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Posted on 19-07-31, 20:30 in Ubuntu: x86_32 is dead because WE SAY SO!
Dinosaur

Post: #461 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
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Also: not all games in Steam are DRM'd.

A bunch of my VNs and Japanese-y games there are completely unprotected. Some have Steamworks, but will work fine even if Steam is not installed (you just won't get your 'cheevos and cloud saves). A few don't even have that, they just dump the flat raw binary on Steam and only use the store as a glorified distribution channel.

Also, there are legit ways to reclaim your game. If you're lucky to not miss the (very narrow) windows, GOG Connect may help you. And as a very specific example, EasyGameStation games distributed by Carpe Fulgur were sold both in and outside Steam. For those that bought their games outside Steam, Carpe Fulgur had to ship the updates as separate zip files, but as a nice side effect, you can use the executables from those to replace the CEG-protected executables from the Steam version, effectively killing DRM for that game, no piracy needed! (Yes, I've tested it both with Recettear and Chantelise). Too bad the rest of their catalog is Steam-only :/

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Posted on 19-07-31, 21:42 in Ubuntu: x86_32 is dead because WE SAY SO! (revision 1)
Dinosaur

Post: #462 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
Last view: 3 hours
And in more sad news for us fans of legacy hardware: Linus himself has marked the floppy driver as "orphaned", that is "noone of us have working hardware anymore, so who cares":
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/47d6a7607443ea43dbc4d0f371bf773540a8f8f4

This doesn't mean that they're deprecating the FDD driver right away, but... that's no good, yo.

Yes, I'm aware of USB floppy drives (I even have one, a Dell-branded NEC I bought over a decade ago, when I still used floppy disks back at college). They all SUCK, and they don't provide true low-level access, so no non-standard formats fun for you - it's 1.44MB OR DEATH. And yes, I still have working drives and virgin media in storage. Last time I used a REAL, µPD765/i8272A-derived floppy interface drive was a few weeks ago (and that's only because USB boot is borked on my IBM Thinkcentre BIOS, so I always keep a Plop Boot Manager disk half-ejected in the drive, because that's a much reliable way for USB boot on that thing, rather than the "let's pretend every USB stick is an HDD so you need to tamper with the HDD boot order because we were too lazy to add a boot menu to this thing" failsauce of this Phoenix BIOS)

So yeah, maybe it's too early for a "fuck you Linus", but preemptive action is never overkill, they say.
Nah, who am I kidding? Even *I* have my standards, and floppy drives really DO belong to a museum.
Fortunately I still have my 386sx for all my floppy needs~ Yes, even 5.25".

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Posted on 19-08-01, 00:59 in Building Dolphin on Debian Stable: problems!
Dinosaur

Post: #463 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
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Posted by Wowfunhappy
Why are you building Dolphin yourself anyway? It doesn't sound like you're making any source code changes?

Because...

- I can
- I want
- The binaries on Debian repos are hopelessly outdated (they're from the last stable release, which was years ago!)
- There are no repositories compatible with Debian which ship development builds (the ones you actually WANT to run if you actually care about playing videogames). No, you can't use Ubuntu PPAs with Debian. Not unless you want problems
- I have no other options, after having exposed the last two points

Anyway, once I upgrade to Debian Buster, I should be able to build it out of the box, no need to bring 3rd-party Qt installers or mess with patches to please "outdated" compilers.

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Posted on 19-08-01, 01:08 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #464 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
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While we guys protest in disgust about the imminent death of our beloved floppy drives and 32-bit processors on our Linux distros, the priorities at Boeing Commercial Airplanes are quite distinct:
https://www.wingsoverquebec.com/?p=8649

The death trap known as 737 MAX just got yet another computer-related flaw added to its pile of computer-related flaws: a good ol' 286 (as in "Intel 80286", released over 35 years ago!) is in charge of critical flight systems, like the flaps and stabilizers. Turns out if you feed a slowass CPU with a heavy load, said CPU performance will plummet down. We hate this when it happens to our videogames, but on an airplane the consequences are far more serious. As in deadly serious.

