Headphones. I don’t wanna listen to your tik toks on a bus.
I would add that a pair of good ones is a world of difference for everything you might use them for - music, gaming, movies. Now good != expensive, good headphones can be had for under 50 bucks, great headphones for around 100-200, anything beyond that you are venturing into audiophile waters with very diminishing returns.
What’s your recommendation ?
For the cheaper end, Koss is a great point to jump on, KSC 75, Porta Pro (these are my go to for moving around, including running in the rain) and Kph 30i are all great options. Worth noting that these will not provide much in the way of isolation, they are relatively open.
There are also pretty good cheap in-ear options (IEM), but i will not comment on these as I absolutely despise this form factor, personally.
For a potential endgame, with a price bump, you can look to something like Sennheiser HD560s. These are what I use at home, they are a great all-rounder, by reproducing the sound spatially very well, which is amazing for gaming, but also immersive for music and movies. For music (well, sound in general, of course) they are what is known as neutral, so they do not excentuate particularly any part of the frequency curve, they reproduce music roughly as-mixed, with great resolution of individual instruments, in my experience they really make the vocals pop.
So open back, right?
I wish you a merry diarrhea 😊
Aren’t those for studio work though ? Rather than for daily usage?
Not necessarily! they are great for at home, especially if you have a kid or grandparent you have to be able to hear. Not so much for the bus though
Are there any good(less bulky and good sound quality) open back headphones for using on the bus (or commute) ?
Personally, I wouldn’t recommend open back for commute as you can hear everybody else and everyone else can also hear you. They are very much moreso for at home use.
They’re really great sound quality, but usually pretty bulky. I was joking because they let sound out very easily, so it wouldn’t be much better for other people than phone speakers.
Since we’re on Lemmy, USB jump drive so they can reinstall a new distro of Linux every ~3 months
Do it with Ventoy https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html
Ventoy is great. I have a bunch of useful Windows ISOs like win 10 and 11. I also have a bunch of useless ones like Win XP and 7.
I have many useful Linux ISOs and I also have an Android ISO for some reason.
A great tool 🔥
I’ve been telling myself to stop distrohopping for 7 years.
I’m addicted to optimizing my OS
I’ve got like 5 of these. Only one of them has a Linux distro.
Keyboard. It’s got hotkeys for the most used characters. It’s so much faster than manually drawing each character in Paint.
Wow, my MS paint workflow is feeling attacked right now.
You don’t have to use every shortcut you know.
People need to think too, and the less repetitive one’s workflow, the less time one has to think.
Time efficiency gains assume practically infinite cognitive resources. Normal human workflow is think/execute/think/execute. Jobs that are only think/think/think/think are unnatural and fuck up your brain. Especially if you think of reality as a sort of test suite you can run against new neural patterns to weed out the ones built on unreliable patterns.
So you do you bro. You take your time on those precious chars. I do recommend you learn chinese in that case though, or Egyptian heiroglyphics. You get a lot more information out of each bmp file that way.
I haven’t used CJK languages in a long time, but for a while I was running a Japanese version of Windows NT and for text input there was an option to draw the character in a small paint window.
A good chair. I know it’s not technically a gadget but if you’re spending half of your day on the computer you should spend on a good chair with proper lumbar support. Your back will thank you.
Just don’t fall for those “gamer” chairs. They’re designed to look pretty, not to be comfortable.
Most gamer chairs are fine but they’re overly expensive. My chair is just a high quality office chair I grabbed from a local store. Super comfy and relatively cheap.
When I was last shopping for a chair, a “gamer” chair was, by far, the best chair that I could find for my size (average height, but stocky and overweight). None of the chairs at my local office store went up far enough for my knees and the arm rests did not support my elbows at table level.
I am sure that their are high end office chairs that would fit me, but I did not want to do much research. I had just read a good overview of gaming chairs from Ars Technica and just went off of that.
Every chair I have had at work has the same problem. At one job, they had ergonomics experts come in to help set up our desks at a new office. The expert sat me down, fiddled with my chair, and apologized because it was hopeless.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, they’re pretty comfortable if I say so myself
The issue is, yeah they’re comfortable, but they’re not comfortable in a good way for your body. You slouch and fuck your spine up. Also you look like a teenager, do you have a racecar bed too?
do you have a racecar bed too?
Why do you hate fun?
I have fun, whilst sitting on a super comfy chair made to be adaptable and ergonomic so I can have fun for longer without fucking up my body. 🤷♂️
With a gaming chair, you’re also overpaying for bad posture and bad materials. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yhc6mmdJC4
It just makes me think ‘kid that got scammed and follows trends to fit in’, not ‘fun’
Gamer chairs are the same chairs you’re buying but more expensive.
Gamer chairs are worse for you than office chairs. They’re designed to look “cool” but most of what they do is kill your back.
