brewtide

Worked for a res-electrician for about 6 years. We would often strongly suggest that people run cat5e (it was years back now) to many locations for future proofing layouts and connections in the house.

Very very few people had interest in the slight added expense of the cable and labor to do as such -- all insisting that they only needed it to / from cable modem area to their aspirational wifi router location.

In an area around nearby, years ago (in the sticks...) someone went up the power lines through the woods and clipped all the bare grounding wire from miles of poles from about 8 feet up to the ground.

Seems like a lot of work for low money.

This is all happening anyways, just at a far slower scale.

Recently both my mortgage company, who bought my mortgage from another company without any say from me in the matter, had a giant leak. You heard about it. I'm hardly alone .

Then Comcast/Xfinity, same thing. I have 2 options for internet, now, it seems. Comcast or now starlink.

Point is, you can plunk your information into relative bare-minimum of sketchiness -- and you'll still be screwed over.

But one of those things has the responsibility placed up on you.

The other, not so much.

Plenty of downsides to crypto no doubt, but I'm not sure "personal responsibility" is one of them.

This exactly. Whatever the motive, whomever fully realizes that this address is watched with a very fine tooth comb and simply isn't possible to go unnoticed.

Why the expenditure? Someone above basically said marketing -- marketing Bitcoin so headlines hit the masses and maybe get some sort of ball rolling again. I think it's safe to assume there is a larger plan in the works and whomever responsible has played their hand and now hopes the cards fall as they projected, for whatever ends.

I dunno. Sleeping glued to the heaters sure beat slogging the 1/4, mile at 8am with wind and sometimes snow whipping you in the face.

They didn't build the MOST IMPORTANT tunnel!

I have no idea if it's chance, but my middle school "first class" BBS system was named... Yup. Coconet. Strange memory recall.

Agreed. Likely in the search of efficiency, which oftentimes brings complexity, which then involves more precision or more pieces to a puzzle, or both.

There is something to be said about the dead simple ways of things for sure, and all depending on object/item but a "sweet spot" where something is pretty darn efficient yet not overly complex.

Our endless forwards towards "the most efficient" everything always carries consequences. People / society included.

Fully agree on all points. When the pandemic hit, I turned the backyard shed (windows, 12x10 at least) into a backyard one room schoolhouse for all of the same reasons. Put a Woodstove in it, wired the property with ubiquiti wifi everywhere (for their zoom meetings). The physical walk to a place meant for learning made all of the difference in the world for the k and 2nd grader who loved the whole experience.

Now since school is back in action, it has become the quiet place to hangout if outside gets too warm in the summer, or a peaceful retreat during snowstorms in the winter. It's cozy as heck.

Slowly becoming the "radio shack" as it has a goes receiver setup in it now and a couple long pieces of wire strung through the trees for shortwave listening.

The physical individual separation, even if being across the yard, makes all the difference to our brains.

First the mortgage provider, and now the only option around for 'net.

We need to come up with a new plan for human authentication, that isn't straight from a dystopian landscape.

I have Plex thrown onto a headless old franken i5 that's also doing duty as a home assistant instance, running an instance of car speed tracking openCV python thing and a goesrecv decoding instance (from the atom processor'd sdr connected laptop out back in the schoolhouse).

You use the app on a phone to cast to a chromecast that's jabbered into the $84 projector, hooked to the "they are broken" Sony Bluetooth speakers and sub (not broken, now fixed!).

And all currently mostly stored on an external 4tb USB 3 drive I've had for years.

A rant, and a ramble, but nothing listed above is expensive or particularly hard to wing together.

Is the experience mind blowing? Nope. But it works for the kids and I, and has certainly been worth the time (and nominal $) expenditure here.

Zero. Qualms.

Edit: $10 a month in electricity for this ancient machine doing all of these things, if you round up.

100% share the method. If you are patient, somewhat knowledgeable, and frankly lucky you can pick up some nice things for real cheap at that point. Sometimes they can turn into money puts, but oftentimes with some preventative maintenance, things just keep going smooth.

