Category: The Dollar Dances On Our Asses Page 1 of 2

My First 24 Hours With the Pixel 5

On November 3, 2020

In Google, The Dollar Dances On Our Asses

In my personal technology life, I do move pretty fucking fast. Once I’ve decided that I like one thing better than another then I’m mere seconds away from huge piles of administrivia and credit card debt. It’s just how I function which is arguably broken as hell. Just ask my credit cards. They’re very much aware of the problem.

After deciding that I wanted back into the Pixel game now that the Pixel 4 is kind of a dead issue and most of the design decisions that I found untenable for my own use have gone the way of the dinosaur, I hit the preorder button with no regrets. It arrived last night and, as I mentioned previously, there’s no time to start messing with an electronic device that is central to both your life and how you make a living than right after that device arrived.

I started the whole process by porting my phone number from Sprint to Mint Mobile. I did have to attempt this a couple of times and actually talk to someone at Sprint in order to get the account PIN that I actually knew and had written down to work for the porting process. Unlike my Comcast cancellation when I moved out of my post-divorce apartment, at no point did I lie and say that I was moving to Antarctica. The whole porting process only took about 15 minutes from when I hit the Submit button until I had phone service again which was smoother than I expected. My previous service was Spent-Mobile so I’m essentially using the same towers as I was a few minutes ago. Easy.

I transferred data from my OnePlus 7 Pro 5G over to the Pixel with no hiccups so other than a couple of political spam messages that came in while this was in progress nothing was lost. After the super tall OnePlus screen for the past year or so the Pixel 5 felt absurdly tiny. I have pretty small hands so it was novel to be able to reach all sides of the screen one handed. Despite being well accustomed to the 90 Hz illusion of everything on your phone being alarmingly fast the Pixel 5 feels impressively snappy despite the cheaper chipset. I think the compromises that Google made towards things people actually wanted like more RAM and a larger battery were the best design decisions they’ve made recently. The Soli chip included with the Pixel 4 probably seemed like a cool bleeding edge thing to include in their phone until it failed to do anything useful and truncated battery life. There are none of the surprises that I didn’t want and all of the things that I loved about my Pixel 3 XL (excepting the screen size) like the fingerprint reader and that fucking camera.

I didn’t realize how much I’d missed having a phone with a great camera until I took my first experimental Night Sight photo of the view from my front porch. I live in a newly built out part of suburban Denver and the other side of the street is the beginning of a wildlife preserve so there is very little ambient light outside. I think the nearest operational street light is at least a block away and this is what came out the other side:

Nightsight

which was pretty satisfying since it was taken at nearly midnight with no actual source of light other than a windows behind me. When you want to actually take memorable photos but can’t be bothered with messing with anything beyond a confirmation that you’d like to use Night Sight then the Pixel is the phone for you. The sensor is pretty much the same as the one included in my older Pixel phone and the photo above is the result of extending my arm, clicking the photo button, and not doing a good job of keeping my hand still. That is what I expect out of my camera which probably accounts for how badly I felt about most of the photos I took on my OnePlus. The magical idiot-proofing just isn’t there.

The other important part for me was the increased battery capacity and the Pixel has more than delivered on that front. After the initial charge up from out of the box, I’ve been running from that initial charge since then and just recently hit the 30% mark. That’s pretty stellar given the amount of time I spend monkeying around with settings and twitchily tweaking settings. I tend to at least passively charge my phone whenever I’m sitting in one place for more than 30 minutes and after resisting the urge to do that for the sake of science I’m pretty confident that I could get away with charging this phone every other day if I needed to. That is a tremendous improvement upon what I saw with my Pixel 3 XL. It would hit the 20% mark near the end of the day without any topping up charge which always made me a little uncomfortable. I’m fond of being able to forget to plug in my phone before going to bed and still having some life left in it the next morning. I will miss the OnePlus warp charging that would erase some of those mistakes but I’d still prefer to just have the capacity to begin with rather than just pumping a ridiculous amount of watts into the battery to stave off the empties.

My first 24 hours with the Pixel 5 have been great and I’m actually excited to be completely happy with a middle of the road phone specifications-wise. I’m glad that there are at least a few companies acknowledging that just spec-bumping once a year doesn’t make a compelling argument for switching phones.

Go Fucking Slower

By goneaway

On November 1, 2020

In Cool As Fuck, The Dollar Dances On Our Asses

We could all use a lot more Slow especially whilst cooped up during a pandemic that, at least in the Unites States, will seemingly never end. Creating some barriers between me and a potential purchase never seemed like a better idea.

