I’m sure everyone knows, but just incase. The Delta Flyers podcast with Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeil is great.

Some talk of pants. Garrett has a big long moan about the shoes he was given for the role.

They are meant to taking about every Voyager episode, but Wang keeps going off on long fun tangents.

Later on they move to talk about every DS9 episode with Terry Farrell and Armin Shimerman.

I’m using Waterfox (based on Firefox but without the bloat), both desktop and mobile versions. Have nothing but good things to say about it.

Cat, I’m a kitty cat.

Gi Joe parody

The talking boat

I totally agree. I still have a large mp3 and flac collection.

When Spotify came a long I used both for a while. But my Spotify playlists became so full of completely random tracks, it was never financially viable to even buy 10%, and its become more difficult to do so legally.

For the bands/artists I really like, I’ve bought CDs or if that’s not possible, bought digital versions.

I am attempting to transition away from streaming completely, but I have playlists which are 100+ hours long; which I’ve curated myself. I have a dozen others which are 8-20.

You could accuse me of having too much music. That i can’t possibly listen to most of it. Perhaps there is some truth in that. When you’ve had access to an unlimited buffet, it’s difficult to go back to a set menu.

Yes, ultimately I want to own all my most listened to music, but for now it would be nice to do both and have a player with physical buttons.

I miss physical buttons for when I’m listening to music.

Having to unlock my phone to skip a track or advance a podcast is really annoying.

I used to be able to click a button in my pocket. I could even slide a bit to skip forward and back 30 seconds.

I also like to listen to music in bed in the dark. The bright screen, the messing around with the unlock, really breaks the flow.

Yes I have earphones that are touch sensitive, but poking it messes with any good isolated fit I’ve achieved, the touch doesn’t always register and after a while, one ear starts to hurt. Especially when you need to tap three times to restart a track.

I’ve now got this stupid setup with a BT dongle in a usb a-c converter; which plugs into my phone and controls a tiny physical keyboard.

There are lots of mp3 players, but they don’t support streaming platforms. The ones that do, also went mainly touch screen only and cost a fortune. There is one physical Spotify player with buttons but it’s just a dumb cube with very basic functionality.

Yeah they are sneaky. You are forced to download everything.

Do a “manual search” on the Nvidia driver page.

Once the “Game Ready” drivers are downloaded. Uninstall the nvidia app (if it’s installed already.)

Now to install.

Basically for any windows software, always choose “Custom (Advanced)” installation, instead of “Express (Recommended)”.

For nvidia, the next page will show you 3-4 options. Untick everything accept “Graphics driver”.

Definitely ignore “HD audio”. It tends to mess up your sound (at least that’s my experience.)

and “PhysX System Software” unless this out of date or missing. Then you can tick this.

Then just your graphics drivers will be installed.

Obviously you will miss out on the various additional features the nvidia app provides, like auto tweaking game settings. But it’s always a tradeoff.

As I said above. Always do “Custom” installs on ANY software. 75% of the time you end up automatically opting into to various forms of telemetry, and at worst find your browers have new plugins, your search engine changed, and antivirus installed. It can be time-consuming to uninstall.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have more questions. I tried to add screenshots but the Lemmy app wasn’t having it.

I use this - https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

But obviously get opinions from other sources first.

It claims to disable most Windows telemetry. Some Adobe. But I haven’t actually done any testing to prove it’s the case. It’s a pretty useful tool. Just use the restore point option first.

Last time I tried this method of disabling Adobe telemetry, photoshop stopped opening after a few days.

For nvidia/amd, just install the drivers, not their tool suite.

As the other posters mention, try to find alternatives.

Other than that, you can try and block at a firewall level. But few companies make it obvious like: http://nerferoustelemetry.pleasedontblockthis.adobe.com/

Obviously I’m not you, so will never fully understand your situation, but from my own experience, I can see why your in a very tough spot.

Even with all the work that me and my wife have done, there are still days that we get to each other. That one of us is at their most hyper or the other at a real low/overwhelmed state, unwilling to do anything but curl up in bed. Each ignoring our own bodies, either because we are too focused on something or don’t want to/can’t move.

Medication is a temporary fix for some or perhaps one symptom of ADHD.

Other people really won’t understand unless they’ve lived in our heads for a short while.

I would be very annoyed as well that my problems were being dismissed and discounted.

Thanks, I do spend a lot of time overthinking.

Now and again I come up with something that works. I still from time to time just want to run away from everything.

I wouldn’t say I figured a lot out, but what has really helped is having a partner who understands my triggers, and what triggers her.

For example, perhaps one of us is in a heated conversation and our voice is starting to raise. The other will make a visual signal, or gently touch a shoulder or hand. To bring awareness that things are heading in the wrong direction.

Often we will simply avoid certain situations altogether. Or find other mitigations. Like wearing Loops (ear things that block out some sounds). Take fidget toys, sweets etc.

Really, we just spend a lot of time talking to each other about what makes us each individually angry, uncomfortable, anxious. Then try to change our behaviour. At the very least attempt to make very small steps to soften this that grate each other.

We were both in several really bad relationships. The main takeaway was, don’t let things stew. It is really hard, but talk about things asap. Perhaps the hardest thing is finding someone who is willing to listen and share as well, and not react badly.

