People who are proud of getting a good deal via an app break my heart. Most folks I know like that are not strapped for cash. They just like the feeling of getting a bargain. They don’t consider that the prices are artificially inflated. They don’t need the sale item. And in the long run they’ll probably end up paying more when the stores know their purchasing habits and have A/B tested them enough to know how to provide as little as possible while charging as much as a customer can stomach.

If a coupon requires an app, I don’t by that item. Especially when it comes to groceries. When it comes to store cards, most let you use a phone number instead of scanning the card. So plug in a random number at checkout. You can often get a hit on the first try. Then pay in cash. Dirty up someone else’s data and give these stores nothing on you. Seriously, if people keep giving in, it’s guaranteed to get worse. First the store card, then the app, what’s next?

I’m with you 100% up to the “little recourse,” I think there’s more options now than there have ever been. Open source (including linux and self hosting) are about the only tech-future things I’m genuinely excited about.

There’s still a learning curve and progress to be made, for sure. However, anecdotally, I’ve seen programming and hosting become vastly more accessible in the last 15 years. Also, not everyone needs to self host, people just need to know someone who is willing and able to set them up.

Not saying it’s a guarantee, but it’s a possible way out, at least. And being here on lemmy, reading and writing about these issues is a good sign there’s movement in the right direction.

I have used inkscape for this purpose and it can be effective. The display units can be changed in the preferences (inch, cm, etc) and basic shape dimensions input directly. You can input absolute position for shapes and nodes, but I didn’t notice an easy way for relative position. They also have a path effect called “Measure Segments” for that functionality. FWIW, I later preferred blender, but I might try a dedicated tool like LibreCAD mentioned in another comment. They seem to have decent documentation and a wiki.

Yeah, even Toy Story 1 animation is dated, which is feature-quality, not TV, and it came out after Reboot.

I admire the historic technical feat. For example, they didn’t have inverse kinematics back then, meaning they couldn’t plant the character’s feet on the ground or hands on a surface and move the body without the limbs moving as well. They’d have to repose the hands and feet to line up. It’s why so many shots don’t show their feet unless they’re standing still and why the boy (enzo?) is always diving into the shot.

And all that data probably takes up less room than a few pictures, could easily be stored locally, and encrypted locally before backing up on a server. But why give individuals control and privacy over their own behavior and history when you can sell it to anyone and keep the profits for yourself? /s

scruffy-seconded.gif

I’ve been surprised by how effective it’s been to say, respectfully, “this is important to me,” maybe adding “here’s why.” Got all my siblings, mom, SO, and best friend on Signal, that’s a vast majority of my online conversations.

reddit is orders of magnitude bigger then lemmy, but I find lemmy high quality and has more people with similar values- more than i could ever keep up with.

Back when Adobe went subscription-only, I stopped using it on my personal work and devices even though a lot of my previous work depended on it. Had to switch to different tools, but now there are better options. Not only has Adobe stagnated, but they caused an even bigger exodus when they messed with the ToS to train ai on user data.

I switch to linux a few years ago and now when I have jobs that use windows I realize how clunky it actually is, and it’s only getting worse while linux has been getting better.

I’m fully degoogled (also a graphineOS user). It took me years to eliminate each service, but I was sick of these giant companies that could never give me the things I wanted because in interferes with what they want (ad revenue). The only thing you can do is take it all back. Participate as little as possible. These companies will not stop getting worse while people continue to use them.

It can be inconvenient, time-consuming, and hard, but there are options, and it is a lot easier now than it was a decade ago. I see no reason why it wont continue to get easier and more accessible. That’s why it’s important for tech savvy folks to do what they can, now, and make it easier for those who come after them. Personally, I’ve done a lot for myself, but need to learn more about hosting securely so I can offer close friends and family better alternatives that they can easily access.

I wanted something similar from a remote company I was working for. They were pretty good about fulfilling requests, but when I asked for a good kvm switch they said they had trouble in the past and instead recommended a usb hub that can toggle between machines. Then connect both machines to the same monitor and toggle the input. Not ideal, but low cost and functional. Might not suit your needs (would be annoying if you have to frequently toggle back and forth), but if you’re just trying to share your desk space between a work machine and personal, and the monitor input is easy to toggle, it’s worth considering.

I don’t think they have the ux advantage that their wealth suggests due to misaligned incentives. A good portion of their investment is getting users to see as many ads as they will tolerate. Try to modify any privacy settings, for example, and the ux is as garbage as amazon.

Fediverse and self hosted, open source alternatives are still relatively new. Folks have to expect some turbulence. As things grow and more bug reports and contributions can be made, the ux could be superior because they can give users what they want instead of maximizing monetization.

Misskey is a federated facebook alternative I heard about on mastodon recently. I’m not too familiar with it myself, but seems worth mentioning.

It has a “groups” feature that might avoid the “instance per person” lemmy workaround you were thinking about. According to this comparison misskey doesn’t have a like button, but a few of its forks do. Not sure about the upload experience; may depend on the app. I didn’t see any clients listed on their site but did a quick search for an iOS app, which exists, so i assume android, too.

Sorry I don’t have more info, but I hope that’s useful. Best of luck! I’ll be looking for a similar solution in the near future.

Wanted to 2nd and add to some of the comments, and ask a question (no expectation of an answer).

Spiraling. Many, if not all, have been there and it’s an awful place to be. It will pass. You say you feel toxic, in that state you can be toxic to yourself, hence the suggestions for positive affirmations. It’s a way to form a habit of not beating yourself up; getting stuck in- or compounding- your lows. If every time you make a mistake you think of all the things you do right, instead of all the things you do wrong, that mistake feels like a fluke rather than confirmation of a negative self image.