From their website:

Passwords, long entry forms, 5-factor authentication, we got it all! Shop online and ask yourself “Do I really need this?” with an excessive amount of details.

This is utter timely genius. They’ve also made a Chrome extension available in case you’d enjoy the maximum amount of self flagellation while buying useless crap on the internet.

And The Horse You Rode In On

By goneaway

On October 31, 2020

In Oh God, Politics, The Dollar Dances On Our Asses

As much as understanding as I might pretend to have for whatever-driven advertising rates, I’ve been pretty sure that Facebook is the source of most horrible things in the world and would never remotely consider feeding any of my money into that ridiculous machine. Unfortunately, a whole lot of people consider that shit machine as the 2020 equivalent of thinking of the big blue ‘E’ of the Internet Explorer icon as the ‘internet.’ Given how much computing is done on mobile devices this almost makes sense but then you read something like this disassembly of advertising rates charged to both presidential campaigns and realize that the chaos boosting algorithms Facebooks prioritizes gives a ridiculous advantage to a candidate that doesn’t give a fuck about policy or the impact any of the trash his grotesque orange orifice spews.

I’m sick as fuck of even hearing about Facebook much less their half assed justifications for doing measurable harm to democratic process by measuring all things regardless of their impact with the same inane system of measuring ‘engagement.’ I still have an active Facebook account and the fact that it still exists, albeit largely as a way to log in to Spotify, is making me feel like I’m a larger part of the problem than I’m comfortable with.

So Much Shazbot

By goneaway

On October 31, 2020

In Apple, Cool As Fuck, Life During The Plague Years, Link Dump, The Dollar Dances On Our Asses, Work Horrible Work

I’m trying to stick with my pledge to not make excuses for my absences because why would I? This typically means, and will in this case, a link dump but I should also mention some of the things going on away from the keyboard since that’s where my focus is most of the time lately.

I’m starting a new job in just over a week. I managed to scrape up a week off between the two which fills me with joy and dread simultaneously. Colorado is back up to Safer At Home Level 3 which means there won’t be a whole lot of anything going on in the city and my house has rapidly degenerated into a state approximate to a 1990s punk house while my wife has been in the hospital over the past three weeks. That’s one of the weirdest parts about being largely confined to home; you’re stuck in the middle of it, realize in full what a godawful mess it is becoming, and cannot summon any enthusiasm for doing anything about it. That’s where I am right now.

Speaking of hospitals and my wife, her projected release date coincides with my first day at the new job. It’s hard to say in just words how relieved I am that she’s getting ready to come home after the sheer number of ‘so scared that I spend the day trying to not break down’ scares that we’ve had over the past couple weeks. I have no clear idea yet what the fiscal impact is going to be but I’m fairly certain that a 3 week hospital stay will not be inexpensive even with relatively good, for a stagnant startup, insurance coverage. I’m trying not to even think about that now but it looms eternally in the background along with all of the other worries that come with ~~stupid~~ adult life.

Here are some sights I saw:

1. You may or may not care about skate shoes. I happen to care a bunch but mainly because I’m always trying to find vegan skate shoes that don’t look like a hacky sack wrapped around my foot. The Savier story is pretty goddamned interesting. I read this story during lunch and ended up falling down an incredible rabbit hole chasing down a bunch of shoes and people who make shoes mentioned in the story.

2. Although this examination of Apple’s newfound commitment to lessening e-waste versus what you’re actually going to buy which incidentally comes in even more packaging is factually correct it is also a frustrating read for me. I have a cheap/old iPhone from Sprint-Mobile that is about ready to go back to the mothership because I have actual use for it. I’m also replacing my OnePlus 7 Pro 5G with a Pixel 5. It’s shipped and should be here shortly. Uh oh! I’m switching phones with different charging standards!! I have several warp chargers for my soon-to-be-ex OnePlus. Will I throw these chargers away? No, because they’re still useful as chargers for other USB-C devices. They may not charge what I’ve plugged it into up to 80% in a scant few minutes but in the wide world of Covid-19 I’m not away from home or even my desk very often. I can wait the extra 20 minutes in most cases. The point here being that because all of my phones excepting my cheapo iPhone all use a standard charging cable that magically just works (that phrase seems oddly familiar – perhaps from another lifetime?) with most of the devices that need charging. I need to charge my Kindle? Easy, just unplug the USB-C cable and plug the microUSB cable into the brick. The multiple wireless charging stands that I used with my Pixel 3 XL — they still fucking work with the new phone two versions later.

