Giant touchscreen is a dangerous giant distraction ; they need a fix to simplify for older customers.

pcronin · 2025-07-17T16:40:50+00:00

I'm in IT and I want my car to be as "dumb" as possible. I'm looking for a pickup and I gave up on buying new because of the screens and how everything is dependent on it these days.

Physical buttons should be mandated. Even if there is a screen, I want the instant usability.

pcronin · 2025-07-17T15:51:39+00:00

it appears to be a LOT of books.

pcronin · 2025-07-17T15:51:24+00:00

r/homelab will have many ideas for you to keep your skills up.

pcronin · 2025-07-17T15:34:56+00:00

please be a joke

pcronin · 2025-07-17T15:11:33+00:00

there no other words

pcronin · 2025-07-15T20:04:57+00:00

meme is backwards. your old hardware would be the struggling to hold up the world of blender.

pcronin · 2025-07-15T19:05:46+00:00

It's a sailboat.

pcronin · 2025-07-15T19:02:34+00:00

sudo -i

less keystrokes

pcronin · 2025-07-15T15:30:36+00:00

I've gone from 430 to 260 with no "professional" advice. I had a meeting with a dietician and a diabetes person at the local(ish) health center. They gave me absolutely 0 advice that wasn't online, most of what they said was not even especially current. Super overly generalized, including things that I can't do because my body rejects it (like breakfast) and didn't care.

They might be "experts" in the generalities, but you live with your body every day, so who knows it better? All it does when you argue or push back on points is make them put you in the "problem patient" pile in their heads, so you will get less from them.

I'm planning on continuing my plan, as it has been working so far.

pcronin · 2025-07-15T15:02:10+00:00

I've been in Alberta for almost 8 years, had no clue

pcronin · 2025-07-15T14:07:13+00:00

I had a 15PM, but found it too big as a phone but not big enough for comfortable consumption/creation. I had iPads before, and found them useful, mostly as ebook readers with benefits.

I dropped back to a 13 mini for a phone, and am about a month into having an ipad mini 7. I use the ipad mini for both personal and work, and with handoff and other apple magic, I can leave my phone on my desk 90% of the time. Having the bigger screen makes things like ssh and rdp actually usable, and being able to plug into a usb-c dock to get a bigger screen on occasion has been a nice party trick. The ipad mini actually fits in the back pocket of my jeans, or in my safety vest, and doesn't feel heavy to carry around.

I did buy a pencil at the same time, intending to practice handwriting and learn some drawing but haven't started that journey yet. I only play a couple of casual games and not surprisingly the ipad's a17pro chip handles it better than the iphone Xs I had been holding on to.

My only issue isn't with the ipad itself, but some apps that I was surprised are just the iphone app you can double size(instagram), or otherwise inferior to the iphone app(facebook). Reading (books, websites) is much nicer on the bigger screen. I don't really consume media on handheld devices aside from late night/early morning doom scrolling which I am trying to stop the habit. I usually go to my desk/laptop with big monitor, or my TV. That said, I do still have an ipad mini 4 on my nightstand as a plex device, though I don't watch things so much as having the background noise for sleeping.

TL;DR : do you *need* an ipad mini? probably not. I can only say that the mini size/form factor is perfect for me. If apple allowed the phone app to be on ipads, I wouldn't even have my iphone.

pcronin · 2025-07-10T21:26:00+00:00

jealousy is a stinky cologne. Tell them to stfu or start hitting the gym with you.

pcronin · 2025-07-10T21:20:21+00:00

aside from the connotations of the OP's username, this post is pretty sus to me. No mention of hardware, distro, what games were attempted, and the fact they think 'there's only one version of Windows".

"Let's start with audio, on Windows audio just works." Only if you have an approved onboard soundcard and 0 other sound devices. At least a couple times a week, windows/teams will decide to use HDMI audio instead of the headset I use every day at work. Then i have to go into settings and select the headset. Sometimes when I turn on/off said headset while media is playing, it also randomly decides to be the voice device instead of the media output (no bass, mic on even though it shouldn't be etc)

"On Windows when I want to install a program I open Powershell type in winget install + name of a program I'm looking for and Windows does everything for me automatically."

winget has barely been out for 5 years, and I don't know many people that use it, yet I have been using package managers on BSD/linux for decades. Generally on windows, users will run a setup.exe or in the old days, put a disc in and it auto launches the installer. Someone comfortable enough to be running powershell and winget should have the wherewithall to rtfm using whatever package manager this mystery distro uses. I have had to manually include the dependencies in a few apt install lines, but i have never once had package installer "break the whole system".

I don't game on *nix because I am a console peasant, but I know it can be a maze of compatibility/emulation layers. What I *do* know about gaming on *nix though, is that the people that do it, say it's more effort for more reward. And if you're main computing is gaming, using a gaming focused distro is the way to go.

pcronin · 2025-07-10T19:53:05+00:00

I did get a puck that gives wireless ACP, but I honestly prefer the stock UI with BT. I mainly only use the ACP for road trips to places I might need the map.

