jqubed
@jqubed@lemmy.world
- Comment on We Won't Be Covering ModRetro Products Moving Forward 2 days ago:
I had a G4 that I liked pretty well, until after about 18 months it inevitably stopped working well, like all my early Android handsets. My Pixel 2 was my first phone to make it to 3 years (although Google did have to do a warranty replacement 20 months in) and it was still good but stopped getting security updates. The Pixel 2 being good ironically lead me to iPhones. I looked at my stepdaughter using a 6-year-old phone that still got updates, still could easily get parts for repairs locally, and started to wonder why I was spending hundreds of dollars buying a new phone every couple years.
- Comment on We Won't Be Covering ModRetro Products Moving Forward 3 days ago:
IIRC it was Verizon; Motorola and eventually a couple other manufacturers would sell the same phones under different names in other countries.
- Comment on We Won't Be Covering ModRetro Products Moving Forward 3 days ago:
I know Verizon has to pay Lucasfilm to use the term “Droid” for their Android phones, back when iPhones were AT&T exclusives and they were using the slogan Droid Does, but I think Lucasfilm had also specifically trademarked/copyrighted/whatever the term. I remember projects like Trillian and Babelfish took their names from the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide properties but I don’t think they did any licensing.
- Comment on this is a stickup 6 days ago:
!stick@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on The AI Backlash Is Here: Why Backlash Against Gemini, Sora, ChatGPT Is Spreading in 2025 - Newsweek 1 week ago:
What began in 2022 as broad optimism about the power of generative AI to make peoples’ lives easier has instead shifted toward a sense of deep cynicism that the technology being heralded as a game changer is, in fact, only changing the game for the richest technologists in Silicon Valley who are benefiting from what appears to be an almost endless supply of money to build their various AI projects — many of which don’t appear to solve any actual problems.
- Comment on at what point in life it's too late to go back to school? 1 week ago:
It depends on if you’re going back to school for career reasons or personal enrichment. For the latter it really is never too late. For your career, though, too late will depend on when you’re hoping to retire, when you’ll complete the extra schooling, how much the school will cost, and how much more money you’ll expect to make with your new degree.
Without any info, assuming you want to retire around 65, I would think it would be normal to want to use your new degree for at least ten years, so whatever schooling you’d want to do you would want to be finishing by the time you’re 55. But those other variables come into play. If you’re borrowing $100,000 to pay for med school, your cutoff date will probably be earlier because it will take a longer time to pay off the student loans. On the flip side, if you’re paying $5-10,000 for a 6-month programming boot camp that will boost your income by $10-20,000/year then you might even consider doing that at age 60, especially if you’re already bringing a computer science background where your experience and new skills will keep you in high demand.
There’s not really a one-size-fits-all answer to this question.
- Comment on Unifi Anonymous...? 1 week ago:
I don’t have advice to give you beyond looking at !ubiquiti@lemmy.world and !ubiquiti@lemmy.ml
- Comment on New Jurassic Park looks lit! 1 week ago:
I feel like Rat Race was an underappreciated movie
- Comment on New Jolla phone and Sailfish 5 offer a break from iOS-Android monotony 1 week ago:
Gives a nice overview of the state of alternative mobile OS and devices, too
- Comment on i told you so 1 week ago:
Handyman thinks lack of use in the basement lead to a clog that built up over the years. Years before Airbnb they were renting out the apartment through the local tourism department because there aren’t a lot of hotels here but it’s a scenic area. But they stopped as they got older so now it only sees use for a couple weeks twice a year when we come. But when we come with 3 people it puts more pressure on the waste line and starts backing up, and finally became a problem tonight.
He thinks there’s a drain in the floor of our bedroom and somebody just put down laminate flooring overtop of it. There should be a drain somewhere but he doesn’t see one, and given the water intrusion there as the other drains were backing up that’s his best guess. Won’t know for sure until he pulls up the floor this week, though.
