Over the last week or so, I have been noticing that the majority of my searches in DuckDuckGo have been completely failing. For example, I was searching for a specific Firefox extension api and it only brings up a list of Firefox extension. If I put the exact same query into Google, the second result is exactly what I wanted. Before this last week, I have being using DDG almost exclusively, but know I am need to add the Google bang before nearly every query. Am I the only person that is having this experience? I really prefer using DDG to Google, but I can't if the results stay this way.

Where do you all waste away most of your time on the internet? I hate to sound like a hipster, but I've come to avoid and/or dislike most main stream content aggregators. Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are all platforms I no longer participate in because of privacy and quality reasons. I like Tildes and all, but the community is small (and I like it this way) and that means the content isn't always fresh. So where else do you all hang out?

Inspired by the news of the new 13" MacBook Pro and Surface Book 3, I was thinking about just how much I hate not being able to replace the RAM, SSD or even battery in newer MacBook models. It seems like such an extreme decision and I wonder why.

The obvious answer is to make the devices less repairable thus forcing people to upgrade sooner.

But Apple isn't really dependent on devices breaking. Hardware is vastly improving every year and their customer base happily upgrades just for that. Also it could be argued that their most profitable product line – iPhones – have, despite all of that, some of the healthiest life cycles in the smartphone marketed with people happily using 5+ year old devices which still are supported in the latest releases of iOS. Few other devices hold their value in resale like Apple products, their sturdiness is quite remarkable and clearly factored into pricing and consumer decisions. They pride themselves with a reliable repair program and I have to imagine their repair geniuses (their term, not my sarcasm) don't like messing with glue.

So, all things considered, is there an argument for fucking gluing in batteries other than petty greed? Like, is it cheaper? That doesn't seem a motivation behind any other major design decision on their part. Is it it lighter? Easier to cool? Does it make for a slimmer chassis?

I tried searching the question but couldn't find anything (in fact, I wouldn't even know what terms to search for). Is there any good analysis or reasoned speculation? It somehow makes less sense the more I think of it and it would give me some head peace to at least know of some arguments for it other than Apple being assholes.

I moved into a new apartment and was surprised to see that all my rooms have CAT 5 Ethernet ports in the wall. However, cue my disappoint when I try to naively plug my router and machine in two separate ports to find that the ports don't actually work. After searching various forums, I found that I have to:

1. Locate the panel where all the ethernet ports connect
2. Wire them to an ethernet switch.

I found the panel but all the wires look like this:

https://i.imgur.com/Qzm72g0.jpg

I'm not sure what I need to do from here to plugging into my network switch. Any guides or advice would be extremely helpful. I don't need every port connected to the switch, only one or two. None of these look labelled so I might have a difficult time isolating which cable runs where.

And about the network switch... Any qualms about using an old router that has the AP turned off?