• 2 Posts
  • 297 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: August 15th, 2023

help-circle




  • In the early days of streaming it wasn’t quite as bad. A few licenses did expire, but it wasn’t like most things were just going to disappear overnight. And Netflix started out with strong original programming, so there was still always value.

    Now, though even though I’ve spent a lot of money on my server and a lot of time futzing with it, it’s worth it to me compared to futzing around figuring out which streaming service has the license this week for the show I want to watch.

    Plus, unless I totally lose my Plex/Jellyfin database (has happened before as I’ve tinkered around learning things), my watch history stays with me. I can pick up a show where I left off, even years later. Not true if a show moves to another streaming service.

    I view it kinda like the trade-off paying for anything vs DIY. Sometimes it’s worth paying a premium to hire someone, especially if it’s way outside your skill set. Other times you interview contractors, and either the price is way high, or you get the sense they have no clue what they’re doing and will wreck your project. If you DIY then there’s a learning curve and you won’t always get everything right, but you have total control.





  • It goes without saying that the U.S. tax system is terrible.

    That said, owing some money at filing time is more efficient for you. If you are owed a refund, it means that you are getting paid back an interest-free loan that you offered to the government for the year. Offering that loan to Uncle Sam gives you zero benefit. If you want to save the money for a big purchase, it’s better off sitting in a interest-earning savings account, at the very least.

    On the other hand, if you owe money at filing time, it means the government offered you an interest-free loan. You were able to take advantage of it throughout the year, and ideally put that money to good use. Now you have to pay it back, but at least you don’t have to pay interest on it.

    The later scenario is part of why underpayment penalties exist.

    Of course the whole system is pretty terrible especially as knowing the number at filing time requires reading a damn horoscope or something. But with a bit of savvy and planning, you can end up with a better outcome.






  • Dempftomemes@lemmy.worldSeCuRiTy aNd PerForManCe
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 month ago

    I had one die in my home server. Hadn’t gotten around to any backups or redundancy yet because it was “just” for configs and metadata for media apps. Took me like 5-10 hours to rebuild the config though which was annoying. Would take me much longer now if it happened again. I no longer have that SSD as a single point of failure in my system.






  • Dempftolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldDistro Focuses
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 months ago

    I see. The word lie is strong, and it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that you never had any issues arise with your install. I see your point, and apologize for perhaps a bit of grandstanding on my behalf. I was more focused on the pros/cons of different types of distros, and missed the reason why you were acting defensively.

    I feel this kind of conversation still isn’t super helpful though (for either of you). I mean it clearly can be true that one person (or one chunk of the community) has no issues, while another person (and maybe another good chunk of the community) does have issues. Though perhaps in getting involved, I haven’t really helped either.


  • Dempftolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldDistro Focuses
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    I’ve had my own issues with two different laptops over the years, and in that time I’ve seen multiple packaging/dependency issues hit a majority of Arch users. My own issues are often caused by bugs on the bleeding edge that users on a non-rolling distro dodge altogether. For me these have mostly been easy to resolve, but it’s a much different experience compared with “stable” distros, where similar changes that require manual intervention (ideally) happen at a predictable cadence, and are well-documented in release notes.

    I still strongly prefer Arch, as I’ve hit showstoppers and annoyances with “stable” distros as well. I guess I’m saying I don’t really understand your responses, and why you seem so critical of user anecdotes in this space, when your original comment was a (perfectly fine) anecdote about how everything’s working for you. That’s great! But we can also point to many examples caused directly by bugs or dependency issues that only crop up in a rolling release. Taking all these data together, good and bad, pros and cons, working and not working, can help us learn and form a more complete picture of reality.