As noted in my last post, I am looking at Usenet, I am also going back to IRC, there seems to be some life still in IRC, on freenode, I found my old stomping grounds of wplug, that seems to be dead, but the Linux chat room still seems to be alive, and along with that there is a vape chat room, been sitting in there for a bit.
Yes I am going back and starting to relive the text based internet. I know I have access to gopher and I should start looking to see if that is still alive.
As I have left social media, and web based discussion boards. I have decided to go back and look at Usenet. For those of you who don’t remember or don’t know Usenet was the original place where online forums and discussions took place, and they still take place there. I also found this https://www.blocknews.net/ looks like a very cheap option for some one that only does text based stuff, I will not be looking at the binary groups, not into that kind of stuff. But the text based stuff should be fun, and a small 10Gb block should last me a long time.
See you on the Usenet if you guys make it over there.
Ever wonder why the US (well the dummyrats) want to ban vaping while the UK is encouraging smokers to switch to vaping. Well lets look at some facts.
1) The UK has nationalized health care (while I am not a fan of nationalized health care this is important to why the UK is doing what it is doing) So for smoking related illness the UK government has to pay for it. This costs them, I am not saying the UK cares about their people I am saying it costs them less if they can get smokers to vape instead of smoking.
2) The US does not have nationalized health care, so the government does not have to pay for smoking related illness.
3) The Federal government and about 48 states get money directly from the cigarette companies based on their profits. So if people switch away from tabacco to vaping, then the US government and state governments get less money.
So the US it costs them nothing when someone gets a smoking related illness and they loss money when people quit smoking for vaping.
So that why the US and US states want to ban vaping, as it costs them nothing when people get ill from cigarettes, but they make money when people buy cigarettes. While in the UK it costs them when people get sick from cigarettes. The issue is not about “kids vaping” as the dummyrats claim but about money, more money in the government pockets.
Sadly the republics are not clean in this area either but they are not as vocal, and there are some republicans that are not for banning vaping. I think Ted Cruz is vape friendly.
I went from flatten the curve, to till there a vaccine to a cure.
The sad thing is people are so afraid of dieing they are to scared to live. People are so afraid of dieing they will give up their constitutional rights. Now the elites know all they have to say is “this is for your safety” and people will give up all of their rights.
‘They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ — Benjamin Franklin 1775
I made my first batch of Vape juice today, I have to wait till tomorrow to try it. But I am trying a Blue Raspberry flavor. Looking forward to trying it tomorrow. I got some PG that has 3mg/ml of nic in it, then I got some VG, I used 70ml of the PG and 30ml of the VG, I am starting with only 5 drops of the flavoring right now, to see how it tastes, if it to weak I can add more. Figure I should start with weak flavor as I can add more if it to weak, as if I make it to strong I can not take flavoring out. I will post after I try it tomorrow.
The dummyrats in DC think that banning business from mailing vaping products will “prevent teens” from getting vaping products. But they are foolish if they think that, it will just make it easier for teens to get them. Here is the reason. First UPS and FedEX NEVER will ask for signature, I have on UPS that they have to get my signature for delivery because back in 2019 I kept having things stolen before delivery out of my shipments, and I have never once had them ask for my signature. They just leave it at the front door where any kid can just take it, so if I order vaping supply and it shipped via UPS or FedEX any kid in the condo building could take it. Now lets look at the USPS, first when something does require a signature the postman does get my signature, and then my mail box has a lock on it, as do many apartment/condo building mail boxes, when I lived in a town home years ago they also had locked mail boxes. Usually places where there are many people in close living areas, there are locked mail boxes, which would prevent a teen from stealing small delivery (and yes I can get 5 bottles of vape juice delivered inside of my small locked mail box) But UPS and FedEx just dumps it in 1 of 3 places, if I am lucky in front of my door, sometimes they just dump it in front of the mail boxes, but more likely in front of another persons door (this person is good about getting my packages to me, so no problem for me, but imagine if there was an underage kid living there.Free vape stuff)
So making it so that you can not send vape products via the USPS is going to make it so easy for children to get vape products, just find where a vaper lives and steal small packages from their door steps. Yes and a kid that would break the law to vape would also break the law to get vape products.
People are all excited about subscription model for music/video/games. But they are over looking one major issue, and that is cost. Back when you got things physicaly you bought it once and you owned it, pay $15 for a CD and it yours permanently. Now you pay $12 something a month for a streaming services, and if you stop paying you loss access to the music. While if you bought the CD you have it and as long as you have electricity or battery power you can still play it with out a continue cost to access it.
