I keep a running list of cool things I find on these here internets so I can share them on Bullet Sunday.

But sometimes... sometimes... something is so cool that I can't bring myself to wait. Today's YouTube video is one of those times. Except I actually found it on the 23rd, so I guess I did end up having some restraint in waiting three whole days.

This video is 35 minutes of absolute joy. It's got it all... old tech... random strangers helping across international borders... entertaining history... and something so hilarious at the 32-minute mark that I nearly choked to death. This right here is why I love the internet...

Earlier this year I posted this epic video along the same lines where a guy tracked down a McDonalds DS cartridge, which is equally fantastic...

If anybody has any recommendations for more videos like these, be sure to comment. The YouTube algorithm is pretty good, but it can't know everything.

I hope.

While having a "smart home" is cool, I would have never spent the money on it if I didn't feel I had to. I bought my home so that I could care for my mom, and part of that was making sure that I could control it remotely. As her dementia progressed, I worked at home whenever I could but still had to go into the office from time to time for a bit. While at work I needed the cameras, a security system, and remote access to everything so I could keep watch and help out if she ran into trouble.

Likely the most important piece of the smart home puzzle was smart smoke detectors.

Mom had put plastic in the oven... twice... while I was home and had the oven on to cook something, so the worry was that she would turn the oven on and do that when I wasn't home. So I bought Google Nest smoke detectors that would alert me to smoke or fire no matter where I was.

Lately the CO₂ sensors have started to fail, and so I have been replacing the detectors as needed.

Until I couldn't.

All of a sudden, nobody had the wired Nest Smoke Detectors available. Nobody. Except Google's own store. But the problem is that they will only allow you to order one of them. This is a problem when I have two detectors with dead CO₂ sensors and one which had expired.

I finally decided to chat with "Customer Support" to find out what to do.

What followed was my wasting an insane amount of time being passed around while being told to do truly insane things. Including (but not limited to) unplugging the failing detectors and removing the batteries so they'll stop beeping.

Yes, you read that right... YOU CAN SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF NOT BEING ABLE TO REPLACE YOUR SMOKE DETECTORS BY DISABLING YOUR SMOKE DETECTORS!

If I didn't have the complete chat transcript of the bizarre shit Google said from my call, I wouldn't believe it.

Note that at any point in my conversations, all the Google "Customer Support" agents had to do was tell me that they were sorry they couldn't sell me replacements for all my dead detectors and I should buy a different brand so I could stay safe. But rather than tell a customer to buy a non-Google product, they thought it was better to tell me to risk my life and illegally disable my smoke detectors.

I can only guess that wanting your customers dead rather than buying a non-Google product is company policy.

Remember when Google's motto was "Don't be evil?"

Artificial Intelligence created "art" is an abomination for a number of reasons. The biggest of which being that AI gets trained on the works of countless artists who have their works stolen so a computer can mimic what they've created. Without artists, generative AI models couldn't exist.

It's a serious problem because the companies behind generative AI and the people and companies utilizing generative AI are poised to make billions off the technology while the artists who made it possible receive no compensation at all. For this reason, there's been a bit of a backlash when companies use AI "art" for their packaging, advertising, or other materials... but it's not enough of a backlash to stop the trend from trending.

Nope. Generative AI is here to stay.

And now Apple has gotten in on the game with an app called "Image Playground." It's the same type of prompt-driven AI that's been around for a while now, it's just that Apple is attempting to make it easier to use.

And easy it is. You feed Image Playground some parameters that you type or select from suggestions, like so...

And you're presented with a bunch of options that have been generated based on your parameters, such as this one...

Immediately there is a problem in that this looks absolutely nothing like me, despite the fact that I fed it a literal photo of myself. Out of the dozens of friends and family that I put through Apple's generative AI, it usually comes down to the hair. For reasons unknown, Apple is adding tremendous volume and wacky styles that in no way match what was sent to them.

You're always given multiple options, but rarely do the photos of myself look much like me. And, again, it usually comes down to the hair. If they could get the hair drawn better, I think that would be half the battle...

