Tech fails

fail.md

If you don't learn from the past you're doomed to repeat it.

Audio

• Dell
  • Latitude 5501 sounds even worse than my MSI MS-16P7 due to ratting its plastic case. Interviews sound like a poor phone connection. Iron Maiden - Can I Play With Madness on the other hand is tolerable and even has some bass, almost enough for Robbie Williams - Angels, which sounds like a not-quite-tuned FM radio for the vocals (too little power), particularly noticable on U2 - Discotheque. Without "audio enhancements" disabled, its audio jack adds a rumble to videos like this. Worst audio hardware I've ever used, especially playing this. Then again, using my Logitech X-230 the cymbals at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxnN05vOuSM&t=54 sound more clear than on my MSI GL63 9SD, but that doesn't run hot during normal use because it has more than one side vent, so is less noisy overall.
  • Precision 5540 also lacks bass and clarity at 3:00 of Angels.
• HP
  • EliteBook 850 audio jack fail, possibly due to Apple headset with its abberant standard.
  • 2nd EliteBook 850 audio crackle while speaker set to 24 bit.
  • 3rd HP laptop had crackling audio with hardware acceleration.
• Jay Sound guitar triple pickup crackles on amp and Rocksmith.
• Lenovo ThinkBook 13s-IML 20RR has shrill loud high notes on Angel Dust by Dieselboy and Mark The Beast which is otherwise not tinny compared to my MSI MS-16P7 GL63 9SD.
• Logitech X-230 - Affordable but its subwoofer is too powerful, even at lowest volume. Intro of The Number of the Beast (Official Video) is also a bit weak compared to my Target TRG-S 120 that has dirty tweeters but makes less noise when plugged in.
• MSI MS-16P7 GL63 9SD laptops have terrible speakers. Iron Maiden - Can I Play With Madness hurts my ears and there's no audible bassline in Robbie Williams - Angels despite the advertised "giant speaker". U2 - Discotheque lacks lows from 0:28, highs from 4:08, and sounds flat overall despite bundled Nahimic software.
• Sonos is part of the Internet of Shit.
• Various tinny speakers. I guess 10 cm is the minimum for good audio, judging by my Sony radio and Target TRG-S 120. Then again, my Sennheiser earbuds and iPhone 12 (despite weak bass on Angels) sound amazing. Small Bluetooth speakers inside of a belt bag sound fine, too.

Health

• Bio+ Biological Plant-based Unsweetened Oat Drink has a terrible plastic cap that tears off before opening, and tastes bitter.
• Children not getting 2 hours of outside play due to school and such leads to myopia.
• Companies sourcing oil, tobacco, cacao, clothing, and other things like makeup from poorly regulated areas use child labor and kill people.

Image

• Bitrotted DVDs:
  • RCV, article K4330DVD. The data side says: Sono Press 50812869/K4330DVD S 01 1FP LB 46. Going by this video i should check The Matrix as well.
  • DFW, DV22093A 28150DLT80 01 OMM Technicolor IFP1L121. New from 2006 package.
• DVD players:
  • Xbox 360 optical drive stops reading DVDs with age, while CDs work fine. Only lasted about 8 years.
  • Q.MEDIA QTK-210 only has a few glitches sometimes but that's probably due to the disks themselves.
• Online services like Amazon, Netflix, and Sony pulling content.
• LCD
  • Hisense/Hynix didn't recall faulty chips.
  • Philips. (5 phone handsets with half-broken displays. 1 wonky monitor at work that finally complained about not quite getting 60Hz and hasn't had random blackouts or RGB sequences via HDMI since.)
  • Sharp. (1 dead TV, 1 microwave with half-broken display)
  • TV from Samsung. (UE55NU7170S dead on arrival. Red LED blinks twice and sometimes once long, attempting to display and playing a bad tube light blink sound softly. Bad caps? PSB? Where is the error guide?)
• Optical mouse cursor jumps in 2022 by 2022 QWare QW GMM-3200, and wiggles by 2022 Gembird MUSW-4B-04-MX.
• Printer by Canon(? It was gray.) started shredding paper.
• Printer by HP, DeskJet 2620:
  • Poor manual. Instead of spamming me about WiFi printing, tell me how to get rid of white lines (hold Power, press Cancel twice, Resume, and release Power), that a blinking power light means it's busy, and that a reconnect via USB fixes a stuck printer queue in Windows 10.
  • Driver causes spoolsv.exe to max out one CPU core on Windows 10?
  • Fails to complain about nonfunctional 304 black still showing 2/3 full. Shows nothing when red stops working even after a head clean.
  • Ink dries after a few months.
  • Paper increasingly failed to feed. Dried or dusty rollers? I replaced the whole thing with a laser printer by Pantum that also has better dust covers.
• HP printers are now remotely disabled when you cancel their ink subscription or use cheaper cartridges.
• HP scanners also need ink!
• Printer by Pantum, P2500W. Only outputs a single page of garbage after two years and <20 pages. Turns out i just had to (re)install the Pantum driver as it still printed properly via direct WiFi (not WiFi Direct according to Android) via the Mopria app and its own WiFi button, which adds a QR code containing my printer password and sends it to Pantum just to download their untrusted apk instead of sending me to their apparent app in Android's Play store.
• SD:
  • HP laptop MicroSD card reader stopped working after first few uses?
  • My first "Made in Taiwan" 32GB Kingston SD card Only writes FF after 8 GB. Fake product from a dodgy phone store? That would explain the shoddy lock slider on the adapter that stopped working within a month or two (and/or it was HP's reader).

