melfie

I remember a time when webpages had banner ads that didn’t flicker and make it impossible to read the page, and that also weren’t based on corporations spying on you. If it had stopped there, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. Even a few second pre-roll ad before a video starts based on the video content and not the user’s history would be annoying, but something a lot of people would tolerate. But no, number must go up!

I have a full plan that expires this year and not sure if I’ll renew. Mail and VPN are good, but the other services I could live without or self-host.

Drive is especially disappointing with the dismal Linux support and I’ve run into issues even on better supported platforms. I technically have 3 TB of storage I’m supposed to be able to use and I wanted to use it for server backups, but they don’t have an object storage API. The rclone support for their private API didn’t work worth a damn, so I ended up also paying for iDrive e2. Not really sure what the value is of their encrypted drive when I can just use Restic with any cloud storage provider.

Ah, yes, the inverted pyramid. You can stop reading at any point and rest assured you’ve already read the most important information. I suppose that works well in a newspaper where both you and the advertisers have already paid, so it doesn’t matter if you actually look at the ads.

I suppose this is one area where LLMs could help. I’d like to have an “inverted pyramid reader” browser plug-in.

Edit:

If you call in the next 10 minutes, we will double your order! That’s right, we will give you 2 of these things for $19.99!

Really? Why didn’t you just say in the beginning that this is a $10 item and the only option is to buy 2? Oh, it’s because you’ve reversed the reverse pyramid. Got it.

I’m referring more to how information is presented. Don’t tell me you have “one simple trick” and make me watch a 20 minute video to find out it’s something stupid you could’ve told me the basic premise of in 2 seconds and then described in more detail afterwards. Going beyond the basic premise and gaining a working knowledge of most topics takes a concerted effort, correct.

DuckDuckGo has been a “good enough” option for me the last 5 years. A couple times a year when I’m not getting good results, I try the same search on Google and don’t get anything better.

This. If I can’t get the basic premise of something in a few seconds, I move on. I assume if they had something useful to say that isn’t an ad or a ploy to get me to look at ads, they’d get to the point as quickly as possible and then fill in the details.

I have multiple Reolink cameras at this point and just have them recording to a SD card and blocked from the internet.

They have local ML models for human, animal and vehicle detection, so something like Frigate isn’t strictly necessary, though I haven’t bothered setting them up with Home Assistant yet and mainly use them with the Reolink app and VLC with RTSP. Sometimes, I unblock them from the internet temporarily if I’m going to need to access them remotely.

Gwynne Shotwell mentions in this video that she saw a mechanical engineer’s talk when she was young and loved her suit. She said she’s hesitant to tell that story, but considers it an important topic because it is ultimately what inspired her to go into STEM.

I think her hesitance is due to the fact that men don’t understand and might ridicule her. For a young lady, seeing a successful woman in STEM bucking the stereotypes, just being herself, and not conforming to male standards changes their perception of the field. Maybe a lot of men shrug when they see Rita’s sparkly dress, but it’s inspirational to many girls with aspirations in STEM.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dar8P3r7GYA