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skuzz

@skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de

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Best Buy Membership "discount" (lemmy.world)

So I was shopping with my wife today and I said "oh let's see if my membership helps out." So we went and added the same item to each of our carts, and to our surprise, the total was the same! So what is it exactly that I'm paying for in this membership if the items "original price" is higher for me than it is for regular...

skuzz ,

Best Buy and most retailers offer free shipping on items $100 and above most of the time. You just don't see that until checkout. No special plan needed. It's to compete with the likes of Amazon.

skuzz ,

There is a reg key to add that disables bing search.

Ooh, do share with the class!

skuzz ,

Ha, what a delightful way to share! Figured it would be easy enough to Internet search, but this way, others reading the thread will be more inclined to enable it when it is just right in the conversation.

Edit: Holy crap, this finally got rid of the weird start menu lag where it used to be "hit win key, type fir, launch firefox" to "hit win key....start menu freezes with no typing, a second modal window floats above it, sometimes in arbitrary locations on the screen (likely because I told Edge to not run in the background ever so it always cold-starts) then "fir" appears there, or sometimes "ir" or sometimes "r" or sometimes nothing." Just to run a program.

skuzz ,

Yep, just gotta get off my lazy butt and do it.

skuzz ,

Electric vehicles aren't helping with the transition to electric vehicles. Cars are more expensive than ever. If one has a choice between an annoyingly necessary vehicle that can get them to and from work and take care of long trips, or something that costs the same (or more) and can't even get you halfway across the state on a single charge, which would one with a limited budget pick?

I have some friends that tried to take the plunge with EV. They bought one used, so some age on the traction pack. Cold-ass winter came along, the car doesn't do active thermal management of the pack. They could barely make it 24 miles between towns. Their next car will be a hybrid. Until EVs are priced similar and behave similar to ICE cars, it's going to be a slow roll to convert people.

skuzz ,

I actually see this rest stop idea as really cool advantage to bring life back to random locations across the country. Kinda like the 1950s Route 66 road tour theme that was popular back then. Create a stop with some goofy thing to look at, some food, some place to stretch, a park, a rock wall, whatever. Great opportunity to capitalism while creating fun and working around the range problem until technology improves or countries like the US get with the program and go more public transport.

As for:

Stop pretending we need to drive 500 miles without stopping, that’s dangerous anyway.

It is more a functional reality in western states, not a luxury or something to boast about. One can drive that 200 miles (likely your charge range will be less at 85MPH with a 60MPH headwind and ascending 4000 vertical feet over a few hours) without having services, utilities, or even towns. The range is a necessity to get back to civilization, let alone finding a charger or gas station.

skuzz ,

Yet another way for the ol’ US to fuck their citizens’ lives up, huh

That's the smell of freedom right there! Yeah!

skuzz ,

iOS in the US doesn't allow sideload.

skuzz ,

Not only a different skin, a kneecapped version of Safari that doesn't have the root level access to Javascript performance boosts that Safari proper does.

1Blocker for the win slightly. It can do an device-local loopback adblock VPN. Until Apple says no.

skuzz ,

Between that, the installation of programs like HP smart, copilot, and Dev Home without my consent. OneDrive being trash. Start menu being slow ever since they deployed copilot even with it shut off. All the tricks to get you to run Edge. The list just keeps growing.

The notifications to get you to change notification settings on a program like Microsoft to-do not being run in a while just take the cake. I’ll run my apps if and when I want to. STFU M$. I pay you for an operating system to run my computer. Not to fight with it constantly.

skuzz ,

That's hilariously so true. Have been completely comfortable using Linux as a primary OS, in my case, I decided, "well Windows 10 was pretty johnny on the spot, so maybe I'll use Windows 11 for a spell." 10 was mostly usable, then 11 was "hey we have this always-update model of 10 in place, let's make 11 all about constant dark pattern pushes?" May literally be the last time I use or ever recommend the platform in any capacity.

