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.

I have a foot pedal button assigned to mute my microphone.

(And no, I don’t stream or anything, purely a QoL thing 😆)

Oof, yeah I’m pretty picky about some keybinds and games that lock down keys can be almost unplayable.

Helldivers 2 doesn’t let you remap interact to F (which is the only muscle memory interact key I can use) and I haaaaate that so much. I had to get a workaround just to fix it.

It’s weird here too because states set sales taxes. I live in Oregon, and we don’t have a standard sales tax here. That means what you see is what you pay at the register for most things, and it’s so freaking nice.

About the only thing I regularly see is the bottle tax (0.10/can added at the register). That’s refundable too, at least theoretically, so it’s not that bad.

What’s really happening here is that advertisers can use the Reddit Ads Manager to create normal user posts and then pay to make them appear prominently on the site and in the app as promoted posts, aka adverts.

Look it’s not exactly revolutionary or new, google search has been littered with promoted ad results for years. But I still hate it. Fuck off, reddit. No respect intended. Icky. So glad I stopped using it.

Putin might as well just say the quiet part out loud at this point. Classic sociopath dictator, gotta pretend blood isn’t on his hands.

Rest in peace Navalny. You and your people deserve better than this.

I agree that pi-hole is an option here, but yeah, the reality is that most daily users don’t even know what it is. At least, not yet.

Adblock Plus and it’s betters became ubiquitous in large part because they were so incredibly easy to install. As easy as gramma accidentally installing yet another yahoo toolbar on accident. Like, too easy.

Pi-Hole isn’t hard to install, and there are some fantastic guides to help users get it running with essentially zero prior knowledge. But in my opinion, I think until it gets closer to “push-button” easiness, pi-hole and systems like it will really be limited to the <5% of users motivated enough to go through the steps, who aren’t mortified of logging into their router’s admin page. I want us to get there faster, and we’re a hell of a lot closer than 10 or even 5 years ago. But we’re not quite there yet.

Edit-typo

Check!

Also, I forgot all the tomfuckery he pulled with starlink in Ukraine, cutting off access and the like.

It’s truly a testament to how much shit this guy has done that we forget so much of it.

Literally only the best strategies here! I mean lets recap:

• Threaten to buy company then double down and agree in writing as a bullying tactic: check
• Roll a nat 1 on your intimidation check: check
• Be forced to follow through when called out on being mentally an 8 yo by the feds: check
• Fire critical employees, like basically all of them: check
• Yoink verification away from public news orgs: check
• Let anyone pay to be “legit,” even if they’re parodying you: check
• Rename twitter to the stupidest thing imagined since head-on (apply directly to the forehead): check
• Gut content moderation policies but also stop enforcing regardless: check
• Post own hate content and racism to the platform: check
• “Accidentally” run ads next to hate content: check
• Be told your sign sucks and to take it down by city: check (lol)
• Become a living embodiment of “big yikes” energy while telling aforementioned advertisers to “go fuck yourselves” on live TV: check
• Hallucinate about making x into a libertarian wechat alternative: check
• Tank the value of the company while blaming literally anyone else for your failures: mission in progress, #1 priority

10/10 solid buy, gonna grab some long calls rn. The koch boys and rupert murderjock must be holding back a tsunami of jealousy by now 🤣

Yes, exactly. The short term solution requires that people recognize the greater evil in the room and defend what little progress we’ve made. We can’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Our first part the post voting system is horrible, but until we can build up enough progressive movement to update it to a better system, priority 1 is exactly what you said.

Choosing not to vote for Democrats because they’re not perfect is choosing to step back and give republicans a free ticket to burn all of our progress to the ground. It’s naïve to think otherwise.

And honestly, that naïveté is holding us back from actually addressing issues like us aid to israel. Enoguh splintering among progressives will by default give control back to republican leaders who would happily sit back and watch palestinians die while lying about it and blaming it on anything anyone else other than themselves.

Free Geek here in Portland OR used to do this. Might still be doing it too, but I haven’t been back there since 2018 so I’m not 100% sure.

But yeah, the last I was there, you could walk in and just buy a refurbished laptop or desktop with Linux on it. They would even give guidance on what people needed if they weren’t tech-savvy.

Earthen walls are also effective at keeping our trolls, though obviously then you have an earthen wall to stare at so it may not be what you want…

Oh no. Anyway…

Seriously though, if it doesn’t come out on PC it probably means I won’t be missing anything for the first couple years it exists. I can’t recall an exclusive that I felt I needed right away.

Especially the old-school ones. Halo is just so much better on PC, especially now that I can torture my friends with brutal legendary difficulty mods for halo 3… Good times.

Ooof, I’m sorry about that. Yeah, as much as I like the idea of PHEVs getting the best of both worlds, it also means risking the worst of both as well. Ultimately if the manufacturer cheaps out in the gas engine it’ll be a rough experience no matter how good the EV side is

This tracks with my anecdotal experience. The EV drivetrain on my 2017 model 3 has been bulletproof, but I’ve had plenty of issues with Tesla’s poor build quality in other areas. Here are the notable examples:

• Tesla had to replace two control arm joints that were poorly designed and didn’t seal out water, so they started squeaking/creaking extremely loudly

• Two repeater camera assemblies that also didn’t seal against water well enough and stopped working

• A faulty frunk actuator that locked the frunk shut (no, there’s no manual release except from inside the frunk lol). I don’t keep anything too valuable in there now.

• So many software bug fixes. I’ll add to that, the original Intel computer just wasn’t good enough for this car needs it to do and it shows.

Honestly this isn’t too much worse than some of my ICE car experiences. I had a brand new Subaru Crosstrek which just kept going back for software updates (not having OTA or at-home usb updates SUCKS) as well as a pair of recalls around the engine. In one of those, the Subaru dealer nearly destroyed my engine by fucking up the timing chain alignment entirely on their own. Fun times.

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.