So yeah, those very expensive birds with flawed computers won't be flying again for some long time. The MCAS issue? That's EASY MODO. Yet, Boing (not a typo) believes they can add more Javascripts hire more $9/hr code monkeys fix this flight control flaw with more software.

I'll stick to buses, thanks.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-08-01, 02:25 in Building Dolphin on Debian Stable: problems!
Dinosaur

Post: #465 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
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Posted by Wowfunhappy
...on a scale of 1–10, how much would you hate me if I suggested using Flatpak?

NaN

I have nothing against flatpaks/snaps (they do help solving a real problem on the distribution of off-repo/third-party/proprietary software under Linux), but I'm not really interested. My only experience was with an Avidemux flatpak (or was it an "snap"? God, those hipsters can't get their shit together), and... it crashed on an ordinary Debian. I ended compiling Avidemux anyway.

And in the case of emulators, there are good reasons for building your own binaries, anyway: -march=native is one, ensuring that your binary will play nice with the libs provided by your distro is another, and in rare cases, you might want to play with patches/hacks not (yet) present on their respective development versions, or whatever.

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Posted on 19-08-01, 11:39 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #466 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
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Also:

- They're talking about "temporarily" stopping production of the 737 MAX, because it's unlikely that the plane will go back to service this year... or even in the next year, as bugs and flaws keep getting disclosed. Plus, they're running out of space to park unfinished/undelivered planes at their factories (at this stage it looks like an used auto lot).

- The 777X is also delayed. They blame GE/Safran for the delays on the engines.

- This fiasco is also hitting other of their business areas, like the defense contractor unit (their second most profitable unit next to commercial airplanes): they're starting to drop contracts for missiles and shit with their dear Uncle Sam because "not profitable enough".


I would say "buy Airbus", but then those Europoors have had their "buggy planes" share in the past (including their "near-MCAS" moment with the A320 over a decade ago). And there is the unloved A380.

So yeah, better buy Marcopolo or Setra shares - a stall on a diesel ECU just means "unplug the battery and retry".

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Posted on 19-08-01, 23:32 in amethyst (text editor)
Dinosaur

Post: #467 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
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Posted by creaothceann
https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/ciy5tj/bsnes_v108_released/evbi18r/?context=3

Also the pages lack the first-level heading element — h1, incorrectly using the header element instead. The header element has a totally different meaning than heading elements like h1, h2, etc.

Webshit UX designer confirmed.

Seriously, not every website has to follow "design rules" as long as the information is clearly laid out in a readable fashion. KISS. byuu's websites are an excellent exhibit of this (his design choices may look weird in this era, but our eyes and bandwidth bills greatly thank sensible designs like those - who cares if you're "Doing It Wrong™" with ancient HTML tags?!)


Posted by Kawa
You do realize you're talking about byuu here, right?

Unfortunately no cure has been found for Reality Distortion Fields yet :/

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Posted on 19-08-02, 01:41 in amethyst (text editor)
Dinosaur

Post: #468 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
Last view: 3 hours
Note that I said "design rules" as in "stuff preached by a design visionary", not "intentionally produce broken HTML even if a browser can render it".

Will you stop moving the goalposts, pretty please?

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Dinosaur

Post: #469 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
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Posted by Wowfunhappy
I have one really big annoyance with how RetroArch handles controllers:

If my controller has an B button, and the system I'm emulating has an B button, I want real B to trigger emulated B, regardless of button placement. So if I'm playing an SNES game with an Xbox controller, Xbox B means SNES B.

However, if the real and emulated button labels don't match, I want RetroArch to map according to placement. So if I'm playing a Playstation game with an Xbox controller, Xbox B means Playstation O.

There's no way to set RetroArch to do both these things, short of configuring each system individually, which is quite annoying in RetroArch's UI.

I'm probably being overly picky, but this behavior does strike me as the logical way to do things.

