chillpanzee

@chillpanzee@lemmy.ml

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK a US passport card costs $30 and is definitive proof of citizenship. It fits in your wallet like a credit card.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Would be a useful tip in a world where ICE follows the law.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The AI explosion isn't just hurting the prices of computers and consoles – it's coming for TVs and audio tech too⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, pretty much. Any decent display on a TV is gonna have all the shit you don’t want, but you can (at least for now) just not connect your smart TV to the internet. You;'d have a good TV with the “smarts” neutered. But you’re still paying for it.

  It’s a bit like the ATSC broadcast stack. You likely aren’t using it, but the industry still makes you pay for it (and it’s not cheap).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Its true they force you to use a ms account to complete install

  They do, but at least for now, the workaround isn’t hard (passing the localonly param). I just bought a laptop this week and did it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How are people discovering random subdomains on my server?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  it’s not even obscurity; it’s logged publicly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app”⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe they hired the brand team from HBO.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK Tempur Mattresses fail quickly and the warranty is fake⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A “great” warranty has always been the clearest sign of a shit product, but even so, defects do happen, and plenty of warranties are real and valid.

  Our perception of warranties is distorted because we sell purchase protection and breakdown insurance for damn near everything now, and we call it an “extended warranty” rather than the insurance product it is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you think Google execs keep a secret un-enshittified version of their search engine and LLM?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I worked for a FAANG company for a lotta years. We always had the fully spec’d laptop/desktop/phone. Its not reserved for just the C-suite. The tech is cheap compared to almost every other aspect of employing expensive labor. Hell, the food we got every day probably cost the company well more than the tech.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For YouTube, I’ve switched to Grayjay and I just subscribe to creators I like. I ignore the home feed.

  This has removed AI slop, ads, and shorts, which is awesome, but I the tradeoff is jot having a useful recommendation feed. Its not as good as YouTube of old, but worlds better than YouTube of the last few years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your opinions of using Pi-hole for DNS within a homelab environment?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I ran it on a Pi Zero W for a bunch of years, and it was as stable and problem free as it gets.

  Early this year I swapped out my wifi/router for a minipc running OPNsense. I retired the pihole since OPNsense has Unbound built in.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bit flips: How cosmic rays grounded a fleet of aircraft⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It happened once

  Not even once according to the article. They don’t actually know what happened on that flight, but their simulations can’t test test for cosmic radiation and didn’t reveal any other errors, so they presume it must be the cause. Then made up a story about that being a day of heavy day of solar activity, which the article refutes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I was to watch the next jake paul fight on netflix, but only watch the first couple fights and turned it off before watching him fight.Would they know?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, they know exactly where you stop, and if enough people stop at a key moment (think GoT Red Wedding), they might use that data to inform future decisions, but it’s a really mixed signal in this case. First, they have to be looking for “who stopped before the main event” as some sort of a signal. They might be, or they might look at it in the future, but like the previous person said, you’re counted as a view well before you get to that point. In their eyes, you’ve effectively voted in favor of Jake Paul because the main event is Jake Paul. It’s sorta like ordering a happy meal as a protest to MacDonalds and hoping they notice you didn’t eat the burger patty. There are clearer ways to protest, like not watching it in the first place, or canceling your sub.

  Also, it won’t fuck with Jake at all. He’ll get paid either way, and there are probably a hundred other metrics his team will care about more than that one (if Netflix even shares that level of detail). Moreover, being controversial and polarizing isn’t a problem for Jake Paul. I’m sure they expect plenty of this sort of thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fun/interesting things to self host?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  AdventureLog is pretty cool. Pairs with Immich nicely too.

  Paperless NGX is awesome. Of course Immich. I also really like Firefly-iii and Home Assistant.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  An even funner Southwest PR story is the Malice in Dallas. I don’t have a good resource to point you to, but you can google it. it was an armwrestling match between CEOs to settle a corporate dispute. The two companies holstered their lawyers and settled the grudge with a big PR event.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You probably already know this, but for others’ amusement… Southwest’s Pilot Training pathway program is called Destination 225, and I doub’t that many prople even in the airline business get the reference. So if nothing else, they’ve got a branding headstart.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t remember where I watched the presentation. I think it might have been one of Brian Schiff’s videos, but I don’t remember. Here’s a link to it I found online. www2023.icao.int/safety/OPS/…/Truenorth.aspx

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Fun fact… there is an ICAO effort to “get rid” of magnetic headings for runway numbers. I listened to a presentation they did last year, and as much as I went into it thinking it wasn’t needed, I was a convert listening to them.

  Btw, magnetic variation is pretty significant in some places. It’s 13 degrees where I am.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats a good and proper alternative google message thats clean but better with privacy? - for texting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think any of them support RCS, for whatever that’s worth to you.

