tomkatt
@tomkatt@lemmy.world
- Comment on Broadcom ends business with VMware’s lowest-tier channel partners 1 day ago:
As a former VMware employee this is just sad.
VMware was a great place to work, with a lot of people who cared about what they were building and supporting, and now it’s just a hollowed out vulture capitalist’s pump and dump.
- Comment on Whatever happened to cheap eReaders? – Terence Eden’s Blog 1 day ago:
This is a weirdly aggressive take without considering variables. Almost petulant seeming.
6” readers are relatively cheap no matter the brand, but cost goes up with size. $250 to $300 is what a 7.8” or 8” reader costs, but there’s not a single one I know of at 6” at that price.
There’s 10” and 13” models. Are you saying they should cost the same as a Kindle?
Not to mention, regarding Kindle, Amazon spent years building the brand but selling either at cost or possibly even taking a loss on the devices as they make money on the book sales. Companies who can’t do that tend to charge more.
Lastly, it’s not “feature creep” to improve the devices over time, many changes are quality of life. Larger displays for those that want them. Frontlit displays, and later the addition of warm lighting. Displays essentially doubled their resolution allowing for crisper fonts and custom fonts to render well. Higher contrast displays with darker blacks for text. More recently color displays as an option.
This is all progress, but it’s not free. Also, inflation is a thing and generally happens at a rate of 2% to 3% annually or thereabouts during “normal” times, and we’ve hardly been living in normal times over the last decade and a half.
- Comment on Whatever happened to cheap eReaders? – Terence Eden’s Blog 1 day ago:
I would rather pay more for a better device, and preferably not one from Amazon if I can help it. Its only a matter of time before they start cracking down even more on side loading
They already started that technically with removing USB downloads. I got sick of their shit and jailbroke my Kindles. They live in KOReader now.
- Comment on Whatever happened to cheap eReaders? – Terence Eden’s Blog 2 days ago:
Is the price of an eReader that big of a deal? They practically pay for themselves with use over time, and they last a ridiculous number of years.
My first Kindle was the K3 Keyboard for $140 in 2011. It finally died in late 2018 after nearly 8 years of use. I regrettably binned it, as I didn’t know you could replace the battery at the time.
I bought a Kindle PW4 for “cheap” ($80 or $90?) in 2019 to replace it, but I hated it after spending some months reading on a larger tablet, Replaced it with a “premium” Boox Nova 2 eReader for $310, and I still use that one today. I plan to just get a cheap battery replacement when it kicks the bucket, as it’s easily user serviceable and a new battery for it is less than $15.
I also got a Kindle Paperwhite Signature in 2023 for $135 as an “upgrade” to the Boox, but it was more a sidegrade. I use both of them alternatingly today.
So I’ve on average paid about $48 a year on eReaders. Seems reasonable considering how many books I’ve gotten for free or very deep discounts via stuff like Bookbub, as well as “free” Prime First reads and Kindle Unlimited books I read over the years as a Prime subscriber, Project Gutenberg and Standard eBooks, as well as digital library access.
I’ve paid more than $48 in one month for subscription services at times that I used less than my eReaders, which see use daily. And you don’t have to be like me and buy multiple, you can buy one reader and use it pretty much indefinitely so long as the battery is user replaceable, so the upfront cost is sort of irrelevant over a long enough time span.
- Comment on Expedition 33's Composer Breaks Down the Soundtrack 2 days ago:
This game is pretty high on my list to check out, but I didn’t realize the music was so amazing. I went right over to buy the album on Bandcamp.
- Comment on ‘My Property Tax Went From $15K to a Life-Altering $91K a Year’ 2 weeks ago:
This is it, and it’s been happening for years. I had a new home built in 2021 and it’s already appreciated by 25%, and periodically been valued even higher than that. I’m not selling, but that still seems crazy to me.
