Today I’m donating my streaming sticks. I got a ONN brand 2k one I bought for 15 and I got an Amazon Firestick 4K I got for $3 from a thrift store because they didn’t know what it was.
And I love the concept of stream sticks, I really do. Too fucking bad that corporate interests got in the way and now everything has to have a bundle of ads at every damn turn. Not even some of the things I’m subscribed to is free from ads because this is the future apparently, we’re here.
Shame because I don’t want to let these go and even if I were to subscribe to Netflix’s ad-free subscription, that’s only one source. Why do that when I can just grab a long HDMI cable, plug it into my desktop and to my TV and I can watch everything that’s there, without ads because of the extensions I use to block ads.
Dual-booting, modding, or debloating Windows. And anything but the LTSC edition. It’ll all fall apart within a year given the nature of Windows 10 updates. Projects like Ameliorated, while well-intentioned, are a security mess waiting to happen since you have to disable any and all updates.
So I bit the bullet on an extra laptop, exiled any Windows-specific projects, files, etc. to it and slapped on a copy of LTSC. I consider the machine compromised and only use it for what absolutely depends on Windows.
Google. It’s been a long process but I’ve been degoogling little by little for a multitude of reasons.
Caring about my life. Im going to let the rest of this one slip through my fingers like beach sand. No need to hold on tight anymore.
Why not? Still so much good and beautiful left… Saying this as someone who has seen more than his fair share of dark underbelly of society.
Sometimes it’s really a dark day but seriously, cheesy as it is to say, the next day will be brighter
I hear you on the streaming sticks. 10 years ago, you could throw a Chromecast in your suitcase, plug it into a hotel TV, and cast anything you wanted from your phone. Now, if you try to do that, you have to set the Chromecast up through the Google home app, tell it what “room” it’s in, but then you can’t cause you arent at your “home”, so you have to set up a new “home”, and then that doesn’t usually work, so you just quit and read a book instead.
Enshittification at it’s finest!
My parents and their endless bigotry.
My gripe is with the androidTV/roku/etc being built into the TV. Just give me a big monitor that can switch inputs, that’s it. I install TVs for work and I can’t count the amount of times the TV is just trashed because the software is screwed up and you aren’t even able to switch it to HDMI1 and carry on like it doesn’t exist. It’s hot garbage, keep that shit on little HDMI sticks that you can throw away without throwing away the whole TV. Seriously, your TVs life gets cut in half if you have a whole OS on it. Bring back dumb firmware.
Oops All Planned Obsolescence
Dumb TVs exist, and they’re 5x the price of smart TVs.
Ads and data mining subsidizes the hardware cost. If you want cheap TVs you get spyware and ads.
A smart TV is a dumb TV when it doesn’t have an internet connection. I won’t put mine on the wifi and do everything through Chromecast or Xbox.
I know OP calls out an ONN streaming stick, bu5 I just got one of their 4k Pro models, and I really like it. It’s a pure Google TV experience with no additional sds.
Doordash and other similar services. My order is wrong 9 times out of 10, and the price isn’t justifiable. I’d rather save the frustration and money and just make ramen or similar meals when I’ve been smoking or drinking and shouldn’t drive to fulfill the munchies.
I hear you. I have Walmart + and thankfully it’s free. Because for the past 3 orders, one of which I paid $80+ for. The drivers kept dropping off my groceries at two different doors in the same apartment building I’m in. How the fuck can you mess that up?
I think I’m at my wit’s end with “smart” things.
Roomba? It takes less time to just vacuum the place than it does for the fucking vacuum to realize it’s been humping the same chair leg for most of its battery charge.
Assistants?
“Hey Google, open the bedroom blinds”
“Sorry, that device hasn’t been configured yet”
“Hey Google, open the bedroom blinds”
“Sure, turning 2 lights on”
“Hey Google, open the bedroom blinds”
“Sure, opening the blinds”
I consciously avoid having to control any of my smart home devices using voice or other weird methods. Everything is toggled with buttons or fully automatic. This works pretty well for me and voice control is still available but it’s only optional. Sure you might ask why even make it smart then? Because I’m a nerd and because I keep forgetting to turn lights off when I leave. Also smart thermostats are great.
Though I also gave up on my vacuum robot. Due to rearranging some furniture I had to move the vacuum base and let it rescan my apartment. But now for some reason it never gets past the dining room and aimlessly swirls around the table until the battery is dead, never finishing the room scan. On top of that it picked up a small pebble or something and scratched the floor. I had enough of it.
I gave up on “smart” devices after giving them zero chances. I’ve never bought one.
I feel the same, but my anger is scoped to cloud-connected “smart” things.
Like you, I can’t stand my iRobot gear. My Roomba hasn’t updated its map in over a year because it always has “some problems” (probably due to pushing everything to the jank
us-east-1data center).On the other hand my recent Aqara gear is very nice but it took me time to finally call it quits on Z-Wave beforehand.
Those bosses in my game that I keep dying on
You just gotta clear the biter spawners around your factory so pollution doest trigger a ton of waves over and over.
Once you get a car drive really far in each direction because nest you have discovered don’t evolve from time passing/pollution/killing spawners. Bring walls if you can and seal up choke points so you get peace of mind and can work on what’s important.
Goddam traffic in cities skylines
Trying to draw using vector programs such as Illustrator. Prior to settling on my beloved (Paint Tool SAI) I tried to use Illustrator, and despite the benefit of being able to blow up a drawing without losing quality, it just never sat right with me and always felt awkward.
Depends on the style, I think. If it requires any kind of gradient shading or texture, pixel editing software. If you can get away with just lines, colors, and solid shading, vector is good enough but it’ll be easier on pixel editing software.
Nowadays I just work on massive files so that I can shrink them to size.
My job. I resigned earlier this week after 8 1/2 years.
i’m about to do something similar and for a job that is a 56% percent pay cut for me; but it’s as far away as i can find from the profit seeking evil that has characterized my most recent jobs while still employing my skillset.
Congrats!
Electronics with bad interfaces.
Either make your shit user friendly, or I’m returning it. If I have Google how to do basic things F U. You and your product isn’t worth my time.
Same with subscription fees.
Burger King. They’ve messed up orders, burned food, and drowned stuff in mayonnaise too many times to tolerate.
Now I just cook frozen burger patties on the stove, and tell myself that their sides were never all that great anyway.
Z-Wave. I could never get it working quite right despite purchasing highly recommended Aeotec stuff.
The MultiSensor 7s and door sensors would always report a battery level of 100%, fall off the network, and do other crazy stuff. I spent a year with a Z-Stick 7 before finally bailing a buying a fifth generation stick.
Firmware updates would take weeks because they just wouldn’t install. Constantly factory resetting them never fixed anything either.
I really hate to say it, but Zigbee ended up working much better despite living in a 2.4GHz interference hell hole.
What is ONN brand?
It’s Walmart’s generic brand for electronics.
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