Both sw and hw.

SW is usually hard to use, offering no meaningful settings or making them hard to get to with meaningful QoL features simply absent. Search in any kind of mainstream product is an absolutely excellent example.

If someone does need something other than the default workflow or encounters any error then that is too bad for them.

For a lot of hw products there is little to no meaningful choice alongside absent repair options. The best example is probably smartphones which are excessively thin bricks with a charging port, camera bump, sealed in battery and hard to impossible to change os.

Features decreasing longevity and contributing to waste(plug in for global warming) are simply accepted and even welcomed by end users for bizzare reasons.

For now there are still workarounds depending on how much effort you want to expend with that effort sometimes being truly excessive.

If you have a flash drive, SSD drive (including NVMe drives), (micro)SD card, or some other popular flash memory media die on you, you might be able to get a free replacement, depending on the manufacturer and the product.

I recently RMA'd a SanDisk microsd card that died unexpectedly. When I looked up their warranty, SanDisk has a lifetime warranty on most of their flash memory products. They even provided a return shipping label. Since they no longer make the card that died, they're sending an upgraded, currently available model.

I've also RMA'd two Kingston NVMe drives. Both of them were getting a bit old, but the RMA was accepted, and in these instances I also received the newer version of the product. I did have to pay for return shipping myself, but it was well worth it.

So if you're about to toss that broken flash media in the trash, double check to see if a warranty applies. It's worth the time and potential shipping cost/hassles in many cases.

I'm looking for a kit that will give me some practice holding wires in place and soldering connections, hopefully also while giving me a completed object or set of objects that's fun at the end. I'm not completely new to soldering; I've done a couple simple kits and some repair of model trains with loose wires, but I definitely could be a lot better at it and I'd like some guided practice. Emphasis on the "guided," I'm not looking for additional things to repair, I really want a straightforward kit, a range of difficulties in connections would also be great. Any recommendations?

Lately I’ve been experimenting with different desktop monitor setups, primarily for productivity-focused work as a systems engineer (coding, writing docs, Slack, email, terminals, etc.). Over the past few years, I’ve rotated through:
• 3× 24” 1080p monitors
• 2× 24” 1080p monitors + laptop display
• 1× 32” 4K monitor + laptop display
• 1× 32” 4K monitor
• Laptop display only (on a stand)

Surprisingly, I’ve found that I feel the most focused and productive when I use only my laptop display and rely on Alt-Tab to switch between apps.

With larger monitors or multiple displays I start to feel scattered. It almost turns into sensory overload, and my focus drops off.

Has anyone else experienced this? Do you find that larger or multiple monitors decrease your productivity? What setup works best for you?

I have probably a 1/4 of a roll of filament that slid off a roll when I swapped it between a Bambu reusable spool holder. It's been on my floor for a couple months and I have not found any way of getting this back onto a spool, either by trial and error or by finding a good resource online.

All the videos I see are people with tangles on spools, and this would be nice if I was in this situation but I am not.

Any time I try to do this it's just so challenging to get any sort of rhythm or easy process with our ruining the entire thing.

Any advice?

Does anyone here use a tablet for note taking?

I've always used pen and paper for note taking when working or in/around the house. At one point when phones got bigger I did try moving to notes apps but they never clicked. Something about the glossy screen and the levels of fuss to take a note just didn't work.

I recently found out that there's e-ink tablets which try to emulate real note taking, like the Supernote which runs a custom firmware to make note taking as easy as possible. Or the Boox which is Android based, so it has way more apps, but it's got amazing reviews.

There's quite a lot, I'm curious if anyone here has actually used anything like this and what their thoughts are?
Looking at reviews, I'm drawn to the Supernote. But I'd love to hear some real use cases!