Android TV now also comes with forced ads (since rebranding to Google TV).
I was pretty upset when the very expensive Android TV gadget I bought (Nvidia Shield TV) specifically to have an external device without ads suddenly had them. They take up the upper third of the home screen.
What they did to the shield was a tragedy. It was so refreshing to have a device that I could completely customized to remove ads and suggested content. I don't blame Nvidia I think this is more on the Google TV side. I still think the shield is the best TV box on the market. I keep meaning to look into loading a different launcher that will let me go back to the old style.
I have no proof, but I have a feeling nVidia is working to fix this problem. They were probably blind-sided and so it's taking a while, but I fully expect them to create their own launcher now to combat this. Their customers were quite upset about it.
Were there significant downsides to the laptop solution?
I have a similar setup with a NUC mounting storage from a small ARM-powered NAS, but I was thinking of changing this to an old ThinkPad X230 with just internal storage and offsite backup.
It was a really old beater, and the problems, I think, stemmed from there - think of electrical problems, because of old USB ports and such. Otherwise it was chugging along like a champ. What I like in my current setup more, is that I could upgrade it as my needs increased - in the desktop, I could fit 5 HDDs and 20G RAM, impossible with my old laptop.
Oooo! Depending on your taste you're in for either a very boring movie or the experience of a lifetime. Complete with an associated rabbit hole of mystery surrounding the director: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Room
I think in this case it's more like you've bought a truck but you put a lawnmower engine in it.
It's a big step between esoterics and "please don't use the cheap shitty DAC that was integrated into your monitor to satisfy a feature checklist".
The amp part will matter a lot the more impedance the cans have, and many of the better headphones are high(er)-impedance. Might as well spring for a headphone amp + DAC combo just to see how it sounds. It's not that expensive, FiiO has some for under 80 bucks, for example.
They were the ones opposed to this sale. The sale was basically not a sale but a hostile takeover, and the former staff have now created a non-profit organization under Swedish law to hold the new network so that this kind of thing can't happen again.
Running a Matrix homeserver is still quite a pain in the ass, especially because there is no real automatic way to purge old history. Join a busy room once and pay for it in megs or gigs of text stored in your DB forever.
Just using a matrix.org account instead is antisocial at this point because of the resources you're taking from the project, whereas paying for a hosted homeserver might not be something everyone can afford. IRC instead only requires a bouncer in the worst case, and even if you stay on channels for years you won't accrue as much history as a Matrix room can generate in a few days. I find that easier to maintain and store.
I do run my own Matrix homeserver and I intend to keep doing that and paying for it, but Matrix has more rough edges than IRC at the moment IMHO.
Edit: Ah, sorry, this was actually meant in reply to parent. But gonna leave it in.
This does not apply to state events. I still had hundreds of MBs of those after purging :( I think it's not impossible to manage this, just a pain in the ass :D
> ...Matrix has more rough edges than IRC at the moment IMHO...
You might be right. Yet, I'm still hopeful for the matrix network and protocol. Also, irc has had a bit of a head start, having had the benefit of decades of eyes looking at it, and hands helping to improve it. Then again, 2 or 3 decades from today, I might be the one holding onto my matrix network world when someone else on a forum discusses the merits (warts and all) of some new protocol for communications scenarios (not limited to chat). :-)
Wow, U.S. egg pricing seems crazy to me. It's US$ 9.90/dozen in Switzerland at a normal nationwide store vs. US$ 5.90 at Aldi Suisse (both selling free-range Swiss eggs).
This can't be explained just by purchase power differences. Considering the conditions even for Swiss free-range chickens aren't good, are they particularly terrible for chickens laying 5 cent eggs? I couldn't find any information (not even pricing) on the Aldi US site.
I come from Iowa, which is by a large margin the largest egg producer in the country. It could be partially a locality thing (very little transportation).
Also of note, this last summer was very very rough for chicken production. Prices were very low compared to input costs, and chicken farmers were losing their shirts. Chicken renderers (mass killing of chickens when the price drops too much) were backed up for many weeks.
That's horrible. I just looked at some farming methods. Man, all the evils of humanity...
Caging has been illegal in Switzerland since 1992, that probably makes part of the price difference. So egg collection can be automated easily in a U.S. process (in states where cages are legal) but is harder to automate here. I would guess they still use nest boxes so there could theoretically be an automatic method from the nest box to a conveyor belt. I'll research if Switzerland hand-collects things, then the wage difference of whoever does that plus vastly more expensive land could explain the rest of the price.
I was pretty upset when the very expensive Android TV gadget I bought (Nvidia Shield TV) specifically to have an external device without ads suddenly had them. They take up the upper third of the home screen.