- Comment on i told you so 1 week ago:
We rushed up to my in-laws about a week-and-a-half ago because my mother-in-law seemed to be dying (it seems like she turned the corner this week and I think she will recover). Tonight, though, I ran to the bathroom in the basement apartment we use at their house with an upset stomach. At the bottom of the toilet was paper, a telltale sign of a toilet that was clogged but has since drained without flushing. Feeling like there was no time, I went ahead and used it, figuring I’d use the plunger after.
While I was there I could hear my wife in the kitchen on the other side of the wall. When she ran the sink the water in the toilet started gurgling, which is not something I’ve experienced before. Before adding any paper I figured I should try a “courtesy flush” to see what happened. It was clogged. Fortunately I didn’t end up needing much paper, but I was still surprised to find the toilet had already drained by the time I had finished.
I decided I should try to keep running the water into the toilet, figuring that maybe it was draining too fast but if I could keep the water pressure up it might clear itself and I wouldn’t need the plunger. I tried it for a couple minutes but then heard a sound and noticed that water was filling through the drain into the bathtub. At that point I figured this was probably not a plunger problem and instead time to call a plumber.
I told my wife but she still thought it was worth trying the plunger first, so I went to go through our room to head upstairs and get it. As I entered the room, I had the sensation that the laminate floor was floating, before it sank down into a puddle. I was wearing socks. I told my wife, so she went upstairs to tell her dad. When she came back down she came back through our room, also wearing socks. It was while waiting for the emergency plumber that I saw this post.
- Comment on I get junk mail from T-Mobile & Verizon offering services that when I call them they say my address is not available for service. Both offer those services to my neighbors. How do I deal with this ? 1 week ago:
Maybe not a blacklist, but I know a house I lived at previously (back in the era when landline telephone was fading out but still common) one phone company didn’t offer residential service at my address but did for neighbors’ addresses and kept telling me I could only get business service. I assume a previous resident had used business service and the address was then in their system as the location of a business. Perhaps something similar is happening to you.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Is he still on TV? Twenty years ago I worked a part-time job doing data entry at a small local brokerage. One of the assistant brokers used to complain because they had a client who would call in almost daily wanting to buy a stock he had a hot tip on, which was invariably whatever Cramer had featured on his show the night before.
- Comment on YSK that Elon Musk now hates California. He lives in West Lake Hills, Texas. He loves to visit Austin. 2 weeks ago:
I realized a few years ago that most Americans will earn at least $1 million during their working lives. Even if they’re “only” making $30k/year that will get them to $1 million in a little over 33 years. They’ll probably never have much in their bank account, but they’ll have earned that much at some point by the time they retire.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to showerthoughts@lemmy.world | 1 comment
- Comment on Is it normal to be really sentimental/upset over a bowl I accidentally smashed? I had it since I was 17 (am 30 now) and my boyfriend was alive back then too. 3 weeks ago:
I don’t know if this is something available where you live, but Replacements, Ltd. may be able to help you. That’s basically why they exist.
- Comment on How long after starting Vitamin D supplements should you notice results? 3 weeks ago:
It probably depends if you’re getting enough. The best way would be if your doctor tests your levels. My doctor initially prescribed me to take like a 50,000 IU dose once a week with dinner or something like that, but I found it hard to remember. I asked about switching to something daily and took an over-the-counter pill every day, which became a routine and harder to miss. After another test we doubled it so I take two pills every day and now an in a better range. But there were months in between the tests, so I think it takes time to really have an impact.
- Comment on Immich Is Now Stable! 3 weeks ago:
As we’re committed not to add paywalls, this purchase will not grant you any additional features in Immich. We rely on users like you to support Immich’s ongoing development.
- Comment on Parking police 4 weeks ago:
Taping to the camera as shown on the left would be challenging to make work at least. The cameras don’t put out light so whatever image you use would have to be on paper thin and light enough for backlighting to work. The distortion that close would also be extreme, so you’d want to keep the main part of your image in the center and small. And yeah, it’d probably be blurry, but the resolution on most of those cameras was already pretty bad up until a few years ago so you might not notice.