From time to time I get something that kinda-sorta looks like it could be me...

But here's the thing. In all the photos of myself that have been generated, you can't look too close. Because the minute you do, you start to notice some horrific details. Usually with the eyes and teeth...

And once you see it, you go back to look at all the photos that have been generated and everybody looks like serial killers. It's genuinely bizarre, and I'm not really understanding why something so standard as eyes and teeth are so difficult to render.

I did have better luck with photos of my younger self...

Which gets me this...

I can sorta see me in that? It helps to add props...

Even though props are highly problematic. I don't think any of them work as intended. For example, this is me in sunglasses, but AI makes my eyes visible through them, which is freaky as hell...

I put myself in a disco, and suddenly I'm in... suspenders?!?

And when I select "Witches Hat" as an accessory, it's like the AI didn't know what to do, so it put me in a... sombrero?!?

I thought it would be cool to see me as an astronaut, since that's what I wanted to be when I was a kid, but Apple removes the faceplate and has my chin sticking out every time? I don't think that's how spacesuit helmets work...

And it's not just one option... it's 5 out of 6. And sometimes they even give me a cleft in my chin, which is wild...

A lot of times, the variants that you get make it very clear that Apple has run out of ideas as to how to portray a scenario. For example, if I were told to draw somebody as a scientist, I'd be sure to have test tubes and science gear in the shot. But Apple thinks that a lab coat and glasses is all that's needed. Or, as in the first photo, TWO pairs of glasses...

   
Apple has a more specialized version of their Image Playground within their Messages app called "Genmoji" which will generate more simplified versions of stuff. But it's via typing to generate...

I've mainly been concentrating on pictures of me to illustrate the app (at least I can be sure that I own the photo being used as reference!), but you don't have to use photos of people. You can type just about anything.

But with wildly varying results.

When I asked for "A penguin on a polar bear" not a single image generated had the penguin on the polar bear. So I tried again with "A penguin ON TOP OF a polar bear" which gave me multiple options. Only one correct...

Like the last time, the majority of the generated images were just a penguin with a polar bear. And usually the penguin was massively huge like this...

Things get a bit disturbing when the generative AI decided to merge the penguin with the polar bear into a single creature...

But the most disturbing image that I got was a truly gigantic penguin fucking a baby polar bear? I mean, it's definitely on that polar bear, so to speak. Though they are kinda merging at the feet...

So... um... yeah... not quite ready for prime time. There's a lot more work that needs to be done. And though I will likely not use it for anything except being occasionally amused by the results, I can see where this is going to be a very big deal for people who don't want to put the time and effort into creating something themselves having the computer do the work for them.

That's going to do severe harm to a number of different art careers, but artists are getting used to that. They've already had their art stolen a zillion times over to train the AI behemoths that make AI generated images possible in the first place.

I used to take solace in the fact that I'd likely be safely dead by the time AI had fully integrated itself into our lives, but here we are. Mainstream use has not only arrived, but it's progressing so fast that I can't imagine what the future is going to look like.

I just hope it's better than that last penguin on a polar bear image, because yikes.

Before the internet was as big a thing for the public as it is now, there were bulletin board systems. Or BBSs.

You could DIAL IN with your TELEPHONE MODEM and POST TEXT-ONLY MESSAGES that other BBS users could respond to. It sounds extremely limiting... and it was... but when that's all there is, you make the best of it. While not necessarily "magic" (even by the standards of the day) it was pretty special to be able to have an online life that didn't cost money (like CompuServe and AOL did). If it was a local telephone call, then it cost you nothing but your time.

And I spent a lot of time on the local BBSs.

Oddly enough, my parents didn't have a big problem with me dialing in and tying up the phone line. Usually I was doing this after school before they got home from work, or at night when they didn't want to talk on the phone anyway. The weekend could be tricky, but even then I rarely got yelled at to get off the phone. Which means the only thing keeping me from interacting with my BBS buddies would be if one of them was dialed into the system and tying up the receiving phone line.

