ThePowerOfGeek

I was looking into something similar recently, and asked around on Lemmy. The general consensus I heard was that a Mini PC weren’t ideal, mostly I think due to the fact that they aren’t designed purely for streaming.

One think someone said piqued my interest, and I might try this. They recommended buying a cheap, Android TV compatible streaming box (like an Onn brand one), and side-loading an open source (and ad-free) launcher onto it.

I found this thread over on the Huffman Shitshow that had some good instructions.

I have no idea why anyone still goes to McDogsbreath (I’ll likely hear some reasons in responses to this comment, but I’ve heard them before and don’t buy them). Back in the day I rarely had positive experiences when I was dragged out there reluctantly. Plasticy food of subpar quality, and very uncomfortable, plastic furniture.

And in recent years, between the prices quadrupling, the limited menu for people who don’t like burgers, the shite Wi-Fi, and now them not even being willing to lose 10c on a relatively small % of customers who get a soda refill… Why go there at all! There are so many better fast food options than that disaster of a chain.

That’s some low-key trolling there.

I like it.

Nah, they are just saying that to live is to short the market.

I don’t have a direct answer to your question. But I advise caution in putting your creative works online in the way you are planning. Between people plagiarizing it (either word for word or just the broader concepts) and AIs doing similar things, you could find that your work gets stolen.

Self-publishing might at least give you a bit of inherent copyright protection. Then at least you will have an ISBN associated to it, and you can always host your stories somewhere (WordPress, Medium, etc.).

If you want to self-publish your stories a free service like Smash Words would work.

This sounds like my old place, but much worse.

We used to have laptops we had to lock in a cabinet (yeah, one of those cabinets with a really puny lock that’s easy to pick). And we had to log into n old mainframe system that had numerous environment instances which each required a unique password that had to be changed every 90 days.

We (the software devs) basically rebelled on the laptop situation and insisted they find a better solution. Thankfully they changed policy and of allowed the laptops to be locked into our docking stations, which in turn were locked to our desks.

As for the mainframe system credential management, I tried using a standard third party password manager, but a) it wasn’t a good fit for the credentials, and b) the sys admins or security team forcibly uninstalled it because it wasn’t sanctioned software (even though it was a well-respected and actively maintained one). And our security group refused to go out and find one.

So being a dev, I wrote my own desktop password manager for the mainframe credentials. It was decently secure, but nowhere near as secure as a retail password manager. But it fit the quirks of the mainframe credentials requirements. And after my colleagues and manager did a code review of it, it was considered internal software, and thus fit for use.

As I was leaving they were in the process of removing all our local admin rights (without a clear path on how to accommodate for us developers debugging code - fun times ahead!).

But all of those annoyances pale in comparison to the shit you are having to deal with! Holy hell, that sounds like pure misery! I’m sorry.

Some brands now use plant or cellulose derived material for their tea bags. Though they still use plastic for the outer wrappers, which is a bit annoying.

I’m getting a very familiar vibe from those cats…

It’s basically marketing people sniffing each other’s butts. To lay people (like you and I) the statements in the screenshots are vacuous, vague walls of useless babble. But to marketing people they are examples of how these companies can help you shape bullshit that dazzles C-suite executives and other senior business managers - they kinda of people who have the power to sign vendor contracts, but don’t usually have the insight to see past this kind of nonsense.

I’m totally with you on the need for a good third alternative. I prefer Android to iOS from a usability perspective (I used to have an iPhone for work, and that UX was incredibly counter-intuitive to me). But I’m well aware of the shortcomings of Android (including the spying aspect).

A solid Linux-based mobile phone OS that had sufficient carrier support for it to be usable for less tech-savvy users would be amazing. Maybe some day…

I used to have the same problem with my Android phones crapping out at the 2 year mark. That was with Motorola and Samsung phones, and an LG got my wife. I know there are lots of people who have had good fortune with those brands of phones, but that wasn’t the case for me.

I ended up getting a 1st gen Pixel, and that sucker lasted for over 5 years. I’m now on a Pixel 4a, and about two years in and everything is going well. I’m not sure if it’s just Google phones in general, or if the quality of Android phones in general is improving. But either way it’s encouraging. In my experience (and the experience of several other people I know), Google makes damn good phones. It’s a shame they are a shitty company in other (i.e. ethical) areas.

I like how not one of the things in this poster is an actual cat. Probably the closest is the cat-raccoon stuck to the wall on the left.

Also, is that a jackalope on the right? And what is the nightmare-fuel thing in the left in the background?

Overall a great image though. Good prompting by you to created it.

My subconscious autocorrected that the first time I read it. It was only after reading your comment and going back to look again that I realized they had not written “There are”.