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Comment This isn't about regulating themselves (Score 2) 64

So lets say I am ahead in a field and have a few up and coming competitors. There is a simple solution to the problem, lets get the government to regulate us all. This causes our competitors to massively slow down as they have to respond to the regulations that I wrote (I don't have to slow down as much - I wrote the regulations such that I am already following them of course). There is also a cost to complying with regulations - it tends not to scale with size more like a static cost. As a large incumbent I can spend a billion dollars complying with regulations. That small startup can not spend a billion dollars to comply, even is I can limit my costs to something I can afford to pay - that is money I am paying regulators not engineers making my product better.

Comment Re:"bring the missing functionality back in future (Score 5, Insightful) 31

Audacity has been on a very long journey to modernize itself. It wouldn't shock me to learn that they shipped it with functions that are being most widely used or easiest to carry over just to get over the hurdle of getting a major release out the door. It's a beloved tool; I know a bunch of people for whom it's a production linchpin, and I think the developers working on are aware of the number of edge cases where only some tiny fraction of their users make use of a feature. Those people can stay on version 3 for now.

IIRC, a lot of what needed to happen with Audacity was an overall change in user interfaces, which required a lot of deep thought about how people interact with the application. It may be that some of the unhandled features just don't align with the current user experience.

Comment Re: You say that like it's a bad thing (Score 1) 167

Do you think there's a world where Apple suddenly offers inexpensive replacement parts for anything? Sometimes the screens on Chromebooks are as low as $30. I'm sure they're third party panels, but they work and return the device to useful life. How likely is it that Apple offers screen replacements under $100, even to institutional buyers?

Comment Re: You say that like it's a bad thing (Score 4, Interesting) 167

That is repairable by the standards of Apple computers, not the standards of open hardware.

My experience dealing with a Chromebook deployment mirrors one of the grandparent commenters: 90% of the problems are broken screens, Screens are quick and easy to replace if you have the part, but screens cost money and you'll never had as many as you'll eventually need. You'll have extra parts for everything else because of the staggering number of broken screens.

I have an occasional side job dealing with PC/laptop/Chromebook repairs at a local weirdo private Christian Academy. Given that the place definitely seems to have a "go pick the stick I'm going to beat you with"-vibe, I suspect there's actually fewer broken systems than I might see from a similar deployment at a public school. Chromebook screens are still the biggest problem. One of the reasons I got this side gig is that an acquaintance saw the number of devices being written off and just assumed their day-to-day IT person couldn't possibly know what they're doing.

Anything else Apple does, unless their screens are indestructible or only cost $20 to replace, isn't going to help with that.

Comment Re:Podcasts are shit - podslop is always the stand (Score 1) 68

Firefox has an extension called Youtube Custom Speed. You can set arbitrary speeds from .05 to 16x in whatever increments you feel like adding. Not that it helps for the dipshits explaining how to type something in a terminal prompt, but it's definitely handy for speeding through laptop disassemblies and the like.

Chrome does appear to have the same thing so it probably works on whatever browser you like.

Comment Re:Podcasts are shit - podslop is always the stand (Score 1) 68

In Pocket Casts, the app I use, there's a playback speed control that can go up to 5x. I usually listen to podcasts at about 3x speed, which feels right to me. I lose a little nuance for audio fiction, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

16x audio playback speeds are typical for screen readers for visually impaired users. Maybe your wife configured something like that, but they take practice to get used to. I only have some familiarity with those because I used to have a blind co-worker and had to support his setup.

Comment ebikes are dangerous! (Score 1) 244

Speaking as a motorcycle rider, ebikes are dangerous. Not because of the bike but because of the riders. They often don't wear safety gear, they don't follow traffic laws, and many bikes top out at 70-80kph. It took considerable effort to get my Class M. A bike going that fast should require licensing and safety courses and helmet laws. Most people don't realize they can squid out on the road on an ebike just like you will on a motorcycle without proper gear.

Comment No win11. Uh uh, (Score 1) 27

I just installed Fedora 44 on my old Win10 laptop. Because Microsoft made sure this perfectly good laptop with 16gb RAM could not run Win11. And Affinity Suite runs great on wine now. And no obnoxious telemetry tracking. Oh yeah, for games: steam and lutris too.

Yeah yeah yeah, linux linux linux

still, Microsoft is in self-destruct mode.

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