Mama told me not to come.

She said, that ain’t the way to have fun.

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  • 13 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Oh, free markets can solve these problems, but we don’t have a free market. These big companies don’t win because they’re the best, they win because they buy the marketshare bribe companies to only support their platforms.

    ISPs are a fantastic example here. Starting a new ISP is prohibitively expensive, not because of the physical materials you need, but the permits (which the ISPs lobbied for) and lawsuits w/ existing ISPs. In a proper free market, we’d have a lot more selection than we do.

    What you call “free market” I call “crony-capitalism.” In a free market, monopolies only stay monopolies if they continue to be better than the alternatives. In a crony-capitalist market, monopolies continue if they can make enough barriers to prevent competition.


  • I don’t go as far as VHS, I would just digitize it an and put it on my Jellyfin server. I did that with my DVDs and Bluray so I’m good if my Bluray drive dies. Likewise with emulators for older consoles.

    But I’m not replacing something just because the port is dumb.

    I’ll probably buy a Framework laptop next once my Thinkpad dies, because carrying a dongle is dumb when I could swap a port.




  • Awesome!

    The difference, though, is I can turn off my phone if I want to, but I can’t really turn off the car tracking unless I tear apart the car to remove the antenna (or at least the power). Some cars make it easy in the fuse box, but others make it a PIA.

    I’m planning to switch to a VOIP number and only use my SIM for data and SMS 2FA. Then I can turn off/remove the SIM as needed. Once I don’t need SMS anymore, I can get a data only SIM and hopefully hide among the various iPads and smart watches.

    I wish I could trust my carrier, but articles like the one you mentioned remind me that I really can’t.





  • I generally don’t play the same game consistently and rarely spend more than 40 hours (usually 10-15) in a given game. For most of the games I spend more time in, it’s either mouse driven (most strategy games) or I use a controller (most third person/top down games). And for the few I play that use WASD, my kids also play on my computer (e.g. Minecraft).

    So I just don’t edit keybindings very often. I actually sometimes avoid playing WASD games because fixing the keys is a pain, especially when some games don’t update the in-game hints or don’t warm when there’s a collision (silently unbinds the key). It’s annoying and I don’t understand why it was ever a thing.


  • The problem is they generally use E and F for something, which results in a cascade of rebinding.

    And yeah, tablets are better, but they’re also more expensive and don’t do other mice things. For how rarely I do 3D modeling and whatnot (pretty rare), making sure my mouse has a middle button is plenty.

    And yeah, I much prefer controller, even for FPS since I don’t play competitively (even then, I’ve seen awesome videos about gyro aiming).


  • I don’t think mice were a mistake, but they’re worse for most of the tasks I do. I’m a software engineer and I suck at art, so I just need to write, compile, and test code.

    There are some things a mouse is way better for:

    • drawing (well, a drawing tablet is better)
    • 3d modeling
    • editing photos
    • first person shooters (KB works fine for OG Doom though)
    • bulk file operations (a decent KB interface could work though)

    But for almost everything else, I prefer a keyboard.

    And while we’re on a tangent, I hate WASD, why shift my fingers over from the normal home row position? It should be ESDF, which feels way more natural…