Years ago, I suspected the new dishwasher detergent tablets and pods being heavily pushed were a ripoff. I put a tablet in a Ziploc bag and crushed it with a hammer, then measured the resultant powder: about 2 tablespoons (30 mL). That struck me as grossly excessive, in line with the "always fill all detergent cups to maximum for best results" instrux on detergent powder boxes (and then liquid/gel bottles).
So I bought a box of regular ol' normal ol' boring ol' dishwasher powder and started experimenting. 1 tablespoon (15 mL): dishes completely clean. 2 teaspoons (10 mL): dishes completely clean. Mind, I scrape off loose leavings, but almost no dishes get rinsed before they go in the dishwasher.
The math quickly showed that yup, the pods and powders are a complete scam. So for years now, we've had this what you see here under the sink, with a teaspoon measure in.
The dishes consistently get perfectly clean, but I've never liked that dishwasher-detergent smell they have after. It occurred to me the other night I'd stopped the experiment without inceeding 2 teaspoons, so I tried 1 teaspoon (5 mL — probably more like 6ish; I don't level off the teaspoon, just scoop-shake-dispense).
Result: dishes perfectly clean. They couldn't possibly be any cleaner, so all the marketing babble about the pods unlocking whole new levels of Ultra Platinum Extreme Clean are bulk wrap. And the dishes now come out smelling of…nothing.
I'm not gonna retire on the savings, but every bit helps. There's a whole lot less waste this way, in money and detergent and packaging and production. The powder comes in a recyclable-for-real paperboard box rather than a recyclable-nudge-wink-lol plastic tub.
As I've done this much schtick, I might's well make a complete job of it: Consumer Reports' latest test of dishwasher detergent doesn't include powders, they say, because most people buy pods and tablets. That's antithetical to CR's nominal mission; decades ago they'd've done my same math and experiments and recommended avoiding the scam and buying the powders they found to work well.
you actually do want some bits of food in there though as they're used as additional "free" grit to apply mechanical action for scraping the dishes clean.
But I totally agree, I went back to the powder. Cheaper and more effective.
They're selling convenience and Americans are stupid
#AudioMo When I decided to go watch our local actors in training perform a short stage play called "Vamptopia" I certainly didn't expect this quite impressive variation of "Part of your world" from the Little Mermaid to happen. I'm pretty happy to have witnessed it, and luckily for you, I've had my trusty stealth recording kit with me. Although the intro is in German, no worries, the actual song starts at 00:51.
Today I invited a couple friends to the #NoKings protest this Saturday, and they were more open to it than I thought. (Not my most political friends.) Turning out lots of folks who don't usually protest would be amazing. I hope Saturday is the day many people wake up and realize the resisting this administration is not fringe, it's what most Americans want.
If you're in the USA, I hope you'll join us! nokings.org/
On June 14—Flag Day—Donald Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday. A spectacle meant to look like strength. But real power isn’t staged in Washington. It rises up everywhere else.
Trump deployed forces against American citizens to chill dissent, spark confrontation, and create an excuse to seize even more power. We won’t back down, but we need to be prepared to handle encounters with law enforcement and de-escalate tense situations. Attend tomorrow’s “Know Your Rights” training with the ACLU to help keep No Kings protests safe and non-violent: act.aclu.org/a/2025-kyr-traini…
My least favorite work interactions are with customers’ 3rd party “rockstar” consultants. I never know how to respond to certain sorts of queries. Ones where I could answer the question as asked but it really implies a deeper misunderstanding. I feel like I want to write him a treatise on VPNs: what they are and how they work. And Cc his boss (who shares his surname…) to communicate the depth of the problem.
I’m letting my boss handle it. He’s the networking guy anyway…
well, there is vpnc (ipsec) and OpenConnect (SSL) which was banned for us to use when I worked at Cisco but we could just spoof the software version IIRC and it worked fine... 🥲
Google Tightens Android Sideloading—At What Cost to Digital Freedom?
Google has begun blocking sideloaded Android apps in Singapore, citing security concerns over apps requesting sensitive permissions like SMS and accessibility services.
Purism makes premium phones, laptops, mini PCs and servers running free software on PureOS. Purism products respect people's privacy and freedom while protecting their security.
So even when apps ask for permission and you explicitly give it to them, that's too much lack of security. I mean sure: To scourges like #Google and the government, security means people need to be "protected" by force against their own selves. That's the thinking we see everywhere these days, because we've allowed complete psychopaths in all positions of power.
