whbboyd's recent activity
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Comment on Are you tech-savvy enough? in ~tech
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Comment on Are you tech-savvy enough? in ~tech
whbboyd LinkThis article is… really weird to me. Like, okay, the guy clearly values stability. But then he says: I… just don't believe him. If he's having that much trouble with routine updates on any of...This article is… really weird to me. Like, okay, the guy clearly values stability. But then he says:
Updates on Linux were always like Russian Roulette. I would restart and pray to every deity in human history for nothing to break. Mind you I didn’t use Arch, that was my experience on Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE.
I… just don't believe him. If he's having that much trouble with routine updates on any of those three, then either his install or his hardware (or both, I guess) are super fucked up. But even if it were true, if you care about stability, why wouldn't you try a distro with a reputation for stability? I've been using Debian since 2010 or so, and it has broken itself under me zero times.¹
In contrast, the consensus on MacOS version upgrades these days seems to be somewhere between "don't" and "at least give it a month for the critical bugs to shake out". And my personal experience with MacOS is almost entirely negative: basically nothing just works! My work Macbook's battery won't last a weekend on standby!²
Any assertion about why Apple's products are popular that doesn't address their titanic marketing budget immediately falls flat on its face, to be honest. So here's my equally-evidenced counterargument to the article's thesis: Apple's products are popular because of their titanic marketing budget, and the author has drunk their kool-aid.
¹ Not to say that I haven't broken it, of course. But it's always been very clear that I was doing something ill-advised, and the breakage was on me. And, of course, it's hardly difficult to utterly fuck up a MacOS install if you put your mind to it.
² Because I am tech-savvy enough, I actually know why: it's far, far too sensitive to various inputs while in sleep mode. So I bump my desk and it jiggles the mouse by two pixels, or turn my bluetooth headphones on across the house, and it wakes up and then happily idles until the battery dies, which takes a lot less than the 60 hours between Friday night and Monday morning. But Apple doesn't get any benefit of the doubt for making deliberate design decisions which make their products behave badly!
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Comment on Why I recommend against Brave in ~tech
whbboyd Link ParentI think you're underestimating the amount of effort required to build a modern browser by three or four orders of magnitude. Microsoft, of all the bloated, overresourced organizations, declared...I think you're underestimating the amount of effort required to build a modern browser by three or four orders of magnitude. Microsoft, of all the bloated, overresourced organizations, declared bankruptcy on it, and Edge is just a Chrome skin. Ladybird and Servo are great efforts, and I hope they succeed, but my strong prediction is that they won't: if either project ever reaches the point of making releases, I think that from the web user perspective, they'll be an awful lot closer to Dillo than real competition for Chrome or Firefox.
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Comment on Introducing two new PebbleOS watches! in ~tech
whbboyd Link ParentAhahaha, a few years ago I also switched from a Pebble (Time Round, no intervening smart watches because I could pretty much just look at the feature lists and go "no") to a Timex Expedition. =)Ahahaha, a few years ago I also switched from a Pebble (Time Round, no intervening smart watches because I could pretty much just look at the feature lists and go "no") to a Timex Expedition. =)
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Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? (trial giveaway: round #2) in ~tech
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Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? (trial giveaway: round #2) in ~tech
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Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? (trial giveaway: round #2) in ~tech
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Comment on Long-term experiences with Google search alternatives? in ~tech
whbboyd LinkI've been off Google as my primary search engine for (checks notes) wow, probably more than five years now. I used DDG for most of that, with Google as a fallback, and switched to Kagi about a...I've been off Google as my primary search engine for (checks notes) wow, probably more than five years now. I used DDG for most of that, with Google as a fallback, and switched to Kagi about a year and a half ago.
I failed to switch to DDG waaaaaay back in 2012 or so. The results were just too bad compared to Google. I'd have to fall back on nearly every search. In the time since, DDG has gotten a little better, and Google has gotten a lot worse. When I switched, DDG was worse, but no longer comparatively abysmal; my guess now would be that it's a little worse, but basically comparable. Neither DDG nor Google are very good these days. I think it's likely your difficulties with DDG are more because it's not very good than user error.
Kagi is… not as good as Google back when I first failed to switch away from it. But it is significantly better than Google now. They do a better job of filtering absolute garbage ("script tag", Kagi versus Google; note w3fools is nowhere to be seen in Kagi's results, but tops Google's, although also note that there's a lot of overlap between results), but the bigger strengths are probably the customization and more rigorous handling of search terms. (Also the lack of garbage nobody asked for, like instructions to glue cheese to pizza.)
As for whether it's worth paying for? I obviously think it is. I think I get my money's worth just from the smoother, more effective search experience; but I also think there's a significant value just from being the customer. A solid portion of Google's decline is straightforwardly attributed to the fact that Google Search users are Google's product, not its customers. Kagi's incentives aren't perfect, but being their customer aligns them far, far better than having your views sold to advertisers.
