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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • We left this month, wife is moving to YouTube premium as a way to ease her out of straming services and I’m building our collection of music every month through self-hosting so when she’s ready there’s a large library for her.

    It’s been great buying music from artists and listening to whole albums which is not something I normally do.

    Spotify doesn’t support their artists as far as I’m aware, what money they do spend on creators it’s people like Joe Rogan, and they continue to increase the price every month. I’m tired of paying for techno fascist’s next Yacht (or election) and this is just one way we’re slowly pulling away from subscriptions.


  • I’m self-hosting my own music as of recently. I’m paying for every song. I don’t have as much music as I did on Spotify, but I’m also A) owning the music B) slowly acquiring more and C) actually paying the artists. For me this is a good step in the right direction.

    I’m seeing a lot of comments about music discovery being the reason to not stop paying Spotify. Idk if that’s something I’d agree with. First of all, I personally listen to singles and not albums but I’ve been buying albums simply because that’s easiest for a lot of sites (or cause I’m getting them on vinyl). So swapping over has led me to listening to full albums and thus a bit of discovery. That may not apply to everyone though. Several of those albums or artists have had collabs that have turned me on to other artists, again, maybe the music discovery people think this is child’s play but it’s led to a noticable increase in my collection.

    Second, can’t you just use Spotify free version to discover music? That’s what I plan to do if I’m feeling like my current collection is getting stale. But between friends, other web services for discovery, various platforms like YouTube that happen to unveil a song here and there, indie concerts that show off new openers to me, or what have you I feel like my discovery is more than sufficient to grow the list of music I need to pick up faster than I’m burning it down or becoming bored with it.

    Also, I don’t understand how discovery can represent a majority of a person’s listening habits. Like isn’t the point of collecting favorites songs and making large playlists to listen to those things. I’ve got playlists with like 48 hours of music on them which cause me to not hear a repeat idk, more than once a month if I’m not seeking them out. That’s partially because I have 3 playlists or so I rotate through but like… Is music discovery so critical and so exclusive to Spotify that it’s worth the subscription. More me it’s not.

    Not to yuck anyone’s yum or anything. Just trying to add an alternative perspective to these pro-spotify comments.




  • Ya, I can’t believe how negative people are towards LTT. That channel is the reason I de-googled when I did, dove into home assistant, even checked out Linux (and now use arch full time by the way). I’m not super interested in defending a company let alone a YouTube personality, but like Jesus Christ some most of the people commenting negatively about LTT need to chill the fuck out. They’re not that bad, they clearly pay people well, they’re open and honest about most shit. If your bullshit detector is going off with LTT I think it needs tuning because you’re probably hitting a lot of false negatives IMHO.

    I have no doubt being as wealthy as Linus is is changing him, I have no doubt that’s effecting the company, but there’s nothing I’m seeing as a regular watcher that is glaringly bad or evil and I recognize in myself I’m actively starting to default to “fuck off” for millionaires so like ┐⁠(⁠ ̄⁠ヘ⁠ ̄⁠)⁠┌. I don’t think the channel is getting grandfathered in on that clause either, they just seem to like people doing their best.

    I don’t like Linus’s time-theft stance as of late, the most recent multi monitors vid had a comedic discussion between him and an employee and I recognize his job in that role is to be the straight man and say time charging fraud is theft or whatever but it feels out of touch. That’s a negative thing I can point to I guess. Am I gonna consider Linus or LTTY evil or shit because he’s vocal about theft being theft even though I think corpos can fuck off because they’re getting more productivity then we’re getting paid - no, no I’m not.


  • Unless all of the rich megadoners die at the same instance, nothing will fundamentally change. We’re in a class war, not a Democrat vs Republican war. Trump may be the man leading the consolidation of power push today, but the reason that movement is working is the environment being ripe for the movement.

    Trump dies and the minimum wage doesn’t go up, fox news doesn’t dissolve, and taxes on the rich sure as hell don’t start up. Nothing fundamentally changes, and with the state of all the fundamental and important agencies worsened and delegitimized things probably worsen significantly for those orgs and their services in the short term while power is redistributed, reconsolidated, and resolidified.

