Alexa. I use Alexa constantly, except my Echos drop off the network and have to be manually restarted by unplugging them. And I curse every time one of them starts up with, "by the way...."
I have several smart power strips that stopped responding; I have had better luck with individual smart outlets.
Digital audio players with Wi-Fi radios that support AirPlay. I've purchased three, two from Hiby and one from FiiO. The idea was to stream AirPlay to the DAP from one of my PCs, getting quality audio over wired headphones, while I walked around the house. The Hiby models would drop the stream occasionally and both had batteries that died in a year or less. The FiiO would accept streams from Apple devices, but not third-party AirPlay streams. I ended up listening to my phone.
I found bone conduction headphones don't come anywhere close to audiophile quality.
Wi-Fi in general, living in a row home in a neighborhood crowded with 2.4 GHz transceivers.
I bought and stored away a large drawer full of microphones, headphones, mice, and keyboards before I settled on the models I like.
I've never used a Windows trackpad that was worth spit. I can't use a Mac without a trackpad next to my keyboard and mouse. The difference on Windows is maddening.
I was getting frustrated with the battery in my old Apple watch as it got older, but now that I have two watches and can switch between them, I wear one or the other 24 hours a day.
Speaking of electronic devices, an appliance is generally locked down, and the manufacturer limits the number of use cases. You end up with something that is not a general-purpose computer, even though many use the same hardware as a computer would.
A game console is a classic appliance. You turn it on and see your current game running or a selection of games to play and you can start playing a game with zero intermediate steps.
The Steam Deck and Steam Box are designed as appliance emulators—they boot and by default operate in appliance mode. They can provide the same exact experience as a console if you use them as designed. They are also general-purpose computers, if you wish to step out of console mode.
I've been a Mac user for years, where the em dash is a modified hyphen on the Mac keyboard. When I moved to primarily using PCs, the em dash alt-key combo was the first one I memorized (alt-0151).
Different cultures. Your culture determines who sets expectations and who enforces them in these situations, and Indians can work with their culture's existing system for organizing and managing community homes. Americans would have to figure out a system, agree on it, troubleshoot it, while trying to learn how to be parents. That's almost impossible.
> Wouldn't it be much better to just refute the claim instead of attack the person's motives?
No, at some point, and we have absolutely passed it in the US, you can be overwhelmed by the lies and bad faith arguments if you try to respond to them individually, and it's necessary to try to derail the source.
It probably should be your own device; the audiogram ends up in the iPhone's health app. It can probably be done by someone else if they don't care and don't need to apply a different audiogram for themselves.
I've received Apple Calendar invites containing Chinese characters from individuals I've never heard of. I deleted them, but just receiving them was a bit alarming.
"Turned" may be the wrong word. "Cozened" might be more correct. There may be no good way for an individual to identify someone who is being paid to take over their project from someone with a genuine interest.
My first impression is that I'm not seeing increased resolution. It looks a lot like an overapplied sharpness filter (too much contrast around existing edges).
>changing people is so surprisingly hard—no matter how much you focus on the person in front of you, you’ll never appreciate the million tiny influences that made them who they are and that keep them that way. If you really want to make someone different, you might have to change the TV they watch, the music they listen to, the things they learn in school, the friends they hang out with, the role models they look up to, etc.
I'm a white guy who grew up in rural Pennsylvania in the 60s and 70s, so you can imagine what my implicit biases are like pretty reliably. What helps me get away from that is access to social media sites like X, reddit, and tumblr, where I follow people who are as different from me as possible. I have updated my influences. I listen. I pay attention to my internal dialogue and reactions and try to challenge myself.
>and if you do all that, congratulations, you’ve started what we call a cult.
Right. It's one thing to open myself to worlds I'm not aware of. It's something completely different to try to control what someone else experiences.
Another way of saying that is—as an atheist, I don't find religions interesting or useful. But I know that I'll never be able to sell atheism to anyone if their religion is a deeply meaningful part of their worldview and identity. Any attempt to do so has to start by destroying that world and that identity, and that kind of violence is anathema to anyone with the smallest bit of empathy. We are made of our influences and this essay covers that well.
It's a great essay that covers so much more than smoking (or drugs). Thanks for the link.
I have several smart power strips that stopped responding; I have had better luck with individual smart outlets.
Digital audio players with Wi-Fi radios that support AirPlay. I've purchased three, two from Hiby and one from FiiO. The idea was to stream AirPlay to the DAP from one of my PCs, getting quality audio over wired headphones, while I walked around the house. The Hiby models would drop the stream occasionally and both had batteries that died in a year or less. The FiiO would accept streams from Apple devices, but not third-party AirPlay streams. I ended up listening to my phone.
I found bone conduction headphones don't come anywhere close to audiophile quality.
Wi-Fi in general, living in a row home in a neighborhood crowded with 2.4 GHz transceivers.
I bought and stored away a large drawer full of microphones, headphones, mice, and keyboards before I settled on the models I like.
I've never used a Windows trackpad that was worth spit. I can't use a Mac without a trackpad next to my keyboard and mouse. The difference on Windows is maddening.
I was getting frustrated with the battery in my old Apple watch as it got older, but now that I have two watches and can switch between them, I wear one or the other 24 hours a day.