post: #1035 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
Just spotted this at the nearest Chinesium supermarket, between the totally-not-expired butter and the 9000+ Tide clones: Fake breakfast cereals, by Kallog'z® Supposedly those come from Colombia (which has an historical reputation over here on "shady business"), but knowing those Chinese, I suspect that the "MADE IN COLOMBIA" printings on those boxes most likely are fake too. No fucking way in hell I'm eating that garbage... not that the average Venezuelan can afford it in first place, but then, the legit Kellogg's left the Venezuelan market a few years ago. But then, the commies seized the production plants after that so they continued the production of "legit" Corn Fakes®... now with government labels (unfortunately the "HECHO EN SOCIALISMO" stickers are not coming back), and without a valid license from Battle Creek, Michigan. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-01-06, 18:04 in Mozilla, *sigh* (revision 1)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1036 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
Mozilla meets buttcoins (and other kinds of fake money). Predictably, twat shitstorm ensues: https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/05/mozilla_accepts_cryptocurrency/ https://twitter.com/mozilla/status/1476951030638260225 (original Moz://a tweet) https://twitter.com/jwz/status/1478022085737803776 (notorious asshole and former father of Mozilla reacts) https://twitter.com/plinss/status/1478135256683143168 (another old Netscape reacts) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29819909 Apparently there is people whose hate towards buttcoins is much MUCH higher than mine, go figure~ Real or fake money, I wouldn't donate to Moz://a, as they would spend the monies on SJWs, highly paid UXtarded art school dropouts, and its obscenely paid CEO. Donate to non-braindamaged browsers instead! (sorry, only Real Money™ accepted here) *** UPDATE: Apparently the shitstorm was so huge that Moz://a gave up with the idea of taking mememoney ...for now? Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-01-16, 17:11 in GPU prices still suck in 2022
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Dinosaur
Post: #1037 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
"Zero" will be a appropriate price for GPUs the day (Xinnie|Kim) nukes (Taiwan|Korea) and there is no cutting edge chips for anyone. Oh, and don't forget craptominers. Better value your classic videogames and forget of GPU-intensive workloads until something changes in the overall picture, as many of the challenges are not only logistic, but political. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-01-18, 17:51 in Upcoming game announcements/news
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Dinosaur
Post: #1038 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
Micro-Soft is forking over SIXTY EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS over the disaster zone known as Activision-Blizzard: https://news.microsoft.com/2022/01/18/microsoft-to-acquire-activision-blizzard-to-bring-the-joy-and-community-of-gaming-to-everyone-across-every-device/ First there was Microsoft Minecraft Professional Edition Then, there was Microsoft DOOM .NET Now, say hello to Microsoft Call of Duty: Enterprise Ops powered by Azure® Cloud™, with a bonus disc for Microsoft Candy Crush Saga for Workgroups! ...and yet they got to keep the human shitstain known as Bobby Kotick. WHY. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-01-20, 01:31 in I still HATE smartdevices (revision 1)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1039 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
So today I dipped my toes into the wonderful world of Modern™ mobile development... AKA "I tried to build my own .APK of this because Nintendo, despite the fact I hate cellphone games" Of course, I ended real pissed because this is modern software development. The instructions seemed real simple: setup an Android SDK build environment, drop your base ROM somewhere, then use Gradle to bulld your .APK. Simple, right? NOT! Setting up an Android development environment in Debian is easy, as all you need is on the repos: adb, android-sdk-platform-23, and since this thing wants an NDK too, google-android-ndk-installer. Except that the resulting environment is completely unusable! Here I go, in the same order as I got into each pitfall, what was the hell I had to traverse: - google-android-ndk-installer is just a shell script that will download a NDK from Google... which is a 1GB download, which takes over 1 hour on my 3MB DSL, if the stars align. - Invoking ./gradlew will die real fast because ANDROID_SDK_ROOT wasn't defined. OK, point that to /usr/lib/android-sdk. - Invoking ./gradlew again start downloading some stuff (like Maven and... ugh, Node.JS), just to die because I haven't accepted the licenses because lawyers have to justify their slimy existences. The naive approach would be to run sdkmanager --licenses --oops, that's in a separate Debian package. And it won't work anyway because... - ...$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT points to a read-only directory, and Gradle will try to download new SDKs because the Debian ones are too old anyway! Except that it somehow wants a standard directory layout or some shit, so your options are: 1) chmod -R you:you /usr/lib/android-sdk. Ugh. 2) Run Gradle as root. WHY!? 3) Forget about the Debian SDKs and go to Google, logon (because of fucking course they now force you to logon just to access the developer resources), and download a SDK and unzip it somewhere else, then point ANDROID_SDK_ROOT there. Not happening! - After shitting on proper Unix hygiene rules and giving Gradle access to a chunk of your /usr, run ./gradlew again... which will gladly download another 2GB of SDKs, just because that's how modern software development is done! You Simply Do Not Install SDKs And Go in these brave new times :/ - Finally, after 4 hours of endless donwloads, mostly useless Stack Overflow posts, broken Debian guides, and JavaScript Frat Boys blogspam, you'll get your highly coveted SM64 debug .APK that Nintendo will never give to you (at most, in a parallel world where Nintendo starts selling classic games for cellphones, you're getting a $20 ROM wrapped into a really bad emulator) - Oh, you wanted a RELEASE .APK? (why? I don't know, but it weights 2MB less than the debug one, FWIW) Cool, you can build one... that your cellphone will refuse installing with an INSTALL_PARSE_FAILED_NO_CERTIFICATES error because of fucking course you don't have a release cert store and haven't bothered setting up your project to use one. Forget about that crap, read this and this, and manually sign your APK. - Wipe your HDD/SSD and burn your cellphone. Man, this was HORRIBLE. Debian has an unusable Android development setup out of the box (no surprises there). Android development environments are tied to a working Internet connection for no fucking good reason at all (once again, no surprises there). Building a trivial cellphone app requires downloading gigabytes of junk. And of course, documentation is broken and you're at the mercy of StackOverflow posts and blogspam just to reach the goal. Contrast with my previous adventures with J2ME a decade ago or so, where all you needed was to install NetBeans + the J2ME SDK plugin, and go. No Internet needed AT ALL! Ah, and Super Mario 64 looks awesome on a cellphone (and it runs smooth as butter on my lowly Snapdragon 210). And it's completely unplayable with those awful touch controls! I gave up after spending 20 minutes to reach the top of Bob-omb Battlefield, because trying to grab King Bob-omb with a touchscreen would have been a easy way to destroy my cellphone. I reiterate: action videogames DO NOT belong to cellphones! Stick to card and puzzle games. I'm glad I don't earn a living making cellphone apps, otherwise I would have ended dead/in jail years ago :) Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-01-21, 00:26 in GPU prices still suck in 2022
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Dinosaur
Post: #1040 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 3 hours |
I'm starting to believe that "GPU computing" was a mistake. ...and the worst victims are gamers, it seems. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
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