xodiumdotnet

[xodiumdotnet]

To preface this blurb, I absolutely stan Cigarettes After Sex. I love most everything they do, which is why the words I'm going to write here feel weird.

It's been slim pickings as a CAS fan because we haven't really had much in the way of anything new since 2019/2020, and I understand that's also because the pandemic happened and they're getting all the touring done that they wanted to before. But from 2020-end of 2022, it's been a musical desert.

December brought us Pistol (which was really good), and a few months later we got one hell of a bomb drop: Bubblegum would finally be releasing. Now, some reading this might stop and say "what do you mean by finally? Bubblegum is a new song!"

Ah, but it actually isn't; just up until July 2023, it only ever existed as a crudely recorded live performance. Go watch it if you haven't already. Maybe keep it on tap in another tab or something.

Short of the relatively mediocre sound quality, the earlier version of Bubblegum was well in line with CAS' typical sound, and it sounded absolutely amazing.

The version that we just got in 2023, however...it feels like a very rare miss from CAS. The overall structure of the song is similar enough, but the guitar is toned down a lot. A little too much. The solo present in the live/early version is completely missing in the studio version, the job of carrying the song in that section being left to bass and keyboard.

The guitar really only gets to strut its stuff during the chorus (and a bit at the end where it's just repeating the same melody over and over) where it feels like it's fighting Greg's (excellent) vocals for prominence.

I feel like 2023's Bubblegum would otherwise be a very okayish song in a universe where the early, live version didn't exist and wasn't vastly superior. It's a shame too because I feel like 2023's version could easily be made better by just allowing the guitar to shine through a bit more than it does. I know CAS loves their bass and keyboard, but it feels like 2023's Bubblegum was carried too hard by both, and it shows.

(On the flip, if you want an example of an old song of theirs being brought forward with excellent results, Please Don't Cry is a good one. Originally appeared on an early album of theirs that's out of print and it was more fast-paced rock, but was performed live in 2018 with their current sound and it absolutely blows me away.)

[xodiumdotnet]

Those $20 Onn TV boxes

I've been slowly working on building out a workspace/chill space in the garage, after finally reclaiming a lot of the space out there over the last few months by getting rid of a bunch of projects and retro stuff I was honestly never getting around to.

One of the things I ended up wanting in there was a TV, because while I was working on some projects, I had SGDQ 2023 up on my laptop and trying to keep track on such a small screen kinda far away was not the business. Thankfully due to being in a community with people who are just itching to give stuff to a good home rather than sending it to ewaste, I had a TV (a 47" Vizio from 2011 running some esoteric early smart TV platform made by Yahoo) thrown at me. Got it mounted up, and realized that because the garage is the way it is, controlling my laptop to get content up on the screen wasn't going to be the most intuitive.

I could have done the sane thing and bought another Logitech K400+ for like, $25, but then I was reminded of the existence of these cool little onn boxes that go for just a hair cheaper. Figuring it should be just fine even if it can't handle 4K all that well (TV it was going on is only 1080p), I took the plunge.

One quick curbside pickup later (like hell am I going into a Walmart these days) I had the thing unboxed and installing updates.

This brings me to the first thing I like about it: It sips power. The power adapter that comes with it is rated for 5v 1A, so most USB ports can drive this thing, and likely the ones on your TV can too (if it's modern enough to have them). I tried to connect it to one of the three USB ports on the Vizio (seriously, three? That's a LOT for a TV) and it was happy as a clam.

By comparison, my Chromecast Ultra would whine if you tried to do this. And that poor thing seems to struggle with pushing 4K video, anyway. It's just hard to keep in mind this is from a $20 box.

On the flip, there's a bad side here: the power is delivered via micro USB. The sooner that port dies off, the better. But I suppose I can't complain for all of twenty dollars. It does reportedly support USB OTG if you want to expand the lackluster storage, but that kinda gets outside the scope of this device for me. (And you'll need a Y-cable. Because micro USB. Yay.)

While we're on ports: there is no ethernet port. Wireless is your lot. For me that works well enough, also because I don't yet have hardwired ethernet to the garage. Didn't notice any stuttering or buffering. The onn box tops out at Wi-Fi 5, but again: $20.

Setup was typical of a Google TV device. You're likely going to be making a trip to settings to uninstall a load of apps if you're like me and only using this for a few services (for me, that's YouTube, Twitch, Plex, and maybe something else). You also get dumped onto the ad-filled home screen, which...some might be okay with it, and in the context of this device? I'm certainly okay with it: Again: twenty. dollars.

Where I absolutely, vehemently abhorred this was on significantly more pricey devices like my old Shield TV Pro. I paid out the arse for that thing, keep your damn ads out of my face. For $20 though? Sure, I'll stomach it. I'm sure I can swap the launcher but that's whatever for me at the moment.

Once I ran through and deleted everything I had zero intent on using and installed the apps I did plan on using (YouTube/Twitch/Plex), I was left with about 5.1GB of onboard storage to play with. For the light use this box is going to see that's good enough, but if you plan on really getting your money's worth from it, you may want to expand that. (Or get something a bit more fit for purpose.)

Updates run, apps deleted, the last thing to do was to give it a benchmark to see how well it performs, and I usually do that by way of tossing this gorgeous video of Costa Rica at it. It's very easy to spot any frame drops or stutters.

Pleased to report the onn box didn't drop a single frame or buffer at all. It played straight through, smooth as butter. Even my 4K Roku TV's inbuilt hardware struggles hard with this video, so seeing this little box of wonder absolutely spank it is awesome (and has me considering grabbing one to replace my power-hungry HTPC...)

Performance-wise, the only iffy thing I noticed is bouncing around the home screen can be a bit stuttery. Once I'm in an app though, this thing performs VERY well for what it is. No video issues as far as I can see. Twitch streams play perfectly, no buffering there either.

I suppose that would bring me to the conclusion: Do I recommend this thing? If you just need a basic, no frills streaming box that does that task VERY well? Yes. Absolutely yes.

