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the iPhone was released 19 years ago, and even though I love carrying a camera/map/walkman/bubble-level device in my pocket, it fucked up our world real bad.
Technology has stopped becoming a tool and a utility and has instead become a form of control. Where we once felt freedom to explore the internet and learn about new things we now have. This technology turned against us to track our every second and control our every thought. Plus the endless crap updates that just make things worse over time instead of better, yeah I could see why people just gave up on this bullshit.
I am curious as to how out-of-touch your single downvoter is. Because you hit that nail right on the head.
Like, for my current place I’m still designing a CCTV system. But it will be using dumb PoE cameras, hardwired into a traditional NVR. But everything will be shielded, airgapped, and using dumb(ish) components that do not “phone home” to their manufacturer in any fashion.
I’m even looking into solid state and mechanical components for other home automation functionality. Like, nothing computerized to any degree, and therefore, incapable of being a threat or a data leak.
Theyre still tools, still utilities. Just because douchebags are using them in power games more often doesn’t make them any less so.
Almost every refuge in internet is for profit data hungry giants. Where are the random forums, personal blogs and the virtual world that used to exist.
All over the place, they just don’t get indexed high in search…
Neocities exists
I’ve been meaning to get back into blogging
I don’t know though
I still blog. Nobody reads it because search sucks, but I keep blogging. Others do too. There are dozens of us.
Me too. With no telemetry or interaction I don’t even know if even a single person has read my dump of thoughts.
WordPress has the ActivityPub plugin, which is the only way I’ve managed to disseminate my articles and have people interact with them.
Who’s your webhost? The data is almost certainly there.
It’s just a static jekyll server I host on my own.
Where are the random forums, personal blogs and the virtual world that used to exist.
they’re right here actually
YouTube?
Just seeing all those thumbnails with the shocked face and stupid arrows makes me want to scratch my eyes out.
But without the red circle and arrows how will you know you’re supposed to be looking at the exploding police car?
Just seeing all those thumbnails with the shocked face and stupid arrows makes me want to scratch
mytheir eyes out.
Maybe this is it
But also open source, self hosting, and diy tech is booming
But also open source, self hosting, and diy tech is booming
how can I use it to feed my family? I’m genuinely asking, I lost my enterprise job I hated.
Not sure unless you find people that want to switch over to non Microsoft etc products and you help them. I had a decent side gig getting people out of marketing companies by building them basic static websites and an email. Mainly plumbers, machine shops etc. They went from paying over a grand a month to like 20 bucks. It got out of hand from word of mouth and my lack of knowleges pretty quickly though
This might not be your issue but replace the subscriptions you use with FOSS ones.
Windows for Linux. MS365 Office for LibreOffice (although I guess you could say Google docs too). DropBox for Filen (or other services). … Gameing for retro Roms? Etc.
Theres also lots of foss support for pirating streamed media.
I couldn’t belive how many my live at home 18yr old cousin was paying for.
- hotspot WiFi
- playataton online
- game pass to play whatever game
- Netflix
- Spotify
- YT premium
- … let alone the mobile plan itself
Honestly, here’s the thing. My PC is still running Win10. It just works. My life is stressful and chaotic and my escape is gaming. I love modded Skyrim and I love gaming and when I get a chance to sit down at my computer I just want to fucking escape. I don’t want to troubleshoot, I don’t want to fiddle, I just want to load my game and have fun.
That is what has been keeping me from switching to Linux these past few years. I have Win10 tweaked in the registry so it can’t run copilot or AI, the start menu can’t connect to the Internet so it can’t show me ads, it’s still Microsoft and I don’t love it but I don’t have to think about it.
If someone came along and said hey, for $100 I’ll install Linux on your computer, make sure all your drivers are installed, make sure all your hardware works, and get your games and files moved over, tested and working, and be around to troubleshoot in the future and teach you basic troubleshooting if you need me (for an additional reasonable fee), I’d pay it. I’m not made of money, but I don’t want to spend my time or limited brain power doing that stuff and I’d be more than happy to offload it to someone else.
As someone who does Linux tech support for 2 people as a hobby/because I love them, it would cost you more than $100 for all that.
But $300 for the setup and then $100 per year for support would be reasonable as long as you don’t expect me to drop everything and rush over when something changes/breaks.
