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.

Is anyone self-hosting a genuinely snappy and robust media hosting service for themselves? What's your setup look like?

The best thing about Apple's Photos on my iDevices is the speed at which everything loads. Even videos (usually) load reasonably fast over LTE. The user interface is decent enough and has a high percentage of features I'd like to have on the go. The on-device AI is awesome (recognizing / organizing faces and objects and locations).

I'd like to get away from iCloud for numerous reasons: the subscription, the chance the UX gets worse, privacy, ease of data ownership and organization, OS independence, etc.

I currently have a QNAP TS-253A with 8GB RAM, Celeron N3160 1.6GHz 4 core, (2) Seagate IronWolf 8TB ST8000VN0022 at about 98% capacity, Raid 1 . I mostly use it for streaming music and videos at home but I also stream music outside the house without issue. Movies don't stream at HD immediately but once they cache up they're good within a minute.

Some people have suggested this hardware should be sufficient. I feel like it's archaic. What do you think?

I've tried Immich but find it to be slow and very limited with features. I've even tested hosting it on Elestio but that didn't go too well. I'm not opposed to paying for offsite services but at that point it just seems like I should stick with iCloud.

I already have Plex running on my NAS so I use that for archiving but it's way too slow to use for looking at pictures, even locally. QNAP has the photo app QuMagie with facial recognition and it seems alright but it's agonizingly slow, if it works at all.

All of the self-hosted apps, in my experience, are well outside the scope of iCloud Photos' speed and feature set. If I could even just test one that matched its speed, I could better assess whatever features they have.

What I'm not sure of is if I'm hitting a wall based on the apps, my hardware, or even my ISP (Speedtest reports upload: 250mpbs). The fact that apps like Plex and QuMagie suck even locally suggests to me it's not an ISP issue (yet).

My NAS is already at capacity so it's time for an upgrade of some sort. While I'm in the mindset, I wanted to see if there's a better product I could use for hosting. My space and finances are not without limits but I'm open to ideas.

I realize I'm not a multi billion dollar company with data centers around the world but I feel like I should be able to piece something together that's relatively comparable for less than an arm and a leg. Am I wrong?

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.

This is a rant.

It stems from the recent Joe Rogan comment about Biden which turned out to be Trump. I'm an indie-leaning "progressive" who found this to be an important moment to call out for everyone.

The video, summarized:
Joe Rogan is proved wrong when claiming Biden said "one of the problems about the Revolutionary War was that we didn't have enough airports". Rogan goes on, "If you had any other job, and you were talking like that, they'd go, 'you're done'". "It's just the media narrative..." Then the actual Biden video is pulled up for him showing that Biden is quoting Trump, "This is the same stable genius who said the biggest problem we had in the Revolutionary War was that we didn't have enough airports". "Is that fake?", Rogan says. Producer, "It's not fake, here's the video..." Trump, "our army manned the airports, it ran the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do." Rogan, "Oh, he fucked up.." His guest, "that's the thing about the media today, you gotta look into it."

My comment:

Is there a sub for instances like this where people say something about "the other side" only to be immediately shown that it was their "side" who said it?
This post is iconic should be pinned to the top of every social site.

Soon after, I received a message from r/JusticeServed (a sub I don't actively participate in) saying,

Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in r/JusticeServed because you broke this community's rules. You won't be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.
Note from the moderators:
You have been banned for participating in a subreddit that has consistently shown to provide refuge for users to promote hate, violence and misinformation (joerogan).
This fully automated ban has been performed by a bot that cannot determine context. Appeals will be provided for good-faith users upon request. You can reply to this message and ask for an appeal. Any other messages will be ignored. More information on the appeal process here: https://www.reddit.com/r/JusticeServed/wiki/botbanned

My appeal did not include kind words. I called them out for being fascists and being part of the reason why Reddit has become a shithole. My appeal closed with asking not to be un-banned. Then I received this message,

We are willing to reverse the ban only if you plan to stop supporting the target subreddit. Regardless of context, contributions you provide to the target subreddit is a material form of support.
Posting, Commenting, and Voting in a subreddit or on an item is a signal to Reddit and their advertisers that the participant believes that the community or comment or post has a legitimate reason for existing and serves a purpose for them.
There is no place for hate, violence and purposeful disinformation on Reddit. Those sub's advertisers should not be rewarded for the traffic metrics you and your peers provide to them by showing up and inflating those numbers.
They don't care what you say. They are just happy to have you continue to show up and refresh the page.
If this is something you can accept, to stop participating in the target subreddit, then please reply. If the bot hits you again for the same subreddit, you will not be unbanned a second time.
If you don't want to stop helping the target sub and their advertisers, then you can just ignore this message.

I responded, in part, with a full throated 'you can go fuck yourself'. This lead to a harassment warning from Reddit. I also noted the sub's 'motto' - "Too many times justice fails to prevail. These are not those times." For fucking real. I had also pointed out that what they're doing is analogous to DeSantis banning me from entering Florida just because I live in Philadelphia.

Dear JusticeServed, this is called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I mean, this is the kind of shit that makes people more sympathetic to Musk and Rogan. I am not in support of nationalism or racism or misinformation. What I am in support of is common fucking sense.

It's very likely that had I maintained my composure I would have had a successful appeal. I didn't want to appeal to be unbanned though, I wanted to bring attention to their hypocrisy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/JusticeServed/comments/10jxlfk/justiceserveds_2_million_subscriber_extravaganza/

With the overturning of Roe v Wade, we saw a couple of subreddits pinning mod endorsed celebration threads. Why anyone would want to celebrate people losing rights is beyond me.

Rights? What rights are you supporting, JusticeServed? Certainly not Freedom of Speech. Spying on people and censoring them for actions they take in other communities sounds a lot like fascism to me.

The take away here is that we shouldn't put so much emotional weight on stupid shit like this that ultimately doesn't matter in our real lives. And in our real lives, we should be more cautious with judging people. Your current mood and state of mind can easily cause you to misinterpret someone else's words and (re)actions. We should all be more mindful to take a breath before reacting to something emotionally triggering. And, of course, fuck Reddit.

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?

For example, I'm on Lemmy.ml and I've joined !photography@lemmy.ml, !photography@lemmy.world, and !photography@kbin.social. In this example, it's not very different from the number of similar groups on Flickr but, in comparison to Reddit, it seems like the decentralized platform can be a little unruly.

How are you going about joining different communities and managing your engagement? Are you only participating on the community on your instance? Are you joining and posting in as many instances that seem relevant?

I admit to spending too much time on Reddit during my work day as a distraction. It's a problem. What's worse is that Reddit has become so full of uninteresting content that I spend most of my time downvoting things that aren't at all relevant to the sub they're posted in. And with a lot of the front page subs being offline, the experience is dreadfully worse.

Reddit is barely any different from any other social media platform now. People just want to argue for the sake of arguing and getting hive mind support without any interest in the relevance or context of the original post (ie., no one reads the articles). Reddit has an algorithm just like any other social media platform to push engaging content to the top so they can get more ad revenue. I've been saying it for years now, Reddit is trash. But damn is it addictive.

I'm thankful for Lemmy and KBin and Mastodon (and my RSS reader) for providing interesting, relevant, chronologically posted content with a minimal amount of dilution. I don't spend as much time here but it serves the purpose of informing and entertaining me for a five minute work break without the frustration of "being social media".