Ask HN: What are your most regretted tech purchases?
Curious what people think is their biggest tech buying regret they wished never happened.
After a couple of months of inactivity, I needed access again. The finger print didn't work (not accepted after a time of inactivity), and I cannot remember the PIN or Google account. I'm essentially locked out.
I can easily prove I'm the rightful owner with an invoice or bank statement, however neither the retailer nor Pixel will do anything, despite multiple conversations.
It raises the question of who owns the device: The person who purchased it, or the person who initially set it up? The Pixel is designed for the latter. I would argue it should be the former since transactions can be verified through intermediaries, whereas anyone could have set up the device, however I understand the complexities of Google verifying retailer receipts.
So I'm left with an unusable device, and I've run out of possible PINs to try.
Hopes for the future:
- On initial setup, a big ugly warning about being permanently locked out, and that I should ideally add recovery options to the new account, and be careful in choosing the PIN
- Requirement for retailers that stock Pixels to accept refunds in these situations, either through the kindness of Google's non-evil heart, or consumer law ("fit for purpose"?).
Any suggestions for what to do with a "bricked" phone would be welcome!
If your phone is on, turn it off. Learn how to turn off your Pixel phone. Press and hold the volume up button and power button at the same time for 10–15 seconds. For Pixel 6 and newer devices: Press and hold the volume down button and power button at the same time for 5–10 seconds until the 'Fastboot mode' screen shows. If you hold the buttons for too long, the phone restarts. If this happens, try again from step 1. Use the volume buttons to change the menu options until 'Recovery mode' is displayed on screen. To select, press the Power button once. On your screen, 'No command' is displayed. Press and hold the Power button. While you hold Power, press the Volume up button and let go of both buttons quickly. Android recovery options should be displayed. With the volume buttons, scroll to 'Wipe data/factory reset' and press the Power button. With the volume buttons, scroll to 'Factory data reset' and press the Power button. Factory reset should start. At the bottom of your screen, when the reset is finished, 'Data wipe complete' is displayed. With the volume buttons, scroll to 'Reboot system now' and press the Power button. To set up your Pixel, after the phone completes the OS install, tap Start. Follow the on-screen instructions to set up your phone and restore your backed-up data
Edit: This feature is called Factory Reset Protection, read more at https://support.google.com/android/answer/9459346?hl=en
> If you can't give this information during setup, you won't be able to use the device at all after factory reset.
There's a reason security-conscious roms like GrapheneOS and CalyxOS only support devices where the bootloader can be relocked after installing.
As for who owns the data, that is most definitely the person who sets up that account with a PIN, not the device owner. If you forget the PIN, that’s a nasty situation, but unfortunately working as I think most would agree is best.
That's exactly the reason why I've started using GrapheneOS on a < 200 bucks smartphone lately (indeed I paid 90 bucks for a Pixel 4a). Pretty unlikely that someone would steal it (and if so, just buy another one), there is no google or generally FFANG at all and it's pretty usable with only FOSS apps. Of course the camera is not the best but it is good enough for more than snapshots. For banking stuff I keep an old iPhone at home locked in the safe - iPhones have real good software / app support and don't require a google account...
Phones and computers should come with a USB-C HSM that can reset and unlock them. This should be in addition to all the existing mechanisms to reset any kind of activation-lock.
In my view, It's beyond absurd that Apple/Google/whoever can sell devices that only they can decide are permanently bricked in extenuating circumstances.
If I have the device, its box, and everything that came in the box, I shouldn't be locked out of it forever.
I went from loyal supporter to wanting to get rid of the whole system. Buyer beware. Company has really gone downhill. I wish they'd fire the CEO.
Leadership ignored them, launched the app anyway, lost a ton of their stock value, and then laid off 100 employees.
I dunno wtf the board was doing at the time, but they should've removed the leader, rolled back the update, apologized to everyone and then worked to rebuild the experience and trust from the ground up. They never bothered with that, instead doubling down on the new app, keeping the CEO, and gradually restoring features. It still hasn't reached feature (or stability) parity with how it was a few years ago. I barely ever use my system anymore because it's so bad. (I really should sell it, but I just don't even want to touch the software to reset it, or try to support the buyer if they run into setup issues... which they will... because it's that bad.)
Apparently they're trying to make some changes with adding advisory boards, etc. But that won't help if leadership doesn't change. It was arrogance that brought them this mess, and the same people are still in charge. https://www.audioholics.com/news/sonos-backpedals https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/sonos-pledges-ch...
Empty promises from people we don't trust is not a way to win back loyalty. It's just lame PR damage control that fools nobody. They've been doing that for months now and the system is still half broken. Every week I run into issues and I've stopped trying to even report them anymore. RIP. I used to love my Move so much =/ At least that will keep working in Bluetooth mode... I hope.
Never going to buy a smart speaker system again. Dumb old cables is the way to go.
Most things with "smart" in the name are never worth the investment.
Sonos really sucks at software, but they get that right. And the speakers are good quality.
Do DIY solutions accomplish this?
The very mild inconvenience of using different speakers in different rooms to me is very tolerable vs. the horrible experience with my Sonos speaker deciding to stop working or can't connect, forcing updates, etc. when I just want some chill vibe background music.
Also I don't understand why they can't play sound from any android device since I can make a radio station on Linux and stream audio to it. I mean playing podcasts on the Sonos speakers would be great..
The FOSS Soundsync used to work with Sonos speaker but I think they blocked them: https://github.com/geekuillaume/soundsync
A friend of mine built his own clone using Raspberry Pis and generic speakers and that works way better than the Sonos stack.
That's the way to go... I guess I always knew, in the back of my head, that a proprietary cloud app was a bad idea... I just didn't think it would get THIS bad. I thought the company would work to protect their reputation and users, especially after they already had at least one similar debacle in the past (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonos#Controversies). I was wrong. Very, very wrong.