I’d happily pay that if it allowed me to not have to deal with it.
I’m not a technological idiot, it’s just not my thing and I find it very stressful to deal with. It would be worth it to me to not have to.
I hear you. It’s a pain even when you have the skills to do it. I am looking for a secondary income stream and want more people using Linux, so maybe I should offer that for people. But ugh, the ways a computer can break can be so stupid.
I understand that you do not want to fiddle with a computer, I was once like that and that is what kept me from switching to any OS on my computer. I want to let you know as an experienced Linux user though that once you setup linux, you do not need to do any more fiddling. For the files and personal stuff, just back it up to an external hard drive. That is pretty much it. I could help you for free, but I do not really have somewhere to message anyone.
This is completely false ime. Updates can break your setup, though on stable distros they usually don’t. Also anytime I installed a game I’d have to invest time to set it up. For older games this could take an hour or more to get everything working. For newer games some features might not even work.
I ditched Linux for a reason. It was useable but I need my gaming machine to be stress free, not another work project.
I was referring to stable distros. But once you got all your games set up, aren’t you kinda good to go? But I get your point still, though.
modded Skyrim
Probably a good thing you haven’t switched then. In my experience setting up mod manager and any external tools (like Nemesis) was not easy, but it’s doable. Mods themselves may not work though, especially if they are more external to Skyrim. So, for example, you can forget about ENB shaders. I mean, when I tried them they worked, but basically no other mods and in an empty area with 7fps is not exactly playable (on Windows it was unstable ~30fps with mods).
After using https://github.com/Anon00b/MO2 to install MO2 for Linux I just used MO2 the same way I used it in Windows and all my mods played nice.
Vortex is a flaming turd on linux. I recently deployed a 2300 mods collection for CP2077 with it. It took around 35 hours - with a premium nexusmods account, and thr download itself was only around 1 hour. In comparison, the multiplatform NexusMods App they mothballed completed the same task in about 3 hours, but since it never was really finished, it failed at the end of deployment. There is a community fork of the Nexusmods App available, but it sadly failed the same way - it can’t cope with really large collections, and i am not good enough of a programmer to really help out - i can read code as long as it does stay simple, but writing it is a completely different thing.
Apparently there is such a thing as a “Nexus Collection Downloader” for Mod Organizer 2, although I’ve never tried it. MO2 generally works fine though.
Will give it a whirl. My experience with Vortex after seeing the NexusmodsApp, that was coming along nicely, being shelved to go back to their tech-debt ridden piece of shit client (even back when i used it on windows it was a buggy mess, and the experience on linux is far worse with awful r/w performance and loads of different UI glitches. Once the whole window just collapsed into a 1x5 cm square with one black and 3 white borders while i was doing something else on the pc not even involving the app - unrecoverable. I became so infuriated that i even posted on the nexusmods forums (https://forums.nexusmods.com/topic/13543600-useable-linux-support/ - i was somewhat surprised that the mods approved the post at all, but since noone engages with the post, i will probably not get any response regarding their plans)
I’ve spent the past couple of years moving away from Apple devices and commercial software, into self-hosting as much as possible. While at this stage I wouldn’t go back to my previous set up, there’s no denying that it’s nowhere near as stable and easy to maintain.
Home Assistant, for example, is an incredible tool; that fails to turn some lights on and off far more often than Alexa ever did. It’s frustrating. Not so much that I’m going to bin it off and go back to relying on Amazon, but enough that I mostly just end up feeling kinda pissed off that the big companies have pushed me into a place where I’ve had to learn how to be a part time sysadmin, alongside my 9-5.
that fails to turn some lights on and off
This is the biggest issue I have with smart gadgets and home automation - they fuck up. Not even getting into the additional pains of fixing the automation when it fails, I’ve literally never gone wrong with pressing a light switch, or possibly pulling a cord. Full 100% success rate without rounding, even when the wifi’s down. I have to walk past the switches (and cords) to enter and exit rooms, so not pressing them on the way past doesn’t even save me any actual time.
Most of the automation I see seems to be the same - it introduces a chance of failure to something that already works, and/or imagines itself a solution to something that isn’t actually a problem. Boilers, fridges, toasters, beds - these were basically solved technologies until someone came along and decided to reinvent the wheel.
