Comment by Programmatic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Programmatic | Hacker News Reader

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You raise an extremely good point that describes my feelings lately perfectly.

How do HN folks manage the inevitable change in and monetization of popular and useful products?

I'm having serious heartburn consuming updated products (e.g. Win 10 and FireFox). It seems that the forced dichotomy is Control, Ease of use, Features within 3 years: Pick two. I had been really happy with my customized FireFox and locked down Windows 7 from the control and usefulness standpoint but FF has been taking liberties that parent notes and Windows has a "new direction" than the standalone value they provided with Win 7. Now it feels like they're yanking the rug out, and constantly evaluating the large amount of technology I rely on is tiring.

I'm right there now. I just simplified everything by going back and looking for the technological singularity where everything just worked.

This is a really hard and uncomfortable thing after years of convenience along the same lines of going back to CDs after using mp3s but it's worth it.

Hah. I actually am very happy with my music solution (for now). I buy CDs and rip them with iTunes to MP3 on my media PC to a network drive, and then manually sync my phone. I can play it on anything by opening a folder.

The UI is essentially put in CD, wait, have music, and sync phones occasionally.

What is your current setup that you're happy with?

My entire outlay is now a single laptop running CentOS 7, a desktop as a backup machine if I kill the laptop, some earphones, a dumbphone and a USB stick and USB mp3 player in the car. I rsync the USB stick for the car periodically and that is it.

As for everything else, browser is Firefox still (ick) and the only services I use are an IMAP box and domain.

I gave up music on my phone, contact sync, email on my phone, navigation, everything. A simpler life seems to be better for me.

I built my own music player / music library after I got sick of lugging around my CD collection with every move.

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