Fuck I dunno, I haven’t used the Play Store since Covid lockdown. I rather prefer to sideload most apps and avoid Google for the most part anyways.

Money is a scam anyway.

I couldn’t agree more 👍

Oh, I have a choice alright, I chose to withdraw all my money and cancel my bank account like 11 years ago, because my bank refused to accept my tax return as a direct deposit. TurboTax had to reprocess it and send my return as a paper check after the bank refused a fucking direct deposit!

Besides, when the electricity goes out for two weeks after a hurricane or other natural or manmade disaster, how you gonna get groceries or gasoline with electronic money anyways? Give me a paper check to exchange for paper money, paper money still spends even when the electricity goes out.

If it’s a service that only deals with electronic transfers, well I ain’t signing up, and you can just keep that gift card if it requires an app to even use.

Every single day I assume that tomorrow there might not be electricity, it’s amazing to me that people have come to rely on it so much and assume it’ll always be there.

Ask anyone in Cuba how that’s going right now…

Riddle me this, why do people use banking apps on mobile devices in the first place? Why put all your financial data in an eggshell just waiting to get dropped or stolen?

Bank cards have had the whole tap to pay thing for quite a while now. I drop my phone, busted. I drop my bank card, it’s fine, I just pick it right back up, and it stays in my wallet unless in use, not in my hand where it’s infinitely more likely to get lost or stolen.

You want a banking app, do so from your home computer, not a fragile mobile device literally designed to fail if it so much as falls out of your hands.

Anyways, riddle me that…

Sadly, there’s truth in everything you say. Scammers are gonna be scammers, and they’ll just find a new technique plus the long standing social engineering to continue their efforts to rip people off of whatever they can.

Still, it’s something in the middleground, to help grandma be less likely to get scammed, while also giving power users an out and way to keep using their devices the way they want.

Fair enough, you have a point. Although, I do think the developer verification thing will make it easier for Google to weed out bad actor developers altogether from the Play Store.

Sure there’s no perfect solution, but at least they’re trying to make it a lot more difficult for the scammers out there, while still leaving power users a path to keep using Android the way we want.

I can actually see where it can improve security against scammers trying to scam elderly and non-tech savvy people.

• Scammer tries to get someone to install malware from their site
• Victim isn’t familiar with sideloading, but scammer instructs them
• Victim hits the first time 24 hour block and has to restart and wait
• The restart alone breaks contact with the scammer, scam thwarted

For the rest of us that know our way around Android, it’s just a one time annoyance, after completing all the steps to enable sideloading, you won’t have to wait 24 hours anymore.

TCB?

I heard somewhere that zombies eat brains…

So, is Artificial Intelligence actually the zombies, coming after the children’s minds? 🤔

So, it’s been decades since I was a teenager, and AI chatbots weren’t even a thing. Hell, I didn’t even have the internet as a teenager, so maybe I’m totally out of the loop, but someone riddle me this?..

They’re age checking and gatekeeping social media, but not age checking and gatekeeping AI chatbots?

Do I have this about right, or am I missing something here?

I’m just gonna drop this link here…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVMvART9kb8

There’s a music band named Suicidal Tendencies. Can’t even look that shit up online without getting a notice and probably flagged on a list.

Side note, bad name for a band…

Honestly I have no idea yet, as I only heard of it and signed up last night. I am optimistic though…

I just signed up with Fluxer last night and chat with one of my old Discord friends. Fluxer is still very much in beta and under development, but seems to be a pretty promising open source clone of Discord.

https://fluxer.app/

They’re only catalyzing and speeding up the demise of humans. Thanks for supporting the cause, cuz who needs humans anyways when the robots take over everything?..

Yay, more lost jobs for humans!

Meh, DOSBox is plenty suitable enough, and QBasic is easy enough to find…

https://winworldpc.com/product/qbasic/1x

I can’t promise that DOSBox emulated results will give the exact color results as original old-school hardware on an old CRT, but results should still be mighty close.

The raw input data files are pretty simple to generate with most graphics software, just downsample down to potato 80x25, then export to raw 888 RGB format.

Sure, have at it!

Sorry it’s not a full complete dump with examples, but it’s programmed in QBasic 1.1 and converts raw RGB pixel data into equivalent closest matching color halftone onscreen characters. I designed it in mind with DOS text modes of either 80x25, 80x43, or 80x50 text modes, but I’m sure the technique can work with any text mode that can properly render the old DOS block characters. But, I’m betting that whatever device you’re using right now is almost certainly not configured to display the old DOS block characters as they were back in the day.

Good luck!

REM TEXTPSET.BAS
REM over_clox - February 26, 2008

DECLARE SUB DisplayRAW (FileName$, W%, H%)
DECLARE SUB TextPSet (X%, Y%, R%, G%, B%)
DECLARE SUB TextPixel (Red%, Green%, Blue%, Char$, FGround%, BGround%)
DECLARE SUB HTMtoRGB (HTMColor$, Red%, Green%, Blue%)

TYPE PaletteType
    R AS INTEGER
    G AS INTEGER
    B AS INTEGER
END TYPE

REDIM SHARED DOSPalette(15) AS PaletteType
REDIM SHARED FakePalette(15, 7, 1 TO 3) AS PaletteType

RESTORE
FOR I% = 0 TO 15
    READ HTMColor$
    HTMtoRGB HTMColor$, R%, G%, B%
    DOSPalette(I%).R = R%
    DOSPalette(I%).G = G%
    DOSPalette(I%).B = B%
NEXT

