No, I work in corporate AV, so I’m buying higher end digital signage for most applications at work.

NEC and Philip’s I’ve been using lately, but they are just the cost effective ones now. LG, Samsung, Sony, all make good displays.

Digital sign usually dont have any smart apps, and if they do you can fully disable them.

They also have all the advanced features you could want. Serial and TCP api, multiple ports of various formats, auto on with sync detect, etc.

For personal use, my last three have been Visio from Costco, and while it has the apps, I just never connect to the internet.

I have seen guides online to open up a display and disable the smart elements, but that seems overkill to me.

One thing to watch for, I’ve heard but haven’t witnessed that many displays are getting way more aggressive about auto connecting to wifi for sharing data and updates. If someone has unsecured wifi near by etc.

Yes and no. This is for parents, so ease of use is a huge factor.

The processors in smart TVs are often crap, plus who know what updates and monitoring they are pushing on you.

With a dedicated media device you only have one company to deal with. Personally, I use my playstation for everything, but for my mom a Sony bluray with the apps works fine.

At the end of the day, they’ll want netflix, amazon, youtube, hbo max, etc, and you get a way better experience with a media player vs smart tv. Sony is a known evil as it were, their hardware is good, and they generally don’t fuck up firmware updates.

If you want a true dumb TV, buy a commercial grade display made for digital signage. Bit more expensive, but designed for 24/7 operation and has none of the smart tv fat.

My advice is never use a smart tv of any kind.

Use a third party device like an apple tv or roku, hell even a bluray player with apps on it.

Then get what ever TV you like and never let it see the internet.

I personally like Visio, but any mid grade display is fine.

The pace of change is about every five years, and some elements are always in transition.

All in one turn key solutions are always one to two cycles behind, so may work great with the stuff I’m already replacing.

I think these are honest attempts to simplify, but by the time they have it sorted its obsolete. If I have to build modules anyway to work with new equipemnt, might as well just write all the code in my native language.

These also tend to be attempts at all in one devices, requiring you to use devices only compatible with those subsystems. I want to be able to use best tech from what ever manufacturer. New and fancy almost always means a command line interface, which again means coding.

20 years ago at a trade show, a new module based visual coding tool was introduced in my field which claimed “You’ll never need another programmer”.

Oddly enough, I still have a job.

The tools have gotten better, but I still write code every day because procedural programming is still the best way to do things.

It is just now reaching the point that we can do some small to medium scale projects with plug and play systems, but only with very specific equipment and configurations.

This is my solution. I’ve said it before, but think it should be repeated. The global population was half of today’s when I was born. 4 billion instead of the current 8+ billion.

That means if half the population disappeared today, we’d just be back where we were in 1975.

Not having kids is the best thing I can do for both the environment, and myself.

Has the added benifit of leaving me as a passive observer who doesn’t have a biological need to care about the future.

I went into one of the larger local shops to buy some risers or something to try and adjust my old setup. Older sales guy about my age took one look at my gear and said “Your knees must hurt like hell”.

I had the money, so I just went full in on new gear, and came away with something I would never have picked for myself.

Not only did he size everything proper for me, he made sure all the pieces were right together. For the first time in my life toe and heel line up exactly with the edge, and where they belong on the pressure points. I’d always riden too small a board and had far too wide a stance to make up for it.

I was still skeptical, but he told me if I didn’t love it he’d do a full price exchange.

Even though it’s about the longest board I’ve ever had, the banana camber makes it feel half the size. Took about three runs to actually trust the board, and I was completely sold, you couldn’t pay me to ride the old gear again.

True, but at least where I ride they have 100% snow making covered. Solution to man made warning is man made snow.

Joking aside, the season in the midwest sure has shrunk since I was a kid.

It’s like going from moms station wagon to a high end sports car. Do I need the performance sports car? Usually no, but those few times you push it, it’s ready for all that and more.

