Hodgepodge: Randolph Mantooth Passes, D4 Patch 3.1.1 Pisses, NYC Subscription Bans, Mitchy Boi Braindead and More

I decided to take a break from the Japan portion of the blog as over a year would go by until my eventual return (spoilerz!) Instead, as I wanted to commit to some writing today, I figured that it’s one of those days where I just open up a few news feeds and see if anything catches my fancy (or royally ticks me off). Not surprisingly, the topic that drives me the craziest is probably the least important in social value (which ironically isn’t our boi Mc-Mitchy who probably can star in the Mummy 8 or whatever they’re up to now). But there were a few other newsworthy items that I felt worth sharing my deep handy jack thoughts with the universe as only I can. So let’s get to it (cue the pr0n music!)

Randolph Mantooth Passes Away at Age 80

I’m starting this post off on a somber note as Randolph Mantooth was one of my childhood heroes because of his role in the TV series Emergency! What people may not realize about me is that early on, I had been a real fan of fire fighters because of my love for Lego. My second Lego set ever was 590 Engine Co. No. 9. I received that one for Christmas when I was probably 3 or 4 years old and my mother attempted to build it for me but failed in following the instructions and ended up tearing the thing apart. So for years, I had no instructions to the set but continued collecting almost every fire set put out by Lego. My mom’s father (grandpa) one time had given me one of those plastic fire fighter helmets and had a picture from one Christmas or birthday that I can remember. Sadly, that photo album is long lost after my “move” from my parents’ home.

But Emergency! was one of those must-watch shows for me with Gage and DeSoto as the characters driving around in one of those paramedic vehicles. Other fire related movies and TV shows like The Towering Inferno had been big favorites of mine as well just because of being fascinated with fire fighters. At that point in time, I had even wanted to become a fire fighter. Of course, that never panned out but as a result, I’ve always had a great deal of respect for those involved in fire fighting.

In Mantooth’s case, the only other show I remember him in was an episodes of Battlestar Galactica called Greetings from Earth (S1, E19). Looking back at the episode, I kinda thought Apollo and he bore a similar resemblance. So that was a funny crossover in a way. As for his demise, it seems he had been in declining health over the years and one image I saw of him showed that he had lost tremendous weight. Sad but I think most of us will remember him as Gage and what he meant to paramedics.

Diablo 4 Patch 3.1.1 Notes are Available

So today, the Diablo 4 Patch 3.1.1 notes became available scheduled for July 14th. People were complaining that for the amount of “fixes” this took the team two weeks for what appears more like hotfixes rather than anything addressing the current season. Considering that most people are seeing Season 14 as an abomination, I’m surprised in a way that more hasn’t been done to correct the course of the game in any way. The bulk of the issues lie in the handling of Mythic Uniques and the changes that shifted their intent. Outside of a small corrections here and there and a tiny improvement to the drop rate, the basic message at this stage is that this change is going to stay regardless of how the bulk of the player base feel.

I read some of the feedback on the main post over at reddit and the general sentiment to me is that the player base feels as though the Blizzard developers (and Blizzard themselves) just took a massive shit on their heads as though they were Vince McMahon. While some people think that the new Mythics aren’t bad, the real issue is that there’s so many problems with the game at the moment that the expectation is that at least some of the players’ concerns should be addressed.

One person even noted that there’s been no communication from the community manager(s)/team, which is highly disconcerting. Some people believe that with the recent cuts the Diablo 4 team might be down to a handful of people. Others consistently have accused the developers of not playing their own game. No matter what though most people simply aren’t happy.

Initially, when I read the patch notes, I expected maybe a small amount of tuning but this was shockingly tiny. I think at a crucial time when the head of the XBox division is looking for cuts (and potentially replacing everyone with H1-Bs, which has its own set of problems), I have to imagine that the last thing the Diablo 4 team would want to do is make themselves look bad. I’ve seen situations like this where teams just go inert until things are decided at the top. I read that there’s a portion of the team that are unionized too but I have no idea how much of a real impact that will have. But this is a really bad look overall where there are no clear winners except for the competition who are going to gain a large amount of momentum because they don’t have the same type of corporate KPI shackles M$/Blizzard do.

Truthfully though, my expectations are exceedingly low for Blizzard at this point. It’s like being in a class of F grade students when you’re the B+/A- student and the rest are pulling you down. I think the player base’s best bet is hoping that the competition can really push their products to make up for the big gap Blizzard is leaving.

