The Great UnGoogling: The Sign

I genuinely once wrote a blog entry using the browser of a PSP while sitting outside a library after hours to use their Wi-Fi. That was many years ago, and I have a lot less patience for when things don’t work. I’ve had my Blogger account for longer than any other platform, with the possible exception of DeviantART. It’s been far from perfect overall, but I’ve stuck with it. I’ve tolerated the occasional workarounds, to say nothing of the site’s frankly dated interface. If anyone were to ask me where to go for a blogging service, my knee-jerk is pretty much WordPress. For all the issues I have with them putting features behind paywalls after previously offering them for no charge (as well as their domain name services, which are downright scummy), WordPress offers the single best WYSIWYG interface for making media-rich text. Everything is laid out nice and neat, I can move things around with ease, and post settings are straightforward and intuitive.

My point is the problem with WordPress is more with me than anything they do. I suppose it’s fair to say that Blogger spoiled me. Everything Blogger offers is free (unless you want a domain name) because Google is a big evil monolith of a company that gets their money by other means (in my case, cloud storage). WordPress is not Google. At least, they’re nowhere near the size of Google and have fewer means at their disposal to keep the lights on.

Recently, I’ve encountered an issue with Blogger using my browser of choice, Safari. It acted like I wasn’t logged in, even though I was. This problem’s worst aspect was being unable to upload or otherwise post any images. After a tedious back-and-forth with Google’s worthless support, I eventually figured out the issue is with WebKit, a toolkit at the very heart of both Safari and my other browser of DuckDuckGo. I waited for a few updates to my OS and had better luck, but as of this writing I’m still not able to post images. That’s a slight lie; I can post images but I have to use another browser that doesn’t rely on WebKit, such as Edge or Firefox. I don’t want to do that. I know this sounds like being stubborn, but I’m just tired of workarounds. Updates always cause certain pieces of software to break, that’s unavoidable. What’s frustrating however is how long an issue can persist. In a time of software-as-a-service, I don’t think there’s any excuse for a known issue; You’ve got the revenue, you’ve got the personnel, fix it… and no pizza or energy drinks until you do.

This all coincides with a recent change I’ve been making over the course of the past year to UnGoogle my life. It started with no longer relying on Google for logins, password management, or two-factor authentication. That was a very big step and so far it’s had no downsides. I do still have a Google account overall, including a Gmail and cloud storage. Gmail is the best email service I’ve ever used and the cloud storage is really just a backup for other storage services I have, including some good old-fashioned physical drives I have to plug in to my desktop. Blogger is my biggest anchor, the most important reason I haven’t abandoned Google entirely. The recent WebKit fiasco, however, has given me pause. Couple that with the promo pricing offers that WordPress likes to email me, and I can’t help but see it as a sign to jump ship and go all in on WordPress for my blogging needs going forward.

So, given the scope of this endeavor as well as my reservations, I consulted my decision matrix. The decision matrix is a spreadsheet that catalogs the results of three virtual assistants asked to flip a coin. At the risk of sounding spiritual, I concentrate on the question while each coin is being flipped. Heads means to go for it. Tails means don’t do it. The result is a two out of three. The assistants are Siri, Alexa, and Google. Siri said to go for it while Alexa and Google said not to. The only time I’ve ever vetoed the decision matrix was when I upgraded my phone from a 12 mini to a 15. I’d held on to the 12 for a long time, even replacing the battery at one point, and the price on the 15 was pretty hard to beat since it was on the way out. As for WordPress, there exists a possibility of being vetoed and I go all in, but don’t hold your breath. Besides, the deal would only last for three years, and then I’d have to pay closer to full price again. I just don’t feel like it’s worth it right now.

I did decide on changing the theme for my other WordPress site for the umpteenth time. I was going to go for a rather bland but practical number creatively called Twenty Twenty-Five. My only real beef with it was putting color customization behind a paywall. The more I thought about it, the more I realized the futility of the situation. For as much as I love dark mode (give me light text on a dark background or give me death), not everyone consumes blogs the same way, and that's completely fine. You've doubtless got a "reader mode" on your browser of choice and can therefore render any theme on any blog obsolete. If you want black on white, white on black, yellow on navy, orange on gray, maroon on pink, I cannot stop you and I wouldn't want the power to do so anyway. Please, by all means, go bananas with my blessing. 

The Great UnGoogling: First Steps

Google pays Apple around 18 Billion every year for their search engine to be the default in the Safari browser. For perspective, that’s roughly NASA’s annual budget. Bear in mind, this isn’t some exclusivity deal. You can change the default search engine in Safari with just a little spelunking into the menu system. Like most things with Apple, the solution is simple, just not obvious.

If you’re on an iPhone:
Go to Settings. 

Scroll down to Apps.
Find Safari.
You’ll see an option for Search Engine.
Tapping on it reveals a list of options with Google at the top.
Take your pick.
You’re all clear, Kid. Now let’s blow this thing and go home.