FOR C% = 1 TO 3
    C2% = 4 - C%
    FOR B% = 0 TO 7
        FOR F% = 0 TO 15
            R1% = DOSPalette(F%).R: R2% = DOSPalette(B%).R
            G1% = DOSPalette(F%).G: G2% = DOSPalette(B%).G
            B1% = DOSPalette(F%).B: B2% = DOSPalette(B%).B
            FakePalette(F%, B%, C%).R = (R1% * C% + R2% * C2%) \ 4
            FakePalette(F%, B%, C%).G = (G1% * C% + G2% * C2%) \ 4
            FakePalette(F%, B%, C%).B = (B1% * C% + B2% * C2%) \ 4
        NEXT
    NEXT
NEXT

'MS-DOS Text Mode 16 Color Palette
DATA 000000,0000AA,00AA00,00AAAA,AA0000,AA00AA,AA5500,AAAAAA
DATA 555555,5555FF,55FF55,55FFFF,FF5555,FF55FF,FFFF55,FFFFFF

CMD$ = COMMAND$
IF CMD$ <> "" THEN
    DisplayRAW CMD$, 80, 25
ELSE
    DisplayRAW "LOGO.RAW", 80, 25
END IF

'DEF SEG = &HB800: BSAVE "LOGO.BSV", 0, 4000

COLOR 7, 0

DO: Hit$ = UCASE$(INKEY$): LOOP WHILE Hit$ = ""

SUB DisplayRAW (FileName$, W%, H%)

    FileNum% = FREEFILE
    OPEN FileName$ FOR BINARY AS FileNum%
    CLS : WIDTH W%, H%
    ScanLine$ = SPACE$(W% * 3)
    FOR Y% = 0 TO H% - 1
        GET #1, , ScanLine$
        FOR X% = 0 TO W% - 1
            R% = ASC(MID$(ScanLine$, X% * 3 + 1, 1))
            G% = ASC(MID$(ScanLine$, X% * 3 + 2, 1))
            B% = ASC(MID$(ScanLine$, X% * 3 + 3, 1))
            TextPSet X%, Y%, R%, G%, B%
        NEXT
    NEXT
    CLOSE FileNum%

END SUB

SUB HTMtoRGB (HTMColor$, Red%, Green%, Blue%)
    Red% = VAL("&H" + MID$(HTMColor$, 1, 2))
    Green% = VAL("&H" + MID$(HTMColor$, 3, 2))
    Blue% = VAL("&H" + MID$(HTMColor$, 5, 2))
END SUB

SUB TextPixel (Red%, Green%, Blue%, Char$, FGround%, BGround%)
    ' °±²Û (32,176,177,178,219)
   
    Diff% = 768: BGround% = 0
    FOR F% = 0 TO 15
        RDiff% = ABS(DOSPalette(F%).R - Red%)
        GDiff% = ABS(DOSPalette(F%).G - Green%)
        BDiff% = ABS(DOSPalette(F%).B - Blue%)
        NewDiff% = RDiff% + GDiff% + BDiff%
        IF NewDiff% < Diff% THEN
            Diff% = NewDiff%: Char$ = "Û": FGround% = F%
        END IF
    NEXT

    FOR C% = 1 TO 3
        C2% = 4 - C%
        FOR B% = 0 TO 7
            FOR F% = 0 TO 15
                RDiff% = ABS(FakePalette(F%, B%, C%).R - Red%)
                GDiff% = ABS(FakePalette(F%, B%, C%).G - Green%)
                BDiff% = ABS(FakePalette(F%, B%, C%).B - Blue%)
                NewDiff% = RDiff% + GDiff% + BDiff%
                IF NewDiff% < Diff% THEN
                    Diff% = NewDiff%: Char$ = CHR$(175 + C%)
                    FGround% = F%: BGround% = B%
                END IF
            NEXT
        NEXT
    NEXT

END SUB

SUB TextPSet (X%, Y%, Red%, Green%, Blue%)
    TextPixel Red%, Green%, Blue%, Char$, FGround%, BGround%
    LOCATE Y% + 1, X% + 1: COLOR FGround%, BGround%: PRINT Char$;
END SUB

Yeah, I don’t think that’s particularly feasible with my prime directives in coding things meant to render on a potato. If I’m ever gonna revisit that old code again, I want it to continue to be able to run on old-school 286 CPUs, real raw hardware.

Like sure I don’t mind writing old QBasic/QuickBasic code under an emulator, but if I’m writing on such an antiquated language for legacy hardware, I wanna be able to transfer it to a floppy disk and run it on actual hardware from the era.

Other than that, going back to the good old days, I don’t see much reason to do such coding on modern systems. Though I will say this much, neofetch and the newer fastfetch are pretty awesome character based sysinfo utilities!

I just don’t see myself trying to jump through conversion hoops such as ASCII to ANSI for such a project to even keep me awake…

I’m not exactly sure how I’d incorporate both techniques into the same rendering system though.

My method doesn’t use letters, numbers or punctuation characters, mine uses the DOS mode block characters, blank space, 25%, 50%, 75% halftone characters, and the 100% solid block character.

I could probably get a little closer to sharper shape edges with my method if I add in the upper half block and lower half block characters, but when using those characters I’m no longer able to use the halftone dithering and would be limited to 8 background and 16 foreground colors…

I dunno where I’d really even start (over) again to use alphanumeric characters with my text rendering method…