    Trump dying would likely just be the temporary slow down of the currently inevitable decline. You’re right to say things get more chaotic and there is a large opportunity for things to improve or change - but believing the GOP disappears, and therefore we enter into a utopia, seems to ignore the underlying cause for their existence in the first place. The rich and powerful want to remain rich and powerful, and ideally become more so, at the expense of everyone else so they fund systems that further those goals.




  • That makes sense. My point isn’t to tax the property it’s that the property is taxed, if that makes any sense. You tax based on the property, it traces to the owner, the owner gets taxed based on the property. If the owner lives in Beijing or Antarctica the property is still here and gets taxed, they can’t avoid it by moving unless they can take the property.

    So in that case, an exempt amount is fine. I’d just want it to be steep up to a point where it’s 98 or 100%.

    No one gets a third house before everyone gets one kinda thing. And also no one is allowed to have enough wealth they can destabilize democracy or even a city.



  • Although I appreciate the thought here, and I think the investment idea may even be good regardless of what I’m about to say, that’s not exactly how this works. If you tax the assets the rich own, where they own them, it doesn’t matter where they go. And they can’t live in Germany and not get taxed, so they can change citizenship all they want if they live here they will get taxed here. And based off of the most recent studies/reports I’ve seen (but not read) rich don’t actually move when taxes go up - which makes sense. People have lives, family, friends, favorite restaurants and hobby spaces.

    The rich will try to dodge the taxes, they may even succeed but we don’t have to legistate a bullet proof solution we just have to agree:

    1. the rich need to be heavily taxed (I’d even say out of existence)
    2. taxing the rich is possible via various methods
    3. taxing the rich would solve and/or reverse most of societies problems so everyone should talk and support it.

    But yes, I’m a big fan of no outside investment. I’m also a fan of government investment requiring ownership purchases. I’m also a fan of requiring companies to be partially or totally owned by their workers. And I don’t think anyone should have a net worth over let’s say 50 million.


  • Merz is predictable and a traitor to the German people. He will usher in the fascist power grab through conservative policies - the AFD will grow in popularity as conservatives protect the 1%.

    Die Linke’s tax plan would have paid for the yearly debt of the government and then some; their secret - tax the wealthy.

    We can afford all of our costs, we can improve society, we can provide a thriving economy for all Germans if we simply tax the ultra wealthy out of existence. No one should have a billion euro net worth, nor 100 million nor 50 million. No one need own 3 houses while others go without even a flat.

    We have enough wealth in this country, it’s just in the hands of the hoarders. Don’t look towards conservatives or the right for change, look towards those that address the root problem!


  • You’re missing the point I think. People want better politicians, Democrats are better than Republicans meaningfully but not so meaningfully that they could fix the issues we’re seeing in society. People like Cuomo and Newson are just power hungry people, who may be better than Trump but the people won’t be satisfied with replacing their turd sandwich with ultra processed fast food, they want a healthy nutritious meal. Newson is fast food, it’s a meaningful step up from turd sandwich but it won’t fix the American diet.

    It’s Germany being upset at the traffic light coalition and then electing Merz. They went from one back stabbing party to unhealthy and destructive fast food. This will only upset people enough to eventually elect their version of a turd sandwich - the AFD.



  • This is a common misunderstanding, to the point of it being propaganda pushed by oil companies to cause confusion, but electrifying everything is always better long-term than not. From a monetary stand point but most definitely from an environment perspective.

    Your area will not always be powered by coal. It is already some degree powered by green energy, it will only get more green over time - and rather quickly with the price of green energy and battery solutions plummeting. Even if it stayed coal powered for a significant amount of time, the reality is gas takes energy to drill, energy to refine, energy to transport, energy to store and deliver the last few miles (km), and then some (or most) of the energy that reaches your house is lost in conversion.

    Electricity is increasingly becoming free to generate, there is no refinement, no energy cost to transport, less energy to store and deliver the last few miles, and then most of the energy that reaches your house is used for it’s intended purpose. Pure electricity is highly efficient and it’s only getting greener.

