The volumes of cash that Microsoft throw at retailers (custom builders / big box) is astronomical. Worked for a relatively small retailer with some international buying power. EOFY “MDF” from Microsoft was an absurd figure.

Our builders would belt out 3 - 6 machines per day, depending on complexity of the custom build, the pre-built machines were in the 6+ per day range.

Considering the vast majority of those machines were running windows (some sold without an os), from a quick estimate after too many beers we were out of pocket 10% at most of the bulk buy price for licence keys after our “market development funds” came through.

It’s fucking crook.

Had my boss trying to grab a pdf (crosswords, colouring pages, printed for kids in a pub) while using Chrome without any adblock extensions.

The volume of ads, trick links, and shite on that one website in particular was outstanding. She asked me if a link was OK to click. Promptly pointed out she should use Firefox (which has unlock and other extensions added) instead of chrome as the link she had clicked was for some sketchy software and not a crossword.

I can’t imagine the internet without ad blockers. Ublock is a great addition, removing elements from pages is a huge advantage. So many sites sling rubbish wherever they can.

Love my old Garmin vivoactive 2? Screen looks like shit but it’s readable in any setting. It’s pretty basic, use it for cycling as it talks to my chest-strap heart rate monitor.

I’ve got a pixel watch too, it’s a typical 1st gen product. Half baked but gets the job done, battery is an all-day for me (no Sim model). It’s got some scratches and blemishes all over the face, see how long it kicks around for.

Shedding weight fast is a great method for excess skin that requires cosmetic surgery to remove. Slowly losing weight can reduce but not eliminate the requirements for surgery.

Good friend of mine lost almost half his body weight in around 4 years, his arms, legs are all OK but his stomach area needs some work. I can’t imagine the hardship people “competing” on the biggest loser need to go through once the season is over.

Discord is trash, had issues with a KBDFans product, something as simple as a search of a forum would have given me the solution. I had to talk to a human to get the required information. They sent me a link to a firmware to download and all was good.

If I was able to search a forum it would have been a 2 minute job, but I wasted someone else’s time, on the other side of the globe.

Firefox is fine on mobile in my eyes.

At least the Android version, even on my 5 year old Exynos phone it does what I need / want from a browser. Allows (some) extensions, lets me zoom wherever I want to on any page, has a reader mode and is snappy enough on old hardware.

Chrome tries to be / do far too much for me, just fuck off and let me browse the web. I do like the dynamic colours that Chrome on mobile uses on different webpages, is hot.

However Chrome gives me dirty Microsoft vibes, and it’s pretty hard to shake that stank.

If your on iOS welcome to the walled garden. Hope you live in the EU.

I’ve got 3 cameras running on a vlan, with no access to the internet.

Frigate / Home Assistant + tail scale (want to move away from this service) let me see my cameras remotely, receive notifications from events and even look at events / stills on my watch.

I have some cheap 5mp Reolink camseras, not the best for frigate but get the job done.

I’ve started using Geddit, a 3rd party app that doesn’t use the Reddit API. And it’s still better than the app they develop in-house.

I rarely visit Reddit, but when searching for something niche there always seems to be a few threads over there sadly.

ChatGPT 9 to be trained on R9K posts. Won’t be able to distinguish fake free text from real.

Mentioning clients LibreTube or PipePipe on android tick the boxes for me. Piped.video let me import my subs and gives me my subscription feed back, same login on LibreTube keeps things cross-platform which is nice

After paying for YTP Family for a number of years, their recent price increase was too much to warrant. I was happy paying ~$25 for multiple people but increasing to ~$35 was a massive jump.

Nah, I’d join random gaming discords over that future.

I guess the answer is money, but why would you do any handling of card details in-house. Having a third party process transactions passes to some degree ensuring security onto said third party.

I’d still doubt any risk of full card details being leaked unless the hack goes much deeper than just Epic.

Company I worked for was the only importer of Corsair chairs into Australia, we were told by Corsair (on a chair by chair basis) to have end users destroy faulty chairs if no replacement parts were available.

Same thing with Lian Li, we had a batch of white cases with a paint defect, they were never sold onto end-users but our warehouse teams destroyed every case, sent images to Lian Li of the destruction and we were sent another shipment.

Cooler-master had some bad mITX PSUs, same deal, sent the boys out with a hammer and safety squints.

At the end of the day it’s cheaper for everyone involved to not have a faulty product that is too costly to repair shipped across the ocean or to a local disty. Sucks for the environment, sucks for the end user having to dispose of a faulty product but it makes for some interesting emails sent out to customers :D

But they do freely allow it, grab an APK from F-Droid and install it.

You posed a question about Google policing sideloading, then posted an article that has nothing to do with google policing side loading.

🤷‍♂️

My takeaway from that article is they don’t, and haven’t.

The splash screen for installing a package not from the play store is there to protect the end user. Without it there would probably be a much worse unwanted software issue on android.

I’ve been “side loading” or just “installing” applications on my android devices since the nexus one, without the help of the play store.

Minimum for me would be 120hz, i’ve been using 120hz since 2012 (12 years… man) and anything less feels like a massive step backwards. My old S10+ and my cheapie laptop feel sluggish in any animated / transmission scenario.

It’s not law in VIC iirc, it’s a common courtesy but not a requirement. Like when indicating to jump in a lane, giving the driver who let you in a wave. Or blinking your headlights when there is a copper in the direction you came from.

Yeah that’s funded by the brand, Logitech and other big brands would give me MDF and scanback on every product sold during a promotion (that was pushed by said brand). We would not make as much margins per unit sold but we would move bulk product.

MDF would go to the internal marketing team for producing assets / promoting on our socials. Marketing would also give statistics on volume of products in promotion sold, click through rate / views / audience. All highly sought after statistics.

Grey market importers would have products at a cheaper buy price but would not qualify for scanback.

One person from my team had committed a PO for the wrong quantity of a product (100 units instead of 10)

But due to our good relationship that brand helped us run a promotion on that product which ended up being exclusive to our stores and moved lots of flight sticks. We wouldn’t have that kind of support if we were purchasing from a grey market importer.

The other side of retail is a fun experience, but for hardly above minimum Australian wage it wasn’t worth the stress.

Edit: Speaking of LOGI, they were a great bunch to be on the good side of. New release products had stellar margins for our stores, as long as we kept on the MSRP, not following MSRP would lead for us not not receive initial batches of stocks on future launches.

Me waiting for solar underground highways.