Unless you live on a huge country (china, india, russia, etc), for an ordinary person, they will consume more media from the country that influences them, than their own country.
Big productions are in a huge % american media, national media for some ~40million population country, limits itself to talkshows, entertainment world, sports and so.. not movies, series or sitcoms
Pretty sure none of those networks are advertising themselves as 'something for -some race', they just exist, do business and focus a sector of the US population, never mention anything else
You can target a niche, thats fine, but doing this type of headlines, you just end up segregating yourself.
I am not really sure of the agenda behind this post, but just a reminder that there is a submarine cable (ALBA-1) that connects Cuba and Venezuela and serves as a full time link and connects Cuba to the world and gives them FREE INTERNET through Venezuelan biggest ISP (Cantv).
This free internet makes Venezuelans furious as our corrupt, dictatorship government rather give CUBA a big part of our own international connectivity that actually use that for our own connectivity/broadband. Note that we have one of the slowest internet connections in the world [1], this last 24 months, we have improved a lot (from rank 200+ to 139) due to some private ISPs finally allowed to purchase a bit more of bandwidth, but it’s still hoarded by our national ISP (gov controlled) and Cuba itself, there has been reports of the CUBA's power going as far as actually having managing positions on venezuelan national's ISP and helping Venezuela's gov on censuring our internet. [2] [3]
I don’t want to get political here, but in before you start criticizing sanctions/blockade and come with sob stories, lets talk about what Cuba really is, a 60 years old dictatorship where human rights are violated everyday making every citizen life a living hell.
tldr; Cuba gov controls all internet access to the island, and they get internet from Venezuela for free no matter what USA does, so they aren't really disconnected from the world because of sanctions/blockade.
The Cuban government and intelligentsia are connected, but ordinary people are not. Until 2018, the only way for most Cubans to get online was via public wifi spots, and while there is now some 3G data connectivity, the pricing remains prohibitive: at last check 1 GB is about a week's salary.
Also not trying to be political, I don’t believe the Cuban embargo/sanctions are due to the existence of a dictatorship. The US has happily done business with, propped up, and installed various dictatorships in the past and continues to do so as well. These dictatorships have performed atrocities similar to or worse than those that the Cuban government performs. Examples include Spain, Argentina, Chile, and perhaps Brazil in the second half of the 20th century.
IMO, the US government is opposed to the proliferation of communism/socialism and for that reason maintains certain embargoes/sanctions. The current sanctions that I know of are against Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba, all openly communist dictatorships.
To conclude, sob stories aside, the existence of a dictatorship in Cuba is not a motivator for the sanctions against Cuba.
>I am not really sure of the agenda behind this post
Cuba, regardless of its government situation, should have multiple high speed links to the rest of the world. Assuming that you are posting from there, you would be in benefit of this. Having a single link makes it extremely vulnerable to outages caused by both technical and geopolitical issues.
Filtering/control of their people's access is a real but separate issue.
Similar computers were given away to almost every venezuelan kid in school during the venezuelan oil bonanza around 2009-2012 [1], a big number were also given during 2013-2014 period.
Since 2013, Venezuela entered into a huge economical crysis. Resulting in people not being able to afford to buy a pc or laptop so the "Canaima" / "Canaimita" laptops where their only alternative to own a computer.
Nowdays, all those kids (now grown) are still using their laptops, most of them already at University level, Imagine people at universities using 2012 notebooks with 10inches screens. They are perfectly working and you can easily fix them as there is so many parts on mercadolibre [2]
As a side note, all the laptops were given away with a linux version mantained by the govt [3] so kids were somehow forced to learn basic linux, wich is kinda cool, eventually most got to install windows on the laptops by themselves, take note that it was of course pirated windows/office, so the kids at least learnt how to properly set up their laptops.
The laptops pretty much became part of venezuelan young generation culture, getting to a point that facebook groups started appearing of people sharing games supported by the laptop [4] some other groups of people modding the laptops and so on.
In fact, one of the biggest youtubers (LowSpecGamer) [5] started his crusade of -low specs gaming- using one of these laptops.