I remember owning one of the first portable CD players that did not have any anti-skip buffer, at all.

It was a very delicate experience.

Yup. In fact, veratasium just released a video discussing this a decent bit in the video linked below...

"What the longest running study on happiness reveals"

https://youtu.be/vSQjk9jKarg?si=k_zU_ua0VlQcpvJS

They bought mine about 18 months ago. It's been a shitshow since the beginning. The last time I spoke to a customer service rep I told her "I pray every day that someone else buys my mortgage."

"Oh, I get it!" She said, laughing.

Brace yourself.

Reminds me of the articles a decade ago or so about using tide laundry detergent for the same reason.

An example: https://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/

Edit: tide, not ride.

Having grown up and lived in Maine for over 40 years has awakened me to an interesting thought semi-recently:

The "Maine mindset" of solve the task at hand, oftentimes even if it does not look pretty or seem an 'official' fix is basically the hacker mindset.

Having not many people in a rather large rural area that gets "all the seasons", combined with generally far lower incomes than many areas tends to put "survival" on the table quite frequently.

Making things work, modifying things to work in the use case you need something to work in, kludges and contraptions is seen across every aspect of living in this state.

Reuse and re-purposing of items (and saving everything under the sun just in case it may be needed -- you should see our yards!) Seems to be THE core mindset.

The weather is... Often less than ideal, but the people and this mindset make living here a pretty unique experience it feels like.

It's not surprising at all that over 85% of the voting population aligned with "yeah, people should be able to fix their own shit" -- because for so many of us "mariners" (edit: Mainers), it's how we make the ends meet and survive until the next Spring.

Also of note, basically the entire state is 100% dependent on car travels. We travel distances for.. everything. In weather.

If your car breaks, etc, you immediately are in a position that needs to be rectified real quickly...

There is a movie based of this premise, but I cannot seem to remember the name. "Freeze frame" comes to mind.

In Maine, ice storm of '98. Can confirm, did suck.

Also got to ice skate down the road, across the lawn, and, well, anywhere.

Bad connections are far more prone to get worse, rapidly (and arc themselves bigger...) When larger amounts of current need to go through them.

All connections need to be nicely done -- the ones on your range plug, they should be very snugged, and double checked.

Etc. lugs on a 200 amp home service panel are ON there.

I think it's like 200 miles from any boarder, including the coastline.

Ie. It can be very broadly abused.

Living in Maine (and, well, rarely leaving...) I forget that they even exist! Funny how we get used to the norms around us.

Huge fan of used equipment, and live in a great country to simply acquire 'peoples old stuff', to upgrade my even older stuff on the cheap.

1) pixel 3 -- Actually bought this new. It's in mint shape, and just had battery #3 placed in it. It does all the things I need it to do, and minus it's lackluster battery life from design onward, perfect. AND fits in a pocket, and allows your leg to still move without snapping it!

2) Every household appliance I have: Dishwasher, Fridge, washer/dryer -- These are all likely from the early 2000's and are of the most simple design. None of the devices have a screen or a 'digital' input mechanism. They are the opposite of fancy, but just do their job, on the daily.

3) Titan 440x paint sprayer -- Acquired this years ago now and have run a serious amount of paint through it. It's probably 15-20 years old. Again, it's not fancy. When you adjust the pressure, you turn a knob. You have no idea what value you are actually at. Need more pressure? Crank it right. Need less? Left. It's perfect.

4) Every car I've ever owned has been at least 8 years old, typically in the 10-12 year range. Always over 100k; Generally nearing 200k. -- I'm sure we're all 'handy' in one way or another here, and are generally able to figure out and be handy in the ways we have yet to learn. Being able to fix most things wrong with a car allows one to more calmly purchase what can turn into really solid purchases with a bit of love and well, luck. Everything is modern enough that 'high milage' isn't as much of a worry as to perceived and actual maintenance done before purchase. Keypoint: Always, always, own at least 2 if you go this route. Things will break, but as long as you can 'take the other one' for a few days/week life's schedule can be continued with 'fix car' / 'send car to get fixed' additions.

