@sxan@midwest.social
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sxan

@sxan@midwest.social 

<span style="color:#323232;">       🅸 🅰🅼 🆃🅷🅴 🅻🅰🆆. 
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍 𝖋𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖓𝖊𝖍𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍 
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sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Quality-wise, Makita > DeWALT ≥ Milwaukee > Ryobi, at least, if you watch teardowns by guys like AvE.

Power tools are like cars; companies hold several brands and target them to different market segments, like Porsche and VW.

Ryobi is owned by the same company as Milwauki; it’s the budget line, Milwauki being their premium line.

DeWALT and Black & Decker are owned by the same company; DeWALT is their premium line.

The exception in this list is Makita, which is its own company. They’re also objectively more well-built than the others (here), and correspondingly usually more expensive.

The premium lines are better quality (not just more expensive) but also tend to have smaller battery-tool options. Despite being a budget line, I mostly own B&D because most of my tools these days are 24V and there are more tool options there. The few, select, DeWALT tools I have are noticably better quality.

I don’t use power tools enough to justify Makita, but also, their battery-powered line is comparatively tiny. As someone else said, there’s a lot of motivation to pick a (compatible) lane, whichever it is. For most home-gamers, the quality difference will probably not matter much. If I were made of money, though, I’d have everything Makita except for the things they don’t make.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Humans. Where is my snow?

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

It used to be, I’d start at DDG andwhen I didn’t find my results, I’d switch to Goog. Now I do this, but when I find even worse results on Google, I switch back to DuckDuck because query wrangling on DDG is more worthwhile. The starting results may not always be good on DDG, but they’re often better than Google.

However, very recently I’ve been starting on Searx on doing follow-up checks on Bing, and this has been working pretty well. I know DDG has to show ads, but lately they seem to take up the better part of the first page and aren’t helpful.

Google is completely out of the picture. Their results are just bad.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Scriptability.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I’ve been hoping that’s gravy. Hope… hope… hope…

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

There’s really no reason why we had to be in a war in Iraq. Afghanistan… yeah, probably not there, either, especially given how intimately we understood how well they had been trained at guerilla warfare against foreign invaders.

Although, that’s not guite accurate; there were reasons, they were just serving different, less publically recognized, purposes. Much like Netanyahu’s war.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

It cracks me up that they’ll sell chainsaws to anyone.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

My cousins have upped this game. They have toddlers. Starting in Feb, they begin stealing back the least popular toys and hiding them in the attic. Then they regift them back to the kids next Christmas. They only buy a couple new items every year.

It reduces clutter in the house and will probably work until around 6, when they plan to shift from regifting to donating.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Amen.

You can make pasta with flour, water, and salt. Add yeast, and you can make country loaf bread. Add a little sugar, butter, & milk, and you can make white sandwhich bread, or dumplings for soup. These are absurdly easy recipes, almost impossible to mess up. Change the portions, and you have sugar cookies, like you said! Splurge on chocolate chips and you can have chocolate chip cookies. Get some baking soda, and you can make crackers.

Flour’s about 80¢/lb. Salt is $10 for 26 oz, which will last many, many recipes. Yeast is $1.50/oz. For $25, you can make about 25 loaves of bread, and still have a bunch of salt left over.

Flour is the single best, and most versitile, calorie-to-dollar value food.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Buy yourself a couple of supreme court judges. They’re a bargain these days.

Should I wait for the "Snyder cut" (director's cut) of Rebel Moon?

Hearing the movie is getting bad reviews. But Snyder says the director’s cut will be a completely different movie with a different vision. I admit Zack Snyder’s Justice League (director’s cut) was much better than the theatrical version and quite different (though I had mostly forgotten the original by then). Not sure if I...

