I remember back in 2013 I built a PC for my wife, and in 2014 one for myself. At that point, buying something online still felt a bit odd. It was reserved for specialty items, shipping would often take at least 2 weeks, or even 6 weeks depending on where it was coming from. I was no stranger to purchasing online, but brick-and-mortar stores with real stock still existed and could get me what I purchased much more quickly.

I remember being so impressed with Newegg’s website. It made it so easy to build a computer and make sure everything was compatible. It was really easy to compare different options. The filter system was intuitive and comprehensive. I remember thinking “wow this is a perfect shopping experience. The future has arrived”.

I went to build my next PC in 2019, and dear Satan was it so much worse. I had heard about Newegg getting bought out by a larger company in 2016, and it showed. They opened it up to 3rd party sellers. The filters got clogged with garbage and don’t seem to work properly anymore. The sort function became a joke. The UI got rearranged to be less intuitive. I think they purposefylly wanted to make a worse shopping experience to make people frustrated, to get them to give up on looking for deals and pay a bit extra just to be done with it. I ended up having to go to a 3rd party website (PCPartPicker) to figure out what I needed and where to get it. And some of those parts I had to order on eBay (some even from Newegg’s eBay account which is just… Why are we doing this?), some on Amazon or Best Buy. And it’s only gotten worse since.

This same experience has happened everywhere. Just this morning my wife was checking out Culture Hustle to see if they have any interesting new paints and commented on how much worse the website was now than when we last used it a few years ago.

This may make me sound like an old curmudgeon yelling at clouds, but I think the Internet peaked a while ago. There are arguments over exactly when, but sometime between 2008-2016. I remember in 2012 in talking to my fellow students about how Google search results were getting worse.

Toxoplasmosis

The Murdoch empire transcends borders

It’s not in that source, but other sources like this one cite Tsainama Marubo (the main tribal elder who gave all the quotes) as being 73 years old.

Seems to me like the Times found some old guy to complain about the younger generation, which I imagine helps to sell a lot of physical copies of the Times.

Completely unrealistic. No cop in the USA would ever think you need a license to walk, or care about it.

Now if the cop accused OP of the terrible crime of jaywalking then I might believe it.

Most baking doesn’t require the precision of weighing. They are rough proportions, not an exact science.

An experienced baker, or really any kind of chef, will learn over time to make minor adjustments based on a lot of stuff. Maybe a bit less sugar, to taste. Maybe a difference in the brand or exact type of ingredient compared to what you’re used to. Maybe it’s a particularly dry day and you need to add more moisture to the dough.

If it’s something I have a lot of experience with I don’t even bother with measuring at all, just eyeball it.

Would a sovereign citizen ask to be pointed towards a law? I expect most would find ways to claim that whatever “alphabet boys” come after them don’t have jurisdiction, or explain why existing property laws don’t apply to them.

This seems to me like just an open and honest fraudster.

I do both. Jellyfin is way better if you put in the work of having a good folder structure and file names for metadata to scrape.

VLC is good for weird file types or non-video media. If you want to have a stash of reaction gifs in a playlist, I don’t know if JellyFin has any way to do that. Or if you want the tablet to display a random slideshow of pictures, like a diy digital picture frame. Also it’s easier to use if you don’t have good file names and metadata scraping.

A lot of what I’m seeing here is included on my Sony Xperia.

Headphone jack, notification light, SD card.

I do miss having a replaceable battery like my older LG phones had and stereo fromt-firing speakers like my HTC One M8.

That is a return to their original business model that led to them becoming a global institution.

Their dining areas were famously uncomfortable, witht he focus on being easy to clean and maintain and discourage people from lingering. The color scheme of red and yellow is purposefully garish, and combine with the lighting to make you want to get your food and get out.

There used to be a set of slanted warming shelves connecting the kitchen in the back to the area behind the front counter. You’d walk in during peak times and see rows of sandwiches already assembled and wrapped. You’d order your food and the cashier would reach around and gather the food that had been prepared 15-30 minutes ago. If you wanted a burger without onions or mustard or whatever you’d have to stand awkwardly and wait. The drive-thru used to be quick, maybe a couple minutes total.

I haven’t been to one in a few years so I’m not sure how it’s changed recently, but starting in the 2000’s they changed their business model to try to compete with places like Subway, Panera, Starbucks, Chipotle, etc. They introduced more greys and browns into their colorways. They expanded the menus with a ton more choice: novelty limited-time sandwiches, “healthy” options like salads and fruits, specialty coffees. They moved to making things to-order instead of having things pre-made. Wait times and prices both increased.

Every other “fast food” place seems to have followed them. The closest replacement I’ve seen is the expansion of gas station/convenience store food. Places like GetGo and Sheetz near me usually don’t have drive-thru’s, but I can quickly walk in and grab a pre-made sandwich for a few bucks and walk out.

What you are describing almost sounds to me like a modern automat.

It’s not fast either.

Headphone jack, 2 SD card slots, physical shutter button, front-facing speakers

Sony is really behind the competition when it comes to making worse products.

Ah damn, thanks for the correction. It seems like every few years the industry changes.

Heck even Patreon was a good way to support artists for a while, but it seems like they might be starting to succumb to the enshittification of venture capital. Bandcamp has been sold twice in the last 2 years.

If you want artists to get paid, you need to pay them more directly.

The highest margin for most is probably merch purchased at venues, including physical media. After that it’s probably the merch store on the artist’s website. They make money off of ticket sales for shows too, but there’s a lot of middle-men and actual costs to shows so there’s a wide variance in profit margin. Even local acts at bars: sometimes it’s a pay-to-play scheme where the band could be losing money, sometimes they’re making a few hundred bucks for a night.

Streaming on Spotify or an ad-sponsored platform like YouTube is going to give small fractions of a penny per-stream to the artist. There’s plenty of artists out there who have opened their books and shown they make more from releasing music as pay-what-you-want than from Spotify.