There’s a handful that do provide quality of life improvements to disabled people, but the overwhelming majority just seem to be parlour tricks that don’t reduce the human workload.
Technology nowadays is basically a cult, a coercitive cult. They often take technology as an end in itself rather than as a means to other ends, they reify it and even deify it, and they treat any moderate stance as an enemy and as a brake on their shitty eschatology.
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I’ve been getting interested in HAM, but it seems really intimidating to get started actually doing stuff and working towards a license. Any resources that you’d recommend for an absolute beginner?
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If you’re in Canada there’s hamstudy. Im sure there are similar community projects worldwide depending on where you live. The duality of HAM is that they try to educate and bring more people into the hobby while also being unfiltered pricks if you violate unspoken HAM etiquette which drives away more people…
I mean its true.
But my 4K120hz VRR Oled just never connects to the internet. gAmInG-rig is on Linux. Pixel got the Graphene treatment. Homeautomation always seemed stupid to me(personally, if you have usecases, good for you). If there were ready to use iot devices which doesnt suck and respect my privacy by just beeing on the local network: sure i would think about it. But hacking together something good with arduinos wasnt worth my time for now atleast.
VR headset OS is hacked and nerved to the best of my knowledge.
For now there are still ways to enjoy tech even though overall its a fucking hellscape.
< Homeautomation always seemed stupid to me
Home Assistant is a great way to achieve home automation without handing everything over to random organisations. Not perfect, but better than relying on Amazon.
I can only speak for myself, but the things that home automation usually automates don’t spark joy for me. Like they’re the kind of friction that I don’t hate, and ideally would want to just have more time to do.
Also I guess I just like being able to go somewhere in my house and there are no computers there
And ESPhome works very well together with Home Assistant if you want to build stuff yourself.
Just get an ESP32 and a sensor or other device that is supported by ESPhome and you will be able to program and connect it very quickly.
There are also ways to use sensors that are currently not supported by ESPhome by writing a custom component, but that is something that I don’t do, too much effort and it’s not that easy.
It’s also crazy just how many different devices can be connected to Home Assistant. If it is at least somewhat widely used chances are good that someome has already written a plugin to make it work.
Techies stopped jumping on the newest gadgets when the newest gadgets became plastic slop that did nothing but track what you said, did, where you went, etc, and reported it back to the company so they could build a profile of you and sell that data.
normies buy the shit now because its affordable (Because of the afformentioned creepware) and because they cant be bothered to do a modicum of research to realize theres a 98.6% chance that the device will be non-functional in a year because the company collapsed (having harvest all the information it needed before rebranding as a new company to do it all over again) and took the online servers with it, because of course your fucking toaster totally needs online servers to operate.
But while going bankrupt, it will sell all information about you to the biggest bidder. Terms and services for you fryer included sharing data with “partners”, so now your health insurance can jack up your premium because you used the fryer “too much for your own good”.
It took extra effort to find a damn washer and dryer that did not want internet access.
I still like technology. It’s still possible to find technology that doesn’t spy on you and that you can control yourself. I use Mint, by the way.
I use mint too! Only switched last year and i have never looked back.
It’s not the technology that’s the problem (mostly), it’s the corporations that control 99% of it.
Foss got me back into computing and seeing how fun it is. And turning my back on corpos as much as possible.
Installing Linux and bucking the yoke of Microsoft from my private life has reminded me that using a computer used to be fun and rewarding. Not even kidding.
My brother wanted to play Project Zomboid on a private server, and I’ve had more fun setting up and managing the server than I’ve had playing a lot of games that came out in the last few years. I need to get the time to setup CRON jobs backup and update the server and mods. I’m trying to figure out if I can do it all from my Proxmox OS, or if I need to build separate cron jobs both inside and outside the VM and schedule them with enough buffer that they won’t run at the same time… Trying to get a nice and quiet hour to myself to really dig into it.
Dude exactly the same here. I didnt realize computing had become depressing to me. Linux made me feel young again!
side note one of my co workers said it got so bad and he hates windows so much he just pretends he doesn’t have a laptop and uses his phone for everything. I’m like…bro go mint. Its so much better.
