Comments by "Keri Szafir" (@KeritechElectronics) on "Louis Rossmann" channel.

  1. There's a huge difference between genuine, fact-based criticism and smearing the company by lying. You nailed it.
    135
  2. It all starts with "no user serviceable parts inside". The manufacturers treats anyone other than their authorized service centers as regular users incapable of repairing their stuff. You're totally right about this going way beyond Apple (or Lenovo, for that matter).
    30
  3. If Włatcy Móch was still made, this issue would deserve an episode of its own.
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  4.  @rossmanngroup  badass mofo! I love that. Keri on.
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  5. I bet MJ has long forgotten (or never learned) that for us self-employed people and small entrepreneurs, any damage means not only significant financial cost, but also waste of time for repairs, paperwork etc., often having to close down temporarily. Of course, all this means loss of income because of having to deal with bullshit that draws us away from doing business. So... no thank you, but fuck you to that privileged richsplainer. I'm with you, Louis.
    13
  6. Holy shit, this broke my heart. Might not be the Therac-25 level, but still, major fuckuppery. Never imagined these self-cleaning litterboxes even existed... I'm way too low tech, maybe for the better.
    10
  7. Wonderful social commentary on today's businesses, worker exploitation, AT&T and being a millennial. I absolutely adore it.
    10
  8. Ending in a board room, you say? All these endings I've seen were defenestrations of those who had different opinions.
    9
  9. ...while being too big to fail.
    9
  10. Very well said! Looks like the economy will have to shift to more automation and mechanization. Robots don't get sick. But then massive unemployment will become a thing. Also, someone has to build and program those robots in the first place. It's been talked about over and over, and over again. Meh. By the way, the whole pandemic thing strangely reminds me of the New Plague from the Fallout universe.
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  11.  @1yaz  I'd rather have the real thing, unless we're talking REALLY weird stuff - not your regular leather, rubber etc. :)
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  12.  @Youtube_Stole_My_Handle_Too  true. I've seen this kind of discussion in the free & open source software context. Proprietary software apologists defended theirs using the security-by-obscurity arguments. I have to say that if you can't monitor what's going on with your device while it's being serviced, you can never be sure that the data will stay intact and secret.
    8
  13. Louis Cartman, eh? Goddammit!
    8
  14. Kinda. Keeping technology open will help develop it - standing on the shoulders of giants rather than reinventing the wheel because someone wanted to monopolize it.
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  15. We really need that "no user serviceable parts inside" bullshit to stop. Love your commitment to sharing knowledge instead of hoarding and gatekeeping :)
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  16.  @PURENT  green indeed, and totally environmentally friendly! Good for his health too.
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  17. Clinton for president... oh wait.
    6
  18. It's meowgic!
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  19. Q&M (Questions & Meows) with Mr Clinton again! Quality cat content. You never fail me.
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  20. Environmental, economic, health, science, education,.. It's all connected.
    5
  21. Hey :) Thank you for highlighting that bullshit. Why did Apple even do that? Anyway, I learned the thing you were talking about the hard way. I had one repair where I ordered a fridge thermostat based on the device's number, and when the part arrived, it didn't match the connections. Meeeeeh.
    5
  22. What an inspiring video! I definitely learned a lot, and surely will in the future. It's a great pity to see Gilles pass away.
    5
  23. Here for the Purresident of the Feline Republic :) I once fell victim to those opt-out shenanigans here in Poland in late 2000s, and reported that crap to a consumer & competition protection office. Looks like it was a big affair back then, with media coverage and the shady company being sued into oblivion.
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  24. "How do you turn off Australia?" Gotta ask Dave Jones when he goes live :) Nice repair job! You may make it look as if it was an easy thing, but it's not... unless someone reaches that level of skill where a mere look at the board and possibly a few measurements are enough to diagnose the problem correctly.
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  25. Absolutely loved this one and your positive, dedicated attitude. I can see a way for me in it all. Leading them by example, by getting shit done and by walking the walk instead of just talking the talk.
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  26.  @cericat  true. 3 years of running my channel, 1.36K subs, not enough public watch hours per year to even be eligible.
    4
  27. Nerds gonna nerf (and turds gonna terf)! BTW you really need an automated "customer alert" announcement system... speaking in the Black Mesa announcer voice. Or maybe GLaDOS? You decide :)
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  28.  @MrJBA79  ha! That's placing the bar impossibly low.
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  29. Ha, I'll keep that in mind and put my face mask on :)
    4
  30. Then you took an arrow to the knee, right? :)
    4
  31. Reminds me of how I went to a customer to fix a two or three decades old cooker and she told me she called some other repair guys who bullshitted her by saying that the appliance is too far gone and can't be repaired. I bet they didn't even take the panel off, because when I did, it was all just a matter of replacing a piece of wire and a spade connector. Bam, half an hour total and it's working again. The customer was very happy as the cooker had non-typical dimensions (by today's standards) and she'd have to discombobulate her whole kitchen to replace it.
    3
  32. It's the engineers who do all the fantastic job... and then Elon takes credit for all that. Meh.
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  33.  @humbughumbughumbug  that may be cynical, but it's true.
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  34. Ha. My mom had a Thomson CRT TV from early 2000s where the user manual contained all the schematics. It's not as forgotten as you might think. And even if there were no schematics in user manuals, they could sometimes be found in books, or a service manual was to be found somewhere. Plus those devices were way easier to reverse-engineer compared to modern electronics that runs on tiny SMT components on multi-layer boards.
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  35. "Change my mind" meme comes to my mind. Change my mind!
    3
  36. Sure it is an argument for R2R. Make it possible to repair the tractors, let people learn it, and the problem of lack of staff will soon be solved.
    3
  37. Maine a.k.a. /dev/null... Keeping your records is indeed a good way to do it, gets your ass covered. It's definitely on those bureaucrats now. To think a mistake on their part can fuck up someone else's life or business, and they won't face the consequences... Meh. Thanks a million for your honesty, appreciating what was done right. I'd love to buy that hot air station, but that ain't gonna happen on my teeny tiny Polish income :/ Tough luck.
    3
  38. I hope you watched it, and learned something. Even if the only thing you've learned is that your guesstimates were correct :D
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  39. Unless they get on your bench when you're soldering these tiny SMD components! :D
    3
  40. "Get women" hmm, as if women were a resource to be acquired! Criiiiiiiiiiiinge. As for qualifications - they're a remnant of a bygone era of industrial capitalism. They have become meaningless through '90s or 2000s, Dating has always been a mystery to me. It seems to me that too many people try to approach it like job hunting, like they seek out someone on dating portals, while the potential "employer" (ie someone you try to date) has little time and numerous candidates, that's why the decision to reject or become interested is just a matter of seconds. No time for insight and consideration here - because that costs energy, which is limited. It's through a sheer coincidence that I found my queerfriend... and recently, they found another one, we live in a triad, love each other, have some disagreement and a lot of nerdy stuff that makes life more fun.
    3
  41. Aw c'mon, old HP scopes, generators, power supplies, frequency counters and other test equipment were the top league :)
    3
  42. Sometimes putting your hand in the Vise of Knowledge too :)
    3
  43. "Simple is better than complex. Complex is better than complicated." --The Zen of Python "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." --Douglas Adams
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  44. And again, I hope someone will learn something.
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  45.  @michaelnorth3666  yeah. I could bet my ass it's the same in guitar electronics. Amps, effect pedals... Level-headed zero BS makers are in the minority, while arrogant ego-driven types like Mike Fuller (who left the industry, taking his business down) or Randall Smith are sadly the norm. It's no longer about who makes a better one - it's about who shouts louder or can drive the manufacturing cost lower, and quality will always suffer here. The makers who care and stick to their guns will be outpriced and pushed out of business, sadly. That's what happened to Fran.
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  46. Occam's razor says that out of multiple possible explanations you choose the simplest one with least assumptions. Looks like the article got it wrong.
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  47. Short, but good quality meowcontent :)
    2
  48. Hey :) I'm all for severe and unavoidable penalties for the corporations, but make them financial - like a penalty equal to 10...25% of the company's yearly revenue. Even more so if we're talking about tax fraud :) Putting someone - even a CEO, COO etc. - behind the bars won't stop that Amazon, Apple or Facebook or whatever other giant we're talking about from doing their abusive practices - it'll just put one person in jail, and the corporation will hire someone else. Generally I think jail as a penalty is waaaaaaay overused both in the US and here in Europe; its original purpose was to isolate the perpetrator from the society to ensure that both the actual and potential victims stay safe. It makes a whole damn lot of sense in case of e.g. murdereres, rapists, thieves, bandits etc. but not for economic criminals, where reparative justice (fines, cease&desist etc.) is the way to go and jail time should be ordered for repetitive offenses only.
