If it’s the control you find clunky, Kodi does support LIRC, and USB infrared receivers are like $20. You should be able to convince it to listen to your TV or universal remote for menu navigation, volume, etc, which will make it feel a lot like a normal/smart TV. I use the Kore app on my phone.
But UI is the Achilles heel of most open source software.
There’s mythtv, but it’s significantly more complicated than kodi and doesn’t have the streaming plugins. IME, mythtv makes a nice backend for Kodi, especially if you want to capture live TV OTA/cable. For just watching stuff, Kodi is great. It doesn’t really honor any file hierarchy you might set up under its “Movies” or “Music” tabs, but you’ll find that structure preserved in “Browser.”
I’ve found OSMC, which is just a dedicated OS wrapper around Kodi, a little wonky, but that could be just me. I’m used to ssh-ing in to systems to maintain them, and it took me a long time to understand OSMC’s connman network manager. I think it’s probably fine if you intend to interact only though Kodi’s on-screen controls, but osmc feels like a ‘weird’ linux. Doesn’t even log to /var/log/syslog
In the 4(?) days since I got my first anti-adblock popover, I’ve completely stopped watching random videos. My few favorite channels I’ve watched in incognito without harrassment, and the only thing I’ve noticed is having more time for other things.
If those content providers were on some other platform, I’d go there, but that’s honestly asking a lot of them for a small slice of their subscribers.
10 carrots is something like 1.5-2 pounds/0.75-1 kg. I can eat a good bit of carrot-ginger soup, but a quart of soup every day for weeks? I think I’d have other health effects before I started glowing orange.
Who are these kids under 20 with $14,000 to give out to scammers? Retirees with a spare $35k, I believe, but I’d really like to see the distribution for both. I’m guessing the means and medians are very different.
No sweat, friend. I was just using the opportunity to extend the “It’s all Reagan’s fault” train. And Donald Regan was a real guy appointed by Ronald Reagan. They didn’t have the diversity of names we do now, so a lot of them repeated, rhymed, or required a middle initial to differentiate. Like all the George Bushes - GWB, GPB, GHWB…
Yeah. https://www.educationnext.org/remembering-nation-risk-reflections-politics-policy/
Abolish the Department of Education. School choice vouchers. Standardized testing. All these memes started with Reagan. Not Regan, his Secretary of Treasury, but a lot of people confused Ronald Reagan and Donald Regan, even at the time.
It sounds like his teacher thinks games should be evaluated for their development of tension and consistent messaging. It sounds like they would penalize a game for having a story with twists and surprises, because those either break messaging consistency or deflate tension. And, of course, quicksaves are evil.
I can kind of see where they’re coming from, but it feels like a very academic, navel-gazing place, akin to pretentious art critics talking about color, composition, and allusion to past masters, or a film critic talking about Dutch angles and long takes. Things that may contribute to the artistic quality and even the enjoyment of a piece, but are not components that us rubes actively look for. The fact they try to lump BG3, soccer, and chess all together under one system of evaluation tells me that they’re going to use some really bizarre criteria.
No doubt. Enjoy your video games the way you want to enjoy them. I picked up RDR2 again recently, got to the point where you’re supposed to break Micah out of prison, and I’m just like, fuck that guy. I’m going hunting and playing dress-up.
I thought Apple was on to something with their cylindrical form factor. It’s inconvenient from a mobo perspective, but a central core motherboard, with CPU, GPU, even memory and M2 sticking out like fins. Get the mobo down to segments like 25mm x 250, and stack the whole thing over a massive -like 250-350 mm- low rpm fan would be great for heat management and noise. Heck, put it in a venturi tunnel driven by a 500mm fan.
Not to mention the subjectivity of what “7” means. I’ve tallied enough judges ratings to know that some people treat 5 as average, some people treat 8 as OK, and some treat anything below 7 as failing.
It’s just part of the code. “Globalist” is often especially about Jewish banking families, eg Rothchilds or Soros. Similar to how “urban” in the US is often code for ‘black,’ even though most of the people who live in urban areas are white. Dog whistles: words that communicate specific meaning within a community without being recognized by the larger population.
It’s not a hardship, though. I’m healthy with no chronic conditions, and I’ve made the specific choice to go with a HDHP to get the HSA, which I treat like a pre-tax Roth IRA. If some catastrophe happens, it’ll be easier to pay for surgery out of the HSA than a real Roth, but I don’t expect to see doctors until Medicare. I don’t even pay for glasses out of the HSA, because its future value is too great.
This is a perfectly rational individual choice to maximize my personal benefit, but it is terrible policy at the population level. It means there are less resources available for the small minority of people who do have expensive health issues, because I’m diverting my insurance premiums into a retirement fund. This is a recurring theme in right wing policy - it’s fine for people whose lives have no major complications, and people with special circumstances are too few to consider. You have to look out for yourself, and a few people will fall through the cracks, which is a borderline sociopathic attitude.
Individual, ACA. $7000 annual premium, $6500 deductible, $6700 max out-of-pocket, so it really only covers catastrophic care. 2023 HSA limit is $3850, up from 3650 in 2022 because of inflation. Please excuse me for rounding - that $350 makes all the difference.
Car insurance is to pay for the damage your accident does to other people. You probably have the optional coverage that also pays for damage to your own car, but that’s not why insurance is legally required. You can get repair insurance, but it’s generally ‘not worth it,’ because no one gets it, leading to a small premium pool and minimal risk spread. Kind of like low premium, high deductible plans do for health insurance.
I think the HSA is a big attraction for the GOP - tax advantaged encouragement to get more people investing more money in stocks. Practically, though it also means more people effectively self-insuring. My deductible is $6500, but I’m allowed to put $3500 into HSA, so 2 years’ HSA savings covers the deductible. Fine, for individuals that are reasonably healthy, but it reduces the pool of money that insurers have to pay benefits to people who do have claims.
Essentially incentivizing individuals to sabotage the system.
I mean, if you’re a Nazi, the new Xitter is definitely a better experience. He knows exactly to whom he’s pandering, which is how you get invited back to Fox. There’s going to be a lot of competition for the segment of MAGA that loves the fascism and xenophobia, but worries that Trump is too toxic to win big cities.
There’s definitely an arms race - if it’s cheaper to pay an SEO to get your pages shown, then you pay the SEO; if it’s cheaper to pay Google advertising, then you pay to play. I’m sure Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm to filter SEO techniques to get better, authentic results, but it seems like a losing battle at this point.
human nature remembers negative experiences much better than positive, so it only takes like 5% assholes before it feels like everyone is toxic.
Dunno if I qualify as a problem drinker, but was a daily drinker for decades. I’ve cut back a lot lately, but there’s some things that just go better, as a whole experience, with beer. Spicy noodles. Pizza. Whether through actual aesthetics or years of training, it’s hard to imagine a nice slice of pizza without a beer. NA beer is a legit substitute, for me, and I can have one NA beer without immediately wanting a second.