The 18-150 is a super zoom, so it gives up some image quality to give you everything in one lens. It goes from reasonably wide to very telephoto in one swoop. Optically, that much zoom means they have to make compromises somewhere, so it’s not the sharpest lens, and at the 150 end it’s not exactly what I would consider bright - but most people only use that outside in the daytime when it doesn’t matter. They’re really popular for people on vacation or who want very little kit, and if you’re just posting pictures to the web you probably won’t notice the flaws.

If you’re buying used damage is pretty much always a concern unless you’re buying from a reputable used dealer who has checked out the lens for you. Especially since you’re a beginner thats probably your best opinion. If you’re buying personally you’ll want to inspect the lens thoroughly for issues, and it’s best if you can meet in person and try the lens on your own camera and look for flaws in any images you shoot. If you’re buying online just make sure they have a good return policy and that they seem to honor it.

Small list:

• Make sure it zooms smoothly, and if you hold it with the lens pointing down the zoom doesn’t creep from where you left it. (Or doesn’t do it too bad, some lenses do that brand new)
• Make sure the focus motors work ok - there’s a lot of variance in how different motors sound, so finding a review with audio of them can be helpful.
• Make sure the aperture works properly.
• Make sure the filter threads are ok, as well as any hood bayonets.
• Make sure the mount is ok, all the contacts are ok, and it communicated with your camera properly.
• If the lens is supposed to have seals make sure they’re in place and in ok shape. If they aren’t check if they’re user replaceable, and negotiate accordingly.
• Make sure the front and back lens elements are clear and free of scratches. Sometimes there can be tiny minor scratches in the coatings that are only visible in some light, they often don’t have a large impact on image quality but negotiate accordingly.
• When you look down the lens it should be clear and clean. If you see any cloudy areas or mold run away.
• Find a better list than this online, there has to be one this is just the basics.

With all that said, I have a few lenses that I’ve bought knowing they have issues and like 90% of the time it’s hard to notice in actual photos.

Honestly the best advice is to just get out there with something and start learning. Don’t spend too much money and don’t commit until you know what you want.

That sounds like a job for the kit lens. The r50 should come in a kit with a 18-45, which is worth using for a while. If you have to buy something the 18-150 is a tad on the slow side (f stops wise, not actual speed) but it should be able to do most things reasonably well, and it should fit in your price bracket. You could get a wide and a longer macro, but you’d be looking at the real cheap prime manual focus lenses (which I like, but they’re not exactly beginner friendly).

It’s really worth really double checking if you can find a used one though. Kit lenses are incredibly common, and way cheaper on the used market because of it. They’re a great starting point until you have enough experience to know what you really want, and a couple hundred USD can go a long way toward something like a fast portrait prime lens or whatever you decide on.

https://optimizeyourbiology.com/light-bulb-database

I almost always recommend the Phillips Ultra Definition bulbs, but they only do 2700k and 5000k. If you want something in between you might get stuck paying quite a bit more for a specialty one.

No french animation? Cause The Illusionist is a hell a of movie.

They don’t show the labels because the brand didn’t pay. If you see a label with a brand on it they probably paid.

For a cooking show it’s probably not going to be worth the time and effort to get a contract in place for every ingredient, so you only see it occasionally.

Something actually changed and now there’s a carry-on not included tier ticket. I wrote more in my other comment in the thread.

After having to fly United a bunch of times this summer, they changed the names of the tickets and invented a new “no one wants that” tier.

There’s now standard economy which is what everyone’s used to and gives you a “personal item” (i.e. a backpack or a purse) and a “carry on item”, and basic economy which only includes the personal item. They mention it on their website, but on third party websites its not quite as obvious which ticket you’re getting.

It has been a nightmare - on every single flight there’s a crowd of people pissed that they aren’t allowed a carry on with their ticket, with them having to run halfway across the airport to upgrade their tickets or pay 3x as much for a bag they thought was included.

If you’re being charitable, it’s a roundabout discount on checked bags to fix the problem they invented by charging for checked bags and then sucking at handling them. Every single flight I took had them asking for people to check their carry on for free because the bins were going to be overloaded, and it seems like they want to incentivize actually checking a bag again.

I started instantly asking them to gate check my carry on (for free) because honestly, the airport experience is way nicer when you don’t have to deal with your luggage all the time. If you check 1 bag as a couple you might even save money, and if you’re alone it might be worth the difference to not have to worry about only having two pairs of pants on your three week trip.

More realistically they want to normalize having to pay for carry on the same way they did checked bags, and they are trying to sneak around that by starting with only their new BS economy tier. Wouldn’t surprise me if they got rid of “basic” and just made carry on a “business class” or whatever amenity.

5 KILOwatt hours is a typical laptop battery? Aren’t they more like 50-100wh?

Love the idea and article, but…

just 800 watts, enough to power a small fridge or charge a laptop,

I want to see a laptop with an 800w charger.

aren’t you still limited by ambient air temp because the hot side of the Peltier needs to be cooled by air anyway?