You could say that you 'miss the old _____' and apply it to almost everything in life and you will feel nostalgia for it, even to the point of looking for a way to get back to it and once you are trying it, you become meh and get back to the new thing, as you realize that it changed for good
This happens repetitively to me and my friends with tech/videogames, we are randomly chatting about how good it was some game (i.e) and we decide to try it again, some 20 minutes into it we are already pretending we are having fun when in reality we are bored/hating it
We might miss litle things, but it's quite hard to actually give a good reason to get back to something 'old' besides just nostalgia
For those trying to say that USDC is 'clear' and backed, remember that an attestation is not the same as an audit, circle has not provided any audit and same as tether, won't even mention an audit.
I choose to believe that what circle and coinbase are doing is creatinng a lot of liquidity by taking coinbase cash and turning it into USDC but at some point a lot of those USDC are being made the same way as tether, is just not real money comming into the ecosystem from either retail or institutions, but just imaginary money that is traded back and forth by coinbase bots to keep the price moving on their exchange
So basically, you hosted the page on github to advertise your spam paid service and then posted here expecting what? your code is not even public, you are just advertising a spammer script
Im pretty confused on why this post is getting upvotes.
Mechkebs are fun, been an user for years, right now sitting on a 1.5k build from 2018
I enjoyed the hobby, not amymore
Since around 2016, the money grab situation became a joke, it all started with Drop (former massdrop) and it all went downhill.. i get that the community was really small and we were forced to use forums to organize drops and so on.. but now the community is by the milliions and stuff are even more expensive than before.. Fake "limited supply", copies of copies of switches that at the end offer no difference, same old keycaps vendors that have months if not years of intentionally delayed orders to justify their insane pricing, US/EU resellers of china pieces for 1000% margins, hidding inventory, snob creators, corruption in raffles, people being hyped by snob 'keyboard celebrities', censure in discords servers when you bring this up and i could go for hours with this list
I've learned that with all the mechanical-head-pens hobbies that it's best to read a little, decide on one good enough product, and stick with it. Stop reading the forums, stop second guessing yourself, just be happy with what you chose.
I settled on a Code keyboard with MX Clears. It's durable, useful and I'm happy with it. Sure I could upgrade but there's little to no reason.
Same with headphones. I gave up on all the fancy audio and use AirPods. Yes, they sound worse. Yes, Bluetooth hurts audio quality. But who cares?
For most of these hobbies the benefit you get from your first purchase will never be replicated. From there it's all diminishing returns.
When audio is being transmitted via Bluetooth, the audio is transcoded to another codec to be played back on the receiver. Lossy transcodes always hurt audio quality, however telling the difference between the source content and transcoded audio isn't as easy as you might think.
Mechanical keyboards are great. Fell in love with an M 20 years ago, and wanted the same feeling. There are great models under $100 that will last you forever. I have 3: 1 at work, 1 at home, and 1 BT for the media center. That's it. Never replaced them, I just got them not to move keyboards around.
The rest I agree. It's like the audiophile business. Drop basically turns every consumer product line into an exclusive, elitist, better than you, brag in front of your bros marketplace with absurd margins. Keycaps are the worst offender, they're the cheapest thing in the whole keyboard to manufacture yet they get sold for... hundreds??!? Hard pass on all that.
Boutique keycaps are expensive because small-run injection molding is always expensive. I'm not at all sure they're the cheapest part of the whole keyboard, I would bet the case is probably cheaper.
Yeah, that's the excuse, but seems like every batch is small-run, limited release, exclusive collectors edition, but somehow more and more stock keeps coming back over time. They're expensive even by Warhammer standards, but at least Warhammer figures have detailed work from an artist on them.
>Yeah, that's the excuse, but seems like every batch is small-run, limited release, exclusive collectors edition, but somehow more and more stock keeps coming back over time.
I can all but guarantee you that fancy custom keycaps are rarely going to be done in runs big enough to have the economies of scale drive down the cost of tooling. Particularly with double shots and the like, those molds are extremely expensive. I don’t doubt that the products are luxury priced, but I think you might be surprised by what the costs are here.
I don't think it's necessarily tooling economies of scale, but probably custom-order costs-- rather than cranking out 5000 standard US QWERTY sets, you have to swap between five different toolings and run 50 sets of each. Even if tooling's free, there's a cost in the short runs and switching.