Combine that with how every one wants to control the streaming space, at one time it might have been a good idea to get Netflix, but as the media companies saw them making money they pulled their IP to make their own streaming service, so while at one time you had content and you continued to play for it, you still losted it, buy a DVD and well you can still watch it they can not pull your licence to watch it. For that matter they can not change it ( I still have old VHS where Han Shoot first, find that on Disney+)
But as to the cost, it going to be a bigger it against your bank account. Lets assume everything is only $10 a month (yes I know things are more then $10, but lets lower it to 10 for easy math, and if I can prove it costs a lot at a lower price it will cost even more at higher price)
So now for streaming, you want music right? Which service? Google Music (now youtube music), Amazon, Spottily, Apple unlimited, which one, which devices will you listen on? Most people that I know that have bought into the subscription module, tend to have 2 (or more) one for their phone and one for other devices. So we are at $20 a month here.
Now what videos do you want what IP do you like, that will say will you get Netflix, CBS all access, HBO Max, Disney+, Hulu, etc. Most people probalby will want just 3 of those, Disney (for things like Disney for the kids, and Marvel etc, not accessible else where) Then there the “tried and true” Netflix, then a lot want Hulu so they can get yesterday’s TV shows, so we are now at $30 for the Video, add in the music from above, that $50 a month.
Now that companies want to do cloud (streaming) gaming, true there are only 5 companies looking into it now (Google – Stadis, Sony – PLay Station Now, MS – X Cloud, Amazon – Luna, and Facebook what every they will call it) Now lets say they are successful, how long till EA, Ubisoft and other Big game companies see it realize they could make more off a reoccurring cost then a one time sell and micro-transactions. But lets just stick with now, which exclusives do you want? that will say which server you will pay for but lets just assume 1 for now, that another $10, add to the $50 from above, so now you have a monthly cost $60 for your entertainment.
I am going to ignore things like kindle unlimited or other ebook subscription services, sadly not many Americans enjoy reading any more, which is a shame as there are many great books out there.
So now we have $60 a month or $720 a year (ignoring sale tax)
Oh and when a license for a IP goes away from a service, you loss access to that work, be it music, video, or game. Or if you fall on hard times (oh I don’t know how many people lost jobs due to the China Flu, and have to cancel said subscription services just to get by) When you cacncle your services, you loss access to those works. But if you had bought them physicaly, you can still put that CD in the CD player. That DVD/VHS/Blueray into the video player, or that game disc into your console (assuming it not an online game, but a single player story driven game) and still enjoy it (assuming you are still paying electric bill) No need to pay for the streaming services, heck your internet could go down, and you could still enjoy those works of media.
Then there the issue of preserving these works of art. There was once a Demo on the PS store called PT, it been wiped from the face of the earth. Even those that got a legal license can not even re download the Demo. Or all the games people bought digitally on the Wii Store, if their storage device goes bad or they have not downloaded the games before the now past deadline, they will not have access to the games. BUt remember they did not buy the game the only bought a temporary license to the game, and when the game store goes down, their temporary license expires.
The digital only and streaming only future is not one to be in braced but to be feared and avoided. I have not even gone over the problem of being unpersoned er I mean “deplatformed” for wrong think, er i mean not being woke enough.
Talking with a coworker of mine this morning I came to the realization of something, that kids will not like. Back story first
Where I work if you telework and they close the building you are to still work, not unreasonable, just how it is. Now when we were talking this morning, he noted his kids were not happy they still had to go to school today via telelearning. They are use to when there is snow there is a snow day, but not today, since there is no traveling they are still holding classes. Now that schools have put in telelearning technology snow days now may be a memory, even when schools do open up. Kids now will have to deal with what adults deal with, no snow days.
I just got these, I ordered the ingredients to make my own juice (still waiting on the liquid nicotine to come in,should be here soon).
And since Propylene Glycol, Vegetable GHlycerin, and liquid nicotine are used for things other then vaping, they should easly get pass any ban on vaping. And the flavor comes from nothing more then food grade flavoring that again will get around any flavor ban. I hope that they don’t ban the sale of flavor vape juice, or try to ban the sale of vape stuff, I have the hardware, and the rest you can get for other reasons so I can still get my vape supply.
The flavors I got are Blue Raspberry, and Root Beer.
I setup one of my Raspberry Pi’s to server as the DHCP server for my home network as I was not happy with the built in DHCP server on the router that Verizon supplied. First issue, is it wanted to be the DNS server for the network and only go out to my DNS when it had not cached the requests. I wanted all requests to go to my DNS server not the router. There are statistics I would like to see as in which device is making what requests. If I used the DHCP server for the router it would send out itself as the DNS server and not the IP address I wanted as the DNS server. So on the dashboard it showed all the requests coming from the router and not from where they are really coming from.
