IDK Iwas using NewPipexSponsorBlock, now Tubular since before Grayjay existed.

Strangely, that generally is how my Linux boxes have been - way less IT guy than when we had WinXP or Win7. You have to use a stable distro however - which TBH is the problem with Win10 and 11 for a lot of people - finding the “stable” version isn’t available to home users or is complicated - so you have new OS deployments every 6 months. Windows Updates are now forced and still often have problems or bugs.

That all said, I think we’ve just got to get used to unstable / rolling release OSs cause “everyone” is doing it. Even Alma is not as stable as previous enterprise linux rebuilds due to Red Hat not releasing point release security updates anymore.

Dells IME just suck. YMMV. Compared to the T480 it’s more portable and lighter.

Where is the actual link for the article? Is it a video?

The Carbox X1 Gen7 is probably a decent choice, but it will depend on the specs - get at least an i5, and max out the RAM to 16GB - you can’t add it later, so make sure to buy one with the 16GB.

I guess not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good would be a fundamental different value. I used to think just pay for what you want because being a customer should lead to better results. The last 10 or so years has disabused me of the notion - so many companies are plenty willing to lie to us or treat us horribly and charge for the “privilege”.

My main point is you seem to be saying “Advertising driven journalism is worse than pay for access journalism.” I’m saying “citation needed” - given how cable news and online sites are such echo chambers now (and widely accepted and studied to be so). Even more concerning is the drift of podcasts, substacks, and youtube channels that rely on donations or subscriptions to ever more extreme areas in “audience capture” where advertising has been less a direct driver than broadcast news. This leaves me wondering if the traditional broadcast media like ABC/NBC/CBS isn’t less prone to conspiracy theories, outright lies, and also more likely to be willing to show me something I don’t want to hear because I’m not directly paying them.

Also sites like https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/center/ and https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/ tend to rank traditional “boring” sources as most factual and least biased, especially local broadcast affiliates local newscasts. I.e. pretty traditional advertising driven news a la the 1980s.

Maybe you dispute factuality rankings and bias rankings. Maybe you think conspiracy theories or shows like “The Daily Show” or Tuckers twitter show are better than choosing not to cover some topics that you feel they should have covered.

I just think today it’s far harder to bury a story - if you want to hear about it, someone is commenting. But it’s far easier to flood the zone with bullshit, and the incentives with pay for access media seem to encourage being like Joe Rogan and not Barbara Walters for instance.

And maybe your entire point is there’s no good solution and news was worse in broadcast times vs today. I might agree with the first except for that means giving up on getting any news at all and I disagree on the second. It’s also why I think having both currently known workable models as alternatives may help - the paid news sources will not be able to as easily be pressured by advertisers or the government funding to not cover topics and the advertiser sources will be more incentivised to report mainstream and boring news than the pay sites.

The sales people are cons, but the idea has merit but not to make money. You’re probably not going to rent it out for a profit.

Where it has merit is if you do the research and understand specifically that the concept can work for you, and take the timeshare off someone else in the secondary market it can save you a lot of money, but only in specific situations.

There are good and bad systems and locations. You want to optimize on those.

You also have to be someone who will go on week long trips multiple times a year and have a life that let’s you either lock the dates in firm 9 months to 13 months out (depending on system) or can go in 30 days or less to what opens up last minute.

And you have to want to go to resort locations like Myrtle Beach, Orlando, Las Vegas, Smoky Mountains, Hawaii, Breckenridge, Branson, Williamsburg or California.

Oh, and you’ll want to be ok with 3 star locations without daily maid service.

The upside is you can often stay in 2 bedroom suites with full kitchen and laundry with pools and hot tubs and arcades and mini golf in various amazing locations for about 1,800 dollars a week or less. Sometimes much less. If you’re comparing 2 hotel rooms at today’s prices that can be very cheap for 7 days. The average say Hampton Inn is close to 200 a night per room, so at the higher end of 1,800 you’re still 1k less for the week.

