I live in Germany.

I looked it up. Neat concept, but it is availiable within US only. There is nothing similar availiable at my country - at least, not that I know of.

Did you follow the tutorial I posted? If so, the English-translated part may not have the right terminology. I followed the instructions on the linked website: https://www.404media.co/paypal-personalized-shopping-opt-out/. I suppose, this is appliccable worldwide.

To me, it is. I don’t have a credit card - I never got one offered by my bank (…which makes one think…). Back in the “early days” (early 2000s - mostly on Ebay) it was quite common to recieve the bank information of the seller after purchase. Then I had to wire the money to the sellers’ account. There was no online banking. It could take up to a week to wire the money. After the seller recieved the payment, the ordered item got sent with postal service. When Paypal was introduced, it was a game changer: the seller recieved the money instantly, and could send the purchased item right away.

How do you do online shopping then? Most websites offer Paypal as a payment method, among credit cards. Or do you pay with a credit card?

• Einloggen
• Herunterscrollen und unten auf der Seite den Link „Datenschutz“ anklicken
• dann bei Datenschutz festlegen den Link „Datenschutzeinstellungen“ anklicken
• dann das Feld „Interessenbasierte Werbung“ anklicken
• auf jeden der beiden Einträge klicken und den Schalter jeweils auf „aus“ schalten

. Translated from the above:

• Log in
• Scroll down and click on the “Privacy” link at the bottom of the page
• then click on the “Privacy settings” link under Data & Privacy
• then click on the “Interest-based advertising” (Personalized shopping) field
• click on each of the two entries and set the switch to “off” in each case

I bought this one. It has a built-in battery that is connected to the board with a standard (?) connector cable. The mouse can be opened with one screw underneath the gliding pad. I have this mouse for over a year now and I’m satisfied with it. It lasts 7 days with RGB-Lights switched on up to 10 days with RGB lights switched off - depanding on usage. You can operate up to 3 devices with it (BT 5.0, BT 3.0 and wirelessly with the dongle held with a magnet underneath the mouse when not needed. It can be charged with the USB C port. It can be charged while in use. Unfortunately tho, the mouse seems to be out of stock at Amazon. Perhaps other shops have this device listed. I obtained the mouse in Germany.

Edit: This is the mouse opened (I had to clean it because it was operated in a feline enviroment). The battery can be replaced easily:

I think that manufacturers of tech products test their products only with a few standard configurations - but in reality there are too many possible combinations of different configurations:

Take a bluetooth mouse for example. Generally, it connects to a computer and it works. Now imagine that you have a different configuration - a logicboard in your laptop that has not been tested by the manucacturer of the mouse or an obscure model of the bluetooth reciever, that also hasn’t been tested to work with that mouse. Your mouse works well in the beginning, but disconnects at random times. You can’t pinpoint the issue, and when you are looking for help online, nobody seems to have the same problems with that mouse.

In this case, said mouse sucks, because it doesn’t function reliably. A different person with a different configuration of their computer (different logicboard, different model of the bluetooth unit) might have no problems at all with the same mouse.

Wait, we actually have to do something? /s

Change has to come from both sides, from companies as well as from consumers. Yes, Your actions don’t really matter when you try to reduce waste, but the oil tanker spills millions of liters into the ocean, or when you use electricity from renewable sources while there is coal extracted and burned to fulfill the need of energy.

But as a consumer you can change the perspective about it by observing it from the personal economic side. This way, doing something in favour of reducing waste or doing something to lessen the effect of the climate catastrophe is merely a side effect of your actions:

