Little things that annoy the hell out of you

[Sumez]

a keyed connector to use by feel

Sounds to me like you've never used a scart cable XD

[Ed Oscuro]

Sure I did, with the XRGB series.

[Mischief Maker]

Looks like Musk's new paywall approach to twitter is starting. Wanna scroll down the history of what someone tweeted yesterday? You better be logged into an account.

I fucking hate Web 2.0.

[mycophobia]

Looks like Musk's new paywall approach to twitter is starting. Wanna scroll down the history of what someone tweeted yesterday? You better be logged into an account.

I fucking hate Web 2.0.

it's been like that for me for a good while now. if i pop open a private window i can usually look at a twitter profile or tweet's replies unhindered. anyways yes twitter sucks ass

[BareKnuckleRoo]

It actually started happening a good 3-4 months before, though maybe it's like Youtube removing the dislike feature and they only started doing it in certain regions before rolling out to others? Very annoying. My preferred workaround is Nitter.

[mycophobia]

It actually started happening a good 3-4 months before, though maybe it's like Youtube removing the dislike feature and they only started doing it in certain regions before rolling out to others? Very annoying. My preferred workaround is Nitter.

oh yeah i completely forgot about this, thanks

[drauch]

Has anyone worked for a place that went through a merger that wasn't just absolutely miserable? Going through my second and it's already foreshadowing to be a miserable, job-altering experience.

[orange808]

When your wireless provider starts actively interfering with using a VPN and also malfunctions using a custom DNS configuration. Why? To provide "better service", the network must be "incompatible"... ... ... ...

Thanks a lot, you orange clown fuck.

[Durandal]

The internet seems to be incredibly, even aggressively keen on trying to get me to follow THAT trial. It is completely insane! Like a plague of locusts, no matter how much I tell YouTube's recommendations to not bother me with this garbage, news/memes/content about it keeps constantly leaking through my filters, begging me to feed it with attention. I shot one glance at the public discourse surrounding it and decided I do not want to be part of a pointless media machine latching itself as a parasite onto something that's ultimately a personal and intimate matter.

[Mischief Maker]

The internet seems to be incredibly, even aggressively keen on trying to get me to follow THAT trial. It is completely insane! Like a plague of locusts, no matter how much I tell YouTube's recommendations to not bother me with this garbage, news/memes/content about it keeps constantly leaking through my filters, begging me to feed it with attention. I shot one glance at the public discourse surrounding it and decided I do not want to be part of a pointless media machine latching itself as a parasite onto something that's ultimately a personal and intimate matter.

I think they're trying to use that trial to trigger a gamergate-tier reactionary frenzy in time for the November elections.

[null1024]

At some point like 8 months ago, Youtube recommendations became really, really bad and they seem to just get worse constantly. I went from regularly watching a ton of suggested videos to now just scrolling through several pages of pure garbage without a single thing worth clicking. It's genuinely hideous how bad it is.
The worst bit is that stuff I've subscribed to seems to actively anti-influence what shows up in recommendations now. Genuinely baffling.
I fucking hate it. Almost all the stuff I click on now is in the side-bar while I'm watching a video, or something in my subscriptions.

Also, I really do feel sorry for anyone new trying to make it on Youtube, given that it seems impossible to be making decent videos while actually getting promoted these days. There also is actively no real competition to the site for video. None.

[KPackratt2k]

Also, I really do feel sorry for anyone new trying to make it on Youtube, given that it seems impossible to be making decent videos while actually getting promoted these days. There also is actively no real competition to the site for video. None.

IKR? I've tried a handful of YouTube alternatives and they all had their own sets of issues to the point where they were worse than YouTube. There was one alternative (Vidlii) that forced users to disable Adblock, yet they insisted on shoving ads onto their pages to the point where I felt that it would feed malicious ads someday (that has actually happened, you know). I found another one (BitChute) that didn't have this issue (and better yet, actually allowed their users to directly donate to them), but I was hardly getting any views there to the point where my subscriber count on that site has been stuck at 0 for two years now. There's also one site (Odysee) that people say is better than YouTube, but considering they want you to participate in cryptocurrency just to be able to have a channel (and it doesn't help that their payment processor is blocked in the United States), I beg to differ.

