Things you should know by now, but only just discovered

Keithustus wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

The recyclables piling up in our home are dead batteries.

Fixed in 1996. Toss them as normal garbage, unless they’re rechargeable. https://batterysolutions.com/news/di...

Huh, I learned something today. In fairness, the article still suggests recycling even single-use batteries wherever possible, as the metals inside are reusable.

Regarding Trader Joe's, I recall a really interesting podcast (Freakonomics, IIRC) episode that detailed how the TJ/Aldi split came about and the personalities of the brothers behind it. Worth listening to if you can find it.

LeapingGnome wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

The recyclables piling up in our home are dead batteries.

Target has battery drop off. That is where we take ours when the baggie gets full.

Round my neck of the woods, Walgreens does too.

Keithustus wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

The recyclables piling up in our home are dead batteries.

Fixed in 1996. Toss them as normal garbage, unless they’re rechargeable. https://batterysolutions.com/news/di...

But they can be recycled.

Can single-use batteries be recycled?

Yes, it is possible to recycle single-use batteries, but there is a fee associated with recycling them in most cases.

Coldstream wrote:

I recall a really interesting podcast (Freakonomics, IIRC) episode that detailed how the TJ/Aldi split came about and the personalities of the brothers behind it. Worth listening to if you can find it.

Cool, looks like this one, only partially through it: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/tra...

Stengah wrote:
hbi2k wrote:
NSMike wrote:

If I’m not mistaken, goodwill will take electronics waste at no charge.

Of course, then you've got to weigh recycling your e-waste against patronizing a business disguised as a non-profit which pays its disabled workers less than minimum wage while its executives are in the 1%.

The world is full of sh*tty compromises so do what you gotta do, but if there's a less-evil alternative available, use that.

Pretty sure you're buying into a smear job against Goodwill.

Does Goodwill Industries Exploit Disabled Workers

Worth reading through. I have mixed feelings about Goodwill as they have a life skills facility here that's very good and does a lot of good work in the community. But hourly wages well below minimum wage---sometimes less than a dollar---is tough to support. The provision of the FLSA that allows them and other groups to pay workers with disabilities below minimum wage is outdated, but ostensibly disability-focused groups like Goodwill will fight against that tooth and nail because their business models depend on being able to pay people so little.

The update that nobody asked for and nobody cares about: Best Buy very painlessly accepted my old all-in-one printer and four old laptops, no questions asked. A++++ would recycle with them again.

This is actually really valuable info for us, Merphle, thanks!

Yeah, I was expecting that I'd have to give some sort of name/address/contact info/firstborn, but nah. It took me longer to unload stuff from the trunk of my car onto a shopping cart, than it did for them to accept.

Note that they have some daily limits (2 items per day, 5 laptops per day, something like that), so don't go backing a loaded 16-wheeler up to their front door and expect a warm welcome.

Bring it to the back door. If you know what I mean. Because I don't.

merphle wrote:

[Re: Best Buy recycling] Note that they have some daily limits (2 items per day, 5 laptops per day, something like that), so don't go backing a loaded 16-wheeler up to their front door and expect a warm welcome.

The last time I moved their policy was essentially 3 items per day. Which is why I stopped there every night on the way home from work for two weeks straight. It was nice to get rid of all that serial port, SCSI port, Firewire, and USB 1.0 equipment, though.

I have a big’ol HP printer who is going to go bye-bye now.

RawkGWJ wrote:

I have a big’ol HP printer who is going to go bye-bye now.

Not to shill further for them, but I noticed Best Buy also has a trade-in program for eligible printers, netting you a $20-40 discount off of a subsequent printer purchase from them. Worth investigating, if you're looking to get a replacement.

Jonman wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

The recyclables piling up in our home are dead batteries.

Target has battery drop off. That is where we take ours when the baggie gets full.

Round my neck of the woods, Walgreens does too.

In these here shores ~every shop that sells batteries takes batteries, and every store that sells electronics have to take in and recycle electronics.

That cheap toothbrush that my dentist gave me as a freebie does a pretty good job cleaning my computer keyboard. It's not as nice as getting into the nooks and crannies with a cotton swab, but for results v. effort there's no comparison.

Vargen wrote:

That cheap toothbrush that my dentist gave me as a freebie does a pretty good job cleaning my computer keyboard. It's not as nice as getting into the nooks and crannies with a cotton swab, but for results v. effort there's no comparison.

I’ve got one of those spinning electric toothbrushes. Well more like oscillating rotational electric toothbrushes. I save the old brush heads and use them to clean small electronics like my phone. It can make the mic port on my phone look brand new.

If you take a YouTube-link and you put a hyphen in this position: yout-ube... you get rid of all advertisements.

Brainsmith wrote:

If you take a YouTube-link and you put a hyphen in this position: yout-ube... you get rid of all advertisements.

And you just gave someone else your Google login?

BadKen wrote:

And you just gave someone else your Google login?

