Aarlog

Tbh even when there aren’t such blatant errors in their reviews Linus has felt out of touch for years. Sometime in 2018 or 2019 (I don’t remember exactly when) Linus did a review of some $150 Alcatel phone and he kept complaining about how it had a micro USB charging port instead of type C, arguing how physical type C ports only cost “pennies” more than micro ports and how there was “nO eXcUsE” to still use micro USB. Mind you, type C had only started appearing on flagships around late 2016-17, so it hadn’t yet started to trickle down into the mid-range and budget segments of the market at that point. That made it all the more jarring to hear Linus ranting about a budget device still using micro USB only a couple of years after type C had even begun to see market adoption.

As someone who’s stuck to the low-mid end of the market (~$150-250) basically since getting my first smartphone, it was immediately obvious watching that video that Linus doesn’t know what the hell he was talking about when it came to tech outside of the high end, and expects every big new feature or standard to be crammed into budget devices regardless of the effects it might have on the final cost of said devices. Sure, type C ports only cost “pennies” more than micro-B ports at that time. But those extra pennies add up on devices that might only cost a handful of dollars to manufacture, plus the extra engineering and design work that has to be put in to implement it, and the added cost of type C cables over micro-B that would have to be included in the box.

After giving it some thought after watching that video, I started to gradually trust Linus less and less regarding anything budget of mid-range over the last 5-ish years before I unsubbed entirely last night. It sucks seeing a creator you respected so much at first go down this path, but I guess nothing can last forever.

I’ve been wearing Reebok Walk Ultra 7’s for ~8 months and I haven’t had any major complaints so far. The outsoles are wearing down as I expected them to, but they’re wearing down slower than I expected, tbh, especially for how soft they are and how often I use them. And as someone with quite big feet, seeing a big, established footwear brand like Reebok make a good shoe I can actually wear (and not look completely like an off-brand New Balance) is nice.

I’ve also owned a pair of Airwalks with gum soles that held up quite well for walking around. In my experience, athletic and skate shoes with harder outsoles tend to last MUCH longer than a typical sneaker, and that pair of AWs had harder outsoles than any other shoe I’ve owned. That pair was made before the brand went out of business a few years back though so YMMV on their current lineup, though it seems they still have a handful of gum sole shoes available.

The API change fiasco and the fallout from it was definitely the straw that broke the camel’s back for me, but if I’m being completely honest all the other missteps and fuck-ups from the company were pushing me closer and closer to finding an alternative for years. I stayed for as long as I did mainly because it was a good place to get news and interact with various niche communities, but really Lemmy does all of that just as well, for the most part.

That said though, I don’t think I would’ve been as ready to leave Reddit were it not for Elon buying Twitter and absolutely fucking that up too. That was the main thing that got me to look into alternative social media sites in the first place, though I haven’t been as fruitful with finding a good Twitter replacement yet.

I wouldn’t say I’m more active in terms of posting and commenting, though I wasn’t too active on Reddit the last few years to begin with. Though the fact I haven’t logged into my Reddit account of 10 years since checking out Lemmy speaks to how at-home I feel here, even after basically giving up one of the sites I used the most in the past decade or so.