The desktop environment has fewer steps, but works much the same way; it’s neatly tucked away in settings, far from hidden, but not calling attention to itself. Like I said, simple, not obvious. As for that list of options, it may seem like slim pickings, and it kind of is. Once upon a time, it was kind of the Wild West. There was Yahoo! and Google, of course, but there was also the likes of Excite and Lycos. Those two are still technically around, but they’re very much shadows of their former selves and not selectable on Safari’s shortlist. In fact, the only search engine I know of that came on the scene with a lot of hype and died almost as quickly was Cuil (pronounced “cool”), lasting only from 2008 to 2010. As to how we came to have one big slice with many rail-thin slices that would blow away in a gentle breeze if you tried to serve them on a plate, that’s a discussion people have earned degrees investigating. So, let’s just call it (Un)Natural Selection Meets The Law of Averages and carry on.

Touching back on those thin slices, they all stand a very good chance of becoming bigger pieces of the pie with the recent backlash Google has gotten for failing to uphold their founding mantra of “don’t be evil”. There’s been too many issues to cover in great detail here, from exploiting behavioral economics to legal troubles to policy changes contrary to earlier promises. Speaking only for myself, I’ve been making moves since the start of the year to slowly but surely de-Google my life, a kind of unintentional New Year’s Resolution. I don’t plan on quitting Google entirely, mostly because of my blog here as well as my YouTube channel, Gmail, and maybe Google Drive (which I'm considering moving to an external drive). My first real step in this direction was eliminating instances wherein I use my Google account to log in to a service. That took a very long time, but was ultimately painless and now I log in to those services through other means.

My next step was choosing a new default search engine, which brings us to that list of options. Yahoo! was an outright no from me. I closed my email account there some time ago and the only real attachment I have to them is Flickr, which I almost never use, at best serving as a plan B if I decide to give up on Instagram. Bing is okay; it’s by Microsoft, a company I have very mixed feelings about, but overall it’s a perfectly competent search engine. I don’t know a lot about Ecosia, except that it’s some kind of nonprofit that plants trees. I simply don’t see a gimmick like that being sustainable, which makes me sad as it’s a very noble cause.

In the end, I chose DuckDuckGo, and I’ve been using it for a few weeks now. It is partly built on Bing and primarily emphasizes privacy. What this means is that when you search something, DuckDuckGo doesn’t keep track of where you’ve been and what you’ve searched for, and does not use this data to target ads to you or otherwise tailor your search results to consider your browsing habits. I’ve never used Google without logging in to my Google account, so I don’t know what the search experience is like for everyone else. The consensus of late is that the search results feel fundamentally broken as they push AI features that are hit or miss at best as well as giving special favor to companies that buy advertising space on the platform rather than emphasizing relevance. Few things in this world irk me more than someone saying, “Just Google it!” as it exposes their ignorance to just how Google works. Put simply, my search results are not going to look like yours because of our different browsing habits. Google tracks what you look for and tries to find results that fit, often creating a kind of echo chamber.

One of the criticisms of DuckDuckGo and to a similar extent Bing is that the search results aren’t as “good” as Google. What is meant by this is that the results are less tailored and require a little more heavy lifting on your part. This isn’t the best example, but you’ll get the idea: when I put “flip a coin” into Google, it loads an applet that flips a virtual coin. When I put “flip a coin” into DuckDuckGo, I don’t get an applet. Instead, I get a list of websites that offer random number generators with coin-flipping options, along with articles detailing the history of the coin flip as well as the mathematical probabilities of using different currencies in the flipping. In other words, it’s not flipping the coin for me, it’s directing me to where I can get help with flipping a coin as I don’t have one on me and need to decide where I’m going to go for lunch. DuckDuckGo isn’t trying to be the answer. It knows it’s a directory. Google is trying to be the answer, at least for simple things like flipping coins or telling me the current temperature in Madagascar or the results of an election. At least, they started with simple things. Now, they’re trying to get AI to deliver more concise answers to more complex questions. I once asked Google which finger types the 6 on a keyboard. The first result was an AI summary that insisted it was the ring finger on the right hand. Needless to say, this is very wrong*. I tried again with different wording, thinking maybe I confused it. The result was the same. Sometime later, when I asked the same question, it did away with the AI summary and gave me a list of websites about learning to type.

To be fair, DuckDuckGo does have some AI features and will occasionally feature a summary at the top, but this is actually a pretty rare occurrence, even when I ask a direct question rather than inputting a string of keywords. Sometimes, the AI summary will only show a blank bar with an option for me to generate the summary. Other times, it’s placed far down the list, sometime after the 5th or 6th result. The point is that DuckDuckGo isn’t trying to force it on me, and I appreciate that. It’s still interested in the technology and wants it to be better, but it knows to make it more or less “opt-in” compared to Google. 

