You get it! Lol honestly I was curious how everyone felt since I see these often. Surly I can’t be the only person who’s grossed out by the thought of buying second hand earbuds…
And you reminded me how I clean mine too. You can see the earwax as you clean it and it’s gross enough when it’s my own, let alone thinking about someone else’s that was there before mine. No amount of alcohol makes me feel better about that.
That’s true. Though nothing like that is on some of the AirPods, at least natively.
I used to have a little robot pal called Anki https://anki.bot/ but I gave it up when the company went under and got bought out and many of the features were now only available through a monthly subscription. If you’re alright with that, it’s a cool little pal!
Other than that, I’m sure there are some open source alternatives, and probably some that can be built, but would need to be self hosted somehow.
I have my eye on this little thing https://www.seeedstudio.com/watcher Sensecap Watcher which is a little thing you can wear and runs a local lightweight LLM or can connect to a server you set up and works as a portable AI assistant for you. It has a camera so it can see stuff. One of the features I see touted is that it can do things like “let me know when the dog pees on the floor”. May be similar to what you’re looking for? I ordered this from Amazon twice and they gave me the wrong item both times, so I would not recommend buying from there. You can get it off their website or through something like AliExpress too but the shipping times to the US are long and prices widely vary.
128GB are even cheaper, some in the $10 USD range.
If all you do is web browsing and word processing, that’s more than enough.
Framework has a few options now so you’ll need to be specific on the particular one you’re eyeing from them. And whatever choice that would be, you can do some benchmarks between their core hardware like AGPU, etc. to see how well it would stack up based on paper statistics.
But as much as I love my Steam Deck (LCD), it is starting to show its age for newer titles out there. I want to say this started with the Liberty DLC for Cyberpunk 2077 where I began noticing it. The base Cyberpunk game plays very well on the Steam Deck but any interactions in the newer parts of the map shows a decrease in frame rates and increased fan speed.
If you’re mainly playing older titles, emulating older games (can go up to Xbox 360 and PS3 with most issues in that era), or for streaming from a more capable computer, then the Steam Deck should be a good choice.
Though, I agree with someone else here that productivity can be a bit difficult on the Steam Deck unless you go for a keyboard that folds up and is made for it and feels comfortable. It’ll be more clunky to haul around like from class to class, for example, than a standard laptop would be. Though be aware that you’ll probably be using a Bluetooth keyboard, so that’s one more device to ensure is charged up. And speaking of batteries, the Steam Deck’s battery life is something you’ll want to consider and compare to another laptop like the Framework if you plan to take it with you on mobile like class to class or for studying in the library, a coffee shop, etc. My Steam Deck’s battery life has significantly decreased since using it, but I can’t exactly say what the life is like for productivity since I’m usually gaming on it and that takes a lot.
And on that note, USB devices like a keyboard do work with the Steam Deck with no issues, but you’ll want a dongle and that is going to add to bulkiness and more to carry since it only has 1 USB type C port which it also shares for charging.
Also, the choice of SteamOS could be a problem depending on what you want to do since it’s an immutable OS. If you’re just gaming and word processing, then it should be fine. But if you hope to do some tinkering in the system, you’re going to have problems there than if you went with a non-immutable distro. Of course you can install any other distro on it, including going to Windows, if you wished, but you lose out on the superior, made-for SteamOS gaming features and modes built for the Steam Deck.
That looks like it would be an awesome build. I’ve thought of the same thing. EVs have changed the game, allowing for much more unconventional vehicles to be made since they’re much less complex in machinery.
Because customers are stupid and willing to pay for it rather than vote with their wallet.
I bought an EV on the last day of the year and specifically got it used to save and not pay the outrageous prices, especially since they degrade in value super quick and by high percentages when bought new. Meanwhile I’m only underwater by $1.5k. Yeah, it had 50k miles, but the battery was still above 80% in health based on my test.
People in my area are driving all sorts of SUVs that are going between $80-$120k and I just don’t see how or why. I remember when these were $50k only a few decades ago and were considered pricey. And what’s worse than the high price is the more frequent issues of these cars and people still are paying higher prices and then bitching about it on TikTok and the like but even with all the exposure, people are still buying them.
I get them confused sometimes too, but no I can confirm I used borax this year. Here’s a picture of the box I have been using
Same brand we’ve been using for years. Unless Borax is the name of the brand lol but the side of the box says “ingredients: sodium borate”
But that’s good to know on boric acid! I heard that for ants too, mixing borax with sugar and a little water and put it somewhere and let them take it back to their colony where it wipes them out but I’ve actually never tried it that way. We only ever sprinkled this down on the floors inside and outside and then vacuumed it up when the summer season is over.
Speaking of ants, I haven’t had an ant problem like I have in previous years too. But that may also be because I’ve been pouring boiling hot water down anthills in my yard as soon as I saw them appearing in the beginning of summer too. It could be due to this, I’m unsure. I had a really bad ant problem in the house last year too that I forgot about until you mentioned that, but I’ve had none this year, and not sure if this could be related now that we’re talking about it.
My dad swore by borax and I can attest to it this summer.
You can find it with the laundry detergents.
We sprinkle it on the ground and it covers everything like a scene from Scarface lol.
But what I’ve heard happens is that the roaches get it on their legs and it begins killing them as they have further contact with the powder.
I’ve heard this isn’t toxic to humans or pets, and I’ve not had issues myself or my cat or any of the other animals we’ve had over the years doing this.
I have had really bad roaches and earwigs at my house. I got fed up with it this year and threw down some of this all over the ground outside and inside. I did this at the beginning of summer when they start getting crazy.
I won’t say I’ve not seen any at all, but the numbers have gone down by 98%, easily, on both of these nasty insects.
There’s a place under a berry bush I have that seemed to harbor them and I made sure to sprinkle down a lot around the edges of that plant. About 5 inches away from the base, but still close enough and in a circle around it. I have seen some but much much less than in previous years there and my berry bush is doing fine and not reacting badly to the borax.
It could, but nobody reads blogs for it to be profitable.
I say as someone with a Blogger that is monetized but gets no revenue, even with an active viewerbase.
Emulation is top notch on it too. I go back and forth playing Steam games and emulated games.
I’ve been replaying a ton of games I played as a kid. Even stuff I was playing as a teen/young adult in the 360 era sometimes works on this thing!
It’s a reference to Spaceballs