Because of the struggle to find a decent alternative, I still upload on YouTube albeit on a limited scale in order to comply with their ridiculous policies (i.e. COPPA and their abusive copyright policies).

You're right, YouTube recommendations do suck.

[BIL]

Documentaries with rhetorical soundtracks. Or soundtracks at all, tbh, barring end credits and maybe opening ones. Cloying, in mediocre and well-made docs alike.

Which is why I appreciated this dude's short doc on disgraced pedo rockstar Ian Watkins. Being neither female nor a twink, I was never into his poofter band (fuck that weak shit! GET THE REAL HARD GAY SOUND ), but I remember them being all over the UK music mags in the early 00s. Was a bit of a downer coming back as an auld grey cunt to discover he was a fuckin chomo all along tbh!

Wow, white women and girls appear to have it rough in ol' Blighty when it comes to securing police attention. Unless said pigs are out to rape and murder them, obviously. The epidemic of cultural neuroses collectively termed "Cool Britannia" seems to have cast a shadow as hideous as the gurning rictus of the Dubya rentboy that was its figurehead.

Oh! Speaking of the plight of women:

I think they're trying to use that trial to trigger a gamergate-tier reactionary frenzy in time for the November elections.

You said it good buddy!



"C'mon, do a Gamergate." *pokepokepoke*

*stairs muffin*

"GAMERGAAAAAATE!"



Shameless necromancy that would be farcical at the best of times! But ESPECIALLY to an avid follower of the ongoing Gamergate The After Story Of. (what a hit!)



Ladies, please, calm your tits! These men can barely afford the cost of vital facial reconstructive surgery - let alone that of a second terror campaign on John Walker Flynt's mouldering gash!

[vol.2]

Documentaries with rhetorical soundtracks. Or soundtracks at all, tbh, barring end credits and maybe opening ones. Cloying, in mediocre and well-made docs alike.

Which is why I appreciated this dude's short doc on disgraced pedo rockstar Ian Watkins.

Yech. Had to look this up, but it seems vaguely familiar. I think I was living out of the country when the controversy happened, so it wasn't first order news where I was.

I am sometimes upset about Fleetwood Mac's Jeremy Spencer who was caught up in a pedo scandal as part of the Children of God cult in the 1970s. I'm not sure how far the trials went, it's not easy to find places with the info anymore as most of that stuff has been mysteriously redacted, but I certainly feel weird about some of those early mac albums because of it. Granted all of this stuff took place after he left the band, but it still makes me reluctant to listen to his songs on them.

[null1024]

My phone decided to start shutting itself off outta nowhere. It's a Galaxy S9.
The culprit? Apparently, the fingerprint scanner! Disabling it in the system settings fixed it.

I did have to scramble for an old phone in the drawer this evening before I found that out, bleh. Also, updates and shit, since it would have been years since I'd actually used it.
Kinda lucky that I even have an old phone that works. I'd written it off as a brick when I got my S9, then screwed around poking at it until it booted again, and hasn't stopped working since. I don't usually get a new phone until my old one is actually unusable.

[orange808]

When thick people invent meanings for songs that contradict the words.

Someone literally told me Ghost Town isn't a protest song and it's about a recession.

"Too much fighting on the dance floor." Ever wonder what that line was all about?

[Mischief Maker]

When thick people invent meanings for songs that contradict the words.

Someone literally told me Ghost Town isn't a protest song and it's about a recession.

"Too much fighting on the dance floor." Ever wonder what that line was all about?

Uh... they're correct.

Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?
We danced and sang, and the music played in a de boomtown

[...]

This place (town) is coming like a ghost town
No job to be found in this country
Can't go on no more
The people getting angry

The official music video is way more evocative of urban decay than masses taking to the streets.

[orange808]

When thick people invent meanings for songs that contradict the words.