No, you're not being picky. This can be possibly seen as fallout from the "all controllers are Xbox controllers" model that the entire industry (not only some emudevs) seem to be fixated on.

If you think that XB->PS mappings are wrong, I don't want to think how they deal with layouts with more or less than 4 action buttons. Like Sega gamepads - the Genesis and Saturn pads are a hell to map to 4 face buttons because those have either 3 or 6 action buttons. There is no easy way to win this out (I end mapping C/Z to the shoulder buttons, but depending on the game this goes from "nice" to "ARGH!"), other than actually buying an appropriate replica controller or a retro adapter. The best emudevs can do is to actually make it easy to change controller mappings.

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Posted on 19-08-04, 15:22 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #470 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
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Posted by CaptainJistuce
Posted by sureanem
Posted by CaptainJistuce
I'm assuming they're using some sort of embedded microcontroller version that runs at something like 200 MHz. I mean, if it is possible for the Z80, it is possible for the 80286.

The article says it runs at 20 MHz, make of it what you will.

I read it as saying the 80286 part wasn't available in speeds above 20 MHz, which is factually untrue(Intel's 80286 parts went up to 25). And then starts talking about the possibility of overclocking.
More importantly, there are no new 80286s available, and Boeing isn't building a plane reliant on eBay to source parts.

I think they heard it used a 286 core, did some googling to find out what a 286 is, and ran. I don't think they have the actual specs of the system.


Kinda relevant:
https://airwaysmag.com/industry/boeing-is-maxed-out-and-so-are-we/
That’s a Harris 80286.

Can it do floating point math? No.

It can execute, roughly, 0.21 instructions per clock.

Does that say “distributed system” to you?

Not me.


Thing is, according to reasonably reliable sources – that’s what the 737 MAX software runs on.

Before I go any further, I have to state that all airplanes run generations behind the bleeding edge of hardware design in the name of cost, safety, and reliability.

No one wants a zero-day CPU instruction set bug grounding an entire fleet because some dumbass at Intel designed on-chip WiFi for the consumer market, and because of a common fab, the enterprise chips still have the feature, you just have to run some bizarre emulator… You see where I’m going.

Bad news. So you can’t begrudge Boeing for using the 286 architecture to run the 737 MAX software, at all.

Airbus—just to be show-offs or something—when it comes to Kung Fu, they decided to write the entirety of the A32X fly-by-wire software to run on a combo of Motorola 68000s and 186s.

The problem with the Paleozoic-era hardware is that two AOA (angle of attack) inputs, when combined with an inelegantly coded MCAS, can overload the CPU in present iterations of the code.

The FAA calls issues related to this, that came up in the simulator, “catastrophic.” It’s not a term they mean to use to fear monger, of course. But it’s not a happy word all the same.

Software is a challenge, well no. Elegantly-coded software is a challenge.

There are also so many questions as what the FAA will consider “acceptable.” Parallelism would be a kludge that some may consider a vast divergence from the 737NG. New hardware would definitely be considered an extensive modification that, given the realities of a post-MCAS world, will be gone over by CS professors and experts the world over before it so much as is allowed to carry a mouse.

It doesn’t matter how Boeing, ultimately, solves this problem—it’s going to add considerably more time to the aircraft’s return to service than they and their shareholders would enjoy.

Until I know more, I am in no position or want to speculate. You can solve a software problem in ten seconds with fresh eyes, or it could take huge team years.


I certainly wouldn't want an airplane with ME/PSP intertwined with critical flight systems, thankyouverymuch. But then, the problem here is not using a core back from men were men and wrote their own device drivers in binary code, the problem IS horrible code with subpar performance without the proper quality and safety review.

Also, speaking about bugged planes, don't forget to reboot your Airbus weekly:
https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/07/25/1932229/airbus-a350-software-bug-forces-airlines-to-turn-planes-off-and-on-every-149-hours

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Posted on 19-08-05, 00:52 in I still HATE smartdevices (revision 4)
Dinosaur

Post: #471 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
Last view: 3 hours
Everybody and his dog reeeeeeeeeally wants me to give my Google account to this shtiphone, amirite?

