NotAlwaysRight Stories

[catcul]

Lesson one to get a job in video games… or any job, really. Don’t be that guy!

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[Jay 2K Winger]

"It's not every day I can threaten someone using puns."

[Mental_Mouse]

It's beginning to sound to me that you may have something more nefarious running on your system and interfering with your browsing. Especially with those prompts to buy a subscription.

I don't think I've noticed any subscription prompts, neither when browsing at home (via Chrome and ABP) or on my phone.

I'd do a full system scan on your system looking for malware just in case. Others can probably suggest appropriate scanners.

Also try a few different browsers to see if the problem persists. If you can check a few different computers too.

And contact Google about that uncancellable repeatable billing, if that is the case. Maybe it is already gone and that's why you can't see it, but it sounds sketchier than that.

The prompts were from Google/NAR, but NAR has since given up on them. Given their topic, it's good that they can admit a mistake and walk it back. (I'm also running Linux, so Trojans etc. are less of a worry.)

Google also altered their interface so that I could remove NAR from the "pass", which effectively makes the pass moot.

The disappearance of the comment box turns out to be on Disqus's side, but that's entirely another rant: Currently my main ID wants me to verify my address, but their verification E-mails are simply not arriving. Looking at Disqus's own forums, I'm not the only person having this problem, but they are simply not responding to queries on that. I won't even get into the spurious spam-marking that afflicted my backup address, and which seems to be affecting even more users.

Looking at Disqus' company page, they boast having one of the highest messages-to-staff ratio in the industry, with 50 million messages handled by (apparently) 36 staff members from the CEO on down. Of course, there is no way to send a message directly to the company staff, so I can't tell them that being grossly understaffed is not something to brag about.

[Mr Hero]

I've had it show up for a couple days before it went away.

[Jetfire]

It's beginning to sound to me that you may have something more nefarious running on your system and interfering with your browsing. Especially with those prompts to buy a subscription.

I don't think I've noticed any subscription prompts, neither when browsing at home (via Chrome and ABP) or on my phone.

I'd do a full system scan on your system looking for malware just in case. Others can probably suggest appropriate scanners.

Also try a few different browsers to see if the problem persists. If you can check a few different computers too.

And contact Google about that uncancellable repeatable billing, if that is the case. Maybe it is already gone and that's why you can't see it, but it sounds sketchier than that.

[Mental_Mouse]

Yesterday I was still seeing it with scripts turned off, so it's not completely gone.

Still having problems with Disqus, though -- I'm not getting their verification E-mails, and that's got me locked out from commenting on my main account.

[ReadyToRetire]

Yeh, I am glad it went away. I did turn off my ad blocker for the site, but loading up the comments would fail the first time every time. I turned the ad blocker back on because seeing that message was less irritating.

[Nunavut Pants]

I have seen the "this is page N you have read ad-free" last week. It went away, apparently on its own, this weekend. Not sure why.

I do run both Ad Blocker and No Script extensions, though.

[EricKei]

ETA: Looking at my Google account, it offers no way to delete the pass. Or stop automatic payments, or even remove my card from their files. The only thing I can do is delete my Google account entirely.

That can't possibly be legal. Contact them and have them either walk you through it or delete the info for you o_O

[Ironclad Alibi]

Does anyone know any way to recover from this? I'm using Firefox on Ubuntu.

After being annoyed by the pop-ups, I unblocked the site for Ad-Bloc-Plus. Upon seeing the animated ads they then foisted upon me, I viewed their web page in a window that was narrowed sideways enough to block the ads from my view.

[Mental_Mouse]

OK, today NotAlwaysRight is itself the problem!

1. It started throwing up intrusive popups to the effect of "You've got ads blocked, this is post #1 you have viewed without ads". No explicit threat of a limit, but I'd say that's implied. They offered to let me buy a "Pass" from Google to view it ad-free.
2. After trying for a while to block the popups with NoScript and/or AdBlockPlus (I've gotta admit uOrigin would probably have been better at this), I gave up on that, and decided to actually buy the pass.
3. Having done so (with some difficulty, as the signup page itself involved some scripts that NoScript didn't like), I found that indeed the popups are gone. Unfortunately, so is the comment section -- not even the comment-count widget is visible! This remains so even with both NS and ABP disabled.

Of course, the comments for NAR are most of the fun. As far as I'm concerned, this is a major-league fuckup, and has ensured that it will be a cold day in hell before I pay another dollar to Google's "revenue enforcement" systems.

Does anyone know any way to recover from this? I'm using Firefox on Ubuntu.

ETA: Looking at my Google account, it offers no way to delete the pass. Or stop automatic payments, or even remove my card from their files. The only thing I can do is delete my Google account entirely.

[Jay 2K Winger]

And that, right there, is why you should treat every customer with courtesy and respect so long as they're not being full-blown creepy or abusive. Never Assume!

With this in mind... MOAR Mystery Shopper pwnage!

[Mr Hero]

https://notalwaysright.com/thinking-...ox-car/102293/

Almost sounds like one of Irv's customers

[TheSHAD0W]

I can't blame Customs for their reaction.

LOL. Aspartame is ungodly sweet. You know how a packet of aspertame is a lot smaller than the equivalent sugar packet? That's because aspartame is *so* sweet they have to add a buffer to it - and the buffer they add is sugar!

[greek_jester]

OP: "How do you think?"

And that, right there, is why you should treat every customer with courtesy and respect so long as they're not being full-blown creepy or abusive. Never Assume!