 The Lovely & Scammy
Samsung
Note 8: Bixby,
the Scam of Scum
3/5/18. My iphone 6s decided to clear itself
after one of apple’s quarter-hourly
updates, and I had to spend 2 or three days making it work again, so I
thought I’d move on to the World of Android. Like all the pathetic
dying technology companies, they must spit on us as they depart and
Samsung is no different: the iphone has its wonderfully-unwanted Siri,
Google has something I forget but it’s constantly badgering me to
use
it, and Samsung’s got Bixby,
The
Scam of Scum! ... I had to register
to get to the settings thing to turn-off the Bixby button on the side
of
the phone, which is apparently a well
known
menace.
So they get to send me exciting email offers to an email account I
maintain for just this purpose. ... But I’m assuming the apple updates
will increase to a 15’’ rate — gotta sell that new luxury
c--p they’re
flogging, so gotta make the old phones break — so I guess I’ll
stick it
out with the Lovely & Scammy samsung for a while. Although I
seem to
have gotten the economy size....
What’s
really odd is that Samsung just wants to get hold of your email address
and pester you forever — i.e. the average stupid “registration”
scam
from Usux™ and all the beautiful companies — but to achieve
this unobjectionable goal, they install special
software
that pesters you in
your phone,
making the product obviously offensive to many potential users. ...
This
is heroic
scammery....
3/8/18.
Samsung scores! I can turn-off
all notifications
with one single poke
on the Note 8, as opposed to the 500 required on the iphone. ...
“Notifications” are those wonderful things that pop-up and
tell
you
stuff — really, just like pop-up malware — but notifications
are kind
and gentle and only want to help.
That is, they’re built-in
advertising malware
for
the purpose of scamming the customer, and I just turned them all off!
... On the other hand, the Note 8 is updating, and perhaps it’ll
just
brick-out & I’ll get to send it back in appalled hysteria. ...
Well, no, it did OK. And really, iphone unit sales
fell below Android years ago, and Android dwarfs
the iphone. Which is why the Android OS
update is less-likely to brick the thing. ’Cause the poor appleoids
are too distracted, what with flogging the stupid watch and the
$1k phone, to do the upgrades competently. Professional ifanboys
still hold out hope of course....
And then again, I’ll never
buy another samsung after the exciting GPS
stupid....
Except
of course For Mandatory Upf--ks: Invisible Screen
Just like Apple!
They’re catchin’
up! ... It didn’t actually clear
itself. No it set the brightness
to totally dim!
So I could barely see the screen controls, which I had to do, to (1.)
sign-in with my stupid pin, (2.) swipe down from the top, maybe twice;
(3.) guess what faint marking was the brightness control, and (4.)
touch it all the way to the right, whereupon the stupid phone solemnly
warned me how I was wasting energy. ... So that’s keul, the kids
are
ok, and anroid’s just like the big kids. ... Note that this is not the “black
screen of death”
of which the android parasitical moronocracy babbles profusely. ... The
phone didn’t
clear; it just
got real stupid.
... Then again,
it is a
touch screen phone, so
I could’ve accidentally turned-off the display at any moment by thinking
about it the wrong way. ... Which is probably the case, since I managed
to do it again a year later. The screen is totally invisible in
sunlight — so I went into a dark corner of the motel room and then
could see faintly the screen, unlocked it, and did the 2-finger down
gesture to get the magic control screen. Although actually I had to go
through settings since I couldn’t see the brightness control on the
2-finger screen. However I needed to go there anyway ’cause somehow
I’d
managed to turn on the &*()()&*(&(*( stupid
flash light,
and that’s where it must’ve happened, and I turn-off the brightness
to
stygian in a pitiful attempt to stop the flashlight.
The stygian
mode is probably great for the amateur astronomers
and their dark sky star nights....
Noli
Tangere Screen
And
oh yes, the beautiful wonderful touch screen, so useful triumph of our
time? — doesn’t work. Like, to move an app icon from the stupid
screen
they put it on to the leftmost screen? ... Nope; always goes some other
horrible totally-unwanted place. EXCEPT
when I use the *(&()*&()& built-in
stylus ... THEN
I can move icons, and do so many
things that otherwise won’t work, ’cause it’s so advanced
’n’ all....
