Jesse Pinkman was a character from Breaking Bad, who was involved with the main character cooking meth and being involved in various crimes and drug deals.

I was referring mostly to balancing out artist royalties with service quality/content, but preference is all subjective and their libraries are all huge. I mean, I’ve got several thousand albums, over 54k tracks in my local library and it would barely scratch a tiny percent of these services.

I actually like Qobuz as well, and it’s great for jazz and classical in particular. I have it integrated with Lyrion, but my wife prefers other services, and Deezer is the currently preferred option. We tend to rotate music services periodically and generally have two at any time. We don’t do much with video services, neither of us watches stuff frequently, but we game and listen to music often.

———

Edit - I really do find Qobuz’s radio feature to be shit, but with Lyrion I have integrated “Don’t stop the music” plugin that pulls related artists via LastFM’s API and keeps an indefinite music queue going.

In general I prefer owning my music locally, and mostly use the streaming services for discovery.

I’d have to actually use Spotify for that. No thanks.

I’m all up for sharing alternatives that are good/better towards actual artists.

• Tidal
• Qobuz
• Deezer
• Apple Music

Literally everyone pays artists more than Spotify. Even fucking Peleton, apparently.

Tidal seems to be the best option overall. Deezer pays artists less initially than the other services (but still more than Spotify), but the royalties increase for tracks with at least 1,000 streams from 500 unique subscribers each month. Popular artists with more play make more royalties. You benefit Deezer, they benefit you, which makes sense to me.

Qobuz seems to pay highly to artists, but their library is a bit more limited compared to Tidal and Deezer, and their radio functionality is utterly shit.

Apple is the only one I don’t have much info on. I’ve used all four at various points, but Apple Music the least because I don’t like my options being limited to playing it on my Apple TV, and Apple devices are limited to 24-bit/48khz, and Apple has weird EQ that pushes vocals way forward in my experience. I don’t like the music fucked with, just play it without DSP and let my equipment to the work, okay?

Currently subscribed to Qobuz and Deezer, and seriously, fuck Spotify.

Given the hardware’s capabilities, 1 TB is honestly overkill unless you just spend a lot of time offline or want a ton of games installed.

I have around 150 games installed currently and still have around 150 GB free on main storage.

It’s a matter of preference. The etched glass screen is slightly hazier and seems to have slightly less color saturation, but is better if you’re playing in an environment without controlled lighting.

I bought the 512 GB glossy and the screen is fantastic IMO. I ended up upgrading to 1 TB essentially by accident, as a mini-PC I purchased for server use came with a 1 TB 2230 NVMe but I was swapping the storage from a server that had a hardware failure, so basically free upgrade.

Stovetop popcorn popper. Started with a cheap aluminum Whirley Pop and after some batches and confirming it worked, I sprung for a good Stainless Steel one

I’ve experimented with batches from 250 grams up to around 1 lb (a bit over 500 grams). Seems around 300 - 320 grams is the sweet spot.

Hey, no worries then, glad it works for you. If it’s not obvious I’m a bit of a coffee snob. 😅 At least for my own drinks, not judging others.

I used a blade grinder for years, was happy when I could afford a real burr grinder, since blades don’t grind evenly and heat up the beans. I gave up on automatic coffee pots a long time ago, something like a decade ago I think. Switched to French pressing, and eventually to a preference for pour-over. Steel in both cases, since I find glass to be a bit finicky.

Do clean your drip pot by running some vinegar or 50/50 vinegar and water periodically. They can get really gross inside and some parts of it you can’t really reach without disassembly.

See if you can get whole bean and grind at brewing time at least, if you can. Roasted beans will keep for quite some time, might not start to go stale for a month or two easily, but they start losing freshness and the subtler notes of their flavor as quickly as 15 minutes after grinding.

Honestly, roasting it yourself isn’t needed, but I like it. I prefer light roast and for several batches my “light” roasts were being delivered solidly medium, and in one case medium-dark. Doing it myself means it’s always roasted to my preference, and if I over-roast it by accident, it’s only myself I’m upset with, as opposed to being pissed at the vendor and feeling like I wasted money.

Ack, typo. Sorry. That was amounts per 2 lbs, was buying bulk rate from Fresh Roasted Coffee online previously.

Now I buy green coffee beans from Burman coffee, ranging from $6.50 to around $9 per 1 lb and roast it myself as needed.