Metals

Rust in dishwasher:

• Knives: Amefa Stainless Made in Holland, Inoxriv Italy, Monogram.
• Royalty Line Quality Precision pan bottoms.

Rust in general:

• All non-deo, non-Gillette spray cans so far.

Misc.

• Bosch GL-30 vacuum blows exhaust right up in your face. Maybe that's why it says "Allergy".
• DHL often failed to deliver.
• Logitech Dual Action stick sensors can go jittery after collecting dust for years, but can be fixed with some 96% alcohol. Test in Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Devices and Printers, Game controller settings, Properties.
• Make sure stone/stud plugs are big enough or use rails for bookshelves.
• Poplar/cottonwood seeds float everywhere and smell disgusting when heated in laptop cooling systems. Dang Romans and their cheap upholstery and expensive numerals.

PC

• AMD's Vega 3 drivers crashed almost every day on Windows 10 on yet another HP laptop with crackling sound issues. Disabling Chrome's hardware acceleration helped that but not the battery.
• Apple: See above. Their wares are overpriced (except MacBook Air M1 vs Dell XPS) and inflexible (MacOS only comes in black or white and doesn't even show where deleted files came from, for example.). Also, feeling the 50 Hz electricity due to its lack of grounding was worrying. Lenovo ThinkBook 13s-IML 20RR also has that but only near the power plug. Both more than my dimmable metal 100 W lamp.
• Battletron gaming mouse wheel stops working in 2 years.
• Dell XPS13 QFHD with Ubuntu expects a Windows partition for the UEFI restore feature.
• EVGA PSUs fry your SSDs!
• Hama OTG USB C/A bent and stopped working for even a mouse.
• HDD from Toshiba. (Fortunately it was only the enclosure's controller. Unfortunately they also worked on Fukushima. Fortunately that emits over 10 times less radiactive waste than Chinese fission plants, which itself is probably way less than its coal plants' radioactive waste).
• HDD from Seagate. (Fell asleep and coudn't get up while slowly tranferring thousands of small files from Windows 10.)
• HP:
  • Like Apple, they have their own incompatible hardware since 2010. A common practise since then.
  • HDMI and USB signals glitch randomly. Possibly related to above audio issues.
  • Printer and SD issues above.
  • Sucks in general.
• Intel Lunar Lake CPUs rust.
• Lenovo installed insecure malware on its laptops. PrtSc key is stuck on F-lock, only producing "O" and an annoying screen overlay for "Skype for Business 2016" despite me having uninstalled Skype and rebooted. (Fix.) Acer offers better value, maybe also beating this Lenovo ThinkBook 13s-IML 20RR's poor audio described above. A pain to repair.
• LG fails at analog connections like VGA (static on D2342) and WiFi (dropped 2.4 and 5 GHz connections on TV, despite WiFi repeater in the same room, but it turns out congested areas need a mesh according to my ISP, which is worse for neighbors somehow but better for me).
• Medion:
  • 1 Dead TV.
  • 1+ dead desktop.
  • 1 dead USB stick.
  • 1 new USB stick that can't even fit a Chinese lucky doll. Fixed with tape.
  • Vendor lock in unupdatable BIOS. Takes MSI cards, but refuses to boot with an Asus GT1030. Maybe for the best.
• MSI MS-16P7 GL63 9SD laptops have:
  • Vulnerable Intel Management Engine firmware.
  • Large intake holes that pass poplar cottonseed, resulting in horrible cigarette-like stench.
  • Terrible speakers. See above.
  • Bad media keys: Two hands needed to adjust volume.
  • Rather loud fans over 4000 RPM, but Dragon Center allows you to adjust that.
  • No num lock light.
  • Bad TN view angles. From 45 degrees up the white circle is full and from 45 degrees down it's almost black. Banding is actually slightly better than on my Lenovo 13s-IML 20RR IPS, perhaps thanks to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 vs yellowish V540_13.3_INX_Dolby.icm.
  • Shady review practices & ethics.
• Nvidia CUDA: PyTorch needs torch.Generator() because (device='cuda') produces different results after first batch of 2 images and changing model!
• POCO F3 has poor GPS reception in Pokemon Go.
• Sony:
  • CDs: Hack your PC.
  • Phones: Too square for me. Automatic and manual backlight adjustment as well as automatic and manual transferring of data is terrible if it even works. Their update app only appears to spam the Booking app instead of giving me a list of changes or even security updates! The Sony Xperia XA1 does not support USB-C to HDMI (aka MHL), nor changing the ring volume in "do not disturb" mode, nor Google Cardboard where the QFHD premium model still beats the competition from Oculus etc at preventing the screen door effect but is too hot and heavy for long term use. 2018 Xperia XA1 in 2022-01 lasts less than 5 hours in safe mode and can't charge or hold a charge, unless the battery store sent me a bad replacement battery twice in a row. At least they didn't explode like Samsung's.
  • TVs: My fairly recent Sony Bravia only has 2 HDMI ports and no 5GHz WiFi, leading to choppy Miracasting from Android. (Enable WiFi and WiFi Direct, choose screencast input from inputs, and connect from phone.) Older Sony WiFi dongle also unsupported. LG's Miracast combined with Raspicast worked more smoothly & LG's passive 3D TVs are also great.