Not even talking about how W11 can't successfully sleep or hibernate on most computers I've seen it on. I was in a computer shop helping someone pick out a laptop a while back, local place. They configured all the PC laptops to never sleep because Windows 11 sleep is so buggy. How is it 2024 and Windows is worse at sleep than it was in 2001?

skuzz ,

Just throwing out there that PDF X-Change Editor and WondersShare PDFelement are both exceptional PDF editors. PDF X-Change Editor also has Windows ARM64 builds so you can run them on ARM based PCs. Although the best thing is to try and escape from Windows entirely anymore. Edit: Also, I second other recommends for Sumatra PDF for viewing. It has always been a favorite.

skuzz ,

Oooh, forgot about that one, good callout.

skuzz ,

It's a really weird and very American problem. Our home broadband either doesn't exist or is really expensive in any given market, and tends to have clauses, conditions, etc. Like Comcrap limiting people to 1TB/mon (very easy to burn through quickly by just watching some television programs) unless they pay more for "unlimited". People, as taught by Capitalism, hunt for the best deals. Paying one bill instead of two saves money. Some have light enough home Internet requirements that they don't need expensive home broadband.

Then the companies get pissed that we're doing what we are supposed to do, find the best deal for our needs, so they set up false gates to make sure we follow the path they want us to follow. Then they pay off the regulatory agencies to allow terms like "unlimited" mean not unlimited, 3G HSPA+ being known as 4G. 4G being known as LTE, 4GLTE or 5Ge. 5G being known as 5G, 5G+, 5GUW, 5GUC, (even though, with the exception of T-Mobile in many markets, that 5G will actually be non-standalone and anchored to an LTE packet core, not 5G SA) and all the other damn arbitrary marketing buzzwords. All of which really mean nothing because the 5G spec allows a carrier to flip on the 5G availability flag on a phone even if 5G doesn't exist in your market.

Most of this, AT&T is the biggest perpetrator of by far. Especially the lying about 5G.

The rules are all made up, nothing is real. Time for the arbitrary monthly bill increase for no reason! Pay up, chump!

skuzz ,

Carriers in the US configure phones so that the tethering APN is always used for tethering specifically over all interfaces, the traffic is also tagged with a different TTL. They also do some malarkey with deep packet inspection (in case you figure out how to modify the APN) to identify if a computer is using the connection (like the initial phone home Windows and Mac both do to determine the type/quality of Internet connection they are connected to.)

All of this one can work around, but it becomes an annoying game of cat and also cat, and then if the carrier "decides" you violated the "spirit" of their TOS, they'll cancel your plan and take your number away.

skuzz ,

It always blows my mind going to a rental and the rental has no or lacking Internet. Yes, I'm probably on vacation, but it's the future and life requires a few megabits. Years back I made it standard procedure to prep some kind of mobile broadband for my destination (buying a month of prepaid for a hotspot or whatever) fully expecting it to just always suck, it's annoying that this is still a necessary procedure in 2024.

skuzz ,

Especially given:

  • Limited to 15GB
  • Then limited to 128kbps

The 15GB is going to be variable based on the link speed available. If full 5G, that can be erased with 15 speed tests in a few minutes.

From there, it's 128kbps * 3600 (to hours) * 24 (to days) * 30 (to month) = 331,776,000 kilobits -> 41.472GB + the original 15GB -> 56.472GB is the limit each month for "unlimited", roughly. A hard limited number.

skuzz ,

Ahahaha, are you in marketing?

skuzz ,

My condolences.

skuzz ,

They force configs on unlocked phones as well, or just don't "certify" them and refuse to let them work. AT&T will go the extra step of locking you out of your SIM card until you call them. The other two are pretty passive about it and your phone just doesn't work right until you put the SIM back in a phone they "like".

skuzz ,

Your average landlord isn’t going to even be thinking or caring about “piracy”. They only care about their bottom line.

skuzz ,

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a46554218/new-car-regulated-speed-limit-california-bill/ California is already trying.

skuzz ,

Solution (for a lot of the Internet): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/shut-up-comment-blocker/

2G, 3G, 4G, 5G mobile data made some sense as it represents generational leaps in the technology itself but then Xfinity wants to advertise "10g" internet...

