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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: January 20th, 2022

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  • They don’t last as long and have less charge cycles, but IIRC they have a larger charge capacity. Eneloop white batteries have 4x more recharge cycles than the Eneloop black batteries. Hard to justify larger capacity (2550 mAh for black, 2100 for white) at 1/4 of the lifespan/charge cycles.

    Some people use them for specific things like gamepad controllers (i.e. X-Box/Playstation controllers) because you’re less likely to have interruptions but personally, I just change batteries when I dip below 30%. I keep 4 spare AAs in a charging cradle (La Crosse Technology, apparently they don’t make chargers anymore which came as a huge surprise because they were THE battery charger back in the day 🤓). I use a program on my PC for keyboard macros that has an additional feature displaying gamepad battery percentage and I find it far more accurate than the native app or alternatives.

    To me it’s like having a 16 gal gas tank and some guy tries to tell you he can swap it out for a 20 gal gas tank, but then you find out the "upgrade" has 1/4 of the lifespan because it’s far more likely to corrode. Not worth the tradeoff for the vast majority of drivers who can simply fill up a little more often.

    It’s a gimmick to basically upsell people an additional battery type that in fairness to Panasonic is literally right on the packaging (2100 vs 500 charge cycles) but unless you’re actively comparing charge cycles between battery types, which the vast majority of people buying batteries aren’t paying attention to because they (reasonably, IMO) assume all AA batteries have a similar life cycle/capacity these days, it’s hard to notice the above differences that I pointed out. So a lot of people buy the white, then the black thinking "ooOoOO Pro edition = better", only to find out 2+ years later that their black batteries are dead while their white batteries keep chugging along.

    I know that’s a super long winded explanation but I think it’s good to explain all this. I mostly recommend Eneloop whites because I’m not a big fan of waste, battery waste in particular, so I think that if someone has to use batteries then it makes sense for them to use the ones that are reasonably priced and will last far longer than any other battery. That said, the price of them definitely has gone up over the years, though that applies to most things.





  • I do value high fidelity media, but frankly I can’t say that I notice a difference between say, 320 kbps mp3 audio and FLAC audio-- and yes I have a nice DAC + headphones so there’s no bottlenecks. I used to have all my music as FLAC files but these days I don’t have the $$$ to buy more storage so I find myself converting everything to 320 kbps MP3 files and I’m okay with that.

    For movies, I’ve only got 1080p monitors + a 720p projector so for the most part I just download 1080p movies. I burn movies and TV shows to Blu-Ray discs so for some S-tier stuff I’ll download the 4K release and burn it to a BD-R in hopes that someday I can afford 4K and all the damn PC hardware upgrades that’s going to require. But I’m in no rush, 1080p is fine by me and 720p on the projector is great.

    I’m into photography, and I’m like you when it comes to lenses. Quality > quantity, any day of the week. I’d much rather choose a nice 40mm prime lens over a 17-70mm lens with mediocre glass.

    My friends are kind of like yours but they know that when they want something of high quality, they can ask me and I’ll gladly do the research then give them several options. I really enjoy well-made products and I despise poorly-made products so much. As a result, I’m finally at that point in my life where quality purchases I made 15+ years ago are still working great and it feels good.

    That said, I do try to keep my purchases to a minimum because it’s way too easy to fall for marketing + consumerism.






  • Before Signal made the boneheaded move of removing SMS support, it was so much easier for me to pitch the idea of using Signal to my friends and family, most of which eventually did make the shift from SMS to Signal messages for reasons like ease of use when it came to group chats, sending images/videos, voice clips, etc.

    But now? Now it’s one of those embarrassing moments where I hear back from people basically all saying "your tech recommendations are usually on point but uh, what happened with Signal???" because the app just abruptly stopped supporting SMS and ruined the seamless appeal. SMS support was the perfect way to ease people into shifting towards Signal messages and now the only damn people I know who still know Signal are my most privacy-minded friends/family, while everyone else has switched back to WhatsApp.

    Clearly I’m not bitter…😅 But I mean like, come on. I had the most notorious luddites in my social circle make the switch to Signal and they loved it. The shift from SMS to Signal messages was so smooth so many of them didn’t even have that "I miss [SMS stuff]", plus they LOVED that Signal could be used on their laptops in addition to their phones. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this annoys me so much.


  • Pfft, speak for yourself 😏I’m too poor to afford a TV.

    In all seriousness, I can’t afford a TV but wouldn’t buy one if I could because the dual monitor setup I have + a mini projector > modern TV nonsense. My projector isn’t anything fancy-- just a 720p bulb projector but I’m convinced that 4K, maybe/probably 8K laser projectors will be the endgame for many people, simply because at that point the resolution to screen size ratio for most people will be where the law of diminishing returns really starts to kick in.

    In 2024, nearly 60% of Steam users are still using 1080p monitors-- myself included. The shift for the average person from 1080p to 4K is taking considerably longer than the shift from 720p to 1080p. 1080p came out in 2007, 4K came out in 2012. Only a 5 year difference but 1080p remains king for the time being specifically because 4K is too expensive for the average person and harder to justify, particularly for computer monitors.

    For TVs, I think there’s always going to be the core chunk of people who just mindlessly buy smart TVs without putting any thought into privacy but I really do think that long term, we’re going to see a shift towards laser projectors that just accept video inputs from whatever source a person’s using, i.e. a Kodi box, PC, etc. Part of why I think this is because laser projection even during daytime is amazing.

    I’m rambling away but yeah, I think at a certain point between the ads and the fact that most people don’t care that much about 4K over 1080p (especially considering the enormous price difference), people are going to tap out soon.









  • As a POC I’d say Lemmy is way better than most similar sites but there’s still the prevalent sexism that always seems like the "acceptable casual bigotry" and I’m not a fan of that. The kind of "jokes" that guys mostly laugh at while women mostly roll their eyes at because the punchline is usually heavily reliant on sexism.