Discord Nitro scam, don't be fooled

There's a new scam going around on Discord claiming to give you a free month of Nitro benefits, I received 2 messages from this alleged bot today:

Screenshot has been edited to remove invite ID to prevent triggering it through manual entry of URL

Of course only being a month, I didn't really intend on claiming it anyways, but having experience as a Computer Technician, knowing the magnitude of those with malicious intent (and the many different methods of phishing account information, as well as through various forms of malware) & being a constant target of phone, email & messenger scams/extortion attempts, I chose to do my research on it before going any further (originally seeing the message on my Android), this thread was at the top of the search results.

If you get these messages (and it's fairly likely EVERYBODY has gotten one if you are on a fairly populated server), do NOT click on these links, block the account (block them on your server as well if possible) & delete the messages (unfortunately Discord does not give an easily accessible report function, if one at all, so the best you can do for now is to block it), maybe add your comments to the thread that's already been supplied.

Twitch video & live broadcast embedding broken

Twitch recently made changes to their embedding API, which screwed up all embedded videos both on this blog & my personal site (I would suspect on other external sites as well).  I've been attempting to get this fixed, but as of yet, have been unsuccessful; I may eventually just need to resort to embedding YouTube versions instead & only providing a link to the video on Twitch if chat played a part in the video in question (which is usually done anyways, so ultimately it will only be the YouTube versions being embedded or no embedded version if it hasn't been uploaded to YouTube; uploading to my personal site is another option, as well as a number of other sites I have used in rare situations, even other sites I haven't used could be used, even if I need to create new accounts for them).

Ironically, Twitch keeps making changes that drives people off to using other sites for what they cut off; first it was the PlayStation 3 & PS Vita apps (YouTube still has theirs running without problems & it's not required to stay logged out of it for it to work, only the PlayStation 4 app still remains on PlayStation systems), next it was descriptions on videos, now we're looking at recorded & live video embedding on external sites biting the dust...  Shall we start making predictions on what they'll cut off next?

Patreon changes incoming...maybe

Shortly after making the following post to my Patreon creator page, I got an email from Patreon linking to this site.  It seems that our grievances have been heard, while I'm not going to hold my breath on it, it's possible that they are going to make changes in the future to stop misdetections & false classifications as has happened in the past.  I still will not be seeking to remove the misclassification of my creator page as previously stated, I will wait to see if they are going to do it themselves & show any relevance as to why I received this email.  Back when I attempted to appeal the decision, I made a suggestion that non-adult content creator pages should allow specific posts to be self-flagged as adult-only so those posts would be restricted & not the entire creator account; we'll see if anything like this happens now that it's become obvious they are aware of the problems with their auto-flagging system.

One other thing to note is I did a whois on the domain for this site that has the video on it, it appears this domain was only registered in February of this year (updated March 20th), it's only now that people are coming forward that they are making it a point to state that what's happening is unacceptable & unfair to those that spend their time creating content & getting shafted by penalties as a result of faulty heuristics that will misclassify their pages & expunge them from any method that would still give them a findable existence on the web.  We'll just have to see if anything happens in the near future to correct this, Patreon has made changes in the past to try to adapt for these shortfalls (some good, some REALLY bad), only time will tell...

Console game streams on hold, Elgato/Twitch server malfunction at fault

Occasionally I streamed to Twitch from my PlayStation 3, however I recently found that I was running into an error when attempting to change the game name in my Elgato Game Capture HD software stating that I was getting a 404 error from Twitch regarding no response on the ingest server.

This particular issue might very well put the nail in the coffin in being able to continue streaming games on console systems in general (not just the PS3) until Elgato is able to fix this problem...

Up until now, I have been very adamant that Elgato was the way to go if you were going to be recording or streaming console games, but as you can see here (and apparently a number of people have been complaining about this, I found a long thread of replies with this same complaint on their Facebook page started back in 2013), I'm afraid I can't suggest Elgato as the optimal video capture device anymore, we'll just have to see if it gets fixed sooner or later...  I'll give it some time to see if the issue ever gets fixed, but I am intending on publishing a negative review against Elgato if the issue doesn't get resolved after a few months.  Of course this could very well be an issue on Twitch's side also, I wouldn't put it past them to have destroyed this software's streaming capabilities after what happened to the PS3 Twitch app (I suppose I can always stream console games to another site until it's fixed with Twitch)...

PS3 Twitch app discontinued

It is a sad day when you turn on your PlayStation 3 to watch Twitch & find that you can not connect to servers, getting the following error:

Oops! Something wrong happened
Sorry, but we can't connect to the Twitch servers right now.