I have to use a Windows 11 machine for work, and I feel better every week about my decision to switch my personal computer from Win 10 to Mint. I’m trying to get my wife to switch over, but she swears up and down that she needs Microsoft Office to do basic document functions… I’d love nothing more than to get her away from that, and stop the $160 or so that I spend every year on Microsoft office.
seems like we have the same life. I also am forced onto 11 for work, and i DESPISE IT. every second i’m on win11 makes me so thankful i got rid of that garbage in my personal life. My SO actually did switch to Mint with me and we’ve worked through issues together, now we joke that she’s “Defeated Lynux” xD. So far, not a single thing has needed windows, except one time i tried to do a firmware update on a mouse through a linux vm with windows and bricked the mouse, and needed actual windows to reflash it. But thats a very small use case. and we can’t play spyware trash games like pubg or fortnite (which are brainrot anyways). I do miss pubg a little bit tbh, just driving around and causing havoc ha.
ah, unfortunate that they need office. Libreoffice won’t work at all?
NGL. I kinda miss League of Legends. I’ve been looking for ways to run it from a VM, no dice. I may end up making a portable installation of Windows 11 and keep it on a removable SSD, and then only boot it when I really get a hankering for playing Ivern.
Libreoffice would work fine, but it looks different, and for the layman, that can be completely unacceptable.
Long term techie switched to ecological field work in habitat restoration, mainly wetlands with some scrublands. In the field over 80% of the time. Bliss.
Fuck I need to do something like this. I’m terrified of the loss of income though. I need to make my life cost less.
I’m mildly interested in one of those coffee mugs that heats your coffee, as I drink mine slowly while working.
But I don’t want an app for that. I just want a wireless charger puck and a temperature dial, with maybe a failsafe so it doesn’t overheat when empty.
So much tech should be small little closed systems, but then you lose the ability to shove pop up ad notifications at the user, or scrape and sell their location, or preinstall residential prices you rent to highly suspicious companies.
I’m really happy with my Nextmug. No app, all manual. Basically it’s exactly what you described.
Look into getting a burnout mug. They have an extra layer before the vacuum layer that quickly absorbs heat then retains it to cool hot drinks to a drinkable temp then holds them there for hours. Zero electronics.
I got gifted an Ember and while it had an app, I never installed it or used any smart tech. Out of the box it was set to some temperature that was reasonable, so that was that
I’ve got a nice vacuum Stanley coffee cup that keeps my coffee hot for several hours. No electricity or app involved.
vacuum Stanley coffee cup
Sweet peak consumerism.
Then buy a knockoff. Thermo cups from Stanley are actually good even when considered overpriced. The Stanley and the knockoff I have are the best termocans I had up until now and I have a few
‘Peak consumerism’ would be using disposable cups from cafes. I’ve had it for about a decade and make my coffee at home. Grow up.
Grow up.
Why?
I got a 5 dollar one off Aliexpress 10 years ago, still running strong.
Nice. I’ve been hesitant to buy anything off such sites after a bad experience. I have doubts about the quality of their offerings.
I bought mine mainly because it fit into a bicycle water bottle cage. When I punctured the outer shell and it lost it’s vacuum, I bought another one, but for some stupid reason, they redesigned it and the new one didn’t fit into a bottle cage any more. A bit disappointing, but it’s still a good cup.
Just get a yeti mug. Keeps it hot for hours and no tech involved.
just get a cheap ceramic mug and drink your coffee faster. Are we putting caffeine into our bodies or are we just fucking around?
I think I’m fucking around because I drink my morning coffee slow and enjoy it
mm. I suppose theres nothing wrong with fucking around. I should fuck around more. OK I withdraw my grumpy comment. I think I’ve grown as a person.
One issue is that it starts hot and very slowly loses heat.
A smart mug can be set to your desired temperature, get there immediately, and stay there.
That being said, as a former Ember mug user, there is no need for that thing to only be controllable through an app. A dial on the side would be fine.
very slowly
Do you need it to be scalding hot the next day or something? My thermos keeps things insanely hot for like 12 hours. It’s actually pretty ridiculous because sometimes the coffee I made before 8 am is too hot to drink even by lunch.
It’s actually pretty ridiculous because sometimes the coffee I made before 8 am is too hot to drink even by lunch.
