DDoS attacks again... (1/23/2019)

Even after getting a new modem today (having my ISP come out to check the lines & switch out the modem) DDoS attacks continued on the first stream after getting the new modem (again expected to be organized by Twitch user iBreezyy); the new modem should have changed my IP address, this shouldn't be happening...  Currently what is available for viewing is on Twitch, however the local video is being processed & will be available on YouTube once it's completed, at which point I'll be embedding the video into this post.  If this continues to be a problem, I will be filing another police report & giving them his address to search his computer for evidence of the DDoS attacks (even if he's hiring somebody else to do it for him, it's likely that evidence is still on his computer), seeing as I located that information several months back (have yet to do anything with it however, figured it might come in handy in the future, which might be tonight).

YouTube version (how it was on my end, gun not firing half of the time)

Article 13 is about to make a (negative) difference for streamers...

Several months ago, I made a blog entry regarding Article 13 with the European Union Directive & how it was going to affect streamers if it passed, even joining the fight for a short time by setting up a timer to get this information out regarding the matter through my bot & tagging my streams to show I was a part of the movement against it (although I pulled out of it fairly quickly due to increased attacks by iBreezyy & his gang of goons shortly after I set it up & it becoming apparent that Twitch wasn't going to do anything about it regardless of how many reported I filed against his channel).

I received another email today from Twitch pointing out that Article 13 is about to go into effect, decided I needed to get involved in this fight once more...  In this email, Twitch states the following:

Dear Creators,

Back in December, we reached out to make sure you were aware of Article 13, a proposal to a European Union Directive that could restrict the content you and your communities make and share on Twitch. It’s a proposal with global consequences, so we asked you and every other creator worldwide to get the facts, talk with your viewers, and sign a petition.

To everyone who shared our concerns and participated, thank you. We see and appreciate your support. To anyone who hasn’t, or to anyone who’s just now hearing about Article 13, it’s still not too late to add your voice to a large and growing group of streamers who don’t want to see their opportunities and creative freedom hindered.

In only a few days, EU national negotiators will sit down with members of the European Parliament to finish drafting Article 13. Lost among the recent debates and negotiations is one core truth: that all of you make the internet a better and more vibrant place by having the freedom to create what you want to create. You use Twitch to communicate, entertain, educate, and bring people together. The negotiators of Article 13 must be shown the value you and your communities bring to this debate, and must understand this law’s potential impact on you and everyone you stream for.

Your voice on this topic matters. If passed, you—the creator who earns a livelihood on services like Twitch, grows communities, and makes original, engaging content—will see more barriers to creation. Please consider these ways to continue educating your community and lending your voice to this important discussion:

• Speak out. Inform and educate your community during a broadcast of the issues with the European Union’s approach to copyright law and motivate folks to take an interest on this topic. Be sure to title your streams #Article13.
• Share your perspective with your member of the EU Parliament. You can find your representative here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/home
• Join with other creators objecting to Article 13 at Create Refresh or #SaveYourInternet.
• Sign a petition.

We’ll continue to do our part by talking to members of the EU Parliament, educating creators, supporting creator action groups, and serving as a home for creators who want to share their views, their way.

And we hope you’ll join us.

Sincerely,
Emmett Shear

Once this goes into effect, expect some changes on Twitch (as well as other streaming sites) & not for the better...  Streamers are going to be the primary force in getting this decision reversed, however I expect even viewers can have their voices heard, because they are also a part of Twitch (what's the point of streaming if you don't have viewers).  For streamers & viewers alike, take the time to make your voice heard, Twitch is going to have some major changes that is going to effect the functionality & what games can be streamed if this new standard is not reversed...

Company staying, streams limited

While the situation with Medicaid may temporarily have been resolved (not that I expect it's going to stay that way, I still have my doubts that it's actually resolved, but I won't know that until later this month or midway through next month), the current situation that is keeping me from streaming as much as I would like is related to some company that is currently staying at my house.  This is an old friend (one of the few local friends I still have that aren't family) that needed a place to stay after his ex-wife manipulated legal procedures to punish him every time anything even smelled funny...

