I’m so confused. Whose dishwashers are you talking about? I’m in the US, you’re describing every dishwasher I’ve ever had, except that we always hook it up to the hot water line. Our unit takes very little water, it takes hours to run a load due to efficiency features. It has a heating element inside to take whatever water it gets and keep it hot for the cycle.

I don’t really see why it’s any less efficient to use the hot water we are already heating with our water heater (which heats much more efficiently than a small electric heater would). The water originally arrives to my house cold, it has to be heated one way or another. My dishwasher is less than 10 feet away from my water heater, water is not losing appreciable heat on the way to the dishwasher.

I think colloquially people have begun expanding use of the word to include anything where features or product are removed but the price stays the same.

Maybe there’s a better word for that, but I understand the parallel.

Appreciate you finding numbers when I didn’t go to that effort. It makes me wonder if numbers are pretty similar globally. 2% having chronic insomnia doesn’t sound completely out of line to me.

I think because it’s a pretty gross mischaracterization of the demographic? Usually hyperbole is used for effect to more emphatically illustrate a generally true or accepted point.

The number of Americans who use nightly sleep aids is extremely low. Like, a vast vast majority of people never take them. I don’t know anyone who regularly takes them, and honestly I don’t know many who take them even occasionally.

So this meme uses hyperbole to drive home the idea that Americans have a pill problem regarding sleep aids and no one in Europe does. I have no idea how the numbers shake out in Europe but I can say in America it is not as characterized. So it’s less hyperbole (exaggeration of a fact) and more like a lie.

I’ve just started dipping my toes back into the waters again too, also after many years of downloading absolutely nothing. It’s a combo of things prompting me.

First, costs have gotten out of control and prices just keep creeping up. This is happening at the same time as content libraries per service dwindle. I make more money than I used to, yet it feels like it goes not nearly as far these days with prices of everything skyrocketing.

Second, it’s becoming a bigger and bigger pain in the ass to find things. Part of the issue for me is interfaces (though I can get around that, generally). Part is content shuffling from one service to the next. But a big issue is all the trash content companies like Netflix are shitting out to pad their libraries. You have to wade through oceans of garbage to find a single thing worth your time. This experience is exactly why I dropped traditional cable years ago! I hate endless filler trash. I don’t want the illusion of a large library to make it seem like I’m getting value. I just want actual good content.

I totally get wanting to play the game when it’s fresh. You miss out on being part of the buzz of a new game if you wait to play it. Every gaming site is full of memes about a new game for the first few months after release and it’s definitely part of the experience to be on the “in” side of that.

With that said, I just pick and choose which games matter to me for that nowadays, and I commit myself to actually beating the games I buy (assuming I don’t hate them). Committing to beating them before buying a new game has really cut back on my buying of new games only to have it languish in my backlog and see price drops before I ever play it.

This way I do get to be part of that community for the games that really matter to me, but I also am not just buying everything out there at full price.

Fully agree with you on artists not getting their fair share, and I would argue that the issue is sadly endemic across the entire music industry and was that way long before streaming services even existed. Spotify is merely the most visible representation of a long festering issue that spans generations.

I can only speak for myself but I do actually still buy CDs for bands I really like. I will also occasionally buy merch or go to shows. Some of these bands I very certainly would never have discovered without Spotify (or a service like it).

Ultimately I agree that I’d like people to understand their options. I think the biggest likely barrier is convenience. I have a NAS server, and a virtual host set up that runs a Linux server with Plex on it, and I have that open so I can use Plexamp to play live albums or any other stuff I own that isn’t on Spotify. But like… That’s a massive barrier to entry to simply create something close to the experience Spotify offers out of the box. And it’s definitely not as polished. I do it because I’m a hobbyist, but most people aren’t like that. So then if you want to buy music individually, you’re stuck listening to actual physical CDs, or ripping them and loading them on your phone or mp3 player. Old school cool for sure, but new school convenience is sure hard to beat once you’ve had a taste.

This is your rationale and that is ok for you. Ownership is important to you. That is ok. But people who make the point you are making never understand the point those of us who like Spotify are making.

We do not care that we don’t own anything after paying. I am not paying to own it. Never felt like I was, never felt like I needed to. In fact, it’s almost a perk that I don’t because then I am not sitting amidst towers of CDs (something that was definitely possible if I had continued my pre-spotify trajectory). Anyway, I pay for access. No more, no less. I pay for access to Spotify’s library, which is many orders of magnitude larger than anything I could ever hope to amass myself, even if I was pirating shit.