Today's buttfuckery involves BANKS! Yay, doomy dooms of doomed doom, now involving your money~|

See, Soviet Venezuelan banking system was pretty much forced -complete with kicking and screaming along the way- to embrace the joy of mobile payments, just like more civilized countries like Japan or Kenya have been doing since forever (and something USA will never adopt due to heavy corporate interests because God forbid you pay for that soda through interoperable payment standards). Unlike Japan's NFC solutions or Kenya's "forced-by-law" SIM toolkit apps, Venezuela's solution is a bit more mundane, involving already-established standards like SMS and websites. And of course, apps for smartdevices, if you're blessed enough to have one in the land of new banknotes with extra zeroes every month. Our banking regulator calls this "P2P", but we know it better as "Pago Movil" (mobile pay), and no matter which bank you have, as long as they've joined the P2P payment network, you're golden - you get your money in seconds instead of waiting up to 3 days for inter-bank transfers to clear (you do pay a slightly higher fee which is still ridiculously low -~0.3% last time I bothered checking-, but that's all). Oh, and you DO need a cellphone number, which combined with your national ID number, is a much easier combination to remember and transmit that a longish 20-digit account number that nobody will memorize, ever.

Few banks have gone the SMS way, and unfortunately most of those have botched their implementation so badly you can't pay realistic amounts of money that way. Most however do allow to pay from any device that can run a web browser, from their onlinke banking portals (but if you go that way, you end invoking the entire security theatre, including 2FA with SMS/emails that never arrive on time - so much for "mobile" payments there). If you DO own an Android device (because iDevices are only for the ultra-rich pigs at the nomenklatura, BlackBerry is finally DEAD AND BURIED, and all other mobile platforms were refused entry at the border, just like everywhere else), chances are your bank DO have The App For That™. Install, login, pay*, done.

Or not.

Leaving aside our pathetic jokes of mobile networks and useless DSL links, you're supposed to source your mobile payment apps through Google Play, which means enrolling your device into the matrix, giving Teh Googles total access to your tracking device. OH HELL NO. Thankfully, Aurora Store got me covered (despite being flaky at times), so it was just matter of locating the apps and install them. This worked just fine with most of my banks, since their apps are contained into a single .APK, they don't bitch about rooted devices, or install a gazillon of services.

And there is this bank, with this piece of shit. Yes, we have a bank called "Plaza". No, my local branch is NOT located at a plaza (there IS a bank at the local Bolivar Plaza, but that's a completely unrelated bank - irony is largely dead these days, it seems). And their mobile payments app feature the unlovely distribution method of split APKs, which cause nothing but pain for anyone trying to avoid Teh Googles. If you try to install their shityass app through Aurora, it will download, install... and crash as soon as you try to login:
08-04 18:27:43.776 23532 23594 E AndroidRuntime: FATAL EXCEPTION: pool-1-thread-1
08-04 18:27:43.776 23532 23594 E AndroidRuntime: Process: com.bancoplaza2.p2p, PID: 23532
08-04 18:27:43.776 23532 23594 E AndroidRuntime: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: dalvik.system.PathClassLoader[DexPathList[[zip file "/data/app/com.bancoplaza2.p2p-2/base.apk"],
nativeLibraryDirectories=[/data/app/com.bancoplaza2.p2p-2/lib/arm, /system/lib, /vendor/lib]]] couldn't find "libsqlc-native-driver.so"
08-04 18:27:43.776 23532 23594 E AndroidRuntime: at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:984)
08-04 18:27:43.776 23532 23594 E AndroidRuntime: at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:1530)
08-04 18:27:43.776 23532 23594 E AndroidRuntime: at io.liteglue.SQLiteConnector.<init>(SQLiteConnector.java:8)
08-04 18:27:43.776 23532 23594 E AndroidRuntime: at io.sqlc.SQLiteConnectorDatabase.<clinit>(SQLiteConnectorDatabase.java:39)
08-04 18:27:43.776 23532 23594 E AndroidRuntime: at io.sqlc.SQLitePlugin.openDatabase(SQLitePlugin.java:212)
08-04 18:27:43.776 23532 23594 E AndroidRuntime: at io.sqlc.SQLitePlugin.access$000(SQLitePlugin.java:28)
08-04 18:27:43.776 23532 23594 E AndroidRuntime: at io.sqlc.SQLitePlugin$DBRunner.run(SQLitePlugin.java:328)
08-04 18:27:43.776 23532 23594 E AndroidRuntime: at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1133)
08-04 18:27:43.776 23532 23594 E AndroidRuntime: at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:607)
08-04 18:27:43.776 23532 23594 E AndroidRuntime: at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:761)
08-04 18:27:43.776 2185 14760 W ActivityManager: Force finishing activity com.bancoplaza2.p2p/.MainActivity

