Viewing profile — vanilla_nut

Way back when I used Spotify, I felt they should go this way instead of dabbling with (fake) podcasts, pivot-to-video, audiobooks, and slop music. All of that stuff is a distractio…

Quite right. I'm worried about the impact that LLMs will have on the learning process, especially in programming, but also in writing. Programming and writing are both skills that …

This is absolutely wonderful. As a former resident of Astoria and soon-to-be Brooklyn resident, I noticed something that becomes pretty obvious quickly to NYC residents: literally …

Source? This seems extremely unlikely to me, running a camera all the time consumes a fair bit of energy and they don't take long to turn on. Unless that's because they're always o…

A lot of companies pay and treat tech writers like shit. If you're a decent tech writer who can write well, grok engineer speak, collaborate well with engineers during crunch time …

I've used ridewithGPS for multiple bike tours, the longest being a full month of unsupported riding. I also use it to scout out routes when I want to create a new ride somewhere in…

TL;DR it looks like the M4 Mac Mini redesign is _not_ soldered onto the logic board. So instead of paying 6x street prices of similar SSDs, you can just upgrade it yourself with an…

> Kagi Maps, based on Mapbox and OpenStreetMaps. Extremely exciting. Google Maps has gotten significantly worse in the last couple of years, finally passing the threshold of enshit…

Only time I've ever had an issue is when I manually disconnected power from a Pi 4 when I overreacted to a network outage. I was dumb and thought my Pi's DNS was screwing things up…

I don't think London has made quite the strides in bikeability that Paris has since 2020, but when I visited Hackney last year I was astonished to see more bikes during rush hour t…

Works well until you end up with temperatures too hot to wear pants. Or you exercise someplace with ticks and get too sweaty for pants. Hell, I live as far north as you can go in N…

Why do housing prices go up? Partially inflation. But mostly because purchasing a house and renting it out is massively profitable, state subsidized, and a safe way to invest a sto…

I find that 4 to 7 day forecasts tend to be 80% accurate. So probably a little bit better than they were when I was a kid. Unfortunately, the most important part of any forecast IM…

Sorry, but my Article and Walmart.com accounts do not need 2FA. I'm fine with OTP, but most places use SMS 2FA, which exposes a unique identifier for myself and -- due to SIM swapp…

I wish more OSes would work with independent photographers to compile a set of beautiful wallpapers. It used to feel easy to find good wallpaper online, but nowadays, especially wi…

In my experience, administration cares a lot about pass/fail ratios. Much less so about the distribution of passing grades. I've seen situations where administration forced a curve…

Two ways: - a Yubikey - a sparingly used email account with no 2FA, just a very long password 2FA through the sort-of-secret email account lets me get back into Bitwarden (and thus…

Worse, ultrawideband/mmwave 5G and 8k TVs can be a nuisance. I've seen 5G phones repeatedly get "stuck" on a weak or nonexistent mmwave signal while traveling, and it can take quit…

Hyperion was a big surprise for me this year as well. I expected it to be good, but the way the first book unfolds a larger universe is incredible. I'm not sure I've read science f…

A good reminder that I need to finish my Malazan readthrough! The universe is incredibly deep, the characters are incredibly rich, but I do wish Erikson would let us get a little b…