flatbield @ furrowsofar @beehaw.org

Interests: News, Finance, Computer, Science, Tech, and Living

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Actually Solidworks is consider low to mid market. NX and whatever PTC calls their high end now are the main stream CAD systems as far as I know.

LibreOffice unless MS Office comparability is the most important thing. Then maybe try ONLYOFFICE.

I used to use Solidworks and NX some. I think there are similarities. That is sketch based. I admit though, not really learned FreeCAD either. On my list some day.

There are a bunch. There are fewer that are multiuser. Search alternativeto. Thing is people want more then double entry accounting. Electronic payment processing, reporting, payroll, AR, tax... Then how does it work with the professionals you hire.

Edit: For personal stuff, my wife and I use GNUCash. It does have small company features. I do not think it is concurrent though, but it can be used with an SQL backend though. We do not use the database mode so no experience with it.

FreeCAD is the best FOSS program I know for solid modeling. Librecad works for 2D.

IP blocking is a lazy move in general but it is common. Also lot of orgs like to use geoip to know where people are from. Probably observe ads too.

Tor and legal. Sure. But an org may both want to serve some regions because of their local laws. For financial institutions there are rules too.

Just FYI. By 4th Turning I mean the book. A couple of decades ago there was a book that takes about patterns in US history. The 4th Turning was about 2020 time frame if you followed the book. A turning from the books thesis is a time of political and social unrest. Weakening institutions. Usually a major war. We see signs of this all around us.

Edit: Feels very pre world war 2 too. America retreating into isolationism. Russia planning to expand. Lot of similarities.

It is the 4th Turning. That would be one interpretation.

For what It is worth, it took a lot of years, but Vanguard now has a few social funds.

Tor. I wonder if that is a more fraud or trolling concern. Or maybe for financial houses more of a US law concern.

Also I can imagine that discussing specific investments is out of scope for Boggleheads as that philosophy is to buy the market. It is not a stock picking group.

Yes but it does have some editing and metadata management features. Personal opinion is everyone should start with a photo manager and then only use another program if you need more. On Linux Shotwell is another photo manager and Digikam is cross platform. I know my wife uses just Shotwell. She has never needed more. I use Digikam because it is a little more powerful and flexible but less elegant. My wife is into photos... me not as much too.

There is Darktable and Digikam too. Little different direction.

Yes. This is why I would never use an iPhone. Closed walled garden. Cannot even load apps from other repos.

Thanks. For finance, there is also https://www.bogleheads.org too. They have a web presence which I have not tried except for their wiki which can be useful. There subreddit was pretty reasonable so I assume their web forum would be too.

Not sure the other options.

Yes. Medical, legal, tax are things hard to find outside of reddit. Just annoying to have to go back there.

Financial seems to be broad enough that there are other choices.

Taxes. What can I say, there is always something...

Former employer issues me a random 1095-C saying they offered me health insurance in 2023. Of course this is false. How much trouble this will cause when I try to claim the PTC this year, who knows. Then I get my taxes almost into FTU and find that it will not handle this years taxes. So I have to find another provider that can. On top of that, still waiting on one final set of tax documents from one entity that can't seem to get its act together. Have no idea if they will by April 15 or not. Feels 50/50 at this point. May have to put in an extension while I wait 3 to 6 months for the wheels to turn on something that should have been done 2 months ago. Of course this means I cannot finish my taxes or get my refund until who knows when. Ironically this year my refund is larger then usual so timing matters more.

Not sure where I am. Makes me want to laugh and scream at the same time.

Thanks.

Yes we know who Musk is... and it is a very mixed bag. Some where around the time he became the world's richest person I feel like something changed and he went over the top or over the edge. Not sure which.

I liked how the article tried to paint less fractional users from search as a positive. Too me that sounds like less relevance which is negative. Also interesting that Reddit no longer publishes that statistic. Makes a me wonder why.

Edit: Also in line with my experience. Feels like I see less search links and when I see them, I am less likely to click on them.

I think what I use to use was an IR spotlight in a portable spotlight fixture that had a clamp you could clamp about anywhere. Also make certain you have enough ventilation.

I was on Reddit the other day asking a tax question. Seemed like posting was less. Felt like a ghost town in some subreddits. Just my impression. Had not been there for maybe 6 months. Place seemed different.

I wonder if traffic and posting is really down?

Edit: Read the article. Says maybe stable maybe some growth. Says search driven traffic less fractionally. I know I see fewer search links to Reddit on DDG when I search.

Edit: Article was a bit vague about stock of new content. Are big contributors adding important new content? Not even sure how to measure. Reddit seems to like to focus on page views and time on site, maybe because financially that is all that matters? Maybe they do not really care about good content and content generation so much?