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. 😞

Before June 2023, I was a mod on several Reddit communities for about 13 years and outside of Reddit since the turn of the century. I just kinda stepped back once the Reddit BS happened.

10 months later, my happiness and over all quality of life has improved. Not only am I no longer stressed (bye bye moderation based nightmares!), but I have way more time to dedicate to my passions and goals.

I thought that dedication to holding together a few niche communities and battling the “bad guys” defined me and gave me a sort of immortality.

I was VERY wrong.

Our great grand kids won’t be trolling reddit archives, telling everyone how “cool” grandpa was.

The greatest thing I ever did to improve my QOL was step away from moderating and leading communities on the internet as a whole. Doubly so if they involve political talk.

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”

I’d be very interested in your theory.

I thought it had something to do with the distance to the server or ping timeout, but that is more of a guess.

I’ve not experienced that problem again despite working as a network engineer for 20 years

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.

Random computer quirks always fascinate me. The strangest one I had involved a computer that shouldn’t have existed.

One time in the early aughts I had a patchwork computer that I put together from the junk pile of a local computer store that a buddy of mine ran.

It was barely holding together in a rusty frame, with zip ties and wood glue.

Its modem was temperamental as hell. It would only stay online so long as it was pinging a website via command prompt. It was only some websites, too. Like I could ping Geocities, but not livejournel.

I remember many weekends doing Mephisto runs in Diablo II, praying that my command prompt doesn’t bug out anytime I’d get anything worthwhile.

‘Based’ means that you are very proud of what you have done and what you are doing and that you don’t care what anyone else thinks.

It’s like if IDGAF (I don’t give a fuck) was an adjective.

I used to not like to learn these ‘new’ terms myself, but this one is an objectively positive to the human language.

I don’t see the point of denying the growth of a language in my lifetime just because I become older. I hated it when my parents did it, and they hated when their parents did it… so I’m breaking the cycle

I didn’t realize until my mid 20s that having a house without pictures and wall hanging is weird. It was also when I learned that if you don’t have enough lighting it makes a home feel like a mausoleum.

The answer as to what a person should put on their walls depends on how based a person is or how much they don’t care about what others think.

If you want to get non-traditional with it, hang up movie posters, collages, video game posters, etc. Whatever you like and like to look at.

If you go traditional and normal, then art is a fantastic idea. Go to your local thrift store and find old art that they have. Local estate sales are also good.

Personally, I love to commission a painting or two from the artist themselves. Etsy and fiverr painters love to make custom art of whatever you want if you have the money. You’re looking at spending anywhere from $10 to a few hundred depending on the size you want.

It’s always fun having a painting of your pet remade in the style of Edvard Munch

Breakups will always hurt. Sometimes you can never get over a relationship fully.

As couples become as one, separating is always a life-changing experience.

All you can do is keep on moving. So long as you are able to put one foot in front of the other, you can keep moving on in a healthy way.

I learned perl to make IRC bots and to customize bulletin boards in the late 90s, early aughts.

I owe a lot to that language as it impressed a woman with my skills in it. I got my first marriage and eldest son out of it.

I listen to a lot of media, like Manhwa recaps, audiobooks, podcasts, true crime.

Some days I click on YouTube once at 10am when I wake up and sit down in front of the computer and once again after my day is over and I go to bed.

YouTube is more than educational videos or prank videos.

You should look into “YouTube Longform content”

This is content, usually over 2 hours, that’s highly entertaining and comprehensive.

Consider PatricianTV

They made a Skyrim retrospective that was 20 hours long Part 1 Part 2

It’s not a let’s play or anything of the like. It’s an actual factual longform review

Not only is it a masterpiece, but it’s a comprehensive masterpiece.

I like the ability to move around to different devices and be able to keep the same video.

I love Manhwa recaps, audiobooks, etc. There are like 12 hours long sometimes. So it’s so much more convent to walk away from my computer and go to the bathroom or lay down and It just picks right up from the same part in the story.

90% of the time YouTube is running on monitor #2, but the convenience factor of the last 10% can make life worth living sometimes.

Yes, but there are drawbacks to each one. For example, with new pipe, if I find a channel that I like I have to remember to like it on all of my devices individually.

I’d much rather use the mobile YouTube as it works perfectly and I can use any add-on I wish to modify the experience without issue.

Use the Firefox nightly build and you can bring your desktop experience to mobile.

Not only can you use sponsorblock but also ublock origin. Plus you can use picture in picture and play the videos with your phone locked by default

Its literal perfect fir my usage

Documentation is like sex: Even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.

I was accused too. Till they saw my 11+ years of old comments, then they thought I was a sold account.

I don’t know if it’s scary or stupid.