In many ways this sort of relationship stuff is far more logic than emotion.

Often just talking and the other person listening (and not giving any solutions, just sympathy) is enough.

With that all being said, take this with a huge bucket of salt. This is advice from a compete stranger. Search around for other opinions. Just don’t ask Chatgpt.

In typical ADHD style I wrote out a whole essay and decided instead, just to post this:

There is a point where you have to decide if it really matters.

Is the goal just to make them understand or do you need them to provide you with other support that only they can provide?

I also had a lot of trouble with both sets of parents.

I tried using examples of their own past behaviours and experiences. Things that had happened to their friends.

This worked somewhat. I don’t think I’ll ever make them fully understand.

Btw, I suspect my parents, my wife’s parents and extended family all have ADHD.

On another note:

There is a chance your wife has ADHD as well, just different behaviours. It might be that there are things you do, that really trigger her.

I thought I was the normal person with the adhd wife. There was a strong hidden reason we got together and stayed together. It didn’t become clear until later.

https://archive.ph/L2Gqp without paywall

I don’t doubt that.

I think familiarity is also important, maybe more so than ease of use.

A lot of people know Windows and how to use it (at least for the basics.)

Steam OS is still extremely niche.

That’s why I think the Steam Machine has to have price on its side to push people to consider buying a gaming-focused PC rather than a more general purpose gaming laptop. Particularly when everyone is struggling with rising costs.

True, I agree.

Edit (mid-November): There are rumours that it could be north of 600.

In my head, unless it’s in the 400-600 range, a gaming laptop makes more sense. I suspect generally other prospective buyers would too.

Steam OS whilst great, still doesn’t run as many games as Windows. Particularly certain popular multiplayer ones with kernel-level anti-cheat.

At the moment all we have is Valve’s theory that if the Steam Machine becomes really popular, Devs might update their games to work on Steam OS/linux. But equally they might not.

In a world where everything is getting more expensive (apart from TVs), I’m not sure the average person has the spare income to buy another single-purpose machine (yes, Steam OS can do more, but it’s designed to be used for gaming). A Windows laptop is more flexible.

I can see this hardware appealing to a lot of people, regardless of price though. Kid’s first PC for example.

I really want this machine to be a success. I would love to ditch Windows completely, as soon as possible.

If it’s more expensive than a entry-level gaming laptop, then I doubt the average user would buy a Steam Machine, when a laptop is far more flexible.

It has to be cheaper and more convenient than what’s currently available.

I might be way off the mark, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it priced like the OLED Steam Deck. At least at launch.

With a later price increase due to RAM and SSD shortages.

Edit (mid-November): watching more videos, could be north of 600.

True. All I can think of is that before it gets to Halloween shops have sold off most of their stock and are in the process of getting all the Xmas stuff out. I’ve been places where they have a Halloween and Xmas mix of songs.

I’m not ruling out that a few hundred thousand completely random people around the world all decide to listen to Xmas music around the same time. I just think it’s more likely businesses switching to seasonal music as early as possible, and streaming Mariah Carey 20 times a day, causing the big sudden spike.

Is it just a load of stores/shops immediately switching to generic xmas playlists after Halloween? To me that’s the only reason I could see there to being a sudden spike. This song is bound to be in most of them. But we’d also need to track other popular xmas tracks.

(I know there used to be significant music licensing issues about what music could be played in a store, to the public. Don’t know if there is some special Spotify business account now?)

As a person who’s not into the table top games, but loves the lore.

I watch/listen to a few channels:

WesHammer - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSDj6ttwzj2sr464jDdg_pA

He does a short introduction (on camera), then the rest is audio with relevant artwork and some video from the games.

Aside from the usual deep-dives into the various factions and popular characters, I enjoy his Grim Dark Story Hour vids. These focus on creepy (horror) short stories from random Warhammer books, where Wes does some voice acting as well.

The Sleepy Hollow - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC86zNGwCUt5gBnizRSWSLuA

Warhammer lore (and game lore). It’s meant to be for helping people get to sleep. But I listen to it during the day. If you do use it for sleep, watch out for the super loud Youtube ads that play in the middle, if you don’t have Premium or use Peertube.

There are a lot of other Youtubers that do good content as well, like Arbitor Ian etc.

The top two are my recommendations.

I know this is just my tiny view on things, but I’ve been testing code from a very experienced Dev, who was recently instructed to use AI coding tools in their work (Cursor, maybe some Copilot).

Functionality in our product is now breaking in weird and wonderful ways. Completely new ‘WTF!’ moments. It’s hard to describe.

Core behavior that I’ve taken for granted - things I didn’t realise could go wrong, are.

It reminds me of when after particular iOS update many years back, (for certain scenarios) Apple’s own calculator wasn’t doing addition correctly.

For me, it’s both fascinating and unnerving. Like some unfathomable cosmic horror.

Obligatory link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_finger

Don’t let a Seal bite you.

“Seal finger was first described scientifically in 1907. It can cause cellulitis, joint inflammation, and swelling of the bone marrow; untreated, the course of “seal finger” is slow and often results in a thickened, contracted joint. Historically, seal finger was treated by amputation of the affected digits once they became unusable…”