  The only place I really miss that is with a fantasy football shit-talking group chat. Otherwise, I’ve tried to move away from SMS/MMS/RCS. It’s hard to pull people away from iMessage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that Apple makes hundreds of millions of dollars with personalized advertising. If you have an iPhone, you should turn it off.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Most settings on iphone only turn off the capability for you, not apple. Wifi is a good example. There is litereally no way to turn the radio off, and the settting merely prevents your use of Wifi while Apple still continues to use it in the background (for Find My mesh and location traction among others).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Awesome-web - Alternative fronted for awesome-selfhosted⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I gave it a look. And I’ll say that personally I’m not a big fan of card stack views, but that’s prob just me. The main reason I’m leaving the note here is to say that the app name bounding box in the cards seems to just truncates the app name. It works fine at 75% zoom, but at 100% zoom I only see the first 2 or 3 characters of the app name. Could be an artifact of the browser I’m using (Brave/MacOS), but figured I’d let you know.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that americans can now deduce private jet expenses from their taxes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s bonus depreciaton, not expenses, and it’s a business tax benefit, not an individual tax benefit.

  Businesses can, and for a long time, have been able to deduct aircraft expenses. Nothing has changed there, and it’s not unique to this turd of a president. The return of bonus depreciation lets them depreciate faster, but again, depreciation is not new. It’s reasonable to removed about that, but you have to get every fact wrong to make that complaint.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bad experience on selfhosting nextcloud⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I installed AIO on an old machine (retired gaming PC) a few months ago. I use NC notes and file sharing, and have disabled other services I don’t need. It’s running behind a proxy server. It’s worked fine so far. I use Immich for photos though, not Nextcloud. I heard a lot of gripes about Nextcloud for photos.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Refrigerator ads are finally here!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  gas station near me had those about 5 years or so ago. I’m not sure if they still have them or not, but volume pumped up to a crazy level too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft confirms Windows 11 is about to change massively, gets enormous backlash - Neowin⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry for being an idiot, but what is an agentic OS?

  Agentic OS is a buzzword that’s meant to imply that the OS is (or has) an AI agent doing useful things for you in the background without you explicitly asking it to do those things (ie an agent working for you). For an agent to be useful, (they say) it has to know and learn everything it can about you, your life, your friends, activities, contacts, work, and so on.

  The tradeoff is pretty extreme though. Everything you do on the PC is watched, analyzed, catalogued, and retained by MIcrosoft (and possibly whoever they choose to share the info with, which is likely every government that asks). The features that do this are generically called client-side scanning and Microsoft has a few specific variants you can read about called Copilot Recall, and Copilot Vision.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How Google Tracks and Scans Everything on Your Android Device⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Looking just at location… Apple is actually better at location tracking precision than Google, and you can’t turn it off (even powering off your phone doesn’t shut it off). Disabling location services doesn’t prevent the data collection by Apple, it only blocks apps from using it.

  Apple is probably better at not sharing your data with others than Goolge, but that’s a position of faith, not fact. If you trust Apple and are diligent about blocking location access to 3rd party apps, it’s better. But you should expect that if you’re giving location access to a free app (like Google maps, a weather app, a ride share app, a streaming app, etc.), you can bet they are selling your location data.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How Google Tracks and Scans Everything on Your Android Device⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is Google Play Services sampling your location so that it can send it in to Google HQ as part of a secret location tracking operation that runs without user consent or knowledge

  Yes they track your phone’s location and movement constantly, but it’s not a secret.

  For an example of the evidence you seek… Google SensorVault location data was how they identified and convicted the January 6 terrorists. You might argue that complying with warrants isn’t misuse of the data, but I’d argue that both the data itself, and the level of precision and detail, shouldn’t be captured and logged in the first place. And I’m fairly sure that most google customers have no idea how pervasive and extensive the tracking is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Question on TV's⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You can’t get a decent non-smart TV, but you can just not connect a Smart TV to the internet.

  Any TV you buy will have a range of “picture quality enhancement” settings. These all introduce some rendering latency. Game modes on TVs (for the most part) bypass the PQE functions. Rtings.com is a quality source for this kind of info. They do good work and publish their testing methodologies.

  Source… worked a shitload of years in TV electronics, and was part of the industry from Smart TVs being godawful to just a few years ago.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are Michelin Stars so highly revered when they originated from a tyre company?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Because they have held a very high standard for a very long time. It is one of the few “brands” of reviews that has remained trustworthy over the years. They only award a star to excellence; nothing in the guide is bad. Indeed there is lots of good food that’s never mentioned in the guide.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google pulls the plug on first and second gen Nest Thermostats⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah. And even “loss of functionality” makes it sound passive; as if it just happened by accident. They Intentionally broke a working product.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google pulls the plug on first and second gen Nest Thermostats⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I bought one a bunch of years ago. Maybe 10 years. It worked fine. Did it’s thing. Then for no reason google chooses to kill it. Fool me once.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the best way to ease getting back in shape after years of little to no exercise?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I know you said no gyms, but a few sessions with a personal trainer at a gym isn’t a terrible idea. The PT will give you a realistic plan to get started. Some goals to keep you on track, and they’ll be that important role of the person checking in on your progress, and appointments you need to keep. Yeah, it’s all a bit of self-delusion… you can get most of this from the web for free, but sometimes having another person to push you is hugely helpful.

  Also, pick up basketball, hockey, soccer/football, and rugby are fantastic exercise that feel like the chore of exercising because they’re a game. If you like cycling, there’s likely a local group or two you can join for long weekend rides.

  I can’t speak to the anxiety and depression, so my advice might not be good advice for you.