If you really want to use a chromium-based browser, Vivaldi does all this and for free. It’s not bad, definitely a bit faster than firefox but that’s the nature of the beast for the web these days. I also like having my tabs on the side rather than the top. I think you can do that with Firefox via an extension, I’ll have to play around. But I much prefer using Firefox in my daily life
Man this bullshit seems to have gotten so much worse since I last looked for a job in 2023
Prior to my current job, I worked at one for 7 years. I’m an industrial electrician, so maybe the demand is higher. But in 2023, I applied for 12 jobs, got 3 interviews which resulted in 2 offers. All cold applications on indeed. I was picky about which jobs I even applied for. For one of the offers I did not want the job and it paid too little so I strung them along as much as I could before I finally turned it down as I had a feeling I was getting my current job, but it took forever for some management to come back from field service for my second interview.
Hell yea I’m from Pittsburgh too!
Yeah. It’s the same thing Uber did with pushing cab services out of business.
Not only that, but AWS is the real money maker for them. Not that retail and gaming and prime and whatever don’t also make boat loads of cash, but it doesn’t even graze AWS. The scale of these data centers is unreal and most of the internet runs on AWS.
I’m an industrial electrician with background on what they’re ordering and installing in terms of control panels and if you saw the weekly shipments it’d make you sick. And we’re only one supplier, they have others.
What? The IO is digital inputs and outputs, analog inputs and outputs.
Then there’s power distribution and 24v DC device power (or 120v depending on application and often age), relays, contactors, timers, VFDs, etc. This is what the world runs on. Networking cables like that Ethernet are still part of it but a pretty small part. They just get plugged into all the PLC racks and any other device that needs it. Some of what I described can be replaced with automation and code, but only the very old legacy devices a lot of these old plants and mills still have around because they’re still functional…
Oh this here is my shit. You should see some of the steel mills we’ve worked on. Panels so old they just screwed them right into the stone walls, live busbars bent and snaking around in open air, fuck all for controls. Love it.
Why is damn near everything in Chinese?
One thing I’d add is a whole house surge suppressor.
I saw the power lines arcing to either each other or the bamboo outside our house last week during a bad storm.
A whole house surge suppressor is only like $100, I’m gonna get one soon and install it. I saw it’s best to install it as close as possible to the main incoming power lugs, one lead on each leg of the split phase 120/240.
A UPS will protect against surges but it’s just a good idea with how many appliances and devices have circuit boards in homes these days. Like your furnace, oven, washing machine, game console, TV, etc.
I had an insane surge last winter so it’s a long time coming haha. I woke up and half my circuits were off. I measured 170v to gnd on one of the legs. Power company and fire dept had to show up to fix it.
Power is ehh not great where I live.
Edit: for your point about a NAS failure. If that were to happen, since I use unRAID, I could just throw the disks on any Linux PC and my data would be fine.
Get a OnePlus 13. They’re ~$900 now but that will soon drop when the new model drops, or black Friday or whatever.
No bloat, great specs, a new battery technology that lasts for 2 days for me.
Or you could just do your chores and not drop 20k
Some of the biggest data centers are pushing 100 megawatts. When I worked on the solar farms out west, an entire industrial site would be around 200-400 megawatts.
For context, those sites would be powering entire towns. The Blythe mesa solar project is over 2,000 acres of solar panels. It’s bigger than the town. Quite a bit of Las Vegas is ran on solar.
It’s not quite as simple as just sticking panels on the roof of the data center. It also needs to be reliable enough to store the energy so it’s available at night when the sun is down. This is still one of solar’s biggest hurdles.
They fired up an old decommissioned nuke plant in Eastern Pennsylvania to power a Microsoft data center
Or you can just as easily install a Linux distro, because that’s all steamOS is but slightly game-ified. If anything you’d probably have a better desktop experience with a distro built with that in mind.
There never used to be tornadoes in my area. Now there are. With climate change, anything’s possible!
My friends don’t have it set up. Some of them are friends of friends, and people I don’t talk to regularly. I’m not going to try and convert them. It’s also a bit more complicated via tailscale or VPN reverse proxies and Plex “just werks”. If there’s anything beyond just installing an app and clicking an invite, a bunch of people who use my library are going to have a hard time. Like my dad, he’s pushing 70. My friends would also have to do the goofy networking setup for it to work for me.
I’m also not even sure if people I share with have means of installing. My one friend who uses my library a lot does it through a Samsung TV. That involves sideloading the app to install jellyfin.
Lastly, like I said, music. Plexamp is one of my #1 used apps. There’s a lot that goes into that beyond just being able to play media. It curates playlists depending on what you just listened to or gives you similar artists, similar to how Spotify makes a “radio” after playing something.
Something that’s getting glossed over in these comments is the ability to easily watch or listen to friends’ media.
I have my own library with about 1k movies, a bunch of anime and TV, and 10k albums. But I have like 6 or 7 friends with libraries even larger. My one friend has 37k albums, they all have thousands of movies I never even heard of, etc. It really makes it like my own mini streaming service, and I love throwing on a huge music library on shuffle via plexamp while driving to/from work.
I paid like $70 for a lifetime pass years ago, so I’m along for the ride I guess. I really rely on the music aspect of it, I haven’t had a spotify subscription in like 7 years.
I know they changed a lot lately, and particularly what pisses me off is how vague and how they intentionally obfuscate how their model works now. I have friends that for years used my library, and recently have been like “I saw Plex started charging now so I stopped using it” and I have to be like “no it’s still free because I have a lifetime pass”. It’s definitely just to trick people into getting monthly subscriptions.
The worst is the stranglehold windows has in the professional world. Shit I’m not even an office worker and I have to deal with ads and now AI just working in the shop and using a PC for Outlook, Excel, Word, etc.
Adobe has been getting really bad too. I shouldn’t have to close like 4 different banners, popups, involuntary AI “summary” suggestions every time I open a PDF. The literal only thing I open on adobe is electrical schematics and using acrobat to document changes, etc. I doubt it could summarize drawings exported from AutoCAD and even if it could, why would I even want that? I need to test panels, not have something tell me “this is a schematic”
Already did this ages ago. Been building a collection for decades now. I’m pushing about 10k albums on the NAS. Haven’t had spotify since like 2018
Ha haaa, as someone who has worked on some of the largest industrial applications in the country, glad to see that even the most advanced scientific cutting edge technology like this is still installed by electricians yolo’ing it. After working on a launch pad for space rockets, everything everywhere is just put together fuck all. Steel mills are especially bad, you have a mix of absolutely ancient technology mixed with decades of repairs and changes and new equipment that is heavily regulated and over engineered and inspectors all trying to meet current codes while mixing old with new, and if it’s old good luck with any semblance of updated drawings. A “refurbished” panel is always a trip as they basically just keep the enclosure and gut it and install new shit and maybe keep a few big important components but then it’s a “repair” and not a new installation.
It’s amazing how the world works sometimes