Politics

• 2:07 Climate change due to brown people breeding too much due to high infant mortality due to war due to slavery due to religion being part of the video, it's a bit worrying to focus on excess humans instead of excess nonbiodegradable waste created by large companies paying the media to blame the consumer for not depositing their packaging in the nonexistent recycling bins, perhaps due to big oil preferring single use produce or because their subsidies make it cheaper than recycled plastic.
• Companies like Coca-Cola and Nestle are paying rich investors like Warren Buffet instead of building desalination plants to compensate them starving dry areas of fresh water.
• The meat industry is inefficient, deadly, oversubsidized, and often cruel. Banana companies are better and/as humans are frugivores.
• Cliques/cults excluding people or solutions for no good reason. Case in point: Tom Robson gave a simple alternative to editing the Windows registry but got downvoted and patronized by greedy hypocrites like "OriginalGriff". It might not be politically correct to disparage mental illness, but keeping it contained saves a lot of suffering. Normal people enjoy competition without getting hostile. On a related note, watch The Karate Kid (1984) and Cobra Kai for enjoyable fictional cliques, unlike lying legacy media like MSNBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, NBC, Business Insider, Reuters, etc. which make me wonder who the real evil imperialists are given that NBC said Putler was invited on 2014-03-01 by his allied president who also supported the SMO in Iraq, but that was after said ally was fired on 2014-02-22 so illegitimate and violating the Budapest Memorandum. Putler's Crimea medals say 2014-02-20 though.

Polymers

• Adhesive tape that stops adhering or tears too soon like decade-old Van Loenhout masking tape. Premium tape like Flex Tape is far superior.
• Hard plastic hooks of door coat hangers break in 5 years.
• Hard plastic plank supports break in 17 years with a shelf full of DVDs.
• Whatever glue Pantum uses for its stickers. Also HG Sticker Remover taking the plastic with it.
• Hard plastic screwdrivers that start to smell like rancid butter after presumably a decade or two.
• Nilfisk vacuum cleaner wheels fell apart in 13 years.
• Rubbery plastic used by Wacom PRN-A284 USB wire (I read XP-Pen and Huion are better.), 2014 Trust GXT 152 in 2022 (still functions with the best LED control, so maybe i should talc it), UPC mediabox HD remote, TechnoStar mouse, Vivanco remote, Sanus VMT15-B1 wall mount, and others. Plastic should not turn gross and sticky within a decade.
• Shoes and sprays from Scapino, they decay in a year or so.
• Silvercrest headphone pleather and pleather in general flakes in 10 years. Real leathercare destroys it sooner. Cactus or mushroom leather is probably better.
• Single use plastic that isn't PLA. PLA gets brittle from moisture and sunlight, so maybe bamboo or hemp are more durable.
• Crude oil:
  • Shell, Total, and other oil majors using illegal toxic waste dumps in Patagonia. Shell's code reviews are also poor despite billions in profit due to fossil fuel subsidies.
  • Oil companies are shipping 300X more toxic gasoline to Africa.
  • Volkswagen keeps gassing people. Though that's to be expected with slave labor, Nazi connections, and theft by fraud.
  • Daihatsu also cheated safety tests.
  • Illegal crude oil refining using children is also unsafe.
• Hata ramune and other marble sodas for using excessive plastic to open a messy and annoying seal instead of a screw cap.
• Lifetime Tools tape measure inner plastic goes brittle after a decade.

