cobysev

Fellow millennial here. I’m in the same boat. Zero subscriptions except for Curiosity Stream, which is like Netflix for educational documentaries, and it’s dirt cheap.

I bought the lifetime subscription to Nebula. It’s been worth it; I have a few channels I follow and I appreciate the extra content and freedom of video producers to say/do whatever they want without platform censorship. YouTube has so many restrictions, no one can post content without bowing to Google censorship.

Parody laws should allow people to actually review or poke fun at other media, but Google will demonetize or block any content that they arbitrarily decide is copyright infringement. Most film review channels I follow have to be extremely creative in how they show clips of movies. Most of them mute music scenes, and some will insert their own public domain (or homemade) music over scenes to avoid a ban. It’s ridiculous how far the MPAA and RIAA have gone in locking down media from public consumption.

I always build my computers with a minimum of 64 GB RAM, so at first I didn’t see what the fuss was all about. But the article claims the Windows OS technically only needs 4 GB?!

And I see the push for more RAM is most likely to accommodate AI/Copilot, which needs a lot of resources to function. “Gaming” is just the excuse Microsoft is using to get people to upgrade.

This reminds me of a video I saw recently about how old computers didn’t have the space to waste code, so every line of code was micromanaged to perfection. But today’s computers have so much room on their hard drives, programmers don’t care how efficient the code is, as long as it runs. Which leads to your computer seemingly performing as slow (or slower!) than computers used to back at the turn of the century.

Our computers are more powerful than ever, multitudes more than the beginning of the Internet Age. And yet, we have so much wasted code because we have room for it, so our modern computers crawl. Imagine how fast our computers could perform if modern coders programmed like they did in the '90s and earlier.

I just got an email from NETGEAR about this. (Yes, they insisted on capitalizing every letter of their brand name)

Which was concerning, because I haven’t bought a NETGEAR product in well over a decade and a half and am adamant about blocking ads and junk mail. How did I get on a mailing list for their company?

Personally, seeing a message like this immediately tells me they’re no longer a brand I can trust. I’m gonna keep using my old routers as long as I can.

Interestingly enough, my ISP forced me to upgrade my modem to theirs last year, claiming that I can’t use a commercial modem because none are made that interface with their company’s technology. Once I installed their modem, my VPN refused to connect over WiFi to the new modem. And several of my WiFi devices just refused to connect in general, including security cameras around my house.

Thankfully, I have an old WiFi router that I use internally in my network and my VPN still works with that. So I’m basically routing all my Internet traffic through an old router, which is set up as a bridge and physically connected to my new modem. It’s the only way I can get reliable, stable, secure Internet in my home. Here’s hoping the old router lasts for a very long time.

Note for those passing through and not reading articles:

This is not a summary of the article, but OP’s suggestion for a solution. The article talks about creating a yeast product that’s lacking in bees’ diet due to climate change and a lack of diversity in flowers.

OP suggests combatting the effects climate change has on biodiversity by planting your own diverse flowers. Which may work, or climate change may just kill those too.

Same. How could a machine steal its own IP address? It doesn’t make sense!

Good to know. I’m always on the lookout for a better, more secure option. eufy is my best option at the moment, but if you (or anyone here) knows a better choice for home security systems, I’m all ears.

This is why I a.) live out in the countryside, and b.) replaced my dad’s old Ring cameras with eufy security cameras.

eufy doesn’t require a subscription service (although you can get one if you want to trust their cloud service). If you buy a HomeBase, you can store all your security footage locally on a small box. Easy to hide and/or grab if you need to get out.

Sure, there’s a security risk of storing data locally. But I trust myself to protect video recordings of my property over some company’s cloud service. Ring complies with police when asked for your video footage, and they don’t even notify owners most of the time. Cops could be looking through your video feed without your knowledge, which is a nightmare if you have cameras inside the house.

And now, apparently, so can your neighbors. Fuck Ring.