🎵Be a DJ, Megauploads Legacy, and the Steam Controller

the odd little controller that could

Mar 14, 2022

It’s another warm - I mean freezing cold week here in Tennessee. Seriously - it snowed like two inches this weekend.

Absolutely crazy!! It melted pretty fast - so we didn’t really get a chance to play in it.

Have you gotten a chance to try that new Starlight coke yet? I have not found the normal flavor anywhere - and I’ve scoured several stores.

Hopefully I can get my hands on the Nitro Pepsi that is coming out this month. THAT sounds really delicious. Heck - I might just preorder it from Walmart.

Have you seen all the new Apple products? The new iPad air looks pretty crisp.

My 2018 iPad is still functioning pretty well - so I probably won’t be upgrading for a few generations. Ideally, I’d like to wait until I only need two reliable devices to do EVERYTHING - like that folding Asus laptop that will be coming out soon.

I’ve been really enjoying this second season of Raised by Wolves. It’s wayyy better than I expected. I’m honestly looking forward to each episode as much I did for Westworld - I hope it gets all the seasons it needs to finish the storyline.

Also - the new Slushii album is absolute fire. I think it’s only a matter of time until he passes Marshmello in terms of talent.

The song ICE is my favorite on his new album. Here - listen to it and tell me that DOESN’T get you pumped.

I did hear that people’s spotify accounts got wiped in the glitch last week - I am very happy I survived unscathed. Did you?

Let’s hop on in!

🎵Be a DJ

The clubhouse copycat apps were a dime a dozen for a good year or two. Heck - I wrote about several of them here!

Truth is - I think Twitter Spaces is the strongest copycat - and may end up surviving the original.

Onamp is a brand new audio app from Amazon where you can create your own live radio show with legally licenced music.

No Twitch bans here for three notes accidentally played in the background.

It’s a really interesting spin on the Clubhouse idea - combining assets that aren’t readily available to other companies.

The closest is Spotify’s Greenroom - and that doesn’t even allow for music streaming.

Amazon has both the $$ and time to develop an app for live radio shows.

After all, if retro Turntable.fm can make a comeback - why can’t the idea be juiced up with something a little more modern?

You can take callers, chat, and play music live - just like a real radio show. The only thing that’s missing is annoying car ads played three hundred times a day.

I’m honestly kinda tempted to start a lofi radio show for The Land of Random. That could be pretty fun. 🤔

Check it out at the link! I’ll be sure to let y’all know if I start a show.

Check It Out

🎥Megauploads Long Legacy

The year is 2012. Life for the average high schooler / College student was good. Bootleg media was literally two clicks away and ranked for SEO, hosted on Megaupload.

Then - on January 20 - everything changed with a raid on Megaupload’s servers and Kim Dotcom’s house.

The plug was pulled (literally) and millions of files disappeared from the net.

To give an idea of the scope, research from Boston’s Northeastern University estimated that, aside from pirated content, at least 10.75 million legitimate files were taken offline for good. (source)

Can you imagine the uproar if Google or Apple’s servers were taken offline?

Heck - the very thought of that makes me want to pull out my hard drive and make a backup of all of my files. (I need to do that at least once a year).

Did you know that Megaupload planned to actually go public on the stock exchange?

A few months after the raid we spoke to Hong Kong-based corporate advisor Robert Lim, who had begun preparing Megaupload for a potential IPO and a listing on a U.S. stock exchange. “Megaupload management had discussions with a number of the ‘Big Four’ largest international professional accountancy firms, which handle the vast majority of audits for publicly traded companies,” Lim said at the time. “These Big Four firms were invited to be the auditor and to work together with management to build out a road map to prepare Megaupload for an IPO,” he added. (source)

But - it never came to pass. We do have Mega though (the rebranded more private version of Megaupload) - but other services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Apple now own the limelight.

We are still left with relics of ancient Megaupload . . . like this crazy promo piece.

After Megaupload’s fall - it wasn’t long before the piracy titans began to fall . . .

