Soldered RAM is just about impossible to upgrade/replace, you have to desolder it and do a bunch of other tasks. I have only ever seen one person do it on a modern laptop and it looked horrendous: https://gregdavill.com/posts/dell-xps13-ram-upgrade/

I would just completely abandon any plans to upgrade a soldered RAM laptop unless you are extremely skilled.

Unsoldered RAM is just push fit sockets that have a release clip you need to pull if the socket is already populated. The RAM can only go in one way, its super super easy. Just make sure you double check the spec of RAM you buying against the laptop specs to make sure you buy the right sort.

The object selection tools in lightroom are pretty amazing, being able to choose select subject on the menu and it just selects the ducks or people or whatever pretty much perfectly each time to make your mask is pretty bonkers. It saves so much time over trying to select an object in dark table.

I really like dark table, I actually prefer the way it stacks modules vs. lightroom, and this is just for complex object selection, I can select the sky or background or whatever pretty simply in dark table.

Oh and dark table does not support DNG files. My workflow using PureRAW outputs compressed DNG files and Darktable will not support them currently. Sure I can go other routes for my export but the smaller size of a compressed DNG is very attractive when I can be working with about 100 * 40megapixel images.

PureRAW can sort of be duplicated by dark table, but again its not quite as good, doesnt quite have the same list of lens for correction/denoise capability. I shoot wildlife a lot and high ISO is a factor of life. Its not that dark table is bad at this its just PureRAW is very good at removing that noise and sharpening.

So lightroom and PureRAW forces me to have either windows or macos, and a shitty subscription for the former.

Most amateurs have signifcantly more time they can cut by training better and harder than spending thousands or tens of thousands on better components.

Its a very small list of amateurs who train to the same level as a pro who has a good chance of winning any of the big competitions.

Stick that under 30s pro on a cheap bike geared the same as a midlife crisis amater 45 year old gear head on an ultra expensive bike and guess who wins?

If you want to buy wins enter an amateur car racing event, those are mostly reflective of money spent given a base level of talent and training (which costs far more money per hour than training for cycling).

Its hands down my most useful tool, especially as I can both invite people to my events and I can share my calendar with people I choose. Everything goes into the calendar, from appointments to birthdays to holidays to when things need to be renewed. Only time I forget something now is if it hasn’t gone into the calendar.

I especially like being able to send the address of where I am meant to be going straight to my maps program, as I will usually try and work out where I want to park when going somewhere. Saves so much hassle when you actually get to the event.

I did a large scale data rationalization and migration project for a company that is heavily regulated. They can be asked to prove they have this or that document from seven years ago, for no other reason than they should have it. Not having it means big fines and negative press.

Hundreds of Tbs of data got appropriately labelled and migrated, even more got left behind on the old system till it could be decommissioned safely after a period of parallel running.

As part of the decommissioning the data was backed up twice, and I wanted the backup properly tested with some random file restores. Not a full restore, just a few random restores just a proof of life test that the backups worked. I was told that wasn’t a reasonable request and it wasn’t needed as the architect in charge of backups trusted his backup team and he “designed pragmatic solutions”.

I still mean to call in to the regulator in a year or two to trigger a restore request, lets see if a pragmatic solution design is actually the same as performing some basic testing.

The budget for Galaxys Edge was cut by Chapek, it was only part of what was planned and what did get implemented was often less than originally planned.

Other than cutting the budget, I think were they went wrong with it was making too high a concept for a theme park and centering it around the less popular sequel franchise time line. It made for a confusing experience for a more casual Star Wars fan.

I stand by RotR being an S tier ride, when it isnt operating broken, because its over complicated and the maintenance budgets were cut.

Distro is more an alignment of philosophy between you and the distro. Something slowly updated but really stable? Debian. Something cutting edge, but with lots of guides? Arch, etc. etc.

Any of them can pretty much run any shell, DE or WM, and as that’s what you spend the most of the time interacting with, that’s a more personal touch point. The distro is really just the package manager that you regularly interact with, and thats easy enough to hide behind something like topgrade.

I have only used Sway for a few years and anything else feels bloated and slow to use to me now. I spent a long time tweaking to get it how I wanted both in terms of add ons and config, then setting the keyboard shortcuts that work for me. I even have a bunch of them configured on my actual keyboard on layers to make them even easier to activate.

Its worth the investment for me as its now transparent to my workflow. I run the same config across all my machines and its been a stable config for the longest time. Long term stability is the key for me.