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  49. Mr Clinton for the PotUS! He'll say "MEEEEOW!" to all that kinds of shitty proposals.
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  50. So sorry to hear about Erica's experience. Rapists should be hung by their private parts. Ugh! I'm all for dumpster diving and other kinds of scavenging, as well as social media groups for sharing giveaway info.
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  51. Fetishization of safety and security? Fine, but only between consenting adults. If that's not the case, it's fucking Alpha Bravo Uniform Sierra Echo. That happens when things are designed by politicians, lawyers and accountants instead of the designers and engineers. Make products safer by better engineering and actually caring about reliability, serviceability, all that stuff, for crying out loud! Today's a very special day when you can't be sure what is April Fools joke and what is real. Poe's law, ya know.
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  52. "And remember: If you can't love yourself, then how the hell are you gonna love somebody else?" --RuPaul Props to you for not micromanaging your stuff. It's so fuckin' toxic. I'd say that if you feel you have to micromanage someone, it might be a sign that they're not a good employee; if you feel you have to micromanage almost everyone, then it might be a problem with your management and the company or division will become so toxic everyone will want to leave. As for the piracy thing, it happens, and it's important to think about harms and benefits. Is this software (OCCT here) someone's livelihood, or just another big company product? To what extent does the developer's income depend on one license more or less? Are there technically and economically viable alternatives, preferably free and open source? Ha. Anyway, using pirated software publically (on videos etc.) is a Back 10 years ago, when I worked at a tech support hotline/helpdesk in a telco/software company, we used non-licensed TeamViewer with the company not really giving a shit for a few months until they bought proper licenses. Nah.
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  53. Damn, this one is spot on! That the problem is with today's technical culture rather than a bunch of companies. What if we, the users, are deliberately dumbed down? By assuming that we couldn't do even the simplest of repairs and not including info on them in the manuals, the manufacturers force us to use their service departments and dictate the terms of use of these devices. Got an older model that was perfectly suitable for you to use and something just broke down? Go to manufacturer's service where you'll just be told that this product is no longer supported and you gotta buy a new one... And so the landfills grow, resources deplete, people become poorer, CEOs become richer.
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  54. You worked on a Pultec or LA-2a? Geeeeeez, I wish I was there. Tube stuff, vintage studio gear and audio in general is totally my thing!
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  55.  @honkleretta1050  I hope my amplifiers will last longer :)
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  56. Industry: "You're not permitted to open your device" Me: "I'm a hacker, not a luser - and a free woman. I do whatever I see fit with MY OWN stuff! So, would you please kindly fuck off, for crying out loud?" (channeling my inner Jack O'Neill, I guess) Just because 99% people don't know how to repair the thing (and thus they shouldn't stick their fingers in it before they learn a few things), it doesn't mean the remaining one percent should be blocked from repairing their gear. But I guess it stems from the litigation & cover-your-ass culture the States have so much of.
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  57. 10 hours and 2k likes. Clearly shows what kind of content is most popular here. -What do you think of "The Engineer's Guide to Cats"? What about "The Cat's Guide to Engineering"? -MEEEEEEEOW!"
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  58. Will those Big Apple mayors ever stop being fucked up, or is that a hopeless cause?
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  59. Yes indeed. Pulling a knife out by an inch while it's been ten inches deep. Propaganda value? Priceless. CATS! How meowsome! I haven't seen these on your channel for such a long time.
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  60. This is by far the meowsomest video this year! It surely takes a lot to be the PotUS, doesn't it? :)
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  61. Oh for crying out loud. Internet connected doorbells with cameras? Now I've seen everything! :D I'd never get one, this coming from someone who normally is in favor of home automation as long as it's self-hosted, based on open source software (and preferably hardware) and non-essential i.e. possible to bypass for manual operation.
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  62. "Empty spaces where we used to talk" like Pink Floyd's song goes.
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  63.  @blank.e5plus  well, any tube equipment for that matter - amplifiers etc. Know your stuff before you open one. Otherwise you're in for a shock therapy.
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  64. Smash the internet oligopoly - bring back the decentralization, independence and diversity of '90s/2000s!
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  65. That's the furry wholesomeness we've all been waiting for :)
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  66. You're damn right on Samsung wanting to keep people buying new ones. That's how the industry works, manufacturers have grown so big and far away from customers and their needs that they just won't care about them - all they care about is their own and shareholders' profit, maximizing income and minimizing expenditure. In other words, make as many cheap enough products as they can, screw the long life and repairability because it hurts their sales. Hotel room? I thought you were a test subject at Aperture Science, haha.
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  67. Don't even get me started... I guess that the Snail Mail Transport Protocol is fucked up literally everywhere. Still waiting for that little package from Fran, that got returned to her because there was some fuckup I-don't-give-a-rat's-ass where in the delivery chain. Meeeeeeeh. How can one rely on ANYTHING in this world?
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  68. Welcome to the club then! Consider getting diagnosed if you feel like it.
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  69. Proper respect to Sony for providing the service info and parts :)
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  70. Nice repair :). Give my best to Bogumił. Oh well, the sticker should say "Do not touch, kurwa!" to be more in line with Polish grammar. "Look, mum! No cats!"
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  71. "Rossmann Repair Group is made of sheeple! It's made of sheeple!" Just kidding ofc! My YT start hardware wise: some Sony 1080p camera I bought secondhand, then it got lost. Moved on to my Galaxy J7 phone for recording. Not too good, moved to Logitech C920 + Streamcam, configured OBS, got myself a mike, another mike, planning to get another camera, blah blah. All that on a budget tighter than Ethel Granger's laces. Learned the basics of editing and got inspired by Dave Jones to keep it simple and low key, not overdo it, otherwise I wouldn't get shit done. No fancy schmancy toys or expensive-ass proprietary software here, just OBS + Shotcut on a PC with Debian as the main OS, all free and open source. Can do, will do. Got tons of impostor syndrome and mental health issues, but trying to get the fuckin' shit done nevertheless. Working through my perfectionism. Love your South Park voice.
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  72. Great to hear these words! Making a change one state at a time. We're getting there. Keep up the good work, I really appreciate you for that.
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  73. Trash metal getting old and rusted!
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  74. Hey, it's a problem not specific to Vice, I fear - it's about the honesty and reliability of modern journalism in general. Not to sound like an old geezer ranting about stuff, but... back in the day, there were ethical standards, well, apart from tabloids. Truth be told... science is not what it was either. I may have liked Vice for an occassional article on social justice issues I read, but hell. Telling lies and not correcting them? Goodbye and good riddance.
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  75. "Home is where you have your turntable and tube amp" :)
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  76. Ha. Dave of EEVBlog would probably find a scope in that garbage! :) Back when I was in Amsterdam, the streets in the fucking city centre were equally littered in the evenings.
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  77. Her comes Louis the Bovine Excrement Disintegrator, tearing the bullshit to shreds as you go. Teamed up with Thor, haha! As always, great deal of valid skepticism and critical thinking here.
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  78.  @rossmanngroup  that's enough entropy to feed a RNG. Google have a wall of lava lamps, you can do that with fish... with a certain number of them, the behavior becomes unpredictable enough :D
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  79. Whoooooa! New kitteh!
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  80. Good that you're against slave owners. So am I.
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  81. Fuck their babbling. I'm gonna run on vintage Thinkpads as long as I can. Using a W520 everyday, running Debian. They're goddamn good machines. Loved the rant. Pet Mr Clinton for me!
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  82. "MEEEEEEEOW" means "I'm too democrat for yo' Texas cowboys' rubbish!"
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  83. Oh, sexy opinions here! I wonder who still remembers Left Handed Mike :) I'm with you. Seems like a total overkill from an economic point of view, unless you're running a porn studio or something like that. What's next? Employing fluffers? (yes, getting ideas from Big Clive livestreams...) Back in my time, when I felt too horny and just had to, I did go to a toilet for a few minutes longer than usual, but not pushing the boundary too far. Am I getting old too? Midlife crisis? Are Gen-Alpha and maybe even Gen-Z people gonna tell me "OK, millennial..."? BTW these pods look like something taken straight out of the 2001 Space Odyssey. May be interesting if you have sex-in-space fetish, minus the zero gravity experience (which I'm quite curious about TBH).
