lh7777

I've had a Sonos system for maybe 5 years and just started dismantling it a week ago. The hardware is great, but the apps have always been terrible -- they add just enough friction that I've been subconsciously avoiding using the system for some time now. If you're into voice control, it's probably OK, but I'm not interested in that. The Spotify app (via Spotify Connect) is probably the best interface for Sonos, but I'm not a big Spotify fan and want to be able to easily play from other sources.

I also looked into DIY options and came to the same conclusions about reliability and time spent fiddling with it.

We have mostly Apple devices, so I decided to just give Airplay 2 a shot. I bought a used Airport Express for our living room hi-fi system and a portable Libratone Zipp speaker to use elsewhere (it's in the kitchen right now). If the system continues to work as well as it has over the past week, I'll probably get a couple more Zipps. But because it has its own battery power, it's easy to just unplug and carry it to where I need it, so I don't think we'll need one for every room like we did for Sonos.

What's availability like, though? I know that my car doesn't make any financial sense, but my primary use case is getting out of town to go hiking, skiing, etc. I've looked into Zipcar before, but it seemed like I'd have to reserve a car ahead of time to have any chance of getting one on a nice day. In Seattle, we used to have ReachNow, Car2Go and Lime in addition to Zip, but those others recently closed down so I'm also concerned that car share isn't really a sustainable business.

There's an 8 year old issue in Bugzilla for this.[1] The Firefox team has finally put some resources into fixing it, but progress has been slow. I'm not holding out much hope -- Chrome has had this feature for a long time and it's never worked quite as well as Safari's.

A Firefox multi-touch zoom extension also exists[2], but it's not smooth enough to be useful to me (admittedly, this is on my old and slow 12" Macbook).

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=688990 [2] https://github.com/haxiomic/firefox-multi-touch-zoom

We have municipal composting here in Seattle, which can handle everything from food scraps to yard waste to bioplastics. The city incentivizes recycling and composting by charging a lot for trash collection, less for compost, and nothing for recycling. I’ve known for some time that much of my recycling is really going into a landfill, but there’s still value to separating for me because I can use a very small (low rate) trash can as there’s hardly anything left that goes in the trash. I wonder if composting is really a net benefit, though.

I don't if/how the banks make money with high-yield accounts, but you might be better off with treasury bills if:

1. You're in a high income tax state -- interest is taxed as income but t-bill yields are exempt from state taxes.

2. You have more than the $250k FDIC limit (although that limit is per bank, so you can safely exceed it by opening accounts with multiple institutions).

3. You expect interest rates will decrease in the future and want to lock in your rate for a certain amount of time (of course, a high-yield CD would do the same thing, potentially at a better rate).

Here's a good, brief article that sums this up pretty well: http://www.grubstreet.com/2019/04/how-to-tip.html

Until I read that, I honestly didn't know that people tip on top of the tax. I was firmly in the "tip 18 percent, before tax" camp and assumed I was leaving a good tip by doing so. I'll admit that I was a bit outraged after reading the article because it made me feel like a cheapskate over something that had never even occurred to me before.

What other tipping faux pas am I unknowingly making?

I'm a big fan of thin, fanless machines, and have both a 12" MacBook and a Surface Pro 5. While it's much less powerful, I find the MacBook more pleasant to use (even ignoring MacOS vs. Windows 10) -- way better trackpad, keyboard and screen are rigidly attached to each other, wakes from sleep faster and more reliably. The Surface Book solves most of these problems (and, IIRC, has fanless variants), but I think it's too bulky due to the 13.5" screen and hinge design. I haven't seriously considered a Chromebook due to the software limitations or the iPad due to the lack of a mouse cursor (also software limitations).

In short, with the 12" MacBook discontinued, nobody's making a notebook I'm interested in at the moment. That's fine, though, as my 2015 MacBook is still working great (especially since I just had the battery replaced) and presumably I can still get a refurb if I drop this one in a lake or something.

Right. The only thing I've ever done using my Sony smart TV's native interface is to go into settings and turn off WiFi. It isn't a dumb TV, but might as well be.

This isn’t the case for “day labor” volunteering in my experience, although of course that’s not for everybody. I build & maintain hiking trails a few days a month and occasionally work construction at Habitat for Humanity. In both cases, you’re supposed to stay all day, but there’s no obligation beyond that one day.

