Snakecharmed

The experience of using a PC to communicate and transfer data to and from a smaller device using a system/protocol that isn't regularly encountered by the general public always adds a degree of difficulty that someone might not want to invest their time in doing. For instance, I've rooted enough Android phones over the years that you'd think it's no big deal for me to do it, but it's never a simple affair. It's tedious and time-consuming to make sure you're doing everything right with the proper software lest you brick the phone by doing something incorrectly or out of order. Even when you do it exactly according to the guide, a minor error code somewhere in the process causes minor annoyances later that nobody can help you with because nobody else ever encountered that issue and documented a fix. Then you eventually forget the process after some time and you have to relearn everything when you want to do it again years later. With phones, it's even worse because the rooting process differs from one phone to another, and sometimes even between two of the exact same model phone because each one started with a different firmware version, so you're not even able to use your memory to recall a certain step of the process to save some time. I can see why the vast majority of people wouldn't have the patience for things like this. It paints a damning picture of how things are going today with technology outside of core computing devices that auto manufacturers are pulling this nonsense on systems where it's completely unnecessary. Of all the parking brakes I've ever used in any car I've driven, none have been electronic. Any savvy car owner wouldn't rely on a dealership for anything after the sale, but what Louis is describing is the path that manufacturers are trying to convince their customers to follow, and they're obviously succeeding to some degree when combined with their attempts to demonize independent mechanics.

You shouldn't have to employ workarounds to deliberately hostile anti-consumer acts by auto manufacturers who have engineered solutions to previously nonexistent problems. Parking brakes have worked for generations before this garbage. Anyone could have seen this coming after BMW tried to charge subscription fees for heated seats. The contemporary automotive industry is built on greed and attempted entrapment of consumers into the manufacturer's product and service ecosystem, as well as financial debt if you're crazy enough to take out a loan (I could just stop the sentence there, but in this case, a loan offered by the dealer). I realize I'm not contributing much with respect to the poll because I won't buy a car that phones home or has unnecessary bullshit systems to complicate functions that had been working fine previously for decades.

Since Fluxmaven mentioned the Mazda3 as an option, there's also the Mazdaspeed3 if you want to step it up a notch. Personally, I'm biased against GM for anything not Corvette, Camaro, or Cadillac V series because they cheapened out on everything else over the last couple of decades, so I'd simply drop the Cobalt SS from the shopping list.

On some level, the battery ecosystem plays a factor as well, or there's one particular tool by that brand standing out well above the competition that it justifies buying into the rest of the ecosystem. I bought into the Milwaukee M18 ecosystem, but the only tools I got new were a multi-tool that isn't even from their brushless Fuel line, and what Project Farm calls the "knockoff Milwaukee" handheld vacuum cleaner that outperformed the genuine Milwaukee in his shootout review. My Milwaukee Fuel hammer drill, impact wrench, and hatchet pruning saw were all bought lightly used at very sensible prices. I never would have bought any of those at full retail. I don't have any particular affinity for Milwaukee or its parent company TTI, which is notorious for being ass about honoring warranties. I think buying into the 18V battery ecosystem of one of the big three is more important than anything else so that you can also buy off-brand tools that use those batteries. Back when some folks were on here looking at USB air dusters, I checked to see if there was one that was compatible with M18 batteries, and indeed there was. Now Milwaukee has since made their own version at an exorbitant $180, but I'd gladly opt for the M18-compatible duster for a quarter of the price and more powerful than any USB-charged equivalent in that price range.

I upgraded my NVR's CPU from a Ryzen 5 5600G to a Ryzen 7 5700G. Why? I don't know. Because I could and their respective resale values are almost at parity on the second-hand market. Once I account for the fees to list my 5600G for sale, the CPU upgrade might cost me about $25. The 5600G was running just fine before. Running substreams of my seven cameras in the Blue Iris main window keeps the CPU utilization low regardless. Getting an extra two cores was a nice-to-have feature even though the machine based on its current use patterns will never come close to needing them. The slightly faster iGPU is also nice for the games that I will never play on this NVR because it's a freakin' NVR.

The last computing purchases I made were my 96 GB memory and 7950X CPU upgrade at the end of last year. Those were advance purchases made to fend off any uncertainty in the retail market for PC components. I haven't been paying very close attention to the news because the manic, ever-changing chaos of the tariffs is tiresome to follow and nobody has time for that crap. I've been looking to upgrade my laptop as well, but I noticed one retailer on eBay jacked up their price from $980 to $1200, then later to $1350 on a refurbished model I had been eyeing for months. The first price hike happened one day after the initial tariffs were announced. I missed out on a normal(ish) price because I was ready to buy that day, but took a break for lunch. Refreshing the page afterward led to the sticker shock. Considering that I distrust most laptop makers for one reason or another, this isn't a good situation. Ideally, I'd go for a 16" Framework laptop, but I'm not spending that much money on something I don't use often apart from watching some YouTube videos daily and may use more heavily when traveling. Now I'm shopping used laptops and it's a lot harder finding something with acceptable specs and pricing (if some sellers can be trusted to provide that info accurately), and that still doesn't address how previous gen laptop prices remain high because the RTX 50 series disaster launch did nothing to bring down the prices of laptops with the RTX 4060+ or 3080 mobile.

Go * yourself, Microsoft.

Kickstarter-style vaporware product announcements are so 2015.