Someone literally told me Ghost Town isn't a protest song and it's about a recession.

"Too much fighting on the dance floor." Ever wonder what that line was all about?

Uh... they're correct.

Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?
We danced and sang, and the music played in a de boomtown

[...]

This place (town) is coming like a ghost town
No job to be found in this country
Can't go on no more
The people getting angry

The official music video is way more evocative of urban decay than masses taking to the streets.

It's everything about that time, including fucking nazi national front types (known simply as "skinheads" to most of us) crashing the scene. The same brand of asshole that punched people in the pit and tried to shave your mohawk. Fucking neanderthal pricks.

[BIL]

"Ghost Town" was indeed written about the economic despair of Thatcher's early 80s Britain and the nihilistic malaise it fostered - ofc, by the same token, it's a very universal song. "This town" could be anywhere fatcats have made a mess of things, then fucked off as the common men turn on one another. "Why must the youth fight amongst themselves? Government leaving the youth upon the shelf." Very broad, to its enduring credit.

I could swear I remember hearing The Specials got pulled from streaming recently because of "skinhead connections," before a shamefaced retraction saw them reinstated. I couldn't be arsed to even look it up. Despair, again! I'd have thought that scene (and haircut)'s co-opting by precisely the toxic brew of dispossessed white men and Nazi pied pipers glimpsed in Jerry Dammers' bleak snapshot would be common knowledge by now. It certainly is Google-able knowledge!

Out in the former colonies we were taught about this in sixth form, it and the riots that followed already seeming like ancient history by then. Barely yesterday in hindsight, ofc. Our sociology prof was a bit of a Citizen Smith who joked he'd done a runner when the revolution never came, haha. Killer vinyl collection, invaluable recs, wonder sometimes if he and spadgy are related tbh.

Very decent article on it all here, from my favourite early 00s. I remember when it was first uploaded. Man could I scarf down a buckshot salad and go back sometimes, I tell ya. 3;

Surprise good memories + tunes in Little Annoyed Hell this evening.

I won't dance in a club like this!
All the girls are slags, and the beer tastes just like piss!

[orange808]

I recall The Exploited wrote a catchy little jingle for Maggie.

Not sure how much I care about the "The Specials" point of view and narrative on musical taste. (The definition of "The Specials" being rather fluid because of the rolling roster.) The knocks on punk make me grin. GBH and The Subhumans have as many gems in their catalog as The Specials. Their station as a supporting band for The Clash sounds about right. That's still their status to date. And, no, a few visits to Top of the Pops doesn't necessarily score points with me.

Nice cover of Dandy Livingstone, by the way. Still not your song, though... Didn't really bring anything new. Not like The Clash bringing something new to Junior Murvin's track or Devo completely deconstructing the moronic Rolling Stones. Never liked lifeless covers that weren't a new interpretation.

Speaking of cover tunes, Essex is a bit of a bore, but I like this one: https://youtu.be/3e7iUgoNp4M

[BIL]

TOTP was never reliable on quality, being a chart show (as it says on the tin, to be fair). I can't recall offhand when they started insisting on miming, but that's another issue. Definitely by the mid-80s... I was barely 5y/o and could smell a rat there, a bit like one's first encounters with those Chinese people in the movies, y'know.

At any rate, some days you'd get a Buzzcocks, others a Pepsi & Shirley...

(so fuckin gay, God I love it )

Good for the odd cute anecdote nowadays, like Ozzy encountering the Wailers backstage, and marveling first at the sheer tonnage of weed smoke pouring out of their dressing room, then their playing flawlessly "despite" () said herbage.

The Old Grey Whistle Test outclasses it on all counts (so many killer one-offs... I should track down a proper archive, I know that Lizzy cut has vanished off YT before), but then it was expressly a showcase for live performances of non-charting and album tracks. Horses for courses etc etc.

Sadly, it's hard to even enjoy TCAP as a nostalgic time capsule nowadays, with Jimmy Savile's fucking ugly mug all over it. 3; Rock/popstars and their orbiters behaving badly is a constant, of course, but few I'm aware of were as shit-eatingly earnest as the astonishingly well-insulated Savile, whose surname appropriately has just the one "l."