That was years ago, and now they want to own the whole thing, from music to speakers, and are willing to brick old devices to force you onto more isolating versions of their app.
I'm very glad I never switched to them (was close when Logitech killed squeezebox), and would not recommend them to anyone for any reason.
Even with the latest version of the new app, when I play something on both speakers, there is a delay from seconds up to a minute before sound comes through the second speaker, they play at wildly different random volumes each time, playing Audible books within the Sonos app no longer works, Airplay won’t connect about 30% of the time, and sometimes they just decide not to work at all for no apparent reason.
Every night I fight the urge to throw them in the bin. I’m contemplating replacing them but don’t know enough about alternatives yet.
So many issues with setting it up with WiFi. Gave up and used an ethernet cable.
It's absolutely useless without a network connection, as it lacks bluetooth. You can't use it as a speaker for a Windows machine, only for MacOS (using AirPlay). I only use it for Spotify.
Wouldn't ever buy any of their stuff.
They deliberately bricked the jog-wheel remote around a decade ago. ("We aren't just not going to support these anymore; we're actually going to remote-brick every single one of them.")
Upgrading the Play:1 to S2 broke the Bridge. (It wasn't bricked, but it was incompatible with their S2 and thus became useless to me; they didn't care.)
Lately, the Play:1 has distortion in the woofer. Sounds like normal audio stuff; a torn surround, maybe. I don't know how to open it to even do a visual inspection.
At 0/3, I've got a lot to complain about with Sonos.
But the one thing I'm not complaining about is how it worked (when it worked): It is a networked loudspeaker, with network datagrams on one side and audible music on the other side. Once music is playing (started by an app or computer software or UPNP or whatever), it continues to play that music all on its own.
It continues to play music if I take my phone and wander off, or take a call, or if I reboot my PC. It lets someone else control the music that is playing. Other than control, one or more Sonos speakers comprise a standalone system that is dependent only upon having the network behave.
I have a very effective LAN in my house, just as I have also had in other living situations. That's an advantage and I want to use it.
I definitely don't want things like this to be burdened with Bluetooth's problems.
This has been my experience, too, as long as you don't touch it. Using the controls to skip a song has caused issues before, as well as unpausing after you've paused it for a while.
That said, most of those problems have been solved by just using ethernet instead of WiFi. Even with my access point being 1~2m away, I've had connectivity issues.
I wouldn't throw it away nor sell it, as it works fine when it does work.
I generally always had good results with my regular wifi, but I had more-predictable results with a Bridge (which just produces a dedicated 801.11 "SonosNet" network), when that device still worked for me.
When I occasionally installed Sonos professionally (a long time ago), we always installed a Bridge into a system or made sure that one Sonos endpoint/speaker was plugged into Ethernet by design. In doing so, this allowed the Sonos-widgets to form their own meshed wifi network that generally behaved just fine.
(And no, none of that is quite ideal.
These days I'm mostly divorced from Sonos. But I sometimes have issues with my various Google Home and Alexa devices that connect with wifi. To combat this, I also plug my old-school tiny-ass Chromecast Audio into an Ethernet adapter, as well as the CCwGTV on my main BFT. I do this just to be sure, because having consistent audio is very important to me, and it does work.
But these devices don't make their own mesh like Sonos can do. [Well, maybe Alexa devices can if combined with an Eero router to steer the whole ship, but I don't want that at all.])
It's a ~60% keyboard, which means it's missing a lot of keys. Notably the F keys and the navigation keys (pgup, pgdn, ins, del, etc). There are ways to remap the blank keys to what you really need, and of course there are all the key sequences and chords you can use. But you have to memorize this stuff, because many of the keys are unlabeled by necessity.
I use it on my PC, Mac (work), and Linux (steamdeck). It's a lot of cognitive burden remembering shortcuts and which modifier keys do what on which OS, with the added headache of having to remember which unlabeled or remapped keys are which modifier keys. I love the feel of it and for normal typing it's great, but anytime I stray from the basic keys (A-Z, numbers, etc) it becomes difficult. I end up doing embarrassing things like using right click on my mouse to do things like copy/paste.
If I was on exactly one OS all day long, I think I could make it work. But juggling 3 is annoying.
If I could redo it all over again I'd realize I didn't need a split ergo keyboard, and would have gotten something more traditional.
Not entirely dissatisfied, but disappointed.
Functional keys, cursor, home/end/pgup/pgdn are painful. The default layout is complete garbage. I made 3 iterations with functional keys over 4 months, still struggling. I connect the kbd to the laptop via the monitor, and recently noticed myself switching to the laptop to get things done quicker.
This fad completely mystifies me. Why would anyone want fewer keys and less keyboard on the desk?
I'd understand immediately if these were intended to be portable units, but I've never seen any of them billed that way.
What I, and presumably also the previous poster, don't understand is using the 60% keyboards that remove so many more keys than just the numpad.
I mean, if you're happy with it then great; it's your keyboard. But I just don't understand it.
Many keys means you'll have to move the hands to reach the outermost (or at least rotate the hand around it's "heel" bone). It limits speed and adds to fatigue. When there are less keys, your hand does not need to move/turn to reach, but you'll need 1-2 extra layers and modifier keys (most users put them on thumbs pad). This will take some time to learn, and it's not clear how to organize them.
So this is a fundamental problem: many easy to use keys vs fewer keys, less reach distance but harder to learn.
I've recently emailed the ZSA team about my struggles with text editing, and they suggested me examples how to overcome this with an extra layer specifically for this. [2]
This is too big of a jump to make in one go, and the sudden overhead in the amount of new information your mind and fingers need to get adjusted to ends up overwhelming a lot of people.
When you switch to a custom keyboard like the one you did. It's not just a split keyboard you're switching to, you also move to a smaller form factor that has lesser keys, and an ortholinear layout which has column stagger instead of row stagger. It's most effective to transition by gradually moving to the next form factor only after you're fully comfortable with the previous ones.