Can’t
Save Browser Bookmarks
Google for “note
8 save bookmark” and you’ll probably be told to poke the
star icon. Which isn’t there. It’s hidden
on the 3-dot menu, and I had to poke it more than once to get it to
go....
Google
GPS: Samsung Sux
 Wednesday,
May 8, 2019. It’s down for the count. Or at least two strikes.
-
My
beautiful giant Note 8 failed to find my way somewhere in North
Carolina — I forget the exact pitiful plaint, but no route map and
“cannot
find a way [to destination]” message. After offing the google maps
application with android offing screen. After powering off/on the
phone.
My beloved suggested
deleting the google maps
app entirely, but of course YOU
CAN’T DO THAT
on a Google™
android phone.
There’s some mumbo jumbo where I could “stop” google
maps with attendant dire warnings, and so I did, and then it seemed to
come up and find the route — EXCEPT
that I couldn’t “start” without downloading the
incredible wonderful useful ACHTUNG
!!! MANDATORY Uber app. Perhaps pretty mild malware, but
still
malware — forced install of unwanted program.
-
My
guess is the
whole rigamarole was google maps updating itself with new
“features” — most notably including DEFAULTING TO THE
UBER/LYFT
ICON: a
little row of 5 icons above the maps specifies modes of transportation,
the one on the left the beloved automobile, the one on the right, the
universal holy bicycle, and the one to the left of the bicycle a
figure of a tiny man illegally haling a car service, which was set to
the default.
So poking START
brings up the demand to download
the uber or lyft app.
Poking the automobile makes everything OK & serene once again,
but
doubtless has driven
many to infuriation and sadly discarded highly-broken androids across
the
fruited plains.
-
But then again,
it’s
probably the stupid hardware — google for “samsung
note 8 searching for gps” and whddya know, happens all the
time!!!
... And of course I can’t
get it fixed, ’cause
it’s not broken-enough:
the stupid thing works when I start
on a journey, and fails in the middle, when it’s the most fun. ...
So
apparently the Koreans have learned murican mediocrity....
5/28/19:
Note 8 CAN’T ANSWER
INCOMING CALLS
(if you poke
— instead, swipe)
It’s
the Final Feature Frontier: the phone won’t
answer calls. ... In a way, that’s
my ideal,
but still for the occasional
emergency I’d prefer if it
could, and it can’t. I poke poke poke the green handset icon  , the screen
shivers with enthusiastic graphic features, and refuses
to answer. ...
This is
programming. ... This
is the triumph of the Android Note 8 ... as updated.
...
But I finally found the
solution @ a sumsung website,
but they didn’t know it was the solution, presumably because nobody’s
going to bother registering — but anyway, apparently I “Can’t
answer
incoming calls on s8 after 3-29-19 update” because I just poked the , but if I want to answer
it, I have to swipe
the
green phone thingey — any direction’ll do.
So that’s all fixed! Along the way in the standard
flailing desperation
I got my beloved
to install the answering machine and I scrawled the magic numbers
for it on the phone case, and
I learned how to stop the stupid ringing. ... So all is well....
Finally 10/9/19:
No Balls
 Which
is silly: the
Note 8 doesn’t have
signal
strength balls like the iphone but bars.
And while at first I imagined the phone was just gershtunk with none,
further harmless investigation discovered it wasn’t the android at
all,
just its stupid software lord and master Google and its google maps,
android version, which would occasionally lose the GPS signal and never
find it again. Until one “X”ed the journey one was on and started
again, and then all was well. Too bad I don’t have a computer to
do
that....
Of course the iphone
Google Maps app doesn’t do that, but that’s because the iphone
is important,
and must be bowed
before and kowtowed-to. The Android’s just a phlyover phone....
... & of
course the Note 8 Camera Stinks
I
must’ve been able to take a picture in under 10 minutes, but I really
don’t remember; usually I give-up because whatever I was going to
photograph disappears.
It’s got millions of controls, and super-psychic touch,
and’ll flips to a selfie, or a video, or
Heaven knows what, at the breath of finger movement or
thought. ... I mean, all
the phones have accomplished something like this talent, but the Note 8
definitely stands-out compared to
my iphone. But of course the Note 8’s more modérne.
... So I take a silly camera
on my ritual perambulations
in paradise, and
perhaps elsewhere. Which
beautiful devices have no
thought
control whatsoever.
