Eochaid

I highly recommend Buck Meek.

He’s the guitarist for Big Thief but his solo albums are some of the best country I’ve heard in a long time. And free from the toxicity of modern country (as far as I can tell)

Serious.

If you are seriously annoyed by any of these things, then it should be a reminder of how unburdened and care free your life is that such a thing actually bugs you, and spark a sense of pride and contentment instead.

No. Not at all.

Honestly, I hated the wire part of my wired headphones for years. I tend to listen to things while I’m doing chores around the house and I can’t tell you the amount of times the cable caught on something and sent my earbuds or my phone careening to the floor. Or was forced to untangle myself from a door knob. Or forgot I had earbuds on and stood up from my desk only to throw my phone to the ground.

I went on a bit of a journey with bt headphones but eventually got a pair of Sony Linkbuds and a $30 Bluetooth thingy for my car that plugs into the aux jack, and never looked back. Every other day I plug the case in on my nightstand along with my phone. Nbd. Linkbuds don’t have the best sound quality I’ve ever experienced in BT buds, but the comfort wins over all others.

I also recently got a pair of PineBuds Pro for $70 and man that battery case is legit. I only have to charge that beast once a week. Just waiting on someone to release a better sound profile for those things because they are BAASSSY. But beyond the bass, the potential sound quality is actually quite good. I’m looking forward to what the pine64 community does with these.

I’ll also say that I have audiophile hearing (I’ve been tested) and I absolutely hear the difference in sound quality using BT and a good set of cans - when it comes to earbuds, the difference is negligible between wired and wireless. Given that 1. I’m more often listening to words than music from my phone and 2. The convenience, I’ll go for wireless more often than not if given the option. Plus, outside of niche phones and defunct LG phones, I never saw a headphone jack that could properly drive a good set of cans. There are way more output devices I would choose over a phone to drive high quality audio.

That all said, do I think manufacturers should remove the headphone jack? No. Apple did it to sell more airpods. Everyone else did it to save a nickle on their costs. Just because I don’t use it doesn’t mean it should go away. If anything, there’s an accessibility element. BT buds are expensive. USB-C / Lightning buds are expensive. Aux buds are cheap. And wired buds are the easiest and cheapest way for someone to get audio out of a phone or talk on the phobe without fucking holding it in the air to broadcast their conversation to the world. And for that reason, I think the jack should ABSOLUTELY come back.

I agree totally.

I don’t get people stanning NMS over Starfield. I mean No Man’s Sky is alright as a tech demo sandbox but even with the latest update, I get bored so quickly. Even the stations and civilization hubs feel dead, the plot is just so haphazard and slapdash. Starfield feels so much more cohesive and…has actual characters. But they’re also just very different games. Starfield is heavier on story content and NMS is heavier on procedural generation.

I loved Cyberpunk’s story but I’ve found very little reason to come back outside of the main plot. GTA5 was a technical achievement under sweatshop conditions and while I hated the story, the world felt alive and full of things to do and places to explore. Cyberpunk feels like GTA if it was made with half the team and with one less year of development (because it was).

And you stanning Cyberpunk and No Man’s Sky as polished games is hilarious to me.

It took several years of fixing No Man’s Sky before it was anything more than a boring tech demo. Cyberpunk took years of bug fixes and a popular anime to break people out of the hate circlejerk and actually experience the fucking game. Starfield hasn’t even officially released yet. People need to chill the fuck out.

Also what are you talking about with “the engine is showing it’s age?”. This is a brand new fucking engine. I’m playing the game on my Xbox in 4k and it looks better than anything I’ve played this year.

My wife, a couple friends, and I have all put a ton of hours into this game and absolutely love it. I put several hours into the shipbuilder alone. Every hand built sidequest I run into feels like a TNG episode. And I love the kinda Becky Chambers / Star Trek-style utopia with mystery and drama theme they’ve got.

This is the most Bethesda game they’ve ever made, for better of worse. It doesn’t hand hold you. There are plenty of times where I’ve looked at my quest log, found nothing i could do except the main quest, and then decided just to jump to a random system - only to get pulled into some crazy new adventure for a couple hours. You’re supposed to be an explorer, if you put even the smallest effort into exploring, you will be rewarded.

A lot of people complaining were never going to like this game or any Bethesda game and I don’t know what to do with those people. The amount of constant negativity on the internet makes me really appreciate stories like TNG and writers like Becky Chambers and Cory Doctorow, because they’re so positive and affirming and optimistic and when they criticise, they also offer solutions. And this game really scratches that itch for me.

And after almost 40 years of life dealing with the constsnt cycle of negativity and hatred and anger and frustration and drama, on the internet, a global scale, and in my own life…I’m just tired. I can’t play games with “edgy dark stories” anymore. I can’t go back to New Vegas because its bummer after bummer. And i know a lot of people thrive on that “scortched earth” bullshit but I just can’t anymore.

I just…wanna sit down and play a game. And maybe one where everything is okay for once. And this is that game for me.