Idle Apocalypse 4th Time Booming

2.5 million souls this time around. Estimated at 2 million with Rick unlocked. Managed to secure a second permanent Mine, the final hammer and inferno spell. The cool part is how much faster this round has been going. Managed to hit stage 50 in around 10 minutes. I spent a good chunk of the spare souls into more Chants. Unlocking the 4th hammer should allow me to unlock all the basics so I’m looking forward to seeing what else is available. I’m very tempted at times to get the “No Ads” unlock but at $10 it’s too high for my taste. Should be no more than $2. Some of the paid for unlocks are ridiculously priced. Instead, saving for the 2nd Grave because it’s the most important spare room.

Main thought here: sad that a mobile game with late 80s graphics/sounds is far more satisfying than a modern ARPG like Diablo 4.

NYC Bans Subscription/Fee Traps

Mayor Mamdani is issuing a new law in NYC to prevent companies, hotels, etc. from entrapping consumers with hidden fees or making it difficult to impossible for cancelling of subscriptions they no longer want. The key piece of the law is that:

Businesses would be prohibited from misrepresenting the purpose, amount or refundability of any fees. Companies that charge “service charges,” “processing fees” or similar mandatory charges would be required to include those fees in the advertised price and document what those fees actually cover. Businesses that violate the rule would face restitution to harmed consumers and civil penalties beginning at $525 per violation.

I have to applaud this direction and wish that more of the US would take to this. I forget if California tried something like this but it really should handled on a national level. I think the violation penalty though is too slim. Instead, I think companies should report all those who signed on these fees and force them to serve jail time. The problem with this level of white collar crime is that the people who handle it aren’t the ones that truly get penalized. And if these companies see that their gravy train is running out, either they’ll make an appeal or find other ways to cheat the consumer. So you really want to penalize the individuals responsible for these decisions and toss them into prison to scare the shit out of the real criminals in this country. I may not agree with China at times but I do applaud the so-called crack down in corruption that you see over there, at least from the optics. Maybe the government here should employ a similar tactic.

As for Mayor Mamdani, while I’ve been holding out to see what his legacy really represents, thus far he’s been quite impressive. He did one thing recently that I read that was gutsy in preventing rent hikes. I really wish something like that would happen in California where people are getting priced out as a result of these tech companies and real estate corporations hiking up the cost of living out here. But I don’t think the governor or various “leaders” out here have that level of sack.

EU demanding Meta (Facebook/Instagram) to Dismantle “Addictive Design”

This is an interesting issue as the quest for EU (and possibly others following their lead) try to quell what the EU feels is “addictive design” that creates a stickiness for users that are vulnerable, most notably teenagers and certain adults. The three main areas identified in this study that are being condemned are:

• Autoplay
• Infinite scrolling
• Highly personalized content recommendations

I think that whoever has done this commission is a technological illiterate. Not that I condone Meta for malpractices but something like Autoplay can be disabled at the browser level. So it’s hard to really blame Meta here especially when others are doing this like Tubi and YouTube. Meta can deny that one just by pointing out how users can control that feature at the browser level. Now, if Meta ends up only supporting Chrome, then the EU can clearly point out some sort of collusion between Google and Meta, but I feel this part really lies squarely in the users’ hands.

Infinite scrolling isn’t a Meta exclusive problem. A lot of places use this technique instead of pagination because it’s easier to handle on mobile devices as well as making for a smoother experience with a mousewheel. When you have a lot of content available, infinite scrolling actually is a good technique even though from a developer’s point of view, it can be a pain in the ass to implement (because of varying browser sizes and the different techniques to get the page load to trigger)

The real problem with Facebook and Instagram is that the UI flat out sucks. I’ve complained for a long time how the photos section in Facebook is the worst thing around. It’s just disorganized and when you have idiot users who upload stuff constantly and even with duplicates, the photo section becomes a gigantic mess. There’s no easy way to search what you want and periodically you’ll encounter things you have zero desire to see. And the feed section is wretched for FB when it comes to the old Wall because it’s this ugly block of text where you can’t order things anymore since the “algorithm” apparently decides for you what you should see. Instagram faces a similar issue.

In Instagram’s case, they have an additional problem that they ended up consolidating their Explore section with their Search portion. This wouldn’t be so bad if the Search part allowed for someone to search using multiple tags. But the sheer volume and the poor quality of search makes Instagram a place where you can rarely really find anything of value. I think most of the time, when you’re using the new Search/Explore feature or “doom scrolling” down, you’re just hoping to find anything worth reading. Again, the system is setup so poorly partly because they want to determine what you ought to be seeing with the worst forms of heat maps that turns someone like myself away.

I don’t think Facebook nor Instagram should redesign anything. I think someone else just needs to develop a better system for handling massive amounts of images and video that are better organized and presented. In turn, Facebook and Instagram will die a natural death as they should.

