Stupid Amazon reviews, search and other gripes

I was searching for a 15' Display Port (or DisplayPort) to HDMI conversion cable on Amazoo recently and wow, talk about a minefield. Seems like a fixed 5% of the reviews, no matter whose product, will be 1-star. No 2-star reviews. A bunch of 3's and then, mostly 4 & 5. Some of them are entertaining to the point of comedy.

What gripes me is that so many people try to use a product for a non-intended purpose and then trash the product for not performing up to expectations. Such is the case with DP to HDMI cables. ALL the product descriptions clearly state these cables are ONE-WAY. They take a DP signal OUT from a source (laptop, game console, etc.) and convert it to HDMI which goes INTO a display device (monitor, TV). Yet, you still have people who try to plug the cable into the DP on the TV or monitor and plug the HDMI end into their laptop (usually a Mac...are Apple users that bad at reading?). Bang, instant bad review "defective cable, doesn't work."

Amazon search needs improving

We can all be stupid at times, right? In my case, it's not paying 100% attention to search results that include "sponsored" results. 95% of the time, the "sponsored" results are NOT what I'm looking for. In the case of DP to HDMI, almost ALL the sponsored results were for HDMI to HDMI cables. Yeah great specs but not what I needed.

Anyway, I put a 15 foot Amazon Basics DP to HDMI cable into my cart and then Amazoo started prompting me to get free overnight delivery by adding another $13 to my order.

Thinking I was getting a different DP to HDMI cable, I blithely put a "sponsored" cable from "PowerBear" into the cart. Got the PB cable with the Amazon cable and noted immediately that it was HDMI to HDMI. Did they ship me the wrong one? Nope. The "sponsored" listing was so filled with buzz words and verbiage that it obfuscated the straight HDMI. Sigh. That will teach me to order shit after two adult beverages.

The good news is the Amazon Basics cable seems to work for my application which is to extend the screen of an old HP laptop onto my Toshiba 1080p TV for karaoke lyrics. But again, 5% of the reviews think this cable is junk, defective, fattening, immoral and causes herpes.

Somehow, Amazon needs to figure out how to leave out "sponsored" results that don't apply to the search at hand. I'm guessing companies are paying for the keywords: HDMI, cable, adapter. Even though their products don't do Display Port, you get those anyway. (Note that using + as Display+Port helps reduce the noise but you still end up with wonkiness.)

Clothing search

My other gripe is clothing searches. I realize that Amazon can only load up what a seller says about their products but you'd THINK we could get better standardized sizing. ALL men's pants should have specifications for WAIST and INSEAM. Instead, it's a mashup of varying specs that make searching for a particular size almost impossible. You want something with a 32" waist and 29" inseam (aka SHORT), you simply can't do it. Put in the keyword "SHORT" and of course you get Men's Shorts. put in "29 inseam" and you get any listing with the number 29 and random things from "inseam".

Why can't Amazon take some cues from the big online clothing retailers (LL Bean, Land's End, etc.) and design a proper sizing / tagging system?

Twitter BLOCKING Blogspot / Blogger domain as MALWARE

 You can see here that I can't put the URL into a tweet OR update my profile. I get a blue popup (which I can't capture) that says Twitter has identified this URL as MALWARE. Hmmm a Google product blocked by a competitor.

HP (again, again, again) locks out 3rd-party ink - Officejet, Envy

HP Inkjet Cartridge Warning

Way back in 2016, HP pushed out a firmware update to its OfficeJet inkjet printers that locked people out of using third-party ink. Of course HP didn't notify anyone that the "update" was coming and instead pushed it out as a stealth firmware change via the HP Smart desktop app.

As you can imagine, the backlash against HP was universal with owners crying foul. Many of them had stocked up on third-party ink and suddenly those cartridges no longer worked. HP Is Once Again Breaking Printers With Third-Party Ink Cartridges [Updated] - ExtremeTech. People who had invested hundreds of dollars in previously work ink cartridges suddenly found themselves with useless inventory. Of course HP's cartridges for most OfficeJets will set you back $80/set.

HP sort of apologized and gave techies a way to bypass the restriction through a special printer driver. Regardless, there was enough screaming that HP eventually undid the lockout via another firmware push. However, HP reserved the right to do it again. 

Move to 2019 and HP indeed tried this again with a stealth update. Same thing happened with user and media backlash. HP backed down once again.

Now here in May 2022, HP has done it again with a stealth update. Boom, all my Office World cartridges that had been working fine for two years are suddenly bricked. And I can't print period unless I pay $80 for HP genuine ink. To top this off, I've also read reports in the HP Community Forum that people with genuine cartridges that HP considers "out of date" can't use those either. 