... “Point
’n’ shoot” u know....
 A
New Day Dawns: The Glorious Google
Pixel XL 4
Sun
8/16/20 10:35 am. Of course, this
android’ll work perfectly, coming
as it does from the mother
of
androidism (i.e. google). ... So far, it’s demanded a giant upf--k,
and constantly pestered me about my gmail. I think I’ve stopped that
but who knows. ... And lookee here, it’s already discontinued!
... Which I guess I’d prefer anyway — means they’ve done
all the introductory upf--ks.
Fixed-up
the broken GPS
maybe. ... Oh well at least I can pitifully cling to a delusional hope,
for a little while. ... But I will note that this phone camera is the
first
that’s actually better
than
my beloved decade-old silly cameras.
That’s
at least partly because when I tell the glorious dropbox to download
pictures,
it just does.
At least two or three times now. As opposed to the beloved iphone which
likes to check every 15 minutes if you want those evil foreign
softwares to do anything, and definitely stops dropbox from
auto-downloads a few days after you beg it, and I have to manually do
it.
... You understand, the pix don’t appear instantly,
but they do appear in the same day
so far. ... @ 9/1, I thought it had reneged but no, it just takes its
own
time, but 9/1 pix taken around noon did
show up before 9pm. ... Sat 9/26/20 3:13 pm And I just noticed, I can
take
the sacred raw photos!
... I probably won’t
’cause apparently nobody cares and so what’s the point?
 ... and
its exciting and so-aristocratic Battery
Rot!
Sat 3/5/22 4:48 pm. Yup only a few tired months/years
of covid billions
monstrous plague dead
— well I haven’t checked the news recently, but it must
be billions by now — anyway my wonderful Pixel XL 4 began remininding
me of my Samsung GPS
— it seemed, like so many of us, to lose its way — and so I
ordered
another, and ingeniously got the cheap economy model Pixel 5A with
a headphone jack,
which until
recently the anointed had assured us would never return again — and
then I took the pitiful XL4 out of my add-on phone case and found the
back of the
thing bulging out! ... Although I had
noticed the bulge before, I
guess I just assumed my case was cranky. ... But apparently all
phone manufacturers must commit this ridiculous amateur-night bungle regardless of
Apple’s shameful
& historic example — Google bulging
phone battery ’n’ see so many....
 But
not to mind ... it’s still a nice camera what automatically loads
pix to my dropbox directory — which of course the Apple phones claim
they will do but in fact resist, requiring personal intervention every
single time for every pic. ... But then, as if to confound my serene
expectations,
my new 5A didn’t
save the pix to the revered & traditional “Camera Uploads”
directory — which I can remember being annoyed about when it was
first
introduced so many eons ago, of course without asking — but instead
the 5a
saves to the root
“Dropbox”
directory, without asking of course, so I’ll
just taste the lash a little. ... But then, presumably after pondering
the errors of its ways, subsequent photos went to the “Camera Uploads”
directory the way the Great Nullity what rules our empty meaningless
universe
intended....
But then there must’ve been an upf--k
and the pictures stopped loading automagically entirely and after
fighting with dropbox for about 10 minutes it seemed to once again
return to decency — until the next upf--k
presumably....
6/22: Google
Android Pixel 5a versus
iPhone
It’s
like how in this vibrant election season the compassionate Democrats
are doing everything they can to campaign for Republicans! In this
case, the delightful and so-conscientious google is trying to drive me
to my iphone. I have them both, and that’s because of my magic battery
experiences with the iphone — it hid
its exhausted battery from me by pretending to work good plugged-in to
power, which is how it normally is. So I was trying to convince the
pixel to play my soothing thunderstorm music @ motels as we rollick on
the wild American highway, but it won’t. The pixel apparently feels
that one shouldn’t listen to music, and turns it off at its normal
shutdown period, even if plugged-in. The iphone, on the other hand,
plays it through the night. Both with VLC; and the iphone even
consented to repeat play, which iphone VLC used to refuse.