In your case, something like the Kinesis freestyle would have been a much better choice for you.
I bought a fancy, customizeable, ergonomic, mechanical keyboard. It feels great! But it's too much hazzle to learn, customize, OS changes etc.
I bought it because I was having wrist pain, and my old keyboard was one I got for free from the college surplus back in 2011. So I thought it was a sensible purchase.
I'm back to cheapo surplus keyboard.
Either they are all 15 year olds with infinite time and better neuroplasticity or... more likely, people that quit are a bit embarassed about it.
If you are thinking of moving to another keyboard with fewer keys, you may want to to do something to keep track of if or how often you are using those keys that you'll be missing. Force yourself to use key combinations on your current keyboard instead of those keys specifically on your current keyboard and find out if it is doable before making the purchase.
* it's a Tamagochi that keeps crying all day long. "Please set this thing up". "Notification about settings". "Help I shat!"
* Loses connections too often.
* Good old apps, like internet radio silently crash.
* If you happen to listen music over Bluetooth and there's incoming call, it
a) shows you modal windows -- "should setting ______ be set forever?"
b) to turn off Bluetooth speaker, you must notice and click a tiny drop-down menu, and select from "speaker" (which is phone's own loud speaker), "bluetooth" and something else -- basically you gotta guess where is "normal" call with phone at the ear. All this must be done in like 10 seconds of caller's patience.
* Unconfigurable at all. You set it to "don't disturb" and whatsapp/telegram still ring loudly!!! IDK, if this setting changes anything at all. Seems that every app has own overrides.
* tries to add junk stuff like "smart wallpapers" -- and after I found a way to turn it off, showed me "The notification will be shown in 24 hours again."
* wakes up if slightly shaken and shines with the screen -- must put it screen down to avoid bright light randomly shining at night.
Maybe it's the recent Android OS such a pile of accumulated crappy features, like CSS in the wild, that is impossible to sort out... Whoever approved to buy crappy noname smartphones and brand them as Motorola, had no brain.
I have a fairly new Pixel (so up to date OS) and none of these problems. Odds are it's something Motorola/Lenovo have messed up.
For better or worse, Android experience depends largely on the specific vendor.
I sprung for the extra version with 12Gb RAM as well, so it's just so pointless. It has double the RAM of my Android phone that doesn't do that at all.
So forget about syncthing or anything else you actually want to run all the time in the background. I need to remember to run it manually if I want things to actually be synced.
I could go through the rigmarole of installing a different firmware but it looks really complicated to do, and there are pros and cons of doing that too.
It depends on whether someone has already created an image for your device.
If so, it's not complicated at all - download a few files, unzip, and type a couple of well-documented commands on a PC while the tablet is plugged in. It took me less than an hour the first time I did it, of which most of the time was spent watching progress bars!
If however your tablet is not in the list of 'supported devices' for the other firmware you'd like to use, I wouldn't try it at all. Likewise if the tablet's bootloader can't be easily unlocked; finding an exploit to crack it can be seriously difficult and time-consuming.
I hope that gives you an idea of how difficult this may or may not be - I hope your device turns out to be in the first category!
But the thing is: almost all issues are the screwed UI. Makes me wonder what are we paying for in the phones, how expensive is it to sort the UI out?
I'm using Hagezi DNS Pro configuration.
DNS level ad blocking may help controlling a lot of system baked ads and trackers. Spend 30mins or something turning everything off from settings.
This has helped me on almost every kind of phone I've ever bought - I've mostly bought Chinese ones.
It's ok-ish but too noisy, takes too long to do its job and as vacuum it kinda sucks I guess.
It also needs an app that doesn't really work at all. I was forced to install it to solve a random problem with the unit, but now it's useless. It doesn't trigger the Roomba sometimes.
I replaced it with a Bosch vacuum that has the bonus of using the same batteries as my cordless drill and other Bosch devices. Yay. The Bosch is also WAY quieter than the Roomba (also quieter than a Dyson, that was surprising), which is great since I have a cat. Also it doesn't have IoT capabilities so it's amazing.
Every device that requires IoT or an App needs to die die die.
Terrible purchase, stay away from Roomba.
After 3 years, though, the experience tells me that it's not such a revolution -- in an apartment with kids, you have to move lot of things out of its way, and this only pays off if you wash the floors afterwards. Otherwise there's little gain compared to wiping the floor manually.
I guess, if it were slightly bigger and could do washing, it would have had much more value.
The batteries seem to be PBA according to their website, which look the same as P4A! But I’m not sure! I only have a Bosch Drill and the mini-Drill/Screwdriver and they are the same!
So far no negatives, been using it daily for a month... it is great at vacumming pet hair and does a job as good as a regular noisy non-portable vacuum. The space for dust is quite good, much better than the Roomba, and very convenient to clean.
Well I got everything set up, turned it on, and it sounded like a jet airplane taking off in my basement. I knew it was going to be loud but this was ridiculous. It was an obnoxious high-pitch whine and I could hear it through the walls and in all rooms of the house. Plus it idled at 100+ watts so it was an energy hog.
Needless to say, I crunched the data that needed crunching then turned it off. I rarely spin it back up. I had some vague ideas about water cooling to avoid the fan noise but that's on the back burner. For now it's just taking up space.
I've replaced it (lab) with a KVM kluster of tinyminimicro machines (1L pc).
Now I just need to throw away the G8.
Upgrade took me an hour and cost $80 via Amazon.
If all 64 cores are fully utilized for days, you need the fan running full blast to avoid overheating.
I have to admit I have also switched back to real paper for a lot of tasks but I still like the remarkable as an e-reader, and enjoy writing on it occasionally, so I wouldn't say it's a big regret.
