Ambient Irony

Monday, February 08

Daily News Stuff 8 February 2021

Chicken With A Chainsaw Edition

Tech News

YouTube locked the official channel for Terraria, a game that last time I checked had sold 10 million copies, over a million on Android alone. (TechRaptor)

And their Gmail account.

And still hasn't responded three weeks later.

Which means the lead developer lost access to everything he had on Google.

So they've cancelled their planned launch on Stadia.

Because fuck Google.

Commenters on Hacker News are unimpressed. Try Ctrl-F and search in that page for "mafia". Enjoy.
They do this to everyone. Make them ten million dollars a year? They'll ban you.

Actually work for Google and can escalate through internal channels? They'll still ban you.
How does the Arm Cortex-X1 on a 5nm process compare with the Arm Cortex-X1 on a 5nm process? (AnandTech)

Okay, it's TSMC's 5nm vs. Samsung's.
Apparently you can make donuts with pancake mix too, though the recipes vary a lot in complexity. Some require additional plain flour, eggs, milk, butter, sugar, and so on, others are basically throw the pancake mix in a donut maker.

I really miss donuts. A single gluten-free donut costs as much as a dozen normal ones.

My grocery order now includes eggs, sugar, cinnamon, blackberry and strawberry jam, and a stick mixer. I'll have to go to Kmart if I want to get some proper donut trays though. (I have both a stick mixer and a hand mixer somewhere, I think. But they're not in the kitchen cupboard, which means they're in a box in the garage with all the spiders and I'd rather just buy a new one.)
No free plan. (No Free Plan)

This is sound advice if you have an audience and don't depend on the network effect for growth and sustainability.

They do suggest free trials with long enough periods - and no up-front payment details, free plans for open source projects, and reasonably priced lifetime subscriptions.
An Android Barcode Scanner app called Barcode Scanner suddenly became malware. (Malwarebytes)

It had ten million users.

Malwarebytes suggests installing Malwarebytes, which given the context of the article seems just a bit pushy.

I suggest throwing all your Android and iOS devices out the window of a very tall building, preferably one overlooking an active caldera.
Phishing emails in Morse code? (Bleeping Computer)

So, it has come to this.
14 million programmers are using VSCode. (ZDNet)

VSCode sucks.
A Paris court has found France guilty of failing to meet commitments under the Paris Agreement. (CBS)

The US, which withdrew from the agreement entirely, has nonetheless met or exceeded its own commitments.
Reddit's five-second guerilla SuperbOwl spot.

Which they uploaded to Twitter because you can't embed Reddit posts.
Glenn Greenwald on how the American mainstream media has turned into the Stasi. (Substack)

CNN, NBC, and the New York Times all have full-time staff dedicated to finding online services that still permit free speech - and destroying them.

Mouse Computer Ad Roundup Video of the Day

Ran out of individual videos, so here's a whole bunch of them. The ones with the little drummer girl start around the two minute mark.

Disclaimer: It's supposed to be pay-to-play. It's a business. That's how businesses work. That's the entire point.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:38 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 541 words, total size 6 kb.

1 I think if a Consumer Bill of Rights were to come out of that Google thing, one of the first things in it should be "if you get banned, the company must immediately refund every dollar you ever paid them for anything" to protect people. Commenters on that story point out entire companies that have been locked out of accounts due to one user. It's crazy. It also reminds me that now that I have a protonmail account I should start transitioning stuff that's tied to my Gmail account.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 09 2021 12:31 AM (eqaFC)

2 "But they're not in the kitchen cupboard, which means they're in a box in the garage with all the spiders and I'd rather just buy a new one."

Nothing casually says "everything here wants to kill you" quite like "I'd rather buy a new [whatever] than go into the garage."

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 09 2021 12:55 AM (eqaFC)

3 What don't you like about VSCode? It seems a bit less bloated than, say, Eclipse.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 09 2021 01:08 AM (eqaFC)

4 Honestly, while I despise Google more and more, the Terraria people are suffering their own stupidity. There is very little excuse for any business to not own their own domain. As an individual I've owned my own domain for decades for ~$10/yr and ~$120/yr in hosting fees for a good hosting provider (HostingMatters, I can't recommend them enough). While I don't use Google, it would be pretty simple to set things up to forward to gmail and let the hosting provider cache e-mails so I could transition if needed. If the hosting provider had a downturn in service, I could move my domain to a new provider easily enough with nothing lost.
It's a bit like certain small business owners I know who still run their email on AOL without understanding that this is a risk.
For individuals it's more understandable, but even there I think those that can afford it should look at getting their own domains.

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Tuesday, February 09 2021 03:02 AM (Pl2MP)

5 Terraria's always had a domain of its own.
You can say "they should have their own email" and I'd even agree with you, although bear in mind ReLogic started out as like 3 people.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 09 2021 03:53 AM (eqaFC)

6 It's not very hard to set up an email server. Of course, it's not very easy to get it right. And then all the dimbulbs want email on their telephone(!)s, but they can't figure out how to install pine on their rotary phone.

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, February 09 2021 06:39 AM (LADmw)

7 Reading the Google apologists replying is amusing. "If you don't release the game on Stadia, you are punishing the consumer!!!!!" as if the developer was suppose to be a charitable enterprise that allows Google to profit off their efforts while being denied the use of Google's assets.

Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, February 09 2021 09:28 AM (4i7w0)

8 Anyone have thoughts on a good domain name registrar that won't cancel you? I registered one domain about 15 years ago (and long ago transferred it to someone else.) I directnic.com at the time but haven't had any interaction with them in close to a decade.

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, February 10 2021 02:54 AM (eqaFC)

9 Nothing casually says "everything here wants to kill you" quite like "I'd rather buy a new [whatever] than go into the garage." Posted by: Rick C
Indeed. My brain, upon reading the original text:
CPU0: aw, come on. Spiders freak me out, but I'm not gonna...
CPU1: Pixy lives in Australia
CPU0: ...and he should probably caulk the garage door shut, too.

Posted by: mikeski at Wednesday, February 10 2021 04:43 AM (P1f+c)

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