The only way I'd not recommend this is if you want to do things that kinda start to go outside the scope of what the onn box is meant to do. Want to run, say, emulators for retro games? Or other things that are going to require more storage? Sure, you can slap a Y-cable and get USB OTG with the onn box, but past a certain point you have to wonder if you're spending so much that you might as well get the Chromecast w/ Google TV (since it has a USB-C port and is arguably more friendly to external devices because of it).

There's also the case to be made for the Shield TV Pro if you can find one used for a good price, but on the flip, that hardware isn't getting any younger and far as I know, Nvidia's got no plans to introduce a new one.

But if all you plan to do is consume video content? This box is great. $20 well spent.

[xodiumdotnet]

Still to this day shocks me that people forgot about Eich. He's the problem I have with Brave, and have always had with Brave. Not the crypto, not the Chromium underpinnings.

I see people talking about the Brave browser in the whole Firefox vs chrome debate, and while people rightly point out that it's just chromium and that they do shady cryptocurrency shit, I never see anyone point out that Brave's founder and CEO is Brandan Eich.

He founded Brave after massive protests against him becoming CEO of Mozilla, resigning after 11 days. And the reason for those protests? He donated a lot of money to the Prop 8 campaign to ban gay marriage.

So just remember: it's not just another chromium fork, it's not just a browser with cryptocurrency bullshit, it's also the browser founded by a homophobe because he got kicked out of his former organization for being a homophobe.

Also, he invented Javascript. I'm willing to believe that maybe he has grown on the gay marriage issue, and made amends for his former mistakes. But Javascript cannot be forgiven.

[xodiumdotnet]

Mastodon't, Part II

A lot has changed. I wrote a post about my bad shake with Mastodon a while ago (and it's still kinda orphaned on my @xodipix account) and it was mostly around how I feel like CWs were being used not for what they were intended, but rather as a UI feature.

Since then, though, I landed at a better instance that's more friendly to someone like me and other twitter expats who don't exactly "fit" into Mastodon's culture (but with obvious rules like "don't be a bigoted jerk"). And it's been mostly a good time. But as of late, this feeling of unrest has resurfaced, due to multiple things.

Civil War

Lately, there's been news that Facebook is planning to launch an effort into ActivityPub, probably called Threads. They've also contacted/been in talks with admins from some of the big Mastodon instances. This has caused a collective meltdown, with people rallying to preemptively block/defederate any instances that Facebook has their hands in. At least from my POV, it looks like a combination power struggle AND civil war as people take sides.

To me it's just a dumb thing to be flipping out over, because here's the thing: Facebook literally does not care. They will do what they're going to do and Mastodon's minuscule (in comparison) userbase will not do jack diddly squat to stop them from launching a product on the AP protocol. Not federating with them? Fine, but if one thinks they're truly sticking it to Facebook by doing so, it feels more like a "whatever helps you sleep at night" move than having an actual effect.

This also presents a fun issue: instance admins deciding who you're allowed to interact with. If they deem another instance (that your friends may or may not be on!) to be an "enemy" because they didn't take a side in this war, you're now completely cut off from them. Better tell that friend to pack up and find another instance, or do so yourself. Mastodon is so great, innit?

Mixed Signals

This segues into another thing I want to talk about: regular users. You know, the ones who just want a place to post, to interact with people they know. The ones who don't give a single crap about who Elon Musk is or that he's running Twitter into the ground, all they know is twitter dot com and how they got there.

To Mastodon's credit, they took a page out of Bluesky's book and finally overhauled their onboarding process: When you download the Mastodon app, it now offers to just throw you on mastodon.social as a "default" instance if you have no idea where you want to go.

Of course, the Mastodon power users hate this. They want users to be more spread out to preserve the decentralization rather than having all the users be on a single instance. Which I kinda get, but at the same time if we're pitching this service to the normies (not using this as a derogatory term; rather using it to describe people who aren't tech savvy and just want a simple sign-up and posting experience), this complicates things and ultimately causes them to want to abandon the process altogether.

Some Mastodon features just outright behave weirdly if you're cross-instance. Favorites on a post don't show properly, only showing people who have favorited it on your instance. Hashtags just work weirdly too, and depend on the people on your instance following a diverse set of them.

Normies are going to jump into this and I'd argue a good number of them are going to jump right back out stupid quick when things don't work the way they expect them to on literally every other social media site.

The Mastodon elite would argue that this is fine, things are broken by design because decentralization! Again, the problem is the normies you're trying to appeal to do not give a singular crap about decentralization. They care about the UX and what they're giving up for this brave new world. and deciding they don't like it and flee elsewhere.

Mastodon just presents this weird mixes signals feeling. Like they'll tell you to hey, come sign up, we're welcoming! It's cozy here! But there's gonna be tradeoffs in doing so!

And when someone decides they're not accepting those tradeoffs and fucks off to Bluesky, they scream at the top of their lungs why someone would be so dense as to go with Bluesky? Or even back to Twitter (before Elon's latest attempt on its life.)

The shaming is dumb.

This "it's the children who are wrong" attitude is really killing my vibe with Mastodon. I feel like Mastodon either needs to accept its status as a niche social network meant for a certain subset of people (and cater like hell to that niche), or it needs to make more inroads toward optimizing the experience for the normies seeking refuge from Twitter.

You can't have it both ways. And that's fine! I don't mind Mastodon where it's at now, but I also accept that I wouldn't ever pitch it as a place, say, my girlfriend should join onto. She'd likely be happier at Bluesky.

If I even did so much as said that on Mastodon I'd probably get a chunk of people questioning my sanity and/or shaming me for not saying something negative about Bluesky. Fact is, for "normies" like my girlfriend? Top to bottom Bluesky is the better experience (at least right now) because it tries to mimic the Twitter experience and that's what she's used to. Trying to force her into Mastodon would be like taking her Mac and forcing her into a flavor of Linux.