DuckDuckGo also offers itself as a full-fledged web browser. I have it on my phone, but I don't really use it for anything. It doesn't even have a Reader View like Safari, so it's not very practical right now and I don't expect new features to roll out any time soon. It's a small company with few employees that operates under a very utilitarian and minimalist philosophy. Much as I think a Reader View would be a given for a utilitarian and minimalist philosophy, I can still respect their barebones approach to what the browser offers. They also offer this subscription service that includes a VPN, identity theft protection, and a personal data removal service**. It’s about 100 a year, and while I don’t have any real need at the moment for what’s on offer, I am considering it as a way to support the cause. I like what DuckDuckGo is doing and I hope they become a substantially bigger slice of the pie. 

I’ll have further entries on my UnGoogling progress, but I wanted to start it off light and simple, something that most people can do without having to make any serious commitments or disrupt any routines.

* On reflection, I think the problem was that Google was assuming I wanted to use the number pad to the right of the keyboard rather than the number row along the top. After all, if you rest your right hand on the number pad, your middle finger falls on the five, putting the 6 right under your ring finger.

** Basically, they put in requests to data brokers to remove your personal information from their records, kind of like a digital "do not call list". I'd previously tried a service called Incogni to see if it would cut down on the damned robocalls. The results have been mixed, but given the majority of these robocalls are from scam artists, I don't expect them to play nice and uphold their part of the Geneva Convention. Needless to say, if I ever find any of these scum piles in the wild or locate their call centers, I will not abide by the Convention, either. 

I Am The Alphabet And The Omega

Google has declared my site unfit for advertising. I imagine it's due to a low level of traffic. I'm far from an influencer, and if I had to guess, my WordPress blog probably gets more views than anything I've written here in the past year.

And that's fine. 

The upshot to all of this is it means there are no ads on my site, which is how it should be. Contrast this with YouTube, where a channel can be demonetized, but still have ads all over it. The channel in question simply does not get the money. Maybe that's how it should be, though. After all, what advertisers were most afraid of when it came to YouTube was their money going to content creators who they disagreed with or otherwise didn't want to be associated with. The platform still got the support it needed, and users were free to share what they wanted to (within reason). 

Of course, I'm sure Blogger takes a lot fewer resource to maintain than a data hog like YouTube, so Google didn't have much of a choice when it came to their "advertiser friendly" policies. It's what makes Elon Musk's recent middle finger to advertisers so frustrating. He's both right and wrong for more or less the same reason. Businesses have a right to decide who they will and won't do business with, just as consumers have a choice with where they spend their money. That's called the free market. However, just like George Carlin said about the American Dream, you have to be asleep to believe it. Right now, big businesses hold more power than they deserve and the average consumer is in no position to do anything to their bottom line and therefore effect change in an unfair market. 

When consumers boycott, it takes a town, so to speak. When businesses boycott, it's usually a handful of guys in suits sitting around a table, never mind the hundreds or thousands of employees who may feel otherwise. This is the fundamental flaw with voting with your wallet, something I used to advocate for quite vehemently. When people vote, it's one vote per person. When dollars vote... well, they can't actually vote. The people holding the dollars do. As Douglas Adams said, "On the whole, it was not the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy." 

As for Blogger, I intend to stay; monetization wasn't the goal... not really, anyway. I've been comparing WordPress with Blogger for a few weeks now as the former keeps sending discount codes my way. Blogger technically offers a lot while asking for "nothing" (besides your data) in return. The only real paid feature on Blogger is registering a domain name. WordPress, meanwhile, offers a more streamlined user experience, but only if you play their paywall game. Automattic is not Alphabet; they can't afford to give WordPress away for free. They want money, not data. 

As of now, WordPress is my after show for Blogger. Anything I don't feel like posting here usually ends up over there. At most, WordPress is my back up if Google decides they don't like keeping Blogger around. It wouldn't be the first time I've had to migrate from a blogging service, and if the Muskrat's acquisition of Twitter has affirmed anything for me, it's that no platform is permanent. 

Batting for Apples

I have a Playstation Vita and I swear that after one particular upgrade to its firmware, my battery life got cut in half. I thought it was just my imagination or finally taking notice of how long I'd had the thing. However, I found a few other users on forums reporting the same issue, with one offering the possibility that the firmware has a new protocol for the Wi-Fi antenna. I don't have the exact post, but it was something about refreshing more often or using more power. If this sounds familiar, you've likely been following the news of Apple slowing down performance of older phones for the sake of preserving battery life (or not, depending on how you read the nuance of various conflicting statements). 

So, as an iPad user who uses an iPhone as a backup for my Android daily driver, here are my thoughts on Apple's whole battery "fiasco".

I don't care. 

I'm not going to go so far as to say #appledidnothingwrong because that's fueling a fire that nobody asked to have started. As far as big corporate deceptions go, this is small potatoes. When I was at T-Mobile, HTC had this "hybrid" style of smartphone (bit of a last hurrah before Android) with battery life so atrociously below specifications that they offered trade-ins for bigger battery packs. 

