#in reliability and access

[ailurinae]

ehhhh

Look, are the problems with "the cloud", sure, all kinds. Is a rather vague term, that is often oversold? Sure. But acting like "a couple external hard drives" is in any way equivalent to "the cloud" is just disingenuous. For good and for bad.

With some HDDs you have way better assurances of privacy, no fear of say a price hike, or loss of a job suddenly putting your data at risk.

But you have absolutely nothing like the reliability of cloud storage. Nor the availability. To get even a fraction of the availability you would need to get/build at least some kind of consumer NAS and run/administer it. Some of them are... pretty good, someone who is at least a "power user" can probably deal with them.

At least then any machine on your home network can access the data, and you probably (depending on setup) have some data redundancy. You still need backups though. NAS usually have backup systems built in, and plugging in an external drive to the NAS makes for a nice way to do backups, and not even have to from computer to computer with it. But if you want to access data safely from outside your home network, you need to set up a VPN tunnel to get back to your network. Which can be done, but is another thing to understand, setup and administer (it's not too bad, but for sure not as simple as using Mulvad or NordVPN for "privacy"). (The other way would be to expose some aspect of your NAS to the internet, but you really don't want to do that, unless you are already in the IT security business)

Once you did all that you are quite well off by home user standards. It'd be more than fine to stop there. But you still only have a fraction of the reliability of cloud storage. And again that is fine. But my point is, "a couple external hard drives" is a fine way to get some extra (and portable) storage, but don't pretend it is "your own cloud storage".

I would like to address something that has come up several times since I relaunched my computer recommendation blog two weeks ago. Part of the reason that I started @okay-computer and that I continue to host my computer-buying-guide is that it is part of my job to buy computers every day.

I am extremely conversant with pricing trends and specification norms for computers, because literally I quoted seven different laptops with different specs at different price-points *today* and I will do more of the same on Monday.

Now, I am holding your face in my hands. I am breathing in sync with you. We are communicating. We are on the same page. Listen.

Computer manufacturers don't expect users to store things locally so it is no longer standard to get a terabyte of storage in a regular desktop or laptop. You're lucky if you can find one with a 512gb ssd that doesn't have an obnoxious markup because of it.

If you think that the norm is for computers to come with 1tb of storage as a matter of course, you are seeing things from a narrow perspective that is out of step with most of the hardware out there.

I went from a standard expectation of a 1tb hdd five years ago to expecting to get a computer with a 1tb hdd that we would pull and replace with a 1tb ssd to expecting to get a computer that came with a 256gb ssd that we would pull and replace with a 1tb ssd, to just having the 256gb ssd come standard and and only seeking out more storage if the customer specifically requested it because otherwise they don't want to pay for more storage.

Computer manufacturers consider any storage above 256gb to be a premium feature these days.

Look, here's a search for Lenovo Laptops with 16GB RAM (what I would consider the minimum in today's market) and a Win11 home license (not because I prefer that, but to exclude chromebooks and business machines). Here are the storage options that come up for those specs:

You will see that the majority of the options come with less than a terabyte of storage. You CAN get plenty of options with 1tb, but the point of Okay-Computer is to get computers with reasonable specs in an affordable price range. These days, that mostly means half a terabyte of storage (because I can't bring myself to *recommend* less than that but since most people carry stuff in their personal cloud these days, it's overkill for a lot of people)

All things being equal, 500gb more increases the price of this laptop by $150:

It brings this one up by $130:

This one costs $80 more to go from 256 to 512 and there isn't an option for 1TB.

For the last three decades storage has been getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, to the point that storage was basically a negligible cost when HDDs were still the standard. With the change to SSDs that cost increased significantly and, while it has come down, we have not reached the cheap, large storage as-a-standard on laptops stage; this is partially because storage is now SO cheap that people want to entice you into paying a few dollars a month to use huge amounts of THEIR storage instead of carrying everything you own in your laptop.

You will note that 1tb ssds cost you a lot less than the markup to pay for a 1tb ssd instead of a 500gb ssd

In fact it can be LESS EXPENSIVE to get a 1tb ssd than a 500gb ssd.

This is because computer manufacturers are, generally speaking, kind of shitty and do not care about you.

I stridently recommend getting as much storage as you can on your computer. If you can't get the storage you want up front, I recommend upgrading your storage.

But also: in the current market (December 2024), you should not expect to find desktops or laptops in the low-mid range pricing tier with more than 512gb of storage. Sometimes you'll get lucky, but you shouldn't be expecting it - if you need more storage and you need an inexpensive computer, you need to expect to upgrade that component yourself.