No, that’s why the baby fridge works. The peltier TEC in the fridge can produce temperatures below ambient, but generally not below freezing. Computer chip TEC coolers would go farther and push more power through the TEC and do things like water-cooling the hot side instead of a little fan.

The reason they don’t get used anymore more complicated. It’s my understanding that basically TECs have a sort of limit on the amount of heat they can push from the cold side to the hot side, because moving more heat means more energy used and thus more waste heat. Apparently most modern chips are past that limit. IIRC, TECs can only move something like 100w of heat - past that and they start to heat themselves up because of waste heat. Modern chips can be like 300w.

Sub ambient cooling also comes with a bunch of issues like condensation, so no one really uses it day to day. Also, chips are run so close to their limits now that cooling like that doesn’t get you nearly the performance difference it once did.

Joe Pera Talks With You might be my favorite show of all time. The way it makes fun of the midwest with such love, and is both hilarious and heartfelt just hits different.

Ah, ok. The Unifi stuff is a bit weird like that. I recommend installing the controller on a computer if you continue to have issues. You don’t have to run it all the time, just use it for config and then turning it off is fine. It’ll give you way more information and control over exactly how the AP is set up.

Which model is it? As far as I’m aware all the Unifi APs need the controller for config. It doesn’t need to stay running unless you want a couple features for large deployments but you do need to run it to set things up initially. The Air Max / uisp lines are the ones with web based config.

Do you have a continuously running unifi controller or is it only running when you do the config? Does it do the same thing with the controller opposite to how it is now (ie if you aren’t running it does it do it when you leave the controller on)?

Are you running the 2.4 and 5 as separate SSIDs or the same one?

Are you on the latest controller and firmware?

To be honest, they seem to be taking a very media literate approach (impressively so, they definitely learned some stuff about YouTube and how to do this kind of thing) to this whole thing, so I kind of get the “farming for views” stance.

But I get it since that means they are actually getting traction instead of just being a thing that drama YouTube talks about for a week and gets swept under the rug. The video notes he’s a very powerful figure in a relatively small town, so they need media pressure on their side.

Ill post this comment here too since it’s the same video, but you might want to put a content warning on this video, it’s pretty rough.

The first video is largely about him running illegal lotteries, which is pretty terrible given the scale they operate at, but it’s something that the average person might not know about or really think about it being essentially child gambling.

This second video is an interview with a former employee who was put in solitary confinement for a video that never made it to YouTube because it was actually just them torturing him. Like, legitimate Geneva Convention war crime torture. Constant noise, no idea what time it is because you can’t see the sun, constant lights so you can’t sleep, constant monitoring, and him running until his feet bled.

If any of it is anywhere near true they need to be sued off the face of the planet in addition to going to prison.

As far as I’ve found, they’re both right. You shouldn’t have to wash your mushrooms, but it’s not a bad idea if you’re not buying fancy mushrooms.

The generic button mushroom variants you’re probably getting at the grocery store are grown in compost, which often contains some manure - ie poops.

But before growing mushrooms it’s pasteurized. Mycelium is picky, and fairly easily out-competed by other stuff, so to make sure you’re just growing mushrooms and not bacteria you basically have to sterilize the medium they’re grown in.

But those mushrooms are often grown in open beds, and harvested by hand. And that means they get that poop dirt right up on them. Will it immediately give you super botulism? Probably not but it’s still kinda ick.

Fancier mushroom varieties from smaller cultivars are the ones that actually don’t really need washed and often shouldn’t be. They’re grown in highly sterile environments and they fruit out of a container, so they never touched the poop. And that’s if they even used compost - lots use straw or wood.

If you do decide to wash your button mushrooms it’s not a big deal, they aren’t actually sponges, and they don’t absorb as much water as some cooking shows say. If they get soggy it probably means they’re old, try putting them in the fridge for a few hours uncovered. It’s basically a dehydrator.

To be fair there’s a Linux version of the bedrock server. But yeah not having it on the steam deck is pretty annoying.

To be fair I’d call it a wash. Bedrock fixes a lot of weird stuff like quasi connectivity and being able to push things like chests with pistons but also introduces it’s own bugs like weird timing things and randomly taking fall damage. There’s also weird differences like being able to do things with cauldrons or just like minor texture differences that they are slowly bringing into sync.

Because Bedrock runs on phones, tablets, consoles, and a host of other random crap, and does so relatively well. Because of that the install base and playtime especially among younger players is actually massively skewed toward Bedrock being the more used. Add to that rumors that the Java codebase at least was a terrible mess, and the performance issues Java edition still has to this day and it’s no wonder they wanted to do a full rewrite, especially after having to make things like the console editions and even one for the 3DS.

The windows launcher is annoying though.