We're starting to roll out a new screen curtain feature to black out the display when using Narrator - thanks, as always, for folks that have shared feedback about this 😊
Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4250 (KB5060820) to the Beta Channel for Windows Insiders on Windows 11, version 24H2.
Changes in Beta Channel b
📣 Po pokuse obviniť muža s valaškou a snahách dokázať, že očkovanie robí z ľudí kukuricu, prišiel originálny únos busty.Čo dokáže politická mlaď, Martina Ši...
You can restrict the audience of your posts on Mastodon using post visibility settings. You can set each post's visibility separately if you want, and you can also choose a default visibility.
There are four or five different visibility settings which let you control who can see your posts and how easily they can be discovered.
Instructions on how to set Mastodon's post visibilities (and lots of questions answered about this feature) at:
Thanks! These days we teach newcomers to add tagged nodes using @vespucci_editor . After the party, we also share a @MapComplete link so people can add ratings and reviews (to @mangroveReviews) for the restaurant we dined at.
What's been lost... Entomologists from Krefeld, Germany, collected flying insects for two weeks in August 1994 (left) and—at the same site, with an identical trap— in August 2016 (right). Similar data from 63 German protected areas overall gave a shocking result: a 76 percent drop in insect biomass between 1989 and 2016. It has worsened significantly in the past 9 years. Photographed at Entomological Society of Krefeld
My friends Critter, Oscar and Talon from The Kuloran Players have produced a truly beautiful sounding audio rendition of the literal formation of the world of #Kirandur. In tradition, it was released 2 weeks early over at our #patreon, but these weeks have passed, and you can listen to the full 18 minutes now! It also happened to be during #AudioMo. What a treat! Anyway, links: First, the promised audio: audiopub.site/listen/7398e304-… If you don't know what this is all about, take a read through our website to learn more: kpguild.games If you liked what you heard, or what you read, enough to wish you could support us, you can do that through our Patreon and gain some cool benefits as you do: patreon.com/KPGuild Enjoy listening! #blind #audiogame
So I went into my work Google account and disabled Gemini features. Now *every time* I open Google Drive, I get this big modal I have to dismiss. This is worse.
- Headphone jack - Square corners on screen, no rounded edges - No holes in screen - Smol like my hands - Ability to install and distribute my own software - Ability to turn off anything that bugs me - Ability, when reading ebooks, to silence visual "noise" like clocks or navbars - I want to neither monetarily nor in platform political power support a company that sells "AI"-branded features as part of their business activities
Attached: 1 image
So I went into my work Google account and disabled Gemini features. Now *every time* I open Google Drive, I get this big modal I have to dismiss. This is worse.
This is why people don't support big media. Greta Thunberg was kidnapped. Point blank. Was on international waters. Israel is not the world Police. They do not have jurisdiction in international waters. That is kidnapping. No denying it. And not a single large media corporation is mentioning that. What the hell is wrong with this world? #news #gaza #israel #usa #aid #climate #international
Is there proof of this? I can't find the GPS coordinates for their last reported location, but Israel's territorial waters extend 12 nautical miles off the coast and they were stopped within visual distance from the Port of Ashdod so I'm pretty sure it wasn't still in international waters
Palestine is not a state. Should there be a two state solution? Yes, I think so, but the rest of the world has not committed to that and put the appropriate pressure on Israel.
As it currently stands, that land is recognized as Israel's and so are those territorial waters.
edit: I should clarify, most of the world does think Palestine should be a state but the only official recognition happens within the UN and the USA has veto power and keeps voting against which stops any progress. Really dumb.
@ibrahim_cris @feld -"no State may validly purport to subject any part of them to its sovereignty. The Convention on the High Seas was used as a foundation for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), signed in 1982, which recognized exclusive economic zones extending 200 nautical miles (230 mi; 370 km) from the baseline, where coastal states have sovereign rights to the water column and sea floor as well as the natural resources found there."
I was also gonna mention the 200NM boundary but that's really more about natural resources than territory. The territorial waters is a much shorter distance.