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  84. Fuckin' bullies. Ganging up on those who are weaker...
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  85. Agreed. I guess that the only reason manufacturers don't provide info/parts (or do it, but at a price so high it makes repair uneconomical) is to boost the sales of new products without caring about the environmental impact and the product's life cycle after it leaves the factory or store. A somewhat similar phenomenon is "this year's model" i.e. moral obsolescence, the thing still works but is no longer trendy/attractive to use for people who give a shit about such things. Keeping up with the Joneses, meh. I guess that if the manufacturers were legally required to take their damaged/spent wares in for recycling or refurbishing, they might have an incentive to prolong the product's life by enabling repairs like it used to be done a few decasdes ago, but such legislation would hit the small manufacturing businesses disproportionately.
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  86. ALL salaries should be transparent - not just when posting job offers or negotiating the salary during the interview, but also throughout the employment. This would curtail the shady deals and salary discrimination, and make the job market competitive.
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  87. "Louis Rossmann's Tested"! I'm getting a good laugh about you talking about us getting a good laugh about you getting hurt. Nice to see you do some technical stuff on camera again - more of this content, please! Ranting about poly-ticks (poly being many, and ticks are bloodsucking creatures) is okay and often insightful, but hands-on engineering and hacking is better. I always pull after I crimp or connect the wire to a screw terminal. I sometimes - whenever possible - solder the crimped connection to improve reliability. I love your business insights! Especially when it's not just armchair ranting but an actual hands-on tech video. My best bet is buying at technical wholesalers and specialist stores, both brick-and-mortar and online. They usually have good quality stuff tried and tested by actual professionals... and their pricing is very decent compared to home improvement stores.
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  88. The fun of the craft indeed! Wisely spoken, and I can't agree more. It's about learning, learning and learning again, getting inspiration from others, honing your skills for years, drawing conclusions from your successes and mistakes, doing the next job better than the previous one. That's how I evolved from trying to resolder that 0.3mm raster flat cable connector on an old laptop mobo destroying the thing in the process, to actually succeeding at SMD rework. That's how I built better and better amps/preamps over time too. I definitely feel it's my calling, and you couldn't have said it better when it comes to the genuine joy and gratitude from a customer who now has a working device. Sometimes it's also facing real challenges and difficulty, and overcoming them... but at the end of the day, it's rewarding if you succeed. And if not, which happens, one can hope one learned something. :)
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  89. Seeing Big Clive here was absolutely splendid! I enjoy his videos a whole damn lot. And if someone calls you a pussy, just meow at them Mr Clinton style. An occassional hiss is good as well. By the way, I just don't understand people who want to keep their gear (Macbooks, cars, whatever) looking brand new through all the time they use them. Maybe it's for the resell value, but still... There's this thing called "beausage", or beauty from usage, where things that are being actively used get their marks, imperfections, scuffs etc. and that shows that it's put into a genuinely good use instead of being stashed somewhere through all that time, has been maintained, still works great and "has its own story to tell".
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  90. I read that very article and I totally agree about the considerations. My opinion is that whenever a tech company goes down or discontinues support for a certain product for any reason, they should provide and publish as much documentation as needed to maintain (or even better, mod/hack) their products. Got schematics? Publish those schematics! Got source code, default admin credentials, info on how to interface with the thing, calibrate it etc.? Publish that, period. Recently I watched a video (was it EEVBlog's one? not sure...) on how manufacturers such as Tektronix published bulletins that covered the inner workings of their devices, with elegantly explained theory of operation of different oscilloscope blocks etc. in the '70s, maybe even '80s. Then those bulletins went down because of cost cutting and keeping knowledge private. I'd absolutely love it if this practice came back, it may take different forms (YT videos, wikis etc.), but it'll certainly save a lot of reverse engineering effort that is very hard if not impossible with today's electronics.
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  91. Hej, rodak! :)
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  92. Hmmmm, what if a headcrab jumped into that pod while someone is using it? LOL
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  93. Cool and fun, cause all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Nice bike too!
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  94. You don't really like Betty Boop, do you? Hahaha. Nice to see post-apocalyptic NYC. Is it Fallout 5 yet?
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  95. Damn professional lobbyists with their FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) spoiling rational bills all over. I hope R2R succeeds despite the opposition. Fingers crossed! It's a great cause. Oreo certainly learned something, but doesn't want to tell you. If you asked Mr Clinton though, we all know the outcome: MEEEEEEEEOW!
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  96. Last time HP was okay was before Agilent branched off, LOL.
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  97. Fuck DMCA. | absolutely agree that consumers SHOULD be able to choose for themselves! Both for DYMO paper and for printer ink, software, laptop/phone parts, processors (yes, Lenovo), bike parts, whatnot.
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  98. Thank you for helping us help you help us all. --GLaDOS
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  99. The world's richest troll, meh.
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  100. Kudos for supporting Blackberry even though the manufacturer withdrew :D
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  101. That's a rather good idea, foot-in-the-door style. Will show that vendor lock-in is not only unnecessary, but also detrimental as it takes more time to have the device serviced by the company than on premises by a qualified serviceperson. By the way, the companies don't necessarily know it all and want to provide the best service either. Sometimes they will try to lie their way out of responsibility. Remember Therac-25 and how the manufacturer handled the situation, i.e. rather than working on a proper bugfix ASAP as the bug did cost human lives, they first denied it, then advised to block a key as a temporary workaround, but how long did it last? Meh. Same old. By the way, I wonder how it's done in the military. I could bet my ass off that the multi-million super reliable gear that they use still needs maintenance, and repairs in case something breaks, and I can't really see sending it to Lockheed or Raytheon or whatnot for repairs.
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  102. Mr Clinton for President 2024!
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  103. The sight of Louis roasting the entitled part of Gen-X is just priceless. I love these rants! Also dealing with mental health issues and living on a budget tighter than Ethel Granger's laces - but doing my thing, just like you, and not taking any corporate gaslighting bullshit. Keri on resisting, Louis! And again, I definitely learned something. We can NEVER agree to be herded into the toxic false positivity when the world is clearly turning into shit and we're in it like fuckin' frogs in boiling water. Over 2M subs by now. That's something... more than EEVBlog and Big Clive combined!
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  104. Love your ranting over tech stuff. That's the old school Rossmann I came here for and still miss. My fav type of content on your channel... apart from Mr Clinton's remarkable meowing. You still have some Dave Jones vibes, you're a repairman after all. As for flux, Amtech does it for me... guess where I learned about it? Oh yeah. The real deal. "The flux must flow", to paraphrase Vladimir Harkonnen. Nice transitions mini-rant. I'm not in the wrong part of Texas, haha! Not even in the wrong part of Poland. Got my 'mones almost four years ago. Things are only gonna change for the better now that the fascist government is out the door, but that's gonna take until presidential elections here until something can truly go forward. That dumb prick with his head stuck up the archbishops' asses so deep you'd have to use the ISS robotic arm to pull it out will block anything that was considered progressive 40 years ago and now it's everyday stuff in the West, like making the contraceptive pill available again. Poly-ticks rant over. And again, I hope I learned something!
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  105. And again, I hope I learned something. Meow!
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  106. Maximum Madness: Furry Road for sure. Taxi drivers here in Poland are often reckless as well. Thinking that the streets belong to them.
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  107. Love your hate of Twitter! I'm not going anywhere near it without a hazmat suit cause it's a radioactive cesspool.
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  108. Good thoughts, truth spoken. I tend to view the difference in terms of resources (time, talent, physical or mental ability, effort, cash, experience...) you have to invest in order to be qualified for the job. Some of these resources are equivalent and interchangeable, e.g. you may not have talent, but work your ass off to learn the thing and succeed at it.
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  109. Just another kind of cat :)
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  110. "Guilty by association" is the word. French courts ain't got their shit together...or is it about punishing anyone who opposes being subject to invigilation, no matter how unauthorized and intrusive it is?
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  111. While any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, as Arthur C. Clarke famously stated... any bullshit claim sufficiently blown out of proportions by sly snake oil salesman type marketeers is also indistinguishable from magic.
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  112.  @traolin5877  yeah, being a nerd who builds tube amps, I really need to say that it doesn't have to be all that expensive, if you know were to get your stuff.
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  113. Strange nerd, anarchist and proud. Thanks for your vidos.
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  114. What a great hissy fit on your part! Good points.
