GOG is pretty good because of this. I check in there if I’m considering buying something on Steam. There might still be compelling reasons to buy on Steam, like I bought Parkitect on Steam because a review on GOG specifically called out how the mods really only work well on Steam, but I’m at least checking first and maybe Wishlisting the game on GOG. I have fairly reasonable trust in Valve while Gabe is running it, but I feel like I can have longer trust in keeping copies of installers myself.

I think in the US I’ve heard ETF/ACH transaction fees are usually around $2.50? It might be possible to have that apply across a batch, though, as in if you submit 10 payments to 10 different people as a single transaction it’s still just $2.50, or 25¢ per person. I’m only getting this from hearing accountants complain at companies I’ve worked with, so I don’t understand the details. But I’ve seen it pretty common with companies doing payouts to want to see a minimum amount before they actually send the payment, otherwise it’s not worth doing.

They can bring some nice benefits like remote starting in cold (or hot) climates, but there needs to be much better design to minimize the exploitability of these systems.

I haven’t seen one of these in a long time

I have off-and-on searched for alternative software for personal blogs that can be self-hosted and it doesn’t seem like there are many options anymore. The only ones I’ve seen are WriteFreely and FlatPress. Are there any other options you’re aware of?

I was an early adopter of Firefox 20+ years ago. It started going downhill more than 15 years ago and I bailed to Chrome when that launched. It really was better than Firefox at the time. Then Chrome got worse and I wound up back on Firefox, not because Firefox had gotten better in that time but because everything else had gotten worse than Firefox in the intervening time. Also, if going from 48% market share in 2009 to a barely relevant <5% in 2024 doesn’t count as a downfall I’m not sure what does.

This process has been underway since the project switched their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox. Early Firefox was lightweight with limited features and the idea that you would add your own as extensions for the features you wanted. Then it started gaining traction and the Mozilla developers started forcing features in that should’ve been extensions. It’s been downhill ever since!

I guess how new are you talking? I think this said it was based on the 2019 release, but I haven’t heard much about recent releases. Winamp 2 was the classic one most people remember. Winamp 3 was a rewrite that was supposed to be better under the hood but a lot of people didn’t like it, mainly for the new interface it seemed. They jumped to Winamp 5 (2+3) to restore much of the old interface while keeping the capabilities of 3. I never had issues with 5 and continued to use it through Windows 7. Haven’t used Windows much since then so I don’t know how it runs now. There have been very rare point updates since AOL took over and later sold it, mostly bugfixes.

You can certainly be paid in cash legally. Finding an employer willing to do that, though, might be challenging. It would probably have to be retail or another business that regularly deals in cash.

I like the sound of this for a device, but couldn’t it be more for these new ARM laptops?

Like, I don’t need to have TSW5? It will just put them on my account if I ever do buy it later?

Massachusetts appears to have 2 per capita

I haven’t finished the book, but The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics is also a good read on the subject.

I counted backwards once and figured out I was conceived the same month as my parents’ anniversary. I thought I might’ve been the result of their anniversary trip to Jamaica, and for some reason that made me uncomfortable knowing that. A few years later they were talking about the trip and that they didn’t know my mom was pregnant at the time. So thinking more it made sense that I was actually probably from a week or two beforehand, but then that means mom was drinking while pregnant because she didn’t know (although I’m assuming that early doesn’t have much impact).

I won a game in Civ V recently as the Aztecs but kept going because the Polynesians were my neighbors the whole game and a thorn in my side. Just before the end the French asked if I wanted to declare war on Polynesia so I agreed to start in ten turns. I haven’t picked it back up, though, because I know it’s going to be a big slog and I haven’t sat down with the time or mental energy for it. But it’s also kept me from starting another game.

It wasn’t even his house; it was his girlfriend’s. She thought they were trespassers, she called him for help (she also called the sheriff) and he showed up pointing a gun.

What’s funny to me is Ireland wasn’t trying to collect these taxes, the European Commission decided that the Irish taxes were too low and amounted to an illegal subsidy.

We have a flat monthly fee of $26.50 and usage is $0.1133/kWh (all prices US dollars). It’s also possible to have a Time of Use plan; for residential there’s still the flat $26.50 fee and then peak usage bills at $0.2345/kWh and off-peak at $0.0623/kWh. If you have a bilateral system (solar panels) the credit for power supplied during peak hours is $0.1539/kWh and off-peak is $0.0373/kWh. Integrated battery systems are not allowed if you go with Time of Use metering. For now the basic residential service (same rate all the time) credits solar production at the same rate as consumption, but that could change in the future.

At 50¢/kWh even adding batteries and trying to be as disconnected as (legally) possible from the grid might pay for itself!

I only saw a promo for it once and was pretty grossed-out, but had to at least look up the Wikipedia. I don’t think I was the target audience, other than it reminding me of 30 Rock.