[orange808]

Right about The Old Grey Whistle Test. A relic of time and the old BBC. Not something you could find in America.

I couldn't grasp the clip, outside of a general appreciation for their ability to play well together. They aren't sloppy at all. Well performed.

It's just that, 1970's rock is something I never could completely understand. I guess we all have blind spots. They sound like Hendrix fans to me. Although, I own no Jimi Hendrix and never wanted to. That entire tree of psychedelic hard rock (and loosely composed/improvised and simultaneously tightly performed) "jam" is outside my reach.

Better than intentionally unlistenable glam punk shit, though. At one point, every shiny clean glam punker (Complete with a perfect fresh green mohawk or liberty spikes. Never ever had their hair down.) had a Crass record and logo scribbled on their clothes. An unfortunate competition to see who could claim to enjoy the most annoying sounds imaginable.

Always a fascinating phenomenon. Putting on music that you know sucks to put off everyone else around you. Also noticed squatters clutching their Best Before vinyl as if it's worth carting around, when they only had a tape deck. Even if did get played, everyone talked above it and usually someone would turn the shit down. Not going to break the conversation or liven the room with that. Doesn't make you exclaim "fuck yeah" and start miniature pit with friends: like when the ticking sample of Time Bomb plays and the song kicks off.

Chalk up another thing that annoys the hell out of me: glam punks that played unlistenable shit when we came around to impress us with their obtuse taste (and went right back to listening to something that's music afterwards). Same ones were guaranteed to bore me to shit with a lecture on anything I own that was printed on a major.

[BIL]

As far as guitar rock goes, these days I'm most likely to blast something along the lines of The Heartbreakers' "LAMF," The Saints' "I'm Stranded," The Ramones and Motorhead's first four LPs, etc... stuff that's committedly built on 1950s US rock n' roll, lean and skillfully played with a healthy layer of grit. It hit me, while revisiting Johnny and Lemmy's records, that I could never seem to remember the guitar solos (the Ramones famously having none at all). All crisply done, no complaints re: quality, I just tended to zone out waiting for the rest of the band to come back in. Everything else though, the riffs especially, fuckin dynamite. Was quite madly into Sabbath as a kid, and likewise these days, it's not so much War Pigs' starkly bleak outro solo I identify with, but that absolute floorboard-splintering stomp-along riff on Fairies.

Son, son, you've gone too far!
Smokin' and trippin' is all that you do!
YYYYYYYEAAAAAAAAAAAWRIGHT NAOOOOO

I genuinely wondered if it was an effect of getting older, some reduction of neuroplasticity like they always bang on about... I'm pretty sure I just have a lower appetite for excess, though. Similar with my real hobbyist passion of gaming, I suppose. I can thoroughly enjoy tooling about in a FromSoft ARPG, but for a desert island I'm packing the coin-ops, where the avatar remains carved in granite as the player's experience and expertise grows over untold hours (like any decent game, said Froms aren't without this aspect, in fact they're notably strong in it for their genre... but for the absolute "Press P1 Start" immediacy, it's hard to outdo cab-bred gaming). Likewise, I do still like the odd Lizzy or Priest or Rainbow ramble full of towering excess, but yeah, compact is good these days. Less surface area, more pressure, its physics innit.

[orange808]

Classy.
https://www.retrorgb.com/extract-the-go ... ition.html

Read the last line.

Real classy.

Hey, don't pay for a legal rom and keep it. Get a refund and steal it, right??

Real classy. Not unexpected, though.

[Hoagtech]

Edit: Non Relevant

[null1024]

Multi-column text in a .PDF file.
It's painful to read on a screen, having to scroll back up constantly. Even if I'm at my desktop [where I can rotate my screen, even if that's a mild hassle], I like having the text zoomed in vs just displaying the whole page at once.

Reading any kind of academic paper is miserable because of this.

