My issue was specifically the windows sync client - not server or web related. I turned on debug in the client and watched the logs and saw it making stupid (IMHO) decisions about speed throttling.

I’m in a similar situation - I’m a (retired) Unix admin and have Linux servers at home but I’m still on windows for my desktop because of OneDrive. If you use it as intended, it works really well. I can login to my laptop, my phone or either of my wife’s PC’s and all my stuff is just there.

Yes, I’ve tried nextcloud and it’s close, but the windows sync client is (was?) broken - the upload speed throttling logic is broken and it was going to take ages to sync my data. I went to the nextcloud community and it seemed to be a known issue that know one cares about because the sync just happens in the background and it’s done when it’s done.

As I typed this I realised that if I move to Linux desktop I don’t care about the windows sync client :-) So now I’ve just got the issue that I won’t get my wife off windows and if we’re paying for 5TB of cloud storage, I might as well use it. Yes, I know there are ways to use OneDrive on Linux, but it doesn’t look as seamless and I’d be always concerned that Microsoft will do something to break it.

For me it’s not about the size, it’s about the understanding. I’d really like to understand what everything on my system does and why it’s there. It seems impossible with modern systems. Back in the '90s I needed a secure email relay - it had lilo, kernel, init, getty, bash, vi, a few shell utils (before busybox…), syslogd and sendmail. I’m not sure any more as it was a long time ago, but I think I even statically linked everything so there was no libc. I liked that system.

Oh, I know how they work - we have an ET-8550. I just didn’t realise generic ink could be so cheap. My wife sells prints of her photographs and artwork so is a bit “cautious” about her ink and only uses genuine Epson at $25 per 70ml. I just looked on Amazon and found that generic ink can be had for around $6-7 per 70ml ($40 for a 6-pack) - wow!

What ink are you getting for $12?? Even allowing for quite a bit of poetic licence, this seems ridiculously cheap.

It blows my mind that they need to do this with physical phones. I would have thought they could virtualise/emulate everything needed.

What’s going to stop you from taking over?

Sane, rational people don’t want to take over anything. We just want to vote for reasonable governments, let said government get on with governing and get on with our lives. We don’t want to be bombarded with all this political bullshit everywhere we turn - MAGA stickers and Fuck Biden stickers, you can’t open any comment thread on any public social media post without some idiot blaming Biden for the most ridiculous things.

Since the growth of the internet and social media these right wing nazi fucktards have figured out they can weaponise their followers to take over anything at any level and with your attitude to this site that’s exactly what I predict will happen there.

Ha, good point. I’m showing my age here. I understand our modern phone screens have resolution approaching that of good print, but when I think of a screen my brain still defaults to something like a 14" VGA at 57PPI :-)

I’m curious if this relies on the fact that we’re looking at on pixelated screens to work. But not so curious that I’ll print it out to check.

I’m in the process of replacing all my mp3 (including a lot of V0 and 320) with FLAC. I know that most of the time I can’t tell the difference, but I did some testing and in some scenarios with some music I could tell. And, at the size of music files, disk is cheap.

I assume enforcing the no photography rule?

My son has just signed up to a new retailer where he pays wholesale rates (he understands the risks) and for half an hour yesterday afternoon they were paying him 13¢/kWh to take it!

Thank you - your description is the only one that allowed me to see the “other” perspective. If I really focus on the “wrong” bottom face and bottom left vertex I can see it the wrong way for a short time but the instant me brain notices the top right vertex it flips back.

I’m kinda ashamed to admit I didn’t know Togo existed. Thank you for promoting me to virtually cruise around west Africa a bit and very slightly improve my geography knowledge.

They tried that years ago in Australia - it didn’t last long.

USB-PD can be used for more than just charging. If you’re running something (a headphone amp for example) from one port of a multi-port brick, you don’t want it to stop momentarily every time you plug or unplug one of the other ports.

Protecting children would mean knowing which users are children, which would mean knowing the actual legal identity of every user of the platform. It’s never going to happen.

I suggest you learn about the difference between line level and speaker level. This article seems to do a decent job:

https://www.electronicshub.org/speaker-level-vs-line-level/

Your boiling water analogy does not fit - water boils at 100°C (depending on air pressure). It’s like the digital signal - boiled/not-boiled, on/off, 1/0, etc.

The output of a DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter) is a line level analogue signal and this signal has an amplitude (voltage) that can be controlled. I’m not a software or audio engineer so I don’t understand how, but my reading and own testing supports this.

My own simple test: I have a Google Pixel 4a and an Apple USB-C DAC (dongle). If I use headphones connected to either the phone audio jack or the DAC and any “normal” music player I can listen at full volume - it’s loud, but far from uncomfortable. If I use USB Audio Player PRO and configure direct hardware access to the DAC I cannot listen at full volume - it’s too loud.

No - I know the difference between a DAC and an amp. The Android (or, maybe it’s just Google Pixel devices, I can’t recall) audio subsystem limits audio output. My phone max. output is about 800mV. I believe they assume all output is going to earphones and they’re trying to protect your hearing. This happens even if you’re using a USB DAC. But, there is an app called USB Audio Player PRO (the may be others) that can bypass the Android audio subsystem and send output directly to the DAC and thereby get the full DAC output - typically around 2V.

Since you mentioned the “power” of an external DAC I’ll add that my experience has been that android will still limit the output unless you use an app that works directly with the DAC. Last time I checked the only option was paid.