I'm also using a lot more paper and have gotten into fountain pens for some kinds of note taking, which is about as economically ruinous as mechanical keyboards.
In the future, I have it on my list to change it into an eink linux box to use to connect to remote machines with the attached keyboard. At least the hardware will be used eventually. Probably won't use the pen in that configuration.
BUT -- I can't remember the last time I charged it. It's possible it's still on its original factory charge from a few months ago. As someone whose phone is perpetually below 20% charge I greatly appreciate that feature -- given the choice, I'll always choose "needs to boot" over "needs to charge". Your anecdote has therefore reduced my own buyers' remorse.
I turned them off one time and it wouldn't even last a day, but after enabling them back again it's back to it's normal multiple days battery charge.
HP + Linux, never again.
HP never again.
That’s better!
Backups are important, but only restores count. Thousands of dollars and years down the tape rabbit hole, I eventually realized (major denial factor there) that the number of successful restores was 'zero'.
By that time I could buy an external hard drive and enclosure for about the same price, and it would work perfectly. Particularly if I simply did a recursive copy of the files instead of using some backup software's weird-Harold file format.
The Schlage encode plus smart lock is the only one that seems to work right at the moment (it also looks the worst). NFC is the way to go for most uses, and matter over thread beats WiFi anything by a long shot.
Not sure about capacitive buttons, but I can see real buttons wearing out or allowing moisture through.
But just to be clear - the level doesn't have buttons. It has touch sensor on the enclosure to lock/unlock by just touching the lock, while it looks like a plain-old deadbolt. The problem is the sensor is garbage, so it's basically a plain-old-deadbolt but costs 5 times as much
After a few years and several doors/apts, the deadbolt itself seems to be showing some issues sometimes (have to pull the door close tightly for it to lock right)... I'm not sure if that's a door alignment issue or maybe a thermal freeze/thaw issue or something... need to debug it further... but it's a lot cheaper and more reliable (and uglier) than most smart locks I've tried, including the much fancier ones.
If you buy something that is installed outdoors, make sure it’s from a company that has previously manufactured things that are installed outdoors, or it will be a piece of shit.
This Schlage model has a listed operating temperature range, because Schlage has been manufacturing things that are installed outside for over 100 years: https://www.schlage.com/en/home/products/BE489WBCENFFF.html
They are also inescapable, which means we are cursed with ugly, unpleasant lighting basically everywhere.
A couple of years ago I looked through all the bulbs at my hardware store, they had Chinese brands and name brands like Philips and Osram. None of the bulbs had a CRI higher than 80.
I work for an electrical wholesaler and checked. We have 18 bulbs in stock with a CRI higher than 80, which is the average. The lowest is 55.
My personal anecdote is that I have yet to have any Philips LED bulbs die on me. The oldest ones I have are from 2012.
Some of it could be because I have defective red/green color vision, but so do about 15% of all males.
The next time you're in a restaurant, public place or somebody's home and notice that you're feeling good and comfortable, try to think about what makes you feel that way. It is probably that they've put thought in things such as illumination.
https://budgetlightforum.com/c/other-light-types/led-light-b...
Most agree that the light from most LED light bulbs (i.e., having a pronounced spike in intensity in the blue wavelengths) is bad for you in the evening and in the night time, but I'm saying I don't even like it in the morning if my exposure is too long (and when I'm having a bady day "too long" might be as short as 10 minutes).
https://www.crslight.com/images/kelvin_cri_comparison_chart....
CRI is also not why I dislike most LED light bulbs either.
Also, to be clear, I'm not claiming that CRI is the root cause here, rather that it should indicate if there's a spike in the blue.
Best decision ever. The lights are dimmable and they have such a beautiful glow. It's so noticeable that guests comment.
I also now buy halogen on sight from the hardware store and stockpile, as their days are surely numbered.
https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/superwarm-1700k-...
Our bodies do so much better when it is dark near bedtime, that the idea of “efficient lighting” to save energy just makes little sense. A person only needs about 20 watts of warm incandescent lighting to read or talk to family after sunset- which costs essentially nothing. We overlight everything because it is so cheap to do, but harms us.
For bed time applications, a guy here was selling the "bed time bulb." I got one and liked it.
Heaven help you if you have a small child in the house that loves to flip the lights on and off.
https://wginc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/WGI-Color-Tempe...
Then there’s the entire Amazon Echo ecosystem. Amazon’s Eero routers - cost $600 or something from what I remember, but they add on a stupid subscription on top for that for features that should be free and are free on other routers.
Another thing I bought which I regret is a used system76 laptop. I originally planned to use it during said outages, but battery life is very far from what I expected (I guess it being old and me using linux doesn't help too).
It's pretty easy to convert 12v to anything you might need. Most ham radios will work on 12v. I'm very happy with my DIY setup with 48AH batteries (24AH x2 in parallel) in a harbor freight dry box, some anderson plugs, and a cigarette lighter adapter that I can plug a real AC inverter into, and/or a nice USB PD based charger.
I'm sure there are companies out there that have this all packaged up as a product. I think the key is to look for LiFePO4 batteries.
Now I have a MacBook Air and an iPad Mini. Two of my best hardware purchases. Procreate and Notability are genuine notebook replacements.
Besides that, any wireless speakers using Bluetooth - it's a garbage consumer technology that I can't believe became a standard. Curious if there was a superior "Betamax" to its "VHS".
I played for a few minutes, listened to Hell March (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3YzmjmAGoI) for nostalgia, and then remembered why I moved on. Games sure have changed a lot in the intervening decades, lol.
If given the chance, playing for nostalgia reasons is fine, just set the expectations lower on how much fun it will be. Spending a lot of money to play? Probably not worth it, find a bar-cade or someone else to loan you a system for a day or two.
