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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I can see those kinds of things working in or near cities, but out where I am - fairly rural - there’s just too many miles of road to install a bunch of speed humps or similar things. It would take a monumental amount of money. They don’t even have shoulders on most of the roads. I admit even I speed when I’m driving them, although I’ll slow down for bends in the road so as not to clobber a deer, cyclist, pedestrian, etc. that might be lurking out of sight.

    (I got into a fun argument here on Lemmy a few months back with someone who insisted horse and buggies should have lights, and I was like, “What happens when you come around the bend too fast and there’s a tree laying in the road?” He just couldn’t accept the problem is the driver, not the horse and buggy. Basically, that’s what’s wrong with drivers in the US: We, as a group, have a bizarre expectation that things will always go to plan.)

    I’m also nervous about these solutions for another reason - I’ve seen towns install those kinds of calming measures in a way that hurts cyclists. In one example, they extended the curbs out to the lane, which does slow down traffic - but it forces cyclists who could previously ride on the shoulder into the lane, thereby further enraging drivers. I had one asshole pass me in that very narrow section some years ago, so now I make sure to ride in the middle of it, so they’d actually have to hit me. They won’t do that because they don’t want to damage their precious car, so I’m safe.

    And I say this as someone that lives in an area that’s actually pretty good for cycling, that is, most drivers are actually pretty good about passing safely and all that.


  • Interesting. Mostly what I see is people slam on their brakes near the camera, then take off again after it.

    My theory: There’s so little enforcement of the traffic laws here, they might as well not exist. You’re almost certain NOT to get caught, so people will do whatever they want and will practically always get away with it. I don’t really want to argue for more cops, but when I’ve driven in areas with more traffic enforcement and visible police presence, people tend to drive much more sedately.

    I drive and ride bicycle, and I would LOVE if the cops came riding with me some time. I see some of them doing the 100 mile ride for charity in our county, so I know they have people on the force who ride fairly seriously. Join one of our regular group rides wearing cycling clothes (not police gear), get another cop stationed ahead in a car or motorcycle…and start pulling over some people who buzz us or roll coal. Word would get out very quickly.


  • Man I want to put LED bulbs in my 1999 model year car, but I don’t want to start blinding people. The last thing I want is for someone to hit me because they were blinded. It seems many LEDs do intend to have similar beam patterns to halogen bulbs, but I’m not sure how well they actually do.

    Our 2020 Mazda has LED headlights, and I gotta admit, they are much better for seeing. We live off the beaten path, not a ton of traffic, but plenty of deer and other animals.

    On the other hand, my headlights in the 1999 had gotten really hazy, and I recently did one of those headlight restoration kits to it, and it worked stunningly well. Since then, I haven’t driven at night very much to get a feel for how much it helped. So maybe I won’t need LEDs. (The halogens in there are relatively new.)






  • I kind of like having that layer of someone who knows what they’re doing. House purchasing and selling isn’t something we do often, so a knowledgeable person seems like a reasonable investment. Same reason you shouldn’t be your own lawyer.

    I do have some qualms about how they get paid. The commission I pay my own agent doesn’t really even bother me that much, although they’re obviously incentivized to get us to buy the most expensive home we can afford. But the commission that the seller pays to the agent for the purchasers disturbs the hell out of me - it’s a pretty clear conflict of interest.

    We had a “Buyers Agent” for our last purchase - this is someone that only does buying; they do not sell homes. The idea being there’s less conflict of interest because they’re not trying to sell you a home they have listed (the company he owned did not list homes at all). Great idea, but they still take the commission from the seller, so it’s not perfect. We worked with another agent from a different company for selling the old house.




  • Yeah. I grew up in the days of serial ports and parallel ports, and USB in general is so much better for most purposes. (I recall plugging my first mouse into the serial port…but wait! Where will my Hayes Smartmodem modem plug into then? Also, don’t plug and unplug things from the serial port while the computer is running.)

    And USB-C is even better. My tablet needs a charge? Well my laptop charger is right here… My phone is low and needs a quick charge? Well my USB-C tablet charger will give it a decent boost very quickly. No worries about getting it plugged in the wrong way, either.

    I have a docking station for my work laptop, so when I had to replace my personal laptop, a laptop that supported USB-C power delivery was mandatory. I don’t use it with the docking station very often, but knowing I can without an issue is great. My wife also has a Macbook that works on the docking station, too, in case she ever wants to use my dual monitor setup. All three laptops, from three different brands, are just plug in and go.



  • Some subs are very negative. I remember antimlm was, as well, people spent all day mocking people who got involved in MLM schemes. I subbed for a while because my wife was in one, and I was hoping for help, advice, tips, etc., but it was all just mocking them and calling them “hon bots” or whatever the term was. I had to unsub, I don’t need that negativity in my life.

    The hobby subs, on the other hand, always seemed extremely supportive, or at least the ones I was in were. For example, the radio control (cars, planes, boats, etc.) sub members were totally into it and totally supportive of whatever it was you were doing. It was inspiring and made me want to get back into the hobby. Those kinds of subs were the best part of reddit, and unfortunately we haven’t recreated that energy for things like that here - just not enough users.



  • Can I bitch about that redaction for a bit? Someone hit our car while it was parked on federal property. There were cameras, and the security people figured out who did it (and called them, and they denied it). When we finally got the police report, all of the information for identifying the guilty party had been redacted, along with the officer’s name and any other useful information. For a literal fender bender. Shitty driver got away with it. The police report was completely useless. I can only imagine my insurance company was like, “We waited 3 weeks for THIS?” They might as well have sent over a blank page.

    I get the idea behind redacting stuff in general, but that one just pissed me off.



  • This is a tough one. The problem with local only backups is, what if there’s a fire?

    I use Amazon Glacier to store my pictures. It’s $0.0036 / GB per month, so I pay less than $2/month for ~535 GB of storage that I’m using right now. There is also a cost for downloading, but if I need it, I’m going to be happy to pay it (and the costs aren’t crazy). Uploads are free.

    (The other problem with Glacier is that it’s not really an end-user-friendly experience, nor is it something easily automated. I use SimpleAmazonGlacierUploader, a Java program someone wrote, to do it. You can also upload to S3 and have it archive things to Glacier automatically - I’ve never tried this but it should work.)

    I considered getting my brother or a friend to build two storage servers (with RAID5 or something) that we’d each keep at home, and just sync to each other. Good if you have a friend or family member willing to do it (or at least host your offsite box). Down sides: Cost to build it, time to build and maintain it, cost to replace things that break, plus cost for electricity. I’ve been using Glacier for many years, so by now maybe I would have spent less on that theoretical backup system, but I also did not have to worry about it.