I ran into this a few days ago, decided to wait a few days before doing anything about it, but ultimately I determined I was going to have to record a new video to add to the Broken Twitch app playlist on my YouTube channel & re-submit the petition that was previously used to get the app fixed.  On further inspection however, I found that rather than just breaking the app & not removing it from the store (as they previously did), they have actually fully removed it from the PSN store this time around, basically a big "fuck you" to all PS3 users that used to use the PS3 Twitch app...  So at this point it was no longer a matter of sending a petition their way to fix it, it was more a matter of seeing if there was any way to salvage the app in it's current condition.

There is a way to bring back functionality of the PS3 Twitch app, but in order to do so, you have to remain logged out & only use it as a visitor (save a list somewhere so you search for your favorite channels & consider setting up email notifications of when they go live).  You might be saying, "but I can't log out with this error locking the screen", well that's accurate, but there's still a way around it & I'm going to give steps on how to do this here.

First step is you have to remove the app from your PS3, this should be a fairly simple step for most PS3 users, just highlight the Twitch app, press ▲, highlight Delete & press X.



Remember I stated that the app had been removed from the store, so you won't be able to download it from the PSN store anymore.  There is still a way you can download the app however; to do so, go to Account Management, then Transaction Management, then Download List, you will find the download for the Twitch app somewhere in this list if you had downloaded it prior on the PSN account you may be logged into on your PlayStation 3.





Once installed, you are going to need to run it, this will update (if you can call it an update in it's broken state) it to version 1.07.


After installing the update, it's going to restart the app & as you can see in the screenshot below that this will at least give some functionality to it.


This will at least give some functionality, but there will be no personalization & no ability to report channels as being logged into the app is what causes the Oops! Something wrong happened. error you were getting before (in other words, the app is still functional, but access to account data appears to have been intentionally broken...as if removal of the app from the PSN store wasn't enough indication that they are sticking to their guns on not fixing it this time around).

It's a shame that we DID manage to get it fixed shortly after submitting the petition to their suggestion boards on their instruction after we had over 100 signatures, only for it to ultimately be killed regardless of it already being fixed...

Decision made, no more multiplayer streaming until I get better internet

On 3/3/2020, I decided to run some tests with my new internet connection to see what I would be capable of on my encoder without causing too many problems with the games themselves (provided the game was online multiplayer).  Keep in mind with my 10 Mbps upload rate with Xfinity, I was able to stream with no bandwidth problems at 3000 kbps (probably could have even gone higher).  What I found was that in Fortnite, I had to lower the encoding bitrate a whopping 2000 kbps (this was a mere 1000 kbps left) to play the game without lag while streaming & the videos when I went back through them were blocky as hell (even in the recorded versions).  At this point it's been determined that streaming multiplayer games while I'm stuck with this shit upload rate with CenturyLink just is not an option, however recording & uploading to YouTube is still optional (not to Twitch while uploads are tied in with premiers).  On the other hand, I should still be able to stream single player games at 2500 kbps, but as it is now, I can't see streaming blocky video that nobody wants to watch is an option, I will have to wait until Google Fiber because available in my area, I can't really go back to paying over $100 per month on disability income alone with Xfinity & I wouldn't while they are still claiming there's an early-termination fee on my closed account (I was told there wasn't an active contract only 4 days prior)...

Twitch version
lower quality public version

Twitch version embed broken due to API change, have not managed to get it fixed yet

YouTube version
Higher quality unlisted version with moderated comments

ISP switch currently a bust, Twitch streams are currently up in the air

The attempt to switch to CenturyLink for the time being has been unsuccessful, the technician not only leaving before the order had been completed, but the modem currently is getting no connection to the internet after recycling the power on it. Until the order is completed, it looks like I'm still stuck with Xfinity. Using the connection I still have with Xfinity, I spoke to 2 representatives to get this matter resolved over the phone for close to 1 hour & 36 minutes, looks like CenturyLink is still incapable of being able to tell who is supposed to fix what & they are still bouncing customers around like ping pong balls (this is what originally got me to switch from them back in 2014)...

I still don't know where this is going or when I'm going to have a stable internet connection with a new ISP, ultimately it's looking better to just remove the boost option from my Xfinity bill & eat the lower speeds with higher costs if CenturyLink can't get their shit in order... Most of my day today has already been wasted with what CenturyLink has been dragging out & the installation technician leaving with the statement of, "That's on you" when I stated we needed to figure out why the modem wouldn't work with my router (attempting to put the modem into bridge mode, which made the administration interface inaccessible & an internet connection completely lost after recycling the power).

Currently the status of streams regarding my Twitch channel are up in the air as I'm not certain where the status of my ISP is going, temporary or not, I can't get anything affordable that is dependable & this is killing my ability to do anything online worthwhile... I'll give another update when I know better where this is going, but I currently don't have anything concrete, I may end up abandoning this switch & just lowering my speed with Xfinity to get the bill down a bit or actually considering going with a satellite provider as a temporary solution until I have something dependable to switch to...