I fixed the amounts in the original comment.

I started buying green coffee and roasting it myself. Went from buying around $38 per 2 lbs to around $17-18 per 2 lbs. Bonus, I’m getting better coffee out of it.

Paying for plex pass gets you hardware transcoding (GPU), and access to Plexamp if you use it for music. Also the ability to use it remotely outside your network I think (dunno, I don’t use that feature) It’s good stuff, but nowhere near worth what they’re charging. I paid $80 for my lifetime Plex pass some years back.

Honestly, even without the $750 pricing, they’ve been consistently raising it for years now, presumably to encourage monthly subscriptions. I don’t trust them, and it’s falling into the category of “you’ll own nothing and be happy.” The other day I even read something about a user losing access to their Plex because Plex themselves didn’t renew their certificate and they had to reach out to support to sort it out. That’s… just completely fucked up. I hate that it requires an online account to access your local content. They did that years ago, and it’s led to me wanting to use it less and less.

I have a Jellyfin server as backup, and have already moved away from Plexamp to use Lyrion and Navidrome instead for music.

The only reason I still use Plex at all is because I watch a lot of foreign content and Swiftfin hasn’t yet updated to use Apple TV’s accessibility settings for captions (Plex lets you override subtitles with the Apple TV caption settings for readability and consistency). Though I saw the Jellyfin team merged the change the other day, so I expect a fix for that to come with the next major update. If that works out, I’ll be deleting Plex from my Proxmox server finally.

That’s great if you have a Roku or Shield. I don’t. I’ve owned both in the past and don’t want either because they’re both an absolute mess of advertising. I currently have an Apple TV and an Android tablet. Jellyfin is okay on Android (and I emphasize okay and not amazing or great), but the Apple TV is may main viewing device and Swiftfin is the best option and still miles behind Plex.

Particularly because on Apple TV with Plex you can override built in subs with the closed caption styles, meaning literally all subs that aren’t explicitly burned into the image can be made consistent and easy to read. Haven’t seen that feature anywhere else, including on the Shield TV/Pro (I used to own one, got rid of it when Android TV updated to the ad-riddled version it is today). It’s a really amazing feature IMO to be able to have full control of subtitle font, size, style, color, outline, and spacing, no matter what you’re watching.

I have a Jellyfin server as backup, but its clients are shit for anything that uses subtitles. I bought plex pass years back for $80 on sale, can’t complain, but I’m never going to wholly rely on something closed source that requires online credentials.

The big 5 in DRAM chips manufacturers literally got fined by the FTC for price fixing in 2002. They admitted to price fixing from 1998-2002.

Don’t forget they essentially did the same from 2016-2018, though that case was dismissed and they got away with it, even though there was seemingly obvious collusion. Weird how even though the case was dismissed, RAM prices utterly tanked for a while after.

Hot take: This is to stop the slop tsunami.

When any idiot can vibe code some slop app, things are going to get out of hand very fast.

But the play store is already completely filled with slop garbage, AI notwithstanding.

LOL, I buy an entire pound of green coffee beans for $9 or less, roast them, and then I’ve got coffee for like 2 weeks.

Injuries rack up, even if you’re not sedentary. I’m in my 40s and most of my aches and pains come from sport or weightlifting injuries.

Paradox’s whole thing is releasing as many DLCs for a title as they possibly can

Across the Obelisk player here, can confirm.

I have a 2020 model CUV. Bit after infotainment, but before the all-digital dash bullshit.

I will be driving it until the wheels fall off, or until gas is literally no longer available.

Badly engineered, badly coded, badly built, and badly serviced. Great work, Americans.

You blamed it on Americans and specifically pointed out bad code, badly built, and badly serviced products.

Are you telling me to personally cast the fittings used in my water heater? To hand solder a PCB for my microwave? To machine my own engine camshaft?

Believe it or not, some people actually do that shit.

Also, please point to me where the any of that is specifically a fucking American problem? Your microwave PCB was probably manufactured in China or Taiwan. Same for the rest of the stuff you mentioned.

And yeah, feel free to solder shit. I fixed my microwave PCB that way when a thyristor fried. Microwaves are pretty fucking simple where circuitry is concerned, large components and they even come with a PCB manual, generally above the door. Even if you can’t build it you can at least repair it.