OpenAI to Run out of Cash by Mid-2027

Some people think that this probably isn’t a bad thing if OpenAI goes bankrupt. The main culprit here in terms of the cash burn are data centers, which, having worked inside a data center at one point in my career (especially if you’ve followed my recent Japan life blogs) it’s mind blowing to me how much these people are spending as well as all the damage that’s been caused apparently. One thing I do know is that I gave Ollama a shot on my better MacBook and it just chugged hard for small requests. My CPU shot up to 300%+ while memory usage got nuked. On top of that the results were terrible.

With OpenAI, I think when Anthropic rejected the current government’s demands and actually decided to be somewhat ethical and OpenAI decided to step in, many users bailed. Anthropic probably is being better used by developers at this stage while ChatGPT is in this weird state. But that move seemed like one out of desperation by Sam Altman because he probably knows how vulnerable OpenAI is (or at least his own position).

My theory is that if OpenAI declares bankruptcy probably Microsoft will step in and buy them out for a low price, Altman will get the boot and Microsoft will end up ditching Copilot or at least integrate Copilot with OpenAI. So they’re just waiting whereas Altman is not in good shape and probably pissed a lot of people off in the past few years. That doesn’t mean under Microsoft’s rule that OpenAI will improve though; it just means that they’ll be more competitive to Anthropic and Google’s Gemini down the road. And Microsoft has the war chest, etc. to wait this out. OpenAI is a one trick pony.

One other interesting comment is how people just flee once ads, increases in cost or other things disrupt their usage. It’s true. I’ve mostly stayed away from ChatGPT because of the usage limits and refuse to pay for any AI at this time. I’ve stated that the frontier for AI does show promise but it’s still massively in its infancy and probably is more like ’98 internet at best with a lot more wary folk.

PS5/Sony Pisses off Gamers into Considering Moving to PC

I’ve never owned a console except a ColecoVision and Atari 2600 once I started using computers with a Commodore 64 back in the mid 80s. I never felt the need since most of my gaming needs were on a PC and I guess lately the mobile platform. And I know there’s a large group of people who grew up on the Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox, etc. In my case, I’ve generally associated those systems being more for arcade games where you’d need some TV setup and a special control. I had gotten so used to the mouse and keyboard that I never looked back except for mobile (which has its limits).

But if there’s one thing I learned about Sony over the years, it’s that they want vendor lock in. At one time, I owned a Sony laptop, which was a horrible mistake. But I had it for my main computer when I was living in Japan because it was one of the lighter laptops around and I hadn’t become a Mac fanboi just yet. But that machine gave me all sorts of problems because I needed to buy the Sony DVD, the CD Writer, the USB reader, etc. all because it had special ports on top of a special battery. And none of these things were cheap. Then when it died, it was a real pain to recover (although my bud on the WinTel team did manage to help me recover the disk). But it was the last time I owned Sony anything.

There was a recent controversy from Sony in eliminating physical media, which means you could only play from their store. I think they were attempting to hamper older versions of their systems to force people to upgrade. In turn, I think this move simply has pushed more people away from Sony.

The problem with Sony is that it’s a large, old company with a giant war chest (like Microsoft) that is mostly living off its legacy. They’re so big their divisions fight internally with each other because it’s such a cluttered mess. I knew someone who worked at Sony who told me that their corporate office used Dell computers. This was when they had a PC business. That tells you a lot about the mentality of this company.

All I can say is that outside of the few mobile games I play, I’m sticking with the PC. Give me Gog.com any day of the week and I don’t have to worry about some shitty online always company fucking me up the ass because they decided to take a shit on my head. Old games rule and you should consider playing those instead of these creative-less current titles because they’re cheaper and you can make a statement.

Mitch McConnell Rumored to be Brain Dead

There’s so many jokes in this that it wraps around and ends up being almost unfunny. One should not laugh at the dead, the elderly, the infirm. But when you’re a clear cut asshole who has caused numerous problems for the country, then all the mercilessness is well deserved. I mean, where can you even start with this? Weekend at the Mitch’s? The Mummy 8? RoboMitch with a Vengeance? The Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz? I mean, it’s endless here.

I know that his wife came back and made a worthless statement. But everyone is just dying to know: is this guy a goner? Has he manifested into his true form as a carrot? Maybe a russet potato? Even if this guy’s brain has finally died, one thing you have to know is that you can’t say that he had a heart attack in this because he never had a heart. So maybe he’s like the Tinman combo’d with the Scarecrow. Nonetheless, they hopefully won’t mark his grave or I’m sure a lot of people will end up marking it with piss and poop for fucking them over.