I still have friends that I made from those days.

And I still have a lot of good memories. Back when Coca-Cola changed their recipe to "New Coke" that everybody hated, I mentioned that I still had a six-pack of the old recipe stuff which I was saving so I could enjoy it down the line when I really needed a Coca-Cola fix. One of the other BBS users mentioned that they were going to break into my house and steal it. What happened next was something nobody expected... it turned into this massive Dungeons & Dragons style adventure game where multiple people were coming up with scenarios to steal my Coke and I was coming up with scenarios to keep them from doing so. This went on for months. And that's just one example of many I remember.

And then there were BBS Bashes which were the equivalent of Blogger Meetups which were the equivalent of Social Media Influencer Parties. Friends you only knew from their posts on the local BBS could meet-up face-to-face, which was handy to know who you were chatting with since photo-sharing wasn't easy (though it would eventually get to be easy enough that you were able to share small, low-low-low-resolution shots (assuming you had a scanner).

I still remember the main three BBSs that I frequented most. Two were from people that became friends... one was from the local library (which was run by the guy who would become my best friend). I can remember the login screen for each (carefully constructed out of ASCII characters to make something cool-looking), and I can even think back and remember the navigation to get through the boards to see new posts in different sections.

It was such a huge part of my life for such an important time in my life that it's all forever burned into my brain.

And that's something I have been thinking about a lot today when it was announced that Ward Christensen, the guy who invented the BBS along with Randy Suess, died at age 78.

If you want to see an interview with Ward (and get a feeling for what things were like back in those days!), I highly recommend watching this great documentary. It's a long one, but it's fantastic and well-worth your time...

The documentary has some names that are very familiar to me. Some of these people I even interacted with back in the day. It was easy, because the community of people using BBSs was so very small.

Rest in Peace, Ward Christensen. You were a pioneer that definded my high school years!

Just when I think I couldn't hate Sonos more than I already do... this happens...

Sonos laying off 100 people amid expensive app problems.

These employees aren't at fault for MANAGEMENT'S stupid fucking decisions that screwed customers and fucked the company. But of course they're the ones losing their jobs. Not management.

MANAGEMENT didn't give a shit that the app wasn't ready.

MANAGEMENT decided to fuck their customers so their headphones could ship by some date on a calendar.

MANAGEMENT sat on their asses as the company imploded when they could have just brought back the old app.

But MANAGEMENT wasn't the ones who would lose their jobs over their decisions causing customers to abandon Sonos... so why should they care?

Last week I spent three fucking hours trying to get my bedroom speakers working again after they randomly stopped the night before. Right in the middle of a song, they died and never came back. No amount of power cycling... no amount of resetting and re-adding them... no amount rebooting my fucking routers or taking down the entire system and bringing it back up again... will get them to work again.

I am told that resetting them and adding them to a different system before resetting and adding them back to mine might help. Who the fuck knows. I don't have time right now to deal with that. If I had money to burn, I would take every fucking stick of Sonos gear I own, throw it in the middle of the street, and take a flamethrower to it.

Management firing 100 employees over their idiotic decisions only makes me want to burn it faster.

Yeah, Sonos put us through all this shitty "new app" bullshit to sell some headphones before a date on a calendar. They unleashed an app that doesn't work, is missing features, and causes endless fucking problems because they just don't give a shit. Which is not surprising because they let their "Pop of Death" fault plague their Arc soundbar for years before they addressed it.

All I can do is hope that once management has destroyed Sonos to the point where it's dead that somebody finds a way of hacking their crap so it doesn't become worthless.

Mac users like to think that the many viruses and problems which plague Windows users doesn't effect them, but they're wrong. The fact that the world runs on Windows means that existing in the world means that Windows problems can affect you. There couldn't be a better example of this than today's "CrowdStrike" disaster.

