I think you’re dramatically overestimating how much people want to discuss politics with a stranger who slides into their mentions pointing out logical fallacies.

Unfortunately most of the PCB fab companies only print off PCBs in at least batches of 5. I bought enough parts to make two cart readers and split the costs with a friend to help drive the price down into the low hundreds.

I don’t know which number you were looking at when you saw the Sanni was “so expensive”. You can get an assembled Sanni v3 for about $150 online. https://savethehero.builders If you join their Discord, there’s also folks selling Sanni v5 DIY part kits for $110-130 depending on what add-ons you go for. https://store.starshade.dev/product/oscr-hw5-complete-kit-diy It’s still a pretty penny, but significantly less than some of the $250 pre-assembled stores online.

I wasn’t able to find anything definitive online, but its specs and functionality sound pretty close to BennVenn’s Joey N64 cart reader/writer. https://bennvenn.myshopify.com/products/joeyn64-cart-flasher

Haha, oh wow, I had somehow missed that. Brian’s done great work with Carrot.

CARROT’s big premium selling point is letting you pick which weather data provider the app references. Darksky/Weatherkit went through a perceived slump after their acquisition, so folks turned to sites like https://www.forecastadvisor.com/ to figure out who was providing the most accurate data in their region.

Other than that, it offers up a few more detailed views, push notifications, and other UI tweaks. They’re one of those companies that tries jumping onboard with things like Apple Watch apps or home screen widgets ASAP.

You probably don’t need CARROT, but if you don’t like the stock Weather app, CARROT probably has something for you.

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Wide Lightening cannot harm you. Wide Lightening is inaccessible without the aid of a SIM opening tool.

The signal to noise ratio has seemed particularly out of wack with Google lately. The amount of blog spam SEO nonsense that crops up into the top 4 results has been pretty noticeable.

I’m not sure it’s entirely a Google thing. Reddit’s decline has made it harder to find quick answers for, “My washing machine’s making this weird string of beeps?” Niche hobbies moving from forums to Discord chats means, “How do I safely remove a keycap without damaging the switch?” is becoming a pinned message in a server you have to hear about via word of mouth. Basically any technology troubleshooting topic has moved from a blog post / forum to a YouTube video. And a 10 minute long one at that. Gotta hit those higher ad tiers.

For what it’s worth, I’m starting the new year off giving Kagi a try. It’s a startup trying to make a paid search engine work. You get 100 free searches to give it a try. After that it’s $5/mo for 300 searches, or $10/mo for unlimited. I’m not sure I’ll sign up for it just yet, but it seems pretty nice. No ads, custom components for things like Stack Overflow and Reddit, and some other nice touches for people who care about search. Their image search actually has a “View Image” link in addition to the “View Page” link. It’s hard to quantify how “good” a search result is, but I’ve been pretty impressed with it so far.

https://www.serverbuilds.net/ is a popular website online for folks building NASes at home. They’re fans of Unraid as well. They’ve got a Discord if you’re looking for something more interactive. Worth checking out. 👍

There’s an interesting conversation to be had about making the Fediverse more user friendly at the cost of increased centralization and non-standard extensions. It’s really difficult to focus on the message you’re trying to convey when you have five other alarmist topics crammed into the post.

Mozilla’s conflict of interest taking money from one of the largest internet advertisers and browser manufacturers was widely discussed during their recent anti-trust trial. It’s not super constructive to flatten the whole conversation to Mammoth being “Google Funded”.

Ah yeah, I hadn’t considered they meant across Apple’s entire laptop offerings.

It’s still a slightly odd observation to make. Apple’s famous in the industry for having a streamlined catalog. Most PC vendors have 4-5 brands/lines with 4-5 chassis in each.

Apple changed the 13” and 15” MacBook Pros to 14” and 16” when they did their first redesign after introducing Apple Silicon. They kept one low-cost 13” model around using the old unibody Touch Bar design. They haven’t made a 17” MacBook Pro since 2009.

So right now it’s just 13”, 14”, and 16”. Two modern chassis and a legacy chassis taking advantage of existing manufacturing capabilities.

It helps if you can find a half-dozen people involved in something you like to follow at the start. Other than that, try joining a mid-sized (~1,000-3,000 users) Mastodon server based around a hobby, interest, or social group you’re a part of. Most Mastodon clients allow you to keep a column open for the people you follow as well as the people on the “Local Timeline” who are a part of your server.

It’s a new social network. If you see someone pop up who’s made a pithy post or two, give 'em a follow. If they’re not working out a week later, un-follow them. Don’t feel afraid to follow a ton of people when you first get started to liven up your feed until you find a good circle of folks.

Get a bug guy to come spray the exterior of your place. They can use stronger stuff then folk’s indoor life hacks. Eventually they’ll stop getting in.