And you normally put your dick in the external hard drive?

She wants the scared and amazed face? I don’t get it.

I couldn’t give two shits about a fucking icon.

Best sleep I’ve ever had in my life.

1& 2: These are the kinds of things that appeal to people with OCD and enthusiasts with more time than work to do. And for the former, more customization can be destructive to productivity. Most people just want to sit down and either get work done or get their game open - not sit for hours customizing the interface.

I rarely ever use my taskbar and start menu on Windows because I can hit the start key and type to find the thing I want. Linux can do that too, but you’re focusing instead on finnicky customization. Most people have a cluttered desktop for a reason - nobody cares or has the time to properly organize their shit. I would suggest focusing on the real performance and productivity benefits of Linux.

3: The only people that care about telemetry are those that already hate Microsoft and already use Linux. Most Windows users couldn’t give two shits that Microsoft uses their anomymized usage data to fix bugs and evaluate feature adoption. Also, the only way to avoid telemetry is if the only servers you ever access are in your basement.

4: I agree that Windows is really obnoxious about the bullshit they’re putting on even base Windows install, but it takes me like 5 minutes to go through add/remove programs. You know what takes me longer than 5 minutes? Getting any non-standard hardware working on Linux, and even some software, and often because the base OS is missing something or has some box unchecked because a FOSS enthusiast has opinions.

5: Not enough people are aware of the fantastic set of freeware MS makes called PowerToys. PowerRenamer actually handles this gap for me. I feel like it should be included with windows but alas, some people would probably consider it “bloatware”.

6: MS certainly has issues in this regard, but I’m curious to know how Linux Mint actually faires. Consumer-focused distros tend to benefit from their low adoption rate and don’t get hammered by attacks like Windows and RHEL derivatives do. But I’ll freely agree that most Linux distros tend to be more secure by default. That said, does it really matter to the average Windows user? No it doesn’t. Because the biggest security issue for both Windows and Linux is actually the user - not an OS flaw. Even a default Windows environment is normally secure enough for most users.

I write simple explanations in english because developers can only write simple instructions in code.

I guarantee you’ve had “problems” but you’re so used to Windows now that you have the muscle memory to deal with it without thinking much about it.

Using all three in my household kinda highlighted for me how much I was just ignoring or working around the ugliness of Windows every single day.

No that’s fair. It just assumes that everything you’ll ever need is on a browser, which in the case of grandparents, is probably true.

I would just um…never tell them about the Android app store because that can get real messy real quick.

Yeah it was just a joke because I love to piss off the MacOS guys. But its like a brotherly teasing. Like, I love you guys, but I gotta rib you, you know.

I think Apple’s biggest sin is that everything works as long as all of your hardware, software, and co-workers have an apple emblazoned on their back. But the moment you have to work with anything or anyone that doesnt use Apple, you have problems. And Apple seems to encourage this because it gets their users to dread working with Windows or Linux users.

The sad thing is that I like a lot of their software. But using their OS is like having Steve Jobs standing over your shoulder and smacking you on the head when you try to shift outside of their intended workflow. I keep running into situations where Windows and Linux would let me go left or right (after finding a hidden and misnamed switch or running a well researched and crafted bash command), and MacOS just put a roadblock on the left because fuck you we said no.

I know that my ideal of a perfect OS is unrealistic. MacOS is more stable because it’s more rigid. Windows and Linux prove that the more flexible you are, the harder it is to use. But settling for one option and looking down at everyone who chose different isn’t going to help. We should all keep criticising our chosen option and root for others that are criticising their own. Because it seems like Apple, Microsoft, and the Open Source community are all in a rut, safely ignoring basic fucking usage issues because of an implicit assumption that their user base isn’t going anywhere.

I live in a mixed OS household. My wife and I both use windows and Apple machines for various purposes (my wife’s work requires both, my mac is just for dabbling) and I have some linux boxes for streaming or storage or whatever. And while that gives me the benefits of all three, I also have to deal with the problems of all three. And its a lot, guys. Not to mention they all refuse to work together.

Except that there’s a ton of actual competition in the screwdriver market that has forced innovation and improved screwdriver functionality that it is essentially “solved”.

Even cheap screwdrivers are easy to use and will do the job, they just might break after a few years. Expensive screwdrivers add extra features and are built to a higher quality. You can absolutely look up reviews and find “the best” screwdriver.

You also don’t need to learn to use a screwdriver. They’re all built to be self explanatory. If they have advanced features that need explaining, they’ll include a manual that explains each feature at a high school reading level because that’s their target market.

Also, there is no locked in loyalty to screwdriver brands. If a brand releases a shit driver, they’ll get roasted. If a new contender puts out a screwdriver that’s better than the rest, tradespeople will flock to it.

I would love it for OSes to be treated like screwdrivers are.

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Nah.

Uh huh.

please reconsider your priorities

Ngl, I laughed pretty hard when I saw that you ended your giant rant with this line.

Whoops…yes