Comcast says it represents a 10 Gigabit cable internet network they are building (it doesn’t exist) so they are basically changing the meaning of the g from generation to gig to act like 10g is 5 generations better (or twice as fast)…or that they have a 10 gigabit network. Neither is accurate. It’s still just cable...

skuzz ,

It was hilariously reading the presser on NBCComcrap talking about how 10G DOCSIS development is progressing and they could almost hit 10Gbps in labs on the downlink but uplink would only be a few hundred megabits tops. Like, none of those numbers are worth selling a marketing brand of "10G". Real fiber Internet can hit it, my provider offers 10Gbps/10Gbps. That could be called "10G" - if we continued to conflate speed with generations like Comcrap tried to do.

I really wish the FCC would step up and slap all these companies perpetuating these weird lie terms the last half a decade.

skuzz ,

And you must rinse them out, too.

This step right here has to end. Recycling facilities should have cycling filtered graywater loops to do the rinsing. Using clean drinking water to rinse out containers is an absolute waste.

skuzz ,

I think the point was, you're removing plastic from plastic to recycle plastic. The plastic you removed won't be recycled. So...what's the point? It's terrible package design.

skuzz ,

it attracts wildlife to your recycling bins

I'd argue this point is nullified given recycling and trash live next to each other for pick-up (at least in the US). If your bins don't seal to keep scent away, they'll be targeting the trash cans anyways.

In parts of the world where clean drinking water is at a premium and increasingly more so, (like the western half and soon 2/3 of the US) it definitely matters to conserve the water we need to live whenever possible.

This brings up another good point though, packaging design should be changed to ensure the maximum amount of purchased product can be removed for use as easily as possible. So many containers today are designed to be sold as "this has 20oz in it!" and only 18oz is accessible. They then have tiny necks or convoluted lips or shapes to make reaching into the container with tools to remove the rest of the product difficult. The companies don't care about the loss of product as the extra 2oz costs them essentially nothing. Even though that added weight is wasting energy being transported at every single stage of the supply chain to be thrown away at the end, they got the sale because it said 20 instead of 18 on the bottle and they could mark up the price accordingly!

tl;dr on the last paragraph: If the container is designed to start its recycling journey as devoid of product as possible, the whole process will have less cleanup and energy/water use, whatever the process is.

skuzz ,

It also depends on what lab the imaging was processed. Oftentimes labs adjacent to a hospital but not actually part of the hospital will accidentally (as if) get billed as an on site hospital visit for these types of procedures unless caught. OP could also have an HDHP.

I've also seen some insurance plans will for some unearthly reason have gaps in the contract and some types of tests become billed outside of insurance even on the "better" plans.

Also, fun thing I learned, women don't need mammograms! They can get ultrasounds instead and ultrasound is actually better!...

...Except insurance won't cover it as a wellness visit because apparently medieval tit-smashing is the preferred method for insurance providers.

skuzz ,

I don't like that I've had to learn so much about medical billing to keep from getting fucked over by procedures honestly. I used to just go do things and ignore the cost because health > money. But then the prices started skyrocketing for simple things and I've had to learn to jump and dodge costs. It's asinine having to be your own doctor, lab tech, and billing department just to play within the confines of the US medical system.

I feel pointless overhead like this is designed to keep us so busy, we don't have energy left to realize how fucked we are, let alone react to it. But, "mah freedumb!"

skuzz ,

That whole diagnostic vs preventative thing we do is so stupid. The raw cost of most tests is nothing. Labwork for example, they only run one or two tests (sugar, cholesterol) unless you request more, but don't say you're in pain or it becomes diagnostic!

Meanwhile, at the actual lab, the machines run a myriad of tests on each sample as they're designed to. So the back and forth about lab billing is asinine. The machines already calculated the results as a part of their standard operating procedure. Why not just return all results the machine generates regardless of query? Why not a full panel as SOP?

Why not make body scans SOP at a younger age so we have a baseline of what a person's body operates at before they age? Etc.

They've inserted extra steps just for revenue-generating touch points. So damn backwards.

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