Can I just say how shitty UPS is with pick ups? Every time I have to RMA something through Dell's support they would schedule a delivery of the replacement part and a pick up of the defective one through UPS, right? Not once did UPS actually show up to pick up the parts.
Even when I manually schedule a pick up with them they just don't show up; they sent an confirmation email saying that they did, but the part is still where I placed it for pick up. And when I email UPS to tell them they just repeat what the confirmation email said.
It's an outdated interface connection standard commonly used by camcorders in the 1990's (mostly MiniDV camcorders I think); its technical name (or name of its specification rather) is IEEE1394, 'FireWire' is just the marketing term Apple used for it. I think Sony called it 'i.Link'.
FireWire400 is really called IEEE1934a and has a theoretical transfer rate of 400 Mb/s, it can deliver 7 watts of power and carry ethernet packets.
The standard pretty much died off as soon as USB 3.0 came out AFAIK, since they couldn't get higher transfer speeds than a theoretical 800 Mb/s (whereas USB3 supports up to 5 Gb/s).
My profile picture shows a FireWire400 port on the front panel of a PowerMac G5.
I honestly don't know how to think about this. On one hand, it's pretty cool that more and more users are giving the finger to Microsoft and switch to Linux.
On the other hand, Linux systems are gonna become a bigger target for cyberattacks or malware. I realise that I, as a regular person who isn't on dodgy porn sites all day, probably have nothing to fear but still, I like my Linux lightweight and if they have to slap some antivirus on there.... eh idk
Budget phones aren't really worth it when you can get a flagship from 3 years ago (with most likely better specs) for about the same price IMO. Sure, updates are a problem but if you're willing to tinker around a bit it's doable.
This might be a bit controversial, as Google is obviously also known for their fair share of not so good stuff but I really like their Pixel line of devices. Especially for that stock android experience (doesn't Samsung even pre-install TikTok nowadays?). Sony phones are also pretty decent from my experience.
As for laptops, the business lines of both Dell (Latitude & Precision) and Lenovo (ThinkPad) are pretty solid. Especially Dell's support is just amazing, I deal with them regularly at work and they've been really great.
As for ASUS; I haven't had to buy a mainboard in a while but I heard some good things about Gigabyte.
Tidal is a pretty good alternative to Spotify; I think they pay artists the most per stream out of all music streaming services, they offer true Hi-Fi quality for the same price Spotify charges for their base tier and they even upgraded all Hi-Fi members to Hi-Fi Plus for free recently.
Nestlé is a big enough campany that you just have to live with not buying their products I guess... Although there are pretty good alternatives for stuff like frozen pizza (Dr. Oetker is pretty good if that's available where you live) and chocolate (Tony's Chocolonely ftw).
Samsung; just a lot of general very anti-consumer behaviour.
LG; a "do not sell my data" option on a TV that's
turned off as standard? No, thanks.
ASUS; has become pretty unreliable in my experience and their RMA shenanigans haven't helped.
Apple; overpriced and anti-consumer, I wouldn't mind getting a MacBook as a gift or something, though...
HP; cheap garbage that's obsolete the moment you buy it and becomes e-waste after the warranty has expired. Their business line is marginally better but there are far better options out there.
Huawei; see above.
Nestlé; do I really have to explain? They're pretty much the worst company to ever exist.
Spotify; endless price-hikes to enable the CEO to buy more soccer teams and firearm manufacturer shares, pay artists almost nothing per stream, disabled their car thing after two years, lied about Spotify Hi-Fi....
I bought some Sony WF-1000XM3 a couple of years ago. They were new, although heavily discounted, but the battery life was awful; the box says the buds themselves would last for 6 hours on a single charge, right? I got maybe 1.5 hours out of them.
Sony wouldn't RMA them because I supposedly bought them at their outlet store (I didn't). Eventually, I just replaced the batteries in both buds and now they last ~3 hours; I guess that's due to the battery in the charging case also being weak.
Next time I'll just buy one of those Fiio bluetooth DACs to use with my Grados....
I guess we just didn't expect to see this kind of realism from a TV screen until it came out, it was a totally new arguably ground-braking thing. Especially with fictional media, which is why James Cameron's Avatar was so great in 3D (despite being utterly boring IMO).
Think about it, the first HD television broadcasts started in the early 90s in Japan. How exciting that must've been. They even got HD movies in the form of Hi-Vision Laserdiscs.
Reminds me of that one time someone on some forum linked to a Jeff The Killer screamer site (basically the same thing you've described) and I clicked on it.
It initially didn't even work, because I was using NoScript at the time... So I disabled NoScript temporarily and refreshed the page. It being about 2 in the morning and the speakers being tuned up didn't help.
I wish there was a real report system for these purposes; I've reported 3 or so users who were vandalising to grant over in the canvas community but haven't heard back from them.
The flag looked so perfect when I went to bed... Oh well
It's not over yet, though, and some users (at least two) have been constantly trying to vandalise the flag for a bit now...
Apart from that; it's been a lot of fun. I hope I didn't cross anyone with my pixel placement, I tried joining the Matrix room but it didn't really work
Can I just say how shitty UPS is with pick ups? Every time I have to RMA something through Dell's support they would schedule a delivery of the replacement part and a pick up of the defective one through UPS, right? Not once did UPS actually show up to pick up the parts.
Even when I manually schedule a pick up with them they just don't show up; they sent an confirmation email saying that they did, but the part is still where I placed it for pick up. And when I email UPS to tell them they just repeat what the confirmation email said.