From my perspective, as someone who got to see the Google G1 phone in person months before any consumers got their hands on it, Apple's exclusivity deal with AT&T was a massive blunder on their part, but also the very definition of serendipity. I have no doubt we'd have gotten Android phones anyway, but that "power vacuum" created by Big Mama Bell had an undeniably immeasurable impact on the smartphone landscape. Smartphones were now for everyone, and everyone deserves as many options as possible for the consumer-based economy to work best. Some people like to tinker with what they buy, while others just want the damn thing to work as advertised. 

My point is, if you're just joining us, welcome to the wonderful world of how upgrades work for Apple fans. You trade customization for stability, and that stability means every few years you get a whole new machine. That sounds cynical, and even condescending, but it's really what Apple users have expected, asked for, and gotten in spades since the beginning. They want their creative productivity machines to be super easy to use and ready to roll right out of the box. In short, Best Buy's Geek Squad is an aftermarket version of Apple's entire business model. If you own a Mac, chances are the most work "under the hood/bonnet" work you've ever had to do with it is upgrade your RAM. Now, by a show of hands, who knows what RAM stands for? Don't be embarrassed if you don't know. As far as adventures in technology goes, RAM upgrades are like changing a diaper or your car's oil. It may not be intuitive or obvious, and can certainly seem daunting, but you can be walked through the whole process in about 2 or 3 steps. 

If you're an iPhone user, you're only holding onto your phone because A) it's still working fine for what you need and you probably don't use it enough to even notice the battery's gradual diminishing, B) you've upgraded and it's now a backup in case something goes wrong with your new one, or C) it's good enough as a hand-me-down or something to occupy a kid or other family member who only needs it for something specific. Speaking of specific needs for family members, check out Music and Memory if you've got a few old iPhones, iPods, or even iPads resting in drawers. 

In my admittedly limited experience with Apple's iPhone line, they're sort of like the original Star Trek or Batman films in that every other iteration seems to get things right. For example, the iPhone 2 was panned by critics for having a lackluster camera despite a high price tag (their Macbook Air had the same problem). Later, the iPhone 4 became a laughingstock because you literally couldn't hold it in your hands without interfering with its reception. The iPhone 6 gave us #bendgate, enough said. More recently, the iPhone 8... well, admittedly those swollen batteries were a rare occurrence possibly blown out of proportion, but they didn't address complaints about the headphone jack from the iPhone 7, so we'll count that as a missed opportunity. Jury's out on the X, though that facial recognition feature causes more problems than it ever solved. Not only can it be fooled by an embarrassingly crude mockup, but if you're under arrest, a cop can unlock your phone just by pointing it at you. It's a scary prospect. 

As for the odd-numbered lot, I can only really speak for the iPhone 5, which is damn near perfect. The most important feature was the variety of 5 models available. There was the standard 5 and the slightly nicer 5s, but then there was the 5c. Intended as an economy/budget-level device, I had a 5c and while it definitely felt like its price tag, it still felt way more solid than any similarly-priced Android phones, and the display alone ran circles around the competition. Later, after I'd finished having my laugh over the 6, I admit to getting genuinely excited for the iPhone 7. Sure, the headphone jack was nowhere to be seen, but they'd given us an awesome camera and finally, finally made it at least splash resistant. For comparison, my Xperia Z Ultra is about 3 years old and nearly every review you'll see from its launch has it getting dunked in a fish tank. It's a small gesture, but I'll take it. 

Building on the success of the 5, Apple made another smart move that may not quite fit the odd-numbered pattern, the SE. The phone has almost identical dimensions to the 5s, but with upgraded guts from the bendy 6. In terms of price, it's filling the same position as the 5c. Sadly, this is a model that's been listed as afflicted by the battery throttling. That said, I've had mine for a few months, and I haven't noticed it. Then again, I only have it as a backup for my Xperia, the same as my old 5c, which I'll be carting off to Music and Memory along with my old iPad Mini 3. I'm sure whoever gets them won't mind some less-than-stellar battery performance. 

IDEAS HAVE NO IDENTITY

Made in LibreOffice. 

I probably spend way too much time on Google+ having deeply intellectual debates with idiots. It's one of those cases where the other person almost has a point, but take it a little too far to the point of absurdity, cutting off their nose to spite their face while writing it off as "just a flesh wound". I don't have a problem with opinions, but I think Harlan Ellison put it best,

"You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your INFORMED opinion."

There's always at least one curious turn the discussion takes that often reminds me why I left Tumblr (which I've learned is Slavic for "Trigger"). The other person takes their foot out of their mouth long enough to start asking personal questions, even though I don't really go out of my way to hide my identity (I'm pseudonymous, not anonymous). Basically, they're trying to root out my agenda (which is Icelandic for "Privilege"). This might be fair if they weren't trying to filter my position through a strainer woven from false dichotomies, as in, "I'd only speak in favor of teaching evolution in schools if I hated God by way of some personal tragedy, a la the Epicurean Paradox*."

