Vintage audio equipment. It’s purpose built without gimmicky features, high quality, high performance, and built to last with discrete components and service manuals. Really it doesn’t have to be vintage, but it’s usually the old stuff that prioritizes these traits. I usually play local files (mp3/flac) over a bluetooth DAC but vinyl is fun once in a while. The same living room system gets used for movies and whatever else too.

Great ones, respect.

Same with my car. I think it’s more important than ever to learn how to fix things. “Buy a new one” is becoming less and less viable for certain types of products if you value longevity, privacy, independence, finances, sustainability, etc.

Probably the rock in a shoe trick as well if that’s actually a thing.

I’m not entirely upset at this. It seems like any advances in computing and network speed these days are used as an excuse to collect more data and make software more inefficient. Also from a global warming perspective, if you’re into that, it may be time we start looking at things from a sufficiency standpoint rather than efficiency.

Aside from how the phones actually compare, I think it’d be good to show there is a market for a factory graphene phone. I want companies to see the difference (financially) when they start taking privacy and other pro consumer ideas seriously.

I often add the word “forum” to my searches to help get some actual human discussion instead of ad farming AI slop articles. Seems like the only way to figure things out these days.

I’m leaving any platform that tries this without a second thought. Already left discord. Left reddit and joined here with the account requirement (even though I have an account, just hate the principle).