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  115. That guy probably hasn't heard of the recently taken down KiwiFarms and who knows how many of its counterparts in the dark web. Hell, maybe even doxxing at all, and how it affects the lives of LGBTQ+ people or other vulnerable minorities. Fuck this privileged bullshit. And his Americentricism too, because here in some backwards country in the Middle Europe (yes, the one that was supposed to be nuked into oblivion back a few decades ago if things went south between 'murica and the USSR - scorched earth!) we've got a misgovernment that is actively seeking ways to invigilate people AND it was shown numerous times that the bloody cops did in fact spy on the political opposition. No UAE ties, sorry... Plus the whole thing about the war in Ukraine and online terrorist activities on Russian part. If that's not the valid reason to be concerned about, then what the fuck is it? Pffffffft. Off my soapbox and I hope someone learned something too.
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  116. Oh damn. I'm thinking about non-places and liminal spaces... again.
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  117. It's not just NYC, it's the whole Western world. Property places are way up, concentrating the real estate in the hands of the few who can impose absurdly high rent and bullshit conditions. All this while homelessness is at historical high because people just can't afford renting, let alone owning. Revolution or otherwise, it absolutely has to stop.
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  118. Ahhhh... Scheißung, not Samson. Nah. Using Galaxy J7 2017 bought secondhand in 2020 and not gonna switch unless it breaks down SOOOOO bad I can't repair it anymore. It's a perfect example of Apple not being the sole major culprit here, again. The whole industry is cancerous. Meh. I hope the European Commission gets their asses together and mandates the battery replaceability.
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  119. Ha! Got a collection of vinyl records, cassettes, CD... and still keeping that physical copy of every Fallout game before 76. That's what matters. Right to repair is the right to own things! When you buy something, it's fucking yours! The manufacturer has NOTHING to do with it from now on. And the manufacturer should definitely not meddle with your ability to use the thing. Subscription is okay for services like beauty, entertainment etc. but hell no for physical wares, and especially not for high-value ones like cars etc. Fuck it. But hey, it's just extending the "cloud computing" idea to non-IT areas of life. EaaS - Everything as a Service!
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  120. So much audio gear, yay :)
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  121. Oh for crying out loud, yet another internet drama. Meh.
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  122. Fully agreed about patronage or donations. Fuck the YT monetization, both from the viewer's and creator's point of view. It's no use. I watch on my laptop using Firefox with Adblock Plus. Thanks for a lowdown on Newpipe. And fuck yeah this kind of PIRACY!!! lol By the way... by forcing ads, YT takes resources from viewers, both time and (unless you're on a wifi network) mobile data. Do they give a shit? Not at all.
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  123. So lovely to see you two together! <3 And that PC reeeeeeeeeeeally is in a state of utter discombobulation.
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  124. Hey, I'm in the "286 first computer" club too :)
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  125. Lovecraft said that a hundred years ago. Still relevant.
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  126. Big kudos to Mark for exposing that esoteric bullshit, and the preamp was badly engineered from the very beginning. Tom Evans probably tried to hide it behind a veil of mystery, haha.
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  127. Lovely idea; I wish I was in the Big Apple (or the States for that matter) to come by, to get a grip on how to work with some higher end pro stuff, but I hope someone could also learn something from me.
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  128. Yaaaay, cat content :) I'm skeptical about ANYTHING big corporations throw at us - they've got their reasons (making as much cash as they can, churning out products made reasonably cheap and pushing some marketing spiel to sell them), and keeping the older product running is not one of them. Not sure if Wozniak, or even Jobs would subscribe to it, but hey - it's the late capitalism after all. I'm in the repair business long enough to know that even if spare parts ARE in fact available, they can be so expensive that buying them separately and putting a device together would cost you a few times more than buying the same device brand new with no discounts. Makes repairing stuff hard to afford... you never get the guarantee that when one part breaks down and you repair it, something else won't fail soon. Meeeeh, planned obsolescence.
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  129. Wait... no cats? Oh really? C'mon! Of course I don't trust corporations, even more than governments. The latter at least have to stick to the laws they lay out to some degree. Truth be told, I wouldn't go to Amazon or Macrohard either; "the cloud" may be alluring, but it's basically a bunch of servers owned by some company, with limited access for the user. Not too friendly when it comes to controlling what happens to your data. I'm more partial to on-premises / self-hosted systems than cloud.
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  130. Y'all better watch this before it gets taken down cause YT won't like it, people! Ha. So nice of you to share this - I've been a FLOSS user and supporter for well over a decade.
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  131. I got a total WTF in first 30 seconds, this doesn't even happen! You're so right about the antiquated education system, it was designed to make workers rather than intellectuals. So, treating kids as objects, or lumps of flesh.
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  132. "Steamy pile of dog shit" is such a nice way to say that!
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  133. Time to go to space. At least there are no people you can infect or get infected by. Truth be told, even if Omicron is not as virulent as Delta, it's vastly more contagious, and more resistant to vaccinations, hence the 3rd shot, but it doesn't provide full protection either. It's like contraception: no method is absolutely perfect, there's always some risk. I'll be pretty safe, as I mostly spend time in my lab and avoid crowds altogether. On the other hand, I'm really missing going to concerts. Mr Clinton's meowpinion on this one is priceless :)
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  134. Bein a big fan of Fran Blanche, I know her point of view and experiences, got to agree with many of them as well as yours: 1. There's no cash in YT monetization. Plus it's all too whimsical - no clear rules as to how it works. 2. YT's recommendation algorithms as well as copyright infringement automated detection are making the place a disaster. Of course no transparency here either. 3. If you want to make cash creating videos, go for the patronage model (Patreon, Ko-Fi etc.) but the economic crisis has forced many people, myself included, to reduce or withdraw their pledges, so while it's pretty viable in good times, don't count on that when it's going bad. 4. Personal experience time: since my channel is less than 200 subscribers, I'll stick with making videos when I feel I need to do, got time and energy to do the editing etc. and I'm not considering any investments of the cash I don't have to have it all too perfect. I'll keep doing my thing, repairing and making stuff, but running a channel is an off-shot.
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  135. I've got a home automation system that I'll develop further as soon as I got the budget for it, now it takes care of scheduling a storage water heater and monitoring the water temperature. But... 1. the server is self-hosted on premises, using free&open source software (Supla, but I'm considering Domoticz or Home Assistant), 2. there is a separate wireless network for automation, with no access to the internet 3. devices don't have self-updating software 4. devices have a manual override, so the automated operation is optional for convenience - if something fucks up (e.g. the server goes down), I can still use them 5. no automation for absolutely critical systems e.g. door lock or utility switching I'm not that stupid to have another HAL9000 or GLaDOS at home! Lessons learned.
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  136. Yes, I did learn something :) That even a broken clock shows the correct time twice a day.
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  137. Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooa! I don't think I've ever seen you so pissed off. Calling out BS where it calls for it. That's the 96% aqueous ethyl alcohol solution :)
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  138. Programmers know about greedy algorithms, but this one is just overzealous. Lawful where they find it convenient, not giving a shit about privacy laws on the other hand. Will be working toward becoming all self-hosted. Fuck the cloud.
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  139. Fuck yeah! As a trans woman, I'm totaly with Meredith on that one. It's about scapegoating, it's about using children as human shields or even weaponizing them for the cause of puritanical and authoritarian poly-ticks and it's about maintaining a herd of humanoid sheep who will go and bleat wherever their overlords will tell them, no questions asked, no critical thought and no scientific inquiry. Fuck that. BTW Louis, I love how you (and Big Clive as well) parody those Karens!
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  140. Ha! That's probably the best April Fools video I watched today :D
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  141. Very well said. All truth, no BS.
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  142. Just be excellent to each other, people. And if you can't be excellent, then at least be decent.
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  143. Neko Atsume, Rossmann edition - with an Oreo appearance. Was expecting Mr Clinton's meowpinions, got disappointed. Thumbs down and unsub. Ha ha, just kitten you right meow! Always appreciating your cat content.
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  144. As if the homeless people were mainly thieves, muggers, murderers, rapists, whatnot. I'd rather say they're on the receiving end of violence and crime way more often than the giving one. So, the NYC administration is trying to solve the problem by getting rid of those who are most vulnerable. Classism and oppression of the weakest, as always. Meh. Oh, I didn't know that you're two years younger than me! Now what was that thing about "millennials killing the economy" again? ;)
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  145. That's what security cameras are for! :D
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  146. That's a full minute of advertising on a less than 10 minute video! LOL There's no way of going commercial on YT unless you hit a motherlode of desired content and your videos go viral right away, or you're ready to invest a big buck and go full pro LTT style. And don't count on ad revenue. Patreon may not be perfect, they take their share, but it's still way better and more profitable than YT monetization.
