4grams

I used to be a good tipper. I still am for genuine service, but the default “tip every transaction” has pissed me off enough that unless you personally handled my food, or performed a service for me, I instantly stab 0.

I was a a baseball game the other weekend, they had a self service kiosk for bottles of soda, a glorified vending machine. It had a default 18% tip added to the transaction that I had to drill into a menu to zero out. Fucking bonkers, not a human in sight, just a couple of sensors and a credit card terminal.

Tip culture has gotten way out of control since Covid, I’m refusing to participate anymore.

Pretty much. I’m a data hoarder, to a degree. My homebuilt, Ship of Theseus NAS is about 15 years old, and it contains data going back over 20. I save everything I produce.

I figure that one day, this data of mine will be fed into a system for future use, in the vein of how they construct people in the Star Trek Holodeck. So, I feel it’s up to me to curate that data, and be sure it’s accurate and reflects who I am.

These days it’s obvious that it will eventually be turned into training data for an LLM, but then at least, my data will have some structure and personality to it. Maybe someday a joke will be cracked for someone that came from a pattern I established. Probably not, but one can dream.

I never look at reviews, I just go in expecting to be disappointed and so usually am not. Even shitty movies are fun since I plan on them sucking…

Update- saw it last night. A bit of a mess, but interesting and enjoyable. I like how it was a retelling of the story but connected it with modern themes. I enjoyed very much the diverse cast, I like performances, and appreciate various takes on the roles from performers with different backgrounds. Dialog was a bit wooden in places, especially the last line, but it was a show, not a documentary so I don’t mind a little ham-fistedness.

The best part was the Trojan Horse portrayal. My whole life I’ve seen the cartoons of a horse rolled up to the gate, and a simple telling of how they were tricked. This put the human cost of it into perspective (the fictional human cost anyway), and the stuggle with how it unfolded by Odysseus. Made me think about it more than I ever have, and from a new perspective.

No, I think I can downgrade it, I need to find an older version of the firmware as they don’t have it available anymore. I think I need a 2024 version.

I do have auto updates turned off, I should just block it at the router.

I don’t know about brother anymore. I have one I bought because it would work with 3rd party ink. I updated the firmware and am now locked out from using anything but brother. I would up finding a hack to get it to stop checking the ink level, so I can at least print, but it’s a temporary fix (have had to do it a few times), and it makes it unable to tell me how much ink is left. No big deal, I just run the cartridges dry, but it’s less functional than when I bought it…

Nutshell, I used to trust bother, not anymore so an open option is a big desire of mine. If this is halfway decent, I’ll pick one up.

Same, I just figure if they want to use windows, then they need to accept all the work impacting problems and stoppages. Just like how they accept the security implications of an all windows network…

It’s so entrenched though, and the typical user doesn’t know any different these days so it’s all windows and cloud now. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for these things, but it doesn’t have to be the default all the time…

This and flannel was me in the 90’s; and everyone else. I loved the thermal under a t-shirt look, let me stay both casual and warm!

I’m convinced this has been the plan for some time. My kids don’t see the point of computers when they have their phones and school iPads. They dont understand the concept of data ownership and everything is temporary to them, whatever is fed by the algorithm.

They are better off that most, my hard core nerdiness has rubbed off so they at least know how to use a computer, have built one each themselves. I just hope it continues to be possible going forward, but I’ll be willing to bet, on the other side of the age verification crap, is even more restrictions. They plan a death by a thousand cuts, until it’s no longer feasible, then. No longer legal to run your own compute.

F’ing suck, used to be available to the masses. I hope it will again, but even a raspberry pi is a luxury good these days.

I have failing hard drives in my NAS but they are nearly 4x the price from when I bought them, so I’m struggling to save for replacements. I’m so pissed off that even used enterprise stuff that used to be cheap, is now also luxury goods priced. I will be paying 259.99 for a drive I used to pay 69.99 for.

I agree that the functionality is sometimes nice, but I would never keep data in just the cloud, at least anything sensitive or valuable. Beyond not trusting someone else with the integrity of my data, I also do not want to be subject to control of it or access to it. Lastly, my data is mine, and in most cloud providers, my data will also be used for AI training.