As for other options, I haven't really trialed any, because I'm pretty happy with Kagi; but I would definitely recommend avoiding Brave.
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Comment on Firefox's new Terms of Use grants Mozilla complete data "processing" rights of all user interactions in ~tech
whbboyd Link ParentMozilla is not operating FIrefox. It's not a service! They do not require any rights for me to run it on my computer. This is the thing that makes no sense here. They've taken boilerplate "social...You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox.
Mozilla is not operating FIrefox. It's not a service! They do not require any rights for me to run it on my computer.
This is the thing that makes no sense here. They've taken boilerplate "social media service" copyright license terms and applied them to something which is in no way, shape or form a service. The net result is incredibly overbroad and mostly nonsensical.
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Comment on Firefox's new Terms of Use grants Mozilla complete data "processing" rights of all user interactions in ~tech
whbboyd Link ParentIt is 100% novel to assert that things that I do on my computer with software that Mozilla merely authored have anything at all to do with Mozilla legally. Nobody else, even the usual suspects of...It is 100% novel to assert that things that I do on my computer with software that Mozilla merely authored have anything at all to do with Mozilla legally. Nobody else, even the usual suspects of the tech villains gallery, does or asserts this. I'd be very interested to hear the legal theory that leads to this ToU.
(It makes more sense with services; for example, Tildes needs a license to my comment in order to display it to you. If this comment were "all rights reserved", Tildes would be violating my copyright by serving it to the general public. But Firefox is, of course, not a service.)
I think Mozilla gets a lot of undeserved shit. They're the "can't win" butt monkey of online browser discourse; people complain that their revenue is homogeneous, and then complain when they try to diversify it. They complain about every change to Firefox intended to improve its market share, but also blame Mozilla for Firefox's small market share. Google has pulled a remarkable fast one in getting people to blame Mozilla for struggling to build Firefox when Google is 100% responsible for making "web browser" a category which requires a multi-hundred-million-dollar revenue stream to develop. It drives me nuts, to be honest. But this feels to me like a 100% unforced error. Asserting novel rights, and making nonsensical, novel claims about why they want those rights, comes absolutely out of nowhere, and I cannot see anything resembling a reasonable justification for it.
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Comment on How often do you replace your phone? in ~tech
whbboyd LinkI got a Nexus 4 in 2013, Galaxy S7 in 2019, and switched to a Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact in 2020. I'm technically on my second XZ2c after the first one developed dead lines in the screen a month or...I got a Nexus 4 in 2013, Galaxy S7 in 2019, and switched to a Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact in 2020. I'm technically on my second XZ2c after the first one developed dead lines in the screen a month or so ago. I very briefly used a Pixel 3 as a fallback in 2022 when Verizon dropped support for my XZ2c (aside: why in the everloving fuck is that a thing) while I wrangled working cell service, but it was never intended as a permanent replacement¹. So say, three phones in twelve years is an average of four years per phone. Although, the S7 was a mistake² and an outlier; if you exclude that one, it's two over eleven years, or 5.5 years per phone.
As for when I'll replace my XZ2c? Well, it'll be no sooner than when something comes along that's (a) supported by LineageOS, and (b) not physically larger. So it sure looks like I'll be using this phone for the rest of my life.
One thing to maybe note is that all of those phones except the Nexus 4 were bought used, priced in the $100-$200 range. So the total amount I've spent on phones, including spares and bad ideas, is still less than the cost of a single new flagship iphone. Aftermarket firmware is basically essential to a good user experience these days, which means picking up any brand-new phone, not supported by any of the third-party firmwares, is a significant downgrade in experience.
¹ Also, I hated it. Turns out, the Pixel 3 is just over the limit of what I can operate one-handed, and I got annoyed and dropped it constantly trying to reach my thumb across the screen. The thing I don't get is, my hands are not especially small, which means most people can't use a phone the size of a Pixel 3 one-handed. And yet pretty much all new phones are significantly bigger than that. Does everybody just uses two hands to do everything with their big clunky phablets these days? Or is this why "I dropped my phone and broke it", something which has never happened to me, is such a common complaint?
² I was already running LineageOS on my Nexus 4 at that point, and looking to replace it because it only supported 3G protocols, which were starting to get phased out. I don't remember why I settled on the S7, but for LineageOS support, you need specifically the international version with the Exynos chipset. These devices have only partial overlap with US cellular frequencies and do not work well as phones in the US. (But they're not completely dysfunctional, which may be worse.) Anyway, with hindsight I should have kept using the Nexus 4 until LineageOS picked up XZ2c support, but I had no way of knowing that was coming at the time.