They’re just cheap shit. I don’t buy cheap shit, I have a premium chair that I bought used for a fraction of the price, cheaper than a “gamer chair” 🫣
do you have a racecar bed too?
I fucking wish
Buy a used Aeron chair on Craigslist or something. I’ve gotten 2 of them like this and love them. They last forever and are extremely comfortable.
A Mira works well too and doesn’t get as much attention as the Aeron, so will be cheaper.
Good call out. Aeron’s are twice the price and the Mira is a great chair too. Tech startups LOVE to splurge on high end chairs and then they liquidate when they go under. That’s how I’ve gotten mine.
There are a few companies on eBay that sell refurb Aerons. I got a like new on for $400. Not exactly cheap, but waaaaay less than retail and comparable to the fancy “gamer” chairs.
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Completely agree. I got a Steelcase for a steal on Craigslist and it has been the best chair I’ve ever owned.
External hard drive big enough to hold more than the entire memory of the computer. Keep everything you find valuable at least, or better yet back up the entire computer on there and update it regularly. Leave it unplugged from the computer between updates.
In other words, an offline backup of everything on your main computer.
Follow the 3-2-1 rule: 3 copies, 2 different mediums (second HDD + thumb drive, DVD-R, tape if you’re nerdy, etc) and 1 offsite (cloud, VPN tunnel to someone else’s NAS, etc)
“if it doesn’t exist in 3 places, it doesn’t exist at all” is an adage I do my best to abide by. I lost a 500mb hard drive in the 90s (oh no…all my funny Sound Recorder clips and funny pics!!) and have been paranoid ever since.
Digital storage is just too cheap nowadays to risk it. Cloud storage, too
What are you all backing up? My SSD is just my OS, some programs and Steam, a fresh install without a backup has me back up and running in about 2 hours.
Some people have families and like to keep pictures and videos of said family around. Also, legal documents, academic papers, career and work related documents. Other deranged individuals have collections of rare stuff like music, games and movies that aren’t available on digital platforms anymore. Wild concept, I know.
It was a genuine question tbh. I mean, I have a family with kids and I am a few years out of higher education (technically still in uni, as residency in my country is still university), I still feel no need to keep a physical backup, maybe backing up the photos would be an idea.
Yeah I don’t know why they came at you with so much snark.
I gather you leave all your digital presence to cloud services? If it ain’t in your computer, you don’t own it. I’ve seen people deal with all sorts of problems because they only had one copy of whatever digital file. Computers aren’t eternal, if anything they are actually more fickle than some physical mediums. Don’t trust mega corporations to keep your data safe, some will sneeze, fuck you over and won’t care because either you weren’t a paying customer or your problems just aren’t profitable enough for even a real human to look at your pleads for assistance.
I just have my photos, that are on the cloud, yes, as they are all taken by phone. I hadnt considered needing a backup for those, and I am not sure I will, but it is an idea. I mostly take them to share with people, I am not really the type of person to go back and look at photos. Nothing else that feel worth backing up.
I used to hoard various files like work stuff, uni materials etc, but time and time again I find I never go back to them, so I don’t really keep stuff like that anymore.
The important things for me to back up include:
- photographs and family videos (literally irreplaceable)
- legal documents and other such paperwork (can be replaced, but it would be a pain)
- various notes on how to accomplish occasional tasks (not too hard to figure out again, but it is convenient to spend 1 minute copying a command out of a text file instead of spending 15 minutes to find all the correct command line arguments)
My backup is the fact I have a general idea of what I’m planning to do and hope I can figure my shit out if I lose all my data
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Get a multi port USB charger. I have some from Anker that have 2 usb-c ports and 2 usb-a ports. Can charge everything from my laptop to all my gadgets.
You can’t have enough usb chargers.
I just bit the bullet and got some from Anker. Gonna have so many fast charging stations, I’ll finally stop dragging the one good charger around behind me everywhere I go.
While I guess not technically a gadget, a nice footrest is surprisingly comfortable when sitting at the computer a while
I highly recommend anti-fatigue mats and adjustable desk! Alternative between sitting and standing.
Long periods of sitting is bad in general.
Dude, definitely. I’m a standing desk evangelist and have 2 at home lol
Right now I’m using a soccer ball, great to fiddle with too.
Hmm, I might have to try this
A good pair of pants.
Way to flex bro. Look at mr moneybags over here with his “pants”. Bro everyone struggling out here
Best computer gadget ever.
Monitor arms and/or a standing desk. Monitor arms free up so much space on your desk and having a standing desk is just good for physical health especially if you work from home.
YubiKey
Wuzzat?
It’s a hardware authentication key. Kinda like a USB flash drive.
You know how some services offer multifactor authentication (MFA), also referred to as two factor authentication (2FA)?
