The whole TV streaming space is just super depressing. Even though I try to self host as much as I can, nothing I’ve found comes close to the experience of Android TV even with the ads (though you can replace the launcher to fix that problem).

Good point, I missed adding that crucial detail.

Smart Homes arent terrible, but it is easy to end up with a terrible smart home if you don’t take care in designing it.

Consider who is using it. Are they tech saavy enough to use an app? Is every user only within your household? If not, make sure everything can be controlled without an app, smart buttons are a great solution. What automation actually benefits your lifestyle? Keep it simple where possible, start with just lights and maybe some sensors.

I think it is best to have an overall plan to make sure your devices work together, but start small. Choose devices that run on stable platforms and locally. Make sure everything can connect to Home Assistant, even of you don’t plan on using it, having the option may benefit you in the future.

I have a hard time calling this enshittification, it dilutes term if it is just used to mean anything getting worse. Rather it should be used to describe the purposeful corporate destruction of a service’s value to boost profit after attracting users.

I’m a big fan of spicy food, but I rarely use hot sauce and am not a fan of buffalo wings. For me I like foods that have chiles where the spice is part of the flavour that makes the dish taste good.

This post assumes way too much and gives the businesses more credit than they deserve. All the AI companies are looking for is maximizing compute per unit of rack space. They are only operating under the goal of winning the AI race to become wildly profitable and powerful. There is no consideration for any bankruptcy proceedings if/when the AI boom comes crashing down as that isn’t their problem at that point.

The GPUs used for these LLMs are simply not in a form factor that could be used for consumer devices, they fit in racks that use far more power than a home computer would be able to provide.Making them that way would be utterly idiotic.

Companies do it because customers continue buying the products, if sales dropped significantly due to the subscription then they would be forced to change.

Personally I will not buy anything that relies on the cloud or a subscription to keep running. My only subscriptions are Tidal and a couple more independent streaming services.

If you have network issues generally best practice is to unplug everything for 30 seconds and then turn the devoces on one by one from where the internet comes into the house and let each connect before moving up the chain. So typically modem then router then computer.

A big problem is that most denim people buy these days is “stretch” which massively reduces durability of the material. It has gotten way too hard to find classic denim in most stores.

I work closely with a company that uses Teams and every time I’m in a meeting that they organize I’m constantly shocked at how horrible that software is. Like I thought Google Meet wasn’t great but everything from sharing screens to the audio quality is leaps and bounds better than Teams.

I’ve always thought that BotW was a good game, but a terrible Zelda game.

I went to 4K monitors many years ago and agree there is a big difference, that said there are a lot of issues with HiDPI monitors on desktop OSs, plus it requires a strong GPU for gaming. Since then I’ve gone to 1440p and think it is an ideal middle ground for performance while looking almost just as sharp.

This is especially frustrating as a Canadian where our market isn’t big enough to have options for a lot of specific goods. I’ll look to buy something and pick what I want only to find that the choices are Amazon or a US retailer with insane shipping costs plus potential customs charges to Canada. Even if I do find a Canadian retailer that sells it, shipping is often more than the product itself.

I’ve started ordering a bit more from Aliexpress, especially for things less than $20 since shipping is usually free or a couple dollars. Otherwise larger stores in my area like Best Buy, London Drugs and Canadian Tire.

This is effectively impossible. Time in the market beats trying to time the market because it is hard to identify the dip until you have already exited it.

When, no matter how long it has been since you saw each other last it is like you saw them yesterday.

I’ve become fed up with a job I’ve had for a long time. I’m confused about what I even want to do because the changes and decisions that management keeps making has me burnt out at even the concept of my job.

I’ve known for well over a year that it is time to make a change, but that has gotten much more urgent recently. The problem is that it’s really haste to leave a well paying job for another I doubt will pay as well.

Dual booting is easy as long as you have a second drive or can shrink your Windows partition to provide space for your Linux install (this can be done within Windows). Your distro installer should have a couple options during install, one of which should allow you to install it on a specific partition without touching your Windows partition. After you select that option it should install everything including a bootloader like GRUB or systemdboot that will allow you to select Windows or Linux on startup.

A warning about dual booting though, Windows doesn’t like to be installed alongside another OS, it may realize this and fuck with your bootloader resulting in a system that won’t boot into your linux install. You need to boot up a live CD and do something called “chroot” into your sytem to reinstall your bootloader. Its not actually that difficult but can be a pain to figure out the first time. https://discovery.endeavouros.com/system-rescue/arch-chroot/2022/12/

I made the change about a year ago now. I saw the end of Windows 10 coming up and decided to install linux in a dual boot and try my best to use it exclusively for a couple months until I properly got used to it. You will need to accept that not every program you use on Windows will be available and you may have to try out a couple replacements before you find something that works for you. But most things have decent alternatives. Especially considering how much is done in a web browser these days, there aren’t too many programs I really miss from Windows (mostly 3D CAD and RAW image processing).

Also, note that the differences between distros is way overblown when it comes to compatibility, it is mostly just a case of whether your package manager has the packages you want available and how bleeding edge the packages your distro uses are. Debian based distros (e.g. Ubuntu and Mint) tend to use slightly older packages than ones that are rolling release like Arch which should theoretically be a bit more stable.

I was holding onto Prime for the unlimited automatic photos backup (I had 300+ GB backed up) but I finally cancelled a few months ago. I’ve ordered a couple of times since then when I couldn’t find what I needed elsewhere and instead of 2 days shipping is has consistently been 3 days delivery.

Yup, also while prices may have gone up across the board the spread of prices seems to have reduced. At this point eating out is a bad value but I feel like spending $30 on a good meal gives me better value than a nearly $20 fast food meal.