swizzlestick
@swizzlestick@lemmy.zip
- Comment on Belkin is killing off parts of the Wemo Line 1 hour ago:
If a device relies on any kind of external service to initially set up or function thereafter, do not buy. Regardless of brand.
Or accept that it has a finite lifespan that you cannot control. It’s not a matter of if the rug will get pulled, but when.
There is a grey area for things that can be reflashed or rebrained, but I prefer to not rely on this. Local access methods like ZigBee, Z-Wave and 433Mhz are immune to this kind of enshittification by design. Even WiFi devices can fit in here, with appropriate restrictions in place.
An acceptable middle-ground would be for EOL devices to be offered (with a big disclaimer) a final update that removes the reliance on the service but retains the core function. That’s a pipe dream though.
- Comment on There is no greater loss than that which is inflicted in the name of war. 2 days ago:
…Goddamnit.
- Comment on Does people doing things that upset others also upset you? 3 days ago:
Sorry, should have been clear. Lethal allergen tour = bad. Banning completely = also bad.
My main point was that there is a line between discomfort and danger. That line can move based on the situation, so it is awkward to abstract without getting down to specifics.
If say 5% of the population suddenly developed a tendency to go into anaphylactic shock on exposure to vanilla, then you could easily see it disappearing from fragrances altogether and becoming a non-problem in that regard. Yet it would still have culinary use and join many friends on the bolded ingredient lists on food.
There is a turnover point (that I cannot explicitly define) where the onus is on the afflicted to ensure their own safety, rather than the population at large going out of their way to ensure it.
I am fortunate to have no issues like this. In 5% Vanilla-Death-Land, the smell of the stuff would still give me pause, as I probably know someone who could well die from the idiot that just walked in the door honking of it.
If the same person instead just brought in a vanilla milkshake, I probably wouldn’t bat an eye.
- Comment on Does people doing things that upset others also upset you? 4 days ago:
Eating an allergen loaded sandwich to yourself - A-OK.
Coating yourself in allergens and going on tour - No.
Banning an allergen because a small fraction of the population suffer - Also No.
For matters of personal preference, I would invite the offended to suck it up and deal with it. For anything with consequences beyond offense, each individual situation is nuanced and common sense should apply. Maybe don’t eat that PB&J just before meeting a bunch of people for the first time.
- Comment on Glitter Bats!! 1 week ago:
Stevie/Stevies (as in the name, Steve) is the house-level localised name here. Stevie Slater.
Why, I don’t know.
- Comment on Glitter Bats!! 1 week ago:
Woodlice are my favourite for this. From the wiki:
Common names include:
- armadillo bug
- boat-builder (Newfoundland, Canada)
- butcher boy or butchy boy (Australia, mostly around Melbourne)
- carpenter or cafner (Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada)
- cheeselog (Reading, England)
- cheesy bobs (Guildford, England)
- cheesy bug (North West Kent, Gravesend, England)
- chiggy pig (Devon, England)
- chisel pig
- chucky pig (Devon, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, England)
- doodlebug (also used for the larva of an antlion and for the cockchafer)
- fat pig (Ireland)
- gramersow (Cornwall, England)
- hog-louse
- millipedus
- QuaQua regional to Beddau and Keppoch Street Roath
- mochyn coed (‘tree pig’), pryf lludw (‘ash bug’), granny grey in Wales
- pill bug (usually applied only to the genus Armadillidium)
- potato bug
- roll up bug
- roly-poly
- slater (Scotland, Ulster, New Zealand and Australia)
- sow bug
- woodbunter
- wood bug (British Columbia, Canada)
- Comment on When you work for a company owned by a A..hole 1 week ago:
- Comment on Corporations are saving the planet! 1 week ago:
Exactly - some are perfectly fine. The cheap ones are terrible, crossthread too easily, get up in your face, dribble, or all of the above.
Sports style bottles solved the problem long before standard caps got in the game. They get disposed of together here either way, even if the cap gets yanked off for being stupid.