I used to do an hour of power lifting in the morning, then after work, two hours of BJJ/Kickboxing/conditioning five days a week.

I didn’t start doing that, I built up to it over twelve hard months with heavy focus on base fitness and flexibility.

Needed a complete change in diet and mentality to do so. My diet was totally focused on training for the longest time, stupid mix/maxing such as eating lentils over rice due to lower sugar content and higher protein content.

It was also a massive help that I WfH and have a weights cage at home so that saved an enormous amount of time that I could reinvest in training.

I cannot train that hard now as I am too old to recover from that much training but I did so for more than a decade. Now I just focus on lifting every other day with stretching/yoga in between.

When my kids were kids it really depended on if they needed anything big. One year we would get them a macbook because they needed a new laptop for school but then it would last nearly five years so I wouldn’t have to buy another one for ages. Same for things like phones or consoles or. I always spent more on these big purchases as they normally last longer.

Now they adults I spend a few hundred for birthdays and Christmas. I like to get something they will actually use, will last, and is memorable. The best gifts show that you actually pay attention to their current hobbies or are something they would want but would rare splash for. Example would be for my sons birthday i got him a GBA SP style emulator and loaded it up with pokemon roms, official and fan, as I knew he had a few months off studying for his professional qualification.

I would rather live on the streets than put up with that, I could not cope with it as I get woke up by people in the same house being quiet let alone noisy cunts like that.

Typically I get about six. Had a long weekend had did nine and half each day for three days straight, which never happens, then last night I got four hours and undid all that goodness.

I would like between seven and eight hours on the regular, just not going to happen unless I retire and live on my own as I am a very light sleeper.

I did Samsung dex for a while, its ok as long as you don’t want low level access to what you connecting to.

Now I switched to a gpd micropc 2 and its built in ethernet, sd card, usb a and c sockets and native linux make it so much more useful. No longer do i need dongles or other rubbish.

Plus it will do multiple monitor support, something dex struggles with. The keyboard is a little small for touch typing but the former factor is worth the trade of for me.

Dumbest person I know also happens to be a super nice, always happy, and also very attractive. She’s never struggled to get work ever, even for her dream job as a teacher when she had to take her foundational English and Math exams three times.

I would say she has a better life than the majority of people, never had a day of stress ever as everything has always worked out for her.

Don’t forget the trackball!

If they have vial compatible (qmk) firmware then you can configure the tap dance from the gui rather than having to customise and compile your own key map.

Not to be confused with via, which doesn’t support tap dance.

Clearly, its the tap dance feature within open source firmware, QMK, that is rising in popularity. People just want to be able to double tap and tap and hold for extra functionality on their keyboard and trackballs.

And I think that at some point enough people will have had enough that they take on production of that themselves via open source projects.

Sure, some will always be driven by cost, thats never going to change, but self sustainability will become more desirable as main stream brands, not just temu tat, drops in quality.

All of which is true but it doesn’t matter if the product is crippled by the designer. Whole point of my model is that you are the designer so its only shit if you are.

Classic is a little different from modern tsw, it could have been retired when it became Classic but they kept it on. How long on total was that dlc available for? And I don’t believe its been turned off just not available to buy or officially supported?

Open source devices will become more mainstream as a push back by consumers against enshitifcation, privacy invasion, disposable products, ever rising subscription costs.

Not just things like phones and laptops but things like mice, keyboards, headphones, even tvs and kitchen appliances. I know some of these are possible now, I use a ploppy trackball and qmk based keyboards but a wider spread of these across the home and more than just hobbyists like myself.

Large chunks will be 3D printed, moving the large component parts of manufacting to the local area. Plus things will be endlessly fixable and upgradable.

I purchased a bunch of dlc for Train Sim World (tsw). I only buy dlc for tsw when its on sale, save a small fortune that way.

Bonus savings if you can get one of the bundles on sale for double discount. I got £150 of dlc for about £55. Yeah dlc is super expensive for tsw but it doesn’t go out of date and nor is it needed for a multiplayer mode so why rush?

Been after the expansion pack for Germany and the Preston Route for ages.

Train Sim World® 5: West Coast Main Line: Preston - Carlisle Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: Schnellfahrstrecke Kassel - Würzburg Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: DB BR 101 Loco Add-On Train Sim World® 5: Maintalbahn: Aschaffenburg - Miltenberg Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: Hauptstrecke Rhein-Ruhr: Duisburg - Bochum Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: Ruhr-Sieg Nord: Hagen - Finnentrop Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: DB BR 363 Loco Add-On