Amazon Customer Obsession

Amazon removed side stripe and images for "affiliates" so you can't embed pictures in your own web sites anymore that link to the products.

Amazon likes to say they are customer obsessed, but they really aren't.  Its all about Amazon.

Remember auto rip? Music library? Twitch ad free viewing? All good examples of features people loved but were "marinal" in their returns.

When I singned up to be an affiliate, I had some folks buy stuff through my links, but I was lazy in setting up my tax info for spifs. So Amazon cancelled my affiliate account because I couldn't sell enough, and then locked me out so I couldn't get the spif payments.

Amazon is evil. 

Day Off Fixes

Today is a "Global Reset Day" so I took the opportunity to fix some things on the PacMan cabinet. First, I never hooked up the 2 pin header buttons to the 3 pin sockets - and so re-use the buttons from the original cabinet. After some research, I discovered it is as simple as "forcing" the 2 pin header into the socket leaving pin 3 disconnected. However, these buttons are cheap, and sound terrible side mounted. Then, my research on audio cables implied I should twist my speaker wires together - braid them - to reduce noise. I did this, and low and behold the hum from the HDMI connector to the speaker disappeared. I was able to remove the lo-hi pass filter and the sound is less muffled. Important to remember that the Odroid uses HDMI out, so with my last update, I need to reset sound output to the HDMI device. Also important to remember that over driving the ALSA mixer is a very bad idea (and MAME sound, like for Karate Champ, will clip out.) Good day off.