Long story short, this manipulation, paired with paranoia & what I would expect to be bipolar disorder resulted in him having to spend some time in jail, as well as having to sell an impressive house (that happened to be too close to someone in her family, not to the point that it broke the restraining order, but enough to keep her on edge & that was used in his sentencing to get out early, causing further damage on his credit he had just managed to build back up while they were still married) he had purchased with a loan from the bank after the divorce.  Because he lost the house, he needed a place to stay after he got out, he called me (I had done this before for a few days when she threw him out of the house after he signed the divorce papers she kept using to manipulate him to get her way, apparently thinking that it would be a show of good faith that he was willing to work with her if he did sign them, she promptly had them processed after he signed them; I explained to him before you don't get a divorce to save your marriage, you get a separation so you don't have to get divorced, none of my advice on the situation really got through his thick skull, so the inevitable happened...), he was supposed to spend a few days here, but it's already been closer to 3 weeks & looks like it's going to be over a month before he'll have a place to move to & I'll be able to get back to steaming more regularly (I may not have an actual streaming schedule, but I was doing it most days regardless)...

I told him a few years ago if she had this type of severe paranoia towards him (and abusive nature manipulating legal procedures to get her own way), he should just leave her & consider it a blessing it was over; my personal statement was that if I was in a (poor excuse of a) relationship like this, I would have had the marriage annulled within the first week.  Also she forbid him to say anything about what was going on about it, yet she felt she was still entitled to tell everybody in her family to get them to cut ties with him & block him on any social platform online (of course he still talked with his own family & myself about it, but it was an unreal expectation that she could talk trash about him to everybody she knew & he was supposed to keep quiet about it).  The reality of it is that poor excuse of a woman will never be able to keep down a steady relationship if this is her personality & sooner or later karma will come back to haunt her (as well as her mother, who abused her position in Deseret Industries to use company funds to make the situation a whole lot worse), she'll eventually realize that not many people would make as many changes or take as many losses as my friend did to attempt to please her & that she will NEVER keep down a marriage if she expects her partner (if there was ever a case where the term "ball & chain" had relative accuracy, this was it) needs to be the only person making the changes...

So until he's gotten his own place & is out of the house, this is going to restrict how often I can stream online or at least restrict the time I have to be doing things on my own & not spending time with him...  It is possible I might be able to talk him into playing a game I can stream online with him (I did get him Double Dragon: Neon during the Steam Winter sale, installed Shadow Warrior 2 on his computer from my secondary/guest GOG account & he has access to my secondary/guess Steam account's game library through Family Sharing should we attempt a Steam game not on his own account; Killing Floor was a game we used to play together, him playing on my secondary/guest computer when he came to visit before getting married, he currently has his own computer set up in my home office where the secondary/guest computer is still sitting, but detached).

There will still be streams at least every 3 days (don't want to lose potential of missing completion of dailies), but outside of that (and when specific llamas are available in the store), streams are going to be back to how it was around the time that Twitch dailies were broken, only playing the game every 1-3 days when necessary to not lose what is available in the game by not bothering to complete those tasks (as far as Battle Royal is concerned in Fortnite, I don't really care for that mode, so loss of what that mode has to offer doesn't contribute to the importance of the original mode that I purchased access to the game for, that being the co-op mode of Save the World, which was available in Early access as early as mid-2017).

DDoS problems again, streams & online gaming on hold...

Getting hit with the whole DDoS bullshit again, expected to be retaliation from Twitch user iBreezyy after his channel got another report against it for racist & aimbot discussions over his VOIP during his Christmas stream.  I am currently on the phone with my ISP looking to see if we just need to replace the modem again, I will be following up with a police report & giving them his address so they can search his computer for evidence of being behind it if the issue doesn't get resolved tonight.

UPDATE: Contacted my ISP, they explained the situation to them, they reset my modem to factory default. Even after resetting everything on the modem to factory, packets were still continuing to drop in the ping test I had been running since the latency issues when I first attempted to stream Fortnite on 12/26/2018. After a while, the connection finally stabilized as I continued to watch the ping test, but I knew that if I attempted to stream again, I would start getting hit by it again. Shortly after that, I noticed iBreezyy started a stream, expecting he was going to continue the DDoS attacks until he felt I wasn't going to stream anymore, then decided to start his own stream.