This is because Aurora loses its mind when fetching those goddamned pesky split APKs, managing to download only the main APK, but not the dependencies (in this case, a native SQLite lib because FUCK YOU THAT'S WHY).

Long short story: I had to download this app from another device (luckily $MOM's Allcrapper tablet hasn't creamed its panties this week, so I used her Google Play account to install it), then since this thing is rooted (thankfully!), all I had to do was to find the .APK and copy it somewhere else (in this case, since the device runs KitKat, my target APK lives at /mnt/asec/com.bancoplaza2.p2p-1/pkg.apk). After copying it to my PC for checking, turns out that this is the full APK, including that pesky DLL of doom. After sideloading it to my Z835 (because beaming installed apps over Bluetooth will never happen due to vendor lock-in "piracy concerns", something that goes way back to the carrier-branded dumbphone era), It Just Worked™. Of course I will have to redo all this crapfest if they ever update their crapp.

Oh, and this craptacular excuse of a mobile payment app wants access to my location - something that NONE of the other banks whose crapps I use requires (in fact, none of those requires any permission beyond network access - the commies ordered banks to geoblock all their online services to within the country borders, but then that's what IP addresses are for! YOU DON'T NEED A FREAKIN' GPS FOR THAT!). But hey, QR codes!


GOD I HATE BANKS
. And when mixed with smartdevices, the result is pure concentrated AAAAAAARGHHH!. Like a match made in the deepest levels of Hell.

Also, while the idea of split .APKs is not bad in principle (just download the parts your specific device actually needs), the execution is an obvious disaster for those that actually prefer to be in control of what gets installed to their devices. Oh, and it does nothing to address software bloat, aside of some developer ego satisfaction ("butbutbut you only download the bits you need!")


*while your bolivars of the week are still worth something

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-08-05, 20:59 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #472 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
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We've got the RGB LED craze everywhere inside of our PRO GEAR SPEC TYPE GT-RAGE "gamer" PCs:

- in our PSUs
- in our motherboards
- in our cases
- and even in our videocards

(There is now even a bunch of competing standards for RGB lighting on motherboards, some of them driven over USB and others requiring proprietary mobo plugs and wires)

Now, get welcome to the next level: RGB-driven SSDs:
https://www.nikktech.com/main/articles/pc-hardware/storage/solid-state-drives/9699-hyperx-fury-rgb-480gb-ssd-review?showall=1

Too bad it's an "about average" drive (any Samsung or Crucial drive will give you better performance per dollar, and that's not getting NVMe in the mix yet - we're talking about ordinary SATA drives). But hey, it's all about the looks! Who cares about speed when you've got the bling?

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-08-06, 00:28 in I still HATE smartdevices
Dinosaur

Post: #473 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
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Posted by CaptainJistuce
Actually, the thing holding mobile pay back now is card readers. Lots and lots of card readers out there without any way of talking to a pocket computer. And the card reader manufacturers are going to charge a premium to upgrade to a new model with more features(card reader manufacturers apparently treat their customers as poorly as can possibly be done, so of course they charge extra for everything).

