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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: August 11th, 2024

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  • People who are proud of getting a good deal via an app break my heart. Most folks I know like that are not strapped for cash. They just like the feeling of getting a bargain. They don’t consider that the prices are artificially inflated. They don’t need the sale item. And in the long run they’ll probably end up paying more when the stores know their purchasing habits and have A/B tested them enough to know how to provide as little as possible while charging as much as a customer can stomach.

    If a coupon requires an app, I don’t by that item. Especially when it comes to groceries. When it comes to store cards, most let you use a phone number instead of scanning the card. So plug in a random number at checkout. You can often get a hit on the first try. Then pay in cash. Dirty up someone else’s data and give these stores nothing on you. Seriously, if people keep giving in, it’s guaranteed to get worse. First the store card, then the app, what’s next?


  • I’m with you 100% up to the “little recourse,” I think there’s more options now than there have ever been. Open source (including linux and self hosting) are about the only tech-future things I’m genuinely excited about.

    There’s still a learning curve and progress to be made, for sure. However, anecdotally, I’ve seen programming and hosting become vastly more accessible in the last 15 years. Also, not everyone needs to self host, people just need to know someone who is willing and able to set them up.

    Not saying it’s a guarantee, but it’s a possible way out, at least. And being here on lemmy, reading and writing about these issues is a good sign there’s movement in the right direction.


  • I have used inkscape for this purpose and it can be effective. The display units can be changed in the preferences (inch, cm, etc) and basic shape dimensions input directly. You can input absolute position for shapes and nodes, but I didn’t notice an easy way for relative position. They also have a path effect called “Measure Segments” for that functionality. FWIW, I later preferred blender, but I might try a dedicated tool like LibreCAD mentioned in another comment. They seem to have decent documentation and a wiki.





  • scruffy-seconded.gif

    I’ve been surprised by how effective it’s been to say, respectfully, “this is important to me,” maybe adding “here’s why.” Got all my siblings, mom, SO, and best friend on Signal, that’s a vast majority of my online conversations.

    reddit is orders of magnitude bigger then lemmy, but I find lemmy high quality and has more people with similar values- more than i could ever keep up with.

    Back when Adobe went subscription-only, I stopped using it on my personal work and devices even though a lot of my previous work depended on it. Had to switch to different tools, but now there are better options. Not only has Adobe stagnated, but they caused an even bigger exodus when they messed with the ToS to train ai on user data.

    I switch to linux a few years ago and now when I have jobs that use windows I realize how clunky it actually is, and it’s only getting worse while linux has been getting better.

    I’m fully degoogled (also a graphineOS user). It took me years to eliminate each service, but I was sick of these giant companies that could never give me the things I wanted because in interferes with what they want (ad revenue). The only thing you can do is take it all back. Participate as little as possible. These companies will not stop getting worse while people continue to use them.

    It can be inconvenient, time-consuming, and hard, but there are options, and it is a lot easier now than it was a decade ago. I see no reason why it wont continue to get easier and more accessible. That’s why it’s important for tech savvy folks to do what they can, now, and make it easier for those who come after them. Personally, I’ve done a lot for myself, but need to learn more about hosting securely so I can offer close friends and family better alternatives that they can easily access.


  • I wanted something similar from a remote company I was working for. They were pretty good about fulfilling requests, but when I asked for a good kvm switch they said they had trouble in the past and instead recommended a usb hub that can toggle between machines. Then connect both machines to the same monitor and toggle the input. Not ideal, but low cost and functional. Might not suit your needs (would be annoying if you have to frequently toggle back and forth), but if you’re just trying to share your desk space between a work machine and personal, and the monitor input is easy to toggle, it’s worth considering.






  • I had a similar change of heart years ago, watching a docu-series on PBS and realizing I wanted more of that content in the world. Even though you can stream PBS for about $5 a month, I canceled Netflix so I could pay PBS $20 a month to start making up for all the time my money was flowing in the wrong direction.

    We’re likely to get more of the things we invest in, and less of the things we don’t. That investment includes attention in ad-driven market, not only money.

    I know I’m not the first person on lemmy to have this realization, it’s one of the many reasons I like it here.


  • I’ve had audio sync issues on kodi myself-- specifically osmc on Vero V which is optimized for playback. I tried checking my notes, because it was some time ago. Nothing definitive, but it may have been related to a random crashing issue that turned out to be a bad hdmi port-- which was the last thing I considered checking after triple checking everything else. Anyway, good luck with the troubleshooting. Audio sync issues are a pain but I can also attest yt-dlp has been solid.