• I don’t have children, because I don’t want to take responisbility for them. Also, I don’t like children. This saves me a lot of money, which I don’t have.
• I am relying on a car. But instead of driving a truck-like 5l-gas guzzler, I drive a small economic car. 90% of the time I drive alone anyway. A small car means less fuel consumption, less tax, cheaper repairs. Also, there are more parking spots availiable for me in the city, since the car is shorter than other vehicles (at least for parallel parking).
• When running errands, I combine them with using the car. For instance, I do my grocery shopping on the way back from work, and I can make use of my car’s storage capabilities. This saves me precious time, since I’m on the road anyway.
• When buying clothes, I don’t buy the cheapest clothes availiable. Mid-price ranged clothes are more durable, and they can be worn longer and are cheaper in the long run. Also, I don’t use fabric softener. Not only does it contribute to polluting the enviroment - fabric softener reduces the capability for towels to dry things (which defeats the purpose of a towel), because it hinders the fabrics’ capillar effect for storing water in the fibers. Additional to that, I don’t use an electric dryer. I hang my clothes to dry. This measurement extends your clothes lifetime, which is saving money.
• Although I am a meat eater, I am open-minded to vegan food - in the last decade it came a long way and there are good substitutes. Some of them are trial and error though (some taste like a stack of hay smells), but the alternatives are out there. It doesn’t have to taste exactly like meat. The worst thing that can happen is, that you expand the list of things you can eat.
• And the most important thing of all: DON’T BUY USELESS CRAP! Sure, the cloud-based app-operated thing is appealing, but what happens, when the company that produces it goes bankrupt? The cloud service gets shut down! You have a paper weight now. I don’t buy such things, because I don’t want my home cluttered with stuff I don’t need eventually. When I buy new stuff (mostly to replace broken stuff that I can’t repair) I do research first and evaluate what features of the desired thing really benefit my needs. I rather buy expensive stuff that is more durable an has a longer lifetime over all. In the long run it turns out to be less expensive.

In my opinion it makes more sense to analyse your actions with the affect of personal economic impact in mind than to view it in the sense of reducing the impact of the climate catastrophe. Because since your neighbor isn’t, you can easily feel helpless and de-motivated.

This happens with your returned packages (article is in German, half of it is translated below):

Amazon shreds its returns 08.06.2018June 8, 2018

The “Destroy” shipping method is bringing Amazon into disrepute - is the online retailer really destroying tons of functioning products? The German government is already talking about a “huge scandal” Germany, Pforzheim: Symbolic image of Amazon logistics center The “Destroy shipping method” can also be booked with the logistics service provider

Tons of returns and products in mint condition, including fridges, cell phones, mattresses and furniture, are said to have been destroyed by online retailer Amazon. This was reported by the ZDF magazine Frontal 21 and Wirtschaftswoche. Both media outlets refer to internal product lists, photos and statements from employees. According to these, goods of all kinds are disposed of “on a large scale” in the mail order company’s German logistics warehouses.

Amazon not only destroys unusable products, but also functional and sometimes new items, according to statements from employees. One employee reported that she destroyed goods worth tens of thousands of euros every day.

Clip from 2022, German. Signature quote: “It is not only an occasional [Euro]Palette of Items, it is whole truckloads - in all fulfilment centers, almost day by day.”

Pizza Hut over Dominos.

In my area Dominos is more common, but they are really bad. All of them. We had them delivered on several occasions (over the time of a couple of years) and at least twice the food wasn’t cooked properly. It was warm but the inside was still raw. When complaining, all you recieve is a voucher so you are bound to them as a customer.

Also, in order to cut preparing times short (a fast order and delivery is advertised) they prepare their pizzas in advance: at our local shop they have a prepared pizzas with the tomato sauce already applied to. They literally have a stack of them handy (at least 30 of these stacked up). They just need to put the toppings onto it, depending on the pizza that will be ordered.

When ordered, you recieve the pizza rather quickly, as promised, but the tomato sauce is more stale than their competitors’ pizza, because the sauce was not freshly applied when the pizza was made). Also, they skimp on the toppings. With a little luck your pizza arrives warm and done (read: not raw on the inside).

Dominos pizza is not worth the money - more precisely, it is a waste of ingredients! I refuse to pay for anything from Dominos - my friends know that and therefore I get invited sometimes when they decide on Dominos. This way, at least I don’t waste my money on them.