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Comment on Facing egg shortage, some Americans turn to backyard chickens in ~food
whbboyd Link ParentAlso, if butchering your chickens doesn't sound awful to you, and you've never butchered an animal before… you're wrong. It's awful. Frank discussion of slaughter and butchery Even if you don't...Also, if butchering your chickens doesn't sound awful to you, and you've never butchered an animal before… you're wrong. It's awful.
Frank discussion of slaughter and butchery
Even if you don't have any emotional reaction to killing, eviscerating, and dismembering an animal you raised, and even if you don't have a reaction to blood and guts getting strewn about (and reactions to both of those are *very likely* in a random non-sociopath), slaughter and butchery is just difficult, messy, unpleasant work. Animal bodies don't want to come apart easily; you're going to be washing blood and other substances out of your hair afterwards. -
Comment on Overwhelmed with the realm of data exploration (datalakes, AI, plus some c-level pressure) in ~tech
whbboyd (edited )LinkI don't have good advice, unfortunately. You should quit as soon as you can line something else up. This project is an albatross around the neck of anyone working on it. More generally, it boggles...- Exemplary
I don't have good advice, unfortunately. You should quit as soon as you can line something else up. This project is an albatross around the neck of anyone working on it.
More generally, it boggles my mind how eager people (especially executives) are to do things without any understanding of what they're doing. Like, it's been obvious for decades that there's a deep strain of intellectual laziness that flows through American white-collar culture; but even my cynicism has been surprised by the degree to which people (again, especially executives for some reason) thought "hey, I might never have to think again", and promptly hurled themselves mind body and soul into the abyss.
Anyway, the real solution to the problem you've been told to solve by killing albatrosses is to hire a data analyst. So you've got it on the authority of some rando on the Internet that you're not crazy, lol. =) There's a truism in data analysis that you can't analyze data you don't understand, and that holds true for large neural network models as much as it does for more trivial stuff like regressions and averages.
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Comment on Phishing tests, the bane of work life, are getting meaner in ~tech
whbboyd LinkDon't include social engineering in penetration tests. Ironically, my experience with phish tests is that the emails are very formulaic, and so they effectively train people to recognize phish...Don't include social engineering in penetration tests.
Ironically, my experience with phish tests is that the emails are very formulaic, and so they effectively train people to recognize phish tests, but not necessarily the wide universe of actual phishing attempts. Combine that with companies outsourcing more-or-less all of their internal operations to external services, and egregious shit like this, and employees are in a no-win situation.
And, uh, most office workers aren't total idiots, and will recognize that the group with any control over this no-win situation is IT. Y'know what really, really, really sucks? Trying to manage the tech of a bunch of employees who are somewhere between highly suspicious and outright combative. Just more fuel on the "corporate IT are a bunch of incompetent ninnies" fire, I guess.
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Comment on Ask Tildes: Job security - does it exist, how to deal with lack of, how to process being fired / unemployment in ~life
whbboyd Link ParentNegotiated severance is rare outside the upper leadership levels. There are ~0 legal protections; your employment may be terminated at any time for any non-illegal reason, including no reason at...Negotiated severance is rare outside the upper leadership levels. There are ~0 legal protections; your employment may be terminated at any time for any non-illegal reason, including no reason at all. If you want three months of wages guaranteed, you need to have three months of wages in personal savings. The closest you're likely to get from your employer (again, outside of upper leadership where golden parachutes are more common) is a large signing bonus, which is relatively more common.
However, if you do somehow manage to get guaranteed severance or notice terms into your employment contract, those are very enforceable. I think the leverage you would need is "be applying to a job where that's already typical", which to the best of my knowledge is executive, certain professional jobs, and very little else.
In the event of layoffs, you have more protections. I'm not sure exactly what those protections are, but I know you're eligible to collect unemployment insurance, which will pay you a portion of your wages up to a cap for a limited time while you search for new employment.
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Comment on We're bringing Pebble back! in ~tech
whbboyd Link ParentGadgetbridge worked (as of a few years ago when I last used it), and supported most of Pebble's features (all the ones I used, but not necessarily all), but it was a big pain in the ass to use....Gadgetbridge worked (as of a few years ago when I last used it), and supported most of Pebble's features (all the ones I used, but not necessarily all), but it was a big pain in the ass to use. You had to extract apps and watchfaces for sideloading, and nothing was as smooth or polished as with Pebble's app.
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Comment on Snacks that aren't just sugar or crazy salty in ~food
whbboyd Link ParentThis is… kind of true? It is true that most of the calories in fruit are typically in the form of simple carbohydrates, and that these calories are very accessible in the context of a...There is still a lot of energy contained in many fruits (although I am sure it varies) and it is easy to still consume way to many calories from that perspective.
