oxjox

“The need is infrastructure,” he said. “You may produce all this light sweet crude oil in Texas. But if you don’t have pipelines to the nation’s refineries to deliver it, how are you going to be able to utilize it?”

So importing foreign crude oil is cheaper. Meanwhile, De Haan said, increasing renewable energy demand is making investments in fossil fuels riskier.

So we buy and refine the cheaper stuff, and we sell our more expensive stuff to places that can’t do that. There’s one more discount: The majority of our oil comes from our closest neighbor.

I've posted this in response to Trump's promise to "drill, baby, drill" as well as for all the people who have fuel prices as one of their primary concerns.

The reason gas prices are high is because it doesn't make fiscal sense for corporations to invest in the infrastructure to refine locally sourced crude oil. And, as it seems, refining local crude may actually increase prices at the pumps.

From everything I've read (please share anything that's contradictory), it seems like Trump's agenda is going to increase the cost of everything. For the number of people who voted based on 'the economy', I wish we had had more transparent discussions about the impact of his plans. I'm already scared for whomever has to inherit this pending catastrophe.

I upgraded only because the speakers on my 12 Mini were failing making it nearly impossible to have a phone call.

(1) This phone is too big, heavy, and slippery and uneasy to grasp with one hand.
(2) The camera bump is ridiculously large. It’s laughable how much it rocks on the counter as you type on it. Not in a good way.
(3) The Camera button is in the worst place (accidentally clicking it constantly) and too confusing so I disabled it forever.
(4) I also disabled the action button. This seems too easy to disable silent mode which I have enabled 99.9% of the time.
(5) The screen is noticeably worse and has a blue cast. It’s not as sharp and the contrast is dull.
(6) I love the material used on the back, even though it makes it difficult to hold.

I fully understand the hardware is significantly more advanced but the iPhone 16 genuinely feels like a downgrade from the iPhone 12 Mini. I’m not happy at all.

I’m going to stop by the Apple Store this weekend and look at getting the SE.

Update:

After a couple weeks, I can confirm that I still hate how gigantic this phone is. I had to get a case so that I can use it laid flat. It's like packing a laptop in my front pocket so I either put it in my back pocket or carry a bag. It STILL wobbles.

I have to use two hands to do most things. Shockingly, web sites and apps still don't properly fit on the screen. The camera is just ok. Speakers are pretty good. I have no use for Apple AI other than the occasional image edit (which other apps do).

I've replaced the shitty Apple camera app with Halide. I access this from Control Center. I swipe left from the home screen to access the default video camera. I found a cool trick to utilize the Action button - use it to access a menu built in Shortcuts (basically mimicking Control Center). I would one thousand percent prefer to get rid of the camera button entirely.

I guess I've adjusted to the screen though it still seems too blue to me.

I really can't think of one reason anyone would choose to upgrade to this phone.

This phone would be perfect if (1) Apple shifted more of the weight towards the bottom, (2) removed one camera, (3) recessed the camera entirely, (4) made the back from smooth (sticky) glass that wasn't nano-textured, (5) reduced the height and width dimensions by 10mm, (6) got rid of the camera button.

I've been trying to delete as many online accounts as possible to reduce the threat of my personal information / duplicate passwords / my cell number getting out there. I know, it's probably not worth the effort but it does at least clean up my password manager and MFA app.

I've tried had trouble getting my personal information scrubbed and my account deleted at Robinhood and LendingTree. Both have policies that claim they're unable to delete user accounts due to federal regulations.

Here's the bit from Lending Tree: https://www.lendingclub.com/legal/privacy-policy

Data Retention: Due to the regulated nature of our industry, we are under legal requirements to retain data and are generally not able to delete consumer transactional data, credit or deposit account application data, or other financial information upon request. Certain regulations issued by state and/or federal government agencies may require us to maintain and report demographic information on the collective activities of our membership. We may also be required to maintain information about you for at least seven years to comply with applicable federal and state laws regarding recordkeeping, reporting, and audits. Criteria used to determine the period of time information about you is retained are primarily related to legal requirements and usefulness of the information for the purposes it was collected.

In both of these cases, I haven't used the account in many years (RH: 2020, LT: 2018). It serves no purpose to maintain this account other than to exist as data for some malicious actor to acquire and act upon.

With data leaks happening practically every day, I'm really not comfortable with financial agencies with varying degrees of security keeping my information forever. I would think it would be in their own best interest to comply with a deletion request to prevent anyone from scamming them.

Also, I can't tell you how many websites I've lost access to because my phone number was tied to log in. I previously had a company-issued cell phone and not longer have access to that. Any website that requires a phone number for MFA is just horrible. I'm trying to sign into another financial site now and apparently I'm not able to do so without a phone number I had eight years ago.