I don’t understand how they end up separate in disposal in the first place. The whole point is that you can reseal the bottle and move/store it without leaking. If you’re not actively using the bottle, it gets resealed to move or store. When you finish the bottle, you probably have the cap still in hand or very close by.
Tangentially, I’d love to see a Pfand type system here.
- Comment on Update to last week's BestBuy Shenanigan. They refused to refund me after not delivering me the stuff I ordered after a so-called "investigation". 1 week ago:
For every person like you that won’t take the shit, there are many more that will just give up. Just like unemployment and insurance claims - denial is the first step in protecting the bottom line.
If nobody accepted such bollocks, it would be more economical to actually investigate, provide service & improve processes - rather than trying to bin complaints at the first hurdle.
Prime (lol) example over here is with Amazon not making it easy to return shit after 30 days, by hiding all the easy return options at that point. You can still do it by contacting customer service and they will generally acquiesce, but just having the extra steps there is enough to save a ton of money by keeping the uninformed in the dark.
Fuck em. Make it difficult for them. Be the goddamn squeakiest wheel you can possibly be.
- Comment on Me today with Bitwarden having server side issues... 3 weeks ago:
I ended up being lazy and just running it as a Homeassistant add-on, but end result is the same.
- Comment on Me today with Bitwarden having server side issues... 3 weeks ago:
Have you considered self hosting with vaultwarden?
At least then it’s very apparent when it is a you problem rather than a them problem 😅
- Comment on Ads when you’re pumping gas 4 weeks ago:
Gotta boil the frog slowly I suppose.
- Comment on Ads when you’re pumping gas 4 weeks ago:
Like an electronic lobotomy. Insert rod and wiggle around until the offending behaviour ceases.
- Comment on Ads when you’re pumping gas 4 weeks ago:
Never understood this. Sincerely hope that any place trying out here is shunned.
EVs will hopefully put the tactic out of business forever. ‘Plug in and fuck off somewhere else for half an hour’ is not a position you can really advertise in.
Unless it becomes ‘watch ad to enable charger’ 😬
- Comment on Cold Callers phoning during work hours and then not accepting your at work and can't spend 30 mins listening to their script. 1 month ago:
We have an automated sin bin extension that we transfer these calls to as soon as we ID them as crap. It’s usually shipping accounts, Chinese factories and forex these days.
It goes to a voicemail that politely tells them why they are there, to remove us from lists & to leave a message/email if they think we’ve mishandled them.
Repeat offenders have their numbers filtered to only ever go to that extension. We don’t get much trouble on the phone these days, and nobody has to waste their time with niceties when we do get unwanted calls.
Thinking about spinning up another that just repeatedly hurls abuse in Hindi for the scam energy calls, which all tend to have geographically similar origins.
- Comment on I can't believe it 2 months ago:
Nah - I just can’t address a question to the right user, you’re all good haha
- Comment on I can't believe it 2 months ago:
Was about to say, £s not pence :) 50s will also out you as a tourist, if nothing else does. Whereabouts are you planning to visit? Just London for the touristy stuff or going for more of an explore?
As mentioned above, electronic payments are now the norm here and have been for ages. Shouldn’t have any problems using a phone or contactless card to pay in most places. Chip/PIN covers most everything else & when you get prompted to insert the card as a security check after trying contactless.
Swipe & sign is possible last time I checked, but pretty much defunct with chip/PIN being readily available. Cash only places are rare and usually associated with food or drugs.
.zip isn’t blocking UK access via apps/api, but it is for browsers. I like VPNs and supporting my home instance, so here I am :)
- Comment on I can't believe it 2 months ago:
If you’re bringing cash, bring it in 20s and below. 50s aren’t used much at all as they arouse suspicion - many smaller places will flat out not accept them.
Hope you enjoy the trip :)
- Comment on Is there still an effort to move technical help threads from Redshit to here? 2 months ago:
Also good, thanks.