HP Support

I contacted HP Support on three occasions (which seems based in India given all the Hindi first names I encountered) to see what the answers would be. Each encounter was always "Oh we are sorry this happened to you. We do not like to disappoint our customers. Let me see what I can do." This was invariably followed by some checking and then a response of HP trying to ensure "print quality" in its products and there was nothing they could do.

HP Print Quality

Here's the thing about print quality. IT'S MY DAMN PRINTER AND I'LL BE THE JUDGE OF PRINT QUALITY. If I'm willing to accept the risk of poor print quality and/or damaging the printer, that's my decision and not HP's. I get it that printers under warranty wouldn't be covered if you use third party ink. But I'm willing to take that risk since the cartridges are 1/3 the price of HP's.

What about refills?

Supposedly HP allows their cartridges to be refilled; but there's a catch. According to users in the HP forums, genuine cartridges have a stealth page counter that will lock THAT cartridge out if refilled. Some report being able to get one full refill's worth; other's report only getting 1/2 or 2/3 worth.

Class action lawsuit?

Count me in. If you're an attorney who thinks this intentional bricking of previously working ink cartridges is actionable, let me know in the comments.

The (racist) American Community Survey

Greetings from the Census Bureau 

My 93-year old mother got the American Community Survey (ACS) from the US Census Bureau the other day and being legally blind, asked me to fill it out. They had already sent her three letters telling her to fill it out online which is tough since she doesn't have a computer or even know how to use one. Being persistent, they sent her the long form paper version.

What is the ACS? It's a long-form survey sent out in non-census years to a sampling of the US population. Yes, by law, if you get one you are required to fill it out.

I'm struck by a few things. First, it's "American" Community Survey. Are they also surveying Canada (the American dictatorship to the north) along with Central America and South America? OK that's a quibble. 

Second, the form is a 48-pages and is literally a blinding array of questions ranging from race and ethnicity to income, housing, insurance, military status, etc. but not legal immigration status.

What really caught me up were the questions about race and ethnicity which we'll discuss later.

Non-binary cosmic muffins

So let's start with literally the first box you fill out. No personal pronouns or non-binary sexes allowed here. You are "Male" or "Female". Now that's got to make the woke generation go insane. What??? I can't self-identify as a non-binary trans female who dates furries? Nope. Also, the question "How is this person related to Person 1?" seems kind of weird given that Person 1 is already checked.

What kind of person are you (politically correct version)?

Now we start on the fun stuff. Race and ethnicity. You almost have to construct a Venn diagram to make sense out of this portion of the ACM. It actually comes in two parts. People of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin (since the Census can't just call them "hispanic") get their own box. And they get their own "where are you from" section as well. 

Mexican is lumped with Mexican American and Chicano while Puerto Rican and Cuban folks get their own boxes. But how come no Cuban American? And technically Peurto Ricans (like most of us) are already American. It's so confusing!

Now if, god forbid, you should be yet another type of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish person, you're asked to further pigeonhole yourself. My favorite example though is "Spaniard". Yes it's technically correct but it's also worked its way into the lingua franca (or lengua espana) as a somewhat derogatory term for upper class non-Mexican Spanish. But this also begs the question, should Portuguese and Brazilians be messing with this box at all? Does your head hurt yet?

At least there's no category of Latinx.

More checkboxes and fill in the blanks!

This stuff must be really important to the powers that be except if you are white or black. Then, not so much. Unlike those Hispanic, Latino or Mexican Americans, white or black people only get one damn checkbox! That's clear racial inequality. Write your elected officials today and demand more checkboxes.

Now the weird part about this is if you check any of the top three boxes, you MUST fill out text below in the online version of this form. It's a "required" field. Apparently White American is not acceptable (even though our family emigrated from England before the Revolutionary War). 

I'd hate to consider what you might do if you're White and have German, Irish, Dutch and French in your family tree. Can you put "Mutt" in the text box? How about Euro-American? 

While we're still on the White box, look at the Lebanese, Egyptian part of it. Are they "white", Arabic, Indo-Arab, Afro-Arab or to use a term out of favor, Semitic?

If you actually look at the ethnic and genetic makeup of Egyptians in general, you'll find they're about 85% Arab-African but, uniquely, Egyptian. Alas, the Census Bureau considers them "White".

Does the guy on the right look "White"? (Hint: he's the President of Egypt.)

Black or African Am.?

Now I'm not sure why the Census Bureau uses the shorthand for "American" as "Am." in some places but not in others. Here, as in other places, there's plenty of room to write out "American". It's almost like some copy editor said "hey, tone down that American crap; it sounds too MAGA."

