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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 23rd, 2023

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  • It’s not a matter of quick learning. If that were the case, GUI is a clear winner. It takes more time to learn a text-driven UI. But the learning curve pays off. You invest more time learning but the reward is reaching a point where you’re much faster than a mouse allows. I started off using gnusocial from a browser then transitioned to #bitlbee, after which I could search, read, and react faster than in the GUI. Same for Mastdon. Sometimes I’m forced into the Mastodon GUI because of something being unimplemented, in which case the loss of speed is apparent. Just like in the 90s, the keyboard is still faster than the mouse.

    BTW, I used a DVORAK keyboard for years. I never measured my speed difference but I think it slowed me down overall because there were moments where the brain would drift into QWERTY mode (and vice versa on a QWERTY keyboard), and the speed difference w/out drifting seemed negligible so I ultimately settled back on a QWERTY keyboard.




  • diyrebel@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlNo Debian Lemmy clients yet?
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    2 years ago

    I have had no choice but to try Firefox because (for years) #Lemmy has been wholly broken on Ungoogled Chromium. And for me the FF-Lemmy UX is terrible.

    Younger generations have no baseline for comparison because they were raised in GUI browsers. My baseline is IRC, gopher, usenet, emacs, lynx, mutt, bitlbee, toot (TUI + CLI), gnu screen, & piles of scripts on 15+ y.o. hardware, etc. So [bart simpson’s grandpa’s voice] all you young whipper-snappers chained to your GUIs with JavaScript, mice, labor-intensive clicking around have a very different reality and baseline of what’s good. Us older folks struggle to find tools that don’t rely on a mouse & which avoid all the #darkPatterns & bugginess of the modern day web.

    (edit) and wtf there are apparently several phone apps for the fedi. I just don’t get how people can like the small screens, small keyboards, and speech-to-text that causes embarrassments.

    The bigger problem is not even the mouse-dependent UI… it’s that browser clients have no practical HDD access apart from cookie storage. Rightly so, but I should have a local copy of things I write because my hard drive has better uptime & availability than any cloud service could have. When censorship strikes msgs are destroyed without backups. And (at least in the case of Mastodon), even the admins cannot recover posts they’ve deleted even if they want to. Wholly trusting a server to keep your records is a bad idea. So a browser can never by suitable for blogging/microblogging, at least certainly not without an archive download option that can be triggered by a cron job.







  • Yes, but sadly the contrary is happening. Restaurant owners now have a sneaky trick to increase tips in order to lower wages: you know those receipts & terminals that have a “suggested tip”? Yeah, those things… they keep increasing. I was handed a PoS terminal in Netherlands (where tipping norms are like a couple euro), and the terminal asked me to tap for how much I want to tip which suggested as much as 25%.

    It’s working, too. A recent article described how this trick is causing average tips to increase. So the #warOnCash is part of the problem.



  • Only real way to get rid of this culture is to ban it to start.

    A ban would be a bit extreme. Is tipping banned anywhere?

    For me, the fix is to establish a fixed tip like some parts of Europe used to have. E.g. $1—2 per person for good service regardless of bill. This would accomplish two things:

    • The tip cannot be an income supplement (thus wages increase if the resto wants to have staff)
    • There is still a quality control signal in place

    Tipping isn’t bad. Being underpaid is bad. If we as consumers want to add a little more for good service, I don’t see a problem.

    The two are at odds with each other; that’s the problem.



  • What’s the reasoning behind that ban?

    The drain infrastructure in most US cities is relatively modern. The city drain pipes are big & thus able to handle a big amount of food waste coming from residents. I think I heard some minority of US cities also ban garbage disposals because for whatever reason their pipework can’t handle the load.

    Old cities have small pipes that could not sustain the onslaught of thick food waste, as I understand it. In my city, rats outnumber humans by 2 to 1 and I think they thrive in the sewer. So I’m not sure if it’s also an effort to not feed rats. In any case, the city’s preferred way of dealing with waste food is to put it in the trash.

    Recently they required food waste to be separated into a different color bag than the others. So they collect the food waste together and compost it. In the end, this is probably the most forward-thinking approach despite the sewer system being quite behind.


  • Where do you live that sulfuric acid is illegal?!

    I think it’s like this in all of Europe. I know in the US you can get 32 oz. of it at Menards for $8. But that’s not an option here. I have no idea what people do if they need to build a battery. The stuff I got would be different than what’s in batteries. Probably the battery acid is more pure. What they sell to pro plumbers is a bottle labelled as /drain cleaner/ with sulfuric acid as a main active ingredient. It likely has a cocktail of additives to optimize it for drain pipe usage or perhaps make it inconvenient for other usages.

    What if you do that? Illegal to buy, own or both?

    I doubt it’s a possession offense. They are controlling the sales. If you go to a pro plumbing shop and try to buy it, they will require proof that you’re buying on behalf of a company that was constituted for the purpose of plumbing.


  • I can’t quite work out if you’re making a prediction of a clog returning, or if you’ve not realized that there is no longer a clog.

    For weeks I have been fighting clog. But the clog is finally gone and the drain is now faster than I have ever seen. The drain actually keeps pace with the faucet on full blast. In the past, even in the best of times, I think the fastest it drained was 1 liter in 20 seconds. Now 1 liter drains in 6 seconds.

    You’re already hundreds of dollars into gadgets and chemicals. Stop it. Cut your losses and call a professional next time.

    Pros give different results in different areas. I called a plumber for a leak once. I was out of town, but a simple leak was dripping and forming a puddle on the floor. The leak was in exposed PEX pipe visibly strapped to the wall (yes that room is quite ugly). The plumber spent little time, failed to find the leak, blamed something that was fine, and charged €200. We called him back and he made the outrageous claim that the puddle was due to “condensation”. Left and gave no refund. I would love to have a reliable & trustworthy plumber. But since I don’t have that I have to become the plumber.

    My costs in the drain fight were ~¾ of €200 (less than the incompetent plumber’s charge for simply showing up). Every time I redo the pipes I’m appalled by the work of past plumbers. So I think I’m just not in a good place to hire plumbers. There is no quality control of any kind in my area. No Better Business Bureau of sorts to record complaints. So the infrastructure is not setup for bad plumbers to fail.