That’s the exact problem a heated mug solves. It cools quickly then stays at your ideal temperature.
That’s the point I was trying to make.
If you close it, the rate of heat loss in even a cheap vacuum flask is minimal, as in “scalding hot coffee poured in the morning is too hot to drink 8 hour later” minimal.
Tea candles are wonderful for this. I keep my Chemex over a candle and pour myself smaller cups from it, but I’m sure you can find solutions where you put the coffee cup directly over the candle as well. A coffee cup with built-in heating elements and electronics sounds insanely overkill.
Or you could use a spirit lamp instead of a candle. Top up the lamp and your drink with alcohol!
Don’t actually do this unless you have some very high % drinking spirits, fuels usually have various toxic things added to them to prevent you from having fun.
All this tech will be hugely inefficient and destined for failure until it becomes self contained and independent of a subscription.
More like 40 years ago
I just ordered a mechanical watch. Primarily because I think they’re cool, but it not even having a battery feels as far away from a smartwatch as you can get to me, and I like that too.
honestly, I like my Seiko mechanical watch, but there would be periods I wouldn’t wear it and then have to re-set the time often enough that it irritated me and I got a Citizen Eco-Drive, and I fucking love the thing. It does everything I need from a watch: tells me the date, tells me the time, has an easy way to switch on/off DST, even automatically accounts for leap years and has a few functions like a stopwatch and a timer that I never use; but it doesn’t play stupid games like modern tech and it never needs winding.
Having said that, seeing the winding mechanism through the clear back glass of my Seiko is magical in a way you can’t get from any electronic watch.
Yeah, I bought an Eco-Drive 10 years ago and it’s still working great. I never have to worry about it, it just works. I’ve bought two more since, the very cheapest basic model I could find (BM-8180 https://ebay.io/m/wZhDp4), and a fancier dressier one (CA-4553 https://ebay.io/m/TbSiJ5). My original GN-4W-S has taken a real beating over a decade, the glass and body are scratched all to hell, it’s been dropped and banged against door frames &etc. It doesn’t seem to mind, still keeping time like it did brand new.
If you want a watch that just does its job and doesn’t really need anything from you, the Citizen Eco-Drive models are great.
They should make a watch stand that rotates so they stay wound
Edit: patent pending, don’t steal my idea pls
I have bad news for you…
they do, but I’m not enough of a watch collector to necessitate owning one (I have a grand total of two, the two I just listed, and one is usually on my wrist)
60 years ago techies decided that technology couldn’t be trusted, because it is programmed by humans. I’ve yet to meet any programming wizards or seasoned IT personnel that adopt the latest crap. We’ve always distrusted our creations. We know how many mistakes we made while making them, that we weren’t able to fully fix.
I want to start farming and growing vegetables. My dream is to have a pantry filled with wall to wall canned and pickled stuff I grew myself… to live for an entire winter on good I grew and preserved…
Same with chickens. Fresh eggs and meat…
Do you have a garden?
I moved into a townhouse too late to plant anything but next year! Definitely not nearly enough to support myself but I’m saving to buy an acreage in the next few years.
You can have a garden on a small patio. Get wire shelves and put planters on them. Kinda like this:
They sell a “greenhouse” at Home Depot that’s basically a wire shelf with plastic thrown over it.
Or you can get a planter like this that sits on the patio or one that hangs on your fence
Nosy apt complex would complain about “excessive plants”.
Dude, we just gotta restart civilisation by this point.
The first generation of the post-apocalypse be filled with enthusiasts and nihilists alike.
A lot of tech today is over priced subscription/data farming crap that is locked and dumbed down so the average consumer can use it without overloading their limited brain capacity.
I’m not going to sign up or use an app on my phone to activate a piece of tech.
Luckily there are still DIY projects I can tinker with. And it’s much more satisfying making it yourself, although more time consuming. But that’s part of every hobby, right.
In 2000 the whole data hording apparatus hadn’t been fully implemented yet, and AI surveillance was something more so seen as science fiction, nothing to worry about until possibly 2100. Sure there was some data collection but it wasn’t like billions of people were walking around with surveillance tech in their pocket 24/7. Things have changed and drastically. Methods to monitor, model, predict, and control human behavior are now a thing and quite robust.