Bonus points for the fact the newly built home and land purchase were about the same cost as it would have been to buy an old run down home in the area that would have needed a ton of work and updates. Free people seem to be building new housing, which in conjunction with the corporate housing acquisitions is driving prices way up.
- Comment on Airlines Are Selling Your Data to ICE 3 weeks ago:
You got one of those dongles, like State Farm’s Drive Safe and Save program? Carry a cell phone? You’re still being tracked.
- Comment on Shinji need a little bit of motivation 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on U.S. Secretary of Commerce says the ‘new model’ is factory jobs for life—for you, your kids, and your grandkids 4 weeks ago:
Think I’ll pass, bud. I’ve read The Jungle, I know how this ends.
- Comment on 8BitDo no longer shipping to US from China due to Trump tariffs 5 weeks ago:
Just ordered a second Ultimate 2c just in case on this news. Was considering the Ultimate 2 for gyro support but 8bitdo’s offering there is confusing and it’s unclear if it would actually work with my Steam Deck (apparently gyro only works in Switch mode?).
- Comment on A mechanic that ain't cursing is a mechanic that ain't working. 1 month ago:
Not a mechanic, but I work from home and my wife gauges how busy I am by the intensity and frequency of the swearing. Post checks out.
- Comment on 90s band alignment chart 2 months ago:
I’m just glad Veruca Salt made the list.
Also, I dunno if I’d lump Sublime into the “happy/horny” category. They’re more on the “sad/horny” side of the chart.
- Comment on Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April 2 months ago:
See my previous comment, I’m 100% on board with Lyrion server and client these days.
- Comment on Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April 2 months ago:
Disclaimer: Plexamp used to be great, but it’s stagnated badly. It was a good reason to buy plex pass at one point, though I don’t think it’s worth it now.
I’m not familiar with Symfonium, but the major defining thing with plexamp is the DJ features for exploring your local music library.
Unfortunately, a few months back Tidal support was removed from Plexamp and that was kind of a deal breaker because now it’s only local library, and its “killer app” feature was using the DJ mixes in conjunction with Tidal to do real time mixes with your local and streaming music together.
I’ve switched to using Lyrion instead, along with the Blissmix and “Don’t Stop the Music” plugins with LastFM support. It integrates with Tidal, Deezer, or Qobuz (and I think Spotify, but not sure, I only use hifi streaming services). They work similarly, and in some ways better because you have full control over Blissmix’s functionality for chroma, timbre, tempo, album and track repeats, and more. Also, Lyrion can stream directly over DLNA to a client, whereas Plexamp was just Airplay/Bluetooth/Google Cast (I have Apple stuff, but Airplay is terrible quality).
It’s sad, but plexamp is just my “local download” player now on my phone for when I’m driving, since it downconverts flac to Opus at higher quality than MP3 and at smaller sizes.
I highly recommend trying out Lyrion. I’ve used nearly everything for music in the past, including even having a year of Roon, but Lyrion has replaced pretty much everything.
- Comment on Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April 2 months ago:
They have sales, and it’s not really worth paying the “MSRP” price. My wife got Plex Pass for $80 back in 2023, and I got it late last year for $90.
- Comment on Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April 2 months ago:
Plexamp full features are only available with Plex Pass. Jellyfin doesn’t have anything remotely comparable (though you could always just run Lyrion).
- Comment on Chrono Trigger Is Timeless 2 months ago:
I made a post about the shader I’m using on the Steam Deck with an album of screenshots hosted outside of Lemmy upload (on Lensdump) and seems to be better, I think Lemmy is doing something to the image with compression.
- Comment on Chrono Trigger Is Timeless 2 months ago:
I grabbed some more comparisons, this time from my tablet using the CRT-Consumer shader. Notice stuff like the bloom from the window and shading around the curtains, the kitchen appliances and plants, general shading around dithered stuff like the tent, and the trees on the world map.