Wondering if anyone is familiar with this federal regulation that requires they hold on to this information and if there's some sort of way around this either with a lawyer or federal form or something.

Anytime I watch a video that's somewhat different to what I've previously watch, YT floods my recommended section with these video types. I don't mind some relevant recommendations but it's too much. There's only like six different types of 'genres' being recommended to me now and I've already watched most of these videos.

I know you can use the don't recommend this channel and not interested options. These don't really apply to what I want. I just want more other things.

YouTube is likely the world's largest and most interesting and unique collection of content and I'm seeing the same handful of shit day after day. I'm bored of it being boring. I mean, I like photography and would like more photography content - just not from the same dozen or so creators because I've already watched all their videos.

I'm not interested in the main menu items like trending, music, gaming, etc. I want quality stuff that's creative and informative. I will never click on thumbnails with surprised faces and arrows. Apparently my super power is the ability to discern and easily ignore content that's clearly click bait and rage bait. I guess the issue is that I'm not interested in content that's created to satisfy the algorithm. Algorithm content is all the same.

Do you ave any hacks to purge recommendations or to get new interesting content to appear?

Are there other long-form platforms (not TikTok) I should be looking at outside of YouTube?

I'm on MacOS and typically use Safari as my main browser. I have several other browsers installed on my computer which I use for different things or just to try out from time to time. Orion is one I haven't tried in a while.

I've launched Orion and found that when I previously used it I saved some tabs - one of them being Ebay. I am not signed into my Ebay account in Orion but when I open this tab I'm seeing "Your Recently Viewed Items" and it's very much showing me the items I viewed in Safari just moments earlier.

Orion promotes itself as a privacy focused web browser.

Privacy by design, like no other browser.
Orion has been engineered from ground up as a truly privacy-respecting browser. We did it by embracing a simple principle - Orion is a zero telemetry browser. Your private information will never leave Orion by default.
And to protect your privacy on the web, Orion comes with industry-leading anti-tracking technology as well as a powerful built-in ad-blocker.

How does one browser know what the other browser is doing regardless if I'm, signed into my account on a particular website?

In my experience, the retail shopping environment has been on an increasing rate of decline over the past decade+. Post-covid, it seems corporations have figured out how to maximize profit, in part, by reducing labor and tailoring towards online sales.

I grew up in a time when people would complain about salespeople pestering them by simply asking if they needed help with anything. Now, I would love to have someone help me with a purchase.

I recently bought some sneakers in a store and it turned out I probably bought the wrong ones for my needs. A knowledgable salesperson likely would have saved me from wasting my money on the wrong purchase. Most of the supermarkets in my area are self-check out only. These stupid things never work for me so it takes me forever to simply scan a few items. At some stores, items are locked up behind glass so I'm not even able to make a purchase - pushing me to buy from an online retailer instead.

I try to go out of my way to find stores that have humans working there. I try not to buy things online and try to support my local businesses. This is becoming increasingly more difficult and I fear the day will come soon where I'm not able to shop in a physical store.

Especially in this post pandemic world, I crave human interaction. I crave a brief interaction with someone who's a member of my community.

There's a small two-location food market I shop at weekly. It's a fifteen minute walk where I do at least 85% of my shopping. Most of the produce and goods are procured within a hundred miles. There are no self-checkouts. I've gotten to know the people who work there. We talk about produce and the neighborhood and the weather. I freaking love that place and legit do not know what I would do without it.

I imagine I'm in the minority. I imagine most people, especially younger people, desire not interacting with others. Some people find it difficult to engage in real life. Some people are fraught with the impact social media addiction has struck upon them - be it the fear of judgement or bigotry or simply not knowing how to interact respectfully with others.

I remember a time when people would say they trust online reviews more than salespeople who get paid on commission. Is this still a prevalent idea? I'll admit that I typically ignore reviews because reviews have become their own industry. However, there are times I've bought a product, found it to be trash, then saw some reviews, buried below the 'paid' ones, warning me to stay away.

I feel strongly, I am fearful, that as we shift more and more of our shopping online - easily enabled by [Click To Buy] buttons and mobile wallets - corporate capitalism is gaining ground on mom and pop shops. Never mind the rise of the likes of Temu. Moreover, the Walmartification of everything is diluting our sense of community.

It's because we only shop online and in warehouses, it's because we have no choice but to not engage with anyone, it's because we're increasing our reliance on 6" in-our-face screens, it's because we don't ever need to leave the comfort of our home that our neighborhoods and society are doomed to crumble.

I'm looking to replace a 6TB G-Drive for my Mac. I'm considering the OWC Express 1M2 NVMe enclosure along with a WD Black 4TB SN850X.

