Notices by Darren (djdarren@mendeddrum.org)

Thinking about it, I think the most stupid aspect of macOS is that there's no universal EQ baked in.

If you're listening to music via iTunes/Music you can use the EQ there to tune the sound from your speaker if it's kinda shitty, but the second you listen to something via YouTube it reverts back to sounding kinda shitty.

There are a bunch of options for a system-wide EQ, but almost all of them are paid-for. Even Windows has a built in EQ!

@killyourfm Welcome to the Kobo life. The water’s lovely.

@killyourfm I’ve got Asahi on my M1 mini at work. It’s generally very impressive and very usable for office based work.

The only thing on my wish list is the ability to run a second screen.

@cstross @pdcawley Yeah, the pacing for the first half of Fellowship is kinda weird, but in fairness, very little happens in the book that massively impacts the story before Frodo gets stabbed up on Weathertop.

From Rivendell onwards I was amazed at how close Jackson was able to keep it. I guess it illustrates just how much of those books is purely world building and description.

The Hobbit trilogy, however, can fuck right off.

@cstross The Golden Compass.

Northern Lights is wonderful. I've read the Dark Materials series a number of times now and will never tire of them.

But that movie was dog shit.

Don't get me wrong, it looked beautiful, the cast was outstanding (Sam Elliott was a *perfect* Lee Scoresby). But the studio fucked it six ways to Sunday, leaving it a neutered mess. And worse, they then abandoned the series.

But it eventually led to the wonderful TV adaptation, so I guess it worked out. @pdcawley

I think the thing that bothers me more than anything is that we live in a world where the worst people (from my perspective) keep getting what they want, regardless of the rules of law and decency.

From literally the worst American winning the presidency, down to everyone’s skinflint bosses doing the bare minimum for their employees.

And it’s exhausting. It’s exhausting to get out of bed every morning, to keep trying to put something nice in the world.

@killyourfm Those buds are bling as fuck. What are they?

I agree with every word of this.

In a splendid moment of #ADHD fuckery, I've just noticed something in my Notes from 3 years ago; a checklist of 15 questions about my experience of ADHD that was going around Twitter that I had every intention of answering and releasing as a podcast.

I answered two questions then promptly forgot all about it...

@aral Shit like this is the real reason that Linux has never hit the mainstream the way the users keep complaining it should have.

macOS is popular because Apple (try to) make sure that everything is polished. Linux needs an official distro that’s obsessively well put together that all the others can hang off of. And yeah, I get how that kinda goes against the FOSS ethos.

Just booted up a shitty Windows 10 PC I have at work for training. I had to dismiss two pages begging me to turn on OneDrive, then a third page popped up telling me to “upgrade” to Win11. That page crashed when I clicked no.

Nothing but big things.

Oh, and I’m currently waiting for my Win11 VM to install updates even though it installed updates last time I used it two days ago.

Fuckin’ Windows, man. Not even once.

I'll tell you what though, I am fucking SICK of hearing about the US election.

If I'll say one good thing about UK politics, it's that our elections are announced and held quickly. Six weeks, start to finish. Four weeks too long in my view, but two months every four or five years.

US presidential elections are - literally - continuous. No sooner has the incumbent been sworn in than their opponents begin jostling to run against them in a couple of years.

@TheBreadmonkey Maggie had a sick figure to match her sick beats.

@girlonthenet Perhaps Duo is a monotreme, and as such can make its own custard.

@aral They can’t handle the truth you’re spittin’

According to this article, they shred literal tons of devices, regardless of whether they’re serviceable. Just yoink the battery and shred the rest.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-04-18/apple-iphone-recycling-program-has-secrets?embedded-checkout=true

It’s just been pointed out to me that the reason Apple runs a trade-in programme for older devices is so they can reduce the size of the used market, and has fuck all to do with recycling.

That’s blown my tiny mind.

Further to this, as I get older and (hopefully) more wise to the world, one of the things that’s really hit me is how everything has a price. Everything.

In this situation, Apple has decided that it’s worth them giving someone a £150 discount on a new phone in order to guarantee that they’ll make more money selling newer phones.

As someone who never really thinks about economy, it’s amazing to me that people’s brains work that way on an industrial scale.

Currently reading (again) The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

It’s a very thinly veiled practical guide to socialism that was published 110 years ago, but which could have come out this year and still say basically the same things about society. About how employers and capitalists try to wring every last ounce of energy for the least amount of pay, and about how many of the working poor are taught from birth that this is correct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged-Trousered_Philanthropists

#Bookstodon #AmReading