I’d tend to chalk that up to user error, if you’re putting enough force on your toilet paper holder to pull it off the wall you’re doing something besides just pulling toilet paper off of it or maybe you installed it with the world’s shittiest drywall anchors
I’ve always thought that most toilet paper holders are over engineered. You don’t need a little springy rod between 2 posts, you just need an L-shaped bar with the short end screwed to the wall and maybe a little knob on the end of the long side to keep the roll from sliding off. And it’s not that the spring style is especially difficult to use or prone to failure or anything, it just seems like a no-brainer to me to use a one-piece holder with no moving parts instead of one that has at least 4 parts (the base, 2 halves of the roller, and a spring) I’m seeing more of that style around these days, which I appreciate.
Stove vent hoods that don’t actually vent outside are fucking stupid. My over the range microwave basically just takes smoke from my stove and blows it back out over my head almost directly at the smoke detector.
I’ve frequently run into shelves, mounting brackets, etc. that seem to totally disregard stud spacing. We got one of those fancy Samsung frame TV’s a while back, to get it to sit so flush to the wall it has its own special mounting brackets, 2 little plates with sort of a modified keyhole slot that you slot 2 little knobs on the back of the TV into. It’s actually not a half bad way to mount a TV, probably one of the easier TV wall mounts I’ve ever personally used, the tv itself is actually pretty damn lightweight (because they moved all the heavy electronics into a separate box you need to hide somewhere) but still I wanted to make sure my fancy TV wouldn’t fall off the wall, so I wanted to mount it to the studs, but of course the spacing of the brackets doesn’t allow that option. I was able to bolt one side a stud but I had to get some toggle bolts for the other side. I’m pretty sure the whole TV is well within the rated weight capacity of one of those toggle bolts in drywall, let alone 2 in drywall and 2 in a stud, but still, it feels like a dumb design choice. (It’s possible that other sizes or newer models do allow for mounting entirely to studs, the size and model I got didn’t)
I helped a friend replace the wax ring on his toilet recently with one of the newer style rubber gaskets, which as it turns out made the toilet sit imperceptibly higher, which meant that the bolts holding it down were no longer quite long enough to screw the nut onto to tighten it down. With a quick trip to ace hardware and a minute perusing my options, I settled on some Danco zero cut bolts, and I definitely think that is a far superior design to the standard bolts that are probably holding down damn-near every toilet you’ve ever used.
On the subject of toilets, I can’t think of any particularly good reason for the tank to be a separate piece from the rest of the throne like on most toilets. The gasket and bolts there just add more places for something to start leaking. It’s probably an ease of manufacturing thing, but we have the technology to make one piece toilets now, the two piece style should be obsolete.
HAAAWOOO!
HAAAWOOO!
HAAAWOOO!
Something you may want to consider is a cell signal booster, cell phones are a bit limited in the size of antenna and how much power they can transmit at because everything has to fit in a neat little rectangle.
But you can get a device to hook up to your car that will retransmit your signal at a higher power. With that you "might* be able to get a signal further out than you normally would.
It would be useful for stuff like this of course but probably also just in general if you’re in an area with spotty service.
I don’t have any particular brand recommendations or anything like that, I think WeBoost caught my eye as a pretty decent-looking option at first glance but I don’t know if they’re actually any good. They’re mostly a product I’m aware exists and I intend to look into more when I have some spare time and money because I camp and hike in areas with spotty reception a lot, but it’s pretty far down my to-do list, so you’re on your own for research right now.
Went to a nudist resort with a couple friend last year, it was a great time.
We camped out, I got there first and started setting up camp. I didn’t exactly have a solid plan but I was kind of figuring I’d set up my tent first so I’d have somewhere to leave my clothes, but it was one of those hot muggy days where the second you step outside your clothes are drenched in sweat, so after about a minute of feeling gross and sweaty unloading my car I decided screw it and ditched my clothes and immediately felt so much better.
Also I’m pretty sure that literally everyone hates doing laundry. If you’re not wearing clothes you don’t have anything to wash and put away. It was pretty nice being away for a few days and having basically no laundry to do when I got home except the clothes I wore for the drive.
Also all-around just a very positive experience. A lot of nudists aren’t exactly the kinds of people you’d necessarily want to see naked, I can pretty much guarantee that whatever you don’t like about your body someone there has the same thing or worse on full display. And once you get over the initial sensory overload you pretty quickly set noticing people’s bodies or the fact that they’re naked.
The average hamster lifespan in captivity is usually only something like 1-2 years, this guy lived for like 4.
He was in rough shape towards the end, his fur was falling out, he’d pretty much set up camp in one corner of his cage and rarely left.
Eventually my mom decided to take him to have him put down. I strongly suspect that we may be the only people to ever request that at the local SPCA
I’d like some PC support for HDMI CEC
My use case is a bit niche, my PC is hooked up to my TV and AV receiver.