It's also somewhat rich my Mastodon feed has been filled with people dunking on Twitter and Bluesky users all the while parroting that Mastodon lacks quote posts and good search by design to prevent that very thing: dunking on other users.

At least from my POV it feels like the Mastodon power users are no better than the toxic Linux advocates who tell you that you should use Linux upon hitting even the tiniest inconvenience in Mac OS or Windows. They have no concept that people have differing needs, and act flabbergasted when someone has the audacity to say that Linux (Mastodon) is not for them and resort to blaming the user for finding something that fits their needs better.

At the end of the day, Mastodon is a culture shock for people fleeing twitter, and some might be okay with that. Some might not. And there's no shame in either option. If you like Mastodon and working with all of its intracacies? Great! If you can't hang and need to dip back to Bluesky or Twitter (assuming the latter survives the next week)? Fair play. No shame.

[xodiumdotnet]

I'm just gonna vent for a bit because I'm absolutely tired.

Putting it behind a break because I may go kinda unhinged in this. It's a mental health thing. Scroll on by if you don't want to read it. I won't be offended. Promise.

I am just so tired of the internet feeling like it's just getting ever shittier and there's just nowhere to run anymore. I mean, there's here, now that here is owned by a company that actually gives a damn. But I'm just tired of these dumb billionaires just buying their way into relevance and then absolutely tanking the thing they've been charged with running.

Hell, one of my favorite artists released a new album very recently, and the chorus of one of the songs on said album resonate hard with how I'm feeling right now:

Passions rise and a voice cries out inside When what I know and love is gone Where should I go, where should I run? The flag I carried, I held high… …over earth and under sky When what I know and love is gone Where should I go, where should I run?

First, it was Twitter. You can feel however you want about Twitter, but what I really liked about it was that it was really the melting pot of the internet. It was also where everyone played. Friends? Yeah. Companies? Yeah. Twitter was just as useful for posting random stuff as it was for hailing companies to get through customer service hell when you really didn't want to place a phone call.

Sure, there were some shitty people on there, all platforms have that. But for my time there? I didn't really run into anyone truly shitty.

Twitter was just a dumb site up until 2022, when I started getting deeper into retro tech and actually built up a really healthy following. The momentum was awesome, and it was nice to just throw some random crap out there and have someone actually like it.

Then Musk happened. I had hopes that he would have actually pulled out of buying Twitter, but nope. Twitter's shareholders all wanted their payday so they pursued Musk and made him hold up his promise (because he wanted to overpay grossly for it, so shareholders got a nice payday for it, fuck the long term health of the platform am I right?!) and now Twitter is circling the toilet.

This meant trying to find refuge on another twitter-alike site, of which there were a few. I tried to settle on Mastodon at first, but the instance I joined didn't really fit me as well as I thought it would, and I got discouraged. Tried another and fared much better off, though rebuilding my following has been slow progress.

As much as this all sucked, at least it was only Twitter, right? Nahhhh.

Not sure how you could see what Musk is doing to Twitter and think "golly gee, that sounds like a good idea", but that's exactly what reddit is doing as we speak, and that just...launched me down a depressive hate spiral that I'm currently stuck in.

It's playing out almost exactly like Twitter is. Some rich asshole (or set of assholes) is mad that they're not making enough money even though they have enough money in the bank to arguably be set for life, so to make even MORE money they're going to go run off and tank a service that they're in charge of.

Or--because we live in this capitalist hellscape--it's considered a bad thing when you're making just enough money to pay your bills, pay your employees, and just exist, comfortably, as a company. No, you must always be growing, or you're a failure. Approaching saturation? We don't care, fuck over your current customers to extract more dollars from them, too!

sigh.

Because Twitter making sudden changes at the snap of Musk's fingers is working out so well for them, reddit's CEO decided he was going to wake up, choose violence, and do the same thing. Despite reddit telling developers of 3rd party apps that hey, everything's cool, we're not charging for our API within the next year...one day they did a complete 180 on that and are now saying "pay up".

Which in and of itself is not the problem: Developers are more than happy to pay into this! But reddit is asking far, far too much, on a way too aggressive timeline. You could say this is intended to just outright kill 3rd party apps without explicitly saying so, and you'd very likely be right.

Reddit's mobile presence was built on these apps. Hell, reddit themselves bought out Alien Blue to use as a base for their own app, so spez's charge that "reddit was never intended for 3rd party apps" is an outright lie.

(Isn't even the worst lie he's spouted. When Christian Selig--the dev behind Apollo--brought out receipts to call out reddit's admins claiming he was blackmailing them, he doubled down and tried to play the victim and continue to say that he was extorted.)

We're now at the point where reddit's many communities protested this, and reddit went union-busting to break up said protest. The whole thing is absolutely wack. They're actually threatening to replace mod teams to force subreddits that went dark back open.

Given how vehemently they're burning their bridges, I don't anticipate they're going to back off and reddit is in the same state that twitter is in: It may live on despite billionaires and venture capitalists trying to kill it, but the soul is gone. There's no joy in using it anymore.

And all of this started because spez saw what Musk did and thought "damn, that's a good idea!" As if that wasn't bad enough, we have some small side things happening, too. Like the Apple Card launching a cruise missile right at me (and people like me). If you want to finance an iPhone (which is really--sadly--the way to go these days, phones are NOT cheap) you have to do it via the Apple Card if you're not on the big 3 carriers.

Not anymore! Apple's removing the financing option for Apple Card users on MVNOs, so you have to be on one of the big 3 carriers with a postpaid plan to finance an iPhone via the Apple Card.

Yes. The Apple Card. A line of credit that I qualified for outside of any kind of carrier bullshit.

This almost feels like Apple feeding into this trope that MVNO users are all broke and don't deserve nice things, but the fact is that if you're a single person who only wants a single line plan, MVNOs are really the way to go. You're getting absolutely ripped off for a single-line plan on postpaid carriers. It's ridiculous.

