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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Buying HP products is bad investment.

    I only had the chance to two of their inkjet printers and one of their office laser printers, plus an elitebook laptop. In short, all of them suck.

    Much better (to me, the best) alternatives, that I can safely say are good investments: Canon for inkjet printers, ThinkPad T and P series for laptops. Those are quality products. Unfortunately I don’t have any experience with other office laser printers, so I cannot recommend one.

    Edit: specified which series of ThankPads are still good.


  • Just as a mildly interesting story, I thought I’d share:

    The best self checkout experience I had so far, was at a Japanese clothing store in Germany. There was a box at the checkout station, and each clothing item had an RFID in their labels. You just toss all your items in the box, it detects which exact products you’re gonna buy, and if the list of items shown is correct, you just pay and go.

    A few years ago I heard of a similar concept for groceries, but that one was experimental and I don’t think they’ve implemented it ever since. But this one at the clothing store was not a test, and it worked flawlessly.




    • When traveling to/from eastern Europe, always have your checked-in luggage wrapped. In those countries, especially in Hungary, there are many thieves among luggage handlers and there are many horror stories regarding in what conditions the passengers received their belongings at the end (if at all). While you cannot 100% eliminate risks, wrapped luggages are much less likely to be tampered with. It’s also worth wrapping it when you care about the outer texture of your luggage (sometimes the cargo area of the aircraft is really dirty).
    • In the terminal building, find your gate first, so that you know exactly where to go when the time comes. Until then, go, find a comfortable seat somewhere else, far from the gates. At DXB I know a couple of cool locations where there aren’t many people waiting, so there are plenty of free space plus much cleaner toilets nearby due to less frequent usage. However, I’ll keep that information to myself, because I still wanna be able to enjoy those less crowded areas when I’m traveling.
    • Pay attention to the safety briefing and really think it through. You have to remember it in panic situations. Pay attention to every single little detail, because everything is said for a very good reason. (Just as an example: when they say “pull the oxygen mask towards you when it appears in front of you”, you really have to yank on it (okay, maybe don’t rip it off; I have no idea how strong to pull it), because the oxygen flow starts only when a safety “pin” is released, which can be done by pulling on the oxygen line.)
    • If your clothes are in your checked-in luggage, always have at least one set of extra clothes in your hand-carry.
    • Pay attention to the airline’s guidelines when packing your luggage.
    • During an emergency evacuation do not reach for your belongings. Just do as instructed and leave the aircraft as you’re told, ASAP. For this reason, keep your passport in your pocket and try to wear clothing that will be suitable outside as well to some extent. For example, wear your shoes and wear a sweater at least. (And pants as well, but I guess it doesn’t need to be mentioned.) You will get your belongings back at the end (if they’re salvageable, I guess).
    • Others already mentioned it, but it’s so important, I need to reiterate: don’t be an asshole. It is common sense, yet there are so many people not following this rule.

  • Choose a direct flight whenever possible. I usually would pick a shitty, more expensive airline over having a connecting flight.

    I have to say, this is just a matter of personal preference. I cannot imagine myself enduring a 13 hour flight in one go, so I tend to pick an airline that happens to have connections in Dubai. It’s about halfway when I’m visiting my girlfriend, and it feels really nice to walk around, stretch a bit, use a real toilet, etc.

    My girlfriend is the opposite, she prefers to come here with a direct flight because it’s less of a hassle and she’s able to rest on the plane all the way.

    Cheap airlines: you get what you pay for. You will be treated like cattle

    That’s true for European low-cost airlines. Sometimes they would treat you worse than cattle.

    However, on AirAsia I had a much better experience, although I only flew once with them.

    Generally, in Europe they would mess with your hand-carry.

    With AirAsia, my experience was that no one gives a damn crap about your bags. Just follow their rules, and if your bag looks reasonable, no one will say anything.

    On a long flight wearing your seat belt

    I would suggest that at all times when you’re seated, with one exception: don’t wear it while boarding is still in progress and the seatbelt sign isn’t on. While turbulence mostly can be predicted, in some rare cases it cannot be. But they remind you of that during either the safety briefing or the captain’s first PA.

    Wearing a mask is not a bad idea

    Duh. I mean, why else would they be hanging right in front of you while the cabin is getting depressurized?

    Just kidding. I know you meant medical masks.


  • Well, I tested both modules, and one of them turned out to be faulty. The other stick works, I can use my PC with it for now. And Corsair’s customer support turns out to be really handy; they can send a replacement first for a deposit, and after I receive it, I can send the faulty one back. And once they receive it, I can get the deposit back.

    So it’s all (kinda) good now, regarding my PC.


  • I’m pretty freakin far from okay.

    My girlfriend has been mad at me for almost a week now; who knows if she ever even wants to talk to me. She hates me at this point.

    And this is my first day of vacation, I have more than 10 days off. I decided to work on one of my hobby projects, and sometimes take a break for gaming. Guess what! My PC broke, Memtest shows more than 3000 RAM errors, so at the moment I’m sitting here testing each module in every slot.

    And then once I figure it out whether I have to send the RAM or the motherboard back, I’ll have no PC for at least a month (I expect longer than that). So I cannot make any progress with anything, now that I have some free time.

    I’m especially pissed off, because it was quite an expensive build, specifically for reliability.






  • Once a friend asked me to buy him cigarettes while I went into the store to buy some food for myself and he was waiting outside. I did it, but I hated every single second of it. The fact that the cashier, and anyone around me could potentially think I was a smoker… utterly terrifying. The humiliation was even greater when the cashier asked for my ID (I was around 20 that time, I looked young enough for them to assume I was underage). Disgusting, horrible experience. Never again.

    There was another case, where my best friend actually didn’t really ask for help, but it was a really serious case. Her mom got into jail as a victim of someone else’s attempt to clear himself in a corruption case. I helped her with my savings (a thousand dollars or so) to get her out of jail. Well, this was another horrible experience, but in a different way. I would do it again if such a situation arises, but luckily her and her entire family have managed to move to a better country since then.






  • In my opinion, social media is extremely harmful to society. Fediverse has implemented some proper moderation, while those more popular platforms tend to amplify what makes this world crazy (and eventually completely destroyed).

    If there’s one reason why it’s not okay that those platforms are more popular than the fediverse, it’s that at least the Fediverse has the chance to properly moderate content, while on those platforms it’s either unmoderated, or even worse, the quality content is oppressed.