After the modem's connection finally stabilized, I put the modem back into bridge mode again, I lost access to the modem's interface after that & spent the next few hours calling Xfinity over & over again attempting to get a fix; I just got disconnected from my 4th call with them & this representative apparently isn't educated in how a modem functions when put into bridge mode & doesn't realize that a router is a key element in receiving internet from the modem. I have explained over & over that I don't have the option to use the modem when it is not in bridge mode when using my web development software, the reason being is that it's reporting to the servers an incorrect IP address (a LAN IP rather than a WAN IP) & the servers my site is hosted on is rejecting the connection when it gets that the connection is coming from a standard LAN IP as opposed to my actual IP address over the internet.

I'm about to give up on them fixing it & just call them when I need it taken out of bridge mode, it's apparent they can't get the modem back to a working order as it was before the factory default, I'll spend all night on the phone with them if I just keep calling until they decide to send a technician; I'll just leave it as is & call them when I need it taken out of bridge mode (which will be never if their modem can't report the correct IP address when attempting to update my personal site)...

I'm going to give streaming another shot tonight to see if the statement of contacting the police again is what caused the attacks to stop, as it's expected they will start again when I attempt to stream again (unless the threat of filing another report is what got them to stop), that's when I'll file the report & bring up the case number from the last report, including the address of where iBreezyy lives so they can go speak to him at his home & search for evidence on his computer.

Internet issues interfering with streaming & online gaming

Due to technical issues with my internet, I'm going to have to wait until my internet stabilizes before I can start streaming again.  Currently the cause of the issues is undetermined (could have been something my friend was doing with is computer, could have been a DDoS attack organized by Twitch user iBreezyy again), but it's not going to be possible to stream or play any online game while that issue continues to be a problem, I'll (hopefully) give it another shot in a few hours)...  If I continue to run into the problem into tomorrow, I'll consider it a string of DDoS attacks & get law enforcement involved again...

Streams limited, Medicaid issues negating personal life...

For the past several months, Medicaid has been harassing me with regular reviews & requests for verifications that is taking up any extra time I may have to spend on other things, this is obviously interfering with my ability to do streams as often as I would like, not to mention my health is quickly deteriorating from the stress it is causing & not getting enough time (if any time at all) to recover from the previous series of what should have already been put to rest... It's expected they are looking for a reason to boot me off of what I should still be eligible for due to being disabled, however we already know that Trump is shooting to get as many people off of Medicaid as possible (even those that still depend on it to continue living, much like myself), unless I can find an outlet that is going to gain me enough income to live off of (a job would be fine if I could get hired, however job seekers with disabilities get much the same treatment as those with criminal histories, most of my attempts to get a job result in dead ends & wasted time), I have to continue dealing with it until I can find an alternative to it (I'd sooner just tell them to fuck off & be done with it, but I won't have any medical insurance if I do & I don't know what to expect if I tell them to get lost) or until it ultimately ends up killing me... Until I get a break from this constant avalanche of notices they are sending me every few days (sometimes several days in a row), I can't say when I'll be able to get back to streaming regularly again, much less going back to a normal life where I don't have to worry about Medicaid constantly trying to find a reason to pull my medical coverage & all expenses it covers (including, but not limited to doctors, disability case managers, medications, inhalers, hospitals, etc.)...

Fortnite streams are currently on hold (StW servers down)

I was intending on doing a Fortnite stream today before I lose out on one of my dailies (already at the max of 3), however when I attempted to access the game after patching, I ran into this:

This only leaves Battle Royale, which I don't play, so Fortnite streams are currently on hold on my channel until resolved. I'm currently monitoring the server status at https://status.epicgames.com, once the Save the World servers are back up, I'll be starting a new Fortnite (Save the World) stream ASAP.

If the Save the World servers are not back up by today's daily reset, I will start streaming other games until the servers are known to be back up.

UPDATE:  Servers appear to be back up, however I got gypped on a daily quest due to not being able to get into the game for over 4.5 hours (I should have been able to complete at least one in that time), so this blog entry is going to stay here, rather than my original intentions in deleting it were I able to complete one so I didn't lose out (the servers came back up literally directly after the daily refresh)...