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  147. Agreed. it's too good to be true when backed by a company with a proven track record of sabotaging any R2R probably ever since Steve Wozniak left it.
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  148. Taking things you bought away from you without your consent and/or knowledge? There's a word for that and we all know what it is.
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  149. New York is like war. It never changes.
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  150. The elevator was broken when it was designed, haha!
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  151. Don't even get me started, please... Same thing happened in the 2019 parliament and 2020 presidential elections in Poland, making lawlessness and injustice win again. I see material fatigue all over, people getting complacent or having a genuine lack of hope for changing anything through voting. It's one thing if all parties' electorates have an equal turnout, but when one of them is more disciplined than the others, it means victory for them because the others have surrendered. That's why all of us, especially the opposition voters, really have to believe how important it is to move our asses and cast those ballots. Pet Mr Clinton from me! :)
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  152. Reminds me of one Bakfiets en Meer (the blog of Henry, founder of WorkCycles) posts about preventing bike theft with a "rust-like" spray paint :) But seriously... I really hate bike thieves, just like I hate abusive drivers. Just how fucked up does one have to be? And the police not giving a flying fuck is probably a thing everywhere, because down here in Poland I had two mountain bikes stolen and of course they were notified and stuff, but the investigation was canceled. On the upside, fun story time: I once had my Sorte Jernhest cargo trike stolen and dumped somewhere in the street. I used my old ID (censored my personal details with a marker) as a spokecard, and that's how the cops managed to reach me and I got it back. After I moved out to a different city, I ride it a lot more :)
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  153. That was a quick one! No Mr Clinton's opinion though. The "official ink only" policies are so bullshit and they're never gonna work because someone will always find a way to circumvent these. It's an arms race, same as with piracy/DRM, malware vs antimalware etc.
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  154. Old CIA interrogation techniques still alive and kicking, I guess.
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  155. Not gonna get any work done there? Mr Clinton don't care!
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  156. As always, poly = many, ticks = bloodsucking creatures. Following one's herd uncritically, or going in a direction opposite to the other herd, is the bane of any duopoly based politics. Same here in Poland with two major parties - (not really) Civic Platform and Law(lessness) and (in)Justice. Sure as hell there are minor parties as well, some of them didn't even get to the parliament, and I'm in favor of some of them contrary to the big two (but I agree with a few ideas by either of these), but nah. If the majority is right, let's eat shit. Billions of flies can't be wrong!
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  157. Thank you soooooooooo fuckin' much for this video! That's just so true. I'm in the repair thing too, mainly audio stuff and vintage restorations as this is what I specialize in, but an occassional laptop or phone also happens. And I fully agree about the complexity and precision, all the equipment needed to even get started fixing modern electronics. Can't even imagine doing a component-level repair on modern SMT devices without a microscope, precise soldering irons, all that stuff, and it's expensive as hell and not often found at hackerspaces (the idea I totally endorse, it's a great way to get started or access some more advanced technologies you can't afford, don't have room for or won't use all that much). Plus access to information and fast changing technology do their thing too. Way back when a single model - one of not that many - was manufactured for a few years, maybe even decades. There were literal fuckin' BOOKS with schematics and descriptions of radios, TVs, audio gear etc. Even without schematics available, someone could reverse-engineer it and share the info with the local tinkerer or professional community, and it served them well as long as the unit was around and there was a need to fix it. Now? Each year a new model, out of production after a year or two. Complex as fuck, and all documentation is locked down tighter than Ethel Granger's laces. We just have to rely on certain design patterns to get the idea what could go wrong.
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  158. Fuckin' unhinged. When are those companies gonna learn... Repeat after me, corporations: When someone buys your product, it's THEIRS, not yours. They decide what to do with it and where to take it when it breaks down. Stop trying to barge in and make that decision for themselves in a most fucked up way possible, by silencing the people who fix the gear and show others how to do it. And it's been demonstrated time and time again that Youtube is way too uncritical about the claims they get. Claim comes in, it's automatically acted upon, not even reviewed by a living human being, let alone one who, unlike me, knows the ins and outs of DMCA and copyright law. Regarding PCB layouts, are they protected if they're not reproducible? I mean, if someone reverse-engineers the board and posts the results verbatim as gerber files or a design in some EDA software, it's a clear case. When someone draws a rough sketch of the traces on some part of the board but not even the intricate details of the layout (power / GND / internal signal planes, trace distances for controlled impedance, lengths for delay matching etc.), I wouldn't even consider it reproducible enough to violate copyright or patent laws. Mend It Mark is dang good at his work, well worth checking out!
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  159. Good rant here. Freedom and safety, not the hidden power (disguised as safety) over freedom.
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  160. Now this is taking WTF to next level. Good thing that people are starting to see the light.
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  161. How long will people keep using the word "hacker" for the shady types who invade privacy, destroy data or make it inaccessible? Gets on my nerves every time, me being a person who holds the hacker culture in high regard. I tend to treat the manufacturer's service as a black box where you never know what happens inside. Unless there's some effective regulation preventing the staff from doing malicious stuff, how can you trust it? It's a bare assertion fallacy at best. With small repair shops you either trust the people because you know them and can be sure that the equipment is in the right hands, or you can at least try to see them working, or ask them about progress, etc. Keep up the good work and don't eat Oreo, please :)
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  162. Rant on point! Loved it. But please, for the love of Mr Clinton, Oreo and Blackberry, don't call that scum a pussy. It's offensive to cats.
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  163. LOL, your mad ranting made my day. So hilarious. Would play Nina Hagen right now, but my amp is on the bench, so no hi-fi for me...
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  164. Water? No problem if you have the Aperture Science handheld portal device.
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  165. Millennial foobar2000 and deadbeef user here, though now I mainly listen to music on vinyl records and an occasional CD. Never really got into Advertify. Fuck their woo.
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  166. Or, like psychologists would say, internal vs external locus of control.
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  167. So, your shop is going south? Hope it's only literally - keep up the great work!
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  168. Hey, thanks for the rant. I'm Polish and mighty appreciating this. Plus the bureaucratic bullshit WILL lock the small repair shops like mine out of business for the sheer reason of regulatory compliance overheads. Fuck that.
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  169. Raleigh? Oh damn, I've repaired a few of their bikes when I freelanced as a bike mechanic... Mostly '60s/'70s vintage stuff. Things of beauty and joy forever, unless a part broke and it was virtually irreplaceable with European equivalents because all the threads were non-standard. Meh. Replaceable battery packs on e-bikes were a no-brainer for me until now. Oh was I surprised!
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  170. Damn it, please get yourselves one of them new Pingpongotron2000 machines! :D Oreo cameo <3
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  171. Not the way to do it ESPECIALLY from an authorized repair shop! Ugh.
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  172. Damn awesome news! Fingers crossed - we're getting there :)
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  173. The sight of Oreo coming out of the closet is priceless :)
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  174. That's absurd. How is it possible that they didn't noticed any failure when they were testing the product? Oh, wait... did I mention testing?
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  175. Oh for crying out loud. It's going down, time to go to Mastodon. Nice robot!
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  176. Warcraft 2 ogre sounds... hahaha! But an annoyed sheep was way better. Now, who played this game back in the '90s? :) Daaaaaamn, this thing is so badly burnt I'd give up right away. And those bugs! Was that a louse, or what? Will you start wearing a hazmat suit for repairs like these?
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  177. I have to thank you for being a real deal leader, someone who sets a shining example of an electronics entrepreneur. As for the "don't share information", well... it might have worked a few decades ago, in the pre-Internet era. It was way easier to keep things to yourself, with hackers few and far in between. Now the hacker community is much better connected and it's no use hiding stuff because someone else will find it out anyway and share it, so why bother? Dave Jones once said that if you want to get anywhere with electronics as a product, forget about patents and make things open source. I'm with him on that one, at least as long as the design we're talking about isn't super niche and meant for very specialized market. But then, the pro electronics also should be repairable, only the pool of servicepeople would be smaller because of the gear's complexity.
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  178. As anyone who played D&D knows, there's lawful evil, neutral evil and chaotic evil... An ongoing behind-the-scene practice of the former led to the latter, which in turn exposed the former.
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  179. Physical strength is overrated - go for intelligence and charisma!
