Had been meaning to install those plug-in air fresheners but couldn't be bothered to buy them for the past month. Then yesterday I learned that those fragrances are dispersed alongside a bunch of nasty VOCs. Looks like my inaction saved my lungs a bit of damage

What instances of laziness or forgetfulness have worked out in your favor?

Bit of an uphill fight with captchas everywhere. Do people here conduct all online activity over VPN whenever possible? Only for the sensitive stuff? Or perhaps the inverse because the bank already knows you? Maybe when travelling or getting around region blocking? Something else?

The one provided by my work aside, I realized that I don't have any consistent rules around using VPN. Except sometimes, you know, when downloading ISO's for my favorite distos.

I first dabbled with AI image generation back in 2022 and sprinkled a few such images throughout my worldbuilding project. It was easy to look past all of the flaws with the idea that it was nothing more than a novelty. And I never cared nearly enough about my worldbuilding to pay anyone for artwork of it.

Now that I look back at it, those images are obvious slop, which I've grown to dislike as much as the next person. But recent comments I've seen here and on other sites have made me wonder if my brain has rotted in the same manner that makes some boomers fall for AI slop. There will be videos where the use of AI is not very noticeable to me, but not with deceptive intent. Maybe an illustration to get the point across or a subtle two-second animation. Commenters will very passionately point it out. To be honest, I don't see the creator either paying for the equivalent human work or drawing anything better themselves.

Does it really just look that bad? Is it an issue with what AI and the companies that sponsor it stand for? Theft of real artists' work? Does it change at all if the images were generated locally with the creator's own hardware and resources? What about upscaling images, like I do with old wallpapers so that they look better on new monitors?

I assume what I've just said will attract downvotes, but that was my thought process and I do want to understand where other people draw the line and for what reasons. Should we limit it to quick-and-dirty illustrations, pure novelty, upscaling existing images, a model that only incorporates work if the artist consents, or something else?

Some apps on my phone will pop up with a dialog containing the release notes the first launch after an update. I find myself dismissing them almost immediately since

1. due to automatic updates, I don't go into an app aware of updates and anticipating changes
2. I have a task in mind when opening the app and just want to get straight to it

It's not always obvious where to bring up the release notes again once they are dismissed. So I wonder, do developers include such popups with the expectation that many users will stop to read them, are most users just as hasty as I am, or both?

The battery tray indicators I've tried on Linux so far only seem to take the instantaneous power consumption into account. Is there one that estimates remaining battery life based on power draw over a longer time window and integrates easily with my desktop environment's tray?

Even if I have the full address of a destination, trying to search for it in CoMaps easily takes more than 30 seconds before I can select it and have it shown on the map. Sometimes if I have a general idea of where it is, I can find it faster than search. Is this normal? Are there settings I'm overlooking that could speed it up?

When I first looked up psyllium husk powder as a fiber supplement, people were complaining that it made the water thick and gross. That enticed me to buy it. And when the packaging said to drink immediately after mixing lest it thicken, I instead let it sit for a good 15 minutes until my glass of water had a smoothie-like consistency. Makes me love drinking water again and also sad that I can't have it with every glass of water or else I get stopped up.

When the privacy laws in the US are so weak, it seems like maintaining the effect of data removal requires paying for the data removal service indefinitely. Is it worth it regardless? Are there any cases and criteria where one should pay for data removal, more so than the average person? Interested to hear if anyone here has seen noticeable benefits, beyond the mere fact that their PII have been scrubbed from data brokers and search sites.

Middle click failure plagues nearly every mouse I've owned, OEM, Logitech, wired, or wireless. I take full advantage of the middle click shortcuts like opening links in new tabs, but I don't think I'm putting it through undue stress either. As far as I can tell, I'm clicking it with the same force as I would the other mouse buttons and much less frequently than the left click.

Failure usually starts with occasional missed middle clicks, which after some point, rapidly progresses until it's failing to register more often than not. At that point, everything else will still work perfectly. No improvement even if I take it apart to clean out what little dirt had accumulated.

One of my mice has managed to avoid this fate far longer than the others but I've just recently stopped using it due to the rubberized exterior turning all gooey and sticky. The only middle mouse buttons that seem immune to all of this are the ones on ThinkPads. Anyone else notice this or could recommend a good mouse that can stand up to a bit of middle-clicking?

A while ago, I set up unattended-upgrades on my Debian 13 machines. Running sudo apt updatedoesn't cross my mind now that I assume unattended-upgrades takes care of that for me, but every once in a while, I'll try installing something and get the "Unable to locate package" errors associated with outdated repositories. After being made aware of having outdated repositories and packages, I'll go and run sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade on my other machines, only to be told that all packages are up to date and unattended-upgrades did do its job there. I don't keep a record of this happening, but I also don't recall there being any pattern to which of my machines are affected and which aren't at any given time.

Where could I start hunting down the cause of this inconsistent behavior? I did double-check that I enabled it via sudo dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades

I could in theory upgrade the power supply to go beyond the 150W target, but then I'd also need a better chassis because it is already quite warm with my current 130W card.

Hoping to stick with AMD, but if my wishes to play around with local LLMs and image upscaling makes Nvidia a more practical choice, I can live with that compromise.

Working with a budget of 200 US, I'm fine going with a used GPU.

Friends and I are considering some travelling around the world, including perhaps a trip to China. There is much negative press on the state of digital privacy in China, but what exactly should I pay attention to if I do visit? If I am your typical privacy enthusiast with a GrapheneOS phone and Linux laptop, how might I prepare for the trip privacy-wise? I'd also love to hear any firsthand experience as to which concerns are myths and which ones are real.