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As long as the record is in good condition, I find the sound comperable. I’ve played the same song on a high bitrate digital audio file and on vinyl and I found both equally pleasing to listen to.

I have a Fluance RT80 turntable, and am using the built in preamp. It’s connected to a home audio receiver (Sony STRDH590) with a 2.1 speaker setup (Polk Audio Monitor 60 Series II Floorstanding Speakers and a Polk Audio PSW10 10" Powered Subwoofer). A pretty midrange setup in others words. And I’m no audiophile, so weigh accordingly.

Edit: I realized you asked specifically about streaming. This link https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/audio-file-formats/ indicates that Spotify does up to OGG 320kbps/AC3 256kbps which is comparable to my personal audio library. So, statement holds.

I got caught up in the vinyl revival, so I enjoy collecting that media. But even then, I consider it more of a novelty.

Generally speaking though, I prefer locally stored digital media without DRM over physical media. It’s just more practical.

That being said, I’m glad that physical media exists and hope it continues to be made. Choice is good.

I can easily believe these types of continued enshittification will help drive more users to Linux desktop usage. But that will still be a small percent.

People have to know and care about the problem and then be willing to put in the effort to understand what to do. That combination is pretty limiting.

I’d love to be proven wrong, though.

Ublock origin has cookie banner filters. I didn’t have this problem, I assume that’s why.

Edit: autocorrect

Not literally a tamagachi, but if you want to go down the super niche rabbit hole that’ll include interfacing a TV and keyboard to a 6502 processor, there’s a guy named Ben Eater who does a great job covering that stuff. eater.net or search his name on YouTube.

I use rsync for this purpose and the only notable bottleneck is my download speed, fwiw.

I wonder how repairable and maintainable these will be as compared to EV’s from other markets and if replacement batteries will be available as the original ones reach the end of their useful life.

If these concerns end up being valid, and the tariffs are large enough that these cars aren’t priced particularly competitively, that’d be enough for this EV consumer to pass it up for his next vehicle. Will be interested to see how it plays out.

Edit: Wanted to say I’m not against Chinese EV’s. If it ends up making sense to get one, I will.

“Peak Windows” is a fun one to ponder. I’d probably pick XP for fairly high reliability and fairly low bloat. Or 2000 if taking business oriented versions in to consideration.

You should check protondb and see if your games of choice are supported, if you’ve not done so already.

I completely jumped ship from Windows the better part of a year ago now and haven’t encountered a single game that didn’t run, at the least, reasonably well. And usually just fine OOB. Though ymmv of course.

Re: cell phone scanning. I’ve seen these camera based book scanners popping up recently. I’ve never used one so I can’t comment on how good they are, but when I read your workflow it occured to me it was worth mentioning. Here’s a search result I arbitrarily picked listing some.

https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/buying-guides/best-book-scanner#section-best-overall

Apology not needed.

I agree with you. The ozone layer is a great example of this being successful. And there are other examples of this kind of issue elsewhere. Like the we have to push for user repair rights or against planned obsolescence (which one could argue this is planned obsolescence, in thinking about it).

A small number of informed users won’t disincentiveize companies from abusing the masses. Because most companies are garbage so of course they will if they can. And regulations are the solution. I’m not suggesting we ignore that. But those of us who are informed can still incentiveize those companies that do treat their customers well in the interim.

I concede to the point though. I said, in effect, that supporting businesses that treat us well will help. But I suppose it’s more accurate to say that will, at best, stop things from getting worse.

Setting legal precidents and regulating the industry are musts to curb this behavior. But we also have power as consumers. The ol’ “vote with money” if you will. There are too many uninformed consumers for this to have a huge impact, but keeping our money away from bad publishers and giving it to good ones will help.

Maybe you can do something with the tampermonkey extension to catch when that audio is triggered and have it do an api call that your script catches?

I don’t know if that’ll actually work, I know of the extension but have never it used nor am I skilled with Javascript but it seems feasible.

Note: I am not a financial expert. And my limited knowledge is for the US credit system.

You want your monthly credit use to be pretty low. I believe under 10% is generally considered good. If you have a low enough limit that maxing it is a concern, then you’ll want to limit the amount of your monthly expenses you put on a credit card.

That’s a fair point. Credit card companies are not our friends, and it’s absolutely in character for them to try and nail us in the fine print.

For my part, I know of my annual fee and the rewards I get more than offset it (though not considerably) but it’s certainly not always so clear cut.

All credit cards are 0% if you pay the balance in full every month. Then it’s just a matter of if the perks are worth the fees (if that’s not something you’re already taking advantage of).

Edit: reworded to not use the word balance twice in different contexts.

There’s certainly more dangers and risk and that’s important to be mindful of, but I don’t agree that it should be limited to having to have a local or a guide.

Some more unsolicited advice to that end.

• There are some places it’s not advisable to go. Perhaps due to conflict or civil unrest.
• There’s more risk if there’s a common cultural bias against you (nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual preferences, etc).
• Research if and what tourist targeted crimes are common ar your destination, as well as scams.
• Affluent areas tend to be safer. And still very affordable, comparatively.
• Don’t carry a lot of valuables. Enough cash for whatever your outing is. I also recommend keeping a travel specific debit card with no international fees and keeping a small balance on it and carry that around. A low limit credit card could also work.
• Let people back home know where you are and check in. If your country has a consulate there, keep that info handy.
• Risks for being a target are higher for women because the world is awful like that.

I know that’s seems like a lot, but it really boils down to being mindful, aware, and prepared.

Edit: split out conflicts and biases and removed a mansplainy bit.

Some unsolicited advice

• Don’t trust anyone trying to make a living off of selling you anything, even something less tangible like a lifestyle.
• If you have extra income after living expenses, set a little aside for personal enjoyment and save/invest the rest. The future is uncertain.
• If you want to travel to far flung destinations and have the means to do so, consider skipping the resort experience. You’ll spend much less especially in developing countries and have a more authentic (relatively speaking), and rewarding experience.

Edit: Formatting.

Maybe conky but probably not?

Conky can be used to display text on your desktop, including grabbing stdout from a program. I’m not familiar with calcurse but if it can dump text output of what you want, that could work.

The big caveat is that conky doesn’t work with wayland. It’s a work in progress (according to the arch wiki, anyway).