5) Woodstove. I live in Maine. It makes 110% sense to have a woodstove here. It's nice to know that as long as I have something to burn, the house will have heat, we can heat water, and we can cook food. The lax definition of input required vs all of the gains of the output it provides have a woodstove, certainly old tech, at the absolute top of perfectly happy with. Currently now heat with heat pumps for general 'fill heat' and the woodstove to raise from that to 'comfortable'.

I'm sure this list could go on forever. I find myself to like simple things that do their job. I like new simple things, that do their job, too. These days, it's seems however that the simple things are often not so simple, but 'smart' and with a feature-set that I really don't need, but often becomes the failure point.

I like the 'click' of the can opener when you squeeze it through the lid. If it fails, you can see why, and address the issue. I'd rather not abstract life away, but use tools that help free time.

As someone who has owned 2 Miataii in their life, 100% agree. Current is a '91 NA in British racing green! When I'm getting hammered by the work / grind, I'll make sure I at least drive it to and from work for a few days -- still doing the thing I need to do (painter; partly seasonal type job with natural world time-frames... nearing soon!). Provides a bit of lark in the day and reminds me to stop stressing as much and to literally and figuratively enjoy the wind in my hair.

But regardless of "buy a car", put some effort into a thing you've always wanted to try to explore, no matter how "pointless" and explore it -- the point of life is to live it and we're all so willing to fall into our own filter bubble of life -- very realized at 'mid age' (41 here, really starting to appreciate birds and cars going slow by my house...)

Find YOU, no matter how unproductive financially / whatever metric that may be!

Same here, but Ive been using lineageOS on mine for a year or so now?

Works great, minus the battery life. On first 'amazon' battery replacement and debating a 2nd. Broke the rear glass changing it last time -- but now I have a pixel 3 'panda'.

Was really hoping to see a similarity sized phone.

Also, do you use the squeeze feature of the phone? I use it all the time - to activate assistant in my pocket, squeezing through the pocket , and in headphones it pops up. Slick.

Guess I'm just replacing another battery.

Hope Google or some phone company is reading all these small phone requests. I understand the compromise may be battery life. I'm fine with that. It needs to fit in a pocket AND be able to bend around and do physical work without binding up or snapping in half.

I have zero doubt we will look back at the current medication pushing for "results" in the future, as we do at the physical implementations of the past.

AFAIK, we are pretty unsure how many medications actually work in the mental health field instead only seeing if they return 'results' similar to what we are originally aiming for.

But it shouldn't be a problem for you. (Not saying it wouldn't be / is not, but should not be).

As a single Dad of two elementary aged children, I'm now used to getting the weird glances from other parents on the playground, when I'm either sitting on a swing/bench keeping tabs of them ripping around a playground or in fact playing with them on the playground itself.

I shouldn't immediately be eyeballed with the obvious skepticism of others, but I am.

On a similar note, in a VERY small town, one isn't able to just go into the school office to talk to the secretary, you likely have to be "buzzed in", and or have the chat via intercom system. It isn't welcoming, and feels more like a prison, honestly.

Again, this is in a very small town,bin a very unpopulated state.

We are so afraid of the dark that we're causing a whole new world of problems for everyone, and at the same time barely making a dent in the horrible articles that plaster "the news".

Sorry, a bit of a ranting, but man the path we are headed on is so damn bleak.

You don't like jackhammers above your head when listening to whatever cassette tape (I'm old!) you brought in being piped to your ears via ... Aquarium tubes?

Don't move equates to my face itches, immediately.

"Our world" not "the world". Gets worse and worse as we distance ourselves further from nature and "real world things" and focus more and more on these screens and the 'world' we have created.

Honestly, I think we're overall pretty doomed. But hey, round and round it goes.