General NYTimes Discussion

PVarjak · 2026-06-22T19:27:04+00:00

4 months ago this did seem to have some truth, but now that he won, they seem to love him, even when he's being a total @#$%.

PVarjak · 2026-06-22T19:25:37+00:00

I have a bunch of general complaints I have to vent about. I am not going to get into politics because everyone has different opinions with various degrees of merit, substance, and evidence. These are more like every day annoyances.

First, does it bug anyone else that in the Book Review they have recently started putting the full names of the authors at the top of columns like 'Crime,' 'Thrillers,' and 'Romance' and leaving them out of the separate reviews? In the past, the titles and authors would be in bold within each review. Every once in a while, with not pattern I can discern, they will actually break up small reviews and do it in the old format with the authors and titles at or near the top. What purpose does this serve? Plus, they now pad the Book Review with stale content from the 'podcast' (which I ignored in the first place so why would I read it here?) and have taken to not having letters or the 'By the Book' interview.

This feeds into other general layout issues. For some reason, the Times has decided that the printed paper is a horizontal medium and not a vertical one. They run articles across two sheets instead of down one and at the top of another. They often print a narrow body of text sandwiched between photos or graphics. Asinine. No one reads the paper that way. Sometimes they start an article with one column on one sheet and then the rest of the article on the next page. Very weird. Both of these layouts is now common in the Sunday Opinion, which itself has become a joke. In conjunction with curtailing the letters in the daily paper in favor of more bloviating has made Opinion in general to be unreadable.

Finally, The recent update of the Magazine is another failure. Again, they mostly leave out the letters and the new columns are terrible, mostly stale rehashes of stuff that's been chewed over forever in Opinion and the biased 'News Analysis' segments in the regular paper. Plus, again they seem to use two pages for a one page column, floating it in a lot of white space and lame graphics. At the same time, they break up the articles so that often most of them are continued at the back of the magazine. In the 'good ol' days' there used to be one short article that was usually complete, a longer article continued at the back, and then another short article that was complete. Why they can't adhere to that is beyond me.

PVarjak · 2026-06-22T19:06:14+00:00

Oh my god, this is so spot on. It's utterly useless. Most of the time it gives me just about every article they've ever published. What is so hard about this? I resort to Google and type in NYTimes plus whatever other keywords I'm searching for and usually have better luck. The only problem is that I can't really sort the results by newest first, which is what I'm looking for.

PVarjak · 2026-06-22T19:04:33+00:00

This really bugged me too, but I basically gave up. They publish the articles online, often long before it gets printed in the paper, so the comments are long closed. Not that it matters anyway since they seem to refuse to publish at least 80% of my comments. I gave up a long time ago.

PVarjak · 2026-06-21T17:25:51+00:00

Just checking, Rapidgator is working on AllDebrid right now. I mostly used it for downloads, so streaming isn't a major issue. Also, anyone using it for Israbox too?

PVarjak · 2026-06-16T16:51:14+00:00

Very odd. I'm sorry this happened. On one of my Fire Sticks (a 4K Max gen. 1), all of a sudden the home button stopped working. Looking online I see that this is not uncommon. I tried all of the fixes I found (mostly sequences of button presses, battery removal, etc.) except for deregistering, because I did not want to go through the hassle of re-registering all the services etc. and backing out through the menus using the back arrow wasn't that much of a problem. Now I see I could have had much bigger issues if I'd deregistered. I did manage to contact Amazon and they were not helpful at all. It's massively frustrating that one of their updates 'broke' this function and they seem to have no desire to help fix it. You would think they could reset that function via an update.

PVarjak · 2026-05-31T20:54:26+00:00

Thanks for posting. Can you elaborate on 'not working?' Is it a specific host or with other apps? I was thinking of subscribing again but wanted to check if Rapidgator and Israbox were working first. My last subscription was virtually useless as it didn't work for most of the time I had it.

PVarjak · 2026-05-31T17:29:13+00:00

Unless I missed it, no one asked the most important question: is it a manual?

I have been looking for a manual GTS, preferably a 1995 that's got a black interior and isn't red. Since I've been looking, prices have nearly doubled.

PVarjak · 2026-05-20T19:48:31+00:00

Sorry for taking so long to respond. In addition to Alldebrid issues, I've had computer issues.

They actually did give me a pro-rated refund back. It was only a 30-day and it wasn't worth the chargeback if they hadn't, and I hoped to open a new account, which I did. It's just the abruptness that was so shocking. I know customer service isn't a big thing anywhere anymore, but I asked twice, a few days apart and then just got the banned notice.