There are typically two types offered: time-based one-time passwords (TOTPs) where you have 30-60 seconds to type in a 6-digit code, and SMS-based where they text you a 4-6 digit code (that also expires within a set time frame).
With a Yubikey, you gotta plug in the Yubikey into your computer or phone. Or, there are some models that use near field communication (NFC) and you just need to bring it near the device you’re tryna authenticate.
So rather than typing in those codes you get either from SMS or your authenticator app, you use the Yubikey as your authentication method.
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A small screen (3-4") phone
Best way to kick the habit of spending every free minute looking at the screen, but still perfectly functional for a wide variety of tasks, unlike a dumbphone.what are some modern examples of these? most phones that are still updated are phablets
Unihertz Jelly Star
They have a pretty interesting lineup I’ll say. Definitely eyeballing the atom models
I’m currently using the Atom. I love it, but it really takes the “small screen” idea to the extreme.
Texting is possible with swipe typing, but for more than a sentence, I use voice recognition, and I don’t even try to write e-mails on it unless it’s urgent.
Typing passwords is an exercise in frustration, so I use Bitwarden with a PIN.
Sometimes I have to turn the phone sideways to even show a button that needs clicking.
I’ve uninstalled the browser, cause it was pointless.
And you better have good eyesight.That being said, for my use case it’s perfect. What I wanted was a “dumbphone+” that can also use messenging apps and e-mail, act as 2FA, sync with my Nextcloud and has a camera for scanning QR codes.
Especially, what are some modern examples of these, but from known brands. Not some shady off-brand “brand”?
If you want a good performance phone for using loads of apps and games, you’re missing the point.
Just use Universal Android Debloater to get rid of crapware and use it for messaging and phone calls.
Personally, I can vouch for Unihertz. Their phones use Mediatek chips (like Samsung, Nokia, Oneplus), are pre-financed via Kickstarter and have great build quality.
The asus zenfone 10 looks cool
if you draw or photoshop, a wacom screen is a life changer. not an ipad pro or surface, a 20"+ wacom cintiq on a solid desk is still light years beyond anything else out there. also, if you edit video, a usb shuttle wheel with mapable hot buttons makes cutting much faster than click and drag. really good speakers are important. lastly, get the best chair (with a headrest!) you can afford.
Cintiqs are nice. I’ve been thinking about getting an additional Intuos Tablet though - sometimes drawing in the Cintiq ends up with me drawing with my face 6-8 inches from the screen, which is just reinforcing my near-sightedness. That, and sometimes drawings get skewed because I normally draw with the monitor tilted back at an angle. :T
I think I’d like the option to switch back and forth. Anybody have any advice or thoughts?
I use my Cintiq, keyboard, and mouse. I was able to build mine into my desktop with a tilt feature that goes from 80 degrees to almost flat. For some reason having it sunk into the table makes it easier for me to draw for long sessions. Your mileage might vary.
What about a table like that for 3D work or CAD? Do people do that?
I did, mostly for painting 3D textures directly on models (Z Brush etc). I knew a traditional animator that converted one of her old light tables with a Cintiq. It was pretty badass.
If you are a pc enthusiast I’m going to say you need a sensor panel. I built one myself, 7" lcd display and driver board costs less then 30€ and the result is incredible. I always look at it for any sort of reason it has temperatures, FPS, cpu/gpu/ram usage, network bandwidth… I always know what’s going on!
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I’m using AIDA64 Extreme, the paid version ha a sensor panel feature that is so good that I can’t explain, so here some photos:
- How it looks in the case: https://ibb.co/4N9jJXV
- Screenshot of the last iteration (changed font and moved some elements): https://ibb.co/YBPFZwz
- Purple variant: https://ibb.co/92LQtpn
One of these, the world’s most sophisticated form of protection.
Electrical tape is classier.
It is? What if you want to remove it? Plus a cup gives a kind of lampshade vibe.
I make a flap out of gaffer’s tape for any device I use without a built in physical cover for the webcam
they sell little plastic laptop camera sliders online for nearly nothing that are more convenient and visually modest
They have improved then since the picture was made, as I used to go to the store and they’d take advantage of the fact people feel they need the sliders so bad and sell them at the price of an umbrella. And then it was realized after looking at bathroom cups that not only can you make them in an instant for free but also that the translucent ones can imbue certain effects.
My webcam has a built in physical privacy slider
I feel like whenever they actually include that they’re pulling a Sun Tzu on us.
I used a Kinesis Freestyle 2 split keyboard for my software dev work, and it eliminated the ulnar neuropathy I was experiencing in about a month.
I’ve been using a Kinesis Advantage for most of my career. It’s safe to say my wrists would have flamed out years ago if it wasn’t for that keyboard.