The fact of the matter is that devoutly, pedantically religious people are afraid of ideas. They're afraid because God is an idea, an idea for a benevolent creator deity concocted by scared, lonely shepherds in the Middle Eastern desert to reconcile their insignificance with their existence. What scares them is that many other people the world over had the same idea. It may not look that way because the idea is dressed up in culture and history and conflict, but underneath all that, they're all alike. When people realize this, suddenly they become harder for those in power to control and dance to the beat of their particular drum. Marilyn Manson put it best, "I don't hate God. I hate his fan club." In the end, if you're focusing on the medium instead of the message, it means you're all out of ideas.

Flat version

I normally try to avoid gradients in vector art (except maybe for backgrounds), but I think it's really fitting for this one.

*(which is an old Iroquois slur that roughly translates to, "God can't hear you and he probably thinks you suck anyway")

Add-ups and Follow-backs: an open letter

There's nothing wrong with wanting attention, getting people to listen to you, have a discussion, seek feedback and criticism, or anything else along those lines. We're individuals, but we're not individuals in a vacuum. Interaction is how we grow as people, our encounters and experiences shaping us for better or worse.
I don't begrudge anybody for their efforts in these endeavors. I'm no better on a lot of levels. However, I like to think I seek attention responsibly, treating others as individuals, taking a rational approach to earning respect, trading value for value, and only dispensing charity and favors on my terms.
What I do take issue with, what absolutely torques me rusted beyond a mere pet peeve are the people who think they're being fair about seeking attention, but could not be more vapid and hollow about the whole thing.
I'm going to describe a profile for you, and I want you to guess what kind of person I'm describing.

The profile picture is of Ted from the Seth MacFarlane comedy. The username is simply: I FOLLOW BACK 100%.

Popular image people can identify right away. Check.
Complete absence of a real identity. Check.
Transparent statement of agenda. Check.

On YouTube, this was called "Sub4sub" and it's essentially a form of spam. If you suddenly find yourself outraged by that statement and/or readying a defense of the tactic, then congratulations are in order because you have been successfully identified as part of the problem.

You're an even bigger part of the problem if you go so far as to leech off the success of others to push your agenda, which is nothing more than seeing a meaningless number get bigger. Over on Google+, I've come across a rash of spam comments from people simply asking for people to add them. The most recent one even set a goal of 300 by midnight, and directly asked none other than Taylor Swift herself (or at least whoever represents her on G+) to add her as she was only ten adds away from her goal.
Going to this person's page revealed little more than a handful of rather uninteresting selfies, a few complaints about living with her parents, and an assortment of trophies atop a dresser. That last detail really crystallizes the whole situation. It's so goal-oriented that it doesn't' merely marginalize the process of reaching the goal, it negates it. 

The worst part is there is simply no redeeming talent.

The last "add-up" I came across that I dared confront about their empty goal insisted that he was worth following because of all the art and videos he posted. Trouble was, it had been months since he'd posted anything of the sort and most of it was shared from elsewhere. In other words, he was desperate, in denial about being desperate, and was oblivious to his own begging strategy.

If all you can promise me in return for my adding you to a contact list is the same gesture in kind, what have either of us honestly achieved? How long do you think it will be before you're off those lists on account of you being boring and uninteresting? What happens if that number you're so strangely proud of drops?

More begging? More spam? More denial of what you're doing being either of those things?

Are you so desperate for self-validation that you don't even care why people are interested in you? Don't you want your accomplishment to mean something, something that a rational, thinking person can understand and relate to, or at least not feel completely sickened by? Don't you want to build a network and audience on something more than a token gesture with no meaning behind it?

Let's put this line of questioning in a different context, one that, at the rate you're going so far in your life, you're practically destined to encounter:

Do you want a job or do you want a handout?

Goodnight, and good luck.

Lootcrate

As I mentioned on my Twitter feed, I decided to give Lootcrate a shot after seeing it featured on Rev3 Games and more recently on Dr. Ashen's YouTube channel. If you don't know what it is, it's basically a grab bag; you get a box of random stuff each month. Said stuff, if past "crates" are anything to go by, includes a lot of blindbox figures, buttons, decals, and the odd t-shirt, among other things. It's a bit silly, overall, but I can appreciate the niche novelty and, by dammit, that's the kind of bold business venture I want to support... if only briefly. I don't think I'll stick with the service, but we'll see. 
As this is a grab bag, it's likely I'll like some of what's in the crate, and not care much for the rest. To that end, and a big reason I decided to go for it, I'll be passing along whatever I don't want, try to make a few people smile. I'm actually a tad anxious about the first box I'll get as the coupon code they posted to their site was "TITAN" which, given this is geek/gaming related stuff, could mean anything from Titanfall to Attack on Titan. I could honestly care less about the former, and have even written a painfully long essay on how not interested I am in the latter. Admittedly, I have reneged on a few points since I wrote it, but not many (i.e. the skinless titan still looks fricking stupid). 
While I don't think I'll be doing unboxing videos or anything like that (seems a bit pointless, as each box is technically unique), the fact is I'm terrible at guessing what people might like, and would like to avoid simply sending things willy-nilly every which way. So, I will be making the odd post now and again or, if I happen to be on Skype with you or PMing you somewhere like DeviantART, Facebook, Twitter, or Google+, I may ask out of the blue if you want something. For the record, these will be gifts. I don't want any money or shout-outs, and I'm definitely not shilling for Lootcrate (though they did give me a referral link, which I'd appreciate you using if, by chance, your interest is piqued and you want to sign up). However, if you really want to return the favor somehow, I won't stop you. Void where prohibited, no obligation, cancel anyt---DAMMIT! 