Focus on the basics: eat, sleep, move. Adhd is much worse when you’re forget about the basics. I’ve been developing a habit of having low-effort healthy snacks around and eating more frequently and it helps (saying this now reminds me I should have some fruit and a protein).

Journaling can give a sense of relief, like what you wrote here. In time you may notice your triggers or common struggles and that can help develop systems to mitigate those issues. You mentioned not prepping your safety glasses or prepping lunch. Evening prep the night before is a great wind-down activity. You probably know this and just forgot or got distracted. It happens. Writing/reflecting like you did serves as a good reminder and can help build that habit (another downside to negative self talk: it can bury that info).

You mentioned you’re losing hope medication can help. Are you currently taking medication? You may want to talk to your dr. I started medicating recently and the first one i tried took me in the opposite direction. The 2nd medication was good as i was increasing, but then introduced some issues (so I’m now trying a lower dose and if that doesn’t help I’ll have to try a 3rd med). The journal can also help recognize patterns, timing, when you took what and how much.

Thank you for sharing your struggle. It’s not unfamiliar. Good luck on your journey. Wishing you the best. It’ll get better. Keep at it.

Edit: typo

Same. Lots of systems and a place for everything. EG if I leave the room and want to remember what I was doing when I got back, it’ll be the one thing that’s out of place and somewhere obvious. Unfortunately, it’s easily thrown off by others who forget to put stuff back.

What’s your relationship with travel? I struggle to pack up and mobilize so many systems. It’s been getting better as I develop travel-specific solutions (like having a dedicated toiletries bag that remains packed).

Happy to see it get love and spread the word. alternativeto.net is my go to. Worthy of muscle memory. I’ve also found great options in the awesome lists on github. Especially awesome self-hosted if we’re talking software. I thought I remember an alternativeto-like site geared towards cli, but I couldn’t find it last time I looked. LMK if that rings a bell for anyone.

I had a similar change of heart years ago, watching a docu-series on PBS and realizing I wanted more of that content in the world. Even though you can stream PBS for about $5 a month, I canceled Netflix so I could pay PBS $20 a month to start making up for all the time my money was flowing in the wrong direction.

We’re likely to get more of the things we invest in, and less of the things we don’t. That investment includes attention in ad-driven market, not only money.

I know I’m not the first person on lemmy to have this realization, it’s one of the many reasons I like it here.

I’ve had audio sync issues on kodi myself-- specifically osmc on Vero V which is optimized for playback. I tried checking my notes, because it was some time ago. Nothing definitive, but it may have been related to a random crashing issue that turned out to be a bad hdmi port-- which was the last thing I considered checking after triple checking everything else. Anyway, good luck with the troubleshooting. Audio sync issues are a pain but I can also attest yt-dlp has been solid.

I’ve enjoyed Zim in the past but not being able to access it on mobile caused me to migrate. Do you have a way to access your notes on the go?

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. My only source of income for more than a decade has been creating media that people stream or watch in theaters, so I must disagree. Under the current capitalist system, people do get paid, but I’m with you that it’s exploitative. People commonly burnout and run themselves ragged trying to make ends meet. I know I did.

I’m skeptical that piracy hurts CEOs and shareholders as much as you think it does. Piracy is nothing new-- CEO wages and capitalism doesn’t seem to care. Those with power can increase prices on paying customers, decrease employee wages or headcounts, and/or start legally pursue pirates. The latter being least relevant to my point, but with digital steganography, watermarking, intrusive tracking, and corporate-friendly laws (see post)-- it’s worth making clear that CEOs and shareholders have plenty of tools already in place to make themselves whole. Heck, pirate from Prime Video and Bezos can increase AWS rates and extract it back from most folks via services they (or their families) do pay for.

Not to say it’s hopeless. I’d like to shine a gigantic spotlight on your last sentence:

indy games/music/etc bought directly from the creators

That’s the way forward. Heck, toss it on a jellyfin server and share it with a few close friends and family. The knowledge gap to do that is shrinking. When many folks know someone who knows how to host, they can start pooling their resources.

The false dichotomy of stream vs pirate mentioned in my first reply could be rephrased as: spending money and attention on media giants vs spending just attention on them. Why not spend neither money nor attention on media giants? Save it for individuals and small teams making cool things. That creates a market and draws in more people to make more cool things and does more damage than piracy. Personally, I don’t see anything on Disney+ (or prime, netflix, etc) worth prolonging the current state of media, so I don’t waste any time on it. I’ve come across a lot of good books, music, and inexpensive hobbies to fill the void in the meantime.

TL;DR: Current state of media sucks, but pays more than pirates. More pirates not paying is not as effective as retraining money and attention. If a pirate occasionally goes through the extra steps to pay someone instead of finding a torrent link, they’re still dedicating significant time engaging with the winners of the current capitalist system instead of seeking out and boosting better, lesser known options. It drags out the current state instead of nurturing existing solutions.

I agree with (and experience) the problems surrounding access to media that you described, but I would also describe myself as pretty anti-piracy. You can be anti-middleman and anti-rent-seeking without being pro-piracy. While piracy circumvents the problems you mentioned, the question it leaves unanswered is how the creator of the pirated media will afford basic necessities like food and shelter. Alternatives to streaming are scarce, but they do exist-- especially DRM-free music and books. These are not static systems. The market will follow the money, so if folks buy into the false dichotomy of stream vs pirate, industry will continue to invest in DRM and anti-piracy measures and creators will continue to submit to streaming services / media silos. I’d prefer a system with as few layers as possible between creator and consumer. Piracy only offers a solution for the latter.