Haha yeah they’re IoT protocols for smarthome stuff. But an open source software called Home Assistant can talk to it, so you can self-host your home automation without your home being subject to the whims of some fragile tech startup and by extension, their investors.

Also it probably was crustier than a toddler’s iPad. 🤢

It sounds like you too, might live in a heavily populated metropolitan area of Nevada, USA. Lol

While you’re slowly drowning in payments but no one can know and you’re just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire!

Lol you nailed it. I know it goes against some of the ethos of Lemmy but I do wish there was some kind of particular “THIS PERSON RIGHT HERE GETS IT” award to give you haha.

“Finally a use for all these leftover 1st gen Kindle Fire CPUs!”

Point 2 is incredibly frustrating. That the ewaste problem has become so much better understood and yet the trend is to keep creating more of it.

I think Pine64 is making Bluetooth earbuds, but like their other stuff it aims to be super hackable and fixable. Wish that was the norm instead of solvent welding.

Workplaces ban possession of Bluetooth headphones? Yeesh, lofi beats in one ear is the only thing that kept me from strangling some people as they took 15 minutes to explain “I can’t send an email and I forgot my password and I lost my phone what do I do.”

Half the appeal of Bluetooth earbuds (without the silly stems) was the secret agent appeal of giving your brain something to fixate on in stupid jobs where you stand around all day.

Unless it’s literally around dangerous machinery or something I guess?

Anyway sorry this isn’t antiwork but still lol. I like my Bluetooth earbuds, but I think headphone jacks should be standard too.

Man do they still do that with these “smart features” or is it all just linked to an inexplicable welded shut black box now? Lol

But if I’m gonna go out, having WASD forever embedded in my forehead is kinda metal.

My biggest annoyance with Gboard is that my muscle memory is so tuned with it and it has GIF search built in…but it keeps wanting to correct random words to whichever is closer: celebrity name or a brand name or something. -_-

Wait, an actually unique smartphone manufacturer and they’re not impossibly expensive and aren’t locked in to Europe?

How did this happen without me noticing? Cool!! Nice share! Now I want them to put daily drivable Linux on it and I’m insta-sold!

(So far I merely put up with the duopoly of mobile OSs. I don’t enjoy them lol)

Thank you! I’ve been making this argument a LOT with recent discussions on kids not understanding keyboards and controllers because their lives are full of touchscreens.

Touch isn’t “the future”. It just absolutely flooded the market.

There’s a great book on the LARP scene called “Leaving Mundania” by Lizzie Stark that’s a really easy, entertaining read. It helped me really empathize with the hobby and the people behind it.

She kinda had the same perspective but approached it with curiosity to figure out what the fuss was about.

(Up until that last chapter on “Nordic LARP”… it’s been ages since I read it but that stuff got weeeird.)

It’s one of those things that would sound like a ton of fun to me, going all in on pretending to be some fantasy character and everybody else is in on the bit, but there’s some combat rules to prevent “invincible OC syndrome” so you’re actually moving playing pretend instead of plopped in a chair for 6 hours for a tabletop game.

In any case, it looks like a good way to escape playing “Bills & Bosses”, a game that is near-universally reviled. hahaha

Unfortunately it’s just very geo-dependent and cost intensive I’d think haha.

Oh sure I agree! The slightly confusing bit is the one here is called “Age of Chivalry - Renaissance Festival”, but could just as easily be “Medieval-themed fantasy con and craft show” …maybe wouldn’t be as catchy.

…but hey I got some sweet custom dice there ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Hoo BOY does Roku have ads! When I installed PiHole on my network and used it as my local DNS, the TOP blocked domain was “scribe.roku.com”. It was calling home like 5000 times a day. We were thinking every single remote push maybe.

Blocking those domains made the entire interface speed up drastically, and got rid of the giant box ads on the side as well. (It’s just a big empty frame now lol).

Rokus are nice and cheap if you can mitigate their rampant data harvesting.

Man does “Google Nest” come to mind. Buys company. Pushes it all over the place. “Eh, I think we’re done. Whole ecosystem useless now.”

Which is par for the course with Google and not at all a surprise, but sheesh.

As someone who hasn’t much watched Top Gear, I was cracking up at your Jurassic Park reference until I saw your edit and was like “Wait a minute.”

Top Gear? Jurassic Park? Either way: Hold on to your butts.

😆

Same. It used to be a lot more of historical reenactment, and a lot of the performances and stuff still reflect that.

But the last few times I’ve gone it’s mainly been a themed craft show with corsets and tunics, and yeah, people with wings, steampunk hats, and Cloud’s buster sword, or tails hanging out of their pants. :|

Renaissance times must’ve been wild, y’all. Lol

Good point…

…to which we’re alarmed because the real “power players” in training / developing / enhancing Ai are mega-capitalists and “defense” (offense?) contractors.

I’d like to see Ai being trained to plan and coordinate human-friendly cities for instance buuuuut it’s not gonna get as much traction…

Or watch Terminator…

Or Eagle Eye…

Or i-Robot…

And yes, literally any of the Metal Gear Solid series…