Pizza Hut on the other hand is always top notch. There are not many of them where I live, but when there is an occasion to have a pizza at them it’s always worth the money. As far as I know they don’t do deliveries - they are more a restaurant than a fast food place here.

I was living with two other roommates and we were moving into another city to live there together as well. Me and one roommate were planning ahead and got moving boxes, slowly sorting out stuff that can be thrown out, and started packing things way ahead of the moving date.

The other roommate couldn’t be bothered by all of this. The day we were moving he started packing his things. We had rented a moving truck for that day and were able to move my and the prepared roommates’ stuff to the new appartment first. Then we drove back to help lazy roommate. If all had been planned accordingly we wouldn’t have had to drive back to pick up a second batch of household items - only for returning the moving truck, and then to travel back to the new place by train.

Unfortunately he had not anticipated that he would have needed moving boxes and it was way too late to organize some. We were moving all of his stuff with garbage bags. They are not sufficient to move things at all.

Moving lazy roommates’ stuff turned out to last several more hours than anticipated. We almost exceeded the deadline for returning the moving truck to the rental place, which would have resulted in having to be charged for another day.

0/10 for moving with garbage bags instead of moving boxes.

You might be lucky: there is a gui availiable for yt-dlp on GitHub. I just looked it up. The descripition reads:

Graphical interface for the command line tool yt-dlp, which allows users to download videos from various websites, including YouTube. It is designed to be more user-friendly and accessible for those who are not comfortable using the command line.

Link: https://github.com/dsymbol/yt-dlp-gui

Edit/addition:

There are online services availiable (for instance https://yt5s.com/en173) that basically do the same as Cobalt.tools. I assume that they don’t put any emphasis on privacy tho.

Yes, this would be an option (that I did not think of). But I assume that it would be easier to download the same file in another file format, as there will be probably an improvement regarding the video resolution (480p versus 1080p or higher).

Warning, I might be wrong:

yt-dlp seems to be operated with command lines, whereas cobalt is a user interface in an opened browser tab. You paste the link of the desired video or audio source into a search bar and you can toggle different settings (bitrate, file format, video output size etc.). The desired file will be appearing as a download into your download folder.

The funny thing is that said .flv files could be played with VLC without any issue at the time I acquired them. I downloaded a bunch of cartoon episodes in this file format back in 2010 (?) when once-click-hosters like Megavideo were a big thing then. I was able to play them with the then current version of VLC without any problems.

Since then there were several updates with VLC and some time along the way it suddenly didn’t work that good anymore. I might add that this file format is not very common today (it was, when Adobe Flash was still around), so today there might be no incentive to maintain any old codecs for these type of files any longer.

When it gets worse with dwindling playback compatibility I probably have to acquire these files with a more recent file format (e.g. .mp4) in the future.

I discovered that VLC isn’t so good at playing .flv files. This are video files that are saved in the Adobe Flash Video container format. I have some episodes from cartoon series which I downloaded years ago. Sometimes there are no playback issues with VLC, but sometimes the audio track is delayed. For this reason I have installed IINA, but I like VLC’s user interface better.

Not discovered in the past year, but in the year before that:

Blender (program for 3D modelling, animation and rendering)

cobalt.tools(web-app for downloading video or audio content from youtube and other websites)

VLC (media player that plays almost everything)

Well, reading all the answers makes me realize that there might have been a kind of evolution when it comes to TV remotes. I just didn’t come across back lit remotes when I saw them with people in my social circle. Maybe my people just don’t have the latest TV set.

Neat.

The thing that bothers me whenever I see a TV remote is that there doesn’t seem to be a remote control with illuminated keys, like on a computer keyboard. That way you can see the buttons even under dim lit conditions. Also, why aren’t there any remotes with a built-in battery that could be charged like a smartphone?

I don’t own a TV, but I know that back in the days of bulky CRT TV’s there were some remotes that could be iluminated. White LEDs weren’t a thing back then, so they used incandescent lamps which drained the 9V battery fast.

Why aren’t back llit and rechargeable TV remotes a thing today, especially because white LED’s and batteries are quite efficient today?