Companies even do this if you have a 5g modem.

There is a 2 hour window at the end of the month in which I am miserable.

I’m at the tip of the US’s Wang and have zero access to wired internet, so I am stuck. 😞

Coincidentally, I just got a knock-off Soda Stream from Phillips. It’s over $150 cheaper and works 2x-3x times better. I wanted to build something similar for a homemade soda bar concept, and discovered how truly cheap it can be to make soda and carbonated water at home. I was shocked at what a simple concept it is, and how much of a profit these sodas water companies make. Phillips even charging $50 for their system is a total rip-off.

Truthfully, I think the increase in quality in the Phillips machine is due to fewer parts is an “exception that proves the rule” as these in-bottle carbonators seem to work better with fewer parts. It’s just a pressure hose connected to a co2 tank. Literally, all of $6 if you were to build one yourself from parts on Amazon (or $3 if you got he Alibaba route)

I truly believe that the fewer parts the better in any DIY or commercial product due to the less chance of a failure in a part if there are fewer parts. This works fantastically for the “lower quality” producing companies, like Phillips.

My inventive and engineering entrepreneur friends and I call this “fewer parts the better” concept, a “Murphy’s law compensator” as the fewer parts there are, the fewer parts that can statistically “go wrong”

No way in hell I’d trust just one backup method for my data.

A 6 TB drive is less than $100 on Amazon and two cloud backups is like $30 extra a year.

This is exactly why I look at companies and corporations with a side-eye of doubt when they claim to have some sort of “do not be evil” motto baked into thier company culture.

It doesn’t matter if a gigantic company has a hundred philanthropy focused CEOs, all ot takes is one greedy or evil one to destroy a company’s dogma

After the investors, managers, and profiteers taste easy money, they will continue to demand to be fed that blood flavored stew.

Once that happens, they either need to be lobotomized or put down for the good of all lest those who are not in the know continue to put money into the frothing imitation it has become.

That is like saying that the screwdriver is the most over-rated tool in the tool box.

Each tool has a place and a usage. AI is just another tool in toolbox that is used to get things done.

I’m using my steam deck right now as a gaming PC while moving across America.

It works really well. I got a dock from Amazon that gives me the ports to plug in my gaming mouse and keyboard. I can do HDMI out to the hotel TV or, better yet, lead out one USB-c cord to a fantastic portable monitor.

I only ran into two minor issues. The first is getting enough juice to the steam deck and heat. Both can be easily solved with a good fast charging station and better air flow (I use this tiny hyper fan and have had zero issues in 90 degree Florida winter weather).

Of note, I dual boot with Windows 11. It’s a bloated mess of an operating system, but I want to use certain mods and programs that windows only. Plus, I’m not tied down to only steam games. The addition of being able to run nearly everything that’s Windows compatible takes the deck up a level, I feel.

The best way to get the most out of the Windows environment is to run a debloater admin tool, which removes unnecessary programs on Windows 10+ systems. The difference between the performance is shocking, making it pretty much required for usage. It’s not too hard to use, too.

The best part of it all is that you still have a stream deck at the end of the day. You don’t have to do any hardware mods. You can pick the deck up and walk out of the house and still have the gaming PC with you.

Those are the only times when it’s appropriate to insert a 3 1/2 inch floppy.

I’d never go back to Reddit again if the several game projects I beta test for in my spare time would migrate over to lemmy.

I have been using WUB, and some other extremely helpful tools that this company makes, for a few years at this point.

The part that I LOVE about WUB is how complete and exhaustive the shut-off is for the ease of use.

There’s no editing files, no editing anything, just download and press a button to turn on update blocking (while protecting the services that could mess up by blocking). Press another button to unblock everything as good as a fresh install.

It’s as if it was never blocked when updates are toggled on, and it’s as if Windows update is completely removed with the blocking is toggled on.

My alts are always on my same name. It helps me not have to remember, but it helps me to compartmentalize.

I have one over on lemmy.world that I made when RiF went down and it pointed to that instance. ‘Reddit is Fun’ was my trusted app of choice for so long that I figured that I’d go with their recommendation.

That mindset was apparently shared with a lot of people, and lemmy.world became overcrowded and unusable every other day for a while due to traffic. That’s when I read that one should get registered at a closer and/or smaller instance in order to have better service.

That’s when I moved over to SDF’s shockingly fast lemmy instance.

I’d love to see smaller game devs have a federated presence with their content.

Right now, I only use Reddit to keep up with game devs who only post game content and updates on their own subreddit.

Microsoft PowerToys is a fantastic program if you like to tweak your experience with Windows.

It lets you do things like set up individual zones within your monitor that act like picture in picture or another monitor. It has a robust color picker, which helps greatly when it comes to photoshop and template creation. I also use the text extractor very often to extract text from pictures, which it copies to the clipboard.

The best, and technically the worst, is it lets you change settings that you can’t normally do in Windows.

While it could get someone YOLO adminning in trouble, thankfully it has a lot of warnings before you mess things up too badly.

Those are the features I use, but there are too many useful features to name in one go.

Here’s the link to get it in the Microsoft Store

WUB or Windows Update Blocker.

It’s one of the first things I put on a new after the initial Windows update.

It safely turns and completely turns off Windows updating and the services involved with updates.

It’s practically a necessity if you use a metered or paid internet connection, or connect your laptop to a cell phone for an internet connection via a hotspot.

Windows doesn’t listen to its own settings about metered connections and if it deems something worthy of killing your data plan for the month, it’ll do so without your knowledge.

The best part is that when you’re ready to download critical updates or something from the Windows store (Whatsapp, Minecraft, Power Tools, etc.) then it’s as simple as a button press to reactivate updates without restart.

Everyone should be using the Facebook addon “Facebook Purity” if they are still using the platform. I’ve been using it for over a decade and I can’t stand using Facebook without it…

Not only does it work better than most adblocks, but you can completely move, remove, and restyle features.

It’s the only way of working with that platform is not harmful to one’s sanity.

It’s too bad it’s not the US mint. It might help inflation.

Where’s Jeeves when we need him? I’d ask him but…

This is the truth. I was being abused by a boss of mine, with him demanding to know the whole of my medical history. He also demanded doctor excuses go directly to him, and not HR as I was told,

Needless to say, HR shared that I was bitching about him and he messed up my desk, breaking an ornament and a knickknack that was precious to me at the time (I got it on honeymoon). I took photos, and HR even saw him near my desk at the time of all of that happened

It took a major civil suit to get the video, but after the judge saw it ‘my case was won’ according to the judge. It was so obvious of evidence of him breaking stuff, spitting on my chair, snapping my laptop.

I even got special consideration because my boss then gave me a laptop that was so old that I couldn’t load the required VPN software.

I’m glad I got out of a corporate run tech field. It’ll eat your soul without you noticing until it’s too late…

I pay for Google premium and I support a few patreons, yes.

That said, I still use ad block, sponsorship block, and privacy badger

Stuff like YouTube content should be free to those who can’t afford it. Plus, my privacy is my own.

Those are the two major issues here

You may not be going to the right areas of youtube.

I’m kept highly entertained with “True Crime” shows, audio books, manga & manhua recaps, and long form documentaries.

I’m always able to have something on my second monitor doing SOMETHING entertaining.

It wouldn’t shock me if they removed ublock origin from the chrome store