There’s also the option of electronic scales which are rechargeable via USB

Haha yeah. People are so accustomed to short TLDs that ‘smith.technology’ just intuitively feels kinda wrong, and it still feels that way to me, even as a tech person who knows it is perfectly valid.

You’re thinking like “smith dot technology dot what?”

Another reason is brand identity.

Using ‘.tech’ or ‘.flights’ or .sports’ for your site feels too “on the nose” and gives vibes of like browsing some directory where things are categorised and sorted. Even worse it implies there are other sites under the same category, and those other sites may be competitors, and this dilutes strength of brand.

lt also suggests strongly what the business does, and while that might seem desirable at first it actually isn’t from a corporate perspective because it means the company becomes tied to their business area and can’t expand and grow out of it into other things.

I think this is a major part of why descriptive TLDs continue to be less preferred over ‘meaningless’ two letter TLDs, because companies want the focus to be on the main part of the domain, not the TLD.

That is likely part of it and also explains why languages like Japanese are more tightly grouped, as there is less spread in word length for Japanese versus English or Italian.

I would imagine this is because there is a ‘comfortable’ rate of information exchange in human conversation, and so each given language will be spoken at a pace that achieves this comfortable rate.

So it’s not that the syllable rate coincidentally results in the same information rate, but the opposite - the syllable rate adjusts to match the desired information rate.

Japan is like this too, and I loved to see that when I was living there.

The bus drivers often wear nice uniforms and white gloves, and clearly take a lot of care in their appearance and work. And people give them respect.

I wish it was like that everywhere, because being able to have pride in what you do and be respected for it is such an important thing that everyone deserves to have - regardless of what your job is.

I feel trypophobia quite strongly with some triggers, even things like budding plants pushing through the ground can make my akin crawl. But for some reason crumpets are okay.

I guess my brain just sees the crumpet texture as being like a macro bread texture, which is okay because it’s kinda bready.

There are some ways in which the newer shows like Discovery are realistic, but there are also ways in which they are stupid.

For example, two federation officers in a life or death situation where they have two minutes to solve an urgent crisis, and they decide to spend 60 seconds of that having an emotional heart-to-heart.

If that was in TNG, they’d have got the job done like professionals, and then had the friends chat later in ten forward. Because that’s how people with jobs get their jobs done.

TNG era was quite cheesy in some ways, but it kept characters real in that they always acted appropriately for their role and position, not just like a bunch of emotional oddballs who get to be in charge of a spaceship for some reason.

One thing that works is finding ways to make achieving small tasks part of your routine. I have a to-do list and in my lunch break at work I often pick off one or two things and decide okay, that’s what I’ll do when I get home. And so that way the selecting of the tasks and the doing of the tasks are things that have their own specific times and the decision is already made.

What also works is to create some external motivation.

I might not feel like cleaning the house, for example, but if I have friends coming over then I’ll enthusiastically clean everything because I want it to be nice for them.

And so sometimes I intentionally weaponise that by inviting a friend over just to give myself that extrinsic motivation.

Not what you had in mind when you said ‘fake’, but how about an AI-generated mushroom identification book that landed people in hospital for eating poisonous stuff the book said was safe

This is it for me too. I’m not going to allow companies to monetise me or my data any more than the absolute minimum I have to.

One thing I try hard at is making sure that I never have to see a single advert in my own home. I don’t have TV, I don’t watch any streaming services if they have ads, and I adblock everything. I don’t care how good a product is, how cheap or free, if it has advertisements I’m out.

To me it’s about having sufficient self-respect to not let companies live in my head rent-free.

Thanks. I’ve been keeping my eye on colour ereaders, and the tech has improved so rapidly in the last couple of years I do wonder if I just hang on for another year then the colour reproduction could be even better.

Can’t wait forever of course, that defeats the whole purpose, but it might pay to wait just a little.

I’ve had two kindles so far, but my next e-reader won’t be from Amazon.

I’m trying to move my tech life away from closed ecosystems as much as possible, So I’ll probably go for a kobo or boox.

For me the dream would be a really large colour ereader around 10 inches, where you can view even the densest manga or comics comfortably without zooming or scrolling. I think that’s what I’m holding out for.

UK here and they are turned on.

Thanks a lot, Brexit :(

I had so many good times on forums back in the day.

The personal nature of them was great for being social and making friends, but it was also good for the quality of the content for and user behaviour too.

When everyone recognises you and remembers your past behaviour, people put effort into creating a good reputation for themselves and making quality posts. It’s like living in a small village versus living in a city.

The thought of being banned back then genuinely filled people with dread, because even if you could evade it (which many people couldn’t as VPNs were barely a thing) you’d lose your whole post history and personal connection with people, and users did cherish those things.

The worrying truth is that we are all going to be subject to these sorts of false correlations and biases and there will be very little we can do about it.

You go to buy car insurance, and find that your premium has gone up 200% for no reason. Why? Because the AI said so. Maybe soneone with your name was in a crash. Maybe you parked overnight at the same GPS location where an accident happened. Who knows what data actually underlies that decision or how it was made, but it was. And even the insurance company themselves doesn’t know how it ended up that way.

What don’t you like about Signal?

Although, these stats are people who would consider giving up cars, among those who currently own one.

People who don’t need a car and already don’t have one won’t appear in these figures

If you imagine the perfect fictional country, then for that country the bar chart should theoretically be at 0% - because that would mean everyone who doesn’t need a car doesn’t have one, and anyone who does own a car needs it very strictly for jobs only a car can do, no matter how good the transport infrastructure and planning and zoning are.

Yeah but there’s clunky in the way where its big but still a single unit as designed and intended, and clunky when its got some extra growth hanging off the back of it like some technological parasite.

Of course, my advice is only that, and you should choose the approach that works best for you. But advice is why you came here right :)

I have a portable monitor that I’m pretty pleased with.

It has a magnetic cover that goes over the screen to keep it safe, and that same cover folds and goes on the back to act as a stand when it’s in use. Power and video are via the same USB-C cable.

Nice and slim and stays in my bag most of the time but when I want a second screen I can whip it out in two secs.

A screen that attaches to the laptop sounds convenient initially, but I feel like in practice it would be a hindrance and make your laptop clunky and bulky.