(But yes, I know, this is likely the carriers themselves pushing Apple to make this change. Still. Sigh.)

I'm sure there are other things going shitty too (like uh, Discord's username changes) but in interest of keeping this post somewhat shorter I won't launch into those. I'm just tired because it feels like we're in that period where like, everyone knows we're headed for a recession and they're trying to squeeze as hard as they possibly can before we physically can't give anymore.

Probably a majority of the reason why I suffer with executive dysfunction as of late and just don't want to get out of bed. Why do so when everything outside your door sucks ass?

[xodiumdotnet]

re: "Only install iOS 17 beta on devices dedicated for beta development."

Maybe for the first betas, this is sound advice. But later on, I've gotta advocate for actually installing beta software (should you want to take the plunge, of course) on your main device, albeit with a good backup strategy. Take a local backup, not an iCloud backup (as the iCloud backup will only work on iOS 17, in this case) and make sure that backup is archived (so that subsequent backups don't overwrite it).

I say this because you're likely to miss a bunch of bugs that would affect you day to day if you install an iOS beta to a clean device that isn't your daily use device. Bluetooth flaky in the car? You're not going to notice because why would you take your dedicated dev device to the car? Cell service a bit weird? How would you know if your dev device doesn't have a cell plan on it?

As such, I advocate for the "screw it, install it on your main device" approach, but I stress: TAKE YOUR BACKUPS. iOS' backup system makes it super easy to roll back if you run into a dealbreaking bug.

(And remember to file your feedback against bugs!)

[xodiumdotnet]

A quick run of the official Reddit app

Because, y'know, they're trying to kill everything else.

Demerits for the app not querying the system setting for light/dark mode. Most apps do this and will set themselves accordingly. Reddit doesn't.

Ads. I don't mind tasteful ads, but ads for pharmaceutical bullshit can sod right off. Which is all I saw.

Algorithmic bullshit: I love that Apollo and other apps let me organize my home feed the way I want to see it. The official app doesn't, it's permanently sorted by best and there's nothing you can do to change it.

Further algorithmic bullshit: In every subreddit they pop up a carousel of "the best of this subreddit". And in typical techbro fashion, you can't just turn this off, either. Nope, you can only tell it "show less of this".

Even in condensed view, posts take up entirely too much room, and with ads eating into that screen real estate, said real estate is precious.

And of course, you get occasional "related communities" things, which feel facebook-esque (and not in a good way).

It really feels like in vying for an IPO reddit is trying to copy the worst of both Facebook and Twitter and I just can't imagine this going well for them. The first party app is a pile of meh, but I will say it wasn't as bad as I remember it being, either. But subjecting me to algorithmic bullshit and endless pill ads (and others with Jesus ads) just makes me hate it intensely.

[xodiumdotnet]

It should be noted that this post talks about some major spoilers in Horizon Forbidden West and the DLC that just released. You have been warned.

I just gotta wonder, did a lot of people completely miss Elisabet's sexuality being a huge plot point for HFW and neatly laying down the foundation for Burning Shores' ending? Because yeahhhh.

You're a clone of Elisabet, with all of her quirks and features intact. And Elisabet's previous relationship with Tilda (one of the Zeniths) has heavy storyline implications because it's that relationship (and Elisabet breaking things off with her because she felt like she was being used) that ultimately saves you from having your ass handed to you by the Zeniths when they get you backed into a corner.

For all intents and purposes, you should have died there, but nope, Tilda has a heel-face turn and saves you. Because you give her hope, apparently, but the end of the game casts all doubt aside and her true motives are laid bare: She wants a second chance that she never got, and she wants you (again, being Elisabet's clone) to go with her, damn everything else.

(Though one wouldn't blame Aloy for like...not wanting anything to do with romance after Tilda's prolific freakout when she understandably declines her offer.)

But given that--again--you're a clone, that would imply that Aloy has the same preferences for everything, too. Up until this point though she hasn't really been interested at all in romance (and turning down numerous flirts in Zero Dawn) so I can see there being some room for doubt, but given that whole arc with Elisabet and Tilda and Aloy being a clone of Elisabet...I feel like it was strongly implied that she was going to be the same way, if/when she decided to pursue some level of romance.

Though I think a lot of the dissenting opinions are more because people want to see Erend get his happily ever after too. Which is understandable, but I never really felt like Aloy and him were a good fit. Now Petra...that'd be a fun match.

(Also, Gildun deserves someone, damn it. He's a national treasure.)

[xodiumdotnet]

This is how brick and mortar dies

...endless capitalism.

There's a fun post up right now in the T-Mobile subreddit about a rep questioning if what they're doing is considered ethical (it kinda isn't) and it kicked off a giant thread where everyone's roasting the OP for, well, being unethical.

Just in case it gets deleted, quoting things starting from the OP:

So I work for a T-Mobile authorized retailer and have in the past worked for AT&T and Verizon authorized retailers as well. We have always had very high accessory quotas that are frankly impossible to hit by just offering them individually. My go to pitch is to present the up front cost, which includes 2-3 accessories, the taxes on the phone and the DCC. I get them to agree to this up front cost, most of the time without question. If they question it, I tell them that it is our standard up front cost that covers the taxes on the phone, plus 3 accessories. However, 70% of the time they don’t question it. If it’s not questioned I tell them, included in your up front cost, you get these accessories.

I’ve been taught much worse practices in the past, such as lying and saying the accessories are mandatory or saying they are free or complimentary. But I never felt comfortable with that and changed my terminology and approach.

So my question: is this completely ethical?

Yeah, I've had reps try this on me in the past though they were a bit more transparent about it. They'll usually grab a few accessories (rather than saying "hey, let's go look at the cases" and letting me pick my own) and ask if I'm sure I don't want them. Only once (and at Verizon, I might add) did I have a rep actually start ringing me out for something I had zero intent on purchasing.

I've never had a rep try to give me a cost with accessories included and pretend that's the actual cost I should be paying.

