It’s probably habit, but it just feels somehow wrong to blow my nose without a piece of paper snugly against my nostrils. Like trying to poop without being seated on a toilet bowl.

In general, I wish more things would have a common design that manufacturers get to reuse and incrementally improve upon. Take, for example, plastic chairs and office chairs. There’s probably a million variations in existence and someone had to model, prototype, and make tooling for each and every one of them. Sure, there’s varying price points, design languages, and use cases. But even for the same price point there’s at least several thousand chairs with the same overall look and feel. All of that duplicated work and effort, only to make several thousand variations, none of which have a distinct advantage, and each with their own completely solvable problems. Why don’t they just pool their efforts and design one example with as few flaws as possible for that overall design and price?

Perhaps a design where both mating surfaces are plastic with metal for the rest of the body? A lot of vacuum insulated bottles have plastic bonded to metal in the cap, they just have to repeat that with the bottle itself

They come in handy when air drying heavy, damp shirts

Reusable water bottles, especially their lids. They build up microorganisms faster than a petri dish and the more complex the bottles are, the worse it is.

Worst offender are the ones with integrated straws. Sure, they look nice and are a good idea, but cleaning them thoroughly is a nightmare. Also, I don’t know how people tolerate the ones with exposed straws or mouthpieces. Isn’t that incredibly unsanitary?

More generally, why doesn’t anyone except for Nalgene make reusable bottles without rubber gaskets? Gaskets get stinky, then you have to peel them out, scrub like mad, and then awkwardly stretch them back in. I’ve been looking for a metal water bottle without a gasket for ages. They literally just need to shove the Nalgene-type screw-on top into a metal body.

Bonus points if someone designs a gasket-less bottle that opens in the middle so I don’t have to fiddle with a bottle brush every time I wash it.

Same here. Gives me a new appreciation for in-app language settings, in case an app is too complicated or weirdly translated.

1. Separate rubber pieces from earbuds
2. Plug drain in sink and wash rubber pieces in soapy water, then let dry
3. Fold a sheet of tissue paper over and saturate with 70% isopropyl alcohol from a dropper bottle
4. Wipe earbuds thoroughly with the saturated tissue and let dry
5. Reassemble and repeat once every 1 to 2 weeks

Agreed, but company does not provide us devices. Everything I’ve said applies to my second phone running GrapheneOS, which I am using as my work phone. I’m trying to avoid setting up and running Play Services just for nice-to-have notifications when none of my other apps require it.

A modern, power-efficient replacement motherboard for the Thinkpad X220/230

Would be absolutely fine if it were just a low-profile SBC that sat in the SATA compartment with some barebones connections out to the ports, keyboard, display, speakers, and battery. It can’t be that crazy of a product. There’s already million super-niche SBCs out there, literally the only hurdles would be interfacing with the proprietary keyboard (a solved problem) and the battery.

I’m jealous of my friend’s workstation that has an easily accessible filter in front of the case fans

I fancied the opportunity, but there were no other speakers of the language at my school.

The Pixel Tablet with GrapheneOS is the gold standard, but there’s even more than just the tablets with LineageOS support if you are adventurous.

I was gifted a Samsung Tab A7 Lite, which is without LineageOS support. However, I’ve been able to flash TrebleDroid Generic System Images (GSI), which are vanilla AOSP images modified to support as many devices as possible. They come with no Google apps or services.

Nearly everything works as expected, performance is much better, and battery life is unchanged. I can even run Android 15 smoothly when Samsung will end support for my tablet with Android 14. If anyone wants a writeup to the best of my memory, feel free to reply.

When maximizing uptime, Debian is the no-fuss way to go.

If you are flashing GrapheneOS, it is a very simple and safe procedure. I’ve even interrupted the flashing when my laptop went to sleep, got the system corrupt warning, and just flashed again without a hitch. All that’s needed now is a browser with WebUSB support and USB cable.

Organic Maps. Living in a somewhat walkable area, it gives me good walking directions. I might be a bit out of touch though since I just commit routes to memory if I’m driving.

For the occasional satellite map, Google Maps unfortunately. If anyone knows of a privacy-respecting map with satellite views, I’d be interested.

Ungoogled Chromium flatpak

In my personal life and in communicating with family, there are few compromises. Most of my compromises come from work.

Phone: Pixel with GrapheneOS and FOSS apps only as my primary. Old Pixel 4a with GrapheneOS as my secondary, with the main profile as testing grounds for various apps and a second profile holding work apps. Whatsapp seems to be the lowest common denominator for practical communication with colleagues.

My workplace is BYOD, with MDM only for software licensing. Alongside my customary X230, I carry my lightweight, secondhand X1 Nano, where I have Windows, software licensed alongside said MDM, and Firefox logged into my work Google account.

Key aspect for me is having work and personal life on separate devices. Not completely airtight, but as good as I can get it without making work any harder than it needs to be.

Banking: Fortunately everything my bank has to offer can be done through a browser. My plan if a mobile app with play integrity ever becomes necessary is to buy a regular Android with a removable battery just to host that app.

Transport: If I’m on a business trip without access to my car (no spyware, it’s from the 90s) and there is no public transport, I’ll get a friend or colleague to call an Uber for me. I haven’t gone out drinking at night since college and I’m not inclined to do so in the future.

Maps: Usually Organic Maps suffices, I generally commit routes to memory before going out. For the occasional satellite map, Google Maps in a browser. I have gotten my family to use Magic Earth though.

Fitness: no actual stats, just a handwritten entry in my daily journal as to whether I followed through with my exercise routine.

No, I don’t want to attract thieves and weird fans.

Indeed, I was happy to share that nothing weird happened and that the update does not worsen the phone, in light of the timing of this release and the lack of a changelog.

Aside from my secondary phone, convincing a couple family members to use GOS was a victory, convincing them to upgrade an otherwise perfectly functional phone is another thing. Justified or not, a bad update would not help my credibility in their eyes.

The flush mounted camera