Same for mobile, but I also use the website when I’m on a computer.

Although much of Tesla’s value recently was from a big jump in November (getting a fancy new oval-shaped office will do that for you)

I don’t think many people realize just how big a jump this was.

Steve Oedekerk, the writer/star of King pow: enter the fist, is amazing in every way - especially if you were consuming media in the 90s. He

• wrote and directed when nature calls
• cowrote the nutty professor
• wrote including Patch Adams
• wrote Nutty Professor II: The Klumps - wrote and directed Bruce Almighty
• created thumbnation
• executive produced Jimmy Neutron and his studio gave us two Jimmy Neutron movies

Pics or it didn’t happen!

/fellow 90s kid

Very few residences have proper ventilation. In the US, a microwave above the stove is common. Microwave often do have a fan function, but the vast majority don’t vent outdoors. I doubt that running air through a very thin filter will do much good.

Haha, the one where I make a bunch of things and fail numerous times along the way or the one where I keep a running list of “this would be a neat thing to try at some point in the future”?

If you’re looking for an outlet, why not project shop with the aim of making something?

This gives you the opportunity geek out on the gadgets you’ll need to pull off whatever you want to make. More importantly, the journey will continue post purchase as chase the thing you want to make.

You can make both digital and physical stuff. With things like CAD, Arduino/Raspberry PI, and IoT you can also blend the two pretty easily.

A very low key example might be a small garden. I’ve put a bit of time/effort into my seed stating setup, including designing and printing parts for my lighting rig. It seems like the setup iterates a bit every year. In addition, every year I spend a decent amount of time thinking about what I want to grow this year and then diving seed catalogues to find some new-to-me verity of something I’ve grown before.

You can also design from-scratch speakers and go as far down that rabbit hole as you want to - buy vs build (kit) vs design the amplifier, ditto for the actual speaker, etc.

/a person who likes making things

Agree, but also half the story.

The zenphone 10 is 146.5 x 68.1 x 9.4 mm.

I had a 3a until very recently. With its 5.7" screen it was 151.3 x 70.1 x 8.2 mm, so it does support the story.

The OG iPhone was 115 × 61 × 11.6 mm.

I’m still using an iPhone 8 for my work phone and it’s 138.4 x 67.3 mm x 7.3 mm.

It’s clear that the market is demanding larger phones, which means that today’s “small” phones are often larger than the phones of yesteryear.

In December I finally bought a phone to replace my 3a. I did it mostly for the battery life, although I did actually buy a replacement battery for the 3a and have all the necessary tools to install it. It wouldn’t be my first time replacing a cellphone battery.

I was window shopping and the Oneplus 12 became fairly discounted at the end of last year.

Honestly, the overall experience really isn’t that different than my old 3a. It’s not like newer versions of Android are adding revolutionary features these days and if you’re running a custom ROM, odds are you’re on a newer version of Android anyway.

Nice things:

• Two days worth of battery life with my usage patterns. Even with a fresh battery, my 3a wouldn’t last this long
• Something like 4x more RAM means that apps are usually in the state I left them in when I come back to them, whereas on the 3a they had usually been forced to free up resources and not all apps deal with that well
• The telephoto lens is nice to have, but none of the built in cameras are a substitute for my dedicated camera for things that are moving and/or things are far away
• The screen mounted fingerprint sensor is very convenient, but that’s a placement thing. Some people liked the 3a location, but I didn’t personally

Unless you are taxing your processor, an upgrade will be incremental. At least that was my experience.

I somewhat regret the larger phone in that it’s a bit harder to handle one handed, but most on screen keyboards have a one handed mode to deal with this. I had a pop/ring type holder on my 3a, so gripping one handed isn’t that big of a deal.

You’re not going to find any of those in stores in the US either. Of all the brands i rattled off, the only one you can reliably find here is Birkenstock. However, you’re not going to find their shoes or boots. I had to order those from the web.

Xero shoes are a US brand, but I’ve never seen them in a store here. Groundies are German. Barebaics and Belanka are both from Slovakia.

The internet is a beautiful thing. Yeah, shipping from all over can be a bit slow but with standard measurements it’s not hard to order shoes that will fit correctly out of the gate.

And there is now so little choice!

There has been a consolidation of the major brands, but there’s a pretty solid niche market around foot shaped shoes.

