Notices by Technology Connections (techconnectify@mas.to), page 4

A dishwasher tip specifically for those of you in North America:

Your dishwasher expects to be filled with hot water. If it takes more than 15 seconds for the water at your kitchen tap to get hot, your dishwasher may be washing with cold water for much of its cycle.

If your dishwasher seems kinda meh, try running the kitchen tap until it's proper hot and steamy before you start a wash cycle. It may make a huge difference.

As the Dishwasher Man, but not necessarily known here for being the Dishwasher Man, here's a short thread to explain my whole thing about detergent pods:

Dishwashers are simple machines. They fill with a small quantity of water, use a pump to force that water through spray arms, and those arms spray your dishes with the water. That's really all that's happening at a very basic level.

Key to making this actually clean your dishes is chemical detergents to break down food stuff.

If it didn't have a way to hold detergent back and release it later, it would all be gone after the first fill and drain (which is known as the pre-wash).

Now, because the people who made dishwashers are smart folks, they know that ideally there should be at least some detergent in that pre-wash. That's when the plates/cookware is at its very dirtiest, after all, and adding a little soap to break down those oils would help.

That's why this dispenser has a divot in the lid. It's for that.

Now, over the course of a cleaning cycle, your dishwasher will fill with water, pump it around for some time, then drain it several times. Every time it drains, it's getting rid of food debris the water picked up.

But it's also getting rid of whatever detergent is in the water.

This is why your dishwasher has a detergent dispenser: it wants to wash for a short while to get the big food chunks off and pumped away before it spends the bulk of its time washing with soapy water.

So this is why I have a beef with pods/tablets/what have you.

They're more expensive for a product that only kind of respects how dishwashers work. A product that explicitly prevents you from experimenting to see how far you can stretch your detergent. A product which encourages mindless consumption with extra packaging, to boot.

Or you could just get a paper box with some powder in it for $5 and it'll last you months.

Fin

This dishwasher spends 10 minutes washing, then drains and fills again before it opens that dispenser.

So if you use a detergent pod, those first 10 minutes of washing will be done with nothing but water.

Now, that can still do a lot! And you may be having fine results with your pods. But by not tackling the fats and oils in the first fill, the detergent has to work harder in the main wash cycle. Encapsulating oil particles uses it up and makes it less effective.

Reason number 35 I just want my car to have a damn power button:

I recently rented a Volvo XC40 Recharge which just... turns on when you get in it with the key and you shift into drive and go. Some folks like this a lot.

OK, well it was raining. I had left the wipers on. Come to find out THE CAR WOULD TURN THEM ON BEFORE I HAD EVEN FINISHED SITTING DOWN.

Nothing I like more than having even more water thrown at me than that which is falling from the sky.

Corporate practices that favor executives over the needs of the rank-and-file should be called McKinseyan, rhymes with Dickensian.

While it will undoubtedly be used infrequently these days, and also I'm a little late to suggest this as a gift idea, a nice return address stamp is a pleasing thing to have.

They're pretty cheap (like $15 for a self-inking one) and if you make a nice design with a standout color ink, it really jazzes up whatever it is you're sending!

@10leej Ehhh this is the Fediverse. It's worse than the internet.

The post in question:

(and that edit was very much to try and help people help themselves but... it ain't working)

https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/111539959265152243

The replies on that post just keep on happening without an OUNCE of self-awareness as they're made.

It would be funny if it weren't so serious a problem.

@thomasfuchs and to be honest, I think my presence here results in a lot of clashes. I really like to learn how things work, but my nuts and bolts level of understanding with software is quite poor. That's why I never touch on computers in my videos, I actively kind of hate them.

Me simply being here is another signal to the contrary, so expectations are misaligned a lot.

@thomasfuchs I've noticed, and started doing the same. It does help, or at least it did that one time

@neclimdul @DoubleA it's not actually free though. You are either using a bunch of people's labor without paying them anything, which okay. Sit with that for a bit.

Or you're going to contribute to the project yourself in which case you are paying with your skills and time.

I don't know what exactly it is with the free and open source software movement, but there's a lot of self-sufficiency mindset that honestly seems to go against society.

I think in many facets of life we need to remind ourselves to think through things from other perspectives.

What works for you may not work for other people, and that's totally okay! And what seems insane to you might seem completely practical to somebody else.

@reiterator @ConnertheCat as far as I'm concerned, if there is a way for you to configure your car such that someone in an emergency can't get it to move immediately or otherwise becomes confused by the way it's operating, that is in fact bad.

Complaining in the name of "freedom of ownership" of whatever that you have to squeeze a pedal or push a button one time when you start the car is like the very definition of making a mountain out of a molehill.

@reiterator @ConnertheCat look, it's okay for you to disagree. But the thing that is more important to me is that, if for some reason I need someone to drive my car to get me out of a jam, I want them to be able to sit down and operate it as if it were any other car.

Perhaps as one pedal driving proliferates this won't be an issue anymore, but I still find it very unsettling when I get in a car, put it in drive, and it doesn't move when I let off the brake.

@breizh

That, to me, is one of those fundamental differences that I don't know if I could ever cross. Because I hear a lot of people who are used to driving manuals say that they find creep to be unsettling or even dangerous.

Meanwhile, I have always found maneuvering at low speeds with a manual to be extremely fiddly, especially in reverse. Creep feels like a more positive control scheme in that case, as well as "you always need to be on the brake to keep the car stopped"

@breizh @ConnertheCat @reiterator This is a fair point, but I think that's the entire point of the debate.

Another interesting factor, though, is that as someone who is used to automatics, I find the lack of creep mode to be unsettling at low speeds. I have a lot more control maneuvering the car if I have to put positive pressure on the brake to keep it stopped and I can make it move very very slowly by lifting off. Plus I can stop it instantly since it's the same foot letting it move.