Out of curiosity, why do you use Ghostery rather than uBlock Origin? It was quite controversial back in the day, but seems to be open source and stuff now. I still don’t see any advantage over uBO, though, so I wonder what would move you to use it instead.

You don’t even need higher end ear buds for replaceable cables anymore. Moondrop CHU 2 are 20-25 € and come with a replaceable cable. The DSP version comes with a nice usb-c cable.

Just make sure to get them from an official retailer; Chinese stuff like this often sells returns on Amazon, non-specialized retailers, etc. Hifi retailers like linsoul, Hifigo, Shenzhen audio, are the only ones where you’ll reliably get a working product. Otherwise the quality is quite good.

My Sennheiser HD600 have been basically indestructible for almost 10 years now. Other headphones have had minor issues, but the wired Sennheiser stuff seems to be incredibly well built. Highly recommend.

There’s also the more modern and powerful zstd. Better than 7zip/xz and far more flexible.

I thought Swift is currently Block-Chain based. Do you mean this Swift?

He’s adorable!! What is it with black & white cats and their pink jelly beans? Why are they so snuggly?? Mind you, I’m not complaining

Because lemmy and mastodon don’t have manipulative algorithms! Maybe we should just outlaw those kind of algos? /showerthoughts

Does anyone still talk about Keeper password manager? I feel like I used to hear about that one a lot, and now it has just disappeared off of the face of the earth.

The beauty of open source

Well, I unfortunately failed.

Do they install DNS filters locally on the machines at all?

No, the kids are allowed to bring their own laptops, because some rich parents insisted on their kids using MacBooks. I tried pushing Linux for the kiddo, but turns out whatever CISCO wifi system the school is using actively blocks Linux (including, for some reason, black listing the arch repos). A lot of stuff is blocked — though easily bypassed by VPNs or the wireguard router proxy I set up — by wifi black lists, including random stuff like duckduckgo and dict.cc

Actually, I did get an ad for a vibrator on dict.cc once, so maybe that makes sense after all. I, a man. Not sure what I’d use it for.

I’m unfortunately not a parent, just a relative, so there is only so much I can do to harass the school about it. I also live abroad, so 🤷 — I try though.

Nah, I managed surprisingly well. In third grade I did really intense dyslexic-specific tutoring (9h a week), and it helped massively. I actually ended up scoring the highest reading comprehension score in my random regional school’s class in 5th grade, I think because of it. There were struggles, but nothing I couldn’t live with. One of my best friends was trans (not publicly back then, ofc), and trust me their school experience was far, far more difficult. I just felt some camaraderie, finding someone else with a audio processing disorder; I didn’t mean to fish for sympathy or anything like that.

Fountain pens for the win, nothing as nice as writing cursive with a good, wet fountain pen. I learned in primary and hated it, and then got obsessed with calligraphy in 10th grade and got a proper fountain pen and good ink and fell in love with the experience.

Learning to write well is really wonderful. I wish I had learned properly in school, instead of having to teach myself. I will teach my offspring, though! If I ever have any — not looking so promising in the current climate. As in political, but also climate change.

There’s an argument to be made against standardized testing. Very neurodivergent individuals, for example, can suffer a lot under bad standardized tests. Idk, though, it would be better to just make a better system, rather than letting people opt out. As long as that’s not happening, there is, however, an argument against standardized tests.

Same!!! I have the auditory thingy and dyslexia, so writing (words, not math) was hell on earth for me for most of highschool. Getting to use a laptop in 11th and 12th grade was a godsent.

But in 10th grade I actually did something that mostly solved my hatred of handwriting: I taught myself calligraphy and whole-arm-writing. Now I love handwriting, don’t have pain doing it anymore, people compliment my writing, etc.

Though I still can’t listen to stuff while writing 🤷 luckily I was able to use a laptop in lectures (philosophy is very notes heavy), and after college it becomes irrelevant, thank god.

I did! The IT department literally laughed at me. I also tried to get them to let teachers install uBlock Origin, because they apparently will watch educational YouTube videos in class sometimes, and then get random ads for everyone to suffer under. But uBlock Origin doesn’t have their support… Ironically, they only support Windows computers and iPhones on the school network. Android, MacOS, and Linux are all officially unsupported.

This is why I switched!!! I don’t use streaming services much, but I hated spotify’s shuffle and general music suggestions. So I tested qobuz and tidal, and can confirm that tidal’s suggestions are far superior to Spotify’s. I still prefer collecting albums and listening to them individually though

Interesting, Oatly is by far the best tasting for me (I’ve tried all brands here in Germany because lactose intolerant). Maybe I’m just being manipulated by the packaging though, I find it so funny. I get almond milk as well, and like the BioCompany brand the most there, but I reckon that’s a Germany exclusive.

For real, it’s so obviously ridiculous. Big Cow Milk must be pretty influential…

Nowadays, it’s about how they mastered it. I can tell you for a fact Ozzy’s no more tears CD sounds like shit and the double record mix is FARRRR better, because it doesn’t have the life squished out of it from brickwalling. Is that digital vs analog? No. Its mastering.

This is 10000% true!! I worked as a mixing and mastering engineer for a while, and lemme tell you… the loudness wars never ended. This is why I still collect vinyl, the medium is kinda shit, but the masters are so much better that it’s hugely worth it for a about 2/3 albums I own (1/3 are duds; I can live with that).

I don’t about you, but in my country Tidal is cheaper than Spotify. But that might be placebo

/jk, though tidal is actually cheaper here. I can’t tell the difference in blind testing between 320 kbps mp3 exported in Reaper and the original wav; they’re indistinguishable to me. Actually, I can tell them apart with some airwindows dithers, but that is a pretty esoteric exception.