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I liked the quote from the historian who said, 300 wasn’t historically accurate, but the Spartans themselves would probably have loved it and approved of the representation.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Nearly every day. There was a time when I’d reach for Ruby, but in the end, the stability, ubiquity, and portability of the traditional Unix tools - among whom awk is counted - turned out to be more useful. I mainly underuse its power, though; it serves as a column aggregator or re-arranger, for the most part.

deleted_by_author

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    sxan,
    @sxan@midwest.social avatar

    I agree with the Kobo recommendation. They’re great devices. However, OP specifically mentioned azw3, which is Amazon’s format, right? You’re not going to be reading eBooks from Amazon on a Kobo. Your choices are DRM-free ebooks, or books from Kobo’s serviceable, but kind of crappy, store. Also, in most cases, pdfs are going to be practically unreadable on any Kobo; you need something more in the format of a reMarkable to get usable pdf on an e-ink device. PDF was another requirement.

    sxan,
    @sxan@midwest.social avatar

    A decade ago (almost!) I had one of those HP swivel-screen jobs - a Compaq TC4200. Replaceable battery, dock, external attachable battery, resistive touch screen, fully user-serviceable… it was the best laptop I’ve ever had, in terms of feature set.

    People often claim they don’t make 'em like they used to, but it’s true. Framework is a step in the right direction with servicability, but they still have a way to go to get to everything laptops of a decade ago.

    sxan,
    @sxan@midwest.social avatar

    Well done; smooth… but also glazed.

    sxan, (edited )
    @sxan@midwest.social avatar

    Depends on how much you let them link it back to you, but you’re absolutely right: social media is a privacy nightmare. It can be mitigated; pick a Lemmy instance that doesn’t require an email, and don’t give out any identifying information, or just lurk. Many of us have multiple accounts on different servers, with carefully segregated personas. You do what you can; OP asked why (or why not) scrob. I see no reason to give out that information, only to give a company more information they can sell.

    sxan,
    @sxan@midwest.social avatar

    Social engineering. The more information they have about you, the easier you are to immitate.

    The threat isn’t in any one piece of information about you; it’s in the corpus of knowledge, the profile they can build. Your tastes in music - at the granularity of not only what you listen to, but how much, and at what times - can help narrow down:

    • how old you are
    • where (in the world, and maybe to the time zone) you live
    • your mother tongue
    • probably your socio-economic status

    These are just the things I can tyink of off the top of my head, and I’m not in infosec.

    Scraft161, to privacy
    @Scraft161@tsukihi.me avatar

    Hardware security key options?

    I've been thinking about getting a hardware security key and have heard of yubikey before; but I want to see what my options are and if they are worth it in your opinion.
    My current setup is a local KeePassXC database (that I sync between my PC and phone and also acts as TOTP authenticator app), I know that KeePass supports hardware keys for unlocking the database.

    I am personally still of the belief that passwords are the safest when done right; but 2FA/MFA can greatly increase security on top of that (again, if done right).
    The key work work together with already existing passwords, not replace them.

    As I use linux as my primary OS I do expect it to support it and anything that doesn't I will have to pass on.

    PS: what are the things I need to know about these hardware keys that's not being talked about too much, I am very much delving into new territory and want to make sure I'm properly educated before I delve in.

    @linux @technology @technology @privacy

    sxan,
    @sxan@midwest.social avatar

    As to why thisisawayoflife recommends these products (over OP’s consideration of Yubico), probably because Solo and Nitro keys are open source hardware and firmware.

    Nitro is a German company. Yubico is a Swedish company. I can’t find where SoloKeys is located. However, the OS nature of Solo and Nitro should make that a little less important.

    sxan,
    @sxan@midwest.social avatar

    Probably not testing, but rather demonstrating to potential buyers (the pig in the background). It sells better, and demonstrates the seller’s conviction that the product works.

    sxan,
    @sxan@midwest.social avatar

    Clever editing. Took me a couple watches to see that the stuffed thing falling down the hill wasn’t the guy in the suit.

    sxan,
    @sxan@midwest.social avatar

    Great write-up! I agree with all of your aesthetic picks. I first saw A New Hope when I was 11, and even at that age - having grown up on a cinematic diet of WWII films - the DLT-19 stood out as a wierdly familiar and out-of-place gun.

    Enjoyable read, thanks!

    sxan,
    @sxan@midwest.social avatar

    Second one looks less like it was tricked, and more like: “that looks fun!”

    sxan,
    @sxan@midwest.social avatar

    and really well washed. From Goodwill? Like, run that thing through an autoclave.

    Even though it looks suspiciously NIB. I’m starting to think I can’t believe everything I read online.

    sxan,
    @sxan@midwest.social avatar

    Good catch!

    sxan,
    @sxan@midwest.social avatar

    The problem is in the “look forward to.” How depressing to get a globe and recognize a memory from your past. You wouldn’t even have that to look forward to.

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