For me, video is rarely the form that I want to consume any content in. It’s also very obnoxious if I’m on a slow data link (e.g. on a slower or saturated cell phone link).

However, sometimes it’s the only form that something is available in. For major news items, you can usually get a text-form article, but that isn’t all content. I submitted a link to a YouTube video of a Michael Kofman interview the other day talking about military aid to a Ukraine community. I also typed up a transcript, but it was something like an hour and a half, and I don’t know if that’s a reasonable bar to expect people to meet.

I think that some of this isn’t that people actually want video, but that YouTube has an easy way to monetize video for content creators. I don’t think that there’s actually a good equivalent for independent creators of text, sadly-enough.

And there are a few times that I do want video.

And there may be some other people that prefer video.

Video doesn’t actually hurt me much at this point, but it would kind of be nice to have a way to filter it out for people who don’t want it. Moving all video to another community seems like overkill, though. Think it might be better to have some mechanism added to Threadiverse clients to permit content filtering rules; I think that probably a better way to meet everyone’s wants. It’d also be nice if there were some way to clearly indicate that a link is video content, so that I can tell prior to clicking on it.

I’m not the person you were talking to, but I agree that I don’t think that they have trouble distinguishing between nuclear and non-nuclear waste.

deleted by creator

You can still get a few phones with built-in headphones jacks. They tend to be lower-end and small.

I was just looking at phones with very long battery life yesterday, and I noticed that the phone currently at the top of the list I was looking at, a high-end, large, gaming phone, also had a headphones jack. The article also commented on how unusual that was.

Think it was an Asus ROG something-or-other.

kagis

https://rog.asus.com/us/phones/rog-phone-8-pro/

An Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro.

That’s new and current. Midrange-and-up phones with audio jacks aren’t common, but they are out there.

Honestly, I’d just get a USB C audio interface with pass-through PD so that you can still charge with it plugged in and just leave that plugged into your headphones if you want to use 1/8th inch headphones. It’s slightly more to carry around, but not that much more.

Plus, the last smartphone I had with a built-in audio DAC would spill noise into the headphones output when charging. Very annoying. Needed better power circuitry. I don’t know if any given USB C audio interface avoids the issue, but if it’s built into the phone, there’s a limited amount you can do about it. If it’s external, you can swap it, and there’s the hope that their less-limited space constraints meant that they put in better power supply circuitry.

Nuclear waste doesn’t really pose problems substantially different from other forms of waste. There’s lots of waste that isn’t good for you if you come into contact with it, and stuff that’ll remain in that state for a lot longer than anything radioactive enough to be a concern is.

Words per minute meaning literally words or characters?

Words. Well, IIRC in tests it’s something like an abstract word of fixed length, something like 5 characters or something, as that’s the average word length in English. Like, it doesn’t mean you’re typing “antidisestablishmentarianism” over and over, one word each time.

kagis

Yeah:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute

Since words vary in length, for the purpose of measurement of text entry the definition of each “word” is often standardized to be five characters or keystrokes long in English,[1] including spaces and punctuation. For example, under such a method applied to plain English text the phrase “I run” counts as one word, but “rhinoceros” and “let’s talk” would both count as two.

Karat et al. found in one study of average computer users in 1999 that the average rate for transcription was 32.5 words per minute, and 19.0 words per minute for composition.[2] In the same study, when the group was divided into “fast”, “moderate”, and “slow” groups, the average speeds were 40 wpm, 35 wpm, and 23 wpm, respectively.

With the onset of the era of desktop computers and smartphones, fast typing skills became much more widespread. As of 2019, the average typing speed on a mobile phone was 36.2 wpm with 2.3% uncorrected errors—there were significant correlations with age, level of English proficiency, and number of fingers used to type.[3] Some typists have sustained speeds over 200 wpm for a 15-second typing test with simple English words.[4]

Typically, professional typists type at speeds of 43 to 80 wpm, while some positions can require 80 to 95 (usually the minimum required for dispatch positions and other time-sensitive typing jobs), and some advanced typists work at speeds above 120 wpm.[5] Two-finger typists, sometimes also referred to as “hunt and peck” typists, commonly reach sustained speeds of about 37 wpm for memorized text and 27 wpm when copying text, but in bursts may be able to reach much higher speeds.[6] From the 1920s through the 1970s, typing speed (along with shorthand speed) was an important secretarial qualification, and typing contests were popular and often publicized by typewriter companies as promotional tools.