A Little Verklempt... DISCUSS!

This will simply be a quick and off-the-cuff note about a recent change that is getting quite a bit of attention, that being the complete and full overhaul of YouTube's comment system. As someone hardly a blip (no pun intended) on the typical YouTuber's radar, most of my content there barely netting a few hundred views, I can't say I'm drastically affected by this. Also, as someone who rarely leaves comments on videos anyways on account of some rather nasty flame wars that erupt (especially over copyright, a subject near and dear to my heart), the effect from that side of the equation is equally nondescript. Others' reactions, meanwhile, have been anything but lukewarm. 

In short, it's a classic example of something trying to be made more accessible and less constricting for the sake of more detailed and in-depth feedback, only to be abused by a segment of the population who could care less about any of those things. 

I've gone back and forth on how content producers will disable comments on their respective journals and channels. Some time ago, I stopped allowing anonymous comments on my entries, not due to trolls or spam or anything like that, but something surprisingly more annoying: feigned authority. Put simply, if you're going to claim expertise on something, stand by what you say. 

Remember Rob Granito? Neither do I. 

In all seriousness, Granito claimed to have worked as a ghost artist in the comics industry for a number of big names. When a blogger called him out on his lie, by way of being on a first-name basis with the editors at Marvel and DC, none of whom had ever heard of him, a poorly-written comment appeared on the entry from an anonymous user, insisting Granito was "legitomite (sic)." Sure, it's rather hilarious someone would be that delusional, but 

The fact is we could probably go on for hours about all these "gatekeeping" tactics employed when it comes to comments, be it Xark, Atop the Fourth Wall, Go Make Me a Sandwich, or forums on The Spoony Experiment, but one simple fact is constant, regardless of how it may seem otherwise. 

YOU ALWAYS HAVE OPTIONS. 

If I see a video on YouTube that I really like and want to talk about it, such as a short film I want to give a scene-by-scene analysis, I could try and fit my remarks into a 500 character comment on YouTube itself, wherein it can be replied to and voted upon by potentially anyone else visiting the video's page, or I can link or embed the video on my Blogger or Tumblr page and avoid the character limit at the expense of making the voting and reply options a tiny bit more obfuscated by comparison. Indeed, this has often been a sort of proposed solution by the likes of Feminist Frequency and Xark for their more civil readers following their respective influxes of trolls and cyber-attacks. Critics have called these moves cop-outs against taking criticism (Want to leave a comment? Jump through this fiery hoop!) or ploys for getting more referral traffic (Want to leave a comment? Be my billboard!). As valid as these criticisms may or may not be, I find it nonetheless funny that so many people take an "Us vs. Them" approach, treating any change in the rules as some sort of unfair handicap. Really, all it's doing is decentralizing the conversation from one in metaphorical earshot of the original post and more public to one on your own personal page with any ensuing discussion being mostly private. To put it another way, you can picket or you can petition. You may have more experience and possibly better luck with one over the other, but the task of making either option work best for you is yours alone. You have only yourself to blame for not being heard or taken seriously. 

In short, no one has taken your right to speak away from you. All that's happening is that you need to exercise those rights a little more responsibly and make the most of what you have. If that feels like defeat or oppression to you, then you probably never took your right to speak all that seriously in the first place, if not had an utterly naive understanding of it. 

419, And It Stands for a "Person"

Recap: Sold something on eBay. Buyer used "buy it now" option. 2 days, no payment, and two ignored messages asking if everything's all right. Buyer's eBay profile on the mobile site gives a New York street address:



Then, I go to the main site, and see this:





Notice the "unpaid" feedback? Notice that Nigeria is not New York?

I find his Twitter, and come across this Tweet:





I thought he was referring to my sale, but the dates are wrong. Still, there's that New York address. The most recent business attached to it is a cargo company called Allworld International. I find their Facebook page, the last update is August 2012:





Hmmm, if they're a freight company that regularly goes to Nigeria, why would someone need DHL to do a pickup to the same place? Google Maps Street View may have the answer in this image dated September 2012, one month later:





That hardly looks like a bustling business. Also, if Bing is reliable, Allworld was only there for about a year, replacing a brokerage. Their phone number gets me a machine, but that can mean anything. Like I said, if it's a shipping firm, why would they need DHL to take something to where they already go?


Emmanuel, my sale was not for international shipping. Your actions speak louder than your words, your inactions even louder. Of course, feel free to explain to me why I should believe a single thing you say. 

