I don't know how many vacuum cleaners I ruined with those little wires, and I still don't understand what a j/k flipflop foes, but I did spend three days wiring up a wheel of fortune circuit to marvel at what was possible with hardware! It was at this juncture that I decided that software was my discipline. Something that has stuck with me mu whole life.
Reminds me of the sound racer v8[0]. This gismo was a lot more fun that people gave it credit for -- it read the rpm from the 12v signal in the power and modulated a v8 over fm. Had a blast in my little four cylinder sounding like a beefy v8!
You're welcome. I just finished linux-ifying the last pc in the house. I'm sure this is what brought us over the edge.
I mean all we need is a browser and steam. Both work halfway decent on mint on older hardware. Sometimes inkscape, gimp, freecad and a slicer -- all are cross platform. As long as we stick to pre-2022 aaa titles, it works just fine. Sure was cheaper than a full household tech refresh.
Thunderbird really stepped up their game too. Maybe this is the year. Maybe.
Payment gateways (paypal, apple, google), in general, do NOT let you cancel individual services and are linked to your CC. Vendors (I'm looking at you, Audible!) constantly hide their account termination under layers of dark patterns. For awhile, I had several ghost subscriptions that I a.) didn't want and b.) couldn't cancel.
My credit card card [1] has fundamentally changed my online purchasing experience as it bridges what I feel is a gap between new payment methods (Apple, Google, et al) and classic payment methods (CC).
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
When I purchase something line, I create a new one-time card (three taps on my phone) and use that new, valid CC for purchasing. Everybody takes a CC. The card is instantly deleted after purchase, and I don't have to worry about my paypal account, apple pay account, google wallet account, ghost subs, account hacks, identity theft -- the works.
Honestly, stories like this (and similar when streaming services change catalogs) is why I've gone back to DVDs. Nobody has knocked on my door (yet) to get those back.
Han Shot first! I had to find an old VHS to see this with my own eyes.
I think this speaks tremendous volumes to the legacy of these programs. Using this site, I fired up an old unix v6 on a simulated pdp11. I've never used a pdp 11 or unix v6.
I was able, within a few seconds, navigate the system and find the 'moo' game in /usr/games/moo. In other words, I was functional with SECONDS. The staying-power of that kind of technology just blows my mind.
Netflix also announced it's raising the price for its most expensive streaming service by $2 to $23 per month in the U.S. — a 10% increase — and its lowest-priced, ad-free streaming plan to $12 — another $2 bump. The $15.50 per month price for Netflix's most popular streaming option in the U.S. will remain unchanged
While I believe that HA is very cool and many vendors provide valuable solutions, we must consider what happens when we die.
This is just one anecdote, but I believe the problem is more pervasive.
I was called to an elderly lady's home to "un-haunt" the building. See, her husband had recently passed away; he done "all of the cool things" to make the home smart. Unfortunately too smart. The wife could not operate the devices in her own home.
She had the tenacity to handle living in a dark house. All the time; she just gave up on the lights -- she couldn't figure it out and lived like this for an entire year.
She finally called for help when lights started randomly turning on and off. She believed it was the spirit of her late husband, but after some diagnostics, we found some cross-channel noise from a home further down the block. Whenever this neighbor would come home, he would turn on his lights via his home automation. About 75% of the time, it would turn on our lady's lights too. In her bedroom. And the neighbor worked 3rd shift.
I spend the next two days removing all home automation devices and, as she put it, putting in "turn the light on and off again" switches.
When choosing technology -- any technology, it's important to consider the life of that device and the people impacted far in the future.
A can of green paint. Seriously. I painted the wall behind me green. OBS studio does my pre-filter and keys well off the wall. Certain services (aws chime and Google talk on firefox), don't do virtual backgrounds and none of them frame the stream well. OBS+virtual camera does a great job!
Speaking of virtual background, I took a real picture of a real office. My virtual background looks natural and is not distracting.