[Sumez]

PDF files used for any other purpose than print seems like a gross misunderstanding of the format

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Real classy. Not unexpected, though.

Your moral outrage over piracy here appears to be the result of you missing a key point in the article you linked. Specifically, this part:

I would give Nightdive Studios the benefit of the doubt here, except for the fact that their “fix” for this problem was to effectively steal the work that fan volunteers had done to port Blade Runner to ScummVM and make it only available behind their paywall.

Clicking this link leads to an archive of a Twitter thread:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220625143 ... 4234260481

Spoiler

Thomas Fach-Pedersen
@madmoose_dk
Jun 23
1/4 Over a number of years, I, along with friends, lovingly reverse engineered Westwood's Blade Runner for @ScummVM
, reviving the game and helping @GOGcom to release the game for sale once again. For this we have asked for and received nothing but the honor of the work.


Thomas Fach-Pedersen
@madmoose_dk
·
Jun 23
2/4 Now @NightdiveStudio
has released their "Enhanced" version. It is, by all accounts (https://rockpapershotgun.com/the-blade- ... ooks-worse), ugly and buggy, and offers no tangible benefits over ScummVM aside from very poor console support.

They even forgot to credit me for the subtitles we let them use.


Thomas Fach-Pedersen
@madmoose_dk
·
Jun 23
3/4 Disappointing, but hardly surprising. This would all be "fine" if @GOGcom hadn't decided to replace our version Blade Runner with this so-called "Enhanced Edition", now offering the ScummVM original only as an add-on.


Thomas Fach-Pedersen
@madmoose_dk
·
Jun 23
4/4 Sadly, it is now no longer possible to purchase and play a digital copy of Blade Runner in ScummVM without sending money to @NightdiveStudio. I'm sad to see @GOGcom relegate our free work to a mere attachment on somebody else's mediocre paid product.


Thomas Fach-Pedersen
@madmoose_dk

5/4 @GOGcom has now stated that the decision to delist our version "was made with input from multiple parties."
@NightdiveStudio were you one of those parties? @ScummVM certainly was not, even though it was our free work that allowed you to sell Blade Runner for years.


Thomas Fach-Pedersen
@madmoose_dk
6/4 UPDATE: While I slept it looks like @NightdiveStudio
has decided to resolve the extremely poor reception of their work on Steam by… copying and directly selling our work.
Absolutely shameless. Technically legal, morally decrepit.


Thomas Fach-Pedersen
@madmoose_dk
@NightdiveStudio banned my from their discord. I guess they are more than happy taking money for our work.


Thomas Fach-Pedersen
@madmoose_dk
To avoid confusion:

1. I'm mainly sad that @GOGcom
switched the ScummVM version out for the Nightdive version.

2. Nightdive has done nothing wrong legally. They own a license to publish Blade Runner and our work is licensed under the GPL, which I believe they comply with.

tl;dr Nightdive Studio released a buggy rerelease of a game, then "fixed" the release by essentially stealing and reselling a competent fanmade version they slapped their name onto without credit to the original developers. People wanted to be able to purchase the original game to use in ScummVM without having to give money to Nightdive Studio, and this generated enough outrage that GOG is now back to offering the competent ScummVM version.

[drauch]

Man, NightDive is really bizarre. Part of me wants to love them, but they keep fucking up pretty hard, then fixing it down the road. Their original Blood release had a lot of wrong stuff going on with it as well.

[vol.2]

NightDive first (AFAIK it was the first) did this with System Shock. For years there was an active community that supported a fan made mod to update the original System Shock, which found it's ultimate version in System Shock Portable (SSP). When ND got the distro rights to it, they basically used SSP and then sent them cease and desist orders to stop distributing it. This was my first exposure to them as a company, as I was a huge SS fan and a Looking Glass Studios fan in general. SSP, just for reference, was partially created by (one of?) those involved with the OG game, and was considered official by many. It can still be found without the actual game included here, and if you search TTLG forums, you should be able to find references to the Nightdive incident and the associated vitriol, but a lot of it is there in form of archived lists and I don't have the inclination to sort right now.