And here we are again, Blacks don't get their own separate checkboxes like the Hispanics. It's an injustice I tell you. But at least the Census suggests that African American is OK even though the checkbox already includes that. So technically, you can be African American - African American like maybe you're extra African and extra American. Would you be African American² or African American x 2? 

All you other people

And finally we get to "Asian Indian" (as opposed to Indian Indian -- see above) and Other Asian. More silliness here because now we are dealing even less with racial makeup and more with ethnicity or nationality. Again, this whole section is about race. I actually had to look up the Chamorro "race". It's not a race. It's an identity by ethnicity and origin (mostly Guamanians and Micronesians). 

Where is all this leading?

By the time I finished just this first page of the ACS, I felt like I had stepped into a dystopian world where people are judged  not just by the color of their skin but by a thoroughly opaque layer of micro-ethnicities that only an Aryian Fuhrer could love. Again, why the special attention to Hispanics? Is it for target programs? Planned pandering? I have spent most of my working career in executive level marketing positions. I've analyzed data, constructed surveys and polls, put together focus groups and developed products and strategies to fit those answers. The ACS seems like more of a mashup than something cohesive and of deep value to the country.

I may go into some of the other areas of the ACS in a future article. The insurance section alone will drive the average person batty. But I'll have to take a hefty dose of pink liquid if I do.

Freebie Canadian Trucker Support Bumper Stickers

I put this together for anyone wanting to print their own bumper stickers in support of the Canadian trucker protests. These will print 4-up with cut marks on standard 8 1/2" x 11" bumper sticker / vinyl paper. (Sorry metric fans, there is very little A4 sticker material available.) If you really want an A4 version, let me know via g*e*l*d*n*e*r <at> gmail.com. I've also linked to a PDF version below so you can resize it in Illustrator.

Link to PDF version

Media blames society for shaming people who've had COVID

I haven't written anything long form for a while but this has driven me to gripe again. Today I noticed a tweet thread from Chris Cillizza, CNN Politics Reporter and Editor-At-Large. (He's the guy who tries to not sound as batshit crazy as Brian Stelter.) Cillizza was bemoaning the fact that those in his bubble wouldn't admit they had COVID. 

Cillizza goes on to observe that "societally we unknowingly turned having Covid into some sort of judgment on your character". (emphasis mine)

The pure self-unawareness here is the completely ignoring the role the media (Chris' team), government and big tech have played in pushing this sort of thinking onto society. This is not a collective we. This was not unknowingly. It was a collective, coordinated and completely conscious effort by media/tech/gov to shame people into getting the unproven and untested vaccines, wearing masks, isolating and social distancing. 

So if you got COVID, naturally you must be doing something wrong. Maybe you went to a football game (even though they have not turned out to be the super spreaders Fauci predicted). Maybe you didn't wear your mask 100% of the time. Went to a birthday party. Let your kids play with those unwashed heathen kids down the street. Shopped at a crowded store. Didn't stay on the 6' dot. Got the wrong vax at the wrong time. Or maybe you had heretical thoughts like why are my kids going to get vaxed when they rarely get really sick from COVID?

Since Cillizza no doubt associates only with like-minded left-leaning political types, it's easy to see how the shame factor can kick in. All you have to do is watch a few hysterical, over the top videos on TikTok to realize how deranged some people's thought processes have become. And not just about COVID but about nearly everything. Rational thinking has been supplanted by "feelings".

Cellizza closes his tweet storm with Omicron changing the dynamic. Sadly it's true. When the supposed smart people start realizing that the virus is gonna virus no matter what, it may change some minds. HOWEVER, it's still not enough to force the necessary introspection needed to admit THEY were wrong all along about pretty much everything from the response to the positioning.

We still don't have testing for antibodies to tell the unvaxed if they should get vaxed. (Yes, I firmly believe that natural immunity is far more durable and long lasting from having had COVID than any mRNA vax can deliver.) We still have a coercive approach to vaccinations. We still have teachers using COVID as a weapon so they don't have to work. We still have pressure on kids to get vaxed when they are at almost zero risk from COVID. We still have people being required to wear a mask when they walk to their table in restaurant only to take them off when they are seated. (Because of course, COVID doesn't transmit at seated level, only when standing.) We still fire healthcare workers because they refuse to take an experimental vaccine (and may have natural immunity),

So Chris' little "ah-ha" moment is really a drop in the bucket that will ultimately change nothing about the politics of COVID. As long as the left continues to see COVID as an opportunity weapon of control, nothing will change.