Lol, if only. It’s not a “smart” fridge, but it does have a lot of, frankly, unnecessary electronics for what it does. Electronic components that, as any internet search for Samsung appliances will confirm, can and do go bad and are a pain to repair.

Oh, I absolutely love my ice maker. Didn’t think I needed one until I replaced the fridge in my old house with one that had one. Now I can’t live without one (except in the dead of winter when I clean it and just turn it off for ~2 months)

Dogs love chewing on ice cubes, especially in the summer. Between keeping bowls of ice cubes out for the dogs and me making margaritas and slushy cocktails all summer, I’d never be able to get by with ice trays.

We’re just planning on moving now, cause we hate this place and there’s a multitude of problems: A/C can’t keep up with cooling the house, costs a fuck-ton in energy bills, the management company won’t fix shit and they’re a nightmare to work with. They tried to blame us for rats getting into the attic, when it was a known problem before. Took us 2 months to make them hire pest control, and then acted like we should be grateful for normal-upkeep, and not having rats get inside

The neighborhood is actually nice, but the big-name management company are basically slum lords with a smile. But we had 3 dogs at the time and rental options were few, that had a fenced yard and would accept 3 dogs. 2 of them sadly passed this past year, and as much as I miss them and it wrenched my heart… we realized we could probably find something better now and not need such a large yard (our last dog is old too, and doesn’t romp in the yard anymore. He just enjoys little walks now)

The stove is just one of the things I hate about this place and I don’t want to fix any of their shite, even for $10. We’re just making it work for now

I’m guessing a tankless water heater involves some electronic controls. It probably could be designed to use low-voltage DC with a battery backup, but that would be fancy.

A gas stove should never need electricity for a burner to work if the user supplies another source of ignition like a match. This is surely a “safety feature” to prevent people from leaving the gas on when the electronic ignition is unavailable, but nobody with half a brain and a sense of smell would do that.

I keep trying to use my convection toaster oven as an air fryer, because goddamnit an air fryer is just a small convection oven and so is this!

It never turns out well and then I say, see? Air fryers are stupid.

I suspect the 10x larger fan on an actual air fryer makes a difference, but I’m not willing to give up the counter space to try.

Best way to reheat pizza. Also, I’ve been making garlic feta fries in there lately that aren’t quite oil crisp (and I’m picky about my fries) but are worth eating. (1 part black pepper, 2 parts salt, 2 parts garlic powder, 4 parts oregano, as much feta as you’d like). We really only get out the big oven for stuff like pizza, calzones, meals for large gatherings, stuff that doesn’t fit in the air fryer.

The box stores make this spanakopita, it cooks up so well in there. I practically live off the stuff.

Try industrial label printers. They are like printers on hard mode.

I do think that most people would be happier with lasers, especially on the “clogged nozzle and requires regular use” front (though now there are also lasers that also do the “razor and blades” sales model, with a cheap printer and more-expensive toner).

However, there are legitimately some people who do need inkjets for one reason or another.

• Lasers, and especially inexpensive lasers where the manufacturer wants to shave down power supply costs, have a brief period of very high electrical draw when they are powered on. This is why you’ll typically see UPSes with warnings saying “don’t plug laser printers into this device”. This probably isn’t more than a minor irritation for most people, but I bet that it can overwhelm small inverters; there are probably people living full-time in RVs or something for whom this a problem.

• Even relatively-inexpensive inkjet printers today can produce what I’d call pretty impressive photograph prints if paired with fancy photo paper. Color lasers — and I’ve never bothered to even get a color laser — do not print photos that look remotely as nice as inkjets do. I don’t print photos — I have screens that can display photos perfectly well — and if I really wanted to do so, I’d go to one of the many stores around that do have the ability to do really fancy photo prints. But if someone were into that, they can’t really substitute a laser printer or most other types of printers for that. Maybe dye-sublimation printers, if those are still a thing. kagis Appears so.

I have a black and white samsung printer that is like a decade old with the only maintenance being adding the powdered ink and replacing the roller thingy a couple of times. Always works, never had an issue, printed thousands of pages over time in spurts of hundreds at a time and even not printing for like two years.

On the opposite end inkjet printers are the fucking worst computer accessory I’ve ever dealt with. They have always been a shitshow even before they started the ink pricing shenanigans because they are finicky and unreliable to start with.

I’d enjoy my Epson Eco tank printer more if it wasn’t trying to constantly update firmware, apps, drivers, etc.

I’m not setting up faxing. Stop asking.

I have a camp stove that I got for really cheap because someone returned it because the igniter didn’t work. The spark gap was too high, so all I had to do was poke the wire over a little, and it works perfectly now.

I have had the problem with a variety of cables. I think its a software issue. Wiggeling the cable does not cause any issues. The screen never looses signal its just briefly black.

But I guess it can’t hurt to try more cables.

The screen sometimes goes black for a second or two randomly.

replacing your HDMI cable

I think you’re onto something. I have two HP cube shaped docks on my closet now waiting on a return box. The third is holding, but only because there’s also a reg key for windows that will lose compression on the HDMI and make it not resynch so often.

I still get the blinks, but they’re daily instead of hourly. I can dig it out if it’s valuable and the cables are good.

I’m also using a steetek/PWay/etc 2x2 HDMI KVM switcher downstream of that dock, so I can switch between two contract desktops for my k,v and m as the day cleaves to night.

Yep. Best way to get a TV that will never sell your data or show ads is to literally blacklist its MAC address at the router level, and then assign the “smart” functionality to a device environment you control, like a Shield Pro with a custom launcher or an Intel NUC media PC or NAS or something similar.

The dumb ones are typically “display” monitors, like what fast-food restaurants use for their menus. Likely more expensive, but built better too

I mean, yeah. Somehow I’m aware of that. But also, we haven’t bought a TV for almost a decade now, and my biggest mistake is letting it update to the latest version. If there’s something these adverts have done is drive me into consuming even less than ever before. I actively don’t buy stuff now.

as they become more protective of the users privacy?

that was a good joke

as they become more protective of the users privacy?

that was a good joke