I recently discovered my local tool library -- seems like a really great idea. For a small annual (suggested) donation, you can borrow just about any tool a homeowner could reasonably expect to use (except heavy machinery, of course). I live in a townhouse with no garage and limited storage space, so I simply can't justify keeping a lot of tools around that I might need again someday. The tool library solves that problem and will definitely save me money vs. buying new or renting at Home Depot.

If you can't borrow a tool or need it semi-regularly, I'd recommend checking out Harbor Freight if there's one nearby instead of going to the local hardware or big box store. Their tools are not the highest quality, but unless you're a contractor or serious craftsperson, they'll probably work just fine at a much lower price point.

I've had reasonable success cutting back on useless catalogs with catalogchoice.org. There are a few very persistent clothing companies that I'll have to call to see if I can get them to finally stop sending catalogs every few weeks, but for the most part, Catalog Choice is pretty quick and effective. Too bad there's no way to opt out of all bulk mail, though.

Are you able to disable auto-playing trailers, or are you just using the web interface or a smartphone/tablet that don't have this feature in the first place?

I have a recent AppleTV, which doesn't have any way to disable auto-playing trailers. Same for my previous STB (Roku). This is a somewhat new feature, so some older STBs and Smart TVs don't have it, but that's just because they can't be updated to the latest version of the Netflix app.

You can disable auto-play next episode across all interfaces and devices in the settings on netflix.com. I just wish there was an equivalent switch for trailers.

I think their worst decision of late is to include auto-playing "trailers" (with sound!) when you pause for more than a second on a title. Between that and the lack of a decent "browse by category" interface you mentioned, I rarely bother using the TV UI to discover content. Googling "what's good on netflix" works much better for me.

At least you can still disable the auto-play next episode "feature".

Apple, too, though. Apple needs to show via their hardware choices that they're still committed to developers and other pros, and Microsoft needs to keep cleaning up Windows.

I switched from a MacBook to a Surface Pro (i5) maybe a year ago and just finished switching back to the same MacBook. I agree that Microsoft's vision for pro users is much clearer than Apple's, which is why I switched in the first place. The Surface hardware is solid for the most part, the Surface Dock is great, the pen is occasionally useful, and I really like being able to rip off the keyboard and use it as a tablet for reading instead of carrying another device. But between missing the craftsmanship of indie Mac apps and putting up with the general flakiness of Windows, I finally gave up on the Surface. Now maybe it would've helped if I got the i7 Surface (& 16 gb RAM) and just put up with the resulting fan noise (or went with the Surface Book instead), but I think it says something about the state of Windows that my 1.3 GHz Core M MacBook is smoother and more reliable than a Surface Pro that's 3 years newer and has double the clock speed.

I've worked in product development consulting for over a decade, and I wouldn't say stateside manufacturing is more difficult -- quite the opposite really for many of the reasons mentioned in other comments. There are plenty of small molding, machining, PCB, etc. shops across the country who would love to work on these kinds of low-volume jobs.

Cost and time are the killer, though. To manufacture a simple electronic product in the US could easily double the lead time compared to a Chinese manufacturer and tooling costs might be 2 to 10x. Per-part cost really depends on what it is you're making and how much hand assembly is required.

My industry is much more concerned with quality and predictability than cost, so choosing US (or European) manufacturers hasn't been a hard choice. But for consumer products, I'm not surprised that the math doesn't work out.

Pretty much off topic, but the opening paragraph of this article highlights what I think is a little-known benefit of Prime membership. The author notes that "sharing an Amazon Prime account with loved ones is surprisingly intimate" but it doesn't have to be if you use Amazon Household:

"Sharing benefits through Amazon Household requires both adults to link their accounts in an Amazon Household and agree to share payment methods. Each adult keeps their personal account while sharing those benefits at no additional cost."[1]

It's limited to two adults (plus teens), so not a solution for all cases.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId...

I just immediately close the tab on any article that starts with "[person's name I don't recognize] was [doing something not directly related to the article's title]". If it's a topic of particular interest (like this one), I'll come here to see if there are comments.

