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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: October 18th, 2023

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  • Gave up because of hardware issues. Laptops had fan problems with it on, the grub wouldn’t install right, a lot of the good distros would show up as black before or after installation. My latest attempt with a decade old iMac made the screen die after less than half an hour upon each reboot. Most of these computers should work very well with Linux but they never did for me. Back then it was a matter of just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.





  • Got an Alphasmart Neo, it’s basically a keyboard with a big enough unlit screen with a printer port and computer port. The original Neo model was made around in 2004-2006 and was made by Apple employees with education and disability in mind.

    For the longest time I wrote on laptops and tablets but the fragility, battery power and eye fatigue made them not as suitable for continuous writing. I had the money and saw others talk about the Alphasmart devices as being the best writing tool, so I got it.

    It’s been 2 1/2 years and the batteries I put in are at 60-56%. The device takes 3 aa for power and a coin cell (like for weight scales) for the memory. I can spend the odd multi-hour writing sessions without ever worrying about the device dying from lack of power. And it takes a lot of writing to get the aa batteries to run down a few percentages.

    Features:

    • Nearly indestructible exterior
    • Turning it on/off and navigating between menus and screens takes seconds
    • 8 file (tabs) buttons to keep 8 projects open at a time
    • Each file autosaves and can save the projects into named files to keep it in the memory
    • All or individual files allow for password protection
    • Just words on the screen
    • Has find, replace, word count, file storage %, wpm, dictionary, thesaurus and calculator
    • Uses basic keyboard commands for text (Mac or windows keystrokes)
    • Detects sections in the file by how many blank lines are inbetween (1-9 blanks and is set up by the user for how many blanks count as a section break)
    • Change font sizes and ‘mod’ for custom fonts and set screen contrast
    • Stop accidentally turning the device on by setting on to Enter + On
    • Allows other keyboard layouts (QWERTY, Dvorak, right/left hand for disabled users) and special characters
    • slow and sticky keys
    • Allows Spanish writing and dictionary somehow

    Most of the features I dont use but they are nice to have. The biggest plus is that it is not tied down to proprietary software or cables. It uses a printer cable (I have a regular one and a c-cable one for my phone/tablet) and all I need to do is select a file button, plug it in, get a blank document ready and hit the send button so it types everything out as a keyboard emulation. It is faster to get files with software but it is not a requirement.

    Best device I spent my money on.





  • We still use cable TV because of the way wi-fi is packaged. So we have a decent selection of free movies/tv that I never watched and could watch through tv. It’s the incessant ads that make me pirate the most. It’s worse than watching the same movie on a live dvr recording. Funny, since some of the movies they say are free were also just dvr recordings with the TV station logo in the corner still in tact.

    Also, Netflix went away too a year or so ago because the cheapest teir made the movies/shows look like they were in 480p every time. It was unwatchable.



  • I remembered downloading that stuff for crunchyroll to work. It has to be downloaded and activated (site permissions or something) I think, it’s been years since I used the site.

    The point is probably to keep people for downloading and screen recording of copyrighted materials. Anime is not owned by the site, rather it is licensed out to be on the site. This has happened before where many titles straight up disappear because the license expired and wasn’t paid to keep it on. Crunchyroll has no authority on how copyrighted material is displayed, rather the companies probably forced it to for legal viewing. Japan copyright laws are very strict.

    Honestly, if you want to watch Anime and have the ability to download it use the official gogoanime site.



  • Tried it out a bit. I Ike the idea of the app being basically an rss read for video platforms. This is great for not having a bunch of apps (twitch app/Xtra for twitch and YT app/Newpipe/skytube/etc. for YT.) A user profile and allowing app comments are nice to have on the app.

    However, I’m worried about what Rossmann says in regards to profit and maintenance. The app is moderated/worked-on by (I think paid) professionals and we should pay a license of $9.99 yet the app is also unprofitable and may never turn a profit. So, what’s the point in paying for the app?

    Rossmann has a millionaire backing up his repair business among other things. So, is some of this being funded by that person and other investors of FUTO or is our money the only thing keeping this afloat? How are these workers getting paid if it’s a one time payment and the money is uncertain? How is the platform going to stay up and pay fair wages? The app is niche and I can’t see too many people paying for a license. I also can’t see too many workers staying unless they are passionate. Something isn’t adding up unless I’m wrong.