I want to listen to whatever I want, whenever I want, instantly. I don’t want to go pirate it, I don’t want to go find it at a store, if someone suggests me a song or album or artist I want to go listen to it right now. Spotify enables that. I have discovered so much music I would absolutely never have tried without Spotify.

And again, I am 100% comfortable paying for access to something not owned by me. I’m a member at our local zoo. I don’t expect to own the animals, I pay to just to get in. I’m a member at our museum. I don’t feel like I should own the artifacts, I pay for the privilege of seeing them. I am a member at a community pool. I don’t own the water, I pay to get in, and have someone else handle all the hassle of maintaining that pool.

Spotify is the exact same for me.

I’ve been reading that there are ways to roll your own version of some of the old 3rd party apps using your own API key. I might look into it, if only so I am not relegated to using the shit web interface when I do need to check a few things on reddit. I refuse to install their official app though.

Hey, you too buddy. Thanks. As with anything there are ups and downs. We just take each day as it comes.

Yeah if Lemmy ever hits whatever saturation point is needed that niche communities are more relevant my participation will increase. As it is I’m honestly having to visit reddit occasionally to get answers from those niche type communities because they are simply non-existent here. There is nowhere but reddit to interact with these groups, as much as I hate that.

This is how my wife and I are, as well. It really is exhausting.

I think some of it is a level of social anxiety. Some of it is this feeling of not wanting to “waste” our time (even though we understand rationally that doing nothing is usually the more objective waste). Some of it is a constant feeling of exhaustion, and a fear that whatever thing we are planned for will result in us feeling even more exhausted. And maybe part of it is simply depression.

I don’t know, but it’s not a super healthy-feeling way to go through life, that’s for sure.

If we are trying to dig into the root cause? Then yes, honestly. It is Google. And don’t call them the “search engine guys”, that’s not what they are about. They are the “mass aggregation and correlation of user data guys”. Search has been a means to an end for Google for a very long time.

All those other things didn’t exist when google was developing their model. Google paved the way for the internet no longer being free, but being “free” with payment rendered in the form of user data. That in turn directly led to all those other evils you referred to. It is not an exaggeration to imply that Google is ultimately at fault for the way the internet functions today.

There’s already been a new flavor of coke developed and allegedly chosen by AI. If that’s not some kind of singularity moment, I don’t know what is.

From a pure graphical fidelity point we’re there now.

From an animation standpoint we are light years away. The absolute best animations or facial expression renders I have seen are nowhere near good enough to actually pass for real. And honestly I am not sure I’ve even seen meaningful improvement in this area in a long time. Even in this demo videos the cars don’t look quite right as they move, and cars are much easier than people, or the way cloth moves when on someone who is moving.

I’d like to think this is the next big focus for graphics, but animations are a lot harder to get right than pure visual fidelity. I hope studios start focusing on it because it will take take us to that next step.

Where it can be frustrating is when you get pressed for advice or an opinion after first saying you don’t have an opinion or trying not to commit to something knowing the person won’t like your opinion.

If I get pressed to give an answer then I’m going to sit and figure out what seems to me to be the best way to do things. That takes consideration and time, it takes energy, which I’m happy to give if I’m taken seriously. When people take what I say, and then say “ok I’m still going to do it this other way” with no rationale, then essentially they just insisted that I waste my time. Why do that? Just don’t ask me then, or take me at face value when I say I don’t know or don’t have an opinion.

I’m an introvert, interactions take a lot of energy. It’s so draining to be forced to consider something then be ignored. I don’t think I’m being arrogant, I just don’t want someone to intentionally waste my time and treat me like my opinion doesn’t matter after making me go out of my way to figure out their issue and come up with a solution.

Every good engineer I have ever worked with googles things. To me it’s actually a red flag if someone doesn’t Google stuff. That tells me they think they know everything, or that they would rather punt than learn. I think googling is a critical job skill for IT.

I was never a direct manager, but I’ve been in on the hiring process for many candidates. Great advice, top to bottom.

When we interviewed we also liked to hear people say they’d Google it. It seems stupid but I want someone with the initiative to find the solution to a problem they’ve never seen.

Also the thing about ownership is key, and for us was always an indicator of someone who might want to move up later. Help desk folks who want to move up do everything they can feasibly do and offer their take on what they think the next level needs to do before escalating. If it truly needs to be handed off then it’s because of permissions. But the best help desk people try to hang on to the ticket as long as they can so they can provide the most consistency to the end user.

Huh. I always heard 3 copies, 2 locations, 1 of the locations offsite. Yours makes sense though.