Scientist, Drummer, Dog Owner person.

  • 2 Posts
  • 90 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 8th, 2023

help-circle



  • Newsblur right now. I don’t want ads, and I like the f-droid disabled the intrusive options from the playstore.

    Any other reader recs? Not married to it by any means, I like it well enough. I don’t like that I can’t browse by folder or by everything without a premium subscription though. $99/year is extreme for my uses, wish there was a more palatable option for intermediate users. Still, it’s easy enough to jump between topics.










  • I am on team work from home personally, but the reality is we will have to compromise a bit, and I think a hybrid environment is where the sweet spot is. I still work remote about 90% of the time, but realistically I think 60-80% remote, 20-40% in office is ideal and tenable for just about every work type where remote work is feasible.

    There is benefit to being in person with your colleagues, there is benefit to having a centralized area for congregating, meeting with outside stakeholders, etc. However, there is absolutely no reason to be in the office all day every day. It makes no sense. The bulk of employees spend AT LEAST 50% (rank and file probably closer to 85-90%?) of their time working alone, by themselves. Let them do that wherever the fuck they want. If the work is getting done, leave them the fuck alone and let them work in their PJs or on their couch or whatever.

    A hybrid environment also keeps your work force local and prevents us all from being outsourced. If we all insist on working remote full time then there is absolutely no reason for employers not to offer our jobs to someone living somewhere that’s cheaper to live. Sure, we could correct over time and move to a lower cost of living place to compete, but is that really what you want? Do you want to leave your home, friends, family, etc just to chase the job you already have solely because they won’t pay you what they already do to stay where you are? If you own a home do you want the value to tank as demand plummets? If your rent is cheap do you want it to skyrocket because displaced remote workers are flooding your town in a rush to capitalize?




  • Yes I used AdAway and AdGuard exclusively on my phone. I use ublock for everything on my desktop, and will until it stops being effective. I never see ads on desktop of any sort so it’s still chugging like a champ but to my knowledge they don’t make an OS level blocker for Android.

    AdAway is available on f-droid, it’s not in the app store as far as I know.



  • AdGuard was my ad blocker of choice on Android for years, but man did they fall off a cliff recently. I used them when you could purchase a forever license (which I don’t even think is an option anymore?), and it was great. All ads would be blocked basically everywhere, whenever they’d sneak through it just meant there was a filter that was out of date and needed to be updated.

    Then about a year ago, the shenanigans started. Non-stop emails like OP is complaining about but also - their service BROKE whenever my phone would switch from data to wifi or vice versa. Like, any time it switched network types, just no internet would work at all. I’d have to force quit AdGuard and suddenly everything was fine. The timing happened when android updated from 12 to 13, so I figured it was something to do with that and emailed customer service. I got a notice that said something like “due to high ticket volume, it may be SEVERAL WEEKS before we get to your ticket or acknowledge it is being worked on, thank you for your patience.” So they’re spamming your inbox non-stop trying to click farm, but they have nobody actually working on the product. I never heard anything ever again (still haven’t…account is still active, email is still the same). I tried reaching out 3 or 4 more times but I’ve never received a response.

    So…yeah fuck em I guess.



  • I suspect that’s actually part of the problem. Zoom is being ditched for teams left and right - so many enterprise companies already have Office on all their machines on the network. Why would they continue to pay for zoom (who I believe jacked up their prices to capitalize on the COVID influx) when teams is included in their software suite and serves the exact same function, with additional functionality? Not saying teams is as good/better/worse than zoom, but it serves the same purpose. There are also concerns over zooms security, which isn’t helped by a huge inrease in cyber attacks just about everywhere - that’s also very problematic for zoom since Teams already requires MFA through authenticator to help prevent the latter.

    The Zoom peak declining combined with a competitor rapidly growing means they’re losing money, and of course the only solution to that is to force employees back into the office. I mean what else could you possibly do? There’s simply no other solution to this problem. They’ve tried nothing so far and it hasn’t worked so, really theor hand has been forced.


  • 7 pro is my favorite phone ove ever owned, finally unseating the v30 which was criminally underrated at the time. I wish there was something better that wasn’t made by Google, but I have always been disappointed with my Samsung devices (Galaxy Note OG, Galaxy s7edge, S9). I felt trapped by them and they always had SO MUCH BLOAT. The s7 was the best of the bunch. I’ve had about as many pixels (2pro, 3pro, 6, 7 pro). They’ve all gotten better with each iteration, but I saw no reason to even consider a pixel 4 or 5. 6 was a huge step up but had some build quality issues. Overall I liked the design choices. I would still have my six but I was having a battery issue that couldn’t be fixed so they let me trade it in and shaved $100 off the 7pro for me in lieu of doing an RMA that late into the life cycle. 7 pro is excellent. I won’t be getting a new phone until this one is dead.