After all that, it turns out that they didn’t do anything useful: no way to even see the current temperature and after a high temperature alert, there’s no way to see how high it got for how long. They advertise remote support but the one time it came up, it turned out that was completely fictitious and they insist on sending a technician.
I don't care too much though, as it is stainless steel inside and was cheaper than the equivalent dumb Philips kettle.
Other than that, I regret buying a Nintendo switch. I played the big Zelda game when it launched and that's about it. Nothing else in Nintendo's library interested me, not for a $70 download-only two years after release.
It's hot most of the year where i live, and it turns into a sauna around your ears, didn't think of that when i dropped a couple hundred bucks on it.
Also my unit sometimes just momentarily doesn't have sound. For like a split fraction of a second there's no sound, and then it continues like nothing. Seems other people have this issue, i've been able to solve it for short periods of time by toggling the connection quality switch in the sony app.
I would recommend the sony WI-C100's, not very expensive, bluetooth, and battery life of 24 hours, plus since its just wireless buds connect together, no sauna during the warm months.
Still like using the XM4's the sound quality is amazing.
You can also just buy a $100 usbc touchscreen if you really ever need one.
But it was in fact the fastest intel MacBook Air - and it still is.
What few people outside Apple (or even inside given Apple's notorious secrecy) probably realized in early to mid 2020, even after the WWDC announcement, was how great the Apple Silicon/M1 MacBook Air was actually going to be, and how it would transform expectations for performance and battery life in a fanless laptop.
Perhaps Apple should have offered a trade-in scheme like they did for the Lisa/Macintosh XL. I wonder if they offered upgrades to the buyers of the October 1999 Power Mac G4 (PCI Graphics) which was replaced by a better model only two months later.
I used Fusion for my previous job from the start of the pan until last year (so first on an Intel Mac, then on an M1 MBP) and it was good enough for what I needed. Win for Arm was obviously faster than Win x86 on the previous machine, even when it was a preview release. Then again, my needs were not extreme.
And I just can't figure out what else a tablet is useful for: it seems to be an uncomfortable compromise between a real computer and a phone but doesn't do either very well. The OS isn't good enough to handle complex apps, and it's just a bit to big to hold comfortably like a phone.
On the other hand, it did survive spilling an entire mug of tea over its keyboard without any problems.
Also, the Boxee Box. Worked great with Boxee for a little bit, and then it all fell apart and Boxee ceased to exist.
I used to obsess back in the XBMC days (my teens) about boxee and the boxee box (never bought it) thanks for the blast from the past!
https://1projectaweek.com/blog/2022/2/8/converting-a-carro-h...
I also realized that the skill necessary to accomplish this was way above my comfort level. I did see a product called the Bond Bridge Pro that has good reviews. The FCC ID for the fans isn't listed in their database yet but it may still work. I haven't had the time to dig further into it.
XBMC was a lot of fun back in the old days. As I got older, I definitely got lazier with stuff like that, went to an Apple TV, and was happy there. :)
That, plus the lack of OTA updates, needing to plug into a PC/Mac with iTunes (horrible app) to load music, backup photos or update lead me to never purchase an Apple product again.
Going from that to an HTC Android phone was like going 10 years into the future.
Thus an iPhone has ZERO usability for me.
Had a regular end-of-the-month printing need of about ~500pages. To my great frustration it still kinda works - needs monitoring for jams, bad prints, paper replenishment, wifi connection loss, you name it.
Should've kept(and very likely will go back to) using the services of a local professional print shop.
And they don’t have returns, customer service also fails to admit that they suck by design and blame it all on me (even though i know other people who has exactly same complaints).
A naked king situation.
I drive a sports car that can corner at ~1G and the seats have bolsters on the side to keep your body in place when cornering hard- but they also make the seat uncomfortable on a long drive, it is a substantial tradeoff. It would seem impossible for a seat on wheels to have any lateral forces at all?
At the very least, the gas piston will fail to hold the position afater a couple of years at most. I don't even care about my chair being easibly adjustable in the first place.
Then the "leather" is the cheapest material imaginable and will start to peel off even before the piston gives in.
The handrests are either not adjustable or completely flimsy.
What do you not like about it?
It feels like people who make it never actually use it.
Personally I'd say my most regretted purchase was the Brand New Model F Keyboards "ortholinear" - It's modeled after an ErgoDox but critically both halves are not connected, so in reality it's two separate keyboards. I don't know how anyone could release something so useless for ~$700. I'm sure all of their other offerings are great, however.
I will never buy another XPS. For all of apple's faults, with the exception of the 2018 model pros, I have never had much of a problem.
Isn't this part kind of the point?
They are just speakers on top of the entry of your ear. So the music competes with the surrounding sounds.
Mostly, I use them to listen to stuff in the house and still be able to carry on a conversation without having to doff my headphones, just pause whatever I'm listening to! A friend also uses them in a wood shop that doesn't allow headphones, but he listens to podcasts to help get through the day.
I'm sorry they don't fit your use case, and I'll have to keep that in mind as I get back on a bike next year.
However, outside with noise, I find them unusable.
I have the OpenRun version and use it for biking and running and it’s great. I’ve been using these a lot running and I prefer these over my Sony noise canceling over ear headphones. There is just something about being outside and still being connected to surroundings - yes for safety but even beyond that - I just run better with my ears open to the air.
I’ve tried several of the bone conducting variety. Shokz is the easiest to use. They also just released a new version that has even better sound called the OpenRun 2 or something similar and it seems to have an even bigger bone conducting audio device.
Maybe I should give the bone conducting ones a try.
I got it so that I could do some writing and note-taking away from my main work computer. Forum posters and tech reviewers assured me the device was up to the task. But the reality is that while iPadOS can do about 60-70% of what macOS can do, the remaining 30% is entirely impossible to accomplish unless you have access to a computer.