Stenotype

Stenotype keyboards enable the trained user to input text as fast as 360 wpm at very high accuracy for an extended period, which is sufficient for real-time activities such as court reporting or closed captioning. While training dropout rates are very high — in some cases only 10% or even fewer graduate — stenotype students are usually able to reach speeds of 100–120 wpm within six months, which is faster than most alphanumeric typists. Guinness World Records gives 360 wpm with 97.23% accuracy as the highest achieved speed using a stenotype.[7]

So it’s not a typo or whatever, if that’s what you mean.

Because 3 - 4 words per second seems a bit much to me and whoever talks that fast?

It’s pretty fast, but then you’re talking about a professional text-entry person using the fastest plain-text entry mechanism we know about in a speed test. I’m sure that that’s not something demanded of a stenotypist in a normal real-time transcription session.

My guess is that you probably could still make practical use of it if you didn’t need real-time transcription by doing a recording and then playing back with software that can do time stretching to accelerate the rate of playback; you could transcribe more-quickly.

'course, automated transcription’s getting better too, and that might also be an answer on that front.

I also have the back propped up like you mentioned with the built in lifts

Ah hah!

Yeah, there are some ergo keyboards that have that “reverse tilt” built in. They’re aimed more at being easier on the wrist than at trying to permit for long nails, but they do exist.

e.g.:

https://matias.ca/ergopro/pc/

I also have carpel tunnel

That’d be an argument for a keyboard, like, a mechanical one where you don’t bottom out the keys on press, and then training yourself to not bottom them out, which is a big argument mechanical keyboard fans have for theirs versus rubber dome keyboards. And you need a fair bit of key travel for that, yeah. Hmm.

Hmm. Interesting.

If you don’t mind me asking, could you describe what alternate keycaps were used? Like, taller keycaps in the front, shorter in the back? Like, I still think that the amount of keytravel would be a negative, but maybe the issue is that the long nails descend into the keyboard given the normal position of a hand typing, and basically changing the angle improves that.

If that’s the case, I’m wondering whether maybe it’d be possible to change the angle of the keyboard as a whole. Like, either use an external keyboard propped up differently, tilting away from the user, or a laptop with the front part of the base shimmed up to tilt away from the user.

Hmm. That’s an interesting problem to have.

On one hand, I can’t suggest a great alternative, but man, silicone keys…I guess if they work for the author.

Stenotypists – people who have to professionally do very high-speed text entry – do use these dinky specialized keyboards that IIRC from a Japanese-language one – I think that there were multiple Japanese layouts – can only have a home row or something. I think that they use chording or something. I don’t know if that might address it, but learning one would be a huge change. Also, I have no idea what keys they can output…given that they’re highly-optimized for text entry, they might not be able to do weird symbols.

goes looking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype

A steno machine, stenotype machine, shorthand machine, stenograph or steno writer is a specialized chorded keyboard or typewriter used by stenographers for shorthand use. In order to pass the United States Registered Professional Reporter test, a trained court reporter or closed captioner must write speeds of approximately 180, 200, and 225 words per minute (wpm) at very high accuracy in the categories of literary, jury charge, and testimony, respectively.[1] Some stenographers can reach up to 375 words per minute, according to the website of the California Official Court Reporters Association (COCRA).[2]

Hmm.

Looking at the key layout there, and here:

https://stenokeyboards.com/

…it looks like English-language stenotype keyboards don’t just use a single row, but rather two or more rows. So that’s probably out.

There’s apparently a second chording layout, the “palantype” layout, but that also doesn’t do only one key per finger:

https://www.openstenoproject.org/palantype/tutorial/2016/08/21/learn-palantype.html

There are dedicated chording keyboards that do use only one key per finger, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard

That has some examples of one-key-per-finger keyboards, like the BAT keyboard (well, that has three for the thumb, but given that you hit those with the side of the thumb, I assume that it’d be okay with long nails):

https://www.infogrip.com/bat-keyboard.html

The problem is that (a) the BAT is discontinued and (b) you really don’t want a one handed keyboard, which is what the BAT does…it’d be better to have a two handed chorded keyboard, or you’re taking half of your fingers out of the picture.

EDIT: Here’s an open-source, two-handed chording keyboard, the Ialboard, based on the discontinued DataHand keyboard. I’m not sure that it’d work with very long nails in its current form – they might collide with the structure of the keyboard – but it’s 3d printed and I’m pretty sure that if the format doesn’t work as-is, a tweak to the 3d-printed keys would permit for arbitrarily long nails. Just need to create a space for 'em.

Gonna need some serious keyboard re-learning, though.