Power

• Batteries:
  • Albert Heijn alkaline AAA best before Nov-2017 were starting to leak in Dec-2021.
  • Duracell Plus AAA leaks in 6 years, even breaking the side of an AAA cell.
  • Kodak Zinc Chloride Extra Heavy Duty AA 08-2011 leaked in 2021.
  • Philips LongLife AAA R03 1.5 V Made in China, Best Before 01-2022, leaked by 04-2024: Only 2 years.
  • Sony Rechargeable Li-Polymer Batteries from 2017 and 2018 die before they're 4 years old, charged rarely or every day. 2 dead Xperia phones.
  • Top Craft Ultra Alkaline AAA (and AA) leaks fluid after 2-4 years, shorting out components.
• Induction plate from Scholtes. (Repairman said they are all less reliable than coil heaters, but the good brand was bought by a bad company. Lasted from 2007-2016, while rarely used.)
• Uninterruptable Power Supply caused more power failures than it prevented.
• NS abused its power.
• Solar road scams. Why can other countries like Germany and France make roofs to put them on so they're 10+ times more efficient and might actually pay for themselves compared to regular roads? Corruption from Big Oil like Shell?

Software

• apt - Sometimes metapackages require too much, leading to wanted packages being marked for autoremoval when removing unwanted packages.
• Bol.com stops working around 23:30 and loses your shopping cart.
• C(++): Unsafe legacy language that lacks proper input handling so instead of making the stack pointer only writable to control statements, the operating system marks data as not executable, so when due to lack of bounds checking the stack pointer is overwritten, it's not executable, which it wasn't in the first place, so execution resumes with your data, which can't be executed due to DEP, so use the executable heap memory instead of the stack and poorly-written code to overwrite the heap pointer with a known function and your choice of parameter such as a path to an executable into a popen.
• GNU sometimes uses random file content to determine its type, leading to not being able to print on Tuesdays.
• Gnome
  • Clicking the active media notification does not focus the relevant Firefox window/tab.
  • Terminal 3.52.0 broke when trying to copy my PS1 using the mouse. (Random letters on cursor blink, lag, and scrolling with Chromium window?! I'm switching to Ghostty.)
  • Themes are a mess. Dash-to-panel is the only thing that seems user stylable anymore.
  • To waste less space by using a single system bar, sudo apt install gnome-shell-extensions and install Dash to Panel.
• Google:
  • Search opens YouTube links in a wrapper that isn't logged in so shows ads despite me paying for YouTube Premium.
  • Gmail doesn't preview attached image from draft.
  • Chrome doesn't show downloaded image from Gmail draft!
  • Chrome download dialog fails to appear while there's an update ready to install.
  • Billion dollar clouds are autodeleted/killed by Google.
• HCL:
  • DX is WordPress but more expensive, complex, and obscure.
  • iNotes doesn't refresh inbox after moving sender mail to junk folder, nor does it move all sender mail.
  • Verse seems to lack the anti-spam feature entirely.
• KDE:
  • Opens context menus on mousedown and menu entries on mouseup, so many terminal windows were closed by opening the context menu too low on the screen while accidentally moving the mouse a few pixels.
  • Knows it's rebooting yet panics about it shutting down Konsole unexpectedly.
• Linux distros in general:
  • Can't keep your data while reinstalling after dist upgrade failed due to not checking for sufficient free disk space first.
  • Conflicts with key ring service for Chrome passwords when trying a different desktop after Gnome.
  • Poor UHD support in Gimp (tiny icons).
  • Elitist users who tell you to not expect anything for free.
  • Devs too lazy to fix critical exploits.
• MacOS:
  • Not free.
  • Legally limited to Apple hardware. (Hackintosh not allowed or needed with GNU distros like elementary OS or Pop!_OS.)
  • Window list lacks the minimized windows.
  • Trash lacks item origins.
  • Menu bar colors are limited to white and black (if even).
  • Needs an Apple ID to update preinstalled software.
  • Lacks window tiling shortcuts.
  • Finder hard to remove from Dock, and litters .DS_Store files everywhere.
• Meta (formerly Facebook)
  • Deletes features like movie ratings and reviews.
  • Deletes posts using poor AI. ('60s Batman & Robin intro GIF is not porn!)