Thermal form boots are a must, though I guess that tech is more than 15 years old in ski boots at least. I no longer cringe and grunt when I put on my boots, they are as comfortable as any footwear I’ve owned.

The flexibility in modern plastics means the straps and bindings themselves are stiffer where they need to be, and have give where they don’t. Combined with the boots there are no more pinch points at all, and all the force you put into riding goes where you want it.

I ride almost exclusively in the midwest US, so hard, rough, icy conditions that most people wouldn’t consider snowboarding in are the every day. A board with reverse camber, often called banana, and magna tractions, serrated edges for holding grip on ice, are a must.

“Turns ice into powder”, well I dont know if I’d go that far. I can lay into turns in the worst conditions and completely trust the edge to hold. When you get that horrible downhill edge that wants to catch and slam you into the ground, the newer complex curves in the camber means more often than not you will pivot out instead of hanging up. I can’t count the number of times I’ve felt that edge wanting to catch and end my day, only to slip around switch and get away with it.

I’m sure there are more now, but a product called 3DO gel was the first I saw. Flexible and soft normally, it turns ridged under force. I have pads of that stuff basically all over my body, knee and elbow pads, but also tail bone, forearms, and in the liner of the helmet. Saw a demo where they were hitting a guy with a shovel and instantly thought “That’s for me”.

If I had to pick one, a board with C2 or C3 gen camber from lib tech, or its equivalent makes the biggest difference. The over all package of a new setup bought and sized together for my cough, um, “modern” weight requirements, took riding from a painful and nervous experience, and made it relaxed and enjoyable again. Due to many old injuries, I used to ride an hour, maybe two, and had to quit. Now I can ride a full evening, and feel good about doing a few hours the next day as well.

The advances in material science and manufacturing in sports equipment in the past 15 years has been amazing.

That means boots, bindings, and a snowboard that would have seemed like alien technology to me when I started riding. Same goes for all the saftey gear, knee pads, helmets, integrated wrist guards in gloves.

The performance, comfort, and saftey offered by modern equipement means I can still enjoy my favorite sports at 50. The thought of getting on a hill with gear I had just 15 years ago makes me shudder.

My earliest gaming memory is my dad taking me to a local hotel bar to play Pac-Man when it came out, which suggests spring of 1980.

I know I played pong, river raid, and pitfall on home consoles as well, not sure which was first.

One xmass we got an Atari, but when my dad realized it came with a poker game he returned it a few days later.

First system I had actual private access to was a TRS-80.

TIL that both Voyager craft are still operating, simply amazing.

Agreed, I started in electronics repair in the 90s, and began learning to code in 2004. 20 years and over a dozen languages later and I feel I am still learning to code.

People say that programming jobs are going to go away because of LLMs, but I don’t see it, at least not any time soon.

They have been trying to eliminate programmers in my primary language since before I started, and I still have steady work.

The thought that a large number of people from non-tech backgrounds can just become proficient programmers in a reasonable amount of time is of course insane. I’ve known many very talented techs who burned out and gave up trying to learn to program.

Something has to be done, and I don’t pretend for a moment I have any answers. I have traveled through many small towns all around the US, and the decline in the past 10 years or so is really depressing to see.

A few years ago, right before the pandemic in fact, I came very close to moving to Missouri.

At the time, turning the job down because of the incredibly low final offer was one of the hardest things I’d ever done.

Ended up finding a much better job and moving back to my home town in a decidedly blue state, really dodged a bullet on that one.

Well, it better not be. I suspect the outcome of this election is going to determine how a lot of things work.

And, as I have to keep reminding people, the only person who has actually beaten Trump before.

And yet I’ll still go out and vote against Trump instead of staying home in november.

We’re in I believe the sixth great extinction event. This is won’t be in the top three.

Life will survive just fine, it will evolve and adapt as it always has.

Well, I voted against Trump last time, and this time I’m split. Yes, I’m voting for Biden, but that doesn’t mean I’m not voting really really hard against Trump.