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  180. Internet of shit, everything-as-a-service, and planned obsolescence after a few years. Where the fuck is our world, society and civilization headed? Seeing this I really don't want humanity to expand to other planets. We really need to learn to clean up our own mess before we go anywhere else! By the way, now that you mentioned water heaters and temperature controls... that's precisely why I installed a home automation system on a LOCAL instance, self-hosted on a Raspberry Pi with a small UPS in case of a power outage. Plus I design my systems so that even when the connection / server is down, you still have a possibility of controlling them locally. Maybe I'm paranoid about the internet of shit thing, having observed the thing for like 10 years, but I strongly believe that it's us owners who must be in charge of our gear. In order for that to happen, we must know how the things work and how to troubleshoot them... which is becoming harder and harder these days, and that's why I fully support the right to repair.
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  181. ...can you or anyone you choose maintain it, and repair it if it gets broken, provided the person doing maintenance/repair has non-proprietary equipment and reasonable skill which can be learned from sources other than training or paywalled materials from the manufacturer / provider?
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  182. An adverlasting arms race, eh? Same as with malware. Youtube made me try Ublock Origin and i'm way happier now. Cory Doctorow is right on the money with his talk on the "internet enshittification", it's been going on for decades, no matter what major platform we're talking. If there's business in it, it'll rot. You would be surprised how many people stick with Internet Destroyer! Especially older people or corporate drones where they won't let you install Chrome or Firefox for whatever bullshit reason the executives come up in the moment.
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  183. "You gained 1 Strength."
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  184. Louis, the master of reverse psychology :)
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  185. Good moaning 'murica, if you have to rely on emotional messaging to get your point across because you apparently have a point other than the real deal objective fact checking and reporting... sucks to be you.
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  186. A rare example of Pop!OS on a Macbook.
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  187. Now, what does Mr Clinton think about it? -MEEEEEEOWWWW! Why would the 'murican manufacturer disallow selling your car off for a year? Maybe because the market is unstable, there are shortages and very likely speculation. Other than that, I can't really find a reason. Of course it's bullshit. Agree with you on these super useless vehicles. Why do so many people have to drive those overgrown beasts, especially in cities, where space is limited and accidents likely? Ugh!
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  188. Oh for crying out loud, this is plain toxic '70s radfem shit. I'm a proud feminist, I do have a grudge against most white cis straight men, but this one takes it way too far! It's just fuckin' violent. And I wonder about the page's name too, this with the post gives off a strong TERF vibe. Equating XX chromosome with womanhood, which is exclusionary towards trans women, men and non-binary people, despite stating in the description that they "are a welcoming subreddit and support the rights of all genders". Meh.
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  189. A nice presidential chair for Mr Clinton indeed! Meow.
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  190. That's FuckYouTube for ya! Worse still, I can't watch on Firefox even with ABP disabled! This place has gone to shit. Watch the figures fall...
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  191. I like Samsung phones, got a Galaxy J7 and a rugged-ish case for it, ain't gonna change if I don't have to. But the company's customer support, business attitude? It sets the new standards for bullshit. Meh. I also distrust any gimmicks and novelty items like foldable phones or tablet laptops (pointing a finger at Lenovo X201t despite being a classic Thinkpad fan). If it's for me, it's gotta be built to last.
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  192. Hahaha! Looks like they either tried to pull an April Fools joke on you, or they really consider you a dumbass. Pet that Berry!
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  193. Riding a bike through wormholes, huh? A real puddle jumper! You ride fast as a motorcycle. Good advice about driving patterns.
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  194. Again, I love your insight on R2R. How stupid are these naysayers! Even if they lack the skill or equipment to repair the device themselves, they could still go to any local repair shop that does repairs for that kind of equipment (mobile, laptops, household appliances etc.) and have it fixed rather than get rejected because the service personnel doesn't have access to schematics or parts. Just how hard to grasp is this, people? "Oh, for crying out loud..." --Jack O'Neill
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  195. Politics, meh. Or poly-ticks, poly being many, and ticks are blood-sucking creatures. To anyone shaping others' lives by the means of poly-ticks: Let us engineers inform you about engineering related stuff and please, please, PLEASE for crying out loud, just listen to people who know their thing!
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  196. BMW going down the line of test gear manufacturers (Rigol, Keysight etc.) where you buy the same hardware regardless it's a $500 entry level scope or $10K pro stuff, only the former has certain features disabled or available for a limited time as a teaser/demo. Remember that epic 2010s Rigol DS1052E to DS1102E upgrade hack EEVBlog made a video on? Same hardware, it's all in the software... Hack the fuck out of that shit, people. I'm getting the impression that Louis said "actually" in this video more than Teal'c said "indeed" in a whole season of Stargate SG-1, and that is something.
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  197. So, John Deere don't know their own documents, and yet they FUD the legislators. How cute.
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  198. Oh damn, what a fuckin' amateur. Lockpicking Lawyer would open the lock in two seconds and do it again to see if it was not a fluke, and he'd be in way faster. Quality lolcontent! Bet you could just gun them down with a Ma Deuce down there in Texas.
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  199. Holy bloody hell, this is beyond fucked up. You're dead on correct that punishing the attacked will give bandits more courage, and make honest people live in more fear.
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  200. You must be a fuckin' superhero to actually be able to go through that mindless babbling and still keep your sanity. My hat is off to you.
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  201. No justice, no peace, never trust the police! That's why I won't install any government-mandated app. Especially since what I stand for goes against the official politics of this backwards country right next to Germany.
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  202. @ajb16384 indeed!
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  203. Oh yeah!
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  204. Just a passive aggressive business model: if a manufacturer is made to make things possible to repair, they'll make parts so expensive that repairing is not economically viable. And they have an excuse (in other words, a public relations gag) just in case anyone is criticizing their practices. Same old. Nice captioning, I like it. Oreo too :)
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  205. On a verge of bad journalism or bad PC building? Either way - please, don't jump, for crying out loud!
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  206. Cool! Things are moving forward, I see. I can't understand why anyone should associate R2R with redlining or racism. That's just literal fuckin' bullshit! I realize that when it comes to poly-ticks, people tend to lose their shit (and reason too), but it's such a gross non-sequitur that it makes my skin crawl.
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  207. Cars? Meh. Cats? Hell yeah!
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  208. A presidential chair is a presidential chair! Respect is due.
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  209. WTF?! An instant fire and explosion hazard - looks hella scary! "The only ones qualified", as if they were talking about inverse qualification. No one else would do such a shitty job. Thanks for sharing.
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  210. -What do you think of Donald Trump? -MEEEEEEEOW! Brilliant! <3
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  211. "...lways, I hope you learned something! Bye for now." Oh yeah, I love the old-school paper books - and I never ever used the e-book thing (unless we're talking PDF on my laptop). No one is gonna take my access away but they take up space, are heavy to carry if dealing with lots of them... that's the only drawback but I accept it. People have been doing this for decades and no one gave a shit. Same for music, movies and games. Only the physical copy, possibly with backups in case the original gets destroyed. If digital, keep it on the devices you have full control over (I've been a GNU/Linux advocate for 12 years now...), never trust "The Cloud", own things and make them butthurt! Speaking of which, I like your new merch.
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  212. Yeah, the deepfake shitshow. Know about that old Soviet photo with Lenin speaking and Trotsky literally taken out of the picture when he became inconvenient for the regime? Now it's easier than ever before to pull that kind of shenanigans... Think about 1984. We already have a MASSIVE problem with people not practicing critical thinking. Putting AI-generated content on top of that will make things exponentially worse.
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  213. Your coffee comments made my day! And damn right on freedom of speech. I wonder if Dave will make a follow-up video. And yes, there's something really fishy going on about your other channel. Ha. Ain't that the truth. Just don't let anyone who's got Mr Clinton's ear to hear that.
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  214. I've come to talk with you again, haha :) Of course it's got nothing to do with the fact that it's electric. That's just one technology among many others. The problem is with today's business, design, engineering, manufacturing and marketing culture. Indoctrinating people with safety while not giving a flying fanspin about it, they only care about the short-term profit by maximizing sales, and other than that, nothing else. That's TRWTF here. Fair point about not buying new stuff. As a 35 year old (post-)punker and free spirit who would sure as hell ride a vintage motorcycle (if I could afford that, but has a fleet of Dutch pedal-powered beauties including a cargo trike), I buy only secondhand, and would stick to my guns even if I was not broke as shit. Paywalling slow speeds? Oh c'mon, for crying out loud. It's a damn safety feature, why should ANYONE limit it?
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  215. LOL. Why don't they add a separate option for showing the number of dislikes? Mr Clinton is all too happy. No need to meow today!
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  216. Damn right, it's so true. Toxic perfectionism is the thing to do away with.
