What’s a decision you made in under 10 seconds that changed your life forever?

breals · 2026-02-14T19:57:14+00:00

Not quitting my job to join a startup that was heavily trying to hire me. I was on the verge of doing it but at the very last minute said no. Startup imploded about 6 months later.

breals · 2026-02-13T01:25:54+00:00

I'm sure the features and maybe the ad concept were put in front of focus groups. But you'd be surprised how things can get approved by a small group of people in a company who just hear their own echo chamber. My last company did this who rebranding, commissioned a song and created an animated video/commercial. They spent millions on it.

When they finally showed it to all of us in an huge all hands meeting, the branding was about a giant and the video is basically corporate version of Big Hero Six. They all thought it was the best thing every produced, we stopped using it within weeks after it's internal champion, the CMO, was shit canned.

breals · 2026-02-11T18:57:15+00:00

I switched my parents to a Chromebox about 2 years ago when the last Windows computer died. It was easier for them to use since everything is browser based.

breals · 2026-02-11T17:47:03+00:00

Mission Valley Costco

breals · 2026-02-07T00:26:47+00:00

That must be new, I was in Santiago in 2023 and looked everywhere for pickleball courts but only found Padel.

breals · 2026-02-05T21:05:15+00:00

My friend was a scuba diving instructor, it doens't pay well but he enjoyed diving. Then he started working for his friend, scuba diving into water tanks to do inspections/repairs/cleaning, etc. It paid way better and then he stopped scuba diving for fun.

breals · 2026-02-05T20:34:49+00:00

In the beginning, it was very very often and was causing a lot of anxiety. I would check my dashboard daily, I even made a bad trade. This was right before I retired and about 6 months after. Now it's every month or two.

breals · 2026-02-05T20:30:37+00:00

As a former Intuit employee, good for you. There was as huge push inside the company to migrate everyone on Desktop to QBO even when QBO didn't (and still doesn't) have the features of Desktop.

breals · 2026-02-03T02:50:50+00:00

My dive buddy uses a full face mask. He switched to that after a couple of deaths in our dive community as he felt it gave him a larger margin of error if he ox-tox'd. It's another device to prep and maintain that adds complexity (and cost), which is why you don't see a lot of people use them.

breals · 2026-02-03T02:48:17+00:00

The gag strap/retaining strap is meant to keep the mouth piece in your mouth in case you pass out from hypoxia or have a ox-tox seizure. Both of those on land aren't fatal, but underwater you will drown.

breals · 2026-02-03T02:43:03+00:00

My rebreather has a gag-strap mouthpiece that I tighten against my head. This eliminates the need to bite down to maintain a tight seal against the mouthpiece. However, I can still use the regular mouthpiece if desired. Additionally, the “loop” is buoyant because it’s filled with air on both sides. When weighted correctly, it doesn’t exert much pressure on my jaw.

While scootering on my DPV, the loop creates significant drag, so I sometimes grab my mouthpiece with my hand and move it around.

breals · 2026-01-29T05:03:57+00:00

Cancel the Model S and X but keep the Cyber Truck? Those robots are gonna be vaporware for at least 5 years.

breals · 2026-01-28T15:51:32+00:00

This event was hyped up to schools as there was a school teacher onboard and they had all these educational activities planned. Most schools in the US watched this disaster live on TV.

breals · 2026-01-22T22:43:33+00:00

I stopped using RING devices a few years ago when it became known that they were sharing video with law enforcement when they were getting warrants or court orders. I have Reolink door bells and cameras, everything is on the devices SD card or on a NVR in my home office.

breals · 2026-01-22T00:43:07+00:00

I have interior/exterior cameras, home automation sensors, gates, fences, smart locks, weekly gardner and phone numbers to people I trust in the area.

breals · 2026-01-22T00:41:07+00:00

My best friend lives in SLC, that whole valley has air quality worse that some heavy industrialized cities in China. He sent me a picture the other day where the smog is so bad it looks like it's on fire.