EDIT2: Here’s another two-handed chording keyboard with one input device per finger, the CharaChorder. It uses an analog D-pad under each finger. I think that it’d have space for long nails as-is. It does have separate arrow key and mouse control sticks, and I’m not sure if those, given the placement, would be an issue for long nails. I’d imagine that if one were determined to work around that with an external mouse device and – if you use arrow keys enough to need it; I rarely do – maybe some dedicated arrow key keyboard, though I’d think that having the arrow keys in vim-style hjkl-style layout might be preferable to the inverted-T layout that seems common. I don’t know whether the barrel connector’s positioning there would be an issue, though the positioning of that is obviously not critical to the keyboard, and I imagine that if it is an issue, with a bit of work, one could relocate it.

EDIT3: It looks like there’s another DataHand-based 3D-printed keyboard besides the above-mentioned Ialboard, the Svalboard. Same argument as with the Ialboard – I’m not sure that it’d be usable with long nails as is, but I’m pretty sure that that design could be modified with approprately-different key shapes to permit long nails to extend through a gap. You can apparently buy the thing in kit form, 3D-print it, so I figure that if someone wants to make a “longnail” variant of a few of the 3D-printed parts, that’d probably be a pretty easy keyboard to start from.

The downside is that I don’t think that – unlike the above CharaChorder – this comes with a travel carrying case, which might be important if you’re a laptop user. I guess it’d probably be possible to craft something with foam and a shell, but that’s not off-the-shelf any more.

How can it be easier to use keys with traditional keyswitches? You’d have more key travel.

I mean, I don’t see a reason to get upset with Google here – Google’s got no incentive to have the SEO crowd do well, combat them too – but it’s Google that isn’t doing the right assessment with their page ranking system if the problem is that the better information source is Wikipedia and Fandom is being ranked more-highly.

I guess this is all part of the social sciences side of chatbots and something to keep an eye on, and folks have to start somewhere…but I kind of feel that the technology isn’t really at the point where teaching people in general with a chatbot is an ideal solution.

It was pointed out to me that I watched more YouTube than any other streaming service which I was paying for.

Yeah, I think that YouTube provides a lot of value.

My problem is that I don’t really want Google – a company who makes a lot of their money via profiling and data-mining – logging and data-mining everything I watch.

YouTube Premium lets someone avoid ads. But as best I can tell, it’s not buying any kind of no-log service – in fact, it’s just linking your activity to your financial information, which makes logging and profiling easier. That’s not the service that I want to buy from Google.

What I’d be willing to get from Google is a “no log” service.

I pay for Kagi, for search engine service. I pay for commercial email service. I’m fine with giving money to online service providers and entrusting them with (some) of my data…but I want part of that service to be that they aren’t logging what I do and data-mining my data.

I don’t like the model of “we don’t charge up front but we make our money by extracting all the information about you that we can”. I’m fine with that existing, because some people are more comfortable with that. But it isn’t what I want for myself.

I’ve had the same monitor, keyboard and mouse for an easy 10;

I guess it depends on frequency of use, but I’ve never had a mouse last ten years. I wear through the switch on the mouse button in less than that, starts to act unreliably.

Going to have to plug GOG here as these are both things they offer.

Note that this is a major selling point for GOG and available on most of their library, but unlike their early days, not everything is DRM-free.

Does Amazon really think anyone out there wants a PC with AI bloatware on it?

Setting aside this particular situation and software package and speaking more-generally as to preinstalled bloatware…

People have been buying PCs for a long time with bloatware on it offsetting the price of the PC, so I’m pretty sure that people either are fine with bloatware or unaware of it sufficiently not to take it into account when buying a PC.

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-discord

It looks like there’s software to bridge it to Matrix. I have no idea whether that violates ToS. It does look like it’s getting development, though, so I can’t imagine that Discord has been cutting people off en masse for using it.

I get that.

Honestly, though I’m still a little puzzled as to why people initially got into Discord; I never did.

I can understand why people wanted to use some systems. Twitter does massive-scale real-time indexing. That was a huge feature, really changed what one could do on the platform.

Reddit provided a good syntax (Markdown), had a low barrier to entry (no email verification at a time when that was common), and third-party client access. It solved the spam problem that was killing Usenet and permitted for more-reasonable moderation.

There were a whole host of services that aimed to lower the complexity bar to get a web page and some content online associated with someone’s identity; it was clear that lack of technical knowledge and the technical knowledge required to get stuff up was a real limiting factor for many people.

But I just didn’t really get where Discord provided much of a win over stuff like IRC. I mean, I guess maybe it bundled a couple services into one, which maybe lowered the bar to use a bit. IRC really seemed pretty fine to me. Reddit bundling image-hosting seems to have lowered the bar, been something that people wanted. Maybe Discord doing images and file-hosting made it more-accessible.

