Bruncvik

Bruncvik , 16 days ago

I'm still using Winamp 2.91. I'm just too used to it to change. Now, if someone added Flac support to the same interface, I'd be happy. And if someone ported it to Linux and Android, I'd pay big bucks for it.

Bruncvik , 17 days ago

I've had exactly the same experience. Let me addd one more: when OneDrive decides to back up open files, they ate regularly deleted both from local and cloud. Those are the files I tend to use the most, and I grew so frustrated that I ended recreating my Documents folder steucture in my Downloads folder, which doesn't get synced. (IT is useless; when I complained abou that, they told me that One Drive was a third-party application, and they didn't support those. )

Bruncvik , 21 days ago

I can't complain about them. I just rip them off. There may be a law (EU regulation) for bottle manufacturers to tether the caps, but there's no law againt ripping the caps off.

Bruncvik , 21 days ago

I'm always pouring the water into a cup or glass, and the attached cap tands to fall down into the path of the stream, lest I use my other hand to hold it. The plastic connestors don't bother me.

Bruncvik , 25 days ago

As long as it can play tapes, I'm okay. Still using a tape adapter to connect my mp3 player :)

Bruncvik , 24 days ago

Yeah, I hear you. I'll settle for an aux port when I get a new car...

Bruncvik , 24 days ago

Aux port is precisely what I'd look for when getting a new car. Even though by the time I do, perhaps my last Sansa Clip mp3 player will be dead and I'd get a new model with Bluetooth.

Bruncvik , 1 month ago

A bit late to the game, but for what it's worth, my experience with the Shockz. I run about 6-7 hours per week, and listen exclusively to audiobooks. As a result, I can't comment on the sound quality, but I do have some other observations.

Pros:

• Waterproof. I've been running for more than a decade before I got the Shockz, and no earphones lasted more than 6 months in the local rain. No such issue with these headphones.
• Not falling off. By their design, they would not fall off, unlike any and all earbuds I ever tried. I may have weird ears in this regard, but I had to learn to run with a hat or headband to keep earbuds in place.
• Spatial awareness. Excellent at keeping me aware of my surroundings.
• Good battery life. A single charge lasts me through the week, and a quick partial emergency charge can carry me over the next 2-hour run. In addition, the "battery low" status actually works well. With any other brand of earbuds, from Mpow to Anker, once I got the "battery low" warning, I had about 20 minutes of charge left. So, going for a long run at "battery medium" was always a gamble. With the Shockz, I never ran out of charge when I started at "battery medium", even on my long runs.

Cons:

• Not too comfortable. I have a big head, and even so the band behind my head is standing off enough that I can't wear my hat over it. So, in winter it's earbuds, held in place and waterproofed by my hat.
• A bit too quiet. Everything, including the persistent wind here, is interfering with the sound. So, for audiobooks, I have to process them in mp3gain to around 95 dB, and then play them at max. This, however, may be more related to my mp3 player; I didn't do an analysis of it yet.
• The controls are weird. My sense of touch is not too good, so pressing the controls while the Shockz are on my head is a futile exercise. I just can't feel the buttons properly, so I have to take off the headphones and see which button I'm pushing.

I didn't test them with music or calls yet (for the latter, I'd have to pair them to my phone), so can't comment on those features.

Bruncvik OP , 1 month ago

This is rsa.ie. The main site works fine, but you have to wait to access the driving test registration portal. Mind you, this is even before you see the login or registration screen. And given Ireland's small size, there are only about 4000 driving tests per week. That number of users is negligible for a normal scheduling page; it must have taken some serious skill and effort to make it non-performant at this scale.

Bruncvik , 1 month ago

I'm still on Reddit, and once in a while I manually overwrite all my comments that are older than a month. 95% of my comments don't have a real value, and whatever I find interesting or insightful ends on my personal Web site. It's my information, and if I think I brainfart something that would be helpful for someone, I add it to space that I control. This was true even before the whole API fiasco.

Bruncvik , 2 months ago

I haven't used Photoshop; learned basic photo editing in GIMP (as a poor student, I appreciated a powerful, free editor). So, no complaints about the UI from me. If anything, I'd probably bitch about the Photoshop UI if I ever used it.

One thing that concerns me a little, however, is the third-party integration with Nik Collection. The second version, which I'm still using, was provided for free by Google. They later sold the software, and the new company commercialized it. I found it difficult to track down the v2 installer, so I'm now keeping it on multiple backups, in multiple locations, as one of my most treasured software possessions.

Bruncvik , 2 months ago

Just another byproduct of enshittification. Novadays, a top-end Garmin watch lasts about as long as a Chinese watch of a brand with random characters you buy off Amazon. Google is introducing planned obsolesence in Fitbit. Banking apps are beginning to require phones that are no more than 4 years old. TVs get bricked with firmware upgrades. So, consumers are trained to buy cheapest, least reliable electronics, because over time they'll provide more value than top-end items which used to last much longer. (This was written on a 13 years old phone. I may not have access to my banking app anymore, but otherwise it works for everything I need, and I haven't contributed to e-waste in this regard. Not that the pollution angle was my reason to keep the phone, but it's a nice extra bonus.)

Bruncvik , 2 months ago

Samsung Galaxy S2. With a replaceable battery and good external cover, that thing can last for a long time. I did contribute to e-waste by replacing the battery three times so far, but that's all.