So, if you're looking at a computer I linked and saying "32GB of RAM and an i7 processor but only 500GB of storage? What kind of nonsense is that?" Then I would like to present you with one of the computers I had to quote today:

A three thousand dollar macbook with the most recent apple silicon (the m4 released like three weeks ago) and 48 FUCKING GIGABYTES OF RAM with a 512gb ssd.

You can't even upgrade that SSD! That's an apple that drive isn't going fucking anywhere! (don't buy apple, apple is shit)

The norms have shifted! It sucks, but you have to be aware of these kinds of things if you want to pay a decent price for a computer and know what you're getting into.

[aardvaark]

i don’t mind suspending my disbelief for leverage’s person-sized ventilation shafts bc that’s pretty standard for the genre, but that doesn’t mean i won’t laugh a bit at some of the egregiously large vents. particularly in the crowning acheivement job (lev: red s2 finale) because - well just look at this lol! harry and parker, two adults, can kneel side by side in those vents. parker can sit upright.

that museum was made for vent crawling purposes. that’s just an extra room in the museum they forgot to decorate. the leverageverse has a thief union that successfully lobbied for a better working environment. these vents double as a playground for museum-goers’ children. i was crying with laughter thinking about this and harry’s vent crisis was NOT helping me remember that there was a serious heist thing going on lol, i love this show.

[hallabun]

shenko as text posts: 1/???

bonus:

[abirddogmoment]

rich because this is how I get to spend my evenings

[aropride]

its crazy the things not living at home and not having been traumatized in almost a year and a half will do for ur mental and physical health

[inscreenshotsandtime]

Opening sequence, no text.

[worfsbarmitzvah]

when you block someone from your main it should automatically block them on all your sideblogs too. you should have to manually go into your sideblog’s settings to unblock someone you have blocked on main rather than the other way around

[raviollies]

Damn I just wanted to say the tags on your post really hit me…almost word for word I relate to all of that and I’ve been struggling trying to find a job to keep myself sane. I had a lot of those same thoughts and especially over the pandemic and it was unhealthy and awful and I lost a friendship that meant a lot to me bc of the same feelings you express in your tags. I’ve gotten a lot better, or at least I like to think I have, but learning to live with the knowledge of how you used to be (or at least being more aware of how not to be like that), and knowing you can’t turn back time has been hard. Seeking validation and attention…oof that all just hits so terribly home.

I think a lot of people developed a very unhealthy relationship with the internet over the pandemic - thankfully I was an essential worker so my pause in employment was super brief.

It IS hard to reconcile that that was also you but at the end of the day the best you can do is acting different and making a difference in the positive direction. You can't UNDO those actions - so really...moving forward is the ONLY thing to do. & while it doesn't excuse your actions, I do believe some grace needs to be given when it is coming from an unstable place such as mental illness.

I will admit I still have a very unhealthy relationship with validation. Not just online but it is turned up to 11 due to the whole dopamine hit of comments and likes. It used to be BAD, it would make me cry if a post flopped because I felt like people didn't care. It's an INCREDIBLY tough cycle, especially for someone mentally ill, but even for someone neurotypical it's common to descend into unfathomable toxicity in hopes of getting love from internet strangers. I mean recently there was a pretty prominent Vtuber scandal that was the most HORRID behavior all for the sake of being a popular streamer.

The internet is both a place that can really abate loneliness while worsening it in other aspects.

[snailchimera]

Even as I get better at driving I find that my intense dislike for the entire process persists unabated. What I want is to live in a place where "non-driver" and "housebound" are not synonyms.

[zo1nkss]

i'm sure tumblr is generally UnBothered by the tiktok ban bc y'all don't seem to like that place, but I am currently very sad to lose it so suddenly :/

also i accidentally locked myself out of mobile tumblr for a couple weeks but its okay i fixed it

[dweamdoodles]

PS4 emulator making leaps and bounds of progress over the last few months to the point where the game is almost completely playable. Old Hunter's DLC finally on Spotify. This is the player base equivalent of a whale fall and will feed many hunters for years to come

[spongebob-connoisseur]

After Dark

[bunnywoman]

i felt less lonely on suicide forums in 2012 than i do right now

[ergativeabsolutive]

Something tragic about the way my health has gone is that yes people used to call me smart all the time as a kid but I didn't really understand what they meant (and partly this was just because having CPTSD I couldn't internalize compliments) and I didn't even fully think intelligence was even real.... In fact at times I was actually against the concept. I thought it was just a skill issue and an opportunity issue. Losing some of that with the transient cognitive decline that's come and gone with my symptoms in the last 2-3 years has taught me how foolish that was

[wutheringhestia]

just realised I have jstor access to the behaviour and ecology of pacific salmon and trout by thomas p. quinn. life has never been more beautiful

[jaypgartifacts]

a weird guy appear