  • WhatsApp doesn't retry failed deliveries. Its tiny error indicators lack error messages and the messages itself only contain a Retry option if they contain an image.
• Mozilla development was too slow, and Firefox prefers its cloud to single files like MHTLM (supported by IE, Edge, and Chrome) or MAFF (no longer supported by its lone dev) on your local storage. Firefox themes also pale in comparison to Chrome themes, not even supporting new tab backgrounds. Firefox also lacks a global audio source focus button.
• Patreon lacks dark mode and hides membership control in settings and behind other logins from the same gmail address. Support on Twitter points back to online form that lacks an option for my issue.
• Tinder and most other dating apps with poor controls and filtering.
• Ubuntu 24.04 fails to output HDMI audio on a Dell Precision 5540 to an LG monitor on first connect. Failed to recognize keyboard and mouse on second and third connect of presumed Dell dual monitor hub, which worked again after trying a different hub.
• Windows:
  • Not free.
  • Not open source.
  • Comes with annoying spy/bloat/adware.
  • Slow file access.
  • Microsoft killed DR-DOS, OS/2, and BeOS, made an attempt on Linux, and allegedly only saved Apple to prevent more monopoly lawsuits. As evident by lack of approval voting and in spite of cartel law, de-jure duopolies are fine.
  • https://docs.python.org/3/library/signal.html doesn't work on Windows.
  • Litters drives with System Volume Information folders.
  • Windows Defender falsely flags QBittorrent as "Potentially Unwanted Application", becoming yet another impediment to actually getting work done, in this case being installing Linux Mint Cinnamon on a USB stick to dual boot my new office laptop as that Windows 10 fails to use my Office 365 email account. Similar signup issue in Teams.
  • Needs a Microsoft account to use.
  • Reboots for updates at random times.
  • Spins up drives for no apparent reason.
  • Popping audio over HDMI. Unrelated to volume normalization. Probably a poor black box audio chip driver by RealTek. Or actually \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class descendant key PerformanceIdleTime not set to 00 00 00 00, causing power toggles and cut audio.
  • Inflexible dependence on C drive space
  • Opens new Chrome windows on turned-off display.
  • Mail for Windows didn't receive mail for an added Gmail account, a recipient lost Outlook mail sent from it, and it doesn't support Google Chat.
  • Microsoft GitHub broke search and spellcheck in this text editor in Chrome 104. Tradeoff for edit support for multi-megabyte markup?
  • Microsoft broke several basic live tile features in Windows 10.
  • Windows 11 loses taskbar icons or even the entire task bar and insists on wasting space on "Recommended" content in my Start menu.
  • Scary "Local Security Authority is off" warning users are told to ignore.
  • DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION after Windows Update with my TP Link 5GHz WiFi dongle plugged in. (10, supposedly the last version.)
  • Windows 11 still not compatible with my Ryzen CPU but at least Windows 10 still allows to dock the task bar to the left side of the screen.
• zsh: argument list too long: rm when trying to remove 30,692 files. Even Finder can, slowly.

Video

• Amazon Prime audio is too dynamic. Voices are too low and music too high. I've only watched The Boys (which clearly introduced bad hero and badder crooks) and some Rings of Power (bad elves and an unseen allegedly badder evil). Invincible is especially bad, but given the dialogue maybe that's for the best. I'm tempted to download or switch to my BluRay copy of Ash vs Evil Dead though. Known issue.
• Dailymotion lacks dark mode, comments, and button to watch "sensitive content". Looks like a dying tech demo held up by ads.
• TikTok web client following doesn't stick, likes are hard to share, messaging barely works, comments are limited to 150 chars, and notifications don't stick. Tofu-dreg project.
• YouTube:
  • Lacks a feed for only my paid content.
  • Can't block clickbait/spam channels/comments.
  • Linked comments don't appear unless other comments are hidden.
  • Comments disappear for no apparent reason, even without using the k-word. YouTube prefers Nazi slogans to my thoughtful criticism.
  • Subscriptions to channels like this don't stick!

See also tech prefs.