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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • There’s currently a Kickstarter going on for a watch that aims to be modular and repairable. It’s called UNA Watch.

    Look interesting, but imo with these things it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem, where the upgradeability/repairability only has value, if it is actually provided in the future (and economically viable). Something that can only be proven in time, but requires people to trust it before.

    I’m not in the market for a new watch right now, since I just repaired the screen on my Garmin, but am keeping an eye on it, since sadly Garmin seems to have entered the early stages of enshittification.


  • Agreed. The prequels have flawed execution, but imo a good base. It’s the reverse with the sequels that are mostly style over substance, chasing some pretty shots regardless whether it makes for a good movie. And I take the former over the latter any day. Especially if we remember that Lucas asked other directors to make them.




  • Sounds like it’s going in the right direction for you financially, that’s great! Depending on the interest rate paying off a mortage is definitely the right call and a pretty good (+reliable) return.

    That said i would probably still set up a small savings plan on a broad market ETF. Not because it’s necessarily an amazing time to invest, but to dip your toes into the experience and get a bit desensitized against the fluctuations. Doesn’t really matter the amount really (assuming you can invest without large fees), it just makes a difference psychologically to have skin in the game. That way you have some history once you decide to enter the market with larger sums.

    The Covid dip, while certainly unusual, is a pretty good example to why it might be a good idea. Since then there’s constantly been chaos in the world, but you could have invested with the worst timing in 2020 and would now be better off than by sitting on the sidelines. The past isn’t indicative of the future, but on that topic i really like the story of Bob, the world’s worst market timer


  • To be fair i think times are rarely normal. Just since 2000 we’ve had the dot com bubble, great financial crisis, covid pandemic, ukraine war and now this. Although the current situation feels like a particularly unforced and unnecessary one. And before that there were also plenty of other crisis from world wars, the cold war with things like the cuban missile crisis or the 1973 oil crisis.

    HYSA with those rates certainly seem like an appealing place to be in the current market, but as always this is a question about market timing, which is hard to impossible. When did you exit your positions and when do you plan to reenter? Because as said with the recent drops on a wide market scale we are still only down to levels just before the US election and nobody knows how things will play out in the future.

    So my point still stands that anyone who is finding himself in acute issues due to the current market changes has done poor risk management. Broad market etfs are meant for a long term investment horizon of 10-15 years exactly so one can weather out downturns. And if someone is close to retirment it would have been prudent to shift some portion of savings into more stable investments similar to how target date funds handle it. Which might still be a good move right now, as the losses are still within reason, assuming a diversified investment strategy (and not something like having bought tesla at peak or the trump meme coin).



  • What’s the better alternative? I’d certainly take a 401k over the current system in Germany where the current working population pays for the pensions of those currently retired. Which is obviously unsustainable if you take a single look at the demographic changes ahead.

    Stocks will eventually go up again and at least for my global all world ETF the current drop means we are only back to where we were in September 24. Trump is certainly destroying a lot of wealth with his actions, but I think this would be true regardless of how you invest.

    And anyone in hot waters right now because of the current drops should have probably been invested more diversified and maybe reduced risk a bit more.




  • If you don’t mind Meta/Facebook, then the oculus quest headsets are also very affordable hardware and deliver a good experience. I think the issue lies with content.

    Smartphones or handhelds like the steam deck with flat screens could use plenty of already existing content made for screens. With VR you want different content that is made specifically for it. There is a decent amount of games (but still much fewer than for other devices), but honestly not that much more.

    Additionally it also can only really be used at home, where most already have other devices.

    It’s a chicken and egg problem. But imo if there were more genuine unique productivity tasks and experiences available through VR, we would see more adoption.



  • If you regularly exercise your max is probably higher than estimated.

    I was under the impression that the maximum heart rate is something that can not be trained. This source suggests that if anything training regularly would lower a persons max heart rate.

    I just think that either one is serious enough about trying to optimize ones training efficiency, at which point the formula wouldn’t be accurate enough for me. Or one takes a more causal approach at which point doing most runs at “conversational pace” is a good enough rule of thumb.






  • Yes, it does make a difference, but like with many other things you should not fall into the trap of decision making paralysis.

    Your current instance lemmy.world is the largest and perfectly adequate for the majority. It also costs nothing to make accounts on other instances and is done in less time than it takes to decide between them.

    That said some reasons to choose one instance over another:

    Federation with other instances

    Some instances choose not to federate with others. Common reasons being political ideology or NSFW/piracy/violent content. Others might be more liberal and leave it up to their users to block whatever within their own apps. As someone already mentioned world seems to have defederated dbzer0 the piracy focused instance. Some political instances that often also get defederated are the far left ones like hexbear and Lemmy grad (seems like those are defederated by lemmy.world as well).

    Server location and performance

    Especially country focused instances like lemmy.ca or feddit.uk will have their servers in their own countries. You can of course access them from anywhere, but a European user might have a better time choosing an instance with servers located in Europe, while someone in America might have lower latency with one located there.

    Alternate frontends

    If you are accessing Lemmy through a browser rather than an app, you might enjoy alternate frontends that change the design. Your current one lemmy.world for example offers 4 different designs that can also be found in the sidebar alexandrite, photon, voyager mobile and one looking like old.reddit.

    General ideology of the instance

    Your choice of instance might also tell others something about you. If you choose a country specific instance people seeing your profile name might assume you come from there, if you choose one with a particular political view people will probably assume you hold similar views. Same goes for other instances that are related to things like sexuality or hobbies.