- Comment on Parking police 4 weeks ago:
The manufacturers were opposed to them being required. I think they claimed it would cost an extra $200-250 per car. But they sure won’t pass up on the ads if they think they can get away with it!
- Comment on Another angle of this modern art installation 4 weeks ago:
I’m very curious about who screwed up first
- Comment on Reuse old security system 4 weeks ago:
It might be possible to upgrade the system but you’ll probably need to find someone who knows these systems better. There used to be a cover on this panel where the buttons and speaker are; that might’ve given a make or model number, or maybe even had a sticker for the company that installed or monitored the system. This is the control panel but there might be a hub/brain somewhere else where all the wires lead, perhaps in a closet or utility room. You might find more information there.
The system sounds like it’s functional; in most jurisdictions the sellers should have provided you with the information necessary to use the system, like alarm codes and contacts for a monitoring service (if any). If you get a code that might be all you need to use the system (you should change the previous owner’s code).
It’s possible to use the alarm without a monitoring service, but I feel like they’re more useful with a service. If there is a monitoring service they would be able to have someone come check out the system and reset the codes for you, show you how to use the system. Is there a sign in front of your house with the name of an alarm company?
This looks like a system old enough that it would probably need an actual telephone line for monitoring and uses wired sensors. Wired sensors are probably a good thing. The sensors don’t need batteries and aren’t vulnerable to jamming like wireless sensors. They’re more expensive to install, though, especially in a finished home. Since yours is already installed, that’s a boon. Most current systems are probably designed for wireless but I’m sure there there are ways to use the hardwired system with more modern systems and get features like remote access.
- Comment on You can now have tables in Notepad on Windows 11 4 weeks ago:
WordPad was removed by Windows 11 version 24H2.
- Comment on Android QuickShare is now compatible with AirDrop 4 weeks ago:
Here’s the Google blog post announcing it: blog.google/products/…/quick-share-airdrop/
- Comment on Calling all Dickheads! 4 weeks ago:
It’s one of the very small number of books to defeat me. The narrative part was okay but every other chapter was full of wildly inaccurate “natural history” descriptions of whales and their lives and I just couldn’t take it.
- Comment on Google’s Sundar Pichai says the job of CEO is one of the ‘easier things’ AI could soon replace 4 weeks ago:
I’m sure there are many jobs AI is not capable of doing but some CEOs probably do a bad enough job that an AI chat bot could probably do better.
I know we like to dump on CEOs all the time but a good CEO does not seem like one that could be replaced by AI, certainly not by what is currently being hyped. There are just a lot of highly visible companies with CEOs who aren’t actually very good. I suspect the dysfunction of publicly traded companies and the goals of Wall Street investors (or other nations’ equivalents) frequently not aligning with a good long-term health of a company has a strong influence on this.
And of course these guys will be happy to have AI replace them; they’ve already made boatloads of money and think they’ll be able to keep that going even if they lose their job.
- Comment on GameStop workers say its trade anything day will be a huge mess 5 weeks ago:
I don’t work there and I also say it will be a huge mess
- Comment on RIP Mac Pro, I guess. 5 weeks ago:
I can’t remember if it’s announced or rumored, but I think there’s an entry-level MacBook coming with an A17?
- Comment on Looks like now Mbin, at least on mobile, mixes threads and microblog posts 5 weeks ago:
Yes, those were features in the most recent release, although I can’t find the announcement post offhand.
- Comment on The MP944 was the ‘real’ world’s first microprocessor, but it was top secret for nearly 30 years — F-14 Tomcat's chip lived in the shadow of the Intel 4004, but was eight times faster 5 weeks ago:
Unless they’re seeing actual benefits for a neural processing unit, I’d guess you’re right about the processors. The ISS runs on 386 processors and those were a surprisingly outdated choice in that era. Even with the advanced flight characteristics of a modern fighter, I’d guess they don’t really need the power modern chips are capable of offering.
But yeah, the radars and other sensors? Certainly not off-the-shelf for flagship aircraft.