Anything made by Razer, any Google hardware
Chromebooks suck ass but Pixel phones are pretty solid
Chromebooks are amazing for a certain type of low technical skill person. Older parents and grandparents in particular are exactly the kind of people that Chromebooks are for. There’s zero technical support burden and if anything goes wrong a power wash solves it.
That sounds pretty good, why wouldn’t you recommend it then, are there better alternatives?
Oh I totally recommend Chromebooks, they almost entirely eliminate the tech support burden from having a parent/grandparent who doesn’t get computers. It was the dude above me who crapped on them.
You’re the one who replied “any google hardware” though.
So buy Chromebooks from other oems?
To be fair, they are just expensive mid-range phones (except the hardware security and build quality), but the tradeoff is worth it for GrapheneOS.
they have nice cameras. but the battery life is attrocious and sometimes will run into radio issues (iirc fixed only one or 2 generations ago)… lack of otp support is also one minor issue
I got a bundle of a Razer keyboard, mouse, headset, and mousepad for all of $50 one time cause it was on sale and we just happened to come across the last one they had. This was about a year ago, because I was needing new ones anyway, and they’ve been perfectly fine ever since.
I try to avoid razer because their products seem so gimmicky and are quite expensive. But i have an mmo mouse for a long time now (longer than any other mouse) and the tartarus, because they were the only ones at the time wgo had something like that. It still works perfectly fine. The s button is almost gone because of usage, but other than that, 10/10
Cloud and “serverless” solutions
I gotta disagree on this one. I cut my workload in half by shifting our infrastructure to the cloud, and now I can spend my time focusing on more worthwhile endeavors.
HP printers.
Really HP anything on principle, but their printers take the cake for anti-user bullshit.
Their laptops are good. But the company is shitty.
That being said, they’re still thriving for a reason. I was trying to convince my cousin to get rid of his HP subscription printer and he won’t. He says it is cheap and easy to pay the subscription and his school aged kids can print the colour pictures they want when they remember they had an assignment at midnight. He just gets ink replacement posted to his house before he runs out and he says it works out great for him.
My mother got an HP 255 G8 laptop on which the webcam just will not work no matter what I do.
It’s enabled in the bios and the correct driver is installed but the built-in webcam is not detected. Also the keyboard got damaged with the space button only responsing to center presses after roughly a year of usage.
I know it’s a relatively cheap machine but the driver issue pissed me off
HP laptops are bottom-of-the-barrel trash and have been for at least 15 years at this point. HP will purposely hide screws underneath rubber skid pads and stickers, requiring you, the owner of said laptop, to damage your own laptop in order to open it up. And you will have to open it up, because it is a piece of shit and it will break. But good luck fixing it, because they won’t even be able to sell you the parts you need, presumably because they’re sourced from whatever Chinese factory is the cheapest at any given time. Fuck HP and fuck HP laptops especially.
That said, if you pay more up-front for something like a Brother laser printer, it should last you a lot longer and be on the order of 10x cheaper per page. People see Instant Ink as “cheap” because they’ve probably never tried the much cheaper alternative, and they see it as “convenient” because they’ve never had a printer that lasts several thousand prints without a cartridge change. It’s really sad seeing so many people who can afford the upfront cost of a laser printer falling for this scam so often.
Brother seems to be the last printer brand to be good. At least on the consumer grade. And they seem to last forever
What a sign of the times. Being subscribed to a fucking printer
I’m told it is not just for ink convenience. Apparently the printer needs to be connected to the internet and stops working if you stop paying the subscription, which you are locked into.
I picked up an old HP LaserJet (with the Ethernet option) for free during grad school. It was a great printer — good CUPS/Linux support, reliable, cheap 3rd party toner.
It’s sad how the mighty have fallen. Would never recommend one for someone today.
I still use a LaserJet 4N, but not a chance I’d buy a new HP anything.
Not really a specific product but those horrible soaking sharpening stones especially if you’re a beginner at sharpening. It’s just too much hassle compared to diamond. That and printer lubricant papers, just make them with printer paper and mineral oil
Anything from Anker after they cancelled an order with PayPal approved payment because ‘they couldn’t verify payment’. Then they insist that the cancelled order could be reviewed if I put personally identifiable information into a random Google sheets doc.
All complaint handling appeared to be a bot. They refused to explain what was the concern with the payment and always responded with very similar ‘apology’ emails even when I indicated for every email they send i’d inform another person to avoid them.
This was the same company that refused to ship to Rhode Island, suggesting you had their product shipped to a friend on “the mainland” who could then forward it
That’s interesting, I’ve always had a very good experience with Anker.