And I’ve hit sales in the less demanding seasons for as little as $550 for the week. But of course if you’re looking at Hawaii in season you might be at the higher end of 4k for a week cash, and technically the sky is the limit. This is where knowledge and planning comes in because you can pay for a week in say Florida for 1,600 every year, but trade that week with one that in Hawaii that goes for 4,000 much of the time. You just have to beat everyone else to the trade which is what the planning is for.

I am not a salesman just a so far happy “owner” going on a lot of trips this way by “sams clubbing” my vacations and paying ahead for some.

If you do want to learn realistic costs and nuts and bolts - tugbbs.com can teach you a lot for free.

First I don’t see an issue with a “store brand” if it does what you need.

Secondly - who is the name brand for say a power strip or a USB hub or USB C charger or cables? Or do you buy monster audio cables? SD card reader? Microfiber cloth? What about regular bath towels?

Somewhat more controversial - what about things that are inherently disposable like latex gloves or laundry detergent?

I went from all free and clear from Sam’s club which took up space and got me like 120 packets for 20 dollars to these detergent sheets which are much smaller and got 300 for 7 dollars. You use the same number of sheets as you would packets. The clothes come out the same.

But yes, try searching for something like an electric lighter for candles on both sites and tell me the “quality non knock off” on Amazon. 90 percent are on temu also for less.

And the direct pay model has plenty of audience capture or the well known yellow journalism issues. IDK it seems to me like ABC of the 1980s was more trustworthy than cable news or social media of the 21st century. Lies of omission are better than straight up lies imo - no documentation is better than wrong documentation.

I mean, most people don’t think ease of changing a light bulb (that they never have to do) is a deal breaker for a car. I haven’t had to change a headlight since they went to LEDs. My last car that was 7 years of owning it.

I think we should insist on making things repairable, but should focus on the things that come up frequently.

Because everything is a tradeoff, things like how often it is likely to need repair, how much the car costs, functionality of the car day to day, looks, gas mileage, heck a lot of stuff will come before a once a decade thing that you’re either going to pay a shop to do or trade before it’s an issue.

I mean people also say you’ll grow up from being a liberal so lol. I presume it has a lot to do with why you have a particular political position and if you’ve actually thought it out at all.

I find it fascinating that you have no preference between the candidates. Do you really think it won’t matter which wins?

I hoped so in 2016,but then we saw what happened after that.

The other thing is, disk space and internet speeds just keep getting cheaper so… Why change just for disk space?

When the alternative was to pay more for the exact same things on Amazon, it’s logical to pay less. Every app tracks you so idk…

You should worry about audience capture / gifting from the patreon model for journalists. And the government control from public funded.

Idk the answer, but ads did give us more less biased news in broadcast news for a few decades.

I think we all have some things that we either don’t talk about to maintain relationships. Of course usually thats respected by both sides.

Do they care that you call them out? Do you dislike doing it? If neither happens it can be useful for people to realize they’re not necessarily holding a position that “everyone does”. It’s useful to be taken out of your bubble I think, and to see “regular people” can have different positions, and maybe try and understand why they do. It might change someone’s mind.

If course if they or you get worked up by the discussion and no one is getting anything out of it, no one is even ‘agree to disagree’ and it’s just causing everyone stress… Then you need to clearly lay out that you don’t like those sorts of comments.

If they ignore you, then you need to decide how much you want the relationship. You could say “I’m serious about these comments. If you don’t want to stop then you need to decide how much you want to see or interact with me. Because I am willing to just avoid these discussions, but I will not keep hearing these comments, and will stop coming.”

If you buy your phone unlocked, you can get Red Pocket which is extremely cheap for service compared to most post paid plans. You can get ~5gb data and unlimited everything else for 20 a month on AT&T. And then if you go to Europe you can just buy a cheap Sim while there and pop it in.

If you’re not picky about the phone, I have gotten sub 300 USD phones for the last 2, first lasted 4 years and I’m about 6 months into the second. Honestly there’s not much I feel like I’m missing, except spending way more money.

Idk the Republicans seem to really want fascism.

The apps are super slow though. Like I don’t need a 5 second animation of bouncing fries every time I do anything. Dunkin is another offender.

I think it’s more the cloud being the issue here. Such an obvious and large and valuable target. Of course Microsoft also isn’t that secure historically.