Vibrams are the extreme. Birkenstock sneakers are pretty well shaped, but their soles are a bit rigid. I don’t mean that in a comfort way, I mean that in a bendable way.

More recent, to me at least, entrants are groundies, xero shoes, Barebarics, belenka, and a ton more.

Cut to the shape of an actual foot and flexible/minimalistic sole. I live in the Midwest, so I’ll compromise some ok sole thickness in the winter. Standing in snow with my kid at the bus stop in minimalistic soles and even thicker socks makes for quick feet.

Shape of your foot? I don’t understand why you would want your toes/foot contorted. I do not understand shoes that have a point in the middle of them. Either you’re smashing your toes together or your making something stick out in front of your foot that will mess up your gate.

Minimalistic sole? This will get you landing more softly on your heel and help you use the balls of your feet more. It’s amazing to me how thick/soft the soles of some shoes are. I suspect they’re necessary to compensate for the way a lot of us walk.

My feet feel fantastic and my motion feels very natural.

Companies also exist to try to find items not sold on Amazon and list them on Amazon for a steep markup.

In both these cases they’re hoping that customers either won’t notice or won’t care enough to order elsewhere due to “convince”.

My oldest pair of headphones is a pair of Sennheiser HD650s that I bought over 20 years ago. Their headband snapped a few years back, but I was able to track down a spair. They recently got a fresh pair of pads too, but have otherwise been going strong. They have gone through a bit of a boom/bust cycle of usage and are currently seeing near daily usage again.

As someone who recently “upgraded”, I agree. My prior pair of headphones are nearly as good as the new pair and have some functionality that just isn’t offered anymore (lots of physical buttons).

I have a pair of Plantronics 8200UCs that I very recently bought pads for. The first set lasted me since October 2021, so I should be good for a while again. They sound pretty good for music, support multipoint (multiple devices pairing) and aptX HD, have a dongle for teams certification, they support sidetone, their voice feedback is fantastic (muted prompts, etc), and have good physical controls (power switch, dedicated mute button, play/pause, ff/rw, volume, answer/hang up, etc). I wish they had a slightly better microphone and better ANC, but they largely get the job done.

I went down the headphone rabbit hole this holiday season and other than better ANC and transparency mode, which the 8200s lack completely, it turns out that I really wasn’t missing out on much.

So: keep them, unless there’s a very specific reason to ditch them.

I largely agree - the fediverse needs less friction if it wants widespread adoption. That’s part of the reason why I wound up on .world. It was easy. I suspect I’m not alone here.

The other bit challenge is that each instance can have identically named communities, which drives fragmentation and makes each community seem less active. I dabble in photography, so I’ll use some examples from that.

Reddit has this problem too, but there can only be one /r/photography. There are derivative communities like /r/streetphotography and /r/askphotography, but the original sub is unlikely to move/change.

By design the fediverse can have many /c/photography communities. In the case of photography there are three or four “big” ones and a bunch of smaller ones. There are also all the derivative communities, some of which are doing better than the ‘root’ community. One example of this is [email protected].

I’m not sure what a good solution is, especially when you start talking about “the same” community on multi-inatance. One of the design goals of the fediverse was to enable that should some instance go off the rails.

If heavy duty means “lets you carry more weight in your bed and tow more” do not do it unless you actually have weight in your bed or tow a lot. To do this, the springs have a higher spring rate which makes the ride very hard unless you’re loaded.

IMO there’s little need to buy new in the computer world unless you want to do something silly like have a snapdragon x laptop or have the disposable funds to go the gaming rig route.

My desktop is a retired business workstation, a HP Z420. I bought it for $250, installed a smaller SSD ($100 new) for the OS + apps, upgeaded to the “best” Xenon that fit the socket ($150 used), upgraded to 64 GB RAM ($107 used, yay ECC memory being dirt cheap on the used market), and a 1070TI ($225 used, purchased just before covid).

It’s more than fast enough for my needs still.

This was all about 4-5 years ago, so you could probably do even better with more modern hardware.

Hair color changes with age. My mother in law and wife were both blond when they were kids, but their hair slowly turned browner with age. They both highlight their hair to split the difference.

We have two fairly young kids. Their hair is pretty light blond on the top layers, but their bottom layers are quite a bit darker. I suspect the biggest contributing factor beyond genetics is sunlight. Both of them spend a pretty good amount of time outdoors when the weather permits.