&
The Return of Bixby
But
just to keep the good times goin’, Google pixel has its own scam-ridden
attempt to get you to use your beloved speech control which all men
love beyond hope & fear, just the way everybody loves Apple’s
icloud so much Apple has to pester you every 30 seconds to use it,
which approach “do
evil” google emulates — it is difficult to kill, although I’ve
turned-off the microphone for everything, for which dire threats are
made that I will disable the precious features of this and that —
but I can’t rid the stupid taskbar at the bottom of the screen of
the
microphone,
which of course the moronology hopes you will press by accident and be
enslaved into the cave of hopeless speech recognition.
 &
the Disappearing Pixel Screenshot
Thu
8/11/22. This just in! In google’s infinite wisdom, they’ve
decided
you
don’t need to get all that screenshot stuff anyway and publicize
their
egregious sins, so it doesn’t work anymore. ... I guess this’s
my
ultimate pixel — they’re headed for the last roundup, I’d
guess. ... I did have a moment’s hope when my ipad forgot its
screenshot ability, and I could cure it by ignoring the universally
stupid/wrong web advice and not
press both down-arrow + power at the same time — which always turned
the ipad off, just like the pixel — but instead hold-down the
down-arrow and briefly press/release the power, which successfully took
a screen shot. But I guess google’s got fewer billions than Apple
and
can’t afford competent thought anymore. The web is alive with
complaints about the pixel screenshot not working, and apparently it’s
just something they do now and then, no doubt when unusual
bury-the-evidence motivation appears....
Random
Binking
3/22/24.
I assume the pixel’s indeterminant genders have given up on the poor
innocent thing, at least it binks every now and then in a very lonely
way. I suspect it’s trying to tell me something about its settings
—
the setting notification keeps turning itself back on — but still
won’t
say why! ... Perhaps, “goodbye cruel world”?
Amazon
Fire versus iPad/iPad Mini
9/7/22.
I bought the fire at 11/21 for a cheap $45 and in the intervening weary
months at some point it took forever to a get a beautiful page from the
ever-exciting world wide web. But then more recently it started working
good, much better than the ipad mini which’d take a minute or two
to
find the wireless, and/or rotate the screen to the appropriate
orientation,
tasks which the beloved fire’d do in a trice.
But
then
I foolishly played a game — a stupid, uninteresting game apparently
intended to trap an unwary child in an endless loop — and then the
fire
software went nuts; obviously broken. Although it might’ve been the
$9.99 HP15-esque app
I bought, one of the
ugliest hp15 imitation I’ve ever seen. ... Whatever, I was able,
by holding
down
the power button, to “reset to factory settings” or something
and all
was copacetic once again, after I’d entered the usual 5 million
passwords. And in a few days it upf--ked
itself and didn’t
restore
the craziness....
The ipads are obviously superior in the apps
department, but for my dropbox notebook, or
visiting the world wide web with a question in the night, the fire
takes the cake....
Perfidious Hot
Spots I Have
Known
One dark & stormy night out on the road, the
motel wireless
was wonky as usual and my iphone hotspot would
not connect — to my beloved Windows 7 won’t-upf--k-in-the-night
laptop. Because for the sacred iphone, Win7 is traife
— not supported,
dark, horrible.
Of course my beloved’s
win11 machine connected flawlessly to the motel wireless. The iphone
would connect momentarily, and then drop the hideous tainted thing. But
my heroic pixel’s hot spot was perfectly copacetic and connected
without shame or shirk. And there was some pixel hotspot button which
promised slower speeds and more catholic connects, and which I think
worked. ... So I guess I’ll stick with the screen-save-shunning
pixel for a little while.
|
![[0]](zero.png)
It’s
like this![[1]](one.png)
Hammond
organs 
I’ve
owned used
, featured on the back cover
of the 1/24 
And
then I got around to reading the previous 12/23 issue, and there she was
on
the bottom third of the inside back cover! 
That’d be the radio to the right in the beautiful picture. The volume
control would make nasty noises, to the point where it was difficult to
get it to “set” to the right volume; and the large tuning thing
was
noisy too. All old analog gadgets used to get like this, and we’d
take
’em apart and clean the controls. The trick is, I couldn’t
tell
by looking at it if the obvious 4 screws on
the outer edges of the back were the correct ones to unscrew. (See 
with helpful headings about “Album” and so-on, and trying to
get a
different “view” doesn’t work, don’t be annoyed!
No
No Windows 7 ’n’
Vista and whatever atrocity they’re concocting this week —
