Understatement, I know, but I find this so annoying, and it certainly feels malicious.

I was just commenting the other day how ridiculous it is that google search results literally serve up malware to people via paid ads. My neighbor was running into issues where her computer kept getting “infected” and a full screen scam would take control, blaring out a loud message that her computer was infected with a virus, that it was infecting microsoft’s servers, and she had to call them now to fix it.

After investigating, I found out that these types of scams are stored as blobs on Microsoft’s cloud service, but the links are spread via ads in google search. When I tried searching for the exact search terms my neighbor was using on my own devices and my own network, I found out that google was serving me the exact same ads, aka sponsored links. They look like legitimate results for things that people search for, like showing what appears to be a link to Amazon when searching for a product, even the links will say “www.amazon.com”.

Obviously I told my neighbor not to use Chrome and suggested some browser alternatives. I installed uBlock on all the browsers (including chrome) just to be safe. Then I showed her how to tell when things are ads, even when they are deceiving, and to never click on ads or sponsored links under any circumstances.

But it’s definitely infuriating that they are serving up malware in their ads, don’t respond to reports in a timely manner, are getting people caught in scams that they allow to advertise on their network but then somehow object to people managing those risks by blocking ads from untrustworthy sources, like google.

I would truthfully and happily go back in time and tell people not to waste with the fucked up bullshit technology of the past. I mean Angular 1, what the hell was that? Twitter integration? Fuck you 2010. Zend Framework? You should be hanged. HANGED.

I don’t think yellowing is inherently an issue with translucent plastics, perhaps only certain types. At this moment I can look around my room and there are at least a dozen translucent plastic items, some of which are at least 10 - 20 years old, and none have any discernible yellowing to them.

Fun fact since you may not be aware, but not all owls are nocturnal. And even those that are considered nocturnal are often active at dusk (after sun set but before the sky has gone dark). So, it could still work.

The Steam Deck was probably my favorite tech purchases in the past few years, and I’m looking forward to checking out the linked article to see where it goes with things.

I had been mulling over the idea of getting a portable for awhile, and truthfully Asus and Lenovo’s offerings are pretty nice. I felt like they were all good enough, performance-wise, for the types of games I play, but battery life was a big enough concern for me that it held me back from actually buying one of these systems. After the OLED Deck was announced and specs on battery life were released, it eased my concerns enough that I felt like now was the time.

I do wish they had handled the launch a bit more gracefully, particularly as far as the limited edition goes. At this point it doesn’t really matter, but it did etch away at some of the “magic” initially and undermined my confidence slightly when they couldn’t keep the store operating, then said the special edition was out of stock, only for it to magically come back into stock after I’d already purchased the regular/standard Deck. Oh well.