3. I really enjoyed reading one man’s 35 year history with Amiga machines as constant in his life. The stories about his nascent experiences with computers and the warm nostalgia that surround those memories was really heartening for me.

4. I also enjoyed this criticism of the odd design decisions Zoom made when implementing end to end encryption because it was a easily digestible and entertaining explanation even to someone who is really not all that interested in the specifics of encryption. The furry stuff creeped me the fuck out but I guess nobody rides for free?

Kicking Some Things Down The Road Because It’s Saturday

By goneaway

On October 18, 2020

In Apple, Link Dump, Linux, The Dollar Dances On Our Asses, This Sucks

Some quick things since my son is with me this weekend and there are some very important shows to watch and video games to be played:

1. Mozilla is completely fucked. No one, including the barely plural employees who remain, can decide what the fuck Firefox is actually about. I’ve been mostly absent from this concern but a bunch of folks who I respect have vocally advocated for FF for years. This is the proverbial chickens coming home to roost. Given the performance of the browser over the last half decade, this hasn’t been a question or issue for me for a very long time.

2. Hey! Guess what? Apple even hates its own hardware now. How long do you need to get everything completely wrong before smart people start jumping ship. Apple is lucky since they’ve been actively opposing your rights as a user for long enough that the Ouroboros manuever isn’t altogether surprising.

3. You can actually buy the Google Coral board now. Well, you can pre-order it.

4. An article about gaming on FreeBSD seems absurd enough for a weekend link dump. You can play games on FreeBSD but most of them are ancient. Linux is doing slightly better on this front in case you were wondering.

Some Tabs That I Can Now Close Permanently

By goneaway

On October 12, 2020

In Cool As Fuck, Link Dump, The Dollar Dances On Our Asses

Some things I ran into while stumbling around the interwebs:

1. Uhmmm should be an mandatory installation for all companies who’ve decided to replace all of the pointless meetings we used to endure in person with virtual meetings where we’re expected to sit attentively while nothing really happens. I’ve been in a few working sessions that would have benefitted tremendously from being reminded that we didn’t need to be in a meeting in order to communicate during that work. A little elevator music to remind you that no one is saying anything or really paying attention to the meeting you’re stuck in? Sound fucking great.

2. TypeLit is a service that gives you practice typing while you literally (or should that be ‘literar-ily’) retype over classic novels. My typing speed wasn’t as quick as it might have otherwise been because I was reading the text while I was typing. For me, it’s most valuable as a hybrid experience that places actually reading the book somewhere in the mix.

3. Buy For Life is a great idea for cataloging products that are durable and not intended to use for a year or two and discard. The contents aren’t extensive yet but the inspiration behind this site are worthy of attention. I own a few of the things they feature but I think this is mostly because I tend to spend too much money on things and despise cheap crap for the most part. I’ll definitely check back here a few months from now to see what they’ve added. More useful things and less disposable garbage is something I can endorse.

4. If you play guitar, then check out Guitar Dashboard. I know nothing about music although I’ve played guitar for nearly thirty years and I picked up on some music theory concepts while fooling around with this tool.

Some Tabs Need To Be Closed

By goneaway

On September 26, 2020

In Arch, Cool As Fuck, Linux, The Dollar Dances On Our Asses

The end of the day ended up being busier with more inappropriately complex things on my plate for a Friday. Today was much better in my mind as a slide into the weekend but that was not the case.

1. I was much more surprised to hear that Linux Journal was back from the dead before I read the announcement. Will it actually have new content? It’s alluded to in the announcement but will likely remain preserved remains for a while longer. I’ll admit that the print magazine wasn’t my favorite but it’s also nice to see the resource that it often was preserved and available for the forseeable future.

2. I ended up back in Arch Linux land again via an alternate entrance with Arco Linux. I chose that particular derivative because it’s as close to stock as it can be and still wrapped in a straightforward Calamares installer. That installation isn’t fast and often gives the impression that the installer is stalled or frozen but it’s a lot less fussy than a vanilla Arch install.

I ended up with a ridiculous workstation class laptop with a very new Intel i9, an insane amount of RAM, and not a whole lot to really do with it other than the usual tinkering more than using for anything productive that I typically do with any piece of hardware. I originally threw Debian Testing on it because it’s super easy and straightforward to set up. Unfortunately, Debian isn’t a great distribution for messing around and struggling to get everything working the way you want it.