So by setting up my own DHCP server and turning the DHCP server of the router off, I can have what I want, the way I wanted it. Plus in the future I can setup network segmentation (which I know I should do, especially for the devices I have for the IoT on my home network they should be segmented off to a separate network)
Also I can now see what each device is looking for. After I did this I found the router was making a lot of requests for a site, that turns out to be a data mining site for Verizon (people thing that Verizon is using that domain to collect data to sell to advertisers, or so the people on the Pi-Hole sub redit belive) I never saw that request on the Pi-Hole as the router was making so many requests I never could sort things out. Now it only making requests for itself and I can see them. That domain went on the blacklist.
Next task is to get bind going so I can send the names of the systems and their IP address to my Pi-Hole so it knows what to send out when I type in the names.
I am not happy with the lack of control over the DHCP setting I have on my router from Verizon and thinking I want to setup a DHCP server on one of my Raspberry Pies, so I can have better control of how my network is configured. Such as I don’t need the router to cache the DNS then make the request on behave of the connected devices. There is no reason for it to cache for things, I can understand it might be nice if you use an external DNS server as it might save you a few ms, but since it is inside my own network it costs more in ms then it saves. Plus it messes up the statistics on the Pi-Hole. Plus when I had to change routers last time it caused issues as I had to setup the whole network again on the router, if I can pull more and more stuff off the router to my own network that would work nicely.
After that I should look into a squid proxy, that could speed things up a bit. Not that I really need it with a Gigabit connection but could be something interesting to look into.
So I run a Pie-Hole DNS server here at home. But I could not find out why the custom entries I put in were not resolving. Exploring around the routers setting I found one called prevent DNS rebinding. When I disable that my custom entries on my Pi-Hole were working, to test to see if it was just a fluk I re-enabled the preventing of rebinding, and they stopped working, disabled it and they started to work again.
So if you use a Pi-Hole for your DNS server at home, and you enter custom entries and have Verizon as your ISP, and it not working go into your router and turn off “Disable DNS rebinding” and your entries on the Pi-Hole should work.
Well as I wrote a bit ago I would be posting here more then on facebag and twitter. Well that has held true. Ot also means I am posting things a lot less as a blog post takes a bit more thought. Also the key here is I have not gone on social “media” as much, in fact a lot less. And I been feeling much better mentally since then. I don’t see as much hate from the left as I did when I checked them more regularly. I also see a lot less ads.
China is no friend of the US, in fact they are still officially an enemy of the US, and here is what their state media said.
Now why would a enemy the the US be happy Sleepy Joe won? Could it be they have bought him off (via Hunter)? Could it be he will sell us out to the country that brought us the Wohon Flu? Could it be Sleepy Joe will make it easier to send manufacturing jobs over the china (thus hurting the American workers and lining the pockets of Whinny the Pooh’s pockets)
I know people are excited about digital only consoles, but there are many good reasons to avoid them.
First what do you do when the store closes down? Try to go download a game you bought on a Wii from the digital store now. You can not as it is completely shut down, you can not even download games you bought.
Second, games can be delisted and you will not be able to get them if they are digital only. With physical games you can always get them (they might cost a lot but they are still there) with digital only the game is gone, look at the game PT, even people that got it when it was available better be careful as they can not even re download it if they loss it off of their consoles.
Third, as technology moves on and better security comes in will your old digital only console be able to connect to the internet? I have a PSP, great system, but I can not connect it to the internet as it does not understand WPA2 nor WPA3, it can do a version of WPA1 but my router does not have that, nor does my cell phone in tethering or my Mobile Hotspot. Sure I could turn off the security but that not a good idea. So sure while you can still download a PSP game (even if you can not buy them anymore) you might not be able to connect to the internet to do that. Good for me is I have a PSP 1000 not a go, so I can still get physical games.
Fourth, you own a physical copy of a game of which the licence can not be revoked. or “lost”. There have been reports of people losing access to their whole EA game collection (if you ask me not much of a loss but still) good news is they were able to get it back, but lets say for some reason EA decided not to help they would be out all that money they paid for, for the games.
Fifth, You don’t like the game or finished the game, well with digital only to bad, you can not get any of that money back, with physical you can always give it to a friend or sell the game as used (no I am not talking game stop, they will not give you much money for it) you can sell it on many of the online market places, or at a garage sell, or a flee market.
