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For the past decade, I had been using DynDNS to give me a memorable hostname for my home network. I signed up in either 99 or 2000, hard to tell at this point, and picked a hostname on the .ath.cx domain; it was free at the time and I liked the sound of it.
All was well & good up until earlier this week, when DynDNS deleted my account without warning for inactivity.
They claim that all users received emails about free accounts being deleted, however, I received no such email, and judging from the Google results, I’m not the only one who claims they didn’t receive an email about the deletion.
DynDNS themselves tell you that free accounts can be recreated after deletion, except that in addition to my account being deleted, .ath.cx is no longer a free domain; I’d have to pay an annual fee to use it again.
Here’s the thing: I would have gladly paid them their fee, if it had been an option. But it’s not. Not only did they delete my account, but I can’t get access to it again. And the worst part is that I can’t even appeal to customer service to rectify the situation, because email & phone support are only available to paying customers.
Do I need to reiterate that I would be a paying customer right now, if they had told me about the change?!
After all of this nonsense, I’m not going to pay money to a company that values a decade-long supporter this little. I recommended their service to everyone and would have forked over a good deal of cash to keep that DNS record.
Instead, my account is gone for good, I can’t get it back, and I can’t get in touch with anyone at DynDNS. I’ve resorted to complaining to them like an impotent jerk via Twitter.
A leaked Apple internal support memo regarding the MacDefender.A trojan makes things quite a bit clearer:
Do not confirm or deny that any such software has been installed.
Do not attempt to remove or uninstall any malware software.
Do not send any escalations or contact Tier 2 for support about removing the software, or provide impact data.
Do not refer customers to the Apple Retail Store. The ARS does not provide any additional support for malware.
Ouch. This is in stark contrast to Microsoft, and even other OEMs like Toshiba, Dell, and HP.
Or, perhaps more appropriately, English degradation, from American English-as-a-first-language speakers.
Twitter:
can i do run away with you leme get lost wit you tomarow…
OKCupid:
I’m looking for someone who is athlete very attractive and intellengent
Facebook:
I’m good at food shoppin dude and fast I know like where everything is at acme and giant… and goldfish are good not a fan of ritas ice tea is good ur ganna need more pizza that good pbj is why to go pb jelly time all the way dude I love pbj… food interest me so much I don’t mind going shopping really I spent like an hr shoppin today for not much at all just bc I walk around the isles and look at shit and say to myself wtf did this price go up or I could make this or I want all of this. Other then that I culd spent ten mins in a store or n hr ir depends. Lol
Sean Lanigan’s 12 year old accuser:
it wuz a joke tho lyk always he picks up gurls as a joke nd I feel rlly bad. Nd I swear I dident wnt to go this far I told cuz some1 told me too nd I thought he wud just get a warning but no:(
Almost a year ago, Google Chrome implemented a change to completely remove “http://” from the URL in the URL bar (in Chrome speak, “the Omnibox”). It was met with considerable resistance from other developers, mainly because it introduced several inconveniences/bugs:
- Copy and paste bugs. If you’re at http://www.google.com, and you want to copy just the “www.google.com” portion, you can’t. Chrome will prepend the copied URL fragment with “http://”. This was broken in earlier builds, it would inconsistently add http:// to the url, including to fragments (http://www.goo)
- Developers cannot easily switch between http & https. Https shows everywhere, but http never does, so as a result if you’re on a http site and need to flip to the secure version, you have to either copy the url, paste it, and add the s to that, or retype “https://” in front of the existing URL. Annoying, though admittedly an edge case that affects only people like me and not the vast majority of users.
- Incorrect behavior for FTP sites. When opening a site like http://ftp.gnu.org/, Chrome would only show ftp.gnu.org. However, highlighting the Omnibox and pressing enter would result in Chrome silently switching protocols on you, taking you instead to ftp://ftp.gnu.org/! Dandy.
Number three is what prompted me to make this entry, because it was recently fixed in Chrome public releases. Now, when you visit a site in the format of http://ftp.whatever.tld, it will show the protocol, greyed out:
At this point, the behavior of the omnibox is totally unpredictable. Secure sites show a green https, most sites show nothing, weird format sites show the protocol arbitrarily. And they won’t give users the option to just show the protocol all of the time.
All of this could have been avoided by simply going the IE8 route: just grey out the protocol but show it all the time:
So one can’t help but wonder, with all of the bugs and workarounds they’ve introduced with this change, what the impetus is for making it in the first place. The last comment on the Chromium bug tracker thread holds a clue:
Can’t believe nobody has mentioned the obvious rationale for this change: SPDY://
They’ll never get over inertia unless they disintegrate the HTTP juggernaut first.