PayPal, eBay, and Haggling (UPDATED)

UPDATE: Issue is effectively two-thirds resolved as of July 23. There's still the small matter of them not acknowledging my bank as real, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. 

I've been having trouble with PayPal for some time now. In short, I cannot see my account. I get an error message every time I log in, no matter what way I log in, that my action cannot be completed. It's not a password error, and it's not any sort of lockout from entering the wrong password too many times. 

This has kept me from updating my contact information (including my physical address and e-mail address), seeing my transaction history, and making payments without incurring fees. As it stands, the only ways I can use PayPal are

* Via the mobile app on my Android phone

* if I know the recipient's e-mail address (so no eBay purchases) 

* and if I use my debit card, incurring a fee for sending money 

Here's the real kicker about that debit card. The last time I was able to use PayPal, I was updating my bank information, as I'd recently joined a new one. They told me my account information was invalid, that the bank itself didn't exist. They told me to wait until it finished processing (because that's apparently a thing that happens in a time when someone's entire financial history can be summed up in a text file of less than 50KB) and that the error message was merely a sort of default warning if a bank is not a major entity like Bank of America or Wells Fargo (in my case, a local credit union). However, albeit they can't verify, presumably after all these months I've been getting this error message, they have no problem processing my debit card which is attached to that "fictional" account, and certainly have no problem charging me a fee every time I use it. It's very hard not to be cynical about these things, especially given that PayPal is no stranger to a less-than-stellar reputation in the eyes of its customers. 

Their customer service, as you might guess, has been virtually helpless when it comes to my issue, ultimately resulting in them telling me to simply try again later and that everything to do with my account looks absolutely fine on their end. My most recent call to them ended with me saying that I was tired of hearing these excuses, because that's what they are by now, and that getting me the promise of an e-mail from an account specialist. I have not heard from this person. This could well be because it's the weekend, but if that's the case, why have I been able to talk with the support personnel on their Twitter account? I initially tweeted my grievances about the complete ineptitude I'd encountered without any expectation of a response. I was screaming at a brick wall, but the brick wall answered. A few Direct Messages later, and I got this e-mail:

This is only the first step in their troubleshooting process. After three different browsers, all with caches and cookies cleared, I got the exact same "Action Could Not Be Completed" error message. 

The worst part about all this is that I made a purchase on eBay and I'm now effectively making this guy wait longer than necessary, which wouldn't even be such a bad thing (I mean, the time limit is 7 days) except I made an offer for below asking price, which is tantamount to slapping someone in the face and demanding they give you a piggyback ride. It makes a bad customer out of me, not because I don't want to pay this person in a timely manner, but because I can't. If I lived near this bookseller, I'd happily stroll on over and throw down my cash for those old paperbacks. 

VECTOR 5NA1TF

Ladies and gentlemen (and all those in between who say, "Nuts to labels!"), I give you the first and possibly only appearance of 5NA1TF, a robot made using a vector editor in Google Drive's office suite. The background, embers, and text are done in GIMP.
The serial number (which would have been visible on the main body had I found a shade of gray I was happy with) stands for "5ir Not Appearing 1n This Film" as he is not part of the storyline for That Which Never Lived.

SEX SELLS (but would anyone buy?)

Here's a little context to set the tone:

Making money off anything to do with the internet is a little like asking for change from the driver's seat of a Ferrari; no one thinks you deserve it, and resent you for asking, never mind that it's a small amount, you only ask once with no issue made of it, and you offer rides to anyone who contributes. It's mind-boggling how many people can be turned away from something if they suspect that it's making money for someone. A YouTuber I follow by the name of KipKay recently had a product placement in one of his videos, some weird energy drink/snack that he was sent as a gift (possibly paid for, I don't know). Despite only being a few seconds out of the total video length, the dis/like bar was almost totally red and a number of comments below cried things like "Sell out!" or "Shill!" or often far worse.
More recently, a businessman by the name of Greg Pabich started a Kickstarter fund to release a fixed version of a notoriously-buggy NES game called Cheetahmen II. The main point of criticism was that the project required upfront payments, citing similar services that produce NES cartridges on consignment (that is, no money upfront, with production being on-demand instead of using pre-orders). This would seem a fair point of discussion, except that the people who were bringing this up were calling Pabich's Kickstarter a scam because of it.
How is using a different business model than someone else a scam? Is Target scamming people because they use different distributors and marketing techniques than Wal-Mart? Obviously that's not to say there are no such things as scams or false advertisements, but merely profiting from something does not a scam-artist make.