I have bought a couple of products in the past also. I searched up my recent scenario and found others with the same experience
On Christmas 2023 I was given an Anker charger. By March 2024 it stopped working…
I really wonder if their product quality fell off and why. I have chargers/cables/batteries from Anker that I bought in 2016 and not a single one has failed.
Also, Eufy is owned by Anker. They claimed they weren’t transmitting images until hackers proved they could access your “smart” cameras…
The problem is, in order to view the cameras in their app, the video has to relay through their cloud servers, and they had little to no security. Since then they have added encryption which hopefully helps.
Best practice is to avoid placing any cameras, especially big box store cloud cameras, anywhere sensitive. The two cameras I have online right now are outside where hackers won’t see anything my neighbors can’t see.
Hard disagree. That sucks about what happened to you but in my experience, Anker products (especially their USB cables, chargers, and batteries) are the best.
Edit: Just learned about this shitty news regarding Anker’s cameras (didn’t even know they had cameras) thanks to /u/Empiricorn. Personally, I don’t trust any security cameras that are cloud-based.
Anker is off my list because of the cameras. They used to be my go-to for cables and chargers. Completely unacceptable.
Any suggestions for a different company to buy cables etc from? I’ve bought their chargers and cables and been happy with them but I’m fine with trying something different next time.
The suggestion I took was Ugreen for chargers and cables. Cables seem to work, and don’t instantly fray, that’s all I want. I got a compact GaN wall plug and it is reasonably fast for the size. No fires and no fried electronics so far.
I appreciate the recommendation! Thanks!
I have never had a good time with Asus anything and their customer service is abysmal.
Who should I buy routers from
I’m honestly about to smack OpenWRT on this old laptop. But I have two catalyst 2960-S switches in a rack to extend it. MSI has a garbage UI for theirs but its what I have until I move and properly setup my home network.
I’ve been pretty happy with my stuff from TP-LINK.
No one, put OPNsense on a micro PC and get a Ruckus AP that you can flash Unleashed to.
This is so sad. I remember a day when Asus was known for making a quality product. Nowadays it’s overpriced garbage.
Their after sale support (both warranty and technical support) is absolutely abysmal. If you need support for one of their products you’re best off dumping it “as is” on fleaBay and buying something else to replace it.
Boox Palma. Got one for myself as a treat and upgrade to my aging Kobo and the screen broke within 24 hours. I have never broken a screen. Support immediately told me it was “pressure” and that it wasn’t covered. I was very careful with it so no…I really don’t believe them. If the screen is THAT fragile…no interest. Planning on selling the ewaste at a yard sale. No way am I giving them money to fix an already flawed product.
They’ve had screen breakage problems since about 2-3y ago for some reason. My OG Nova Air has survived about half a dozen short drops without any issue but more recent devices are just spontaneously breaking in people’s bags or sitting on a counter.
I think they’re dealing with some kind of design failure where they haven’t accounted for display stresses in the newer thinner screens but they’ll never, ever, admit to it. That would open them up to replacement liability and drive them out of business.
If you do buy one of their newer devices I strongly encourage you to buy a 2-3y aftermarket warranty with it otherwise it seems like you have a decent chance of just being shafted at random.
They are in China and I am in the US. It is not worth my time. My best recourse is to spread the word so others aren’t burned as well.
I appreciate it. I’m trying to find an ereader now and I can cross them off the list. I wish I had leapt on the Pine64 one while it was in stock but I desired the color screens too much.
I have been happy with my Kobo Libra Colour I picked up after the terrible experience with Boox. I wish a phone sized option was available from Kobo but I have been enjoying the option to use a stylus more than I expected.
Oh yeah, I’m not saying you did anything wrong I’m just telling people to protect themselves when they buy their products.
They make nice eink devices, they just have a tendency to implode fairly often so definitely have buyer protection for a couple of years if you’re going to spend on one.
There’s really nothing you can do to go after them either, I doubt they have enough of a presence in the US to make a small claim worthwhile.
I’d you bought yours with a credit card take a peek at your card agreement and see if you have any coverage for electronics purchases. You might have coverage for 1-2y for phones, tablets, computers, etc and could make a claim through your CC company.
Don’t ever buy Sony wireless buds. They stop working right around the one year mark. Customer service is horrible.
Any “Gaming” headphones they are all such trash. Buy a nice pair of headphones with a quality metal headband and get an audio cable with a built in mic.