The thread was closed to comments right after that post was made.
How the USA handles Wikileaks:
PayPal has blocked transactions of the organization. [...] Reports suggested that the whistle-blower was contemplating on shifting its servers to France to evade American laws, but the US administration reached out to their French allies in no time. [...] The US Social Security Administration already warned its employees that even browsing Wikileaks could be a criminal offense.
How Germany handles Wikileaks:
WikiLeaks is irritating and annoying for Germany, but not a threat. From an international perspective, I see their actions as totally irresponsible. One might also ask, however, if a government is acting intelligently when it organizes its entire diplomatic correspondence on a network that can be accessed by 2.5 million people.
Not to mention the countless television personalities calling for Assange’s assassination, like that complete idiot, Sarah Palin. Not to worry though, he’s got that covered.
Album: $9.99.
All tracks from album, purchased individually: $4.95.
 Amazon album vs file pricing. I wonder how many people have fallen for this.
If you’re running Firefox 4.0 b5 on Windows and you’ve suddenly noticed that your fonts look utterly hideous, you’re not the only one.
Direct2D & DirectWrite landed back in February, but were only turned on in nightly builds up until now. Suddenly with Beta 5, a lot of users, myself included, are noticing that their fonts look vomit-inducingly bad. Hardware acceleration is to blame.
If you have this problem, here’s a fix:
- Go into about:config
- Find
mozilla.widget.render-mode
- Change the value from
-1 to 0
- Restart Firefox
Voilà, problem solved! Be sure to report that you have the issue in the Firefox feedback links.
A quick Google search for “HTC Incredible SPP” will yield hundreds of angry posts from users all around the country, talking about how the stock Bluetooth stack that shipped on the Incredible is incomplete, namely missing SPP. That means it won’t talk to certain cars (in particular, new BMWs), and it won’t work with certain Bluetooth keyboards, etc.
Frankly, I never noticed, as all I ever used Bluetooth for was the occasional file transfer to my laptop.
Recently, however, I got a new car that has built-in Bluetooth connectivity, and when the dealer tried to sync my phone, it failed miserably. Guess which brand of car I purchased? Right, a 2011 BMW. Fiercely clowned.
Part of me just didn’t care, I don’t use my phone while driving, I’m actually pretty vehemently opposed to it as a matter of fact, but it was the fact that it didn’t work, even though I wouldn’t use it, that really bothered me.
Looking online, CyanogenMod fixes the issue, meaning that it’s not a hardware bug, it’s entirely the HTC implementation of Bluetooth. Apparently they used a 1.x stack in their 2.1 build, which caused the issue. HTC customer service stated that it wasn’t a bug, they wouldn’t fix it, adding further disappointment to many users’ expectations.
I figured I’d wait for the 2.2 OTA and if that didn’t fix it, root my phone. Well, I’m happy to say that I have my 2.2 OTA now, and officially, the Bluetooth stack is fixed. The phone syncs perfectly with the car, as soon as you sit down it pairs, etc. I tried it out the other day while parked in front of the house just to make sure it was working properly, and sure enough, it worked flawlessly.
So there you go, Incredible users. Get Froyo, get correct Bluetooth. (And 802.11n, and 720p recording, and mobile hotspot, and Chrome to Phone, and…)
“We know you need your friend-search fix, but if you don’t give us a little something-something, you get cut off.”
Apple was too busy tweaking to respond.
Gruber writes:
This is good news, but I don’t think there will be much of a practical effect — just because it’s legal doesn’t mean Apple must support it.
While he’s right about the second part of that statement, the first reads like someone with their head deep in the sand.
The practical effect of this, John, is that Apple can no longer claim that Jailbreaking is Illegal. The last legal foundation that they had to try to outlaw things like Cydia is gone; users are now in the free & clear to run whatever software they want on their iPhones, and Apple can do very little about that. The practical effect is that US citizens who were worried about the legality of the jailbreaking process, from writing bootloaders to distributing apps on Cydia, no longer have a cause for alarm.
And of course, the practical effect is that Apple can no longer cast jailbreakers as thieves who are out to steal Apple’s IP and run amok with it. Even the ruling today declares that using 99% of Apple’s firmware with only a few bytes changes is not enough to justify a DMCA charge, and not good enough reason to allow Apple to willfully continue their walled-garden approach to the iPhone. It is a direct slap in Apple’s face.
No wonder John can’t see it, he’s still stinging from the hit.
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