The drive is mostly used as my photography drive. I work off of it with Capture One. About 20% of it is archive data.

I'd like to upgrade to SSD for the sake of longevity and speed. And because I find the ticking and knocking my existing drive makes to be annoying. And because MacOS does this weird thing where opening random apps causes the external HDD to spin up and stalls operation. I fear everyday that this seven year old drive is suddenly going to die on me.

Just looking for some suggestions if anyone's familiar with these OWC + WD products or if you'd recommend something else.

Share some objective or subjective wisdom you’ve learned recently.

Practically every email I've received in maybe the past year has started with "I hope you are well". I even had an LLM draft a placeholder email for me and it started with the same thing. This has not always been the case and it's strange to me that everyone I interact with begins their emails with this line. Frankly, it's annoying AF.

What gives? Who started this? Why has it become so prevalent? More importantly, how do we stop it?

While I'm at it, if you work in tech / customer support, I urge you to speak with your supervisors to minimize the boiler plate copy paste trash you insert into your emails. People dealing with shit that's not working as intended or desired do not have the mental or emotional capacity to wade through your platitudinal nonsense. Get to the fucking point.

The community around buying and selling gear and just watching awesome stuff pop up for sale regularly is one of the reasons I've stuck with the site for so long.

Other than FredMiranda, e$ay, Craigslist, I'm not sure what other options there are (I'm not on FB).

Is there any chance something like photomarket could pop up in the fediverse? What other sites are you trading on?

Without naming names, there's a well advertised grammar editing tool that's available either as an app download or browser extension. This is something I'd value for a number of reasons (good grammar is important!) but I'm super cautious about anything I'm giving permission to watch what I'm typing.

Ideally, I'd prefer to select text and have it analyzed on-demand using on-device intelligence. I'm on a Mac and it seems like Pages isn't cut out to check grammar. Also, there's no way in heck I'm paying $30 a month for a subscription.

Edit: I just want to acknowledge my request for something I'd value and then saying I don't want to pay for it. I would certainly pay for something if it met my needs but this function isn't something I'd personally value at $30 a month or any monthly subscription ($30 a year sounds reasonable). Moreover, if there's any suspicion of an application using my data for their own profit, they are not getting my money. So, in this case, for the sake of data privacy, I would prefer to pay for something (preferably once - grammar shouldn't need updating).

This might be the wrong place to ask this question but, as someone who has owned more Apple products that I could count, I'm interested in reducing my dependency on them (and tech, in general) moving forward.

A significant portion of my life has included spending time and money on devices and applications to "make my life easier / more productive". It's becoming all too apparent though that this has created a reliance on technology that can become difficult to separate from if a company, such as Apple, makes changes that are displeasurable or disruptive to the habits I've adopted my daily life.

I mean, my bluetooth trackpad is acting wonky right now, so that's not fun. Wired always works. Is there too much technology?

I am not a fan of having to keep a phone on me at all times. It's always in silent mode and visual notifications are kept to a minimum. I can and do sometimes go two to three days without even knowing where my phone is. If I leave the house, I more often just take my Apple Watch and a note pad. (However, with the realization that Apple is changing the Watch UX with OS10, I'm not so sure I'll be using it much longer.)

I'll go through my phone once in a while and delete apps I rarely use. If I need something, I can easily reinstall it. The only things I really need a phone for are Maps for navigation, Safari to open a restaurant's menu, to manage my Apple Wallet, to get a Lyft, to view my Fitness / Health info, and to access an MFA Authenticator app.

After my Apple TV, my iPad is probably my most used device, closely followed by my Mac mini. (I have a MacBook for work - I don't consider that part of this conversation.) Thinking about it though, I could probably eliminate the iPad in favor of the desktop experience. Since there is not Finder replacement on iPad, I need a MacOS computer to mange my music, photos, files, etc. Although, I hate sitting at a desk more than I need to already for work. If ~~MacOS~~ Finder were available on an iPad, I might be able to ditch a desktop computer.

I just checked Screen Time on my phone - I'm averaging about 1 Hour / Week. My iPad is about 4 Hours / Week. Why do I even have these devices?

So, my problem is that I need(?) each of these devices for just a small handful of tasks. Stepping back from it, it feels stupid that I have all this crap. It's a lot of money spent and it's a lot of opportunity for something to break my daily habits. Although, speaking of habits, I have to admit I feel an addiction to these things that prevents me from getting rid of them.

Aren't we all addicted to out devices? Are we actively encouraging or reducing our dependency on technology and what affect does this have on our mental well being?

I'm wondering if anyone has taken steps to replace or eliminate devices or experiences. How are you living a minimalist technology life?