Anything from any company large enough that the obvious business decision is the screw over the end user to generate additional profit. That excludes basically everything, so instead it’s easier to give recommendations for what I would buy/use instead:
- Open hardware products
- Framework laptop with RISC-V hardware
- not released yet
- Purism
- Maybe not fully open, but at least they have schematics
- Pine64
- Caveat emptor, software controlled charging circuits, be wary of bomb
- RaptorCS
- Wikipedia has an okay list
- Framework laptop with RISC-V hardware
- Open source software
- Operating systems
- *BSD
- Some Linux distributions
- Plan9, Haiku, Illumos, etc
- Web browsers
- qtwebkit based
- qutebrowser
- gtkwebkit based
- luakit
- Textmode/Terminal browsers
- w3m
- lynx
- links
- Other graphical browsers
- netsurf
- links graphical mode
- ladybird
- Apparently the developer is an asshole
- qtwebkit based
- Other userspace software
- Video
- ffmpeg
- Graphics
- Krita
- Blender
- GraphicsMagick/ImageMagick
- ffmpeg
- Audio
- LMMS
- ffmpeg
- PDF
- xpdf
- mupdf
- IRC
- Hexchat
- Feature Complete ( dead :'( )
- EPIC5
- Hexchat
- This list could go on forever, consult your repository instead of me
- Video
- Operating systems
Everything sucks, avoid car brands that sell your driving data (AKA buy an old car or figure out how to permanently disconnect your car from the internet), and avoid smart home and llm garbage.
are you aware that the vast majority of people can’t relate at all with the way you assign value? Or that they cannot afford the cognitive and temporal cost to adopt the technologies you mentioned? This kind of reasoning is what killed FOSS.
are you aware that the vast majority of people can’t relate at all with the way you assign value?
Clarify?
Or that they cannot afford the cognitive and temporal cost to adopt the technologies you mentioned?
People can learn entire, sometimes multiple languages, but learning some FOSS tools that are much more limited in scope is too difficult I guess. Relevant reading.
This kind of reasoning is what killed FOSS.
FOSS is dead? (and we killed it?)
FOSS is more popular than ever.
Clarify?
The vast majority of people do not care at all for technological autonomy, either because they don’t know about the implications or because they know and don’t care because it has very intangible effects over their life. Therefore they don’t make decisions taking into account technological autonomy or privacy.
People can learn entire, sometimes multiple languages, but learning some FOSS tools that are much more limited in scope is too difficult I guess. People who learn new languages during adulthood while working are a small minority. I speak as an immigrant who after 7 years barely speak the local language, like pretty much all my peers who didn’t take a whole year off to study. People with a job, social life, healthy relationships have very little time to focus on learning and very little incentive to do so.
FOSS is dead? (and we killed it?)
FOSS, on a political level, as a movement, it is dead. What we observe is the corpse, being a resource for value extraction processes by corporate and military organizations. The space of conflict over technology today is somewhere else: tech unionization, the post-FOSS movement, tech cooperativism, direct sabotage, public regulation. FOSS has been subsumed by the system.
https://www.boringcactus.com/2020/08/13/post-open-source.html
- Open hardware products
Any Apple product, mostly the iPhones. If you live in Latin America, those things are more a burden than something useful. They are too expensive, too fragile, and too Eye-catching for burglars.
They eats up your phone plan in hours just by existing, you can’t borrow a charger because everyone around you has Android. The simplest things to do on Android are an ordeal on Iphone.
The only way it can be worth it is if you have all Apple products (iMac, AppleTV, iPad, etc). But for that, you better be prepared to pawn your soul.
The simplest things to do on Android are an ordeal on Iphone.
Can you give us any examples?
- sigh *
Ok, let me see. Again, this is my experience and my opinion, so some things may not be a problem for you at all, for example:
Testing self-developed games or apps. I develop games. To test them on android I just need to create the APK, pass it to the phone, install and done. I may be wrong, but on Apple it’s not that simple.
File management. Many times I use my phone as a Pendrive, others I want to save my music to listen offline. Of the latter I remember that on my old iPod it was a headache to transfer music from my non-Apple PC to the device, transferring other files was just impossible, and it seems to me that that has not changed in Iphone, but I don’t know for sure, since I don’t handle an iPhone.
Going back. All modern Android phones have three on-screen buttons, the order varies, but in general they are: one to see all open apps and close the ones you don’t need or all of them, one to exit the app completely, and one to go back to the previous tab in an app. The iPhones I have been allowed to handle do not have any of the three buttons, the back button is the one I miss the most.
