red_rising

Equally important to remember that this has nothing to do with the ‘quality’ of the Texas electric grid because Texas it’s superior to all other states in every possible way.

Using the term ‘handicap’ implies limitations out of their control, which I don’t think is true. For most of them the more accurate term would be ‘willfully ignorant.’

What is a better alternative, aside from just buying the media directly?

Courtesy of the local tax payers….

I feel the same. I don’t do ads. If a product doesn’t have an ad-free product that I’m willing to pay for, then that product doesn’t exist for me. Similarly, if a paid product decides to introduce ads (I’m looking at you Amazon) I’m immediately cancelling.

Half the point of ads these days isn’t to advertise to you, it’s to piss you off enough to upgrade to a paid plan. If they happen to also make money from the adverts, then that’s just an added bonus.

What a disgusting, selfish viewpoint of something so tragic

I struggled with this for a long time and even considered redoing my shower to eliminate the glass because it bothered me so much. I tried so many different things, including a lot of the stuff listed here but the best solution I found is barkeepers friend (https://barkeepersfriend.com/products/soft-cleanser/). It requires zero scrubbing and leaves the glass crystal clear after. I don’t even bother using a squeegee anymore because this is so easy.

That’s a fair point.

I just bought a Roku smart TV and the first time I powered it on, it asked if I wanted to enable smart features by connecting to the Internet. I said no and it functions like a dumb TV now. There are a couple brands that still make dumb TVs but they are all fairly small and not great quality. Much better off researching which smart TVs can be easily disabled.

It’s only $20 a year or $80 for life. I feel like that’s a fair price to support the developers.

Ah thanks. Ya it’s Apple only but I like how it doesn’t sync to a central server but will still sync between your devices across your local network. Seems to minimize a lot of attack surface.

Any options on StrongBox? It seems like a good option but they don’t quite have the reputation that others have, despite being around since 2017.