My tv, av receiver, and even certain game consoles all talk to each other well enough through CEC controls that I can do a lot from a single remote, and not even a fancy pants universal remote, just the one that came out of the box with my tv. It was a little mind-blowing when I realized I can more or less navigate the menus on my PS4 with my TV remote. The TV remote turns up the volume on the AV receiver, most of the inputs on the receiver, depending on what’s hooked up to them, will come up on my TVs input menu, the TV will wake up the PlayStation when I go to that input, etc.
I’m aware that CEC is a bit of a mess with how different companies implement it, but personally I’ve been lucky and a lot of it has worked pretty much out of the box for me.
Mostly I just want the volume controls on my keyboard to control the volume on my AV receiver.
I recently got a pulse eight dongle that I think in theory will let me do that, but it’s not exactly the most intuitive thing to configure.
We need the old timers running the party to step aside. Give up the reigns, retire when they’re able and let younger blood fill their seats, or give their blessings to 3rd parties and choose not to run against them (and preferably without outright endorsing them either so the Republicans have a harder time making the claim that they’re just the same Democrats wearing a different hat, just step aside, choose not to run a candidate, and let the new parties do their thing)
We need younger people to step up. Run for office, call and write to your elected officials, show up to vote, demonstrate in the streets, etc. pay attention to politics (no one like politics except fucking sociopaths, but they’re part of how the world works, trying to ignore them because it’s boring or it makes you mad or whatever has the same kind of energy as pretending gravity doesn’t exist because you don’t like it when you fall and scrape your knees- you’re just going to get hurt even worse if you don’t take those basic forces of the world into account.)
We need to take a step back and agree on a list of priorities. Ask 100 liberals/leftists/democrats what the most important issues are to them and you’re probably going to get 100 different lists. Climate change, LGBTQ rights, wealth inequality, healthcare, police reform, Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, homelessness, drug abuse, legalizing marijuana, raising the minimum wage, foreign policy, domestic surveillance, free speech, corruption, term limits, etc. just to name a few off the very top of my head
And frankly, we need to pare that down to a handful of solid issues that appeal to as broad of an audience as possible and that we can agree that these issues are the most pressing and we must make real progress on right now because there won’t be a later, and we need to agree to suck it up on some of the other issues that need to go on the back-burner for now, especially since those issues don’t have as broad support yet and so trying to bundle them in with our overall policy is just torpedoing our efforts to make any sort of progress at all.
LGBTQ rights for instance, they’re human rights, and they should be a goal that we’re striving for. We also don’t really have the popular support needed to get much done there, often even within our own “liberal” parties the numbers aren’t looking great. We should be proud of what we’ve accomplished and fight tooth and nail to hold onto whatever gains we’ve made, but we may need to walk this back from being a top-of-the-ballot issue and accept that maybe we need to deal with, for example, the climate catastrophe that is happening right fucking now and do whatever we can to prevent world war fucking 3 from breaking out in Europe first.
And we can also claim some pretty significant victories for LGBTQ people if we just avoid framing them as an LGBTQ issue. If you slap an LGBTQ sticker on a law, CHUDs will come out of the woodwork to make up excuses about why it’s bad. But if you play your cards right and avoid their trigger words you might just be able to slip some healthcare, wealth inequality, education, and police reforms through that will both help LGBTQ people now (because a rising tide raises all ships) and pave the way for further advancements down the line (because a better educated populace with less issues of their own won’t feel as much need to make LGBTQ people their scapegoat for every minor inconvenience)
Or if you don’t have the patience or will to do that, the other two options are
Accept defeat. You live in maga world now, live by their rules or risk the consequences.
Full-on revolution, no half measures, organize fast, hit them hard before they have a chance to do anything about it and rebuild the world better.
I have no desire to live in maga world. I also don’t have any desire to live through what would surely be bloody revolution with no guarantees that the right people will come out on top, so I am really hoping people get the hell on board with plan A.
Not quite, it’s an international sign that a vessel is in distress.
Then mostly right wing lunatics co-opted it to mean that our country is in distress.
I don’t remember ever hearing the word “phonics” except in commercials for Hooked on Phonics
That said, the concept of phonics was absolutely part of how I learned to read, even though they never outright told us that that was what we were learning.
If you have freezer space, buy meat that’s discounted because it’s going to expire soon and throw it in the freezer.
Properly packaged (vacuum sealed is usually your best bet) the meat will last basically forever as long as it stays frozen. I’ve pulled frozen meat out of my freezer that was a few years old that was perfectly fine.