CrowdStrike is a cyber security company whose products protect your computers from going down due to external attacks and protect your data from data breaches. Today they sent out a security update to their Windows host customers which, alas, ended up being defective. This caused all the computers which received the update to crash. Hard. A global IT outage occurred. Which means everything from airports and airlines to banking and health care were hopelessly fucked. All you saw anywhere and everywhere was the dreaded Windows Blue Screen of Death™...

So whether you are a Mac user, Linux user, or Windows user... you were hopelessly fucked by consequence. Like these people in what I'm thinking must be Berlin Brandenburg Airport (I've only flown into Berlin a handful of times... so while "Ankunft" is definitely German, I can only be positive that this is not Cologne-Bonn's airport, which I am very familiar with)...

Photo by Liesa Johannssen/Getty Images

Now, given how much travel I've done in my life, I've been in situations just like this. Mostly as a consequence of weather, but sometimes it was technical. I've definitely seen the Windows Blue Screen of Death™ in more than one airport. I do not envy these people trying to deal with the clusterfuck that's become their life. I can't even remember all the places I've been stuck over the years. But it's happened many, many times. In the beginning when I hadn't traveled so much, it was both frustrating and terrifying. But as the number of trips I took went up, my anxiety went down when problems popped up. It'll all work out, no matter what happened, I knew that I'll get to where I'm going eventually. Accommodations to my situation will be made. Which is not to say that sadness didn't occur. I missed a Christmas back when my mom and grandmother were still alive and, given how important that holiday was to them, I was understandably upset about it.

But technology happens.

In other news... after watching Jason Statham in the incredible action flick The Beekeeper, I've made it my mission in life to watch all of his films that I haven't yet seen. There's not a lot because I'm a huge fan of the kinds of films he makes. The best of the films I watched this week was Safe...

Is there anything brilliantly new to be had? No. But there were a number of interesting bits in-between the fighting. Can't ask for more than that!

Another day another way Sonos is screwing their customers. I am so fucking sick and tired of this shit.

First Sonos forces you to upgrade to a new piece of shit controller app that's missing features and is badly unintuitive. But they dumped it on us before it was ready so they could release a new pair of headphones that requires it. And while I can forgive a lot, having to constantly wait for playlists to load is driving me up the fucking wall. This is what I see ALL THE FUCKING TIME NOW...

And it gets worse. Playlists constantly, unrelentingly pause to buffer. If you've got a lot of songs in a list, scrolling is absolute agony...

I'm guessing this is because you can no longer control your speakers locally, and have to go out on the internet through the shitty fucking Sonos servers to access the shitty fucking speaker sitting in the same room with you.

Then today it was revealed that Sonos removed the line from their user agreement saying that they won't sell your data. It's still in the agreements outside of the USA but, because this fucking country cares more about corporations than people, Americans get fucked by Sonos. Again.

So what's next? Sonos starts charging you a subscription fee to use their idiotic fucking app that's required to control the speakers you bought? At this rate, it seems not only possible, but expected.

Sonos should be forced to allow local control of their gear by consumer protections... because that's how it was when we bought it. Now it's just an internet device that puts you at the whim of Sonos's fucking stupidity, and I would have never signed up for that.

For only the third time in my life, I've changed my mobile company.

I've considered it many, many times, but the effort to switch over something I don't care that much about was never worth it to me. If I can make calls and access the internet, I'm good. But eventually the reasons to switch are far more than the reasons to not switch, so here we are.

My first cellular carrier was Verizon. I liked everything about them and stuck with the company for a little over a decade. Right up until the Summer of 2007. And why did I switch from a mobile carrier that I had been so loyal to? The first iPhone was released, and it was exclusive to AT&T. Had Verizon been able to sell me an iPhone, I would have stayed.

Switching to AT&T was okay. I didn't love them. I didn't hate them. I just went along with them out of sheer momentum for nearly fourteen years. Their coverage was never as good as I had with Verizon, but it was good enough. What was horrific about AT&T was their billing. I have no fucking idea why it was so shitty, but in my last four years it kept building and building until I couldn't take it any more. After I changed plans I spent hours on the phone trying to get my bill straightened out. It never worked. The next month I'd just have to start all over again. The minute I was eligible for T-Mobile's Magenta 55+ plan, I bailed.