This is where I draw the line on upselling. At this point, I'm fine with being asked if I want insurance, or a case, or whatever. Would prefer I didn't, but I know they've got goals to hit. The line is crossed when it feels like I'm being forced into an upsell. As in the rep places a wall in front of me and refuses to move it until I agree to their pitch.

I've never personally had that happen to me (thankfully) but I've seen tales of people in /r/tmobile who DID try to purchase a phone only to be told they couldn't unless they bought it with accessories.

How people are okay with doing this is beyond me. Speaking of people being okay with doing this, here's someone who replied to me:

And personally, since I work in a commission based job, I probably would stop the transaction and say the systems are down if you didn't get anything with the phone.

We have store goals to hit, and this is the box we're put in by vendors. If it's a new line, 50% of the time I'll be pushy and the other half, I'll be like, fine whatever (you're getting insurance tho or I'm pretending the system isn't working)

If you're doing a naked upgrade, you're simply not doing a naked upgrade. Sorry, not sorry. I'm not NOT hitting goals because the cx doesn't want to protect their new device that's likely on a promo. That's not my issue. I'll hit goals regardless.

Edit: Dislike this as much as you want, capitalism will always win, I have a job to do, and if that's your opinion, get it online without the accessories, because this is what we're taught to do. The worst thing you could do as a cx is something that fucks up our numbers, so I'm not even gonna risk it. We're not being dishonest or adding the accessory without saying anything, but you're also not getting the device if you want nothing.

This goes ridiculously far over the line and way into the "forced to take the upsell" pitch. Don't be this person. Just...don't. This is how brick and mortar dies. This is why a good number of people of my generation (millennials and younger) don't want to deal with stores anymore and why we want to do everything online. We don't have to deal with these garbage practices.

These aggressive upsell tactics are dated, and it feels like the upper management (who--if my own experience with them is any indicator--have not had a customer-facing job in decades, if ever) is super out of touch with how to actually sell things.

To draw on my own experience, I worked Diet Retail, aka grocery for about 5 years. Not as bad as retail obviously, but we still had our fun bouts with customers. The store I worked for was very low-key, most of our customer base were returning locals, very few new faces.

When I was hired, we were encouraged to draw on our own experiences when fielding questions from customers. Like if a customer was asking what brand crackers we liked, we were to answer honestly. We had our own store brand, but it was never encouraged to recommend the store brand over all else.

A few years in, that changed. Everyone got hit by the Great Recession, and corporate was desperate to milk blood from the proverbial rock. So they enacted a set of policies to get us to upsell things. To tell the customer "hey, you know what goes good with crackers? Some store brand peanut butter!"

These policies--of course--were developed by execs roleplaying in a boardroom and thinking that yes, this is how customers actually act and what they actually want. Said execs who haven't worked a customer-facing position at the company in decades.

As you may have guessed from my quote earlier, part of this was also that we were to lie through our teeth and recommend store brand stuff now and say that we liked it better than the name brand stuff.

Much to the chagrin of my boss, I never did things by their book (simply because their goals and policies made my job unreasonably difficult) so when these directives came down I completely ignored it. But having friends in the outer departments who were more strictly held to these new policies, it was ugly. Returning customers weren't happy with it, expressing disbelief that they were being upsold at a grocery store as if it were a car dealership.

(Thankfully, we had a trick up our sleeve. To every customer that was irate, we gave them the info to contact corporate, to tell them how they really feel. Long story cut a little bit shorter, these upsell policies were revoked within the month they were enacted due to negative customer feedback.)

This really gets down to my problem with all this. I don't mind upselling as annoying as it is. But when I'm outright being lied to? No. Screw that. Despite what some executives think in a boardroom far away from customer eyes, customers do NOT like this. Not one bit. The only people that do are the people completely oblivious to what you just did, and it only takes one savvy friend/relative to tell them they've been had.

Like the original post I quoted at the beginning where the rep isn't even disclosing that you don't NEED the accessories. They're just there, and the rep makes you feel like you HAVE to take the bundle. It's a shitty way of doing it.

Selling Stuff in the age of Amazon

It really comes down to corporate drones having unreasonable expectations of a market that's changed and is leaving them behind. These days, most people I personally know who buy a phone go and buy their cases and screen protectors on Amazon before they've even done so much as order the phone from wherever they're getting it.

Thing is, not all is lost just because Amazon exists. If you don't live within a stone's throw of an Amazon warehouse it's likely your stuff is going to be shipped via USPS, and therefore will take a couple days to actually get to you. Even with Prime.

Best Buy also managed to capitalize on Amazon, too. They realized that most people were just using Best Buy to window shop and then go onto Amazon and buy the thing they were looking at for cheaper. So...they started price matching Amazon, because they figure they'd rather get a cheaper sale than a lost sale. And that worked out for them.

While a lot of the younger generation is fine with buying things online, there's also something to be said for the feel of instant gratification too, and Best Buy knows this. That's their draw in an Amazon-dominated world. Why wait when you could have it right now?

Carriers could do the very same thing. Leverage the fact that you could have a case in your hands right now without having to wait.

Carriers also need cheap cases, too. A lot of cases in these stores are well over $25 when a cheap Spigen can be had for $15 on Amazon. It'd be infinitely easier to win over a customer if you can throw a case at them for an arguably negligible amount of money. Especially if they're financing and you just add the case to the financed balance.

(This goes double for the screen protectors. You can get a 3-pack of glass ones on Amazon for under $10 for most phones. T-Mobile? They want $40 for one. Yeah. InvisibleShield also has expensive ones, but at least they back it with a stupid good warranty.)

You could also toss in an added benefit, as well. Like hey, we'll give you an in-store warranty for this case, if it breaks within two years we'll give you a new one free of charge.

Point is, you can beat Amazon if you offer benefits and advantages that Amazon can't or won't offer. Instant gratification is a huge one. Benefits like an in-store warranty are another. Offer those benefits and play them up, and I'd bet you'd convince some customers to buy your stuff.