No, it’s part of Google/YouTube. That site is intended for web developers and others who want to enable streaming of videos with no embedded cookie data, so their pages will run smoothly.

Questionably useful for regular viewers/users though since it won’t run from apps and must be navigated to specifically per video.

Unless there’s some app developer using it to tie a user’s playlists to those to help them avoid ads?

(The number of apps I’ve PAID FOR to enable background play and other features....which no longer work....is infuriating.)

Okay, if I'd bothered to do a whois I would have seen that Google, LLC owns the domain.

I'm getting rusty!

I wonder if there’s a homebrew iOS widget that streamlines that?

I just noticed that the latest version of Edge includes all open tabs when alt-tabbing.

I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I've already created tons of app shortcuts for things I use often. I kinda like it, but I can see things getting very busy sometimes, but I'm not someone who generally has tons of tabs open. I'm sure there's a way to disable it too.

Win+Tab only shows just Edge still which is good.

PaladinTom wrote:

I just noticed that the latest version of Edge includes all open tabs when alt-tabbing.

I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I've already created tons of app shortcuts for things I use often. I kinda like it, but I can see things getting very busy sometimes, but I'm not someone who generally has tons of tabs open. I'm sure there's a way to disable it too.

Win+Tab only shows just Edge still which is good.

I've kinda liked it so far, but yeah I can see it being cumbersome if you're working across a large number of tabs.

I really love the vertical tab option they've added to the beta build though. Soooo much easier to work with 50+ tabs open.

Dishwasher pods suck. Unless you're throwing an extra one in at the start, the first (most vigorous) part of the wash is going to be with water only. Those of you who follow Technology Connections on YouTube likely know what I'm talking about...

We switched back to liquid and started using the extra little divot on top of the soap dispenser. Our dishwasher now does an incredibly good job without our pre-rinsing things.

I saw that when it came out and immediately decided that my current tub of pods was my last. What a great channel!

Thanks for posting, had never heard of that channel before, or examined how pods work. Had actually given up placing pods into the detergent holder since pods were just staying there doing nothing (after a cycle, were still there intact but sticky) and had instead been leaving one in the tub at the beginning of the cycle. Apparently that’s bad.

Maybe it depends on the dishwasher? I have used the pods for years and I am happy with how clean our dishes get, we even just use the 'light wash' cycle all the time since there is no need for the longer one. We buy the tub of like 100 from Costco.

I can see maybe from a financial perspective that liquid could be cheaper and just as good so why not save the money? I'll watch the video above.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Maybe it depends on the dishwasher?

It definitely depends on the dishwasher. Our circa 1982 dishwasher that finally gave up the ghost last year was a BEAST. You'd have to really try to put dirty enough dishes in it for a single pod to fail to get everything sparkling. Note that that dishwasher pulled in cold water and heated it, so it sidestepped the issue raised in the video of the first rinse being with cold water and thus doing bugger-all to dislodge the dirt.

But I suspect it depends on the pod too. Maybe even the water where you are - hard water requires more soap to get the same amount of lather.

Keithustus, in my experience, if the pods don’t deploy, then the dispenser lid springs might have come off. That would mean the lid is loose but never actually lifts up to release the pod. If so, you can use a small screwdriver to coil them back up and tuck the ends into the little slots provided. I had that problem for a while until I figured out what was going on.

These days I make my living writing software for spacecraft, aircraft, and other such things. However, like many other SW engineers from my generation, I got my start when I was gifted an 8-bit computer by a parent. In my case this was a Commodore 64, which is still secured in my attic because I can't bring myself to recycle it.

I spent more time than I care to admit just playing with that, coding it in BASIC, and acquired some reference manuals that helped me learn more. I knew that some of the fancy commercial games I played were created using something called machine language, but never had that bit of insight or small push from an outside source to learn now to do that myself.

I never heard of a compiler until I went to a summer program after my junior year in HS (NJ Governor's School in the Sciences) and that was actually just compiled version of BASIC. My first CS class in college was the first time I had ever seen a programming language without line numbers (Pascal). Over the following few years my horizons expanded a lot, but I never did take the time to go back and apply any of that to my first programming love, the C64.

So, this video from The 8-Bit Guy filled me with a mix of nostalgia, regret, and a feeling of "I should have known this by now".

I could fill the thread with the things I should know already about cooking, but a highlight of recent: curry isn't a spice, it's a combination of spices. I figured there was a curry plant out there, probably in Asia.

Hrdina, if this stuff interests you, look up Ben Eater on Youtube. He has a whole series of awesome videos where he's building an actual working 6502 computer on breadboards. It'll never be anything like the 64 was, but damn, it's an interesting set of videos.

He's doing a series of simple machine language programs to demonstrate aspects of how the design works, as it expands and takes on more features. He edits and compiles on a PC, and then burns the program to an EEPROM and sockets it into the breadboard for the computer to run. When it (often) doesn't do what he wanted, he explains why, updates the program, and tries again.

You can even order parts and follow along at home, making your own.

His voice is very pleasant, so the videos are extremely watchable.