The nice thing about T-Mobile was the price. $50 a month. Total. Taxes and fees included. But that price came at a cost... 1) The signal was terrible so many places despite the fact that my handset was showing good bars and 5G. 2) They discriminate against single people, because single-line customers didn't get the perks (like free Netflix) that multi-line customers get, even though single-line customers pay more per line than anybody! 3) They keep changing the game from when I signed up. First I couldn't pay with a credit card any more or they'd take away my auto-pay discount, then they decided to raise the price $5 a month. With no perks, poor quality service, and a price increase, I was done.

And now I've come full circle. I'm back to Verizon. I was going to go with a pre-paid plan just to get the best price, but ultimately went with a regular phone plan because... GET THIS: VERIZON DOESN'T DISCRIMINATE AGAINST SINGLE PEOPLE! Single-line subscribers get all the perks that multi-line subscribers get! So when I factored in an auto-pay discount, a bring-your-own-phone discount, plus the money I would save on stuff I was already paying for by taking advantage of the choose-your-own-perks, I would be paying the same $55 that T-Mobile was charging. Except taxes and fees were not included, so I am paying $8 more. But I was willing to pay it to get Verizon's better service... and to support the fact that VERIZON DOESN'T DISCRIMINATE AGAINST SINGLE PEOPLE! Interesting to note that when I take advantage of other perk savings that are available when my current subscriptions lapse, I can likely recoup the $8, and maybe more...

In three years my "bring your own phone" discount will end. I don't know if Verizon will make an offer to keep me... or if I'll have to switch again... but I think I'm to the point where I'd rather switch for a fourth time than pay more for what I was already getting, so maybe I'll jump to a pre-paid plan then. Or switch carriers. Or give up on a mobile phone altogether.

You can do that, can't you?

Just when I think that I couldn't hate Sonos more than I already do... they unleash this new shitty fucking app that's somehow even shittier than their previous shitty fucking app.

Why in the hell can't they hire a UI designer who actually knows how to craft a useable UI? Because I've only been using this heinous blight on all humanity for two hours and I've found so much wrong as to make me wonder what the fuck they're even doing.