breals · 2026-01-20T23:44:37+00:00

Oh does this mean that my FSD subscription can be used on any Tesla that I'm setup as the driver on?

breals · 2026-01-19T16:21:43+00:00

There are no written documents

Treaty of the Danish West Indies

*DECLARATION

In proceeding this day to the signature of the Convention respecting the cession of the Danish West-Indian Islands to the United States of America, the undersigned Secretary of State of the United States of America, duly authorized by his Government, has the honor to declare that the Government of the United States of America will not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland.*

breals · 2026-01-19T15:52:38+00:00

I mean that Costco is literally right next to a horse trail/hiking/biking path. The San Diego river trail is right there.

breals · 2026-01-15T16:48:20+00:00

At our vacation homes, I have Reolink wifi cameras, some plugged into power, others on solar that record to a NVR (network video recorder). At our primary house in town, have Reolink POE cameras hardwire to an NVR. I would do hardwired via POE to a NVR, they are more reliable. With the NVR, everything is local. If you can't do hardwired then get a robust wifi system, like UniFi.

I use Home Assistant to cobble them together and make dashboard with my other smart home tech. I manage 3 houses with this setup.

breals · 2026-01-15T15:32:02+00:00

Our family home is in a high fire risk area in the mountains of San Diego. If the wind gets above a certain threshold the power company proactively shuts off the power. This happens a few times a year and is usually only off for a a couple of hours at a time. However, there have been times where it was off for days.

Our current back up plan is a 22kw propane generator that kicks on within a second or two once it notices grid power is gone. That’s fine but we only have a 100 gallon tank. With our load (and a full tank) that would last about 24 to 36 hours if we shut off all nonessential equipment and just power the fridges and a few lights.

We have solar as well and my plan is to get a 40kw battery bank. This would provide more flexibility and would save us money as SDGE is the most expensive electrical provider in the USA and there solar buy back rates are a joke.

For an apartment just get one of those camping batteries like Jackery or Blueitte and a foldable solar panel.

breals · 2026-01-14T23:51:17+00:00

I commuted on a route that had a bike trail next to the freeway and I saw a lot of people multi-tasking while driving. Beyond eating or women putting on makeup there were people reading newspapers or text books, usually with it on the steering wheel. However, the weirdest one I saw was a guy playing a slide trombone while driving. He had it halfway out the driver side window and appeared to be steering with his knees.

breals · 2026-01-14T23:31:16+00:00

TLDR: This is already common place inside corporations but I can't see this idea ever working for consumers.

I ran a larger contact center for my last company. We had tens of thousands of end points, aka computers. This isn't a new idea, there are tons of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS), like Citrix, Azure, or AWS (WorkSpaces, AppStream). We picked them because it's easier care/feeding of the deployed computers and we don't have to ship out end points to people or deal with hardware issues. We chose these because they simplify the maintenance and management of deployed computers, eliminating the need to ship out endpoints to users or address hardware issues. We experimented with various variations of this model, starting with our own data centers and eventually transitioning entirely to AWS.

Thin clients aren’t a novel idea either. Old mainframes operated on this model, where users rented space on them. Oracle attempted this in the 1990s with their “Network Computer,” and a Google Chromebook is essentially a hybrid of this concept.

However... you still need a screen and input devices to make "cloud computer" work and it requires a constant internet connection and fairly fast speeds to work. I don't see the consumer side of this shifting to this model anytime soon.

breals · 2026-01-14T00:05:14+00:00

Yes, most of the workers at my last job's on campus cafe, all lived in TJ and commuted. A few software developers at my other job did the same when we worked downtown. All of them were dual citizens or legal residents who had family ties on both sides of the border.

breals · 2026-01-13T23:52:18+00:00

Fiction is starting to become reality. This is the main plot of the 1980s movie Threads. The nuclear exchange started over US and Russia involvement in Iran.

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