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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: November 7th, 2023

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  • Get a cheap laser printer. The toner won’t dry out, and you can get a very reliable printer for cheap. The Xpress series from Samsung was cheap and very reliable. Unfortunately, Samsung does not manufacture printers any more and their printer business was bought by HP. I have no idea how new HP models compare to the old ones.

    I’d probably look at Brother, a monochrome laser printer can be had for $120, and Brother generally has a good reputation. If you want to print in color, that’ll be more expensive of course. Honestly, I haven’t had a color printer in 11 years and I don’t miss it, but YMMV.






  • There certainly would be a market for a network camera ecosystem provided by a company that people can trust. I don’t think it has to be all or nothing, plenty of people really are in no position to self-host.

    I’m not sure if there is anything out there that regular consumers currently could migrate to in case they want to get away from questionable companies. There are completely local systems (local recorder, no remote access), but those are lacking the home automation features / notifications, and well-respected brands that have been around (let’s say, Axis?) that are still closed source, not cross-platform and with pricing often not aimed at end customers.

    I didn’t check out this project, so I’m certainly not saying this is it and there habe been various criticism of this particular project here, but I’d love if a decent project would emerge in the space.

    Would you consider using a managed cloud solution + app if it’s open-source and properly end-to-end encrypted? How would a hypothetical company have to behave to be trustworthy, while still being allowed to profit? People here seem to like e. g. tuta.io for encrypted mail, I don’t see why a similar model could not work for network cameras.

    These are genuine questions btw., I myself am really annoyed at the status quo with its data breaches, blatant lies to customers about encryption, and corporations willfully cooperating with fascist governments by proactively providing video data. I’m not even going to talk about AI training.






  • I tried to give a genuine answer, but maybe not to the question you really had in mind.

    No, I don’t think ease of play and reproducibility should be the goal when designing each and every instrument.

    Let’s talk about another, modern synthesizer as an example, SOMA’s Lyra 8. While you can manually tune the instrument to play a scale, it is infamous for modifying any initial tuning due to its internal feedback loops and won’t stay tuned for very long. If you tried to always keep it in tune, you’d be arguably using it wrong. It’s also rather hard to integrate with other instruments since it’s so hard to control - it has a reputation to play it’s user, not the other way around. I’ve heard people say they need a cigarette after a 20 minute session with the device. Yes, it’s hard to play, sometimes maybe even frustrating, but it also is a unique experience and one of my favorite instruments.

    Let’s switch to a completely different example. Digital photography, both photo and video, is without a doubt a much more advanced and much more predictable alternative to analog, film-based photography. Still, people are actively looking to shoot film, sometimes even using expired film for its certain look and to explicitly seek the unpredictable.

    About 20 years ago, I was asked to repair a Soviet film camera. The shutter timing mechanism was broken, so I replaced it with a completely predictable ATTin85 controlling the old electronics that time the shutter. The artist didn’t like this approach at all and refused to use it.

    I hope this gives you a better insight into what I was trying to say.

    Finally, as I said earlier, I don’t even believe a good, modern Theremin played by an expert is even be unpredictable to begin with.



  • You can easily grow mushrooms that contain psilocybin at home. It’s an easy process, the internet has plenty of communities.

    If you are not very experienced with psychedelics, please inform yourself about best practices / harm reduction. Look into set and setting. Have people around who you trust.

    For most people, psychedelics are not a substitute for therapy. The healing happens in between trips, but you have to put in the work - don’t skip integration. The average Joe will need professional help for that.

    If you have serious issues or if you are repressing a lot of stuff, it will most likely come up during a trip and you will have to process it - psychedelics show you what you need, not what you want. That being said, most people that have a lot of experience with psychedelics will tell you even difficult trips will lead to positive gains.

    Overall, it’s mostly a marvelous and wonderful experience that can be life changing, but please treat it with the respect it deserves.