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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • tankplanker@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.worldTypeframe
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    4 days ago

    I have always loved the concept of computers like this one.

    I have a picocalc on order but I am aware I am unlikely to make such a restricted use platform work for me day to day.

    I also have a GPD MicroPC 2, its just about perfect for me for actual travel usage as its just a small PC, and when plugged into a docking station will drive 2x4k screens fine. It fixes everything I do not like about smartphones, I just want it smaller still but the keyboard is already a big compromise for me.

    However I like the fact its based on a PI as it has a wide range of options for expansion and a large base of support to take it further if you need it to.



  • When my kids were kids it really depended on if they needed anything big. One year we would get them a macbook because they needed a new laptop for school but then it would last nearly five years so I wouldn’t have to buy another one for ages. Same for things like phones or consoles or. I always spent more on these big purchases as they normally last longer.

    Now they adults I spend a few hundred for birthdays and Christmas. I like to get something they will actually use, will last, and is memorable. The best gifts show that you actually pay attention to their current hobbies or are something they would want but would rare splash for. Example would be for my sons birthday i got him a GBA SP style emulator and loaded it up with pokemon roms, official and fan, as I knew he had a few months off studying for his professional qualification.







  • Quality of the system is such a massive dependency here, I can well believe that someone watching old reruns from a shitty streaming service that is upscaled to 1080p or 4k by their TV they purchased from the supermarket with coupons collected from their breakfast cereal is going to struggle to tell the difference.

    Likewise if you fed the TVs with a high end 4k blu ray player and any blu ray considered reference such as Interstellar, you are still going to struggle to tell the difference, even with a more midrange TV unless the TVs get comically large for the viewing distance so that the 1080p screen starts to look pixelated.

    I think very few people would expect their old wired apple earphones they got free with their iphone 4 would expect amazing sound from them, yet people seem to be ignoring the same for cheap TVs. I am not advocating for ultra high end audio/videophile nonsense with systems costing 10s of thousands, just that quite large and noticeable gains are available much lower down the scale.

    Depending what you watch and how you watch it, good quality HDR for the right content is an absolute home run for difference between standard 1080p and 4k HDR if your TV can do true black. Shit TVs do HDR shitterly, its just not comparable to a decent TV and source. Its like playing high rez loss less audio on those old apple wired earphones vs. playing low bitrate MP3s.


  • I have WfH for about twenty five years now and I will say the same thing I always say when this type of comment pops up, if people do not want to talk to you for some reason they will not respond as its a lot easier to hide on email/IM than an office situation. If you finding that people are hiding from you, then that’s as much a you problem as anything else for not directly addressing it.

    I actually find it considerably easier to get hold of someone via IM than any other method short of direct dialing them as I can reach them in meetings or away from their desk or even in another country entirely, its only if they are intentionally ignoring you it does not work. If the person is presenting in a meeting or otherwise legitimately incommunicado then they aren’t going to respond F2F or IM anyway.

    Not measuring output volume or quality consistently is a widespread problem for businesses, regardless of location of the employee. Consistent and accurate measurement is the only way to be sure you are getting the results you are expecting, for coding that means code reviews not commit counts, 360 feedback, and so on. If you are feeding back, and someones ignoring that, guess what, its also a you problem for not building in consequences and follow ups. It also applies just as much in an office situation as it does remote.



  • With Lost they repeatedly said that nobody, not a single person, had guessed what the ending was, not realizing that this was one of the first shows to go massive for fan theories on the Internet so everything even remotely plausable had been guessed.

    So yeah, they painted themselves into that corner fair and square as it was clear they had no fucking clue what the ending was when they started that show.

    If it was me, I would have admitted someone guessed it and just picked whichever fan theory seemed the most sensible to me.




  • Much like Regan and Bush Junior, Trump is the front man to smarter (but not really smart) people who orchestrate everything. He just happens to be broadly aligned with what they want, and every now and again they throw him a bone with his personal vendettas while allowing his family to make obscene amounts of money via various scams and bribes.

    What is truly astounding is how many people voted for the orange buffoon a second time, and still support him now. He has always been very clear as to what he is, what he will do, yet they still vote for him? Racism and hate has to be a powerful perfume that covers up the rancid stench of Trump and his goons.


  • I would buy a feature phone today, preferably something eink, if it was painless to switch my SIM between it and my smart phone. Having to take the SIM out of one, put it in the other, then turn on the phone is not painless and they do not design the little draws to support thousands of open/closes against the contacts to read the SIM.

    There are times I want the smart phone to have the SIM because I will want or need the extra functionality and if you just make the feature phone do everything then its just morphed into a smart phone with extra steps. I want the feature phone to be basic as I can get away with.

    That said, I really want google wallet or similar that I can share between the two phones for my passes and tickets, audio streaming support, and maps. Something like a Hisense A9 would fit the bill but the temptation to add more apps than the basics would be too great, plus I still need a way to switch SIMs between the phones.

    I cannot replace my smart phone, rather than supplement, with any feature phone because I use it for such a wide range of things. I can ssh from it to my home devices, I can manage my bank accounts, it tracks my health, it provides video and audio streaming on and offline, I can read and write documents/spreadsheets, plus anything you can do via a web browser.


  • What this chart is missing is the impact of the quality of the screen and the source material being played on it.

    A shit screen is a shit screen, just like a badly filmed TV show from the 80s will look like crap on anything other than an old CRT.

    People buying a 4k screen from Wallmart for $200 then wondering why they cant tell its any better than their old 1080p screen.

    The problem with pushing up resolution is the cost to get a good set right now is so much its a niche within a niche of people who actually want it. Even a good 4k set with proper HDR support and big enough to make a different is expensive. Even when 8k moves away from early adopter markups its still going to be expensive, especially when compared to the tat you can by at the supermarket.



  • Yeah it pushed me to finally put in an order, got to wait till December now as I’m in the third batch.

    I wanted to wait till we had proof thst the graphics card would be updatable and a better one would be available as their AMD card is a bit too lightweight for me.

    I would rather it had been a better AMD card, I have a 7900 xtx in my desktop, but i will take what I can get at this point, especially as I know I can upgrade later.