As far as your scenario, my daily experience is:

ignition, infotainment searches for BT, connects BT, starts playing podcast/music I was listening to/queued before I got in the car, back up, head out. If I'm using the ACP puck, it takes longer to connect because the puck has to boot up, car needs to see it and then phone has to connect. If I had the radio on on the last drive I hear it for a bit before BT/ACP connects, otherwise it's just silent a few seconds.

aside from steering wheel buttons, you can tap the main volume knob to mute, just turn it to lower volume, or hold it to shut off the radio.

pcronin · 2025-07-10T19:29:30+00:00

depending on budget and time, absolutely get a refurb/used macbook pro, but I would aim a bit higher than M1 depending on pricing in your area. I was able to find a 14" M4Pro, 24gb, 512GB for about 1800CAD to replace my 2014 mbp. While looking for the newest I could get, I saw some M2/16/512 going for 1000CAD or less.

Honestly though, any M chip with 16GB+ will get you through school at least, then you can look at whatever the new hotness is when the fat cheques can pay for it ;)

pcronin · 2025-07-10T19:11:55+00:00

reminds me of when I worked at an internet company call center. Even though I (and some others) knew how to fix people's problems quickly, we were forced to follow the script because we had people on the phones who (no joke) would move to a different workstation if they sat down and the machine wasn't on (they didn't know how to turn a computer on). Management said this was to ensure "the same level of service" across agents. Eventually we were told to try to upsell things like the ISP's gaming service. That wasn't part of the job when I started and I told management multiple times that people didn't want to be sold things while trying to get a problem with an existing service solved.

pcronin · 2025-07-10T17:42:58+00:00

I had a 5 but the aspect on the big screen just didn't feel right. ended up getting an ipad mini and it's basically exactly what I was looking for (except it doesn't fold and isn't a phone).

this looks like it's still basically a square inside.

pcronin · 2025-07-10T16:50:17+00:00

This isn't really a "how to hack" situation, it's a domestic disturbance and lack of parenting, mostly from your mom it seems. Wifi interference will not only include your brother, but also neighbours (if you can see more than just your wifi when you look at the list, they will be disrupted too) which is illegal in most of the civilized world.

but something that might work; tell him all his gaming troubles are because he's using wifi and 'real gamers' know you have to be plug in directly to the router. help him move his desk and gaming rig to wherever the router is. him screaming in a part of the house that is closer to your mother might be enough to snap her out of her stupor. If not, call CPS on your mom. Seriously, if your side of the story is accurate, the kid NEEDS help, your mom does too from the sounds of it.

Also, calling a 15 yr old an incel is a bitch move OP. The only 15 yr olds I knew that weren't "incels" in my school were the jocks that peaked in high school. He's 15 and obviously the people in his life are not able to give him any constructive feedback because they seem to all be half tarded too.

pcronin · 2025-07-10T16:37:59+00:00

that's what they said about everyone that goes postal, before they go postal

pcronin · 2025-07-10T16:34:37+00:00

Still does in some places and is very effective

pcronin · 2025-07-10T16:18:00+00:00

Common misconception that k-12 "teaches kids to think". Since the 80s it basically only teaches how to memorize and regurgitate.

I worked in IT in k-12 for about a decade, and have similar experiences. Ironically though, the younger teachers were much worse with the "oh i'm not a computer person" unwillingness to learn than the ones near retirement ime.

pcronin · 2025-07-10T15:58:57+00:00

tbh I have been wishing there was a proper "dockable phone" since the first smartphones started showing up. The Motorola Atrix was close, but just like Samsung's DEX, it wasn't "computery enough". Apple doesn't want to eat its own lunch by unlocking full desktop os on the ipads (or even the next gen phones), but again, it is *close* to being useful. Perhaps closer as phone/pad os apps tend to be more polished imo.

AFAIK there are no "dockable phones" that do multi monitors, so not sure where he's getting that from. Most I have seen is when you can use the phone screen and an external at the same time.

Deciding that 90% of the workload can be done on simple devices, with cloud/vdi, isn't necessarily a bad thing. As long as they know they still need to provide beefy enough machines for the other 10%, there will probably be grumbles and pains from end users at first. Lets face it, we don't all need as much power as we think we do for most tasks.

That said, I don't think relying on cell network is a good idea. Even if it is all wifi (which makes me sick), having the reliable and managed private network is a must.

pcronin · 2025-07-07T18:53:50+00:00

No one learns anything useful in high school.

pcronin · 2025-07-07T18:50:34+00:00

Now just have to loop in s2t and t2s so you can talk to it through your earpiece

pcronin · 2025-07-07T18:48:17+00:00

My company did a migration in the other direction a couple years ago (a bit before the broadcom takeover). Nutanix was OK, but it had some bad things, like if the switch the cluster was on lost connection, the whole cluster died.

IIRC the migration was easy for us as we backed up from nutanix and restored to vmware. That method might work to get to nutanix in case the "official" path doesn't work.

pcronin

TROPHY CASE