Not that there’s much to maintain, it’s a one-and-done thing. This would resolve the unsigned extension though :)
- Comment on Is there still an effort to move technical help threads from Redshit to here? 2 months ago:
Thanks for the hint on libredirect/redlib, that looks very serviceable.
- Comment on Is there still an effort to move technical help threads from Redshit to here? 2 months ago:
I’ve frankensteined a horrible unsigned extension that’s half bad human code and half AI garbage that autoredirects reddit links to their archive.org version.
Does the job, if a little slowly, without this little shit getting in the way:
- Comment on When IT upgrades your instrument computer to W11 2 months ago:
That’s even worse. A an almost literal in-house driveby. It’s not bloody hard to see potential problems.
This computer has a strange doo-hickey poking out of it that I know nothing about. Maybe I shouldn’t just slap a new OS on it. Nah fuck it. Need to meet planned quota. Send it and run lol.
There’s a reason our PCB pick’n’place machines run Windows XP. And why that ‘Y2K compliant’ lathe over there is rocking '98. And why that tyre balancing machine at the shop over the road is in the same boat.
- Comment on When IT upgrades your instrument computer to W11 2 months ago:
Bad IT.
I remain thankful that Win11 is fussy about what it will install on. It needs at least:
- UEFI boot mode & GPT partitioning of the disk
- TPM 2
- Secure Boot
Nixing any one of these will prevent an automatic upgrade, regardless of what group policy etc is in place. On a bunch of new Win10 builds from a while ago, I set them up as CSM/MBR and turned off the TPM in BIOS. Absolutely no chance of surprises there, even if I accidentally mark a machine for upgrade.
My network is small though, < 50 clients. When the bullet must be bit, I have the time to add the client to the ‘will upgrade’ AD group & go over things with the user(s). Then run through converting MBR to GPT, switching to UEFI and enabling the TPM again.
After that it takes care of itself and pulls down a load of QoL fixes post-upgrade.
I don’t think you’re the first nor will you be the last to be smacked with a driveby install that fucks up your equipment, sadly :(
- Comment on What is everyone's favoured domain name provider these days? 3 months ago:
Sounds like capitalism at work, pricing to suit demand :( Not a great idea to let a domain fall out of grace if there’s ever a chance you’ll want it again.
In work we still maintain domains for arms of the parent company that are long defunct. Less for us and more to prevent others registering.
I’ve had one personal domain go out of grace, but the reactivation price wasn’t too bad. Cheeky, yes - but not bad enough to get something new.
Could be worse, could end up at auction like hexbear did…
- Comment on What is everyone's favoured domain name provider these days? 3 months ago:
Welcome.
Wishing you well wherever you end up :)
- Comment on What is everyone's favoured domain name provider these days? 3 months ago:
The private domain registration service Withheld for Privacy is available for almost all domains Namecheap offers. Due to registry restrictions, It cannot be used with .ca, .ch, .cn, .co.in, .co.uk, .com.au, .com.es, .com.sg, .de, .es, .eu, .fr, .gg, .id, .in, .is, .li, .me.uk, .net.au, .nl, .nom.es, .nu, .nyc, .org.es, .org.au, .org.uk, .paris, .sg, .to, .uk, .us, .vote, .voto, .xn–3ds443g domains.
- Comment on What is everyone's favoured domain name provider these days? 3 months ago:
Thankfully I don’t deal with enough domains to need to wrangle them with an API.
Appreciate the warning for if I ever I do though - what’s so bad about it?
- Comment on What is everyone's favoured domain name provider these days? 3 months ago:
Namecheap have served me well, for both personal and work.
- Comment on Welcome, new users! 3 months ago:
That is a wonderful chart.
Congratulations. Great to see growth :)
- Comment on Welcome, new users! 3 months ago:
As for why, it’s probably due to the censorship screws getting tighter at Reddit. Luigi is a bad word. Eating the rich is verboten. Just 2 examples. Interacting/upvoting such content is now also an offense even if you didn’t write it yourself.
For many, it’s their stop to get off the train. Mine was the API boogaloo.
