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Bruncvik

@ Bruncvik @lemmy.world

Posts
1
Comments
215
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • E-waste is growing 5x faster than it's recycled, says UN

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  • Have they? In what way?

    This is speculation by Ars Technica. Essentially, a recent firmware upgrade seems to have drastically lowered the battery life of some models. In addition, they are removing all third-party apps in the EU in response to the DMA.

    What TVs? Vizio, Hisense, the Chinese junk budget brands?

    Most recently Roku. But I used a TV only as an example. A year ago, an OTA upgrade bricked microwave ovens. Google's history of bricking its smart home products goes back to at least 2016, companies like Wink threaten to brick your devices unless you suddenly start paying a monthly fee on top of your purchase price "for life", there were reports of smart bulbs or thermostats ceasing working as well.

    The following is pure speculation on my part: I think we're at the beginning of a huge wave of planned obsolescence. Everyone and their mother are now training AI's, and they want their customers to replace older products, which don't support AI integration, with new ones. They'll soon stop supporting the older devices or outright bricking them, to force people to buy the new ones.

  • E-waste is growing 5x faster than it's recycled, says UN

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  • Samsung Galaxy S2. With a replaceable battery and good external cover, that thing can last for a long time. I did contribute to e-waste by replacing the battery three times so far, but that's all.

  • E-waste is growing 5x faster than it's recycled, says UN

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  • Just another byproduct of enshittification. Novadays, a top-end Garmin watch lasts about as long as a Chinese watch of a brand with random characters you buy off Amazon. Google is introducing planned obsolesence in Fitbit. Banking apps are beginning to require phones that are no more than 4 years old. TVs get bricked with firmware upgrades. So, consumers are trained to buy cheapest, least reliable electronics, because over time they'll provide more value than top-end items which used to last much longer. (This was written on a 13 years old phone. I may not have access to my banking app anymore, but otherwise it works for everything I need, and I haven't contributed to e-waste in this regard. Not that the pollution angle was my reason to keep the phone, but it's a nice extra bonus.)

  • Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory

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  • I watched a video on Youtube (so take it with a grain of salt) that claimed that the current climate models don't take into account the reflectivity of the clouds. When these are included, the models appear to be far more accurate. (I only have a passing interest in the topic, no expertise, so I likely misrepresented the conclusions. If you are interested more watch the video yourself.)

  • Tethered plastic caps

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  • I saw it for the first time last summer. Did a little reading, and according to the news articles, it was a EU directive, but it had been heavily lobbied for by Coca Cola. If I remember right, all EU countries should have implemented the necessary legislature by June this year.

    I personally just tear the caps off. Can't get used to them.

  • Stop using Opera Browser and Opera GX

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  • Just something I'm used to. I have windows tabs on the bottom, so I'd like to have everything in the same place, rather than move the cursor all over the screen. I guess it's a holdover back from Netscape days when I had several separate windows open, and they all had their own tab on the Windows task bar.

  • Stop using Opera Browser and Opera GX

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  • I used Opera because you could place tabs at the bottom of the window. When Opera became just a Chrome skin, I switched to Firefox because through the Tab Mix Plus extension I could place the tabs to the bottom. When Firefox killed the extension (and many more), I switched to Vivaldi (made by the former Opera team) because it offered tabs on the bottom. Very recently I switched to Waterfox, because @jh34@lemmy.world told me the browser also allows for tabs to be placed at the bottom. What can I say... I'm a bottom kind of guy...

  • Removed

    CNN blocks Firefox with uBo

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  • I'm getting these messages occasionally, but usually they make sense, such as when I go to online gaming sites or torrenting portals. Didn't try porn - don't want a call from HR. In general, our IT policies are fairly sensible; this is one of the very few outliers.

  • Removed

    CNN blocks Firefox with uBo

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  • All other MSM, even some more questionable like The Sun or Fox News, works fine. CNN is the only one blocked.

  • A rant about an experience I had with Google maps today.

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  • I found out that the best way to force Google Maps to update is to make the correct edit in Open Street Maps. Google seems to source its local information from there.

    Just an anecdotal example: I live at the end of a cul-de-sac, and I've seen loads of cars drive up to my house, and then gingerly do a 15-point turn (the road is very narrow), and drive back. I checked Google Maps and found that it lists my street as open. I've filled reports with Google several times, and nothing happened. Then, I updated OSM to indicate that at the end of my street there's just a pedestrian footpath to the next street. Within two weeks, the number of cars turning around decreased drastically. I checked Google Maps, and found that they fixed their map. A few years later, there's still the odd car making the mistake, but the only map service I could identify that still didn't update was Apple Maps.

    Since then, I've done several edits in OSM (I live in a young estate, with loads of construction still going on, so maps are not very reliable), and Google always picked up these edits.

  • Removed

    CNN blocks Firefox with uBo

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  • Funny... My company (over 100k employees worldwide) is blocking CNN as a security risk...

  • Data regulator fines HelloFresh £140k for sending 80M+ spams | Messaging menace used text and email to bombard people

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  • Got a couple of e-mails from them on one of my mail accounts, even though I never subscribed to them (in fact, at that time I didn't even know who they were). Marked them as spam, and Gmail never showed me more of their e-mails. If enough people did the same, e-mails from the hellofresh domain may now be is some of the biggest spam filters. Way to shoot themselves in the foot.

  • It is essential to stop using Chrome. Under the pretense of saving users from third-party spyware, Google is creating an ecosystem in which Chrome itself is the spyware.

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  • I was one of the users who left because TabMixPlus stopped working. Never worked again, so I'm with Vivaldi. I know; it's built on Chromium, but being able to have my tabs on the bottom of the window is worth it for me.

  • Almost Half of Warren Buffett-led Berkshire Hathaway's $365 Billion Portfolio Is Invested in Only 1 Stock

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  • I used to work as a financial analyst on Wall Street, and even after I changed careers I invested on my own, roughly following Buffet's strategy. My annual returns averaged 22%, but given the little starting capital ($2000), I cashed out with just enough for a large downpayment on my house.

    Anyway, just a very short primer on how Buffet is investing. He's a student of Benjamin Graham who wrote the highly influential The Intelligent Investor. There, Graham outlined the most basic fundamental strategy: buy stock in companies where market cap is below book value and hold long-term, until stock catches up. Obviously, that's hardly feasible in today's markets, but there are still stocks that you won't realize they are undervalued until you research the shit out of the companies. Not stocks, but companies. The former, technical investing, has been in vogue since at least the 90s, while the latter is the old school fundamental approach of actually calculating the stock's underlying value and its growth potential.

    Where it all comes together is portfolio building. The conventional theory is to have around 30 stocks to minimize volatility. Buffet's approach is to maximize upward potential by having fewer stocks (around 10), while minimizing risks by researching and fully understanding companies he invests in. This ranges from understanding financials and operations to analizing the company's management. Buffet is known for keeping the management of an acquired company in place and not interfering with their decisions because he wouldn't invest into a company where he wouldn't trust the management in the first place.

    Of course, I didn't have the means for investing enough to have any influence on the company or market, so I had to really dig into the fundamentals and hope the market would eventually realize the value of the company. It worked for me, as long as I stuck to companies whose business model I could understand. So, I missed loads of winners from the tech sector, but I've had a steady above-market return, and that was good enough for me. I followed the advice from the book On Investing by John Neff, which I can fully recommend, if it's still in print.