An easy way to do this is to get an inexpensive DVD / BluRay player and disks. My (expensive) BluRay player will turn the TV on and select itself via HDMI.

When Netflix released an awful update that had that problem, I called and threatened to cancel.

And they immediately fixed the lag?

Within a few days it appeared that the update was recalled.

It was the bad update that made videos start playing as soon as you selected them, instead of going to the information page. I get the impression I wasn't the only person who complained; I suspect that any manager who sat down to watch TV that night probably twisted a few arms.

I'm seeing that again in some of their UI, where you have to specifically click More Info to get to the details page vs playing immediately.

It's a combination of a few things:

There's a massive amount of junk food and ultra-processed food in grocery stores, even though (rough estimate) 50% of floorspace is "raw" food. (Fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, fish.)

Processed food tends to have more sugar (high fructose corn syrup) than other countries. The same brand in the US vs another country will have more sugar.

Cultural momentum: Everywhere you go there's unhealthy food.

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Speaking from personal experience, junk food is just plan addictive and satisfying. It's not like alcohol or other drugs where you can just abstain; you gotta eat and we all get hungry.

I generally prefer reading, but I don't judge people who prefer listening. My wife sometimes plays audiobooks for our kids, I read them.

I really wish I could make myself listen.

The times I have just sat and listened to a well-told, well-paced story have been magical.

But the dopamine hit of reading -too quickly- competes; the pressure to "be busy" wins and makes me impatient for the spoken word by default.

The defaults are too high. I'd be better off reading less but reading more slowly, and listening sometimes.

But this is not the highest priority problem to fix, either, and I can't fix everything.

Because if you don't make periodic cosmetic changes, people will think you're going out of business.

It's why your favorite shoe company, that you buy from every 2-3 years when you wear out your favorite shoes, always has new styles and discontinues other styles. Converse is a great example.

Generally I agree with you. My advice is that when you find a pair or shoes you like pick up at least 3 pair because by the time you need to replace them they'll be gone, but Converse isn't a great example of that because I can get a pair of Chucks which look/fit basically exactly like any pair I've ever had. It's actually kind of nice that Converse doesn't seem to play the same game as the tennis/running shoes I wear out.

I'm trying to learn CAD and 3d printing.

For the moment, I'm trying to design a shell for my car key fob. I keep leaning on the buttons and setting the car alarm off; I also never need to touch the buttons on the fob, because the car has a button for me to lock / unlock it as long as the fob is in my pocket.

I'm sure it's a trivial project for someone who has experience with CAD and 3d printing; but for me, where my hobbies in my adult life involved either programming or woodworking, it's a new adventure.

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I tried using Microcad, which was on HN about a month ago. I really like it, but it's still too early for me to design what I need to design.

I'm mostly happy with OneDrive on Mac. I lead a major competitor to OneDrive back in the day, so that's saying a lot.

I still have to restart it from time to time, though.

My wife is vegetarian, mostly vegan because she's allergic to dairy.

I really enjoyed "keeping up" with her when we were dating, because I was really tired of eating the same things all the time. There's really a lot of delicious plant proteins if you take the time to look.

(That being said, our kids like meat. We just don't eat it all the time.)

Shortly before I started paying for YouTube, I remember seeing one of those ultra-long ads. The ad seemed interesting, so at first I didn't want to skip it. As soon as I saw that it was a looooong ad I got into the habit of checking the length of an ad before I even considered if it's worth watching.

Now I just pay for Youtube. I'm a lot happier that way.

Time is money. Ten minutes of daily YouTube ads adds up to 5 hours a month. Premium costs $14, roughly an hour's work at minimum wage. Trade one hour of labor for four hours of free time. That's 48 hours back each year for $168. It's a no brainer. Even if your wage is half of 14 dollars, you would still gain 24 hours back and it would still be worth it.

or install ublock origin and keep your money and the time!

while depriving google of revenue AND costing them money

win, win, win and WIN

Also decreasing the likelihood of content that you like watching gets made? The creator is being paid from that ad revenue too.

if my viewing actively cost the video creators money from me watching I'd probably feel guilty and stop

but this isn't the case, I'm completely cost neutral to them

but it does directly cost Google money... and I'm perfectly fine with that

I'm not making a moral judgement here. I'm talking about sending a signal that this type of content is valuable to make, leading to more content of that type being made.

Or maybe they will move to a platform that respects them. Gotta start somewhere.

They're on YouTube because it's the platform that gives them the greatest chance of success. What other popular video platforms do you know that give you 55% of the ad revenue?

I watch YouTube on many devices through the app. At the time, I was using YouTube music.

I hate to be negative, but this just seems reminiscent of consumer video game hype in the 1990s; where things never lived up to the hype.