3. I’d looked at this New Yorker article about the hidden cost of streaming music earlier today and wasn’t astonished by any means but if you think that streamed content just launches of the void then it might be worth your time to read. I can’t really check my work on my initial read since the New Yorker website really, really objects to me not allowing ad tech on my network. Sorry folks but poking holes for something that I was dismissively making fun of isn’t anything I’m budgeting time for today.

4. Because I don’t work at a company that thinks very much about its technology infrastructure like at all, the alleged demolition of knowledge heavy open source solutions in the path of Snowflake doesn’t mean that much to me per se. If the marketing copy sticks to pavement I look forward to another batch of system administrators even more stupid and incapable of troubleshooting further than dialing a toll free that will make me seem comparatively brilliant. Who could argue with the innate craftmanship that accompanies managing platforms that manage things for you. Maybe inexpensive, B string tech bros are the grim future now?

5. I’m not up for throwing cash at preorders these days but this amazingly featureful case for Raspberry Pi has put my wallet on notice once a generation or two has rolled out. They have a bunch of features inexpensively baked into this that are things I want. Damn it.

The Half Life of Shows Produced By Netflix Is Oddly Precise

By goneaway

On September 24, 2020

In I Wish I Didn't Know About This, The Dollar Dances On Our Asses, This Sucks

I enjoyed the Netflix series Altered Carbon more than I enjoyed the books written by Richard Morgan. They numbered among those guilty of my least favorite criminals in the science fiction genre: exciting worlds full of engaging ideas written poorly, presumably at top speed in order to pay the goddamned bills. It’s an unfortunate pattern I’ve been haunted by more than a few times and a hypothetical (following my own assumption that books were issued hastily) situation that I empathize with. I hope that the Netflix money provided the author some more time and resources to invest in his creations. The preceding makes me feel somewhat mean.

The reason for this personal attack on a writer (sorry!) is that I read an overdue explanation of the reasons that Netflix keeps cancelling shows after two seasons from Wired and it really points to how little algorithmic trickery and how much the simple cost of production and the oddball bonus incentive structure tied to attracting creative talent has to do with it. You’d think there were many more data points under consideration and for a longer period than 28 days but apparently it’s watched one and watched all spread over a slightly less than month long period weighed against costs that will rise per additional season after the second:

Netflix tries to make itself more appealing to TV show producers by giving them bonuses and pay bumps as a series carries on. Harrington says that shows on Netflix are more expensive after season two, and even more expensive after season three, with the premiums going up each season. “They have to give [a show] more money per series, and if they decide to recommission it, it becomes more expensive for them to make,” he says. “Because of that, so many more shows are canceled after two series because it costs them more.”

Financially, it makes more sense for Netflix to commission a new show than to renew an underperforming show that is only going to get more expensive the longer the series goes on. Tim Westcott, research and analysis director at Omdia, says that in terms of investment in content, Netflix is still in the growth stage. “In the US, subscriber growth has leveled off a bit, and they’ve now got a lot of competition in the US. But they’re adding many hundreds of thousands of subscribers every quarter around the world. They’re still in a phase where they’re still throwing fuel on the engine to keep that subscriber growth going,” he explains, adding that it’s ultimately looking to increase volume so that it can churn out new shows that it can promote to attract more subscribers.

This strikes me as absurdly since so many intriguing series that have excited me were doomed from the start by their release date or what was going on in the world when they were released (would Tiger King be nearly as successfully as it was had it been released before the Covid-19 quarantine? I have my doubts.) and that part of the algorithmic decision making breaks my fucking heart. I guess it’s marginally better to know than to be clueless but the ruthlessness of this decision making process makes me not want to get too emotionally involved in anything that Netflix produces.

Then The Stupid Week Ended

By goneaway

On September 11, 2020

In Link Dump, Linux, The Dollar Dances On Our Asses

Some things:

1. If you’re familiar with the Right to Repair movement (is it a movement, even or just a group of people tired of not actually owning things that they buy?) then you’ve likely heard that John Deere is not friendly to those who prefer to keep their own machines running. This is noxious as fuck on many levels but much less despicable than what JD has followed up with: that passage of laws to protect consumers ability to repair their stuff without the use of typically more expensive ‘official’ repair options dictated by the asshole company in question make people more vulnerable to sexual predators and other scary people. This, of course, is alarmist bullshit of the very worst kind and should be met in response with torches and pitchforks especially companies that make farm equipment.