The first paragraph, I can get along with and understand where you’re coming from.
The second paragraph, could you elaborate what you mean by “eat up your phone plan just by existing”? I personally use an iPhone and have had very normal data usage rates that is accurately tracked through both the phone and my carrier’s app.
Also regarding borrowing a charger, they just moved to USB-C so that will be a non-issue a few years down the road when lightning is phased out.
Plus how can you hold “borrowing a charger” against a phone company? If you don’t have a charger on hand that’s your fault.
Because they insisted on using the inferior lightning connector instead of using USB C like everyone else.
Yes, that would’ve been a very valid reason for that person to not recommend an apple product. But to not recommend it because they can’t borrow one from everyone around them is such a weird way to put it that I didn’t even consider Apple’s absurd reasoning for using the lightning connector
Well, it is necessary to clarify that I speak not so much from my own experience but from those close to me (family and friends who have or have had iPhones, I have only had iPods). With regard to the phone plan, the people I know who have had iPhones always tend to have no data to browse, because the data on their phone runs out surprisingly faster than on Android phones. I don’t know what the technical details would be, I suspect it has to do with processes running in the background that require internet.
With the chargers, on the one hand the thing is that most iPhone phones circulating in Latin America are older, so none have the Type-C port that is now Standard. And for the iPhones that do have it, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think those iPhones have a particularity that only cables manufactured by Apple can effectively charge the iPhone, while any other cable either can not charge it as quickly or can even damage it. I think something similar happens with the Nintendo Switch, that its port is Type-C but only cables made by Nintendo work, but I insist in saying that I could be wrong.
To conclude, I must say that this is just my opinion according to a specific context. I am sure that in more developed countries like the United States, Japan or European countries, the experience of having an iPhone is as normal as with any other phone, or even better.
Gotcha. It could be entirely possible that the anecdotal experiences regarding phone data that you’ve heard could be simply because they’re heavier users or that they purchased a smaller quota. From personal experience, I really have not noticed any background processes that suck up data.
Regarding the type-C cable though, I have actually experienced that problem where cheaper cables do not work for charging. This part is PURE SPECULATION on my end, but I suspect Apple stops cheaper cables from charging on the off chance that it increase the risk of a fire (cheap cables = thinner wires = more resistance = more heat) because when stuff like that makes the news, the headline is typically “iPhone caught fire while charging” and not “Cheap cable caused a fire.” I spent a lil more on a third party USB-C cable that was higher quality and rated to charge up to 65W and have had no problems with it. I’m not sure what the economic situation is in Latin America, but where I am (Malaysia), I spent about RM60 (which is roughly equivalent to $13) on the cable that worked compared to RM20 for the cable that didn’t, just to give you a point of reference.
Should probably point out thatbthey were forced to move to USB-C
Sure, but whether they were forced to move over or did it out of the (non-existent) goodwill of their hearts wasn’t the point of contention in the discussion and results in a similar outcome. The initial commenter pointed out that they couldn’t share a charger and I just mentioned that this should be a non-issue once lightning is phased out.
Considering they made it so that you need apple issued usb-c, and have problems with normal one (probably fixed now because people obviously complained). I’d say avoiding it is a good choice.
Roku anything
I have a tv from them and one day the PBS kids app just stopped working. I contacted customer support and they just told me it was the app developer’s fault, nothing to be done. Waited months thinking it would eventually resolve but never did.
And recently where they:
- Blocked people from using their tvs until they accepted a new agreement and
- Filed for a patent that defines how they can start overlaying ads on top of other connected devices over hdmi
Glad I shut off wifi to my tv years ago and plugged in a separate smart tv hdmi dongle. And not getting anywhere near anything that says Roku on the packaging again.
I’ve never had a Roku TV, but I’ve been using two of their HDMI connected devices for years.
I’ve never had an issue, but one is too old and needs replacing. What alternatives would you suggest I have a look at?
A phone plan with a phone. You pay more over time and you get stuck with a contract.
Buy a phone and get a plan from a MVNO. Your monthly plan will be better and cheaper. Also since you own the phone when a better plan appears you can just switch.
Adobe Creative Cloud. It’s really expensive, and once you stop paying, you lose everything.
No wonder why it’s some of the most pirated software in the world.
Losing access to a work I put hours and days, sometimes months of my life was the main reason I now absolutely refuse any non-open source products. My advisor/colleagues sometimes say “university gives it for free”, or “we pay all that money for this softwares”, but I am not going to use them even if they are slightly better than open source.
You’re making great progress.
Kids
