As a former VMware employee this is just sad.
VMware was a great place to work, with a lot of people who cared about what they were building and supporting, and now it’s just a hollowed out vulture capitalist’s pump and dump. Anybody with any sense is migrating to alternatives, if they haven’t already.
This is a weirdly aggressive take without considering variables. Almost petulant seeming.
6” readers are relatively cheap no matter the brand, but cost goes up with size. $250 to $300 is what a 7.8” or 8” reader costs, but there’s not a single one I know of at 6” at that price.
There’s 10” and 13” models. Are you saying they should cost the same as a Kindle?
Not to mention, regarding Kindle, Amazon spent years building the brand but selling either at cost or possibly even taking a loss on the devices as they make money on the book sales. Companies who can’t do that tend to charge more.
Lastly, it’s not “feature creep” to improve the devices over time, many changes are quality of life. Larger displays for those that want them. Frontlit displays, and later the addition of warm lighting. Displays essentially doubled their resolution allowing for crisper fonts and custom fonts to render well. Higher contrast displays with darker blacks for text. More recently color displays as an option.
This is all progress, but it’s not free. Also, inflation is a thing and generally happens at a rate of 2% to 3% annually or thereabouts during “normal” times, and we’ve hardly been living in normal times over the last decade and a half.
I would rather pay more for a better device, and preferably not one from Amazon if I can help it. Its only a matter of time before they start cracking down even more on side loading
They already started that technically with removing USB downloads. I got sick of their shit and jailbroke my Kindles. They live in KOReader now.
Is the price of an eReader that big of a deal? They practically pay for themselves with use over time, and they last a ridiculous number of years.
My first Kindle was the K3 Keyboard for $140 in 2011. It finally died in late 2018 after nearly 8 years of use. I regrettably binned it, as I didn’t know you could replace the battery at the time. Shame, I really liked that thing.
I bought a Kindle PW4 for “cheap” ($80 or $90?) in 2019 to replace it, but I hated it after spending some months reading on a larger tablet, Replaced it with a “premium” Boox Nova 2 eReader for $310, and I still use that one today. I plan to just get a cheap battery replacement when it kicks the bucket, as it’s easily user serviceable and a new battery for it is less than $15.
I also got a Kindle Paperwhite Signature in 2023 for $135 as an “upgrade” to the Boox, but it was more a sidegrade. I use both of them alternatingly today.
So I’ve on average paid about $48 a year on eReaders. Seems reasonable considering how many books I’ve gotten for free or very deep discounts via stuff like Bookbub, as well as “free” Prime First reads and Kindle Unlimited books I read over the years as a Prime subscriber, Project Gutenberg and Standard eBooks, as well as digital library access.
I’ve paid more than $48 in one month for subscription services at times that I used less than my eReaders, which see use daily. And you don’t have to be like me and buy multiple, you can buy one reader and use it pretty much indefinitely so long as the battery is user replaceable, so the upfront cost is sort of irrelevant over a long enough time span.
This game is pretty high on my list to check out, but I didn’t realize the music was so amazing. I went right over to buy the album on Bandcamp.
Saved the video to watch later given the mention of spoilers, I want to go into this one blind.
Ace Combat has entered the chat.
You got one of those dongles, like State Farm’s Drive Safe and Save program? Carry a cell phone? You’re still being tracked.
Just ordered a second Ultimate 2c just in case on this news. Was considering the Ultimate 2 for gyro support but 8bitdo’s offering there is confusing and it’s unclear if it would actually work with my Steam Deck (apparently gyro only works in Switch mode?).
Thanks, didn’t know that!
I could be extra sensitive to perceived soft language these days, so I appreciate the context.
The word is “kidnapped.” Not vanished, not disappeared. Kidnapped.
Language matters. Stop reporting falsities via soft language.
Not a mechanic, but I work from home and my wife gauges how busy I am by the intensity and frequency of the swearing. Post checks out.
Hell if I know. I suppose that’s one of the multitude of possibilities of “what’s coming.”
All I know is I’m fine with getting out of the way while they get it. Preferably far away, where I won’t have to hear the bitching and blaming later when they find out what they asked for, what they voted for, and what they actually wanted don’t align.
Get out of the way and let us get what we have coming
Say no more fam.
Currently alternating between Half-Life 2 (I swear I’m actually gonna finish it this time) (yeah, I can’t bring myself to finish HL2) and Chrono Trigger (I swear I’m actually gonna finish it this time).
power vacuum
That’s a strange way to spell “block party.”
I’m just glad Veruca Salt made the list.
Also, I dunno if I’d lump Sublime into the “happy/horny” category. They’re more on the “sad/horny” side of the chart.
See my previous comment, I’m 100% on board with Lyrion server and client these days.
I only use Plexamp now for local music when I’m driving.
Disclaimer: Plexamp used to be great, but it’s stagnated badly. It was a good reason to buy plex pass at one point, though I don’t think it’s worth it now.
I’m not familiar with Symfonium, but the major defining thing with plexamp is the DJ features for exploring your local music library.
Unfortunately, some months back Tidal support was removed from Plexamp and that was kind of a deal breaker because now it’s only local library, and its “killer app” feature was using the DJ mixes in conjunction with Tidal to do real time mixes with your local and streaming music together.
I’ve switched to using Lyrion instead, along with the Blissmix and “Don’t Stop the Music” plugins with LastFM support. It integrates with Tidal, Deezer, or Qobuz (and I think Spotify, but not sure, I only use hifi streaming services). They work similarly, and in some ways better because you have full control over Blissmix’s functionality for chroma, timbre, tempo, album and track repeats, and more. Also, Lyrion can stream directly over DLNA to a client, whereas Plexamp was just Airplay/Bluetooth/Google Cast (I have Apple stuff, but Airplay is terrible quality).
It’s sad, but plexamp is just my “local download” player now on my phone for when I’m driving, since it downconverts flac to Opus at higher quality than MP3 and at smaller sizes.
I highly recommend trying out Lyrion. I’ve used nearly everything for music in the past, including even having a year of Roon, but Lyrion has replaced pretty much everything.
I don’t see how it’s not. I have all the desktops and gaming PCs in my house running EndeavorOS and it’s been a flawless experience, much better than Windows. Heck, I’ve been using Linux for my general desktop since 2015. I only kept a Windows install around for gaming, and that’s not even needed anymore.
Even the difference in the installs is utterly absurd. Linux install from USB to full desktop deployment is 15-20 minutes, tops. For Windows, it was more like 2 hours and a bunch of hacks to work around their Microsoft account bullshit.
What exactly “isn’t ready” in your opinion?
Sounds great. I’m in my 40s with myopia, astigmatism, and more recently, presbyopia.
Progressive lenses don’t work for me, and needing two pairs of glasses is not ideal, even if it mostly works. Plus I can’t even just buy reading glasses off the shelf, even my short range office lenses need a prescription and are expensive as hell.
Autofocusing lenses sound like an awesome alternative.