It appears that the RX 9070 XT is sold out at the two Micro Centers closest to me, with limited stock remaining of the RX 9070. They supposedly had hundreds in stock on launch, but I didn't bother to check yesterday since I wasn't planning on getting one. The 3080 Ti lives on due to me making no time to play games in the last two years. Even when I do get back into it, I've got a backlog of older games to go through that pose no challenge to the 3080 Ti at 4K. It's a lot less stressful not being on the cutting edge because it really sucks out there right now if you are.

Yes, Waterfox defaults to the same user agent string as the Firefox extended service release now.

There are several more privacy-conscious forks of Firefox that I trust more than main line Firefox since probably over a decade ago when whichever one of Mozilla's earlier privacy controversies came to light. Floorp - Most customizable UI LibreWolf - Most privacy conscious, rendering may break on some websites out-of-the-box because all privacy-focused settings are enabled by default Waterfox - My daily driver for over 7 years now, best balance of privacy and customization of the two above, has Widevine support

The fiber plans I've seen are typically symmetrical. There isn't really a good reason for them not to be. Have they published pricing in your area yet? AT&T recently finished laying fiber in my area. It's $65/month for 500 Mbps symmetrical and I think $85 for 1 Gbps. I'm not on it because I want my neighbors to be the guinea pigs, plus the installation of the fiber ONT would not be completely straightforward and clean because my network closet is on the second floor, although one wall of the closet is an exterior-facing one. Alternatively, I could have the ONT enter my network via my downstairs MoCA, but that will add a small amount of latency to the rest of the network. There are ways to make a second floor install clean, but I have no expectation that their techs would spend the time doing a bespoke installation. I also don't like AT&T, although it's hard to say whether I dislike them more than Comcast. Probably not at this point because at least AT&T isn't playing a bunch of BS games with their pricing. I had to figure out what was going on with my 1 Gbps Xfinity plan late last year because the price went from $65/month to $88. Apparently, they stripped away more of the auto-pay discount with credit card (and I refuse to switch to debit or ACH when dealing with them) and I must have forgot that I'm on a two-year contract with a reduced second-year discount compared to the first. Mid-split is available in my area which would give 100 Mbps upload on the 1 Gbps plan instead of 20, but I would have to buy a supported modem because they are stubbornly dragging their asses on certifying the Arris S33 for mid-split, if they ever do at all.

Siri Is Super Dumb and Getting Dumber DARINGFIREBALL.NET Siri with Apple Intelligence gives confident but embarrasingly wrong answers to sports trivia questions, both famous (Super Bowls) and... [...] It’s just incredible how stupid Siri is about a subject matter of such popularity. If you had guessed that Siri could get half the Super Bowls right, you lost, and it wasn’t even that close. I have a family member who demonstrated this in real-time with Siri giving two conflicting answers to the same question about a card game's rules just minutes apart. The scary thing is that he and his wife think they understand consumer AI and trust it blindly. No wonder the stories he tells are full of fabrications and lies. The article also looks at Google's AI overview search results, which are already infamous for being easily manipulated by trolls. To that end, I leave this gift for you guys to enter into your uBlock Origin custom filters:

Loosely related, I hate how insurance companies nowadays tie an optional tracking device to your auto insurance as a way to pitch savings on your premium. I tried one of those things once and the app that was on my phone was a battery killer. That was the official reason I stopped using it anyway. Either way, never again. The truth is, I'm not okay with being tracked and held hostage to driving in a manner that is more unsafe to my surrounding environment to satisfy the app/tracker's arbitrary definition of safe driving. For me to be a "safe" driver and get the maximum benefit, I would have to always drive at or below the speed limit, accelerate like a centenarian (assuming one would still have the fine motor skills to smoothly regulate the pressure applied through their right leg), and overwhelmingly rely on engine braking. Nobody with any street sense drives like that. If you drive like that, you will get run off the road by other drivers. They claimed my insurance wouldn't ever go up as a result of using the tracker, but I don't believe it, and either way, that data is getting stored on someone else's computer and probably shared with other insurance companies as well. I'm not super adamant about protecting every single piece of my data. It isn't always convenient, and I accept that giving up some of it will happen in modern society, but the insurance tracker was where I decided to draw the line as far as sacrificing my liberty for a monetary benefit. That garbage can only be used against me and screw me when I switch insurance companies, and it isn't worth $100 per 6 months. By extension, I refuse to own a newer car where such data is being collected without my enthusiastic consent. That hasn't made the driving experience better for anyone. There is no benefit to a purchasing consumer for their car to phone home to the manufacturer. This wasn't needed for a century of driving and it isn't needed now. Software-as-a-service was Pandora's box to individual liberties, and who benefits from that? Not you and not other people. It's corporations whose primary objective is to separate you from your money in the most insidious ways possible.

Similar tasks, different tools, related principles. I ended up getting the Project Farm recommended "knockoff" Milwaukee handheld vacuum which replaced an ancient Black & Decker Dustbuster with a weak battery that I hadn't used in years. It's also a much more portable alternative to my Miele canister vac, which is a much more portable alternative to my Kirby upright vac. Anyway, the handheld vac has taken on everything that was too cumbersome for the Miele, from my car interiors, to my furniture, to chunks of drywall and wood dust from doing some electrical work. I also used it to vacuum dust from my case when upgrading the RAM and CPU a couple of weeks ago. I rarely have a need for dusting with compressed air. The last time I needed it was when I was selling off my old GTX 1080 Ti and needed to reach the inner fins of the heatsink. For lighting up lump charcoal, I use a 1500W, 1150°F hot air gun and it works great. 45 seconds of direct heat gets them going without needing a chimney starter. I first tried the wood shaving and wax fire starter pellets, but those get too hot too fast. I would have tried a chimney starter next, but I was trying to not buy a single-purpose tool.