I learned this the hard way when I was traveling with just my iPad and somebody sent me a ZIP file that had a hidden file in it (in the UNIX sense, i.e, with a name starting with a period). At the time, there was no way to view or open this file using the iPad Files app. I could pay for a third-party file manager, or I could use iSH to edit it in Vim. Why make it impossible to see dotfiles at all?! Why not give me a checkbox I can enable to temporarily view those files? I understand that it's rare to receive a dotfile over email, but it's not an impossible event.
At some point I discovered you can't install custom fonts on an iPad. Apps can bundle their own fonts, but installing a font globally requires a nasty workaround: use a third-party app to embed your font files inside a security profile, then install that security profile via the Settings app. For a device that targets designers, video editors, and musicians, not being able to install your own fonts is such a bizarre choice.
There were other weird papercuts too. When exporting tracks from Logic, I couldn't put the app in the background. I had to sit there and wait for it to finish. Many apps had iPhone and Mac versions, but no iPad versions. For a while the Magic Keyboard's trackpad cursor didn't send hover events to web pages in Safari, which meant some webapps were unusable. The Apple Pencil could send hover events, though, which meant I had a fun week navigating the WordPress admin interface using the Pencil instead of the trackpad. They eventually fixed this issue.
You can't play more than one sound source at a time. A one second looping sound on a webpage can permanently stop playback in Spotify or Apple Music. This behavior might be fine for a phone, but for a tablet that claims to be a computer replacement? Weird choice.
I could go on and on about this. After all these years, the iPad is still pretty much a consumption device unless you're a digital artist who relies on the Apple Pencil for work. Besides digital drawing and handwriting, there is very little you can accomplish on an iPad that you can't accomplish far more easily on a Mac.
My iPad Pro is basically a Kindle now. Sometimes I use it to watch YouTube, but only sometimes. The YouTube app on iPad is far worse than the website, and it's easier to just reach for my Mac.
Synth apps are superior on a multitouch screen. Whenever I try them on a Mac it's like I just have one finger. You can set up external MIDI control for apps, but the iPad is just immediate with no extra hardware. (And of course there are dozens of great, cheap synth apps for iPad.)
Games may be content consumption, but multitouch enabled games (board games, card games, rts, etc.) are great on the iPad. Also Apple actually cares about iPad gaming, while their commitment to Mac gaming is lukewarm at best.
Duolingo may also be content consumption, but I greatly prefer its web app on the iPad to the Mac version.
First Asus purchase ever. USB Bluetooth dongle. Stopped working in 2 weeks.
Second. An Asus GTX 770. It broke in 3 months.
Third. Asus Xonar PCIE Sound Card. Optical did not work, started hissing/having static in less than a year.
Fourth. Asus motherboard for 1st gen Ryzen. Tried to update bios on arrival, it bricked.
I am never NEVER buying anything Asus related ever again.
Later I got one from Omron, an actual medical company. It stores my vitals without phone and displays almost all the data on device and autodetects user. There is syncing for my data which I can do once in a while. The app's headscratching/feature ratio is moderate but since it has no bullshit features its enjoyable.
It's actually amazing how much you can get done without a phone distracting you, but it's expensive and rarely used, and paper is fine for occasional initial brainstorming.
Mechanical Keyboard. I tried one with no page up/page down/home/end keys and hated it. I also wasn't a fan of how separate keyboards keep your hands farther from your eyes on the screen compared to a laptop, but that probably just takes a few months to adjust.
Pickit3. I learned a lot... But why didn't I start with Arduino?
RFM non-LoRa Arduinos. Nobody uses these, it's like $5 of cost savings. My custom protocol I built to do error correction with them was incredibly time consuming and not that much fun.
A loft bed and mattress. I could have probably just found a more durable cot really. The extra storage space didn't help that much, I would have been better off just.. buying less stuff.
Any brushed motor tool when brushless is available used for the same price as the brushed one new and on sale.
Earbuds. I lost the charging case on one, and an earbud on another. Not doing that again, I'll just use normal Bluetooth headphones or else not do headphones at all.
12v gear. Everyone who starts with electronics will at some point think about having a single 12v transformer and running their whole workbench on it. They will pick a connector and start building around their new standard.
I chose XT60 which requires a bunch of handmade cables. Such a hassle. Just use USB-C and you can run on 12v easily if you ever need to.
Tons of random parts and pieces, to the point where I'm trying to put together an Awesome List in celebration of all the super common parts and materials which are all you need for 99% of stuff.
Any product containing lead. I'm sure the amount of exposure was trivial but really there was just no reason to be messing with it when there are alternatives.
A catalytic butane heat gun. The one I have is just kind of OK.
A Hakko soldering iron. Those FX-888 type ones are so expensive especially for the older tip format.
I use notes and text highlighs in PDFs daily. Its easily indexable.
Long story short, warranties still matter, and it should be a big part of any expensive purchase decision.
I don't have the floorspace to walk around, there's only one app I even use (Wander) and it gives me a headache after a few minutes. And now both of them are obsolete. Even the default environments are disappointing.
Also, just broke a cheap Hama mouse into pieces, literally today. It was only like ~$5, but the worst piece of trash I have had: it turns off after 2 minutes of inactivity, and on top of that it can't wake up always... (well, couldn't wake up. It's in the mouse-heaven now)
Another suggestion of mine is to listen to CDs from the late 80s, when record labels considered 'digital' a mark of quality and actually followed through with the marketing. They tend to be the best, in my opinion - they have good dynamic range which nowadays is usually compressed out of the recordings to maximise loudness, and they had just started using 192kbs bitrates, which I consider to be at the upper level of my hearing ability. No help for new albums, of course, but hopefully those will have FLAC downloads available as some consolation!
As someone who grew up later in the MP3 era (90s), I guess I never knew what "good" audio ever sounded like. I'd love to do a back-to-back comparison of the same song, one in "modern" shitty no-dynamic-range and the other in a higher-fidelity version to see if I can notice any difference at all. Between my consumer equipment and my aging ears, I dunno if I'll be able to at all...?