It doesn’t stop the process of things expiring, it just kind of pauses it. If you throw it in the freezer 2 days from expiring, you gotta plan on using it within about a day or two of taking it out (although you can fudge it a bit, if it doesn’t look or smell weird it’s probably fine but do that at your own risk)
My schedule works out that I can do a lot of my grocery shopping in the middle of the day during the week, and it seems like Tuesday or Wednesday is when a lot of stuff gets marked down at my local grocery stores, I assume their meat shipments come on Thursday and they’re trying to clear space for it. I pretty much just buy whatever’s on sale, and throw it in the freezer. Sometimes I even luck out and get some really premium stuff- I’ve gotten wagyu steaks, duck breasts, beef tenderloins, etc. Even marked down they’re a little spendy but I save them for special occasions (got a tenderloin I’m gonna pull out of the freezer for Valentine’s Day and make a Beef Wellington)
And really, having a dedicated freezer is pretty great in general if you have space and especially if you’re able to shop around and buy in bulk.
I also have a full sized deli slicer. I won’t necessarily recommend you buy one of those, but I got mine for free, so I’ve started going to a restaurant supply store and buying whole deli meats and cheeses. That can be a great buy if you have the ability to store it. I’ll slice down the whole thing and portion it out into 1lb packages, vacuum seal and freeze them, then I’m usually set for a couple months. I break the cheese down into 1lb-ish blocks to freeze and slice them down as needed.
For lunch meat, making your own can also save you a bit of money and get you a better product. I’ll buy up some chuck roasts or those butterball boneless turkey roasts when I find them on sale, season and roast (or smoke) them to my liking, and slice those down. Miles better than the roast beef or turkey you get from a supermarket deli, and if you shop smart it’s a good deal cheaper. (Those butterball roasts, for example, are usually around $12 around me, and get you about 2 or 3lbs of meat after roasting it, 1lb of deli turkey is usually about that same price or more, and trust me, this is better)
It does help that I work night shift, so on my days off I’m usually up by myself most of the night with nothing much to do except food prep.
I think it depends on how you use those different sites
I transitioned from Reddit to Lemmy pretty seamlessly like you did. Around the time it became clear they weren’t backing down on the API thing and other bullshit, I looked up some reddit alternatives, chose Lemmy, and kept right on doing what I was doing on Reddit.
On the other hand, I’m having a bit of a hard time ditching Facebook.
The difference is I know the people I’m friends with on Facebook, I have actual relationships with them, I’m there to interact with those specific people. Leaving Facebook without finding a decent alternative and getting those people to switch with me (which probably means they’d also have to convince their other friends to switch too) means losing contact with those people.
On Reddit and now Lemmy, I’m basically here to read articles and have conversations with strangers about those articles. I don’t really form lasting relationships here, I don’t recognize usernames outside of maybe 2 or 3 big names. If they weren’t full of the worst kinds of idiots, trolls, bots, and scammers I could pretty much get what I’m looking for from the comment section on a news site.
Some people do build those kinds of relationships here though, they come to Reddit or Lemmy, at least in part, to interact with specific users and communities that they have some sort of connection to, and when you have connections like that, it gets pretty hard to leave that platform. Unless all of your friends leave at the same time and go to the same platform, you need to either lose some friends, split your time between the two platforms (neither of which may be as good as what you had because not everyone is there) or you have to find some other way of staying in touch and keeping the friendship going (which is often much easier said than done)
I was asked to officiate my friend’s wedding a few months back, I’m no writer, and I wanted to do a bit better than just a generic wedding ceremony for them
So I fired up chatgpt, told it I needed a script for a wedding ceremony, described some of the things I wanted to mention, some of the things they requested, and it spit out a pretty damn good wedding ceremony. I gave it a little once over and tweaked a little bit of what it gave me but 99% of it was pretty much just straight chatgpt. I got a lot of compliments on it.
I think that’s sort of the use case. For those of us who aren’t professional writers and public speakers, who have the general idea of what we need to say for a speech or presentation but can’t quite string the words together in a polished way.
Here’s pretty much what it spit out (Their wedding was in a cave)
Cell Phone Reminder
Officiant: Before we begin, I’d like to kindly remind everyone to silence your phones and put them away for the ceremony. Groom and Bride want this moment to be shared in person, free from distractions, so let’s focus on the love and beauty of this moment.
Giving Away the Bride
And before we move forward, we have a special moment. Tradition asks: Who gives this woman to be married to this man?
[Response from Bride’s dad]
Thank you.
Greeting
Welcome, everyone. We find ourselves here in this remarkable setting—surrounded by the quiet strength of these ancient walls, a fitting place for Groom and Bride to declare their love. The cave, much like marriage, is carved out over time—through patience, care, and sometimes a little hard work. And yet, what forms is something enduring, something that stands the test of time.