- Comment on Chrono Trigger Is Timeless 2 months ago:
Yeah, it looks a bit different on my Steam deck and TV, maybe because they’re OLED displays. It doesn’t come across as dramatic as it is in person on the screenshot. In person there’s more bloom and higher contrast, the characters look more… planted in the world, I guess is the best way to explain it.
Like, is you look at the rounded parts of the big robot there’s a bit more depth and contrast that give it more rounding and image depth in shadows, but again, the screenshot isn’t doing the effect justice.
Also, the still image doesn’t help because the shader also impacts how the game looks in motion.
I took the screenshots on my Steam Deck, but hadn’t actually seen them until I uploaded here.
- Comment on Chrono Trigger Is Timeless 2 months ago:
I don’t have nostalgia for the game, tried it a few years ago but bounced off. Not sure why, just wasn’t in the mood for a HRPG at the time I guess.
I recently gave it another go, been playing it on my Steam Deck and it’s been great. I’m a few hours into it in the future currently and I think it’ll stick this time, it’s great.
Only thing is the game feels like it was really made with CRT behavior in mind. Like the game has some amazing shading and almost 3D depth to a lot of the art but without CRT shaders you don’t see it at all. If you play the Steam version, reshade goes a long way. I’m using a combination of CRT-frutbuhn, EasymodeCRT, and vibrance and it looks amazing.
- Comment on Favourite Mario Kart game? 2 months ago:
MK7 has been my favorite, especially with the CTGP-7 mod.
- Comment on Self-hosted home server project - call for competent advisory opinions 3 months ago:
You didn’t mention your budget. That will impact things.
If you have a closet with a rack you have a lot of options, hardware-wise. If you’ll be running this in your living room, for sake of your sanity, something like an AMD mini-PC with a small NAS for additional hosted storage via NFS would probably be your best bet.
A PC with Proxmox could do this handily. I have a cheap Ryzen 5500u mini PC hosting my Plex server, audiobookshelf, home assistant, and DLNA server (AssetUPnP). It’s only 6 core/12 thread and32GB RAM but still has resources to spare. You could totally do an 8c/16t one and throw more RAM at it.
- Comment on Amazon is changing what is written in books 3 months ago:
Music is absolutely solved.
- Qobuz store
- Bandcamp
- Tidal media downloader
- Deemix
Screw streaming. Local is always better. Purchase and/or download FLAC. I’ve got nearly 1 TB of music on my NAS and my collection is regularly growing. From Qobuz and Bandcamp, anything you purchase is owned, and DRM free.
- Comment on Current chain of command 3 months ago:
Reported. This community is for shitposts, not real facts.
/s
- Comment on France runs fusion reactor for record 22 minutes 3 months ago:
This is freaking awesome. Only a few years ago it was exciting to see a fusion reaction last a fraction of a second.
- Comment on Getting a Steam Deck to emulate retro games? 3 months ago:
I bought my deck predominantly to play PS2 games and it’s great at it. Unfortunately, my Steam backlog showed up and reminded me it has other uses so I haven’t spent that much time emulating on it.
- Comment on Kindle Is Making It Harder to Switch to Rival eReader Brands. 3 months ago:
The Nova 3 released in late 2020, it hasn’t existed for 8 years.
- Comment on New Junior Developers Can’t Actually Code. 3 months ago:
You and I read a very different comment, apparently. There was nothing there saying new is bad. Maybe read it again.
- Comment on Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books 3 months ago:
No book turn animations in Neo Reader, but other apps might, like Moon+ Reader. I prefer the Boox interface and warm light, and it’s much more customizable. Also, being android based means access to alternative reading apps, and even manga.
Not sure if you can still buy the Nova line, I’ve had it since 2020. I bought the Paperwhite Signature as an “upgrade” but the Boox screen is larger, the warm light is nicer (warm orange/tan, the Kindle warm light is pee yellow).
- Comment on Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books 3 months ago:
And mine are digital, DRM stripped, stored locally, backed up to my NAS, and cloud.
Don’t be a Luddite.
