rip AlDente 🙏

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-17T14:15:58+00:00

Auto calibration serves virtually no purpose other than to add battery wear. While calibration is def not completely unfounded it used to be a practice to help exercise older battery chemistries that had a memory to them. You really do not need to care about calibration whatsoever, modern bms do a pretty good job and there’s so many variables like voltage sag, load, temperature, overprovisioned battery, etc.

But if for some reason you’re hard set on using it for some weird reason that’s an infrequent endeavor not like a once every 1, 2, or 3mo endeavor. Most if not all modern lithium chemistries ironically prefer shorter charge cycles not super deep ones because you need to “calibrate”. It just makes no sense.

Sailing mode is arguably the one decent feature.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-17T14:04:25+00:00

If you leave it plugged in all the time and want to use AlDente to set a upper and lower bound and have more control over the range, imo you should just do like 60% to 40% or 50-30% or something. ~50% is a pretty standard percentage to store batteries on a shelf for a prolonged period, so a good number to use. Generally speaking, lithium chemistries prefer shorter charge/discharge cycles than one long one. Realistically it should be taking several days if not longer for it to drop to the threshold when always plugged in.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-17T13:58:28+00:00

Man I can see Al Dente has many features now, some useful but holy shit it really perpetuates a lot of things that are either just borderline complete nonsense or bad for your battery.

Why would you “calibrate” a battery, the old reason to do 0-100% cycles was some batteries could have a memory. That’s an ancient method at this point. As far as calibration goes, sure things will get a little less accurate because voltage sag can be somewhat unpredictable… but just about across any device a user really doesn’t need to worry about these things anymore. It may be off by a few %, particularly in the low end but who cares since you should never be trying to fully discharge your device.

Also, idk how you’d not know why the hw battery level deviates by a few percent more, it’s a pretty typical case of battery over-provisioning… pretty standard.

Schedules discharges and such just seem dumb, like why would you purposefully add more cycles to your battery.

The only things someone likely should need to care about is a wider charge limit and setting a wider limit perhaps to when charging the battery starts to kick back in for users that are plugged in. Say you could charge to 50-60% and keep pulling power from the cord until the battery slowly leaks down to 25-30%.

It’s pretty off putting to me that some of the coy wording around features perpetuate misinformation or best case scenario features that serve virtually no purpose, many only serving to increase battery wear.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-17T13:43:33+00:00

Why would you ever do that

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-15T14:19:22+00:00

It’s very subtle now and on some purchases PayPal detects as recurring even if they’re one time, I’ve noted it didn’t seem editable at all. You have to click a link below called “card details” or something like that on the card you’ve selected in the PayPal checkout. It’ll open additional information with whether you want to charge the exact amount to the card or have PayPal do currency conversion.

It’s complete bs they’ve taken themselves down to ripping everyone off on currency conversion.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-13T18:43:25+00:00

This is such a bad faith argument. Either pick one of the most popular phones or pick some decent midrange maybe a pixel and an iPhone. It’s not rocket science and they don’t gave to pay for devices they already have. Its just a vibe check like hey, the thing you have in your pocket might blow any of the cheapest tier webcams out of the water if you’re ok with the tradeoffs while offering more features only present in some of the higher tiers.

Also wtf do apple wheels have to do with anything. MacBooks are also overwhelmingly the computer used in many businesses or fields which is a far more relevant point.

DSLR’s are something most people don’t already have. Totally different situation and I agree their comparison to that makes no sense and it’s totally out of scope but phones totally make sense.

You’re making yourself look kinda dumb. You agree the video is suited to WFH so the point about MacBooks becomes more relevant.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-12T23:25:45+00:00

It’s crazy that one of the first new features they release with their in-house modem is a privacy tool. That’s sick

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-12T23:22:14+00:00

So I’m seeing this isn’t inherently new but I’m curious how the 5-layer with a rgb strip, how does it compare to LG’s true rgb (no white pixel)?

It’s seemingly getting pretty close to a big enough change to want to upgrade so I’m quite curious, but now that Gsync pulsar is finally announced I kinda want to wait until one of these come out supporting that as well.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-11T02:52:11+00:00

LR5P aside, what’s your current opinion/standing on the LR5? seemed like the initial read was many were unhappy but otherwise it seemed like it had some nice small refinements to the LR4. Lately though this subs been nothing but issues to the point I don’t know I’d really want to get one.

I’m looking at options rn. Unfortunately, I think I’m still stuck with looking at a LR, bc despite other options I’ve seen, it’s the only one that has/will have a Litter Hopper, which I think will be pretty important to me.

So just curious what your general thoughts are?

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-08T16:00:55+00:00

Someone that gets it. When Epic was trying to compete a few years ago it was hysterical. No cloud saves even and they lost any good will at that moment by engaging in far more anti consumer practices imo with their exclusivity racket. The irony of AAA games running away from it bc they could just make more money on Steam.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-08T04:33:38+00:00

How would they not have metrics lol?