@ibrahim_cris @feld tldr Israel only has jurisdiction 200 miles outside of their shore, the aid vessel was both more than 200 mi away from ANY shore, and also was not heading towards Israels' shores, it was heading to Gaza, where Israel does not have jurisdiction either, as Gaza is recognized as an independent state. Even IF they were within 200 miles of the shore of Gaza, Israel still does not have jurisdiction there.
not by the UN, which stupidly is what we have somehow decided is what matters internationally and we likely won't see that change until the USA is dethroned as the world's superpower and the UN is disbanded
@feld @ibrahim_cris They are recognized by the United Nations as a non-member observer State, so they are recognized as a state just not part of the United nations, similar to Taiwan.
good point, but they even lost other rights in the UN in 2020 when they expired
There's also the Oslo Accords...
International agreement on these things is a fucking nightmare
I don't think this is worth arguing the specifics right now. It's easier to just point out that there are no allies stepping in to help Palestine fight back, so if anything that is enough of a signal that governments are OK with Israel denying Palestinian statehood regardless of what they signal in UN votes.
A lot of cruel and cowardly people out there in power
@ibrahim_cris @feld They. do. not. have. power. to. operate. outside. of. their. jurisdiction. Point blank. They are not the world police. They're not allowed to do just whatever they want. There are literally multiple cases going on right now specifically about this blockade because they are operating outside of their jurisdiction.
All of Apple's operating systems have received a redesigned user interface called "Liquid Glass," featuring translucent elements with rounded corners, and an all-around new look.
https://appleinsider.
As rumored, Apple has announced that developers will soon be able to access the on-device large language models that power Apple Intelligence in their own apps through the Foundation Models framework.
https://appleinsider.
If you want to dockerize a GeoDjango project, the most common method is to use an oficial Python image as its base, and install all GIS dependencies over it, being GDAL the heaviest one, making your final image easily reach the mark of the multi-mega…
Claims that WWDC will crash and burn because it won't launch a device like Apple Vision Pro annually, or refresh all the hardware Apple has are evergreen -- but that is entirely missing the point of the conference.
Claims that WWDC will crash and burn because it won't launch a device like Apple Vision Pro annually, or refresh all the hardware Apple has are evergreen — but that is entirely missing the point of the conference.
🕹️ What happens when a veteran MUD dev builds a modern client from scratch—with ARIA #accessibility support, dyslexia-friendly fonts, and captioned sound effects?
I talked with RahjIII, longtime steward of The Last Outpost, about his browser-based client designed to make text games playable on anything from smartphones to CRTs.
If you care about MU*s, inclusive design, or the joy of old-school games meeting today's tech, this one's for you.
Codethink specializes in system-level software engineering to enable advanced technical applications, working across a range of industries including automotive, medical, telecoms and finance.
Welcome to GUADEC 2025 GUADEC is the GNOME community’s largest conference, bringing together hundreds of users, contributors, community members, and enthusiastic supporters for a week of talks and workshops.
“If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces, or forces that support Israel.”
With our new Customer Dashboard, it’s easy to find your license keys and download the latest versions of any and all apps you’ve purchased from Rogue Amoeba.
You argue that the only sensible action is to hold off, that is, not use genAI. Would that be your position on all new technology, all new technology in the current environment, or is there something special about genAI (e.g. being a psychological hazard)?
I ask because I don't like to contemplate how different, and possibly worse, my life would have been if my parents had taken such a cautious position about personal computers in the 80s.
@matt The entire blog post is an argument that there is something special about generative models that works in ways that are similar to homeopathy and psychic cons and has a risk model that's more similar to pharmaceuticals than other tech. I mention several examples of how it's different including citing another long blog post of mine.
If you missed that then I must have made a huge mistake in how I wrote the blog post.
We loved showcasing our full range of assistive tech at Sight City 2025 - from Orbit Reader & Slate to Graphiti and Magna! Thanks to all who connected with us. Let’s keep pushing accessibility forward. #OrbitResearch #AssistiveTech #Inclusion
Orbit Research had an overwhelming response at Sight City 2025! Thank you to everyone who visited our booth and tried the all-new Orbit Player – our DAISY and media player for accessible reading and entertainment.
To paraphrase; the toy-like lossy chat interface in ai tools causes people to systemically downplay their own complex part in making them work. Which is bad for building good tools, and bad for evaluating technology.
My current theory of agentic programming: people are amazing at adapting the tools they're given and totally underestimate the extent to which they do it, and the amount of skill we build doing that is an incidental consequence of how badly the tools…
feld
in reply to Isocat • • •you actually do want some bits of food in there though as they're used as additional "free" grit to apply mechanical action for scraping the dishes clean.
But I totally agree, I went back to the powder. Cheaper and more effective.
They're selling convenience and Americans are stupid