Some places have NFC readers, and they support Google Pay and Apple Pay.
For everywhere else, there's Samsung Pay.

Samsung Pay works everywhere, because the PDAs that support it simulate ye olde magnetic stripe via actuation of an internal electromagnet. No one has to upgrade their hardware to include NFC readers. It is a clever hack, and I respect that, even if I hope to never own another Samsung phone ever again.


Holy shit, yo.

1) Doesn't USA have a banking regulator office or something that can force banks to actually not be complete assholes when talking about paying over anything that isn't a credit/debit card!? (oh, I forgot "interoperability" is a curse word up there). I can't believe my commie shithole is LIGHTYEARS AHEAD over your banks, at least with mobile payments. Our cards are not involved at all. Unfortunately at this stage, the P2P program only covers payments between humans, and only recently some banks have entered the next phase: payments from humans to corporations. Surely there are a bunch of WTFs under the hood, particularly at the security department (what if someone steals your phone? Because that WILL happen to you at some point in time. On some banks there is absolutely no security at all, in the name of convenience), but at least nothing that involves tearing the whole house down and starting over.

2) Wow, you guys still rely on magstripes. I can't even... Your banking system is indeed masochist by design then.


Posted by CaptainJistuce

That said, "banks are awful" is a universal truth.

Every country has its own flavor of "awful". Right now, ours is precariously dangling between "house of cards" and "panic~!". Every time I dip my card or send some money over a wire/licensed radio spectrum, it's like I'm playing a game of Russian Roulette. Just last week I lost big time, when the debit card networks decided it was a great time to "chip rejection" (whatever that means), while eating my money in the act. Called $BANK, they say "wait 72 hours, then come back with a formal complaint letter". If I'm lucky, I'll get my money back in FIFTEEN BUSINESS DAYS (i.e. 3 weeks, maybe a month). Normally this is not a big deal, but then, this is not a normal country. When I get my money back, it will be worth half it was worth today (in the best of cases). And yes, this happens to any random guy (or gal) over here at least once a year (the only new bit this time is the "formal complaint letter" - they used to deal with this over the phone, but I guess their call center drones defected to Argentina last year).

But hey, banks know better than I. And now I have to carry them on my Sino-American pocket computer, next to the bunch of plastic cards with European-assembled rice-grain-sized microcomputers-on-a-chip.
At least I can keep teh Googles and crApples away from the gory bits!

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-08-06, 22:24 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #474 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
Last view: 3 hours
Huh, sadpanda is back online.

Dunno how they managed to sort out their impending doom, or if it was gratuitous drama from the very beginning (it all started with the site admin wanting to step down or something, but now the entire thread has been deleted).

Anyway, fuck any law or country that pretends to ban fiction just because some people with clear mental diseases can't tell apart between reality and drawings.

(I'll still keep nhentai as a backup, love a few bits of their design, although I don't know how they curate their contents since you can't even upload stuff on your own)

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-08-08, 00:54 in I still HATE smartdevices
Dinosaur

Post: #475 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
Last view: 3 hours
I'll stick to cash withdrawals once a week, like I've been doing since... well, forever.

Plus, now that I actually collect the goddamned pieces of paper, I have a legit excuse to refuse going cashless (I'm already pissed over by the pre-communist CANTV when they phased out chip phonecards, to replace them with those lameass magstripe cards which were quite ugly, and when the commies took over, they pretty much killed phone card collecting as a hobby)

Today had the chance to test this shittyass bank mobile payment app.

The app wants access to my GPS, otherwise no payments for you.

On all other mobile payment apps, you just login, pay, and you're set (one of my banks even allow for login-less payments, but up to an arbitrarily low amount, a restriction enforced by their latest update. And before you scream "UNSAAAAAAFE!!!!", be aware that all banks are mandated by law to set upper limits for daily transactions, and to allow the account holder to modify them or to stick to the max, and in this specific example, for their mobile payment app to work AT ALL, you have to enroll your device - if you phone gets lost or stolen, you simply remove it from your account ASAP). But that's not how things are done at this bank which is totally not located at a plaza, no sir!