You can sell stuff without having to lie. You can beat seemingly invincible competition if you just leverage their weak points like Best Buy went and did. Lying to your customers just pisses them off and is not an effective long-term strategy.

[xodiumdotnet]

re: tiktok

WARNING: POLITICS AHEAD

TikTok may not be saints, and don't worry, I fully understand if TikTok is not your cup of tea. That's entirely fine. What I will ask of you is to recognize that this ban that our government officials are trying to ram through is a crock.

The hearing yesterday should have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the people who make these laws have no idea what they're doing. Asking questions like "Does TikTok connect to Wi-Fi", as if that's some gotcha moment. There were some good questions in there ("Does TikTok suppress Black voices", or questions of a similar nature, asking about the algorithm) but for the most part it was government officials who have no idea what a JPEG is grilling TikTok's CEO in matters they don't comprehend. And that is infuriating.

(Note: For matters like these, they really, really need to pull in someone like Ted Lieu, someone who is actually somewhat savvy with tech and knows what they're talking about.)

The other thing that the smug redditors who are pining to see TikTok die are completely missing is that Meta is pushing this along hard. They're lobbying this super hard because this is the best chance they have at having one of their primary rivals kneecapped, with the intent that we'd all just migrate over to Instagram Reels (which suck ass, honestly.)

I'm not going to pretend that TikTok are total saints, and that they aren't collecting and selling some level of data. Because everyone does it these days. If you have a phone in your pocket, it's already happening. Hell, it's probably happening right now, on this very site. Because this is a free blog, and Automattic has to pay the bills somehow.

But if the government truly cared about protecting our privacy, they'd attempt to enact a set of laws that targets all corporations that do business with the US equally, be they on our soil or off. Something like the GDPR. Rather, they're singling out TikTok. Which, even if we banned TikTok, that fixes nothing. Meta's still going to be allowed to collect absolute gobs of data on you, building shadow profiles on people who don't even have profiles.

(If it isn't plainly obvious by now, it's clear that Meta's using this as an opportunity to both kneecap one of their primary competitors and as a means to take the heat off themselves.)

Plus, there's also the political ramifications of this move: We're going into an election cycle next year. TikTok is used by a lot of younger folk, even by some more progressive officials to speak directly with their constituents. Guess what's going to happen if you yank that away, guys?

The youth vote is going to be pissed. Considering we need them to save us from ourselves because our government is teetering on the brink right now, doing a move that is likely to be immensely unpopular with that sector is going to be disastrous.

The Ban TikTok movement wasn't popular under Trump, and it sure as hell won't be popular under Biden. And with the right sliding harder and harder into fascism with each passing day, risking the election like this is one of the dumbest moves I can think of. It really is.

I will say, however, that TikTok's CEO did make some lofty promises (especially with regards to code audits) and I do fully expect him to be held to what he promised. Even if most everyone on that hearing panel had already made up their minds before he spoke a single word.

[xodiumdotnet]

What do I do, Xfinity?

The internet problems saga continues, I suppose.

Back in October or so, I opened up a dialogue with Xfinity (on their official subreddit, which hey, that's kinda nice) concerning their internet in my area going down hard from 7pm to midnight. What I mean by this is that I'll lose a good chunk of my downlink speed and almost all of my uplink, making things like streaming or even uploading pictures in chat apps a bit of a chore.

This began around the time our plan was upgraded from 600/35 (down/up in Mbps, respectively) to 1200/35 in May of 2022. I initially thought it was due to an equipment issue, so I did the financially irresponsible thing and splashed out on a good modem, a Motorola MB8611, which is a modem that received high marks from a friend and Cisco employee who lives and breathes this stuff, so if he says it's good, well...

That unfortunately fixed nothing. Thus, the dialogue was eventually opened.

To their credit, Xfinity did swat down some low-lying issues. They pretty much rewired our house, so the modem now has an entirely new cable run between it and the main splitter that comes off the ground block.

They also did check to make sure the run between the ground block and tap was good. The only interesting thing was that they apparently found something noteworthy with the tap, and filed a mystery ticket against it, a ticket that Xfinity support refuses to elaborate on other than confirming that it exists.

We went back and forth for a bit, and through a couple techs before they eventually fell off and quit responding. Which was fine because at the time this was when the holidays were starting to get into full swing and I was tapped out.

There were still slowdowns, but thankfully things remained somewhat usable, pulling about 400/10. Is that acceptable when you're paying for 1200/35? Not really. But I'll take what I can get at this point.

Everything at this point was pointing to one conclusion: This is a capacity problem. The only variable was that I was using my own equipment that may have some dumb incompatibility. Given how adamant Xfinity support was that this cannot be a capacity issue, maybe they were right?

Some months later, I put it to the test. I went to the Xfinity Store, I rented an xFi XB7, and let 'er rip. It was super nice to be able to take full advantage of our internet connection (as it has a 2.5G Ethernet port), but...as expected, the cursed hour rolled around, and the speeds torpedoed.

I gave it another day, but I was already growing tired of the XB7 because of how dumb the configuration utilities for it were and the UX for advanced users was just utter trash. Upon the second night of it falling on its face at the cursed hour, I put it back in the box and took it back to the store, rolling back to my "old" equipment.

(I've since upgraded routers to be able to take full advantage of my rated internet speeds. I now have an Asus GT-AX11000 Pro, and the thing is gigantic and awesome. The live traffic stats are awesome to have for troubleshooting, too.)

Anyway, up until a couple weeks ago, I kinda just sat with this, with the fact that the speeds are never going to be good during these times. But things began getting worse and that's what prompted me to both reopen dialogue with Xfinity and write about this. Because this service is not cheap, and now our connection is going down harder.

Rather than the not ideal but usable 400/10, now our connection is crashing down to 100/4. Yeah. I'm losing 90% of my downlink, now.

This is not okay, and damn it, I'm not giving up again. This has been going on long enough and I'm not sure what I need to do, but...something's gotta give.