So, I enjoy using the cloud for some things, I still keep my primary data under my control, in my own known and backed up locations.

As for the forcefulness, there are a lot of us who care deeply about ownership and privacy, and there are a lot of those that dismiss our concerns as invalid or unimportant. Not that you are by any means, just that is what I see frequently.

Most of the time it does work, which is why it’s so goddamned hard to undo. I’ve been working on de-appleing, I’ve nearly completely de-Amazoned and am also working on de-googling. But these damn providers make it so difficult, they get in so deep. It’s not even me that makes it hard, I’m willing to make a little extra effort for a more privacy focused platform I control. No, it’s the family and friends that all are perfectly comfortable handing control of their data and frankly lives (everything is in these fucking things, schedule, contacts, financial stuff, all digital communication, photos, videos, etc…).

As long as you keep spending a lot of money, and upgrading to the newest devices, you will have a decent experience. As soon as you try to extend the life, find alternatives, look for ways to control your own data, then it gets real hard.

To be fair, it’s not just Apple. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, any of the big players are the same. They all manage to make it easy, so long as you are comfortable being captured.

That is true to some degree, but there is no Dem Soc movement within the gop. I’m no fan of the democratic party, but there are some decent folks in it. Aside from a couple single issue allies, I can’t think of anyone decent in the gop.

Yeah, I got your incredible wordplay, clearly mine sailed over your head (unsurprisingly).

I can tell this is how you see the world.

Dude, I don’t get why you are so very interested in carrying water for billionaires. I’m truly baffled in these conversations why people just insist on defending people who will never know they exist.

lol, good for those in power maybe.

You are walking away with the opinion that there are good billionaires who have your best interests in mind. I mean, that’s an opinion, just a really stupid one.

I’ll be fine here in the actual world.

Sigh, steam has zero support, like actually none and it’s well known in the industry. It’s 100% a drm platform, you must have an internet connection and a valid account to play your games that you purchased. You only have access to any of them because they allow it.

Again, I don’t care about your opinion because it’s wrong, and I will judge it the same as I judge people who have other similarly bad opinions. I do wish you would realize that your idea of a good billionaire is bullshit, but that’s to protect you from falling for the shit they are peddling. No skin off my nose if you choose to continue to suck up to them.

I will stand by my original statement that there is no such thing as a good billionaire. It’s this statement that I’m defending and your “nuh-uh, he’s really cool” has done nothing to convince me otherwise.

No, but I definitely have knowledge of what you don’t.

Look, suck up all you want, but there just is no good billionaires. There are ones where the goals are temporarily aligned, but to think that any of them do what they do for the benefit of others is just a moronic take. Some probably started that way but ALL billionaires alive do what they do for themselves, their own power and control. Gabe is better than most, but he’s still on the list and has done many terrible things. Valve is better than most gaming companies, but it’s still a DRM platform that has no customer support and dictates how the industry has to bend to their will.

I can tell you haven’t done your research because there are many stories of valve fucking people over, and again, valve is arguably a net negative for gaming in general due to how it’s completely destroyed the idea of ownership. We all only have access to our shit due to their good graces. I personally hate having thousands of dollars of things I’ve paid for, controlled by one single company (I too used to assume they were the good ones).

Because you don’t do much research outside of the ways that it’s impacted you.

There is factually no such thing as a good billionaire, and to pretend it’s an opinion based thing is just yet more lickspittle behavior.

There are less bad ones, but you cannot become a billionaire without hurting a shitload of people. It’s arguable that valve has been a terrible thing for pc gaming since it’s led to the death of ownership. But this is one of quite literally thousands of things that can be litigated in his case.

Update- this is like saying “in my opinion, donald trump is the best president we’ve ever had.” You can think this, it can be your opinion, but it’s wrong, and tells people a lot about who you are. Sticking up for billionaires is one of the more pathetic things a person can do.

There is no such thing as a good billionaire and to say otherwise is just lickspittle behavior. Gabe does not care about you.