It seems that my confabulation of 192kbps was also a gross underestimation - apparently, the Sony PCM-1, which was released in 1977, already had a bitrate of 573kbps.
Brothers in Arms was one of the first albums recorded on a Sony 24-track digital tape machine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_in_Arms_(album)#Recor...
I recently bought a pair of Bose QuietComfort Ultra and sent them back because I had nothing but issues with them and they were barely any better than the Anker's when working. Certainly not worth the price difference.
I had the Bose and Sony ones. They were OK, just uncomfortable. Been using the in-ear Airpods Pro for a few years now, for everything from work to flights to trains to exercising, and I love them soooo much... they're probably my favorite tech purchase ever (and I don't even have an iPhone). Pairing is always a pain in the ass (I just manually pair again with every device I want to switch to) but other than that, they've been so nice.
Personally, I'm not an audiophile, but I find the audio quality incredible (vs my Sonos speakers, wired Koss PortaPros, generic soundbars, Sony XM3 and Bose QC35s, etc.) and the comfort unbeatable. But some people hate the in-ear kind.
Anyway, not trying to convince you of anything, just wondering what made your experiences so different and bad?
Common problem: ANC changes the music too. It messes with the mids and highs, regardless of the model. Some are better than the others... but of course ANC can be turned off, which I did frequently in the past years. Oh, and the low battery warning: "ATTENTION - battery will be empty in 4 hours, let me disrupt your music every 60-120 seconds till the end of time!".
Bose QC35, QC45: They are pretty much the same, both inside and outside. Very comfortable, can't argue with that. They randomly they cut off the first/last 2 seconds of the tracks (how did they even release them like that is a mystery for me). Also, no bass, no highs, just a pile of mids. Almost 0 dynamics - you will never hear any other instruments else during a bass-guitar heavy track...
Sennheiser PCX-550 ii: It sometimes sounded fairly decent, even with ANC, however rather uncomfortable. The touch interface is catastrophic (in humid weather all the controls activate at the same time. Literally: volume up-down, play-forward-pause-call, all at the once). It had the worst bug I saw so far: about once every 2 weeks it made some extra loud shrilling noise that made me shit my pants (I'd guess the ANC got into some self-amplifying feedback loop). After it came back from "warranty-repair", it did it again within 3 days.
Marshall Monitor II ANC: mushy pile of mids, sounds actually bad, especially for its price. I really thought that it was made for rock music, but no. It is mostly made for audible books. Controls look cool (5-way joystick), but hard to use in practice: if the button press is even half a degree off, it doesn't register. Especially unusable while walking. Used two different sets of this model (after a warranty exchange). Earpads break after 6 months (for both sets). The second set it literally a pain to wear: it makes the top of my head hurt after 20 minutes.
Sony 1000XM2: Very bad touch interface, it feels like the gestures are randomly changing function. Keep disconnecting and stuttering. Sometimes after 20 minutes, sometimes after 2 hours. The only guaranteed thing is that one of them happens sooner or later. If I apply a ton of EQ on each track one by one as they are played, it is possible to get decent sound of it. But usually I just want to listen to music, without messing with EQ every few minutes.
Airpods pro: Keeps disconnecting. ANC keeps turning on and off, living its own life. Sometimes only one side has sound. But it doesn't sound bad, when it works. It doesn't happen very often though. Too bad Apple ran out of SW developers.
I have only one BT headset that I keep using still, though exclusively for workouts: Sony MDR-ZX770: I got it like 8 years ago. It sounds crap, but very robust and reliable at what it does. If you want a bad sounding cheap headset, I recommend this one lol.
I had some random headsets from Amazon also, Chinese garden variety, but I won't even say anything about them.
But in a nutshell, that's why I have had enough. Now I'm just back to oldschool headsets, and hear every instrument without bugs.
Given the popularity of the product you’re presumably aware this isn’t a typical experience. I certainly haven’t encountered disconnects or ANC switching off uncommanded, and the only time I get one-sided sound is if one side runs out of battery. You might consider asking Apple to replace them.
My first and last experience with an Android based TV device.
Since 2018 or so, I've been using a small Windows PC with a Hauppauge WinTV Dual USB tuner (ATSC, watch as you record a different channel in the backgroud) and DVBViewer software. Use a web browser for streaming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_CD
It was kinda cool but they didn't support it long. Video was one of its selling points supposedly, but didn't have good replay-ability. I should have known that because I'd played "video" games like Dragon's Lair in the arcade. But the Sega CD was even worse, limited to (I think) 64 colors! Which looked like shit. At least I did not buy the 32X as well.
I did however learn a very expensive lesson about product support and being on the bleeding edge—let others live there.
My apartment building's management would only give me one key fob so I cloned it into my flipper for a second key. I've cloned hotel key cards too.
The infrared remote is good to control things like TVs & air conditioners in a pinch - like when you misplaced the remote. Or when the TV belongs to someone else...
Now I just use a pair of Sennheiser studio headphones and a usb desktop microphone, and they’ve lasted for years with no issues.
If you're careful there are so, so many harbor freight tools that likely come off the back of the same Chinese factory name brands do. Their "professional" line is about 50-70% less expensive and performs as well. The impact wrench is better than a Milwaukee, and their professional torque wrench comes within tolerance to a Snap-On.
For someone who doesn't need a QA cert for insurance/licensing reasons harbor freight is a miracle. Likely because it's the EXACT same stuff. Nothing is made in America anymore.
If 6 months pass and you are still using it, and notice it not being enough for your use, then get a quality one.
I've seen many quality tools that have been used once or twice after years, bought out of impulse.