UPDATE 3/20/23: You...you can't be serious, they're literally telling me this is not an Xfinity problem, that my modem is to blame, and I need to call Motorola to fix this as this is their problem. Did they...completely miss the part where I said I had an XB7 and the problem still persisted WITH THEIR OWN EQUIPMENT?

Holy shit. I can't even. I really can't.

UPDATE...a few minutes later: Got swapped to someone a little more understanding, but made it clear there's no way to escalate unless a tech deems it so. You know, the tech who can't be out here past 6pm, before the problem actually occurs. This is going to be a pain.

[xodiumdotnet]

AirPods Pro

Very quick little first impression. Picked up a set since my girlfriend was at her work and offered to grab some via payroll deduction. Tried them when I was in Arizona last year and the noise cancellation was something to behold and comfort wise I found them much more desirable than the Galaxy Buds I used previously.

They also came with a 6mo Apple Music subscription, which...hey, that's perfect. I hate Apple Music, but it's also probably going to be the best place for me to try the spatial audio goodies, so...as long as I keep sync off I should be okay.

Thus far, spatial audio seems to really depend on the song in question. Some older audio remixed for spatial just have elements to them that feel out of place (like there's a bit in Fleetwood Mac's The Chain that just leaps out and doesn't sound right during the chorus). Whereas newer music that feels specifically made for it sound more...natural. There are in-betweens too (like The Cranberries' Dreams just feels like there's another...layer to the sound, if that makes sense. It sounds good, though).

For normal audio, however, I can say they sound great. No complaints about audio quality.

The noise cancellation still works as good as ever. I have a relatively loud air conditioner in my room and when the ANC kicks in, all I hear is a dull hiss from the AirPods, almost as if it's the background hiss from a pair of good headphones being connected to a high-powered amp. The traditional air conditioner sounds fall completely mute. It's AWESOME.

I still need to mess with the ear tips a bit, doesn't help that I just got back from Seattle and seem to be battling an ear infection that makes using in-ear 'buds a painful affair, but when that's all said and done...

[xodiumdotnet]

Even when you’re traveling the retro never stops.

[xodiumdotnet]

On the Retro Fighters PS3-compatible Defender

Bought this controller because my PS3 is currently using a fairly beat-up and tired Sixaxis (yes, the original Sixaxis, not a DualShock 3) that I saved from a trash bin about a year ago.

To kind of spoil this, not even two hours after using it I've already filed for a return on Amazon. It's not all bad, but just one small thing that became a dealbreaker.

The good thing is that as a complete package, the Defender is a cromulent controller. According to Spawn Wave, it comes apart easy for service, the button action feels good, and the D-Pad button action feels good too. It isn't a microswitch-laden affair like, say, the Switch. Or the modern Xbox controllers.

There was no creak, no flex, and though the Defender was a bit light in the hand, it still felt good and solid.

The only issues I had with it were two:

The shoulder buttons. This is a very small gripe but the L1/R1 buttons feel a bit too skinny, and the triggers have a shorter throw than I was expecting. These are things I could adjust to, however, so I'm not going to knock them too hard. What I will knock, however...

The D-Pad. It's big and beefy, and the button action as said before is fairly good. Where it falls apart is registering button presses. To test this out I would scroll through the PS3's XMB by tapping directions on the D-Pad and observing how the PS3 reacts.

I would have to press very precisely on the direction I want, and firmly. Otherwise it was flaky in recognizing that press. If you press it with a lighter touch as I tend to do, it had trouble consistently registering that press.

Worse yet, the Defender would sometimes register that I was holding the button, not tapping it. If I tapped through the XMB it would sometimes skip over entries like I was holding the button instead of tapping it.

I even tried this in a PS2 game (Wild Arms 3). I could stutter step perfectly and perform pretty precise dash movement with the Sixaxis, but the Defender would randomly drop inputs or act like I'm holding a direction instead of merely tapping it.

This, THIS is the dealberaker. Considering I use this PS3 for retro games from the PS1 and PS2 era, having a working D-Pad is non-negotiable, and for $60, I could likely find a genuine DS3 for far less that's in better condition.

If RF ever sorts out the issues with the D-Pad, however...lovely controller, feels much more ergonomic in the hand and the buttons have a good feel to them. But all that just comes apart due to it misreading my inputs. I may give the Defender another go down the line, when early unit weirdness is sorted out (since it launched not all that long ago).

But right now, back it goes. Unfortunately.

[xodiumdotnet]

With some people, the only winning move is not to play, and that's why even when it comes to friends and family these days, I'm getting out a contract and demanding upfront payment for any services rendered just because I had a thing with a trusted client (who is a family friend) go south fairly recently.

To keep a long story short, she really loved MacBooks, but got stuck with an aging PC that was starting to fall apart. But now she has Big Money so she was asking me for recommendations for new computers and I mentioned her love for MacBooks. She loved the idea, went to Best Buy to try one out, and bought it.

After getting her all set up with it and her gushing about it the entire way, she got home only to basically shelve the poor thing and kept using the PC she desired to replace so badly. On a more recent call she hadn't used the MacBook in so long she actually forgot the password to get into it (because her PC had no passwords).

Once I got that sorted and did the requested servicing on it (running updates, making sure she could log into things because it sounded like she was finally ready to let the PC go for good), she left and said she'd pay me for it over PayPal when she got home. That payment never came. Texts and calls were ignored until I got my girlfriend to call on my behalf.

She (the client) tried to say she couldn't pay me because her PC (which again, is very much on life support) is broken and I haven't fixed it. Girlfriend thankfully did a solid and mentioned that hey, he doesn't mind fixing your PC but that wasn't part of the deal for the payment she's very past due on.

Client reluctantly goes on her phone, cuts the payment for services rendered, and that's the end of that. Since then she's found someone else to do her work. Sucks that I've lost such a longtime client, but that's the way it goes, I guess.