Instead... you have to use 2FA. Over SMS or email. Except that I don't do email on my cellphones, ever. And their 2FA codes self-destruct after 3 minutes. Guess when their SMS codes do arrive - too late, usually (and you risk getting your online access flagged or locked out for your sekuritah). Plus, you DO have to manually type in the code from the SMS into the app, because this app won't "sniff" incoming SMS for that code (I guess that's a plus for privacy, but task switching or copy&paste on smartdevices without buttons is still horrible), making the whole experience a big pile of AAAAARGHH!!!

But hey, I don't get a "RESTRICTED MATERIALS OF IBM (C) 1995" warning on each screen! Instead... I got a shitpile of Javascript and a canned webview from some hipster framework named Cordova. With a native SQLite DLL because this bank is too lazy to save my frequent payments serverside, just like "mostly sane" banks do.

If I could go back in time, I would erase Andy Rubin from existence, for starters. Even ancient Windows Mobile was much saner than current mobile platforms. Yes, it was ugly. Yes, it wasn't "mass consumer friendly". And yes, it was Windows, but suckier. But smartphones were meant to be PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS, not sources of daily and constant headaches!

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-08-08, 17:04 in I still HATE smartdevices
Dinosaur

Post: #476 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
Last view: 3 hours
Now that we speak about banking WTFs, let me extend another WTF. This even managed to get my phone involved. Also, PRINTERS, because they hate you and no WTF is complete without those dreaded paper munchers of doom!

Quoting myself, for context:
Posted by tomman
Just last week I lost big time, when the debit card networks decided it was a great time to "chip rejection" (whatever that means), while eating my money in the act. Called $BANK, they say "wait 72 hours, then come back with a formal complaint letter". If I'm lucky, I'll get my money back in FIFTEEN BUSINESS DAYS (i.e. 3 weeks, maybe a month). Normally this is not a big deal, but then, this is not a normal country. When I get my money back, it will be worth half it was worth today (in the best of cases). And yes, this happens to any random guy (or gal) over here at least once a year (the only new bit this time is the "formal complaint letter" - they used to deal with this over the phone, but I guess their call center drones defected to Argentina last year).


Yesterday I went to the bank to file the formal complaint letter (which involved several paper jams and mispicks on my Konica-Minolta printer), since the 72 hours for the automatic reversal elapsed and my money is still nowhere to be seen. The customer service representative lady was not really interested into focusing about processing my complaint since I'm not a retailer bribing her for getting a card (PoS) terminal issued. She goes around, walks in and out several times, talks with the other CSRs about completely unrelated crap, and FINALLY gets her ass back to her desk to actually process my complaint. On this bank, this step involves her filling a Excel form (!??!?!?!!!), printing it out, rubber-stamping it several times, and myself signing it as the last step. Then the whole sandwich of paperwork has to be sent via courier to the main branch, because this bank regressed itself to 1985 or something.

Anyway, the first roadblock was getting the Excel form properly printed. The HP MFP disagreed - the form was getting truncated at the bottom end, like someone forgot to correctly select the proper paper size on the printer driver setup dialogs. "No, that's not it!". After ruining like 4 sheets of pristine (and in this country, quite expensive) blank paper sheets, she finally managed to print it OK, after fiddling with the paper margin setup on Excel. Then, it's my time to place my signature, with the pen supplied by the CSR. The pen which failed when I do the initial stroke of my signature! Oops. No, I can't redo the stroke, as the sekuritah-conscious folks at the main branch would reject it. This means printing the whole form, AGAIN. This time, the pen cooperates and I got my easy-to-forge signature on the damn form. We're done, so I leave the branch and move elsewhere to continue with my daily tasks.