I also subscribe to the buy cheap, if you use it alot and it's not working out buy a much better model. I've done that for years and have a hodgepodge of brands that make me happy. The only exception is battery powered tools, I did some research, decided that Dewalt would be a good choice. I didn't want to have 10 different kinds of battery packs around, so picked the battery ecosystem and went from there.
And when I buy a wood chipper, my Fujifilm printer will be the first thing through it. I have wasted more time and supplies to get pictures that look like a 2 year old colored it. So sad.
And for the "occasionally hang up a painting or some shelves" type DIY it's fine.
If you didn't buy it at harbor freight, buy your next suspiciously cheap tool at harbor freight.
Used to have an MBA 2013. Great device, which ran well despite its age.
The MBA 2018 is awful. The keyboard is awful (have the double-keystroke issue), the performance is awful and the device would get hot and throttle with even the least demanding of tasks. And no magsafe! At least the USB-C connectors were a welcome addition. And an additional regret (totally my fault) is that I got the ISO-keyboard version.
I now also have an MBA M3 for work, which is a great device. The keyboard feels better, it runs smooth as butter and hey, the magsafe's back!
After I had owned it several months, they sent out a repair crew to reinforce the lid for the purposes of (I am not making this up) preventing it from exploding and spraying the laundry room with shrapnel. OK, fine, mistakes were made. But the reinforcement came with a new wash setting for use with heavy loads (bedsheets, etc.). Using that setting, or loading the washer past about 50 percent on any other setting, or sometimes just because, it seizes up and dumps its entire water load onto the laundry room floor. This happens just rarely enough that I've only now decided to go through the annoyance of replacing it.
Unlike some of the other people listing VR headsets, I actually use VR regularly. But the Vive in particular was an expensive piece of junk: it lasted not even a year before one of the displays started to die, then experienced the same failure again 6-7 months after warranty repairs. Apparently this failure mode is common.
In general I think it's best to stay away from the high-end headsets: HTC, Varjo, Pimax, Bigscreen, everyone I know with them has experienced problems of some sort or other. Many of the midrange headsets are worse on paper, but seem to have fewer issues in practice.
Every computer ever, I could have been a lumberjack and had a peaceful life
A couple months later I was at the local surplus goods shop and they had gorgeous Sun 21" CRTs for $75 each. I broke down and passed the virtually new $350 LCD to other family members.
It ended up Capacitor Plaguing itself to death after like 3 years. I tried replacing the bulgetacular caps, but no dice.
Copenhagen Wheel. Still working but no longer supported. Approaching 5000 miles. Some day they might brick my bicycle, which is kind of crazy.
I use iPhone mainly, but for Android I usually stick to either Pixels or Motorola, even the cheap ones have been quite reliable for me, both hardware and software, plus they are usually a good deal.
Miui was fine too, it was generic “android experience” that made me hate it. I avoided sharing details cause neither HN does usually like it nor I want to remember. It was one of the biggest physical and psycological a reliefs in my life getting a new iphone afterwards.
lenovo thinkpad, used as a linux notebook, but the trackpad is difficult to use under linux.
I wish they would bring back a 27" iMac and Target Display Mode.
This seems crazy to me. I program with my Ergodox perfectly fine. It's so much better for programming because all the silly symbols I need can be wherever I like.
You can put the [] keys wherever you like. You can have a brackets/symbols layer activated by holding another key, so you don't even have to move your hand to get any symbol you want.
I don't do this for brackets but I do have a movement layer which puts the arrows and pgup/pgdn/home/end right under my right hand on the home row. So I hold my thumb on a thumb key and then I can use arrows without even moving my hand.
I also have other keys on that layer send the higher Function keys that aren't even on a standard keyboard (F13-F24), so they are picked up by Autohotkey and I can run any kind of script I want from that. I use that to move windows to certain locations. I have a key on that layer to immediately bring up the calculator. I also have media controls right there. Really it's limited only by your imagination and how much effort you're willing to put into making things happen.
It's 1000x more flexible than a standard keyboard because I can put keys that I need regularly either on a layer linked to a thumb key, or basically any crazy setup you can possibly think of with tap layers or whatever. https://docs.qmk.fm/feature_layers
If you can't find a place for brackets, you really should think about it a bit harder, because that's the absolute weakest argument ever for using a standard keyboard. The symbols are absurdly laid out on a standard keyboard!!
Even the moonlander default Layer 1 is so much more logically laid out for symbols: https://configure.zsa.io/moonlander/layouts/default/latest/1
Have a look at the Spacefn layout for some ideas, they mention parentheses here: https://kbd.news/The-SpaceFN-concept-2315.html
Here's a guy specifically discussing coding on a moonlander https://anniecherkaev.com/principles-for-keyboard-layouts
I guess if all you wanted was a standard keyboard that is split, then it's not that, but I'm never going back to a standard keyboard, and you can't make me!
But it is a regret with benefits. E.g. this comment.
You can convert them to monitors, if you want.
For more graphically intensive games, I still have a Windows desktop. I don't think I will ever buy another "gaming" laptop.
So far aside from cell phones and tablets nothing has worked right.
My Macbook Air M2 is the exact opposite of that. Best purchase of the past few years, without a doubt.
I got a refurb 8gb/256gb m2 air somewhat impulsively when in the market for a use-on-the-couch laptop. It is NICE. My real laptop now never leaves the dock.
Kobo eReader, think it was called a Sage? absolute garbage, worst eReader I have ever bought. Spent 10 months battling with support after constant issues, got a replacement and sold it immediately.
I still want to give smartwatchs a chance but this definitely didn't convince me. Who wants another thing to charge every single day? I have enough with my phone already...
I gotta find an excuse to use this thing.
Are you laying your wrist flat when using it? I could see maintaining a fully pronated posture leading to wrist aches over time. I try and keep my hand as neutral as possible when using it, in realist i'd estimate my wrist angle off the desk to be ~45deg, then I use my middle and ring fingers on the pad.