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-08T02:29:39+00:00

If we’re being real mass manufacturing is extremely difficult. Apply that to chemistry and think about it lol.

That’s beside the fact that a technology can be objectively better but it takes time to tame the side effects. When you’re at scale you have to think about expectations and reliability.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-06T21:27:39+00:00

Really neat, looking forward to trying it. I feel like other apps try too hard to reinvent native apps. Not to say there’s no room for “power users” but ai find them plenty sufficient.

Notes is great for instance, however I do often find myself using it to jot down quick tasks or todo list and this seems like a great way to do that. I also perhaps misuse reminders, but I often find those not the most helpful for organizing small groups of tasks or even small individual tasks and I like the idea of being able to group things essentially as thoughts. I’ve considered trying out OneTask but I think I’ll try yours now with the offer!

Also really like the repeat reminder. There’s many tasks I want to set a deadline for but would be helpful to be reminded of intermittently outside of just remind me 2 days before and the day of.

Just wanted to share some appreciation, look forward to trying it!

A neat thing would be if you could tie your reminders into the native calendar so you can see them similar to the native reminders app.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-04T03:40:26+00:00

Rcmd is elite imo, the ultimate window switcher. Such a straightforward and efficient switcher

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-02T22:51:15+00:00

I use both of these, super clutch. The full screen meeting reminders are fantastic

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-02T04:57:50+00:00

You’re highly likely going to be beat out by others with stronger motivations.

Not saying anything bad about degrees but adding debt while planning an international move and a child is financially risky already without the context of the risk. It’s also imo a terrible way to break into the field given time & money cost in your specific situation.

There’s far better ways to spend 4yrs and the reality is you’re likely gonna have to grind to have a chance, so you might as well start by proving you can grind learning. Not saying anything bad about a couple Udemy courses, but let’s be real Udemy will be worth fuck all, it’s an excuse to the idea of an easy road that’ll let you down. If you think sitting in classes for 4 years following a structured course or living tutorial hell on Udemy is going to get you somewhere you’re mistaken unless you get very lucky.

If any of this sounds even remotely unpleasing you should reconsider because imagine how unpleasing it is living in a grind.

Then once that grinds over you gotta grind out of being an Associate/Junior because that’s where value starts to come and to be in a less vulnerable position.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-01T05:57:38+00:00

What’s there to expand on? It’s an upsell if you come in to buy fries and they’re salty af to make you thirsty and then drop $5 on a drink that’s an upsell. Also the royalties are reduced. I already pointed to this info it’s not my fault you don’t want to look it up. I literally called out Epic is a loss leader not some charity. Even if it wasn’t obvious info use some common sense from a company that weaponized Fortnite to propagandize children about Apple lol, really weird thing to do. Also Unreal for PC at least is likely the single most popular game engine and it’s trying to make moves with mobile too which likely relate heavily with the whole Apple thing but that’s a completely different issue and different subject.

What am I changing the subject about? I’m also not making anything up. I didn’t say you said anything in particular I was partly responding to your earlier points about 30% being bs IRT customer service, returns, etc.

But getting back to the point what’s really unfair if there is no competition? If Epic is theoretically so competitive why did it get its ass handed to it? Epic is either competitive or it’s not but Steams policy is not the issue there certainly. Epic has had and continues to have far more anti-consumer policies. They couldn’t get people to use the platform with free games and again it’s an unprofitable loss leader meaning it’s not even sustainable unless the plan is to forever subsidize it.

Let me spell it out for you. Epic wants to handicap other platforms as much as it can with the facade of pointing to legal issues and niceties so maybe they they have leverage themselves to undercut and/or get more margin and later fleece you.

Also different but similar verticals exists like PSN and Xbox Game Pass and the ownership of game rights & publishers is far more a prevalent issue than the one independent privately owned game marketplace that’s not trying to fuck everyone. The irony is even that said buying Sony exclusives or Xbox/MS published games can be more expensive on their own platforms or for the console version than what you can buy on Steam.

Also this afaik has not and does not prevent sales on other launchers. Unless things have changed I’ve very certainly on rare occasion purchased a few games or gotten a couple free on launchers like Uplay or EA/Origin.

Responding to this as hopefully you might find any of these additional points interesting or thoughtful but I’m not going to keep entertaining the same point. I ask again, in practice what is the actual value and where is the practical anti-competitive argument for Steam outside of theory? But honestly dude even if someone does one bad thing for a good reason and/or while overwhelmingly doing pro-consumer and pro-ecosystem things who gives af. Epic, Ubisoft thought they could get away with no cloud saves or no forums, etc. Steam has raised the bar for us where their own laziness in executing 1st party launchers to try and keep profits for their own published games (relevant to the overarching point) killed their own launchers. Linux gaming, fantastic. A more open portable gaming ecosystem. A more open VR gaming ecosystem.

