The guy who runs the instance I’m on sends out a statement every month, detailing how much he’s received in donations, what everything has cost, and how much there is leftover. Accounting for a small buffer to allow for emergencies, he donates the excess to Alzheimer’s research. We’re a Pritchett focus instance, so everyone’s happy with that.

I’ve paid far more to my Masto admin than I ever did to Twitter.

I’ve been on there two years now, so 🤷🏽‍♀️

Meanwhile, I’m technologically thick as shit and have no trouble using Mastodon at all. If I know someone is on there I’ll find their profile and follow them. Done.

It ain’t that complicated.

They’ve brought the hammer down on this. I was happily ‘traveling to Ukraine’ with my Apple TV to watch YouTube without ads for the equivalent of around £3 a month for over a year. Last month they canned our Premium.

I use yt-dlp to download my subs into a Plex folder now. Fuck ‘em.

Did you switch to it from Android or iOS? Because as someone who’s only used iOS since 2010, I imagine it’ll be one hell of a shock.

I’ve take to using yt-dlp to download things I want to watch to a Plex folder, just so I can watch on Apple TV without having to tolerate a barrage of cunty adverts.

It’s kind of a pain, but it does mean that I’m spending far less time idly scrolling through YouTube.

I’m currently in a weird thing with Apple. I’ve been using Macs since ‘07 and iPhones since ‘10, and while they make absolutely incredible hardware, I’m sick of how much they rip off their customers, and I’m sick of being able to see the ways in which they adapt software to push you towards the thing that makes them the most money.

As a result I have an M2 MacBook which is the best laptop I’ve ever owned, and I’m close to putting Asahi on it to see if I can use that flavour of Linux as a daily driver. Come February, when my iPhone 13 mini is due for upgrade, I’m giving serious consideration to picking up a used Pixel 8 so I can use Graphene instead.

On the other hand, there’s nothing you can do anyway, so the only option is to let them burn.

The centre of that circle appears to be a tool shop. I don’t like what that might suggest…

Being told this time and time and time again has really fucked the male psyche over the years.

You know this thing is tiny, right? It’ll be shockingly easy to pick up and press the button. Even with cables hanging out of it.

I use a 2014 mini with all cables hanging out the back, and it’s really easy to pick up.

It’s literally just the same body as the OG Magic Mouse, which had a bay for a pair of AAs underneath. All they did was remove the bay, put a rechargeable battery in there, and a socket to charge it. It takes a couple of minutes to give it 9 hours of juice.

There’s no grand conspiracy.

My MacBook has just two USB-C sockets. When I bought it I picked up a couple of A adapters on Amazon for a few quid each. It’s never been an issue. Even less so with a desktop, as you’re able to leave the adapters in all the time.

The power draw of these things when sleeping is negligible. They’re basically off, so there’s no real need to shut them down with any regularity.

I can use my MacBook for a whole day and still have half the battery left. Their power efficiency is genuinely remarkable.

The other day I got to pondering whether people who work for ad serving companies have ad blockers on their work computers.

And with GMail and Chrome, it is still.

Between 1948 and 1991 Skoda was a state owned company, making pretty low end cars to satisfy a social requirement for Czech citizens to have a vehicle. They had 0 bells and whistles because that wasn’t really the communist way.

As a result, non-communist car manufacturers almost always offered better quality, better kitted out models, so the likes of Skoda, Lada, and Yugo became a joke.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I need to sort out a different way of doing things.

My phone hasn’t made a sound in years. It’s hard on silent and all notifications* go to my watch so it can tap my wrist quietly and politely. _ *I say “all”, but it’s calls, messages, and reminders. General purpose apps aren’t allowed to talk to me.