Probably because I rambled for way too long and didn’t give sources lol, here’s a couple examples from America’s test kitchen demonstrating what I mean:

Review of a combo Dutch oven/slow cooker that’s not great at either job, and is more expensive than buying the two items separately https://youtu.be/llPyDvfHx3k

Gear roundup for 2023, the best things were ones that innovated in materials or tech that was actually useful, worst things were overcomplicated equipment that didn’t actually try to use tech to improve the mechanics of the cooking equipment https://youtu.be/AU3mUjIF3A8

Cooking is an inherently manual task, and as such any meaningful improvements to cooking tools are enhancements to the manual capabilities of the tools. These are improvements to things like speed/precision/durability of mixing, heating, weighing, etc. Often times the most meaningful improvements are improvements in mechanisms in cooking machines or the materials they are made of, but there are definitely examples of electronics or software contributing in this way. Good examples would be fuzzy logic applied to electric kettles to make the act of heating to a specific temperature more precise by controlling the heating element so the water is brought to temperature without overshoot, or PID controllers in espresso machines controlling pumps to follow a specific pressure curve instead of requiring complex mechanical systems to accomplish the same thing. The problem with many of these internet-connected or heavily software-dependent appliances is that their added features do not improve the manual capabilities of the appliance in any way, sure the machine will tell you how much weight of flour you need for your cake, but your cake won’t be better than one produced by a “dumb” machine because the scale isn’t any more precise than any other scale that would be used for that purpose.

The other issue with these devices is a fallacy that’s really common in kitchen equipment, which is the idea that more functions = better. Fundamentally, a device designed to do both task A and task B will be worse than an equivalently priced combination of one device for task A and one device for task B, because there is a cost associated with engineering the device to accomplish both tasks. This effect is especially noticable on all-in-one devices that mix, weigh, and heat because there’s a lot more complexity, and thus a lot more cost spent on integrating the components together

How to destroy your up-and-coming indie studio in three simple steps!

1. Publicly fuck over the two people most responsible for your massively successful IP, ensuring they’ll never work with you again

2. Cancel any follow-up to your massively successful IP and continue with projects nobody cares about

3. Fire the rest of the staff responsible for your only successful IP

There is a well known fault in Teslas where the front linkage breaks, and that’s a lot more catastrophic than just putting on hazards and pulling to the side of the road. Worse still, this can happen at less than 100 miles driven, and Tesla won’t cover it under warranty: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/20/tesla-blamed-drivers-for-failures-of-parts-it-long-knew-were-defective.html

Join the cult of embedded engineers! My current project at work uses a cortex m0, so we have 32kB of code ROM and 4kB of RAM. It’s really satisfying finding little optimizations to save a couple dozen bytes here or there, and there’s never the pressure to just slap together code without worrying about size or speed since you can’t afford it with the hardware you’re using

Dumb question: did you remember to plug the battery connector back in? Or maybe you damaged that connector? That would explain if it only works when connected to power

It probably falls into the “costs a shit ton” but some people recommend the fellow carter mug. I’ve never tried it myself, but apparently ceramic-coated insides are best for not affecting the taste of coffee. I think I also saw some kind of ceramic-coated travel mug at Starbucks too? Can’t speak for how spill-proof either of those things are though

I mean, it’s pretty scummy but “working with” could refer to just being in communications with those charities about what a potential donation would be used for. Given what Jirard has said, I assume he was completely negligent about checking in on any of the foundation’s activities, and was probably just handed a paper with the names of “partners” on it for the stream. That said, I feel like the quotes about being a “major” or “main” partner with some specific organizations could get them into trouble, even if it’s legal for them to hold the money that long and they pass IRS audits

I would love to see an actual lawyer’s take on this. Jirard’s response is basically “we mislead everyone and were shitty for not donating before now, but it was perfectly legal for us to hold the money until now, and it was also legal for us to use donations for operating expenses of the foundation/events”. While Karl presents a lot of evidence of misleading statements by Jirard, his usage of the encyclopedia brittanica to define charity fraud instead of any actual legal definition, and presentation of evidence as more damning than it actually is (and in a very hostile manner) leads me to view both sides in a negative light. At this point, I have no idea whether either side has any legal grounds for the accusations made toward the other, and I don’t see that changing unless someone with actual legal knowledge weighs in

My wife and I ended up having a girl, but the names we were thinking of if we had a boy were Apollo or Layton. Those probably don’t need your criteria, but just throwing it out there!

True, but people who used to be served one ad per video are now being served 4 or 5, which both lessens the value of each individual ad, and gives more incentive to get rid of them with premium

That would be Age of Ultron, also home to the wonderfully awful scene where black widow tells Bruce banner that she’s a monster too because she can’t reproduce 😬

America’s Test Kitchen does very thorough reviews of lots of kitchen equipment, here’s their review of induction cook tops.

TLDW: duxtop 1800W is good, there are better ones but they’re a lot more expensive

Yeah, when I worked for an energy company, their stance was: why wouldn’t we build as much renewable energy as we can? It’s cheaper than power plants and basically just sits there making them money with minimal upkeep

I think the major difference that determines copywrightability is the amount of control the artist has on the outcome. If a photographer doesn’t like the composition of a photo, there’s a variety of things they can do to directly impact the photo (camera positioning/settings, moving the subjects, changing lighting, etc.), before it’s even captured by the camera. If someone is generating a picture with AI and they don’t like the composition of the image, there’s nothing they can do directly impact what the output will be.

If you want a picture of an apple, where the apple is placed precisely at a certain spot in frame, a photographer can easily accomplish this, but someone using AI will have to generate the image over and over, hoping that the algorithm decides to eventually place the apple exactly in the desired spot

Even compared to something like a washed Ethiopian? To be honest I’ve never tried kopi luwak, I just figured it was overhyped and comparable to other specialty coffee lol

That reminds me of this great place I once went to that was literally just a farm house that was repurposed into a restaurant, in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road and surrounded by farmland. It wasn’t cheap but also not outrageous, and the salads were amazing.

I also just remembered this Hungarian restaurant. Can’t get any more homey than some ukranian grandma’s house

You can get that same experience with coffee for much cheaper, but it does require a little effort. You just need to find a good coffee roaster near you or online where you can get freshly roasted specialty coffee(arabica, not robusta; and from a single farm, not a blend), instead of the stuff at grocery stores that’s been sitting for months. It might cost $15-$20 a bag, but that’s still less than a dollar per cup! If you want the absolute best coffee, then grinding the beans yourself and using something like an aeropress or pourover brewer is ideal, but you can still get great coffee just by buying locally roasted beans from a nearby shop, letting them grind the beans for you, then brewing with a regular old coffee machine

Honestly, unless you’re getting headphones that require a decent amount of power, you should be good with Apple’s USB C DAC that they sell for around $8. If you have a limited budget, it’s better to put as much towards the actual headphones as possible, you’re going to get a lot better sound out of $100 headphones through a $10 DAC than you would with $50 headphones through a $50 DAC

Nobody gonna mention the pennies in Belize? That’s the only coin I can think of with wavy edges and it’s so fun