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.

Bicameral mind due for a comeback I see.

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.

I’m a big fat guy who sweats a lot. I’ve never cared about the sweat though only the smell. So my whole life I’ve used nothing but deodorant, NEVER antiperspirant.

I’ve never had problems with either pit stains, nor lingering odor. I’m pretty convinced that antiperspirant leads to more smell; I’m not saying I’m fresh as a daisy at all times, but even at my worst, my odor isn’t that bad, while drier people often stink to high heaven.

Yeah, I’m not not big on retribution, but this fucker deserves no sympathy. This man deserves far, far more than what’s coming to him.

So, in other words, he is definitely going to give himself and his sons this award, and the republicans will happily go right along with it.

It came to me last night, how all this AI and the difficulties obtaining hardware. This is all them trying to end the idea of ownership, at least of your data. They want to control all the data, so everything you do, every picture you take, every game you play, every essay you write, will be only available in the cloud. We are getting close to the point where are must pay for every bit of our own data that we access.

This is the inevitable result. I’m very glad I’ve spent years building my own library of content. I just hope I can continue getting replacement hardware to keep it alive.

Good thing we’re about to give them a half a trillion dollars. Goddamn the entire world sucks.

I understand the authors reasons, but for me personally, having paid for the app, I’ll use it until it no longer suits my needs. Right now it does early what I need and does not cause me any issues. As soon as the enshittification hits me though, I’ll abandon it for something else. I also would not recommend someone purchase it, given the new pricing, and the availability of free alternatives. Had they been there when I paid for Plex, I’d be using them instead.

Yes and no, I only buy refurbs these days, so long as they work out of the box, they have been far more reliable than retail drives from a box store.

Definitely higher incidents of DOA drives, but the ones that work, have been pretty solid.

Still don’t trust spinning rust, so in addition to dual parity raid, I also have a full backup copy. But I no longer have reservations about refurb drives…

The reframe has already worked. The number keeps being reported as 1.8 billion dollars when it was specifically 1.776 billion, 1776 being red meat for his base. That number means something to them and covering it up is providing cover for the motivation and intent of the fund.

The 1,776 million number contains more useful info than saying 1.8 billion, so I’m cool with that framing.

Right, at this point essentially every decision has been a disastrous mistake, no sign of slowing down…

I paid for it ages ago on a deal, and it currently suits my needs. It runs as a docker container and it just works. It’s easy enough for my elderly mom to use remotely and I’ve ripped my entire movie collection for her to watch. I also like the live tv that’s included with the pass.

I would switch in a heartbeat if it wasn’t doing what I need, but so far I have no complaints, it works well for my family’s needs.

We had our chance, and this country chose this path. Every bit of this was telegraphed, nothing that is happening should be a surprise.

Your friends, relatives and neighbors all enthusiastically voted for this to happen (mine too). Do not let them forget.

Following in my dad’s footsteps.

ding, ding, ding… It’s much more lucrative to be pursued than it is to be part of the machine. He’d be a relatively progressive republican (at least according to them) and he’d be getting criticism, instead of praise from the fascists.

there’s that pesky concept that this clown ignores laws and norms, and has 2 additional branches of goverment who are dedicated to nothing more than sycophancy to him.

The US government is currently run by calvinball rules.

It’s good, it’s bad, it’s good, it’s bad, it’s…

Fuck it, life is better with coffee, and fruit.