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  217. Berry rolled for initiative and got the highest score while Clinton patiently (or... catiently?) sits there waiting for reelection and protecting his reputation by not letting anyone bribe him. And Oreo is just too sweet for all the petty poly-ticks (poly being many, and ticks are bloodsucking creatures). Yes, I learned a lot! :D
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  218. Self-hate, sounds very familiar to many folks with gender dysphoria. At some point you just can't live with it anymore and it's the turning point where you take the risk, despite all the adversity, hatred and difficulties you're gonna face as an out or even perceived trans person, you come out to yourself and then to others, start transitioning. I know the pain very well. Not only that... I felt like shit many times in my life, faced with the choice between calling it a life and changing something I went for the latter. Nota bene: only a part of trans people experience dysphoria; there are different kinds and intensities of it too - which made me hold myself back from transitioning for almost fifteen years since I realized just because I kept telling myself that my case is "not serious enough" because I didn't really hate what I was born with since my childhood. Times change, for the better IMO.
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  219. -What do you think about Donald Trump? -MEEEEEEOW!
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  220. "Hello and welcome to Mr Clinton's lab! In this episode we're going to have an interview with a German TV station. So... let's get started!"
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  221. Hi there, you've got a big fuckin' thank you for these words! I fully agree that getting into repairs is relatively easy if you're willing to work hard learning the stuff, and while I'm not doing repairs on kitchen tables anymore (unless I'm working on a customer's device at their place, which happens with household appliances) and I've set up a nice electronics lab, Keritech is not yet officially a business and won't be until it's profitable enough. Pet Oreo big time from me! :)
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  222. I'm so glad that you made it! It's a huge success, one of the many to come. Keep that up and inspire countless people, like you did up till now <3
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  223. A house is not a home without a cat :D On a more serious note, everyone of us needs some rest and downtime. Have a pleasant stay, you deserve it!
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  224. Capitalism is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play. But it'll be around as long as people will see no alternatives to go for. I'm on the disgruntled "screw this!" crowd, but still doing my thing in my lab and hanging out with other hackers.
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  225. Suck'em dry economics and rampant landlordosis - glad you're calling BS on that. Same in Poland and it was a thing back then as well. Good luck on running your business in a new place! 0:55 1.3M for something that can only be torn down and built anew? They gotta be shitting us.
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  226. WTF? That's some insane and unintended social engineering pwnage... Should have never ever happened. C'mon corporations - get your shit together, review your processes! My home automation devices NEVER connect to anything in the internet and every one of them either is non-essential, easily replaceable or has manual override. I run them with an on-premise hub (Supla + MQTT) I personally installed on a Raspberry Pi, and if that thing tries to pull off some shenanigans, I'm quick to dig deep and tackle that.
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  227. Ha! About fuckin' time.
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  228. He's the President - he needs and deserves media coverage!
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  229. Oh for crying out loud. First they go and destroy local media, and later on they try to distract the public by making platforms hide independent creators from other countries. Meh, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtDit6klbMs
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  230. I wish the actual haters deleted their own accounts, instead of you. Would make the world a better place.
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  231. It's the landlordosis bullshit again... Good thing you checked and exposed that scam. They'll rip you off for total shit... hell if you knew right away it was gonna be shit, but it's simply shit covered with chocolate.
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  232. Keeping a healthy lifestyle is good, but integrating it with your day-to-day life so that you treat it as something so simple and obvious rather than a set of particular activities you do for your health is even better. I don't have to spend time or money to go to a gym - I just ride a bike going to my customers, doing shopping or running errands; I live on the fifth floor in a tenement house, so I end up going up the stairs quite a lot, etc. And sometimes I have rough sex too :). And I stay away from addictions (alcohol, smoking, drugs) because I knew it was bullshit from a very young age, seeing my mom smoke and pay lots of cash for cigs made me stick to the decision that I'm not going down that way. All the better for now, at least it doesn't fuck with my hormone replacement therapy.
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  233. Good thing y'all take some time to move around. Sitting there all day long makes people butthurt, like we've seen with the NYC mayor :)
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  234. It's not a chair, it's a presidential seat! Try negotiating with the '90s head of the most powerful country on Earth and he'll just say MEEEEEEEEOW.
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  235. Damn awesome, Louis - that's the spirit!
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  236. Sounds like it's time for a class-action lawsuit... Don't let it go, rock the boat to hell and beyond, but definitely don't sell your business.
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  237. Those who compete with Dymo and HP must take great care lest they become Dymo or HP themselves, and when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss will stare right into you. Some nice kitty love here.
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  238. Bet my fuckin' ass this is not what Steve Wozniak wanted. Good rant.
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  239. "You can't always get what you want" --The Rolling Stones I sometimes wonder if you're on the autism spectrum. Got what was formerly called Asperger's syndrome myself. Won't hestitate to use it! You're another one (because Fran said it in her "Approval" podcast) to say what I was thinking for a loooooooong time. It's something about being ambitious in science and tech, but I think it can relate to any field, like sports etc. It's also something about being past the initial stage of Dunning-Kruger curve, when you realize your incompetence and become humble, allowing yourself to learn. The more advanced we get and the more complex, challenging etc. the stuff that we do is, the more "genius" we are considered by those who can't do it, but still our horizons are far away, we look up to the people who can do far better and more advanced stuff than us, and feel little in comparison. Like me compared to Fran, or Fran compared to e.g. Einstein or others she looks up to. Permanent impostor syndrome. Being praised by those who are not on our level yet doesn't cut it for us - it's being praised by those whose level we want to reach that matters. Like me back in 2000s, when I was building amps already and was buddies with a professional amp builder (Piotr Stanisz of Black Dog Amplification), I saw his amps inside and they were very clean and elegant, so I got inspired to build mine better, and better, and better still, and he appreciated my work quality. Felt absolutely great. And if something was wrong, we talked about it, and I learned. Looking for answers to life, universe and everything. There must be something more than the 42 everyone knows. Well, maybe it was supposed to be 420, but the zero was lost at some point? Sometimes I wonder about Dave Jones' failures and how he got where he is now. Would totally love if he got philosophical, like you or Fran. Always appreciating thoughts and insights from people who know their stuff.
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  240. Makes me wonder how long the warranty was on the battery, and how oversized it was in order to ensure that lifespan. But still, including any killswitch-like feature sucks big fuckin' time.
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  241. You hit the nail squarely on the head here - it's about protecting their revenue streams, thus maintaining the power in the context of the market and economy in general.
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  242. Of course you drink IPA when nothing works! LOL
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  243.  @sparcnut  Artificial intelligence becoming sentient? We've been over that so many times :D
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  244. This ain't no Nina Hagen's song. It's the post-apocalypse.
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  245. "In case of implosion, look directly at implosion" (Aperture Science)
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  246. Seeing it all over Poland... Maybe not riots, but complacency and material fatigue. Antivaxxers are rather strong here, too. That doesn't help at all. Daily new cases reaching 20k now. Last year the misgovernment tried to blame the Women's Strike movement for the surge in infections, but that was bullshit. Now no massive protests and a lot of infections nevertheless. Fortunately the misgovernment didn't go the route of lockdowns again, because they totally destroyed many branches of our economy and I think that if they were to do that again, they'd be in for a civil war, and they're losing support big time. I had two jabs and will be going for the third one - I trust science, I'm definitely pro vax, and I'm also somewhere between individualist and collectivist, caring about individual freedoms as well as the reasonable common interest such as getting this pandemic over and done with. So, I'm for wearing these masks in closed spaces, getting the shots, keeping distance, limiting unnecessary contact etc., and intensifying precautions if the local situation is getting serious.
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  247. Sounds like a fuckin' scam. Or bureaucrats having such a total mess in their systems that not even the toughest brains would be able to take care of. And as for running a business in the Big Apple, gotta ask Fran or Ladyada.
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  248. Fix the NYC governor, people! :)
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  249. I was gonna ask where you can find one :)
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  250. I love your ranting, it really reminds me of Dave Jones (EEVBlog), and that's absolutely fuckin' brilliant! :) As for that guy talking about TikTok... is he a poor wannabe standup comedian, or what? Who cares anyway? If only he was talking about installing some actual malware, servicepeople looking through stuff or other sketchy shit going on... but his anal argument tells it all. Samson Electronics, you say? The company that does pro audio gear, or someone else?
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  251. What the actual fuck? Restaurants ain't obliged by the law to provide bathrooms to their customers? No sanitary inspections to enforce they're up to standards? That's just unthinkable! #HackTheBathroom hahaha!
