Look on the bright side: I bet a fair number of folks like me didn’t know about this and now it’s on my front burner to-do list to check it out! Thanks for the good work.

Greenshot is so handy. I’ve successfully converted several of my coworkers to using it. Some of our corpo contract IT folks are secretly pissed about it because unlike us they aren’t allowed to use open source software (LOL) so they have to put up with windows snipping tool

Startup times getting down below 20s definitely helps with this. I haven’t had a machine that took over 30s for a few years now… even my phone isn’t that slow.

Was recently asked to look at a laptop because it was “running slower than normal” and “takes a long time to resume from sleep.” Hmm, ok. It’s only a few years old, probably just bloateare.

I powered it on and immediately got served an early-2000s size dose of 10+ minute startup time. This laptop from only a few years ago still came with a spinny disk drive… Ugh. Didn’t even bother trying to optimize it. It’s getting cloned up to an SSD before I even try to work on it.

Honestly I’m shocked at the number of people that stayed on twitter. Like… just why? It’s zero effort to leave and minimal effort to find another platform.

I realize many people choose not to care who owns the companies that make their stuff. And to be fair, sometimes it’s actually worse to throw away the product than keep using it despite the associated image. I still daily drive my Tesla model 3 that I bought in 2019. Throwing away a car creates a shitload of waste, versus just continuing to drive it. I’d never buy another tesla, which solves that issue.

But unlike throwing out a car or even throwing out something with actual value like youtube, ditching Twitter as far as I see has no downside.

Agreed. I started out with r-pi for the TV and and refuse to ever go back to just the smart-TV or stick interface. I’ve since moved on to more powerful HTPC/dedicated game server PC so I can host games for our friends but I still have the r-pi.

Honestly as nice as some of the smart TV or smart stick functions are, they’re only nice because they’re zero-effort. For just a slight amount of effort and no technical knowledge you can have a much better and safer setup.

Personally I can say the only reason I don’t ride my e-bike more for daily use is due to the rampancy of bike theives and vandals. Shit is genuinely getting hard to deal with and I don’t have time or money to put up with it.

If I could guarantee with just a high end u-lock or bike chain, something not too unreasonable, if that allowed me to park my bike at a busy grocery store and be able to ride home 15 minutes later, I’d use it that way. I genuinely love my e-bike and find it fun to ride, even with the annoyance of locks and security.

But after having wheel(s) stolen, a shifter broken, lines cut and even a lock fucked up, and after having transients and crackheads harass me for parking and locking up, I’ve just given up. Our police are still choosing not to do anything about this kind of crime, and I can’t get insurance against theft like I can with my car.

Plus, my EV has security and cameras, and critically is big enough that even a jacked up thief can’t walk off with it. Worst they can do is break windows or smash mirrors. I’ll waste the extra time and energy driving to the store if it means I won’t lose thousands of dollars to theft with absolutely zero chance of recompense.

If it a) successfully fools people into thinking their products are good, b) further fools them into thinking they’re worth the batshit insane pricetag, and c) isn’t illegal enough to be unprofitable, then they’ll keep doing it.

So yeah, I’d wager they keep the blue/green boxes. Bet they’ll also change non-rcs+non-imessage to another color to further divide things up as well.

I just feel like musk wants a western version of wechat for a hybrid user base of hardcore republicans and hardcore libertarians. That seems like such a fundamental oxymoron… but here we are.

And in fact, I hate to say it, but given how good those groups of people are at bending reality and making themselves conform to a warped capitalist standard, it might just work out for a while. But more than likely it’ll probably also go the way of “trump bucks” or whatever those psycho-loyalist cryptocoins were called. Basically it’ll end up a big old miserable fraud.

The again if it’s Elon’s coin on the table I’m not so sure I care. He’s just ruining spacex, tesla, et. al. Let him bleed money.

What’s genuinely sad is that the people who can’t bail from twitter quickly will be spitroasted by musk in the process.

He won the birth lottery, as it were

Honestly the range isn’t even an issue. Yes they did something wrong, but IMO in terms of misleading customers it’s not at the top of the list long list. They have all this horseshit about “full self driving” that they stick all over their website with pretty animations and graphics.

Then you actually read into it and the fine text says “oh by the way, it’s technically just a slightly suicidal/homicidal level 2 ADAS that nobody has signed off on, and that Tesla can yank it out from under you at any time, and thst WILL be conveniently forgotten about and valued at $0 if you decide to trade in your car with tesla, but it’s cool brosky just do it for the likes”

I have to play devil’s advocate here. Are you really fine with the current level of ads? Fine with some past/historical level less than now? What level is ok exactly?

To me the current level of youtube ads is unhinged. Even minus the privacy issues it’s not usable. And it got that way (to me, at least) as soon as skip wait timers (remember when that was all we had to deal with?) became a thing.