I have no idea why a number of people who liked Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead used Discord rather than Reddit; it seemed like a dramatically-worse system if one was aiming to create material for others to look back at and refer to.

kagis

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditForGrownups/comments/t417q1/can_someone_please_explain_discord_to_me_like_im/

It’s just modern day IRC with video.

Ahaha, thanks. This is indeed an ELI60 response, although it doesn’t really explain how Discord suddenly got so popular. But if I couple this with /u/Healthy-Car-1860’s response, I’m kind of getting the picture.

Got popular because it spread through the entire gamer/twitch community like wildfire due to actually being a more complete package and easier to use than anything prior. Online gamers have been struggling with voip software forever (Roger Wilco, Teamspeak, Ventrilo, Skype, and many others).

Once it was rooted in the people who are on their computers app day every day it was bound to spread because the UX is incredibly easy compared to previous options for both chat and voip.

Maybe that’s it. I never had a lot of interest in VoIP, especially group VoIP. When I was playing online games much, people used keyboards to communicate, not mics. There was definitely a period where people needed the ability to collaborate in games and games didn’t always provide that functionality. I remember people complaining about Teamspeak and Ventrilo. I briefly poked at Mumble – nice to have an open-source option – but I just had no reason to want to do VoIP with groups of people.

But I suppose for a video game clan or something, that might be important functionality. And if it’s also a one-stop shop for some other things that you might want to do anyway, it maybe makes sense to just use that rather than multiple services.

and Orange or Yellow are usually “always on” and/or 2.4 amp or some other kind of thing like that.

It’s the variety and surprise here that adds novelty and excitement to life.

https://www.usbmemorydirect.com/blog/usb-port-colors/

The blue USB port is also known as USB 3.0 or SuperSpeed (SS) USB. It was introduced in 2008 and offers a data transfer speed of up to 5 Gbps, which is more than 10 times faster than USB 2.0. In addition, it can transfer data in both directions simultaneously.

I definitely have a number of devices that use newer-than-USB 3.0 and use blue.

The teal USB port is also known as the USB 3.1 Gen 1 or SuperSpeed+ (SS+) USB. Released in 2013, it supports up to 10 Gbps data transfer speed, which is twice as fast as USB 3.0. The color is similar to USB 3.0, but it will appear as slightly more green-toned than the classic blue of 3.0. This is the easiest way to differentiate USB 3.0 vs 3.1 ports.

I don’t think any of my devices actually use teal, regardless of what they support. Oh…hmm. Wait, I think my last desktop motherboard did that.

goes to investigate

Yeah, it has teal and blue ports.

My current motherboard uses blue or red for everything USB-A, so clearly isn’t using blue to indicate “USB 3.0”, and labels every port, blue or red, in English as “USB 3.2”. So it clearly isn’t using the port color to indicate purely speed.

The red USB port is generally classified as USB 3.2, which was released in 2017. However, it can also be used to indicate a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port.

Another source of novelty and excitement.

Yellow USB Port Meaning

The yellow USB port is another color that can indicate either USB 3.2 or USB 3.1 Gen 2.

So much excitement.

The yellow USB port is more commonly found on laptops while the red USB port is more commonly found on desktop computers. This is because the yellow USB port indicates that it is always on, meaning it will continue to draw power even when the computer is turned off or in sleep mode. As a result, you can generally use it to charge other devices, such as smartphones.

Honestly, I didn’t really have an issue with USB type A ports. They worked fine, and it was only a minor inconvenience to orient them the right way. I cared far more about capabilities of the port (speed, power delivery, etc) than I did about the actual port.

I believe that the reason that the smaller USB variants showed up was because some devices were just too small to physically accommodate a USB-A plug. Think MP3 players and later – very importantly – smartphones.

For the vast majority of consumer electronics, USB-A is fine. But for things that are as thin as possible, usually to fit into a pocket, it starts to bump up against limits.

That said, micro-USB sucks in every way. The awkward “is this the right way?” thing is way worse than with USB-A, it’s not meaningfully smaller than mini-USB, the port is incredibly hard to clean (and it always gets dirty), and the connector seems to break all the time. I would’ve been totally fine with moving everything to mini-USB instead.

Mini-USB put the tensioners – the bit that wears out over time, is the bottleneck on the lifetime of the thing – on the (expensive) device rather than the (cheap) cable. Micro-USB and USB-C didn’t make that mistake.

Like, I think that there was a legitimate reason to fix that one way or another.