I'm not an expert by any means, but if the Commons Clause's FAQ is accurate, the copyright holder is only retaining a very specific right to commercial use, not all rights to commercial use:

"Commons Clause only forbids you from “selling” the Commons Clause software itself. You may develop on top of Commons Clause licensed software...and you may embed and redistribute Commons Clause software in a larger product, and you may distribute and even “sell” (which includes offering as a commercial SaaS service) your product...You just can’t sell a product that consists in substance of the Commons Clause software and does not add value."

I see how that restricts my rights as a user, but those are rights I simply don't care about. Back in the days of dialup, people were able to make a few bucks by selling Linux CDs to help other users get started. But what examples are there today of unmodified free software being sold by someone other than the primary developer, aside from various app store scams?

The new construction buildings I've lived in in the US definitely solved the neighbor noise issue except when the guy next door would have loud parties on the balcony -- I'd hear that through the windows even if closed. But while higher floors have nice views, they also came with a lot more white noise from distant highways.

Agreed! Really wish we could get Macouns in Washington. Honeycrisp are good, but a bit sweet for my taste. I also like how comparatively small New England apples are.

They're over a year old, so probably not worth the trouble. Just dug the AirPods out of the junk drawer and they seem to be working better than I recall. Recently got a new iPhone, so perhaps some of my problems were the old phone's fault instead of the AirPods. I don't have any other bluetooth devices so there wouldn't have been anything else to tip me off.

I'd never understood the appeal of wireless headphones, and I guess I kind of do now that I have AirPods. Mine fit fine and stay in while running, but that's the only use I've found for them. Anywhere else and I'd much rather use my 15 year old Sennheiser earbuds because I have so many problems with the AirPods:

* like pretty much all Apple earbuds, they don't seal to my ear so they're totally useless in loud places like airplanes (my #1 use case for headphones)

* audio frequently drops out, especially when outside (and there's nothing for the bluetooth signal to reflect off of)

* terrible mic quality for phone calls

* unreliable pairing to my Surface Pro

* one more thing for me to forget to charge

Some of this is anecdata and maybe I just have lemon AirPods, but my experience has been very far from "there's no going back and there's no comparison". I'd sell them without reservation if I didn't feel weird in general about selling earbuds.

I never tipped Uber drivers, but I stopped using Uber before they added the option to tip through the app. On Lyft, I've always tipped ~15% if the car was clean and the driving seemed safe, often more for <$10 rides. From what I've read, it's not easy to make a good living driving for Uber/Lyft, so adding a bit of a tip doesn't bother me too much.

Sometimes I take a regular cab home from the airport because the Port Authority has (seemingly) intentionally made using app-based services as inconvenient as possible. At least now everyone has Square for credit card payments, but the cab drivers often have the minimum automatic tip set to 25% (or even 30%!) so I have to take the time to manually enter something more reasonable. I'm sure they get a significant number of passengers who are in a hurry and can't be bothered to do so.

Thanks -- I didn't realize that reordering tabs had been fixed. It only works on the active tab[1] and I guess I've only ever tried moving inactive tabs before. It's not perfect, but so far seems better than in Edge (which allows reordering of inactive tabs but is often rather janky) and Chrome (which has no ability to scroll the tab bar, so tabs quickly get uselessly tiny).

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1362065#c57

They've actually fixed a number of minor issues over the past year or so, but Firefox still doesn't support pinch zoom on Windows[1]. Being able to reorder tabs using the touchscreen would also be nice, but not as critical.

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=688990

I really want to like Firefox (or any of the alternative browsers mentioned here for that matter), but I frequently use my Surface in tablet mode and the only browsers with acceptable touch screen support on Windows are Edge and Chrome. Last I checked, this still didn't seem to be a priority for Firefox.

I'd be very interested to hear more about your 2nd house experience as I'm currently considering building a similar-sized house using SIPs in rural Washington state. Ideally, I'd use a GC (if I can find a good one!) to get the building dried-in and then do the bulk of the finishing work myself. Do you have a recommendation for a SIP vendor?

Not the OP, but I have Windows Firewall set to block outgoing connections by default, which renders WSL mostly useless due to the way firewall rules work. This is supposed to be fixed in the next major update, so I may move over. There is still something nice about being able to snapshot my Linux VM and reset it after making a mess while hacking on something.

FirstTech's credit card is PIN priority. I've only used it in Canada so far, but it works as expected there.