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  252. "We are the Youtube - you will be assimmilated - resistance is futile!" Which is the reason to "fuck YT monetization and focus on Patreon" in 2023. Seriously, a meowing cat is dangerous content to them? I could understand if the kitty was hissing, biting and scratching. BPD AI? No, you ain't talking about GLaDOS, are you? Because she'd kill all the team off with deadly neurotoxin... oh wait, maybe that's what happened at YT, and we're all just test subjects? LOL
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  253. Real deal mechanical watches are the best, plain and simple. None of that newfangled cloud-connected electronic rubbish.
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  254. Being a single decent person in that trumped up semblance of a government? Stay strong and give'em hell.
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  255. Thanks a million, I'm definitely checking this one out! Been using GNU/Linux and OpenWrt for 13 years now.
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  256. As if "software-as-a-service" wasn't enough, now we've got "hardware-as-a-service". It's pretty common in the business-to-business practice, but consumer products were mostly free from it... other than planned obsolescence, either by maing the thing no longer relevant, or making it fail, or withdrawing support and shutting down the infrastructure the product needs to run. In neither case was the manufacturer so obvious about it though.
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  257.  @jackburton6330  talking about Lizzy, my friend's tortoiseshell cat who was super ornery, to the point of jumping on anyone she didn't like, biting and scratching. If the Combine ever wanted to create a cat and headcrab hybrid in order to infiltrate people's houses and do more harm, this would probably be the result.
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  258. Not exactly agreeing with you, but still I wouldn't want to live in such a big city as NYC, LA etc. Hell, not even Warsaw. Too overwhelming. I still love cities (and especially Dutch ones), I'm just an old town kind of gal. Living in a tenement in the center of Gdansk feels way better than living in a '70s/'80s block in a remote part of Lodz where I spent my entire live before I moved out three years ago. Plus I feel a whole damn lot safer here than I used to in Lodz (before I even started transitioning), where I was getting harassed enough to give me PTSD.
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  259. Too good to be true. Expect a serious shitshow... Wake up, Neo. The Matrix has you.
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  260. ...no zombies!
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  261. Splendid! Resistance and pressure does work, even if not always. You don't just reserve a pat on the back - I'd hug you joyously if I were in the Big Apple :)
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  262. It's just inflation, I guess.
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  263. BIG thumbs up for showing, Louis! That preamp looks baaaaaaaaaaadly discombobulated... like it wasn't just damaged in transit butmangled inside, boards flying, standoffs broken or just missing. Using plastic ones for stacking boards with heatsinks is a mistake... also, the plastic feet could have hex sockets for nuts, so the whole preamp could be taken apart with no tools.
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  264. Peace through power? Naaaaaah... Power through greed.
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  265. Wait a moment, you ran your repair business in a park and no one gave you a hard time for it? That's WILD. Make Big Apple alive again! Not the rotten worm-infested and gentrified place it has become through greed.
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  266. Right on the money! Good rant, and I agree though I don't know shit how things really work in NYC apart from what you say. Running red lights can be done but has to be done responsibly: check all the surroundings, check the conditions! If there's literally no traffic, go. If there's even a slight chance of collision, please, for crying out loud, wait! It's their time, respect that. Indicate your change of direction! People can't read others' minds. If you're gonna turn or stop, then stick a hand out, especially when riding fast. Oh, and riding in the streets, mind the trucks' and buses' blind zone. As for sharing space with pedestrians, again, you said it better than I would: Spiderman rule applies, physics apply, psychology applies. We, the riders, ARE stronger - with higher mass and velocity, our higher kinetic energy is way higher than pedestrians' (still just a teeny tiny fraction of cars') - which means we have more potential to do harm AND will be perceived as a threat, for a good reason. Let's do everything we can not to induce that sense of threat in others. Slow the fuck down when passing pedestrians or when visibility is not clear or there's a chance of someone going out of the building, don't take risky decisions (as in overtaking a bike with an oncoming bike at a short distance). No matter if we're talking electric kickscooters or bikes, their users ride all too fast, all too careless. I'm pulling a wild guess here as I've never ridden an electric scooter - but it's a matter of "feeling the energy". Riding a bike, one has to put their own work into accelerating, and this happens over time (same thing as you mentioned about high-powered electric bikes). Wanna go fast? You'll get tired. This teaches respect for one's own limitations, and teaches conserving energy and planning its use. On the other hand, electric scooters and fully electric bikes, as well as motorized vehicles, abstract that. Within the vehicle's limits, it accelerates and decelerates fast. This incentivizes people to use more power as there's plenty to go around. Time is money, don't waste it, go fast, you'll have more for yourself, can do more work, earn more cash, which offsets the cost of energy you have to draw from external sources (electric or fuel), though putting your own work into riding is not exactly free as you have to eat to be able to ride. Also, I'm not sure how e-bikes are regulated in the States; here in the European Union an e-bike can only have 250W and go up to 25km/h on assist, then it cuts off after breaking the speed limit. People still bypass that limit, haha. Registration of e-bikes conforming to those regulations is not mandatory, above that it'd be probably classified as moped and need to have licence plates and the rider would have a driver's licence (AM, A or B). Certain observations apply to my life in Gdansk and my 13 years of experience biking in the city every day as a basic form of transport. Bikes with assist are frequent as the city is surprisingly hilly, but since electric kick-scooter share systems have become more popular than bikes, it's mainly about those scooters. Food delivery guys are commonplace, they mainly ride mountain-ish bikes with electric assist or electric scooters (as in Vespa etc.) as the downtown is heavy with restaurants. What you said about getting as much shit done in as short time as possible applies here, the cost of living in Gdansk is one of the highest in Poland. The food delivery workers get their task via platforms such as Glovo or Uber Eats, which in itself is a crap job, it doesn't pay well. The platform/app tracks the worker and imposes limitations on route choices etc., unlike the old bike messenger thing (BTW I haven't really seen bike messengers here). You did household repairs? We've got something in common, haha! Then I got old-ish, burned out and went on fixing various stuff, mainly audio gear, here in my teeny tiny lab. BTW I'd add assist both on my Gazelle city bike and my Sorte Jernhest cargo trike. Those hills are killing me... Staying car-free (or car-as-a-service), considering a motorcycle someday cause I'm a rebel girl, haha.
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  267. Loved this one! Repairing while saying some true words about being smart. Oh, and you're a good sex educator! :)
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  268. Don't get me wrong. I'm here for Mr Clinton. Haha.
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  269. Just spouting their bullshit as always, while the world is burning... Same old, same old. It's just poly-ticks - poly being many and ticks are blood-sucking creatures. Period. Love your rants, as always, and again, I hope I learned something.
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  270. The cookie was a lie!
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  271. OMG, it's so canon it should be written in the canonical law!
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  272. Fire? Meeeeeeeh. Explosion of an anti-tank grenade launcher in the chief commander's office, on the other hand... now that's epic. NYC ain't gonna beat Warsaw on that one!
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  273. Was expecting MEEEEEEEEEOW! Mr Clinton's style... got dissapointed! Downvoting. Just kidding :)
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  274. Nailed it. This has been a problem for years, but sometimes shit has to hit the fan to see it. And speaking of getting old titles and having them work - I recommend Good Old Games. And I still have CD-ROM discs of Fallout 1&2, Red Alert 2 and some others. Real deal physical product you can own.
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  275. The good old "cut the bullshit" rule.
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  276. Looks like someone put their asses on fire, LOL
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  277. Hey, I'll probably get back to Jitsi, it's no hassle free and open source, just install it with your distro's package manager and that's that. None of that downloading, EULAs and other proprietary software rubbish... BTW @rossmannrepairgroup - any comment on the Red Hat shitshow that's been going on lately?
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  278. Expenses, human resources, another replaceable cog in the machine. Meh. Not an investment, someone's talent or personality... This doesn't count for the BigCo.
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  279. Can Paul dressed up as cat have a meaningful conversation with Mr Clinton? Post-apocalyptic recovery ain't gonna be easy. Even if things seem to be coming back to normal, you're never sure what shit you encounter right behind the corner.
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  280. On point. I love your rants. And again, I hope I learned something.
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  281.  @gblargg  Alexa? Nothing compared to GLaDOS.
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  282. That's the 96% ethyl alcohol, Louis!
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  283. One small move of a capacitor, one great leap for the humankind! :D
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  284. A business integrity 101 course. So many people still have to go through that.
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  285. Looks like that number is served from some call center in India... Just kidding!
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