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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • This is my assumption too.

    I consider myself a difficult person to target ads at because usually if I need something I’ll do a deep dive and research the fuck out of it before narrowing down my options. For example when I bought a cordless vacuum recently I checked wirecutter and project farm on YouTube before eventually settling on a brand I’ve never heard of based on the project farm video and the performance in that video.

    Now, where this broke down for me and I started to question reality was a few years ago when I had a Yamaha street bike (FZ09) and I was coming up on my first oil change interval. I did what I usually do; deep research dive, checked forums, reviews, Reddit, etc.; what’s the best oil for this bike, do people usually use the 1st party “Yamalube” oil or do they go for something different?

    It’s important to note that at the same time I had been watching the back catalog of motoGP races from the 2015-2019 era and enjoying a couple of those races each day.

    Anyway, all of my research on the right oil for my bike’s next oil change led me to a couple of forum posts where I decided that “Motul 7100” oil was the best option for me, the climate I ride in, and my bike. I ordered it on Amazon and moved on with my week.

    Later that week I realized that in the background of several of the race tracks where these motoGP races were taking place were massive trackside ads for… literally Motul 7100.

    Now, sure it’s normal for motor oil companies to sponsor motor sports, but it freaked me out. It couldn’t just be coincidence! “I researched this thoroughly and made up my own mind!” I told myself.

    Why didn’t I end up choosing Shell or Bel-Ray or Penzoil instead? Is it because I subconsciously conditioned myself to be willing to receive recommendations for that oil brand? Was it because of other people being advertised to who then recommended it?

    At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how it happened… but I bought the very same oil that was advertised to me even after trying to be as resistant to advertising and brand loyalty as I could be.

    After that realization I’ve just come to the conclusion that advertising is bigger than any of us individuals. It’s almost not possible to resist it, because at some level, somewhere along the line, it’ll get you. Or it won’t 🤷🏻‍♂️


  • Not daily, but weekly or so.

    My dad had a little leather zipper pouch with two or three nail clippers and files/blades in it; a small pocket sized nail care set.

    I used it weekly when I was a kid (every time I’d visit his place), probably from 9-17 years old, and then he gave it to me when I moved out on my own, so I’ve probably used it weekly non-stop for about 30 years at this point.

    Electronics are tougher as they just don’t last as long; I used a Dell 24” LCD from 2006 all the way until 2022, so 16 years? It even failed around 2015 or so (power supply died) and I ordered a replacement PSU, resurrecting it. That monitor was my PC monitor and TV in college, and just kept kicking.







  • My X950H does not give the option (although there is a hidden dev/“pro mode” that allows you to turn it into a dumb screen I think) but my newer A80J model does give the OOTB option to disable the smart features.

    The Bravias with Google TV are at the absolute limit of what I will tolerate from a smart TV. Suggestions/tailored stuff on the Home Screen, but no invasive ads. Anything further and I’d turn them into dumb TVs and use an Apple TV or Google TV dongle instead.



  • Nothing too crazy. I use Proxmox on hardware that used to be a gaming rig (4th gen Intel) and I upped the RAM to 32GB.

    • Plex
    • Home Assistant
    • NextCloud
    • VM to host Duplicati + Samba which backs up some shared storage.
    • VM that contains the extremely specific build environment for one of my mechanical keyboards
    • VM that contains my ESP Home environment.
    • VM for Docker based web development because as good as WSL is, it still sucks sometimes.

    Some of my “VMs” are actually LXCs but I can’t remember which are which at the moment.

    Playing with ZFS was fun too, and it puts all that RAM to good use!

    I’ve also been meaning to create a VM for Dokku, but I haven’t had a strong enough need yet.




  • I need iRacing and the software for the rest of my sim rig to be fully supported. This means “SimHub” for my wind sim, the “SimRig” app for my motion actuators, “SimCommander” for my wheelbase, and there are a couple others like “The Crew Chief” etc. oh and whatever emulation layer for iRacing; as there’s no Linux version; would need to not get me banned from the anti-cheat software.

    I put my money where my mouth was though! I used Manjaro+Gnome for 2 or 3 years on my main machine, dual booting Windows only to sim race. I quit Adobe and Maxon and switched to DarkTable and Blender for photos and 3D modeling. All my 3D printing software and slicers have native Linux versions. I used Chrome, Chromium, Firefox, Dropbox (have since switched to NextCloud self-hosted). Docker was a dream and so fucking fast for web development. I still keep a Linux VM around just for Docker web development.

    Here’s the thing… on not one but two occasions my machine refused boot to a GUI. I’m speaking as someone who uses server Linux daily for work, Mac OS daily for work, and Windows daily for play. If Linux distros and GPU makers don’t get their shit together IT WILL NEVER be the year of Linux on the desktop. Exactly 0 times has Windows failed to boot to a GUI for me (short of a hdd or GPU hardware failure) and Mac OS has also not booted to a GUI 0 times. As long as seeing a desktop on boot is not a 100% guarantee when running Linux, it’ll remain as something only nerds or enthusiasts do.

    I love Linux, but I’d say it’s a safe bet to say I’ll never sim race or run iRacing natively on Linux short of Microsoft and windows disappearing from existence overnight. It just won’t happen.

    For web development or 3D modeling and hacking around? Gimme Linux or Mac OS! WSL is like 99% there but no where as performant as the aforementioned. Also with WSL simple fucking things like networking become a proxy-firewall-ssh-tunnel nightmare.