I present for your consideration the case of September 3rd, 1967: the day Sweden switched from driving on the left side of the road to the right side. One would expect that the incredibly distracting process of overcoming a lifetime of learned habit would be a recipe for chaos, but in fact there were significantly fewer accidents than average on the day of the change ^[1].

As it turns out, the danger of complacency outweighs the danger of distraction. It does not particularly matter where one directs their focus if they are not driving mindfully. In a more natural environment, we’re good enough at identifying dangerous situations to pay attention when it matters, but roads are not a natural environment. For every alert person briefly annoyed by an audio notification there will be at least as many pedal-pushers too relaxed to even form coherent memories, let alone engage in defensive driving.^[2]

I used my WF-1000XM4s daily for 2 years until the batteries gave out. They were already out of warranty, but Sony replaced them anyway. I still use mine daily and am quite happy with the performance. They’re great IEMs if you’re fine with the batteries croaking after a couple of years – not a big deal if you’re comfortable installing aftermarket cells.

It’s not ideal, but I’ve had worse exeriences with other IEMs. My worst experience was actually with the GalaxyBuds, which unfortunately I developed an allergy to (Don’t roll your eyes – I’m not the only one! It was an issue with the rubberized coating in a few specific batches). Those assholes accepted my in-warranty RMA, but then never sent anything back. I literally only wanted a replacement, not even money back! Support completely stonewalled me even though I had the UPS receipt from their return slip 😤

Actually, forget ANC. Get some of that Automatic Brainwave Cancellation

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Delicious gruvbox. Excellent choice with the focus highlight color (I do something similar).

If you use picom, try out this shadow config I made for a similar theme. It creates a neat accent effect that complements the focus border and gives a flatter look:

shadow = true;
shadow-radius = 1;
shadow-opacity = 0.50;
shadow-offset-x = 2;
shadow-offset-y = 2;
shadow-color = "#211521"

Yeah… not much you can do beyond DNS-based blocking for most dumb SmartTV OSes and obviously sideloading iOS apps sucks if you’re not jailbroken. Cases like these are really where they get you!

Regarding Chromecasts, just in case anyone’s interested: they’re still Android under the hood, so you can simply send the Revanced Manager APK via Send files to TV and proceed as usual. FYI: you need to enable developer mode (see step 3, specfically) to install custom APKs – this won’t impact your warranty.

You may be surprised to hear that the revenue split on Premium is the same as the split on Ads: 55% of all Premium money goes directly to creators on a member viewership basis. Alphabet increasing the price of Premium does increase the money going to Youtube corporate, but the revenue structure is fundamentally designed so that creators also receive an equal raise.