#janky — Public Fediverse posts

Michelle is right! #BlackSky https://share.google/sUuqSQIRggzDnVV10 Trump is Janky and makes America #janky

Just finished disassembling a late-Intel-era Macbook Pro to remove the spicy pillows from it, and I gotta say, I am not impressed with Apple's hardware engineering on it.

I'm not talking about them gluing the cells of the battery to the case - that's been discussed to death, and was unnecessary. I'm talking about some other rather bad choices made during design.

Specifically: fasteners. In general, you want the fewest different types of threaded fasteners possible in your design. Fewer parts to keep in stock, fewer possible mistakes when assembling and disassembling units, etc. And Apple utterly failed this design rule.

It's like each separate part in this machine is held in with 3 different fasteners. Sometimes that's unavoidable in a design; you're using machine screw #1 for most things, but there's one that has to go into this particular place where it can't be as deep/long or there isn't room for the same head or something. But in this case, most of the fasteners are different for no very good reason. There's room for them to have used a common screw for many of the cases where they just ... didn't.

Paying the Apple tax for this kind of janky design (and user-hostile repairability) is just insulting.

"Designed badly in California, manufactured in China".

#Apple #AppleTax #Macbook #MacbookPro #glue #SpicyPillow #design #BadDesign #hardware #janky #UserHostile #CaptiveMarket #AppleMac

I've finally taken the next step with figuring out how to have some sort of decent voice support in Home Assistant. I mean, other than relying on Google Devices.

The picture below shows my completely ridiculous setup for voice recognition:

Total cost: $0, but that's because I reused all the hardware.

I got a RPI4 connected to an iLuv something or other Bluetooth speaker whose battery is completely shot, and a Blue Snowball USB microphone.

I'm running this on the RPI:

https://github.com/rhasspy/wyoming-satellite

Janky as hell, but it works. As I see it, this is really a minimum setup for experimentation. The Atom M5 Echo does not hold a candle.

This is only the beginning.

#HomeAssistant #VoiceRecognition #HomeAutomation #RapsberryPi #janky

Of course, if my furnaces today used that design, I wouldn't be #ranting.

I have two #furnaces - at the time this home was built, it was the style here to put in two furnaces, one for the upstairs, and one for the main floor and basement. Kind of like a really #janky #zone system. I replaced both of them when I bought this #house.

Well, last #winter, the blower motor in one #died. It's kind of nice having two; the house was #chilly but #livable while I was getting it #fixed.

8/x

#ChicagoIndex email just arrived. Anyone can just click and take their survey! Like, say, CTU minions pushing #BrandonJohnson! Don't fall for the results, though I know many of you will. #Janky #Journalism #JournalismEthics #Polls #ChiMayor23