Also, TIL about āwax boilingā Alps switches o_0 https://www.youtube.com/@waxzone-also-urmum
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I saw this earlier today and I couldnāt believe my eyes lolol, quite the madlad indeed.
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Iām disappointed with how impressed I am and impressed by how disappointed I am.
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NGL, this is exactly the sort of nonsense I do from time to time. I salute my fellow junk-merchant.
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On waxboil: on top of the video you linked, this wiki page looks useful too. I came across it a few months ago, but havenāt gotten around to trying the technique on an M0115 I have with orange alps in particularly nasty condition.
If I ending up finding time, Iāll report back!
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These tariffs, man. What a fucking mess.
My recent order from Prototypist was showing about 25% extra added on for import fees. Iām pretty sure itās 10% at the moment. I emailed Jae and he was really cool and understanding and said he was trying to get figure out what was going on. Said he would try to see if he could find a way to refund whatever wasnāt actually due. AND THENā¦ I get a message from DHL saying I owe an ADDITIONAL fee of $24. So, at this point, Iām paying 29.5% extra. Jesus.
Jae immediately responded via email (again, couldnāt be happier with the communication), and said they were in the process of refunding US customers for fees they may have paid extra for.
But all I can think is what horseshit this is. And who is raking in the money that people are forced to hand over (and a lot of the time, not legitimately needing to pay)?
Itās not like I can just ignore the message from DHL. The message states that payment must be made before they will deliver my item and it will be return in 5 days if I donāt pay.
Itās goddamn scams all the way down, isnāt it?
As much as I hate to say it, I would absolutely avoid buying anything that does not come from a US vendor. Even if itās the most amazing thing youāve ever wanted to pick up. You would honestly be better off to wait a month or two and offer 20% markup on the aftermarket. It would still be a better deal.
Also, Iāve got my pitchfork and torch, just point me in the right direction. Iām ready for it to start burning.
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Apart from the actual tariff amounts, killing de minimis has been the most brutal part for global small businesses who want to sell to US customers, and frankly for anybody in the US trying to spin something up that needs low overhead, to say nothing of the simple inflationary pressure on consumers.
Delays and paperwork and āprocessorā half-scams and unexpected fees (or even the threat of them) has left me gun-shy as well. If $800 was high, then lower it, dramatically even, but completely killing it off benefits no one except Walmart and Amazon.
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A 10% tariff is reasonable and import fees and tariffs are something common in other countries that have tons of duties officers to inspect packages, etc. I am not against taxes like this per se.
Butā¦ they were implemented here with absolutely NO infrastructure to handle them. So companies like DHL and UPS have to charge exorbitant handling fees to stay compliant.
It is almost like no one thought through the whole thing before implementing it 
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The most infuriating part is that importers (you in this instance) arenāt refunded the tarrif-of-the-day fees once they are determined unconstitutional by the courts. You have to actually sue to get your money back. Thatās bonkers to me. Only the largest corporations will have the money to due so, or even have paid enough in tarrifs to be worth the pursuit (and of course, they have already recouped those fees as they were passed to the consumer in most cases). All of it is such a scam.
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And in the end itās always and only the customer who pays for it, never the exporter as the āstable geniusā claimed.
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An update: I did get refunded for a large chunk of the import fees I paid. Prototypist customer service has always been good and this interaction is no exception 
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First Iāve heard of the Didaktik (a Czech speccy clone) andā¦ this one goes to 11!
I do love me some unusual keyboard layouts and shapes, but something tells me the engineering team just hated stabs.
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How interesting.
A number of manufacturers went to great lengths to avoid using stabilizers in the 1980s. My favourite might be those āislandā keys, where a multi-unit key has a kind of āislandā at the top for the finger to press. That way, pressing the āislandā ensures a centre key-press, which wobbles less than a press to the sides of a multi-unit key would.
Spectrum clones were so prevalent in the former USSR that some individual cities had their own Spectrum clones. Some teams later evolved the Russian Spectrums into the ZX Evolution and Pentagon models. [In a way, they are the real-hardware version of the Spectrum NEXT.]
The Spectrum was a very simple design, compared with some of the other 8-bits. Especially the video display hardware, which was very economical. If there was maybe one thing they should have addressed in the hardware, it would be the colour-clash, even if it led to a slightly-higher unit cost. This is where a MKII Spectrum could have been nice.
[And of course, the original keyboards were notorious. Even though a lot of offices use evolved versions of them today!]
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The mad bastards have done it. Theyāve figured out a way to ruin mechanical keyboards:
Also, lulz at $230 for a macropad. GTFO.
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That might be the first thing they donāt sell at a loss.
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Ooof, and itās with Work Louder. I donāt know how many of yāall still frequent R/MK, but phrases like āTikTok slop marketing,ā and āthe worst keyboard Iāve ever ownedā are thrown around pretty liberally on threads about their stuff.
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Yea from what I have seen over the course of work louder existing is basically the owner of Work Louder is not a very good person and that extends to not a good product/business.
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Iāve wondered about the Work Louder stuff. It appealed to me from a design and aesthetic standpoint and looked very modern. But I never really liked their layout and while I like the look of flat keycaps, I donāt like the typing experience. Unless theyāre on a macropad or somethingā¦ but Iām sure not going to buy this thing for any amount of money.
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Keyboard tattoo on momās arm for communicating with her nonverbal son
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