1 hour later, I'm at the other end of the city, already in the bus back to home, waiting to it to start the route since it was a slow day, devoid of passengers, when suddenly the phone rings! It's a SMS from the bank CSR, telling me that I have to go back to the branch to sign the goddamned form AGAIN, because she had forgot to input my account number on it! W. T. F!??!?!?! Dude, how do you even!??!?! After disembarking the bus, claiming my fare back, and switching routes (thankfully the route to this bank branch also starts at the same stop, but on a different car), I'm back at the bank. It was noon already, and with rain looming over this part of the city. The CSR had a new (and this time, properly completed) form ready to sign, complete with the required rubber stamps and other signatures. I'm handed the same faulty pen, and naturally the piece of shit FAILS AGAIN WHEN I'M DRAWING THE INITIAL STROKE.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGHHHHH!!!!

Another printer dance cycle after, I finally got a nicely drawn signature on a properly filled form. Rain is now pouring down outside, and it's still noon. Now, the fate of my money is in the hands of an army of paper pushers several branches away. So much for computers, eh people?!

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Dinosaur

Post: #477 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
Last view: 3 hours
Posted by CaptainJistuce
Why does Microsoft get credit for inventing button labels that read in the right order when Sega's been doing it since the 80s?

That's because nowadays' kids were born AFTER Sega left the console market, and said kids are now playing CoD and Halo on their Xboxes. They've never heard about Sega making other stuff aside of Sonic games (if anything).

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-08-10, 01:06 in I have yet to have never seen it all. (revision 2)
Dinosaur

Post: #478 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
Last view: 3 hours
Soviet Venezuela, where DC-9s first/second gen 737s A380s come to die:
https://simpleflying.com/estelar-airlines-airbus-a380/
https://twitter.com/Enrique77W/status/1150424626415198209

(The superjumbo was supposed to be a temporary replacement for another leased A340 that is being serviced, to last two weeks in service. The plane broke after 4 days in Venezuelan soil because we can't have nice things. Also, it seems those Hi Fly dudes are really desperate to get people lease their unlovely second-hand superjumbo, if they were letting it fly to one of the worst and most unsafe airports in the world)

EDIT: After oh-so-many delays and cancelations, this fat bird managed to reach Argentina... over a week later than initially planned: https://airlinegeeks.com/2019/07/25/best-flu-ever-airbus-a380s-first-revenue-flight-to-argentina/

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-08-10, 11:22 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #479 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
Last view: 3 hours
Huh, for the first time since its inception, Slashdot is blocking anonymous comments.

Yup, Anonymous Cowards are now barred from trolling shitposting spamming commenting - they now need to create an account. Freedom of speech concerns aside, for the first time in YEARS, I can actually browse the comments and grasp a semblance of intellectual discussion!

Really, it was time to do something: most of the anons were the same old tired spam (some guy named "APK" spamming a "hosts list", the usual political trolls, and the typical trend spam), plus a pile of harassing towards a few specific members, infecting EVERY SINGLE STORY, even if none of said memebers actually post there!

Mind you, this will not stop trolling (nothing stops you from being an ass after creating an account and logging in), but with Anonymous Cowards shot dead, the site is now a bit more human.

Hell, maybe *I* should finally stop being a lurker :D ...nah.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-08-10, 19:48 in I have yet to have never seen it all. (revision 1)
Dinosaur

Post: #480 of 1318
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 9 days
Last view: 3 hours
2019-08-10 Because the master copy has already been sent to the duplicators, Wily Beast and Weakest Creature 1.00b update released ahead of Comiket 96 for players to use to fix important bugs when the full game comes out.


Congratulations ZUN, you've just become Valve Software!
"IT COMPILES, SHIP IT!"
"We can always patch after before going gold"
Yes, I'm well aware that any new game gets a patch a few days after release, but this is the first time ever I hear about a new release in the series getting a patch released before going retail. Day 0 patches, now on your doujinsoft!

(And if you think you can escape the madness by purchasing digital, you're wrong: the game will release on Steam A FULL MONTH LATER than the Comiket release -which was today-. Dear ZUN, please don't do that anymore, with love, the year 2019~)

Anyway, now that a new Touhou game is out, it's time to wait for the most important thing: where is muh porn of the new 2hus?!

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