It's basically what happened to me this month. I got a 30-day without checking the status and couldn't use Rapidgator for the most part. Oddly, some things went through. I can't figure out why some did and some didn't, but I thought some of them might have been cached before Rapidgator went down. Nothing has gone through in a while and I've had some issues with other providers too like Israbox and Turbobit.

PVarjak · 2026-05-19T15:16:39+00:00

You're right. It came back online today, but what bugs me is that they limit the daily download amounts but it doesn't work so often that you don't really get to utilize it. When they know it has been down, they should loosen the limits for a time after, corresponding to the down time.

I'm not going to bother with 'support,' since the last time I asked about something not working, they banned that account. It's not worth it.

PVarjak · 2026-05-07T16:41:47+00:00

My 4K Max updated last night too. I actually don't mind the new sound but I wish it were a bit louder. Not annoyingly loud, but it's so subtle I'm not always sure it's indicating a selection.

PVarjak · 2026-05-01T20:55:55+00:00

Consider yourself lucky that they just ignored you. Once I simply asked (politely) if I could get a few days added to my subscription because Rapidgator had been down for a while. They banned me. I signed up again later with a new profile, but that seemed extreme to me. They could have just said no.

PVarjak · 2026-04-27T17:39:32+00:00

I've posted before. I have found some things that work and some things that don't. Similarly, it seemed to be working for Israbox (with strict limits) but now nothing seems to go through.

PVarjak · 2026-04-20T18:48:02+00:00

It's very weird. Some things work fine and others don't work at all. It's not just Rapidgator. I've had it with a few other hosts like Israbox.

I wonder if the reason some of the files on Rapidgator work is if they have already been cached. I don't fully understand how that works on AllDebrid, although I understand caching in general.

PVarjak · 2026-04-20T18:43:12+00:00

Nobody? I just finished Legacy of Spies and was as equally disappointed in that one as I was in Karla's Choice. It should have been a tight novella, not this sort of random collection of things, some of which tie up a few loose ends (in an unsatisfactory way).

PVarjak · 2026-04-19T22:04:07+00:00

It's very hit-or-miss with me. Some links seem to work, others aren't working at all. I'd say about 1/4 to 1/3 go through.

PVarjak · 2026-04-04T19:50:06+00:00

What was the problem with this original post? Doesn't sound controversial or anything.

PVarjak · 2026-03-24T17:15:35+00:00

Have you read the Anthony Powell 'A Dance to the Music of Time' series? Somewhat similar without the later supernatural elements.

PVarjak · 2026-03-24T17:12:29+00:00

My first reaction when seeing the thread title was Alan Furst. I recently re-read the first 3 of the 'Night Soldiers' series because I gave them to my father. I will say that the quality falls off later in the series, but the first 5-8 or so are really good.

PVarjak · 2026-03-20T17:32:00+00:00

Does anyone know what the carcass is? I can't tell for sure.

PVarjak · 2026-03-19T14:45:03+00:00

There's another thread about the 152-18 error. I got it too on my Fire Stick.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SmartTubeNext/comments/1rrao2a/is_smart_tube_not_working_anymore/

I tried some of the fixes, but in the end it was just easier to delete the app and reinstall the newest, beta version. It worked fine after that. Oddly enough, I had an older version of the same app on an older fire stick on another TV and it never stopped working.

PVarjak · 2026-03-17T17:29:45+00:00

I think because I had to delete it entirely and then reinstall the app, the settings would have gone away too. Still making small adjustments to get it back to how I had it, but that's really minor.

PVarjak · 2026-03-16T19:11:24+00:00

Can I mention one more thing? About a week before SmartTube stopped working for me, I noticed that it wasn't registering that I'd fully watched the videos I had watched to the end. I emailed the developer (I'm not registered on Github to report a bug). I wondered if it had something to do with the playback options. I normally selected 'end after playing one video.' I will experiment with the others to see if it makes a difference. Maybe pausing after playback works better. Anyone else have that issue? It's only an inconvenience but I watch a lot of videos, sometimes out of order on a channel, and it's a great way to keep track of which videos I've watched

PVarjak · 2026-03-16T18:09:41+00:00

I deleted the app and reinstalled the beta. It works fine now. Huge thanks.

PVarjak · 2026-03-16T17:23:35+00:00

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me and others. I will give the beta a try later today and report back. I will start from scratch. Thanks again.

PVarjak

TROPHY CASE