Today, we’re here to witness Groom and Bride join their lives together in marriage. In this moment, we’re reminded that love is not about perfection, but about commitment—choosing one another, day after day, even when things get messy, or difficult, or dark. And through it all, we trust in love to guide us, just as God’s love guides us through life’s journey.
Declaration of Intent
[Officiant turns toward Groom and Bride]
Groom, Bride, you are about to make promises to each other that will last a lifetime. Before we continue, I’ll ask each of you to answer a very important question.
Officiant: Groom, do you take Bride to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live?
Groom: I do.
Officiant: Bride, do you take Groom to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live?
Bride: I do.
Exchange of Vows
Officiant: Now, as a sign of this commitment, Groom and Bride will exchange their vows—promises made not just to each other, but before all of us here and in the sight of God.
[Groom and Bride share their vows]
Rings
Officiant: The rings you’re about to exchange are a symbol of eternity, a reminder that your love, too, is without end. May these rings be a constant reminder of the vows you have made today, and of the love that surrounds and holds you both.
[Groom and Bride exchange rings]
Officiant: And now, by the power vested in me, and with the blessing of God, I pronounce you husband and wife. Groom you may kiss your bride.
[Groom and Bride kiss]
Officiant: Friends and family, it is my great honor to introduce to you, for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. [Name].
I pretty much just tweaked the formatting, worked in a couple little friendly jabs at the groom, subbed their names in for Bride and Groom, and ad-libbed a little bit where appropriate
The “language” that the n64 used was basically in a totally different language family than what PCs and later Nintendo consoles use.
Think of it as if the N64 spoke Japanese, while PCs speak Spanish. There’s a lot of things that don’t translate cleanly from one language to the other, you can’t just feed it into google translate and expect what comes out the other end to make sense, you’re going to need someone who understands both languages to go over it, rewrite some of it to make sure all of the nuance is coming through, add some asterisks and translation notes to explain some concepts that don’t really have a direct equivalent in the other language, etc.
Later Nintendo consoles spoke something more like Portuguese or maybe even Mexican Spanish instead of PC’s Castilian Spanish. They’re much more similar languages that translate more directly and some things may not even really need translation as long as both parties slow down, speak clearly, and maybe throw in some hand gestures here and there, and google translate will get you like 99% of the way there, without the translator needing to add as many explanatory notes.
All those translation notes are what the emulator is doing, and the N64 to PC emulator has to do a lot more interpreting than the Switch to PC emulator.
The rules vary from one state to another, But usually there’s a requirement for there to be evidence that the child is in imminent danger before they can issue an amber alert.
I work in 911 dispatch, we have plenty of custody dispute situations where someone takes off with the kid where we don’t issue an amber alert, that’s saved for times where the person who took them is deep in a mental health crisis, or has made some kind of threats, etc.
Often it is custody or some other kind of domestic situation related, but that applies for most child abductions in general
Barely a day goes by that I don’t get at least one call for some kind of child custody dispute, but I can probably count the amber alerts we’ve issued in my 6 years here (during my shift anyway) one one hand with fingers to spare.
when a child is involved in a crime near you.
The specifics vary a bit from one state to another but AMBER Alerts are normally reserved for abducted children, usually with some additional requirements like sufficient reason to think the child is in immediate danger of death or injury, and enough of a description of the child and/or the abductor to be able to identify them.
It kind of sounds like that article is about the “hey Siri” feature getting activated accidentally, like if it picks up something that sounds similar to the trigger phrase and starts recording
Which is still a big security/privacy issue, but not exactly the same as if they’re just turning the microphone on whenever they want to listen to you and serve you ads
I don’t think that most of the big tech companies are listening to your microphone (I’m not ruling it out entirely, and I’m certainly there are some smaller sketchier companies that are doing it)
But I think most of the time most of the time they don’t need to
They know what ads you’ve seen on your phone/computer, what you’ve been googling, the websites you’ve visited, where you’ve used your credit card, what shows and movies you watch, and where you’ve been (from gps locations, or from what wifi networks and Bluetooth devices you’ve been near or connected to) and what ads, playlists, stores, products, etc. you were exposed to while you were there, and of course who you talk to and all of that same information about those people.
That’s all going to influence the things you think and talk about, they probably have a pretty good idea what kind of conversations you’re going to have well before you do.
And don’t get me wrong, that’s creepy as fuck.
I think most of it comes down to people not even realizing how much data about ourselves we put out there and all of the ways it can be collected and used to build a profile about you.
And honestly I think they can probably get better data from that most of the time than from trying to filter out background noise and make sense of what you’re talking about through your microphone.
In general, I have no problem with AI in and of itself.
I just don’t trust any human person or organization to make one, and do it safely or use it responsibly.
It really kind of depends on the type of anchor and the intended use
The most common little plastic ones that you’re probably picturing are pretty bad in most cases, but some of the heavier duty ones are pretty damn strong if used properly