This is… kind of true? It is true that most of the calories in fruit are typically in the form of simple carbohydrates, and that these calories are very accessible in the context of a hunter-gatherer diet. But in the context of a modern, agricultural diet, it's much less true. For example, an apple contains roughly 100 calories. If you're targeting 2000 calories for a day (which you probably shouldn't, that number is 100% arbitrary and quite high for an average American), you would need to eat twenty apples. This big ol' bag contains 13 apples. Do you think you could eat a bag and a half of apples in a day? One apple every 45 minutes? I think I could, but I really like fruit and I wouldn't enjoy it much. That's an extraordinary amount of bulk to consume.
In contrast, a big mac (apparently a standardized unit of unhealthy food…?) has 540 calories. I think most healthy adults could eat four big macs in a day. (I would struggle because I find fast food hamburgers gross, not because it's a lot or difficult to eat.) And those calories are more accessible than those in an apple; a bunch of them are coming from protein or fat rather than carbs, but there's virtually zero fiber for the gut to work around.
Now, if you're already getting most of your calories from calorie-dense meals and apples really are a snack, then yeah, you could pack a fair few calories in that way and go over your target. If you want to satisfy the urge to snack without consuming a lot of calories, you can certainly get less from eating more. (A stalk of celery has six calories, for instance.) But if you're replacing fried or sweetened packaged snacks with fruit, you would be very hard pressed not to improve things.
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Comment on We're bringing Pebble back! in ~tech
whbboyd LinkPut me down as "cautiously intrigued". I've written before on here about my feelings about Pebble. Given renewed interest and an open source companion app, I'm much more likely to pull out my old...Put me down as "cautiously intrigued".
I've written before on here about my feelings about Pebble. Given renewed interest and an open source companion app, I'm much more likely to pull out my old Time Round than buy a new watch (especially if new production runs are brightly-colored original or Pebble 2-styled; that's perfectly fine, but not really my aesthetic). But given those things, I'd still give it just even odds with continuing to wear my current watch. I like my current dumb watch. It's definitely a better watch than the Time Round.
All a bunch of stuff that I hadn't thought I would have to consider again, I guess. Which is exciting in its own right, whether I change any of my habits as a result or not. =)
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Comment on To those who have been trying out Kagi: what do you think of it? in ~tech
whbboyd LinkNot the user you're looking for (I've been using Kagi as my primary search for a year and a bit now), but I'll give my thoughts anyway (it's the Internet, you can't stop me!). I like it overall; I...Not the user you're looking for (I've been using Kagi as my primary search for a year and a bit now), but I'll give my thoughts anyway (it's the Internet, you can't stop me!). I like it overall; I definitely find it to be the best search engine (meaning "finds the most relevant/useful results for a given search query") right now. If I were to make a ranking of notional search engines, it would look something like:
- Google c. 2010-2015
- big gap
- Kagi
- medium gap
- Google now
- DuckDuckGo
- Bing…? Yahoo, maybe? TBH, if neither Kagi nor Google find something useful, I usually assume it doesn't exist.
- big gap / Cuil
(To be clear, I'm pretty sure the big gap between Google of ten years ago and Kagi of now has more to do with ten more years of SEO getting more intrusive and big tech consolidating their platforms than anything to do with the actual effectiveness of the search engine.) It's frustratingly difficult to get useful results, but still significantly better than Google (and there's way less obvious spam to sift through). As of a year ago, Google had decayed sufficiently that DDG was only marginally worse, so it's what I was using previously, and Kagi produces notably better results.
The main feature I use other than just… searching… is adjusting site rankings (mostly to punish garbage like Fandom or W3Fools that has good SEO but negligible useful content). I don't use any of the bangs or whatnot because I have my user agents configured to do that in a more streamlined way (cf.). I don't use any of the AI features because I'd like to force human beings to lie to my face (figuratively, anyway). I don't use Orion because I utterly despise both macos and chrome.
To be honest, even if Kagi was no better than DDG, I would still seriously consider using it, from a "support the business model you want to see in the world" perspective. Advertising is a pox on the Web and society at large; I certainly don't think Kagi is perfect, but at least I'm actually their customer.
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Comment on I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012) in ~science
whbboyd Link Parent…Would it, though? Tungsten is not particularly reactive. It's not going to dissolve into the water on its own (in fact, it will happily ignore baths in some pretty serious acids). The usual way...…Would it, though? Tungsten is not particularly reactive. It's not going to dissolve into the water on its own (in fact, it will happily ignore baths in some pretty serious acids). The usual way to distribute it in gasses is to heat it white hot as an incandescent light filament, at which point it starts slowly sublimating; but hair dryer coils aren't designed to get anywhere near that hot, and couldn't do so when immersed in water regardless.
While I agree with this, I would also like everyone responsible for an interface or program to stop fucking churning it pointlessly like a shark tank full of chum, pleaseandthankyouverymuch.
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