By 2017 Projectfreetv, Grooveshark, and Putlocker were all dead and buried.

It’s crazy to me that piracy was once a kinda mainstream thing. Now it’s been banished to the edges of Reddit and other websites.

8 years ago - a bootleg movie was a google search and page one result away.

Now - “legitimate” (meaning the website is relatively safe to use) piracy is a 20-40 click endeavor - not to mention using a VPN and other security measures.

Even Limewire is rising from the grave - rebranding as an NFT market - which is honestly quite bizarre.

I never expected to see that logo ever again - did you?

I thought LimeWire was gone forever . . .

It’ll be curious to see if a “piracy titan” like Megaupload ever rises again.

Will it decentralize further with Web3? Will it continue to stay in the world of secret subreddits and discords?

As streaming platforms continue to grow - and platforms carry less and less content - I think piracy is going to keep growing in the shadows.

I’ll leave you with this interesting reddit thread to chew on.

Is the black flag rising again?

🎮The Steam Controller

I remember reading online in 2019 that Steam was selling out the olde’ steam controller for $5 a pop.

I missed the sale by a few hours - I kinda wanted one. Yes - I knew the Steam Machine and its respective controllers were dying out - but the appeal of PC gaming with a controller was very tempting.

The Steam Controller was designed for a different time, almost an entirely different reality in fact. It was made for an era where PCs were in every living room, connected up to a big-screen TV running Big Picture Mode, from a wee Steam Machine sporting the Linux-based SteamOS. And in that mythical realm, the Controller makes some sense. The trackpads, the inputs which truly mark it out from the crowd, were created to emulate mouse movements and allow you to play strategy games, and other classically PC games on a TV from the comfort of your sofa. (source)

PC gaming from your couch sounded cool - but it didn’t really work with consumers. The fantasy of a happy medium between the PC and Console crowd just didn’t seem to interest people.

PC gamers were content to use a mouse and keyboard - and console players were content to to use their controllers. Neither of them wanted to learn how to combine the two.

Not many PC players wanted to spend hours figuring out how to map Army Men II or AOE II to a controller - and console players definitely didn’t want to . . . except for a loyal few.

Steam Machines is just a dead empty page now.

And just like Onlive - another experimental gaming solution was lost to history.

You can still find a Steam Machine for sale on Ebay, if you’re curious.

But what about the Steam Controller? That was still useable with Steam on PC.

A small community carried on - creating layouts for their favorite PC games. For example - their subreddit is still relatively active and so is the Valve hub.

Their loyalty may just prove to be just the thing that the Steam Deck needs. Dave James sings their praises quite profusely for all their hard work.

you few who jumped onboard the Steam Machine dream and paid out for a Steam Controller weren't content to just put the pad to one side and move on with your lives. No—bless you—you struggled on to find ways to play games with already perfectly fine control schemes, created intricate profiles, and uploaded them to the cloud so other believers could benefit from your work.
And now anyone who's bought, or reserved, or plans to pick up a Steam Deck in the future, is going to say a little prayer to you unsung heroes. (source)

Thousands of gamers are getting their hands on the brand new Steam Deck - and discovering that they have the Steam Controller community to thank for alllllllll those PC game layouts.

Well done to everyone to stuck it out with the Steam Controller! There’s a lot of people singing your praises!

Read more of Dave’s profuse apology to the community at the link.

Steam Controller 💪

🐙The Land of Random

Random Randomness from your favorite curator of the niche

How Many Tabs do YOU have open?*

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The DTK Website

This website is very bizarre. Possibly a front for a ARG? Who knows . . . Let me know if you manage to get past the brain.

DTK?

Eye of the Liger

2009 Youtube for you. Hahahahahahahahaha

Can You Keep the Light on?

Fighting with another random internet user to keep a light on has never been so fun.

THE LIGHT

Build Your Own Voice Assistant

If you’re wary of privacy concerns with Alexa or Google, youuuu could try building your own. That’s where SEPIA comes in - an open source digital framework that you can build out for your smart home needs.

SEPIA Voice Assistant