    As for cost, again I’m not wise to everyone’s situation, but gas has a constant cost that will always be higher over the long-term compared to electricity that - if I had to make a bet - I’d say will pay back the upfront costs on the order of years and not decades at worst.

    That being said, yes, we are all getting poorer and housing is one of societies big failures right now and there’s no shame in not being able to afford the healthy, optimal items right now. That’s late stage capitalism, we need to tax billionaires and multi-millionaires out of existence.

    But the reality is gas is worse in every metric, and it is definitely worse for the environment regardless of the power generation sources your local area currently uses. It’s fine if you have to use it, it’s fine if you can’t afford the alternative (although please calculate long term cost to likely save yourself money), just don’t believe gas is better or cheaper or more environmentally friendly.


  • I mean this isn’t a discussion about what stove you should use if you have one stove. This is a discussion about which is superior and which you should pursue if given the opportunity.

    There are a painful number of Americans (and now Germans) who still prefer gas over induction for one reason or the other. A large portion of the Americans in my experience think this way because of the lobbying campaigns of gas companies to make gas seem better or safer than it is.

    So ya, if you rent (increasingly most people because late stage capitalism) I’m not talking about how much worse your stove is compared to induction to shame you. I’m talking to everyone who has an opportunity to change someone’s mind on it, buy a new stove for a new construction, or replace their stove when it dies (or sooner if you can swing it).

    And there’s no way the gas stove doesn’t cost more over even it’s first couple of years compared to induction. The price of gas will only go up with time, electricity will only go down with time.



  • Induction is far superior to gas which is far superior to electric.

    Gas is problematic for a lot of reasons:

    • the infrastructure leaks from the supplier to your house
    • the infrastructure is expensive to build and maintain compared to electricity
    • the infrastructure is dangerous compared to electricity
    • gas stoves leak harmful chemicals into your house
    • using them reduces the air quality in your house
    • they transfer a relatively small amount of their output heat into your cookware compared to induction (which also means they heat up your kitchen more)
    • they’re less responsive than induction
    • every moment of their use is furthering climate change significantly more when compared to induction, and paying for that infrastructure to a home locks that house into that decision for decades at a time.

    Gas has some benefits to induction, but if it was invented today very few people would use it because it’s so much worse than induction.

    This comment isn’t to say “people who use gas are bad or in danger”, it’s just saying at the technical level and from a societal perspective there’s no meaningful reason to use gas as your main heating element’s source of power.


  • Well I haven’t read his biography or even really followed him so… I came in with this new watch, have experienced very few things from them as a company, and a couple of the experiences were just a bummer.

    I’ve got nothing against the guy, maybe everything you said is correct, I don’t wish him ill - just pointing out some things I experienced with this redesign announcement.


  • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.worldPebble Time 2 Design Reveal
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    1 month ago

    Did you watch the video where the creator talks about adding more features? I also got the ick from that lol. He talked about throwing in a cheap compass module and not being able to promise how good it was and then said “you’re welcome”. Maybe I’m being a Karen lol (oh god I should have died a hero), but I didn’t like that whole exchange. If I recontextualize it to “a friend of mine shooting the shit about his project” it’s not bad at all - just my lazy friend complaining about some feedback. But the fact that it’s the founder making his supposed baby and having no interest in making the most jam packed, high quality product, makes me a bit upset.

    There’s that Kickstarter knife going on right now, and watching their video where they’re obsessed with putting a whole bunch of bullshit into this knife and doing it elegantly - idk… Felt like a stark contrast from that to this “your welcome for a cheap compass module” attitude.

    Idk. I buy things based off of vision and belief in execution right now and this guy makes a slim epaper watch vision feel like a vision of money bags instead. And now the execution misses the mark for me. Vibes are all off. RIP, might get one after reviews now but ya writing this out has convinced me to cancel.

    I hope it still slaps for everyone and it’s successful. I want more epaper everywhere - love the tech.