The object of a system of authority is order, not justice. Justice matters only after injustice sufficiently compromises order.

  • 6 Posts
  • 182 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • You should also be changing with time to take advantage of such technological growth.

    Whoo boy that’s funny, thanks for the chuckle. I’ve been technology professional so long that I literally predate NAT. To say that I’ve changed with the time would be an understatement.

    TVs are admittedly geared towards single wide screen tasks like the obvious: media consumption.

    Huh, media consumption. You mean like Lemmy or any other web media?

    That’s what additional monitors can be used for; but the point is with a single wide monitor you don’t have to run a second monitor.

    Here’s where we diverge and despite considering the issue for several hours now I’m still not sure if this is a generational issue or something else. Obviously I’m from the time before widescreen and it looks like to me like you’re trying to use a workaround (multiple windows on a single screen) to justify what is objectively a downgrade in display technology.

    You are in essence saying “Yes I know the monitor doesn’t have enough vertical space but you are supposed to use the extra horizontal space to overcome that.” I am going to counter by saying that computer monitors shouldn’t be 16x9, that’s a TV / Movie format forced into the computer industry by display makers who wanted to leverage their investment in television panels to produce cheap computer monitors. In short you are forcing yourself to find ways to work around display tech that doesn’t fit the use case; the screen is wider than it needs to be while not being tall enough.

    Amusingly I was discussing this with a peer about an hour ago and he brought up ultra wide monitors like the Samsung Odyssey QD-OLED G9 (5120x1440) and after looking at it we decided that a monitor with the same physical width (48") but double the physical height (20" vs 40") and double the horizontal resolution (2880) would be near perfect. With such a monitor there would be so much real estate that app windows would stay large enough to be readable while still being capable of displaying lots of data vertically.

    You could mount one vertically, you could use different sized displays, you could stack them.

    Ahhh, now we hit the rub. I do a lot of remote GUI work and what I’m dropping into expects widescreen and uses all of it. Downscaling that into an app window makes the problem worse because it leaves large areas unused horizontally and there’s still not enough vertical. I could flip a monitor to portrait but then it’s too narrow to be handled correctly because what was a lack of vertical resolution has now become a lack of horizontal resolution. This is another symptom of 16:19 being a bad aspect ratio for computer displays.

    Be your own person.

    This person is seriously considering a pair of frameless ultra widescreen displays in a vertical stack. Expensive AF but potentially oh so usable.

    You do you with multiple app windows squished to fit into today’s displays. If it works for you then it works for you.

    Enjoy your day.



  • If you’re using anything full screen, you’re doing it wrong

    I’ll make sure to start watching YT videos in tiny little boxes like we did in the 90s and 2000s. 😜

    I have 3 curved monitors in the home office. Left monitor is browser, center monitor is primary task, right monitor is comms or secondary task. I can’t track more than three things at a time anyway and I bought these big ol’ curved monitors for a reason.

    This is how computer monitors have been used since I first touched an Apple II+ in 1980. It’s how you use every other display in your life. The problem isn’t with people using apps full screen.


  • Stop making a single browser window full screen and use the additional space on the side for something useful.

    So stop using monitors the way I’ve been using them since 1982? Stop using them the way that literally every other screen I interact with functions?

    A chat application, a notepad, a calculator, file browsing, a second browser window, documents, etc.

    That’s what 2nd and 3rd monitors are for.

    Or rotate the display to be tall instead of wide if you really want the extra vertical space.

    That’s not so easy when you’re using multiple curved monitors with a stand or mount.

    I get what you’re saying, I really do, but from my point of view it’s incorrect. It breaks the usage paradigm that’s been in place since these things were invented and there’s no other screens in our lives where we intentionally use less than the full width available for a single task.






  • Tesla employee or not they’re almost certainly correct, the barriers to entry in the automobile market are very high. Tesla made it, barely, through leveraging enormous amounts of Venture Capital. BYD made it by using even more enormous amounts of Government Funding plus Venture Capital and those were both done in areas that already had stupendously high levels of ICE auto manufacturing.

    Mexico has none of that and they’re competing with all of the established players. I wish them success but it’s extremely unlikely that they will succeed.





  • I have Z-Wave switches but being able to make a voice command like “Nabu, setup to watch TV in the living room.” is faster and easier than pulling out my phone, unlocking it, opening the HA app, and then triggering the “Watch TV in the Living Room” automation and that’s assuming my phone is actually with me. I often roam the house without my phone, relying on my Smart Watch to alert me to text messages and phone calls.

    Here’s another one. I’m taking laundry downstairs but the stairs lights are off and so are the basement lights. My hands are full carrying a basket of laundry so flipping the switches or using my phone to do it means that I have to set the basket down. Instead I say “Nabu, turn on the stairs and basement lights.” and the lights turn on for me. When I’m done and back upstairs I can either wait for the motion timer to turn them off or simply say “Nabu, turn off of the stairs and basement lights.” EZ-PZ and so convenient.

    Different strokes for different folks and all that, I’m not judging how other people live, but I really don’t understand why people choose to do without voice control when they have an HA setup and the ability to run it all local.


  • That’s the answer commonly given but I don’t understand how automation can handle the ad hoc nature of life. Here’s some examples, maybe you could explain how this works for you?

    • Watching TV and I’d like the lights dimmed or turned off.
    • Finished putting laundry away and laid down to go to bed.
    • Someone left the kitchen and the light is still on. I want it turned off without having to get up from the couch and I don’t want to wait for the motion timer to expire.
    • Someone is coming over, say Pizza delivery, and I want the exterior lights to go back to full bright before they arrive.




  • Could be that they are taking a loss on the initial units in order to get going. Once the campaign backers are taken care the product is commercialized and then the price goes up. I’ve seen more than one Kickstart campaign used to launch a company in just this way. (Tempest PWS is another example).

    Anyway they aren’t vaporware. I backed the campaign and received my units today.