Bruncvik , 2 months ago

Have they? In what way?

This is speculation by Ars Technica. Essentially, a recent firmware upgrade seems to have drastically lowered the battery life of some models. In addition, they are removing all third-party apps in the EU in response to the DMA.

What TVs? Vizio, Hisense, the Chinese junk budget brands?

Most recently Roku. But I used a TV only as an example. A year ago, an OTA upgrade bricked microwave ovens. Google's history of bricking its smart home products goes back to at least 2016, companies like Wink threaten to brick your devices unless you suddenly start paying a monthly fee on top of your purchase price "for life", there were reports of smart bulbs or thermostats ceasing working as well.

The following is pure speculation on my part: I think we're at the beginning of a huge wave of planned obsolescence. Everyone and their mother are now training AI's, and they want their customers to replace older products, which don't support AI integration, with new ones. They'll soon stop supporting the older devices or outright bricking them, to force people to buy the new ones.

Bruncvik , 2 months ago

It's not. 90% of my phone usage is calling, text messages, FM radio, taking quick photos, and checking the weather. The rest is the occasional browsing. I haven't really found the need to do more with my phone.

Bruncvik , 2 months ago

I saw it for the first time last summer. Did a little reading, and according to the news articles, it was a EU directive, but it had been heavily lobbied for by Coca Cola. If I remember right, all EU countries should have implemented the necessary legislature by June this year.

I personally just tear the caps off. Can't get used to them.

Bruncvik , 4 months ago

I used Opera because you could place tabs at the bottom of the window. When Opera became just a Chrome skin, I switched to Firefox because through the Tab Mix Plus extension I could place the tabs to the bottom. When Firefox killed the extension (and many more), I switched to Vivaldi (made by the former Opera team) because it offered tabs on the bottom. Very recently I switched to Waterfox, because @jh34 told me the browser also allows for tabs to be placed at the bottom. What can I say... I'm a bottom kind of guy...

Bruncvik , 4 months ago

Just something I'm used to. I have windows tabs on the bottom, so I'd like to have everything in the same place, rather than move the cursor all over the screen. I guess it's a holdover back from Netscape days when I had several separate windows open, and they all had their own tab on the Windows task bar.

Bruncvik , 4 months ago

Agreed. I used to be the tech support for my family members. Everyone I switched to Mint Cinnamon stopped calling me. (That's also when I realised my relatives never call me to share good news or to ask about me.)

Bruncvik , 4 months ago

Funny... My company (over 100k employees worldwide) is blocking CNN as a security risk...

Bruncvik , 4 months ago

All other MSM, even some more questionable like The Sun or Fox News, works fine. CNN is the only one blocked.

Bruncvik , 4 months ago

I'm getting these messages occasionally, but usually they make sense, such as when I go to online gaming sites or torrenting portals. Didn't try porn - don't want a call from HR. In general, our IT policies are fairly sensible; this is one of the very few outliers.

Bruncvik , 4 months ago

I found out that the best way to force Google Maps to update is to make the correct edit in Open Street Maps. Google seems to source its local information from there.

Just an anecdotal example: I live at the end of a cul-de-sac, and I've seen loads of cars drive up to my house, and then gingerly do a 15-point turn (the road is very narrow), and drive back. I checked Google Maps and found that it lists my street as open. I've filled reports with Google several times, and nothing happened. Then, I updated OSM to indicate that at the end of my street there's just a pedestrian footpath to the next street. Within two weeks, the number of cars turning around decreased drastically. I checked Google Maps, and found that they fixed their map. A few years later, there's still the odd car making the mistake, but the only map service I could identify that still didn't update was Apple Maps.

Since then, I've done several edits in OSM (I live in a young estate, with loads of construction still going on, so maps are not very reliable), and Google always picked up these edits.

Bruncvik , 5 months ago

I used to work as a financial analyst on Wall Street, and even after I changed careers I invested on my own, roughly following Buffet's strategy. My annual returns averaged 22%, but given the little starting capital ($2000), I cashed out with just enough for a large downpayment on my house.

Anyway, just a very short primer on how Buffet is investing. He's a student of Benjamin Graham who wrote the highly influential The Intelligent Investor. There, Graham outlined the most basic fundamental strategy: buy stock in companies where market cap is below book value and hold long-term, until stock catches up. Obviously, that's hardly feasible in today's markets, but there are still stocks that you won't realize they are undervalued until you research the shit out of the companies. Not stocks, but companies. The former, technical investing, has been in vogue since at least the 90s, while the latter is the old school fundamental approach of actually calculating the stock's underlying value and its growth potential.

Where it all comes together is portfolio building. The conventional theory is to have around 30 stocks to minimize volatility. Buffet's approach is to maximize upward potential by having fewer stocks (around 10), while minimizing risks by researching and fully understanding companies he invests in. This ranges from understanding financials and operations to analizing the company's management. Buffet is known for keeping the management of an acquired company in place and not interfering with their decisions because he wouldn't invest into a company where he wouldn't trust the management in the first place.

Of course, I didn't have the means for investing enough to have any influence on the company or market, so I had to really dig into the fundamentals and hope the market would eventually realize the value of the company. It worked for me, as long as I stuck to companies whose business model I could understand. So, I missed loads of winners from the tech sector, but I've had a steady above-market return, and that was good enough for me. I followed the advice from the book On Investing by John Neff, which I can fully recommend, if it's still in print.