• Does the widget at the bottom reflect what's actually being played? Fuck no. It shows the song you first selected, then never updates again. So far as I can tell, there's no way to see what's actually playing. Unless you stop, select a new track, then play that (oh... turns out you can update the widget... all you have to do is FORCE QUIT THE APP AND RELOAD IT! Then the widget will update from what's playing. So handy!).
• Can you arrange your favorites? Fuck no. Pin your favorites? Fuck no. You even have to dump the fuck OUT of your favorites to even get to where your playlists are at (unless it happens to somehow be one of the ten things that can be displayed on your home screen. Can you fucking imagine having to load something you don't want to get to something you need? Who the fuck thought that was the best way to arrange any of this? There's no configuring ANYTHING.
• Are items in your favorites handy to use? Fuck no. I have songs on there that I tap to play... AND NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS! Some songs will play. Some won't. Is there any way of finding out why that is? Of course there fucking isn't.
• But surely the interface for controlling your music is easy to use since that's the whole fucking point of the app? Fuck no. Half the time when you click on a song for info or whatever, it will start playing even though that wasn't your intent. But there's no ellipsis to click on (...) so you assume that you click to interact with it... except that doesn't work, and you've just fucked everything up for nothing.
• But alarms? Fuck no. But sleep timer? Fuck no.
• And did they finally give us a useable search? Fuck no. Search is ungodly slow (EVERYTHING IS UNGODLY SLOW! Wait for your playlist to load. Wait for your songs to display. Wait for the next batch to load as you scroll. And wait to load. And wait to load. And wait to load). Even worse, you can't make the blanket search results default to your service of choice. If you want to only search Apple Music every time? TOUGH FUCKING SHIT! You either have to select the service first, then search... or you get to search EVERYWHERE EVERY TIME... then wait for the app to go non-responsive while it searches for shit on services you DON'T WANT... then you can select Apple Music (or whatever). NOTE TO SONOS: I don't want to listen to Sonos Radio EVER! How do I erase your fucking radio shit off my list?? Can I even do that? I can sure as fuck remove EVERY OTHER SERVICE.... why not yours? Does anybody even use it? Do you think shoving it the fuck down people's throats will make them want to use it?
• But surely it's easy to do simple shit like add a song you find to a playlist? Fuck no. I don't even think it's possible to add a song you searched for to a playlist. At least not that I can find. I have to go to the desktop app to do that (even though Sonos is discontinuing it... who the fuck knows what you do after the desktop app is gone).
• Can you at least inject music into your queue by clicking "play next?" Fuck no. You can't do FUCKING SHIT to your queue. You can't add songs... rearrange songs... remove songs... NOTHING!!
• Using this app begs the question... is there an upper limit to how many fucking layers of sheets you can pile up? Just curious, because absolutely everything you do generates a new sheet, and you have to swipe down on EVERY FUCKING ONE OF THEM to get back home. Click on the widget to get more info, new sheet... click on the queue, new sheet... click on a track to get info, new sheet... this app has more fucking sheets than a fucking klan rally. And when you want to go back? SWIPE TO CLOSE! SWIPE TO CLOSE! SWIPE TO CLOSE! SWIPE TO CLOSE! Jesus Christ, just give us a fucking home button for God's sake.
• Apple has had Dynamic Island on iPhone for a minute. But does Sonos use it so you have a convenient way to get to your speakers or interact with what's playing? OH FUCK NO! OF COURSE THEY FUCKING DON'T! Haven't you been paying attention? If there's a smart UI decision, Sonos actively avoids it like the fucking plague.

I'm dying to know: Does ANYBODY at Sonos actually listen to fucking music using this piece of shit? Who would want this? Pathetic. Fucking pathetic. After waiting YEARS to get an app update that's worth a shit... then getting this fucking disaster... I'm ready to throw all my Sonos gear in the front yard, douse it with gasoline, and light the fuckers up. I'd rather listen to music on a fucking iPod mini than suffer through this idiot shitshow any longer. It's just fucking inconceivable that this is where Sonos is at. Will they fix all the shit that's broken, unclear, and missing? Maybe. But shouldn't they have beta tested the app before releasing it? Well, it's Sonos. It took them a fucking YEAR to release a fix for the Pop of Death on the Arc soundbar, and I'm still not convinced that it's totally fixed because I am still having problems. So you do the math. Shake that Magic 8-Ball and the answer always seems to be "Not fucking likely."

If you're thinking of buying Sonos gear, you should take a fucking pass. A hard pass. If things keep going like this, they're not going to be around much longer anyway.

UPDATES!

Before I get to some more thoughts about this shit... can I just give a shoutout to all the people saying "Relax, it's version 1 and things will get fixed" and "Relax, it works just fine for me!" Fuck you. There are BASIC FUNCTIONS THAT ARE SERIOUSLY BROKEN OR MISSING! If I had the option of downgrading to the old app, then I'd say "Well that was bad!" and be able to relax. But I can't. And goody for you if it works for you... that doesn't fucking negate the problems that everybody else is having. Take several seats and be happy that your whole system didn't go down and all the basic features other people use are something you don't give a shit about.

But anyway...

On the Sonos site they have a feature list which shows all kinds of options you get when you click on a track...

But what do I get? Save to favorites (which may or may not play when clicked on) and replace the entire fucking queue. That's it...

I can only guess that all those other basic features aren't working, and rather than getting it all fixed before release, Sonos decided to shove out an incomplete fucking app with no way to go back to the old app which, while shitty, allowed all of this.