I'm starting to feel like I may be preemptively biting the hand that may or may not feed me by defending a business model I haven't even fully-implemented yet. I've started writing an erotica story, one that's shaping up to be fairly lengthy, not quite novella territory, but sizable nonetheless. It's comprised of four chapters and a short introduction/disclaimer. The intro and first chapter are essentially finished, but I don't want to post it anywhere until I have the remainder completed. Part of this is because that's just how I've always written, somehow it just feels like bad luck or counting chickens before they hatch. I'd rather not start shooting a trailer before I have a script.
The main reason, though, is that I'm planning on selling the story, with the first chapter being available for free and the entire story for a price.
I'm either going to have it available on DeviantART using their "points for download" system, though I'm not entirely sure they'll allow the story to be posted there, given their upload guidelines, or through Google Play Books (Android and Chrome platforms). The price, whichever system I go with, will be about 1.00USD (though I'm looking at a few other services to see how their profit-sharing compares). It is turning out to be fairly lengthy, but it's hardly in novella territory yet, but it's shaping up to be at least as long as Ladyhorse which I wrote a few years ago. Following its release, I considered re-inserting a paragraph I'd deleted at the last minute and offering that version up for sale as a sort of "Premium Edition." Obviously, that's going a little overboard for just a paragraph, which is why I also considered commissioning some illustrations for it. In the end, I didn't bother with it. For this, I've considered making some myself, though I'll admit they won't be anything special (in fact, they'll probably be sketches of locations or items in the story, as I've kept character descriptions to a minimum). I don't know if that's worth a dollar, illustrated or not, but compared to some of what I've seen on Google Play for around that price, it's probably more robust. Plus, I'm still working under the notion I set forth in the comic that, in the way of 90% of erotic literature, I could do better. So, this is me putting my money where my mouth is, and possibly shooting myself in the foot for blabbing about this potentially earlier than I really should have.

Here goes nothing.

... better get back to it.

Final Word On The Problem.

Okay, so I can get the missing icons back if I just use the new interface, which I don't really have a problem with save that every time I open it, I get this banner up top telling me my browser isn't supported and I should try Chrome.
As I've said, I don't use Chrome because of a conflict that causes my PC to randomly restart. Evidence to prove this: Once I uninstalled Chrome, it never happened again. Correlation isn't causation, true, but a quick search in the forums showed I'm not alone in this; XP does not get along with Chrome, and random restarts are among the side effects.
Apart from that, though, why wouldn't the latest version of Opera be supported?

In any case, the time seems to have definitely come for me to do something about my PC situation. As of now, I'm still running XP on a rig I've had since 2005 with no real updates or upgrades beyond a new graphics card and a second disc drive. The biggest problem I'm having is that apart  from Opera and Skype, no application that requires an internet connection will work, including other web browsers. I think that, with all the Linux distros I've experimented with, on top of everything else I've used this computer for, the hard drive has simply had enough and needs to be replaced. I get error messages, but any attempts to fix them turn up negative, so I think we're dealing with an outright hardware failing. The same thing happened to my iMac once upon a time. It was funny when I took it in to get repaired; it had a 10GB hard drive and the store said the smallest drive they could replace it with (and not charge me an upgrade fee) was 30GB.

Anyway, the plan now is that I'll be replacing my hard drive and maybe even upgrading to Windows 7, but since it will most likely be the starter edition, I'll also re-install Jolicloud and switch between the two as needed. For some strange reason (upsell, upsell, upsell) the starter edition of Windows 7 does not allow you to set your own desktop wallpaper, but Jolicloud can. I intend to only use Windows 7 for non-web related activities, such as editing audio (and maybe video) and using my scanner. Jolicloud will be used entirely for running Opera and maybe Chrome (in case Blogger decides it doesn't like Opera, the uncultured swine that it is). I may also be upgrading the motherboard with one I've had lying around for a while (long story, don't ask). I've been planning at least one aspect of this plan for some time, but I've never gotten around to it. Instead, I've just been cautious about saving things and backing up my data whenever I think to. In any case, if I do replace my hard drive, it'll just be for safety sake as I intend to store most of my stuff onto flash drives, as I've done for years. When I was using my little Linux computer Sophia (also a long story not worth asking about), I had an 8GB thumb drive in the USB port at all times, only using the onboard hard drive (which was actually a compactflash card with a special adapter, something I may employ for this upgrade) for applications.

In the end, for as mad as I was, it wasn't so much at Blogger or Google as much as it was the fact that I don't like being told to make upgrades that I already intend to do regardless. Speaking of journals, though, we'll end this on something slightly different:

DeviantART's new journal feature just annoys me. They've essentially turned journals into literature uploads, complete with being able to give favorites and share options. My question, what about all those losers (they know who they are) who just post song lyrics or other things like that? Journals aren't art, they're a means for artists to talk to their audience, whether to give them important updates or just to shoot the breeze, they're not things to be placed in frames and hung upon the wall. The point of journals was that DeviantART users could essentially say anything they wanted with no fear of getting taken down, suspended, or even banned because the journal was just a kind of soapbox for people to have their little say in whatever they were on about. Now, by putting them on the same level as works of art, they're going to take away that relative safety. Journals can now get popular the same way paintings can, and that's not a good thing.

I know whenever DeviantART makes a change, there's always some huffing and puffing and melodrama about getting used to the change, and in the end, we get used to them, but this time, I think they may seriously have done something wrong, and I don't think they can undo it. We'll see.

Good night, and good luck.