Knowing what I know now, I probably would still have my "job" if I had instead recommended a PC, but who knows.

[xodiumdotnet]

Maybe I'm wrong, but

Nothing irritates me more than some exec who has never worked in the trenches a day in their damn lives coming in on a high horse, a list of Corporate Commandments in hand, telling people who have more experience communicating with the general public that no, their way is wrong, you must do it according to this way that we've simulated with other execs in a closed office with a whiteboard.

It happens all the time. It happened to me in high school, even! And is currently happening to people I know!

In high school, it was some "prestigious" educator who defined a method of learning that everyone had to follow. No room for individuality, no room for those who couldn't learn the way everyone else did. Guess who fell by the wayside with that one? The special education kids. Yay.

In work life? It was always the suits handing down dumb programs to "increase customer engagement", such as constant upselling and trying to straight up lie about how good our products were. Because according to their little cutesy roleplay that they did in a boardroom, customers liked being treated like this. Even though these people hadn't worked a customer facing job in decades, if ever.

And now...it feels like some workplaces are in a rush to adopt stuff like Six Sigma to "fix" their problems when their problems are obvious and don't require manufacturing industry strategies and micromanagement to fix. Obvious things like "just hire more damn workers, the problem is you're constantly overloaded" or "pay your workers more".

Nope, some exec up in some suite somewhere says that can't be the issue, here's some (what sounds like) techbro gobbledygook to "fix" the problem.

It just irritates me because it feels like taking something that somewhat works, just needs a bit of help to spending more money just to break it further rather than actually solving any problems.

Yes, this rant was set off by someone close to me telling me about how they're trying to shoehorn Six Sigma into a place that frankly shouldn't be using manufacturing industry techniques to increase productivity.

[xodiumdotnet]

Why Tumblr? (Again?)

All of you may notice that I've once again switched xodium.net to point at a Tumblr, rather than a Blogger blog. (You can still access it via the blogspot address here, if you want to go back!)

Initially, I wanted something a little better than Tumblr, which is why I jumped over to Blogger. However as the years have rolled on, it feels like Blogger has fallen apart, along with distrust in Google kinda eroding my confidence.

The three major reasons, as they stand:

Blogger is neglected, it seems

Maybe it's just me but it feels like trying to post something to Blogger from Firefox is a bit of a nightmare. The editor never, ever, ever seems to work right (formatting becomes sticky and doesn't seem to want to turn on or off properly, leading me to begin typing on a new line and suddenly it's coming out bold or italicized) and it started presenting friction to me wanting to post.

That's the way I (unfortunately) work. When I go to post what's on my mind in a wall of text like this, if there's too much friction in the process, I'm more likely to just give up the effort than see it through and actually post something.

Now, I could very much switch to another browser to do my editing, but with Chrome seemingly aiming to screw everyone over with Manifest v3 and how Chrome has arguably become the new IE, I only want to use Chrome in true emergencies. (And, sadly, every other browser out there is pretty much Chromium-based, so even if I used, say, Brave, or Opera, or Edge...they're all the same under the hood.)

This subject kinda segues nicely into our next reason...

I don't trust Google

I've been trying to lessen my reliance on Google stuff for a bit, now. They're more known for having commitment issues than actually introducing some cool stuff, which is unfortunate.

This eventually threatened to affect me more so than it already had (because I was already irritated with the loss of the Wallet Card) because I had a Google Apps For Your Domain account to handle the behind-the-scenes stuff for xodium.net. Google eventually changed it to Google Workspace, and treated everyone like enterprise users even though a good chunk of us were just hobbyist people with our own custom domains.

Which is fine, but it started coming at a cost: Those of us with Workspace accounts (that we didn't ask for) couldn't do a LOT of the stuff that regular Google accounts could do. We missed out on so much. So it wasn't like we weren't paying the price somehow.

But we didn't care. Most of us just wanted custom domain Gmail.

In early 2022, though, Google came-a-knockin', telling us we all had to pay the piper or we'd lose access to Gmail. They were more than happy to give us literally everything else for free and kept trying to offer alternative free plans, but all of them lacked Gmail access.

It was at that point I started "getting out" of Google services. I mostly use my Outlook account for most email these days, my 18 year old Gmail account acting as a signpost with forwarding on. I still use things like YouTube, but where I can cut Google out of my life? I've done it.

Google--to their credit--did eventually back down and let us hobbyist users keep their Workspace accounts for free. But that credit gets taken away when you realize it was announced way too late. The July cutoff date for legacy users was originally announced in Jan 2022. Google announced their program to let legacy users continue as they are...in late May, 2022. One month and some change before the change was set to go into effect.

Google had 6 whole months to backtrack and they chose the second to last one to do it.

Good job. Except not really.

I had already moved everything to other services by then. Google's reputation can't be trusted, and that's another reason I started looking to get out of Blogger. They could cancel it at any time and their only response would be "too bad, so sad".

Tumblr's ownership

Tumblr has been through it. Thankfully, though, I actually trust Automattic to do the right thing. They did turn down the temperature on the controversial NSFW material ban, which I see to be a good thing. And Tumblr in the wake of Twitter imploding seems to be as vibrant and awesome as ever.

But this was the catalyst that got me to switch away from Tumblr. Yahoo kinda just...let Tumblr languish. Yahoo got sold to AOL, and then AOL got sold to Verzion, it was a multilayered clustershag of epic proportions and Tumblr was just caught in the middle of it all.

But now that someone whom I actually trust with blogging platforms owns Tumblr, I've got a lot more confidence in Tumblr as a platform, way more than Google, even.

That's why the time felt right to switch over.

So far, I've been quite pleased with the switch. It still feels familiar, but also robust at the same time.

Could I have spun up a Wordpress account (who's actually also owned by Automattic)? Yeah, but they charge a monthly fee for custom domain use, and I'm kinda in a place where I need to be cutting monthly expenses where I can.

Tumblr works well enough, and that's good enough for me. Hopefully it's good enough for you, too.