• 2 Posts
  • 64 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 20th, 2023

help-circle
  • As an introvert that likes the idea of hanging out with friends but gets exhausted from the thought of social interaction, I can’t stress enough how much I value friends that include me like this. I even usually have fun and will sometimes even join in after a while.

    PSA, always invite your introvert friends, and don’t take it personally if they decline.





  • To play devils advocate here, Protons costs are not fixed. The storage, compute, and people behind your email (and other services) continue to cost more today than they did when you signed up. I would also expect, as a business user, that your prices to customers have increased at some point to cover higher costs of supplies and needed overhead. It seems fair for Proton to do the same and I wouldn’t expect this to be how it always works (and in fact I’d expect at some point in the future you’ll get hit with a catchup increase, either because you’ll need to change your billing cycle or Proton just can’t continue to deliver the service for what you pay on your grandfathered rate). As long as rate increases are not egregious and are well communicated by companies I respect, I see them as an unfortunate but fair way to keep those companies in business.


  • For me as the driver of not one of these cars, I think the driver monitoring and sheeting is perhaps one of the most important parts of these systems. I 100% want your car to scream at you for not paying attention while use the driver assist features because it’s such a common and easy thing to do (if it works 99 times without issues, human nature is to assume it will work that 100th time, so checking that email from work real quick is probably fine). When the consequences of a driver failing to post attention while using these systems is potentially other people dying in a horrific crash, your discomfort at an alert because you happen to be a perfect driver that never does other things in the car while driving doesn’t matter.



  • The flip clock seems very much like a LEGO Ideas set, I would be surprised if they don’t develop that one. The JWST is cool and they’ve made more than a few space themed Ideas sets but it would take a fair bit of refinement I think to get the part count and price point right on it and it looks like it might benefit from some custom elements for the mirrors which seems to make it an unlikely pick unfortunately.

    Interestingly there’s been a bunch of Phinas and Ferb sets voted up the last few periods, it seems like there’s certainly a market for that as a full line and they already work with Disney for licenses all the time.


  • Trees and scratchers are a must, cats usually scratch furniture because there isn’t something else nearby to use. Trees give them a place to climb and feel safe up away from things. You should also have places for them to hide (boxes, piles of blankets, a bed in a quiet room, etc). As for toys, it really depends on the cat. Ours is super picky and only likes specific rattle balls from Amazon, small rattle mice, and some kickers (there are few others but they are all small and easy for her to cray around). But for every one toy we found she likes we have half a dozen she won’t touch. You’ll likely need to try a bunch to find what yours will enjoy.






  • I say wear what you like when it comes to underwear. If you want to wear full long Johns under your pants then don’t let anyone stop you, and the same goes for thongs, tighty whities, boxers, and everything in between. In th ink what major brands are realizing is there is an untapped market for additional styles and men are comfortable enough to at least try them. Companies like cocksox have made actual men’s thongs for years, amongst many other styles (actual meaning designed for all day wear, not just a night in with a significant other). That is to say it was possible to find them for a bit if you looked, it’s just more recently that you don’t really have to look to find them in places which I think means they are more than just a fad.


  • With Plex pass and a tuner like an HDHomerun you can record directly to your servers storage. It’s not terribly difficult to setup and works really well assuming you get good OTA signal. Of note the HDHomeruns seem to be less sensitive overall to OTA signal and anecdotally have a harder time pulling in ststions with birderline signals.


  • A lot of these depend on the model and where it’s installed (geographically and within the house). In many areas of the US, there is a drain in the floor near all water heaters as a matter of code, you can drain condensate directly to that (and unlike gas appliances, the condensate is clean and does not need treated to go in household drains). I honestly think the noise concern is hugely overblown and used as an excuse for people that don’t like change. Sure it exists, but if your water heater is in the basement or garage like the majority are at least in my areas of the US, you’ll never notice it. I also look at the cooling air as a benefit for at least half the year, I can close all the vents in our basement for the whole spring/summer and it’s super comfortable. In the winter it’s a tad chilly, but not uncomfortable. Drying the air is also great for our basement, it’s literally a dehumidifier in what’s usually a pretty damp location for many people. Ours (a rheem unit) has a flimsy plastic air filter you vaccuum off once a year as well so not really a huge deal. I think most are like this.

    I agree that folks should do their homework and understand what they are getting. Heat pump water heaters are great, but are overpriced at the moment. Even with electric company rebates and a tax credit it cost more than a decent gas replacement would for us. It’s likely to only pay off because we have solar and so don’t really pay for electricity for a large chunk of the year. But I expect costs to come down over the next 5-10 years as these become the go to for most electric installs (and with fewer new gas hookups in new and renovated buildings that’s like to be most installs). Once these hit that $700-$1000 price point there’s really no good reason most people shouldn’t default to installing one.



  • YMMV of course, and will highly depend on how many people are in your house and how you use hot water, but a 50 gallon heat pump water heater easily supplies a dishwasher and two long showers with 1/3 of a tank of available water left in our house (and I take pretty hot showers that are not always as short as they should be). Sure, it takes an hour or two to fully recover but we aren’t ever looking to use much more hot water at one time. If you have a household of four, it may be a bit more of a problem, but then you can easily schedule other hot water uses to happen “off peak” like a dishwasher.


  • Idk, I DIY swapped out old gas water heater for an electric heat pump water heater heater and it was super straight forward. If you have the plumbing and electrical skills to add a circuit and move your hookups (since on most gas water heaters they are on top and most heat pump water heaters they are on the sides top and bottom), you probably have the skills to safely disconnect and cap off the old gas line. Just be sure to use pipe dope that is rated for gas, and check with soapy water once you pressurize the line again for leaks.



  • Or you can use something like Squarespace or Wix and have a fully functioning website with everything you need in a few hours and start monetizing your views with ads. Both start at $16 a month so it’s a larger hill to climb sure but you get custom branding and don’t have to deal with the baggage of a Medium page (largely that it’s considered in many circles an untrustworthy source for pretty much any topic mainly because of how easy and barrier free it is to write there. They also have a pretty well established history of working to screw over contributors to profit off of your work including you automatically giving a full license to medium for everything you post).

    If all you want is a newsletter though without a webpage to back it you can setup something in mailchimp with a custom domain (.coms start at about $10 from cloudflare). Again an hour or so of reading and configuring and you’re on your way, with an Adsense account you can even embed inline ads to your newsletter.