One of the biggest complaints by others is that they can no longer see music on their local network storage. Support for this has been dropped completely. This is nonsensical in all kinds of ways, but fortunately I get around it by having Plex manage my media, and Plex is actually showing up and working (despite having a red exclamation point in the button with absolutely no explanation). Sonos's response seems to be "Don't you even stream, bro?" which has left a great many users thrilled, as you can imagine.

A minor annoyance... whenever I go to System Settings, I fly into a panic because I think a bunch of my gear has gone missing from the system. My room will show "Stereo Pair" which is normal because there's two speakers joined into a stereo pair there. But my living room will show "Arc" and that's it. It used to be "Arc + Surrounds + Sub" or something like that. I wish that they would go back to that. With so many people losing equipment out of the app, I'd really prefer not to get assaulted with this incomplete info.

When you opened up the Sonos app away from your home network in the past, you'd get a message that said something like "Searching for your Sonos network." Now, this doesn't happen. Assumably because Sonos is all about internet connectivity for some reason. And that would be fine... except it doesn't reflect the current state of your devices back home. According to the widget, Karma by Taylor Swift is playing in my bedroom. The little bouncing equalizer icon is bouncing... and I am given the option to pause what's being played. Except nothing is actually being played. Which is why this whole internet connectivity fiasco is so fucking ridiculous. It appears that EVERYTHING goes out on the internet, even when you're at home. That's why it takes forever for shit to load. And why when you scroll through your queue it has to keep pausing and loading... pausing and loading... pausing and loading. I suppose that Sonos could justify this huge fucking waste of time if they could point to the app and say "SURE IT'S SLOW! BUT YOU CAN CONTROL YOUR SYSTEM FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!" Except you can't. It gives wrong information and none of the controls even work.

To actually control your system remotely, you have to use the internet and login at http://play.sonos.com. This will be the only option available on desktop computers once Sonos kills the desktop apps, so you'd think that the web app would be fucking killer, right? Yeah... you'd think that. Except the web app is just as fucking useless and broken as the phone app. It is equally slow with a lot of waiting around for things to load. Even if you're sitting in the same fucking room as your speaker, since the controls have to go out onto the internet, visit the Sonos servers, then come back to you. No option for local network control. But it gets worse. Remember how I was mentioning that search on the iPhone app if fucking abhorrent? Somehow the web app is even worse. At least in the iPhone app you can select the service you want to search. But if you select a service in the web app, there's no search bar on the service sheet. You are forced to use the universal search bar to search all services (including Sonos fucking Radio that they won't let you fucking delete no matter how badly you want to)...

It's been well-established that I fucking loathe Sonos and don't recommend their bullshit... even if you find their gear on clearance. At least right now. But there's a few things that Sonos can do which would at least make things tolerable...

• Bring back the old app until you can get a workable new app. That should be a fucking given... especially when your initial release is missing a shitload of features and half the stuff is broken... but since it's not a given, you need to give people the option of reinstating the old version ASAP.
• Keep your shitty new UI with its endless sheets and incomprehensible navigation if you must, but have it stay on the local network instead of going out on the internet. There's no benefit to this. Nobody wants to have their bedroom speaker play the Macarena while they're across the country or on the other side of the planet. Not only is it fucking stupid, it slows everything down to an absolute crawl. The app is unbearable to use it's so fucking slow.
• Even better? HIRE A FUCKING TALENTED UI/UX DESIGNER WHO KNOWS HOW TO DESIGN A FUCKING APP! Jesus. This should be app creation 101. And you'd think it would be given how people railed you for the shitty design of your old app! But here's the thing... as bad as it was, I find myself longing for the old app. Sure it was a mess, but it was fast and reliable. And that's more important than how it works. By a longshot.
• Stop sitting on shit endlessly. You took fucking forever to develop a new app (such as it is). You took fucking forever to fix the Pop of Death in the Arc. You took fucking forever to adopt HDMI. You take fucking forever for EVERYTHING! Companies who can't be responsive really don't have much hope long-term. Other companies invade your space while people wait. Better options come while people wait. You can't afford to laze around as you always have. Which is to say... FIX THIS FUCKING APP AND ALL ITS FUCKING BUGS AND ALL ITS FUCKING PROBLEMS NOW!! NOT NEXT MONTH... NOT A YEAR FROM TODAY... FUCKING NOW! And don't blame us because it's become so urgent. Had you not released a buggy pile of shit with no downgrade path, you could have taken all the time you needed. But now? Well... it's all on you.

