There is now a _huge_ industry of solo editors who spam YouTubers advertising "increasing revenue by re-using the content you already made!"
And 98% of it is just grabbing popular snippets of long form videos, cropping them slightly, and overlaying some bubbly animated text (or worse, just closed captions but with a bright font).
It's almost as annoying as the deluge of people who email and say "we can auto-translate your content into 20 languages!"
I backup to Amazon Glacier S3 Deep Archive backed buckets. The price is only a little higher for a few TB than other providers, though egress fees in case of restore are a lot higher. That's a tradeoff I'm willing to make as I'd have two have two separate local NAS replicas corrupt or die before I need to rely on the Deep Archive.
They're cheap (the reason many people use them), and the number of people we know that use them is ridiculously outsized compared to the general population, because we know people in the tech sphere.
A lot of the music is made just playing with different parts of the sound, and having all the controls exposed to be messed with can lead to more creativity.
IMO, kind of like how I enjoy Linux configuration files, in a way, more than I do a GUI that covers up 90% of the guts of an application or server software.
I couldn't imagine buying a dishwasher that did the same... but somehow that happened.
There's no indication that functionality is hidden behind an app. You find that out after you get the thing home, set it up, and start using it (a lot of the time).
This is one of few places where I’d like to sprinkle a little more government overreach in just the right way - to prevent manufacturers from walling clearly essential behaviour behind an app. That’s far too gray of a line for governments to handle, but I can dream.
These days I would prefer it say that the documentation for communication protocols and for any computer control interface or network functionality must supplied and destination any addresses configurable by the user.
> That’s far too gray of a line for governments to handle, but I can dream.
I know that GDPR doesn't get much love, but I think that it shows that we (well, not we, because I'm in the US, but the EU) can meaningfully legislate issues involving intent and essential function. IA (obviously) NAL, but I see no reason that "those portions of the essential functionality of a device that do not inherently require the use of internet connectivity must be available without internet connectivity," or even the weaker "a device that is not usable without internet connectivity must be clearly signposted as such or be subject to free return at manufacturer expense for [some period of time]," wouldn't be a meaningful and enforcable law.
> Bosch I presume?
>
I would bet on that too. I have an older 300 series that is not WiFi and app enabled. It works great. I was suggesting "dumb" device models to someone and it was damned difficult to find which SKUs had misfeatures and which didn't. Same model, possibly same SKU (there are #s for different retailers), but two years newer had "smart" features.
Government overreach is the reason for this - no need to ask for more. If you believe in climate change, you will feel happy to 'save the world' by ceding control of your personal data and resources to the government.
The idea is that every resource is is monitored, the electric company's smart meters will report everyone's usage. This will then allow for fine grained control over your 'misuse', with carbon credits (taxes/fines) altering behaviour. 'Smart' everything is technocratic control.
I really appreciate you, in particular, posting that here, because if Jeff Geerling can end up with an appliance with unwanted cloud/app dependencies, it's not a customer skill issue - it's a lack of candor from the manufacturers issue.
If it used some standardized interface for communicating with the app, a benefit could be not being tied to it's physical interface if it breaks down or if you want to extend it's functionality. Unfortunately interfaces are the opposite of standardized or open right now.
So after you have manually loaded it and put the soap in and closed it, instead of pressing a button to start it you can go through 6 screens and 25 clicks to start it!
And oftentimes, download the user manual. If at all possible, I download the manual before making any purchase decision. It can answer questions such as: What’s included in the box? What cables/accessories will I need? Will the specs be fit for purpose?
User manuals are unbiased and usually a very accurate way to figure out lots of things about a product, especially something complicated and/or expensive, before purchase.
Unfortunately I have seen companies who are paywalling or purchase-walling manual downloads.
> Unfortunately I have seen companies who are paywalling or purchase-walling manual downloads.
This is itself an enormous red flag of its own. I would never buy any product from a company that has its manuals online but then makes it difficult to actually download them. That's a worse sign than the manuals just not being up at all.
Bosch are nasty in many ways though. Their ebike battery and motor system in particular is extremely hostile to diy anything. Repair, generic battery with Bosch motor, using your Bosch ebike battery outside the ebike, ...
They hide this fact several times - while others advertise proudly, and idioticly -, true, but that is why I read the user manual before considering the purchase. Several of home appliances I browsed failed at this step.
Overcomplication works for masses, unluckily, they want to be thorougly amazed like in a circus at every cycle of washing dishes or what, and real engineers are a dying breed. Children put together shiny crap nowadays. While the motto should be: "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
This is, quite possibly, one of the best nerd sniping comments I’ve seen.
Two thoughts come to mind, one not serious, one serious.
1. I can’t imagine having to align the counters on all those tapes.
2. I’m guessing this would really only work for sequential reading and writing. In some ways that makes it more fun as the latency would be that much worse.
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