Sixth (this is a bit related to the fifth) you can not loan a game you have to a friend, with physical I can let a friend borrow a game I have to see if they like it. (you could also make an argument along this line about game fly also)
Seventh as hard as it is to belive there is still a sizable number of people even in the US that don’t have access to high speed internet (see https://www.statista.com/statistics/185532/us-household-dial-up-internet-connection-usage-by-state-2009/ for states as of Nov 2019, sorry could not find anything more recent) about .6% of the use population is on Dial up still (US population is 328.2 million) so that is about 19.5 million people still on dial up. So to download a very small game by today’s standards (20GB) it would take 852 hours (or 35 days) True they will never be playing on line games, but there are many great single player games (this is also an argument why game companies need to have a complete game that works from start to finish on day one on disc non of this stupid 20GB day one update) I am lucky I have a 1Gbit connection, my PS5 sees 800Mbits during off peak times and only 600Mbits during peak times so I can not imagine the pain of trying to do the internet on dial up, but those people exist, and those people are probably most likly the ones that feed us out in rural America that it not feasible to send cable internet or fiber out to those area as the population density would not make it worth it, and 5G has a limited range so that not a great option, and satellite internet usually have hyper low data caps, 12GB to as “high” as 150GB. See https://www.satelliteinternet.com/resources/unlimited-satellite-internet/ (this could go and probably should go in Eighth but here i am talking about those in rural america, I will leave data caps for the rest of us separately)
Eighth is data caps. (true this is more of a argument against streaming game services like stadia, but I will focus only one downloaded games here) Some ISPs have data caps (looking at comcast here) download CoD and from what I can find 190 Gb, so if you have only 1TB as your data cap you have used up 19% of your data there. Now do you like streaming videos? Youtube, netflix, Hulu, Disney plus? 4k streaming takes about 7.2GB an hour lets assume 3 hours of videos a day, that is 21.6 GB a day or 648GB a day, so now just downloading 1 game and 3 hours of TV a day we are at 838 GB leaving 162 for everything else, telework, how much data does that take. you are not left with only 162GB for the month or 5.4GB a day, oh you said there is a 20 GB update to a game you have. Oh on Saturday and Sunday you watch a bit more TV? You don’t live alone, you have a family of 4, that only 250Gb for each person a month? You want to buy more then one game this month? Well I hope you are not on comcast, I am lucky I have verizon with no data cap on my home internet I blast pass 1TB easly each month.
I am not saying there is no place for digital only games, it is a fine option for online only games, games like CoD, Battle Front 2, and Overwatch, games that when the game servers shutdown, the game is dead and unplayable, game that require an internet connection to play. But for single player games that can be played off line, games like Boarderlands, DragonQuest, and other Story based games Physical is probably the best way to go. And we need to push to keep physical games.
Also if you like digital only I am not bad mouthing you, if that what you want that fine, I am just saying a digital only future is not a good think for the above reasons, true I hope (and pray) reason 7 and 8 will someday go away, but some of the reasons above will stay, and need to stay such as the progression of security that will prevent older consoles (even the ones coming out today) to be unable to connect to the internet, we must keep progressing security. And loaning and selling a digital game there could be technical solutions, and I hope they do come up with it, but I doubt they want to there is no money in the big corporations in it, I just hope MS’s dream of preventing selling and loaning physical games that they had at the start of the Xbox One never comes true.
So far this year we have gotten some great JRPGs Persona 3 ReloadedShin Megami Tensei V: VengeanceLike a Dragon: Infinite Wealth And there are still more coming, coming on the 5th of July the one I am most hyped for The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak and latter this year we are getting Metaphor:[…]
Today I weighed myself and came in at 130 pounds. When I started I set a goal of 125 pounds. So only 5 more pounds to go. I am a long way from where I started, I started at 300 pounds on March 31, 2022, it been about 15 months since I started this diet.[…]
With summer coming buy, and me still on my diet, I came up with a snack, I have always enjoyed popsicals, so what I am doing now, is I am taking those water enhancers that say they have 0 calories and use that as the flavor for my popsicals, and I have some popsical makers.[…]
For my friends I did a video to show my friends how I have my apartment setup, because I did some changes to the living room and the bedroom. Here is the video
Posting a new updated before and after picture. First one was taken in 2021, the second picture Just this last weekend.
March 31, 2022 was the day I hit 300 pounds and decided to loss weight, today I weigh in at 135 pounds. To date I have lost 165 pounds. My goal still remains 125 pounds, so I only have 10 more pounds to go. I feel so much better, later on I will post a[…]
Today I did some meal preping for this week. Cooking both in slow cookers. First dish, is a ham and veggie soup contianing Ham Potatos Celery Spinish Carrots Onions Veggie Stock With the amount of stuff and what I put in it, the whole slow cooker has about 1200 cals in it, this should make[…]
Today I did my daily steping on the scale this morning, it read 140 now. So since I started my diet last March, I have lost a total of 160 pounds, and only 15 more pounds to go, till I can start working on keeping the weight off. But I been feeling a lot better[…]
Today, when I did my morning weight in my scale read 143 pounds, so to date I have lost 157 pounds. And now I have only 18 more pounds to go.
In the past I have used a 4G T-Mobile hotspot, that was costing me about 50 a month for 10GB of data. But for that same 50 I could get T-Mobiles home internet. So I cancled the hotspot line and added the Home Internet for my backup internet. First they say there is no data[…]
