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On 12/1/2023 at 6:48 AM, naptownskinsfan said:

Got a great deal on a Garmin Fenix 7, and it blows the Apple Watch out of the water.  As I am getting serious with running, this is going to be a big game-changer.  

Apple still does apps better than all.  But I rarely used the watch apps anyway.  

 

I'm old enough to remember when Garmin were basically just a company for outdoorsing gear.  GPS and electronics for the backcountry and fishing and whatnot.

Then they went heavy into that pioneer industry of car-mounted GPS-Nav systems.  Then got eaten up by every car maker on earth starting to include it from the factory.

 

But props to them for the great pivot to "wearable tech" stuff like that.  Seems like they put a lot of their longstanding experience with ruggedness, waterproofing, durability, easy functionality, and just research on what "active people" really care about and how they function, to great use taking a lead in that new market for smart bracelet things.

Inevitably, Apple will catch up and eat them alive.  By sheer mass.  But i love a good "smaller" tech company finding a niche and holding off the bigguns...at least for a while.  I'd imagine Garmin has a lot more staying power even if it has to shrink back to more specialized outdoors gear though.

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I also stopped deliberating on the whole..."tablet question" vs "laptop" and what i really wanted.  Not sure i fully settled it but...

Pulled the trigger on a Cyber Dayz Deal or whatever on an Dell XPS15 that's pretty rocked up.  They're so tiny and light these days, good enough.  Plus, still powerful enough to at least putter around with some of the programs i might want to use at some point; hopefully probably not because the whole point is to detach from that stuff.  Nice to know that i could though.

Mostly just caught a price that was kind of stupid and pretty hard to turn down.  Combined with being away for a while recently and realizing my limpwristed old "easy travel" laptop was starting to seriously show it's age and kind of annoy me even in pretty basic stuff.

 

 

Still might revisit the Tablet thing at some point though.  Not sure.  Wait and see if it still feels like a need.

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Remembering again, how annoying it is to get a new computer set up just right.  Just so many stupid little things that want to default to something stupid.  Becoming an annual routine for me.  🙄

 

Just the sheer volume of products and different subscriptions and services and and things you have to log into and verify and download and configure.  Even just getting simple things set up to not be like purple and bizarre and in the wrong places and default to configured wrong and sending things to the wrong locations.

 

This is why people become Apple disciples i suppose.  Though i'm sure i'd be unhappy with inability to customize that the way i want too.

 

Always just feels like the efforts everywhere to "streamline" everything show up hugely negative at the front end.

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On 12/12/2023 at 6:13 AM, naptownskinsfan said:

Still have to sign back into everything with Apple, but the keychain does help.  

You got a good machine though that should last for a while.  Dell XPS is a good machine.  

 

I'm mostly just venting.  Some of the stuff i was dealing with doesn't even work properly on Apple.  lol.  But it's still just annoying having to go through so many things and menus and settings to get everything to operate the way you really want it to.  I wish there was a "copy/paste" option for new devices.

 

Apple does that really well with phones at least.

 

 

I'm pretty stoked about the machine so far though.  It's nice, small, compact, and pretty powerful.  I'm reminded of why i have a Precision laptop for anything serious though.  The thermal management on this thing is...immediately apparent as a weak spot.  lol.  It gets weirdly hot, just doing basic stuff and updates for a new computer.  But that's just a thing when you cram a bunch of power into a super thin laptop.

Edited by Tugboat
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10 hours ago, BobbyPhil1781 said:

A lot of people said Elon killed Twitter. I just found this interesting. 

https://advanced-television.com/2023/12/18/research-x-twitter-site-traffic-up-22-3-yoy/

If revenue plummets, and usership suddenly skyrockets? One answer: Bots

Funny how the same week as Putin says he wants to negotiate with Trump instead of Biden, Twitter traffic spikes? Interesting..... 

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1 hour ago, Heimdallr said:

If revenue plummets, and usership suddenly skyrockets? One answer: Bots

Funny how the same week as Putin says he wants to negotiate with Trump instead of Biden, Twitter traffic spikes? Interesting..... 