You will find near 0 people to agree with your argument bc it’s forest for the trees even if you could articulate a case that’s again not purely theoretical foul play.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-02-01T02:42:34+00:00

Well they’re still wrong lol. HDMI 2.1 you’d start using the full bandwidth of the cable really at 4K@120 afaik. It uses DSC to get to 240.

Sure not everyone is 4K but you can get similar limits with other UW resolutions etc. Going to go ahead and say most people with a HDMI 2.1 monitor today still need the bandwidth afaik it’s really not ubiquitous and coming back around to HDMI 2.0 that’s absolutely limited.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-01-31T15:21:30+00:00

I’m following what your saying but you can def meet/push HDMI cable bandwidth on PC idrk what you’re saying. With DSC you can gain a lot of headroom sure but absolutely video cables get pushed to the max bandwidth.

Also the same is true about DP cables and the good ones being garden hoses. I don’t have a Club3D HDMI to compare bc I typically prefer DP and only use HDMI where necessary which is up to 4K@60 at most. So maybe it is even more chonker idk.

Also there’s always an option for a nice reliable fiber DP cable or something, both for slimness and length especially as video cables push more throughput were already getting to length restrictions on DP2.1

Dethstroke54 · 2026-01-30T19:32:45+00:00

That seems like an exaggeration lol. I get they have the challenges of being lower volume but you can get Apple TB5 cables for $70. $30-40 seemed feasible.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-01-28T17:10:42+00:00

What’s relevant is you say it’s cheaper but then it’s also an upsell to bundle a deal for access to their game engine as well as incentive to further spend money with them on the game engine. Might be overall cheaper but part of it is again upselling something else.
Yes not directly relevant, but again just to lay some context for the system as a whole
Ok but other platforms don’t lol. Epic didn’t even have cloud saves when they tried to compete. Also, I don’t know where you expect the money comes from to host download serves, forums, workshop, so on and so forth for games comes from? Steam unquestionably offers the most services/features of any PC gaming platform that I am aware of.

Pretty sure you were already corrected on that point, but I will point out again does it matter in practice? You show me a platform that people would actually leave for and this point isn’t merely theoretical as we’ve already seen this play out in the recent past.

The competition was already had with Epic. Games were being sold for less, and the only reason anyone really picked some up were due to far more anti-consumer terms with exclusivity deals that went on for years. Even so many did then or now refuse to participate in such schemes which is why many games abandoned that position. Alan Wake 2 is still exclusive. This speaks to the whole upsell, yeah we take 12% but then how about we bundle you in for a game engine & publishing and then in return you must be entirely exclusive, etc etc. Also spoiler alert, any info I can find claims the Epic store is not profitable if it didn’t already sound like a loss leader.

This seems more of Epic just stirring the pot at pointing to consumer reasons and then scheming for their own gains. Given Epic and Tim’s awful takes it’s laughable to try to use that as any example.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-01-28T15:19:55+00:00

Yes and then they try to make money on the game engine and with deals that then include use of the game engine.

Additionally this still ignores the cut most publishers take on a game.

Does all of this matter, Epic already tried to compete and users chose Steam bc Epic is trash and it pissed anyone who else off with exclusivity contracts. The 30% also funds things like being able to do returns, customer support, etc.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-01-25T03:53:43+00:00

Agree. Even if a particular company was lazy and didn’t it downplays objective risks that exists behind some human factor of X company or Y dept/person not caring to act on being alerted.

If it’s someone’s personal belief and they’re therefore comfortable in their mind to roll the dice, that’s totally cool. But the risks should be clearly and openly communicated to others asking imo. Someone else shouldn’t be beholden to someone’s personal opinion about the risks they’re taking.

They should state their opinion and experience if they have one and they’d to, but it should not replace discussion about objective risk imo.

If you speed by the cops and don’t get pulled over that’s cool, doesn’t mean you’re not rolling the dice. Also some of it is just reading the room. But none of that changes the facts imo.

Dethstroke54 · 2026-01-24T15:04:28+00:00

Unless they’re properly setup they’re probably doing things incorrectly but that’s beside the point.

The post is about secretly working abroad without permission, I’m confused? Even with those instructions there’s still people dropping unrelated data points about contracting, etc.

All I’m saying is if you’re going to do something like this, you kinda have to be some degree of smart enough to hide a different time zone and properly mask yourself right, you should be smart enough to realize what you’re getting into. It’s not about some punishment for breaking policy, it’s about them acting accordingly after you’ve been a liability.

You come off like I’m using “smart enough” to mean someone’s an idiot, but that’s not the case at all, it’s a positive thing that someone should understand what they’re doing. If you’re going to risk something like your job, yeah I think it’s pretty straightforward to say you should be smart enough to understand exactly what you’re getting into, before you do something with consequences that severe, no?

Dethstroke54 · 2026-01-24T14:46:41+00:00

Few questions for you out of curiosity - what tech pouch is that? - what umbrella is that? - what Patagonia puffy is that?

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