patchexempt

I have a sit/stand desk and so I spend about half the day in my chair. I use a Steelcase Think; I like how it's relatively simple but still has a lot of articulation in its armrests, which makes it easy to get decent arm support where you need it. It's very sturdy and of nice quality. my only complaint is that I wish its back didn't have an inch of give before it hits the lock point at the furthest forward point, but this is really very minor.

if you live somewhere that you can go to an office surplus store, I'd super recommend doing that. I picked out this chair after trying a bunch out, and it was much cheaper than MSRP since it was used. they had like 20 different models and perhaps 5 of this one, and I picked out the nicest of the bunch.

I walk into my home office, as my company like many went fully remote during COVID and stayed that way. However prior to that I had two options:

I could bike, it was about 5.5 miles with bike lanes the whole way (until downtown, where the roads were shared but marked for bike traffic). I think it took me about 20 or 30 minutes, but honestly I don't remember anymore. Going home took longer as it was uphill compared to the way in.

The other option was I could take public transit; there were both buses and a light rail and I greatly preferred the latter. When I did that, it was a 5 minute walk to the light rail, about a 20 minute ride, and then a 10 minute walk to the office.

At the time I lived in a decent sized US city, but since going remote I've moved somewhere smaller. However I really loved having good public transit, and if I ever had to go into an office again either being able to bike or public transit in is a big requirement for me; I can't stand car commuting: it's stressful and wasteful, and has a very negative impact on cities for those that live there.

smoking: I decided it was disgusting. it was like a switch flipped and I had no desire to do it anymore.

and it helps that it actually is super nasty (I can only imagine how I used to smell), and ruins everything; I just had to realize it.

Jet Set Radio, Chu Chu Rocket

being against disposable vapes does not equal being against vaping; I sort of can't believe this needs to be explained: the environmental cost of disposable vapes is preposterous, they should've been banned from day one. if they want to make it about the children: whatever gets it done, but I want it done because buying something like that when it is explicitly meant to be thrown away is outrageous.

it's easy to recommend a ThinkPad for Linux, and something in the T or P series laptops might suit you. video editing is a potential difficulty though, as that feels a little more workstation-grade than the rest, and you'll probably want to go big on RAM (32GB would be best) and be sure to get at least an intel i7. I've not had great luck with battery life on AMD (shame because everything else is great) but perhaps others have tips for doing better.

you could also go for the ThinkPad yoga models (make sure they're still ThinkPad though! they also sell a different model line just called "yoga") if you wanted a tablet/convertible for graphics work.

anyway look at the T14, P14s, or P16 if you want something bigger. whatever the latest generation of those models is.

I've used rclone with backblaze B2 very successfully. rclone is easy to configure and can encrypt everything locally before uploading, and B2 is dirt cheap and has retention policies so I can easily manage (per storage pool) how long deleted/changed files should be retained. works well.

also once you get something set up. make sure to test run a restore! a backup solution is only good if you make sure it works :)

yeah I don't know; I imagine the per-unit cost of this will be pretty low in the end, and won't incentivize much change at all to the products since it'll be a fraction of the cost, but I would love to be wrong: things that last longer and are supported longer are obviously the best choice, and feel in very short supply. but something is changing: look at the Android phones from Google and Samsung which have seen a tremendous increase in support length; that's (probably?) due to consumer demand and government pressures, so yeah it might matter in the end.

that's fair.

that's a good point, I would love it to work out that way. I'm not super optimistic (esp since electronics aren't the things I typically see, but that's just my experience/bias), but it could help.

Home collections would not require any extra bins, the government said, adding the cost of the pick-ups would be financed by the producers of electrical items and not fall on taxpayers.

you're going to see it in the final cost of the products though, which to be clear isn't a bad thing, but it's extremely disingenuous to act like there's no end cost to consumers when the companies are definitely going to pass that on. language like this tries to obscure that fact: it's actually true, but people take "the taxpayer" to mean "I won't pay more" but you certainly will.

I think this is a great idea and an important thing to do, but stop babying people about the costs: things cost money, and buying things that are difficult to dispose of has consequences that need to be dealt with, don't try to hide it.

my actual biggest wish, which I will never get because the administrative costs would be astronomical, is that the cost added to goods be directly tied to their recyclability (both in materials and labor) as it would incentivize building more easily recycled products by manufacturers to keep costs competitive.

content id is a wild one that I only discovered a year ago: I had always used my own Chromecast when traveling, and I plugged it into a Roku TV which kept saying "did you know you could watch [content that I was currently watching] on Roku" which really freaked me out, so I looked into it. honestly not sure why they tipped their hand like that: I found the setting and turned it off. otherwise I would've been none the wiser.

creepy af though. the amount of tracking you implicitly accept by using random devices out in the world is staggering. even if you read every privacy policy and opt out of everything (I do) you have no chance.