Now? With unskippable ads, huge wait timers, and ads injected into the middle of 8-minute videos? Nope nope nooope. Not a chance in hell would I watch unblocked or non-premium youtube.

Pretty good analogy though. Steam has some ads (out of the box it literally launches an ad window at startup) but it isn’t really a pain in the ass about it. You close the window, you move on, it only happens once and there’s nothing unskippable. It doesn’t shove ads in front of my face every time I launch a game from the library (I’d immediately leave the platform if there were.)

Fact is if steam and the other major platforms were ever to devolve within striking distance of how bad youtube has become, piracy would become unhinged. So far Valve has resisted the illusory “infinite money lever” that idiots in c-suites have misunderstood ads to be.

My rule for a while has been to limit myself to one major subscription at a time. It really curtails the rampant streaming costs.

I made an exception for spotify for a while (so I’d have spotify + one streaming service + maybe one small low-cost one) but with how expensive they’ve all gotten I’ve reverted to only spotify and low-cost stuff.

Right now I just have spotify and dropout TV so I can catch up on Dimension 20.

I’m sorry, I hate Elon and Tesla (and with good reason) but saying that an EV is rolling e-waste is going too far.

My model 3 has been bulletproof for the last five years. It’s a 2017 model, one of the earliest, so take that for what you will. The earliest models like mine were apparently some of the better ones until 2021+ model years. I wouldn’t consider buying one now due to Elon’s tomfuckery and the unresolved racism issues within Tesla, but to claim that they’re rolling trash isnt correct.

Plus, the fact is that virtually all cars (ICE models as well!) are rolling out of factories with dozens of integrated computers and touchscreens. It’s very hard here in the US to get something cheap that doesn’t have any electronics - basically imposible. And, if you do the compromise on cheaper and fewer electronics, the reality is that the poor grade of those cheap electronics will actually lead to a shorter lifespan and more overall repairs.

I’m not suggesting for that reason to go buy an EV - certainly not a new Tesla. A used one might be fine. But more broadly, electronics in cars (not just EVs) are really a huge problem. Unless they’re designed with repairability and durability in mind, all new cars have this issue, and you can’t single out Tesla for this.

At the risk of being condescending… don’t worry too much about it for now. I assume the reason you can’t switch is because your parents or someone else is paying for it and won’t allow your input. If that’s the case, when you get to the point of being able to pay for it yourself, you get to choose exactly what you want.

Becoming self-sufficient is pretty wild, come to think of it. Also mildly traumatizing and occasionally terrifying, but mostly great. Need a new phone? You get whatever you want, if you can. Same with housing, transit, etc. If shit wasn’t so unbelievably expensive it’d be even better…

“Might” thats real cute.

Seriously though, there’s some real insidious shit that goes on here in the US as far as mandates minimum fuel economy in large cars, which is definitely not helping this whole cost problem.

Basically, the US both nerfs requirements extremely quickly for more wasteful vehicles (such as SUVs and trucks) and nerfs the requirements within each individual category (like car, truck, mid-size SUV, etc) as the physical size of the vehicle gets closer to the max allowed size within that category.

This is a total win-win for automakers, as they can skate by with lower efficiency vehicles (reducing cost a lot) while making them physically bigger (not that much more expensive) and pocketing the difference. Oh and bigger is better so on top of that you just pay a fat-car tax straight to the automaker.

It’s really properly fucked.

YouTube for more: https://youtu.be/mQDegCqiVnU

Since someone already mentioned dashcams and cast iron, my vote is: a bidet toilet seat attachment.

Fancy ones can roll $200+ but a super simple one with just a cold water hookup and no electricity will knock you back $50-60. I bought one right as covid was beginning to hit the west coast, and instantly realized I could never - ever - go back.

Huge bonus of the toilet seat style bidets is that, since you aren’t actually replacing the toilet, they take like 5 mins to install and can be done in a home, condo, apartment, wherever.

One of my favorite jokes ever (forgive the dated lingo)

*A code reviewer walks into a bar.

…runs into the bar. …skips into the bar. …handstands into the bar. …does the hula into the bar. …brings four people they just met into the bar.

And orders: …1 beer …10 beers …99999 beers …null beers …a Pepsi …a 10" personal pizza …salted peanuts …12345 orders of salted peanuts

Nothing goes wrong.

Another person walks into the bar and asks to use the bathroom.

The bar goes up in flames.*

So these definitely aren’t audiophile grade audio, but I have the Steelseries Nova Pro Wireless, which come with two hot-swappable and replaceable batteries. Always changing one while the other is in use, so I never have to worry.

Main reason I got it was the dual/simultaneous USB and Bluetooth. I’m on Discord or calls on my phone a lot for personal, but want to stay connected to PC via USB for audio (either Teams for the work pc or gaming on my desktop).

I’ve heard the newer version is slightly better, but probably still below audiophile standards. Either way my ears are pretty wrecked and I can’t really pick up fine notes. They’re fine by me!