Brewchin

Good lord, I had one of these. By SoundBlaster, IIRC (May still have it in a box somewhere).

For the confused younger folk: They were a neat idea on paper, but awful in practice. Being all rigid plastic without padding on the base, they excelled at transmitting every bump/vibration of the desk, keyboard taps and (roller ball) mouse movement. 😬

Before headsets with mics or decent noise cancellation were a thing, and before online gaming was much of a thing, so most gamers had powered speakers on their desks. Which the mic was also great at picking up…

Just realised that I automatically filter out obvious scams, as I genuinely didn’t register the contents of either of those spam boxes…

That arrangement has existed for over 30 years, and it’s now an unconscious scan. 😒

But I think the point remains in the middle of the page, that it will run through the standard bullshit FOMO timer, and then start downloading the expected binary.

And it’s not VLC doing any advertising. They’re just choosing to use a shit download site to host the binary for that OS and download method

First indication of fake I’ve seen so far, based on OP’s detail-light post. I’d assumed the FOMO timer would eventually download the genuine binary.

So, share with the class…

Gonna need a bit more info than you’ve provided.

What I will note, from the information that you’ve provided, is that you shared an internet exchange screenshot showing a couple of low key ads (with the usual opt out bullshit links), so any ads are not on the VLC site - it’s on their download partner site, a la 1995 - and they’re probably the most tame ads (repeat: not benefiting VLC) that I’ve seen in 30 years.

tl;dr: Late-stage PSTN/POTS dialup configuration of binaries hosted on a third party (pre-CDN) download site -who are free to inject whatever spam they like - (but have been astonishingly restrained here) along with the download link.

Don’t know its correct name, but we called it Paper Asteroids or Pen Wars? 🤷‍♂️

It works by placing a ballpoint pen (eg. a Bic) vertically on the paper held up by a fingertip, then moving your finger back and away from the direction you’re aiming until the pen tip slides/rolls itself and the pen drops onto the paper. You draw a small ‘x’ where there resulting line ends.

Your opponent then does the same thing. And you repeat from your previous ‘x’. You’ll each end up with a series of —×—× over the page.

I seem to recall there being two ways to play:

• Have your line hit the other player’s leading/current ‘x’. I think this is the normal way, but it’s hard.
• Have your line hit any mark the other player has made. Much easier, but doesn’t make much sense.

Either way, it was a fun and cheap way to entertain yourselves during a class break years before everyone had dopamine slabs in their pockets. 😄

Used to play this in primary school. First time I’ve ever seen it mentioned anywhere outside of that time and place. 😄

This is exactly what I came into the comments to say. 😄

I somehow remember the circle algorithm ahem years after learning and using it for anything I could…

You know this is the internet right? Nothing is beyond the realms of possibility if money is involved. Did Jackass teach us nothing?

Is this “if PornHub monetised and incentivised content creators like YouTube does”?

Also: The pasta - cooked or raw? 🤡

I dunno? Although this was inevitable once Google borged Nest, I rejected the “you must now convert your Nest account to a shitborg account” prompts and my Nest gen2 is still quite happily talking to my Nest app?

No doubt it will eventually die, but for now it’s unaffected. Works fine.

Fuck Google. Sideways. With a wire brush. Despicable vultures.

10W? That’s incredibly low - under 100mA wherever in the world you live. About the same as an LED bulb, or a tenth of an average incandescent lightbulb.

For comparison: my NAS and NUC (mix of HDD and M.2 drives; both hosting services) draw 75W combined at idle, measured via Home Assistant and a smart plug, and that’s generally considered low-power self-hosting.

I’d be pleasantly amazed if you could get a laptop to use less, so I look forward to other replies.

I still use all 3, though I’m slowly moving CPU intensive containers to the NUC. The Pi is untouched so far, partly because having edge services there will make it easier of I decide to implement a DMZ.

The NUC+Proxmox is a great combination. Bit of a learning curve (eg. as with Docker, you need to pass devices in Proxmox and then to the container; same with CIFS shares), but there are lots of resources out there. I have no regrets going this route, and it had low power consumption.

On Windows thing, I was specifically referring to the server OS as the NUC came with Win11. Do whatever works for your desktop/gaming setup.

Though I also switched that to Linux (EndeavourOS, though there are other game-friendly options) a couple of years ago, and its worked out great. Guild Wars 2 was my most modded Windows game, and I can run all except one of the Windows-based addons I want for it. Setting it all up the first time is a ball ache (as it was with Windows, but that was done over time 🤷‍♂️). 😊

I was hosting most of my Docker stuff on my Synology DS920+, use Docker in a Pi 4B for AdGuard Home and WireGuard, and found myself wanting to use Home Assistant.

Can’t use Docker for HA if you want HACS (addons) and Synology decided to kill USB drivers some time back, so looked around for options. Considered a Nabu Casa Yellow with a CM5 compute module (for Voice PE) and its price was more than a GMKtek N150 NUC, which has far higher specs and enough headroom for other things. So I got the NUC.

First thing I did was nuke Windows and replaced it with Proxmox, then installed Home Assistant OS (HAOS) as a VM in it. Plenty of headroom left, so now it’s also got a Linux VM, a few LXCs, etc. (The Proxmox Helper Scripts site makes it very easy).

Could easily install AGH or PiHole and a bunch of other things on it. Think it’s the best bang for buck thing I’ve bought in years.

A much better reply that my planned “it’s intentional” response. Enjoyed that - thanks for sharing.

Genuinely amazed one (in particular) of my university housemates didn’t come up with this abomination.

He’d be devastated to see this… 😅

That’s fair. 🙂

No need to defend it. It was obviously a comment on the headline; I didn’t care who wrote it - the criticism was directed at whomever vomited it up. Tech publications are as much uncritical PR agencies for tech companies as the latter’s marketroids are.

Amateur marketing speak for “we’re considering bringing it to other hardware”?

Saw a post earlier on Mastodon where someone repurposed an old phone into a Home Assistant display/controller?

They hadn’t used a full dashboard, though. It was just about checking and controlling their cat’s feeding system. 😅

The Green brothers are interesting and thoughtful. They try to be an overall positive influence on the internet, even aside from their vlogbrothers thing.