I don’t know what’s up with the algorithm pushing these lately. If it’s a video with 4 views from a channel with no subscribers I’m probably not interested in it. Sometimes they have a good thumbnail/title so I give them a chance but 9/10 times it’s terrible. Also often extremely right wing for whatever reason.

I thought that without blocking cookies the tracking is still active, even if you’re not being served ads from them. In those same LinkedIn privacy settings you’re automatically opted into having your data used to train AI models.

LinkedIn has some of the most obfuscated and complex ad targeting settings I’ve encountered. There needs to be a retirement to have a one click solution to disable ad personalization.

I miss the old topic specific internet forums so badly, but having tons of different accounts made the barrier to entry high so I understand why they died out.

Offsite backup is not optional for anything important. It’s worth paying for AWS or literally any other online storage solution for that copy. You don’t want a natural disaster to lead to the loss of all your life’s photos for example.

I also personally don’t recommend doing your own software for anything related to backups, you can’t test edge cases easily and it could easily lead to loss of data. I once used an app that attempted to manage its own backups delete it’s online backup when it lost its local data as it attempted to back up the blank local data.

Web browsers don’t integrate to a single account and payment system, nor do they preemptively load entire websites before you start browsing. So you’re always waiting for actions to complete or for images to load which feels slower. Mobile websites also tend to be very bloated slowing things down further than if the same functions were done natively in an app. There’s also no consistency between websites so you never know when something will/won’t work nor how far away you are from checkout. And then to top it all off there’s browser compatibility, which is typically pretty poor for anything that isn’t Chrome/Safari.

If a web browsers could really do the same thing all these companies wouldn’t feel the need to make their own device specific apps.

Even the best websites don’t feel as smooth as native UI elements, and somehow browser compatibility is still a very common issue. Signing in with Google and using gpay for checkout is kind of close, but each website has different design elements complicating the experience while giving up the same amount of your personal data as if using an everything app.

And you can repair them without needing to shut down a whole railway. All these projects to put solar panels in novel places are totally pointless and solving a problem that doesn’t exist.

This is why everything apps are so popular in many parts of the world. Using a mini-app from the internet running within another app is far preferable to downloading a whole app you may never need to use again. The way they do it in China is so seamless even if you’ve never visited the business before. There’s never any special account creation or entering of payment information.

Obviously it’s pretty terrible in terms of user privacy since the everything app has basically unchecked access to all of your personal information and habits, but the convenience is incredible and feels decades ahead of how apps work in the US.

Did you know that you can save 11% on EVERYTHING?

I literally bought the soft toy bear that sings the jingle. I’m surprised they haven’t expanded toward the coasts, I never even considered going to Lowes or Home Depot when I lived relatively nearby one. I was initially not a fan because they put the local True Value out of business but the selection and prices are just too good at Menards with much more silly charm. And the 11% rebates were amazing if you remembered to actually mail them in.

The ads on over the air programming are so so terrible. And even with a great antenna the many channels aren’t exactly the highest quality content even if they didn’t have ads.

YouTube has taken the place of over the air TV and for good reason.

If they had an actual plan or history of preserving games I’d not care about emulator development. But with the industry track record being so poor we need emulators if for nothing else for preservation.

So much culturally interesting data has already been lost to time which I bet future historians would absolutely love to have access to. The internet archive is missing much of the early internet, while old iPhone and Android apps are largely unable to be run even if you have the APK/IPA required,

Dental and vision are never included in US health insurance and operate on a totally different confusing insurance framework. They’re only available through separate plans and have their own deductables and terms. But unlike health insurance the premiums are generally orders of magnitude lower for both vision and dental.

The problem I’ve had is that the maximum benefit is typically in the range of $2k-$3k/yr for dental which is quickly hit if you have any oral surgery needs. Unlike with healthcare I don’t feel ripped off when paying for dental/vision since the few hundred dollars per year covers preventative care visits too.

Using stock as collateral for loans with insanely low interest rates is very, very common among even engineers in big tech. It’s a well known loophole passed on by the older engineers/managers at the companies to the younger ones. From the perspective of eventually paying the tax it doesn’t help, but inflation will outpace the interest on one of these loans so it does lower the effective rate and more importantly for the economy as a whole is cash earned/spent without having been taxed. Ya it will need to be paid back eventually, but that can take decades.

As an outsider I’m just amazed that with Brexit there wasn’t a large push to unify with Ireland. They never wanted to leave the EU and the border issues it has created have caused so many headaches.

Without a distro to rally behind I’m personally somewhat skeptical. Ubuntu was the best shot we had but since switching everything over to SNAPs it’s on the slow side. With the number of Windows ads and early end of support for Windows 10 there’s a real opportunity for desktop Linux, but until there’s a well supported distro that genuinely doesn’t require using the terminal I can’t see there being mass adoption.

Basically, though I tend to use GMX email aliases for these sorts of useless signups. I don’t want some temporary email account to be all that’s needed to get control over my TV should I ever connect it to the internet again.

Many of the cheap TVs with Roku built in require you to set up a Roku account before you can even use the HDMI inputs. After setting up your account you can disconnect it from the internet and use it as a normal TV, but I spent a while trying to get around this block. In the end I had to create a Roku account.

I work in tech and needed to do this as part of onboarding after receiving an offer. Asking during the interview is a little weird but if they’ve had problems where their desired candidate didn’t have the necessary documents then it makes sense. I wouldn’t assume they’re wanting to see your house, they’re likely just wanting to make sure you won’t need H1B sponsorship to get the necessary documents to complete the I-9.

Tasker has a similar companion app, it just doesn’t work with as many things on my Pixel 8 Pro as Macrodroid. The only phone automation I rely on anymore is Wifi hotspot toggling based on connected Bluetooth devices, which Tasker is incapable of now even with the companion app. I really don’t know how Macrodroid does it.

Of the automation apps my preferred UI Automate with its flows. It allows the complexity of Tasker without becoming unreadable as the automations become big. It’s harder to edit and even worse without root than Tasker.