But given Sonos's history, I am holding out zero hope that anything gets resolved quickly... if at all. They have long since stopped giving a fuck about their products, their reputation, and their customers.

I'm in full-on construction mode here in my home, but have no fear... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Shield Gate! Yesterday I mentioned that every time I watch Rogue One: A Star Wars Story I go running to the internet to watch the super-cut of all the space battles because they're just so cool and amazing to look at. And here you go...

You're welcome! Dang pushing the Star Destroyer into the Shield Gate was brilliant fun.

   
• Acolyte! The big news out of yesterday was that Star Wars gave us a peek at new Star Wars on Star Wars Day...

Looks darn good! But I'm so used to being shown the best bits of the show in the trailer, then finding out that it's nothing like what they showed us. So I guess we'll see.

   
• Mazes Got Nuthin' on This! I fell down a rabbit hole of videos of crows being geniuses. Then octopi. And then... rats?!?

Rats driving a car. Who knew?

   
• Dementia Village! The dementia care home I found for my mom wasn't a sterile, boring, hospital-like place. It looked more like a home with different textures and colors and interesting things to look at... other patients to visit with. Her room was likewise nothing like a hospital room, and could be filled with all her stuff so it felt familiar. The hallways was in a big loop so she couldn't get lost. For what it was, I thought it was quite nice. The only thing missing was a way for her to wander outside and look around. And idea which was has been explored by this Dutch facility, which is incredible...

As happy as I was with the facility I found for my mom, I would have been thrilled if she could have stayed in a place like this. So much more friendly. I really hope these "dementia villages" catch on.

   
• Hulk Smash! The Incredible Hulk Coaster at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure Orlando is hands-down my favorite rollercoaster. I rode it the year it debuted, then rode it plenty more times over the years (one visit to the park I rode it five times!). This video talks about the coaster, and I've skipped past all the non-Hulk-Coaster crap at the beginning...

I did ride it after the refurbishment, and was impressed. They kept the classic coaster everybody loves... just made the experience better from start to finish. No other coaster I've ridden since has compared to it. Not bad for a coaster 25 years old!

   
• AI FAIL! I had the same thing to say about both the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1: "Once Apple & Google unleash AI assistants on their phones, all these additional gadgets are toast." But this was before either of these devices were released to horrific reviews. They're useless. Snazzy Labs has a great overview of both devices at the same time so you only have to watch one video...

The Humane AI Pin was fucking useless on paper and is worse than useless in practice. I was a little more bullish about the Rabbit R1 because it at least had a screen to interact with stuff and sounded like it had a better service. But it turns out that it's worse than useless too. Which is to say that Apple & Google are winning before they've even released anything. How boring.

   
• Fuck This Fucking Fuck! I gotta say... watching puppy-killing piece of shit Kristi Noem getting dragged from one end of the internet to the other is the best thing ever. She murders animals not because she needs food or is in danger... but because she just fucking loves to kill (surrendering your "problem" puppy to an animal shelter means you can't kill it, so she must love it)...

I hope her political career is truly toast, because a sadistic fuck like this has no business holding any political office. If she thrills to kill a fucking puppy... can you imagine what she would do to make lives harder for people she doesn't like? And now she's blaming all her lies and bullshit on her ghost-writer. Which is hilarious given that SHE NARRATED HER OWN AUDIOBOOK AND KNEW FULL WELL WHAT IT CONTAINED! That happened after she fucking lied about staring down Kim Jong Un. Jesus what a dipshit asshole.

   
And now back to construction, already in progress.