2. This is a look at how badly reporting security vulnerabilities can go. This hole was eventually rectified and the involved parties talked things out but the initial report and response were about as terrible as you could ever hope for.

It is kind of a bummer that Giggle uses AI to validate robotically gender instead of just allowing people to identify the way they feel. I both get the motivation and don’t simultaneously. It’s a tough thing but I dislike it anyway.

3. This is somewhat click-bait-y but interesting nonetheless: Mark Shuttleworth commenting about being the less visible face of Ubuntu these days and the uncertainty it’s causing within that community. I keep thinking that Ubuntu shouldn’t even be a thing that people really concern themselves with given that an above average number of their users are actually using derivatives anyway. I’m still bitter about the abuse of Debian upstream but mostly I’m just bitter.

I’m Having Trouble Rationalizing My Next Potential Phone and Beginning To Suspect That There Is Something Very Wrong With Me

By goneaway

On August 29, 2020

In Android, The Dollar Dances On Our Asses

If you knew me in real life you likely would be ashamed by proxy at how often I swap out my phone. It’s a bad habit that I’ve been trying to wean myself from for years especially in a world where you end up paying slightly more than the MSRP for a phone when you purchase from your carrier and just in time for that phone to be just slightly outmoded and seemingly useless. I dislike myself for that tendency since it’s essentially money frittered away for no good reason and probably ends up causing a lot more e-waste than I’ll ever be comfortable with.

Here are the phones I’ve used in the past 2.5 years or so:

1. Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
2. Samsung Note 8
3. iPhone X
3. Samsung Note 9
4. Google Pixel 3 XL
5. Google Pixel 3a XL
6. Oneplus 7 Pro 5G

In the best possible world, I’d be using something like the Fairphone if it were more practical outside of Europe and I could stop myself from relentless wanting the latest and greatest by owning a phone that was at least upgradeable. Unfortunately, this doesn’t look like a possibility in the near future. That would be a line in the sand of sorts to keep me from relentless upgrading.

Things I’ve enjoyed about my last few phones:
1. Samsung – battery life! My Notes would last for-fucking-ever on a single charge and it was my introduction to actual fast charging.
2. iPhone – Meh. Solidly mediocre but I fled back to Android land as soon as it was economically feasible.I hadn’t used an iPhone since the 4 was released. I did not miss much. Because I am not in high school or college, the blue bubble stigma means absolutely nothing to me.
3. Google Pixel – the 3a had great battery life and a camera comparable to the amazing one on the Pixel 3 XL. I miss taking photos that look that good. I loved my Pixel 3 XL but the mediocre battery life and the fact that I had to RMA that fucker once without any support from my carrier were both disappointing.
4. Oneplus – I love this phone for everything but the camera and the lack of wireless charging. The fast charging is completely amazing and I’ll admit that the numerous issues that I had with my Pixel 3 XL and the Pixel Stand made me leery of trusting my ass chip to wireless charging especially when you’re wireless charging your alarm clock. Given the direction that Oneplus seems to be moving, I’m not sure that any of the newer phones they’re bringing to the market, in the US at least, are necessarily what I’m looking for. I would love to have the 8 Pro as my next phone but that doesn’t seem likely in the US.

Sooooo, the phones that I’m eyeing:
1. Pixel 5: There is so much to love and hate about all of the hardware that Google makes. I’m hoping they find a reasonable compromise here and make something that’s more usable than the last Pixel that I skipped completely. Battery life is fucking important. Love the camera that is far too capable for a person that mainly takes pictures of my kid and random objects. Love the speed of updates. Love the sometimes stupid extra functionality that comes along with having a Pixel like having the ability for a robot to screen your calls. Hate the seemingly abyssmal hardware QA (I must say that my last RMA for my Pixel 3 was completely software though). Hate the fact that Pixel hardware is much more affordable if you don’t pre-order. Hate the fact that Google still doesn’t get that being able to use your phone through an entire workday is important to most folks.
2. Oneplus: I really would love to be able to purchase a Oneplus 8 Pro and have it function in the United States. That is apparently too much to ask. Sigh.

The weird need to buy is already messing with me. I’m trying to not do anything excessively stupid until the Pixel 5 is actually, you know, released and has actual hardware specifications and pricing. This review of the Pixel 4a does make some good points about features versus dollars which is cool with me for the most part since I’ve used a Oneplus 7 Pro 5G for months which has neither wireless charging nor rated water resistance. Still, how will the Pixel 5 line up?