skepticalifornia

I used to play around with custom ROMs back in the Nexus days but I use my phone now for so many banking and other security - focused things nowadays that I feel it is just too risky to do all of that on a device that uses a non OEM ROM.

Maybe I'm too paranoid, but phones have gotten so complex today that even highly technical users have trouble ensuring that every aspect of their device is safe unless it is locked down to some extent.

Yes, they do go on some tangents occasionally. I used to think it a bit strange but have grown to like it. A number of years ago Steve went on this Vitamin D research kick and he compared taking supplements versus sunbathing nude (imagining him doing that is hilarious in its own right) and getting his levels checked after each trial. The discussion on this made me decide to start taking Vitamin D supplements and I feel like that has been a benefit.

The Melatonin thing comes from a different research project Steve did to find the “perfect sleep supplement formula” and he experimented for months with different ingredients to come up with what he contends will help him sleep and help him go back to sleep after nighttime bathroom visits. I tried some of the weird ingredients and it did help, but I didn’t stick with that. Even got my wife to try it. I’ve also discovered some great Sci-if authors from their book reviews.

I think they go on these tangents to keep the show fresh after 15 years. I believe that Security Now is TWIT’s most successful show but I wonder how they are doing overall.

LOL yes it is a weird name and I almost spelled it as brita. The company is actually Elecom and the trackball is called birta - https://elecomusa.com/products/b08p66zvzx

It is a nice little trackball that comes with a case - I use it with my iPad when I travel.

Great review! Thank you for the detail.

I was a trackball user for many years, but have gotten away from that for the most part. This might be a product that would drag me back in.

I do have a Birta MT1BR mini trackball I use for travel and it is great.

Agree completely about Security Now - I’ve been listening since the beginning (like 15+ years now?) and I honestly don’t remember Steve Gibson saying much political stuff. Leo is obviously pretty liberal, but he normally keeps a lid on anything political as well, unless it is tech industry specific. (Full disclosure - I am fairly liberal so maybe I’m oblivious)

Just go to your subreddit, copy the URL and add a .rss to the end, for example https://www.reddit.com/r/news/ becomes https://www.reddit.com/r/news.rss I've been doing this for years, using Protopage as my start page in Chrome and I make widgets with these RSS feeds. Lemmy and Kbin have RSS feeds as well, but you either just put in the URL and the RSS feeder recognizes it, or you click the little RSS icon by the sort selection and use that.

Apollo on my iPad and Sync on my Android phone.

You may be interested to know that any Lemmy community can become an RSS feed. Look for the little RSS icon to the right of the Sort Type drop down, click that and it takes you to the RSS feed. That URL can then be pasted into just about any RSS reader and you will see a list of the latest topics. I use ProtoPage as my browser home page and have widgets that show me Beehaw Technology, News, etc. I clicked on one of those stories to come to this post. (By the way, Reddit works this way by just putting an ".rss" at the end of the subreddit's URL. I used that a lot and am ecstatic that Lemmy allow a similar thing!)

This does nothing to address one of the most expensive aspects of attending college - room and board. With rent and real estate prices climbing dramatically, this is a huge (>50%) part of the expense of college for those who cannot live at home. Students get loans to help cover that and over four years it adds up to many tens of thousands of dollars.

I really think at this point I am done with Reddit. The attitude Spez and the other admins showed in that AMA was disrespectful to users and mods. Reddit is just a platform, they don’t create content, and the mods work for free as far as I know. To give a big FU to users the way they did is all I needed to see. I am going to use Lemmy and continue to use Mastodon for better or worse, but so far, I am liking it more and more over here.