Is revenue plummeting? I hadn't seen that. Just saw the stock price is doing well then saw this stat and found it interesting bc so many people said he would kill that platform 

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2 hours ago, BobbyPhil1781 said:

Is revenue plummeting? I hadn't seen that. Just saw the stock price is doing well then saw this stat and found it interesting bc so many people said he would kill that platform 

Its a app that entirely makes money off adverts and here is what the revenue breakdown is by year

  • 2020- 3.21B ⬆️
  • 2021- 4.51B ⬆️
  • 2022- 4.73B <---Elon buys Twitter. Twitter at all-time high value revenue 
  • 2023- 3.31B ⬇️
  • 2024- 3.14B ⬇️-- Future projections
  • 2025- 2.99B ⬇️
  • 2026- 2.84B ⬇️
  • 2027- 2.70B ⬇️

 

 

Edited by AkronsWitness
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14 hours ago, BobbyPhil1781 said:

A lot of people said Elon killed Twitter. I just found this interesting. 

https://advanced-television.com/2023/12/18/research-x-twitter-site-traffic-up-22-3-yoy/

If anything, it's a combination of bots and the fact that he's "increased traffic" in an obtuse specifically measurable way, by making it so much more difficult for anyone to actually get to the content they want.

 

It's basically just moving the goalposts arbitrarily.  Making the site less functional and transparent, and seeing revenue continue to plummet as a result.

 

 

It's what Elon does to literally everything he touches.  He takes a thing, soaks up money and makes it worse.  Then brags about it and pretends to be a "genius".

 

He's a fascist dink.  He hated that he was being badmouthed on a platform a lot, so he bought it and ruined it.  Same thing he did with that idiotic "Hyperloop" that was never actually intended to exist or do anything other than sabotage actual established High Speed Rail systems in North America, in support of his big dumb Electric Car enterprise.  Which is a whole can of over promising and under delivering in and of itself.

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On 12/20/2023 at 2:49 AM, Tugboat said:

If anything, it's a combination of bots and the fact that he's "increased traffic" in an obtuse specifically measurable way, by making it so much more difficult for anyone to actually get to the content they want.

 

It's basically just moving the goalposts arbitrarily.  Making the site less functional and transparent, and seeing revenue continue to plummet as a result.

 

 

It's what Elon does to literally everything he touches.  He takes a thing, soaks up money and makes it worse.  Then brags about it and pretends to be a "genius".

 

He's a fascist dink.  He hated that he was being badmouthed on a platform a lot, so he bought it and ruined it.  Same thing he did with that idiotic "Hyperloop" that was never actually intended to exist or do anything other than sabotage actual established High Speed Rail systems in North America, in support of his big dumb Electric Car enterprise.  Which is a whole can of over promising and under delivering in and of itself.

Not to mention the app has became a buggy mess since he took over. I use it almost daily on my phone and in the last year so many things 'break' in the app now almost on a weekly basis compared to when Jack Dorsey owned it.

The 'For You' section and its algorithm serves you posts about things you have zero interest in, sometime the app just stops working and no images/videos will load, now I have advertisements every 5 posts when I scroll related to anything and just last week I was served a ton of ads about vibrators 🤣. Like what are we doing here.

Obviously cutting 2/3 of the staff will impact the performance of the product. Just last night the entire app shutdown for about 2 hours. Nobody could use it and nothing was loading. This is happening way more regularly than it ever did before.

But to your point about Elon himself, Im with you. Look no further than changing the name of the company from Twitter to X. As somebody who works in digital marketing--I cant tell you how incredibly stupid that decision is. You took over a company that built a (mostly positive) reputation, with a instantly recognizable brand, logo, color scheme, lingo (tweets) searchability rankings on Google, ect. and you just threw it in the trash out of pure narcissism. Do you know how hard it is to get company branding to that scale Twitter was at? Its 1 in a million. Sheeeesh

All because the guy who named his kid X Æ-A-Xii decided that 'X' sounded cooler. *facepalm*

Edited by AkronsWitness
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15 hours ago, thebestever6 said:

anyone have any good recommendations for a minimalistic wallet?

I use my phone case. The ottor box strata series is what I used for years, but they don't make them for my newest phone so I found one on Amazon that I like even better. 3 credit card slots (holds 6 cards easily) and a large pocket for receipts/cash. Added bonus is the flip over style case that has saved my screens from breaking multiple times.  Tucch is the brand of this one

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46 minutes ago, adamq said:

I use my phone case. The ottor box strata series is what I used for years, but they don't make them for my newest phone so I found one on Amazon that I like even better. 3 credit card slots (holds 6 cards easily) and a large pocket for receipts/cash. Added bonus is the flip over style case that has saved my screens from breaking multiple times.  Tucch is the brand of this one

damn I didn't even think of that you're a genius 

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