From what I've seen, a typical new keycap set is 90% existing tooling in a new colour-wave, and 1-10 completely new legends, usually that define the theme (there are seemingly 300 sets with Hiragana sublegends, but this one will have a Windows-logo key replaced with the Strawhat Pirate flag!)
I suspect there are efficencies to be found by pooling overlapping orders and reducing nonstandard kitting. Saying "everyone gets the 3/£ keycap" adds 20 cents per order, rather than making a few UK users buy a low-economies-of-scale kit at $25.
I've been fond of Maxkey's caps-- they seem to have achieved that accidentally. They seem to sell one basic cover-all set in different colours, and as a result they have pretty good supply and modest prices (their sets sell for about USD100, I suspect anything similar from Signature Plastics would cost 150 or 200, and have a 12 month turnaround)
Just go on ebay, you can find great pbt double-shot keycaps for ~$20 or even less, usually shipped from China. The enthusiast shops only carry the most expensive stuff.
ducky keyboards are around the $90-$120 range mostly, depending on the model you get. I think they're a great option for a high quality but non-exotic keyboard
Been running Noppoo Choc since it came out, got two of them. Newer Noppoo Lolita Spyder had the same feeling but didn't award being bought. At work a colleague has a Drevo Tyrfing V2, too much LED but it has a good touch too.
I am into the mechkebs as a hobby (have a KA2, Kyria, Model01, Redox and parts for Dactyl Manuform laying around) but it the first time I've ever heard of Drop, fwiw.
I think that mechanical keyboards are an interesting (if expensive) hobby, but standard keyboards with only mechanical switches and and funny keycaps are too expensive for what they are providing. They are a bit nicer to type with, but switches are in general not the problem of a keyboard. The layout and ergonomics are.
You have to switch to an ortholinear split with a firmware to see how different the ergonomics of a keyboard can be if we push it further and do non let legacy drive our decisions.
> I think that mechanical keyboards are an interesting (if expensive) hobby
I'd love to own a mk, but I don't because I refuse to pay the huge markup just because "it's mechanical!". I'm typing this comment on a decades old Logitech K120 that's even missing some keycaps, that cost me, what, 10 bucks? But you're telling me I can't find a ultra basic key caps set for under $20 because...? "Hey, this Ducky is tacky but doesn't look that bad, how much is it?" $125? Go duck yourself.
The scene is completely nuts, there's no space left for people who just want to type on a mk, it's all about exclusivity, "the endgame", limited editions, artisan caps... Bullshit. There's no "mechanical K120". There's no room left for full sized, affordable, practical, run of the mill, "Ford Model T" mk. So thanks, and good riddance. I'll just buy another K120. I could pay $20, even $40, for "a good feel", but it's not worth $100.
Imagine the same scene on mice. "Hey, are you tired of your ball mouse? Want an optical mouse? Well, the technology is cheap, but we're going to charge you $120, just because!!"
I don't want a mk as a hobby, I want it as a tool. But it looks like we're incapable of conceptualizing a mk as a tool. Sorry for the rant, and pardon my French.
> Imagine the same scene on mice. "Hey, are you tired of your ball mouse? Want an optical mouse? Well, the technology is cheap, but we're going to charge you $120, just because!!"
My, I better not tell you what a MX Master, G903 or Kone Pro Air retails for...
That said, I think you're asking too much if you expect a mk to cost about the same as a membrane keyboard; I think a 2x-3x price increase is totally reasonable considering that a membrane keyboard is trivial to assemble compared to one made of 102 individual switches, and that the production scale is so vastly different.
On the other side, I'm typing this on a Lenovo keyboard that's technically a membrane but it's so sturdy and clicky it feels pretty close to the brown-switch Cooler Master I have at home (which was definitely a cheaper mech, I think I paid $65 or so for it).
>There's no room left for full sized, affordable, practical, run of the mill, "Ford Model T" mk.
I bought a boring (by mk community standards) Filco Majestouch in 2010. I think it was around that $125 price point, but you know what, it is at least 10 times better than the keyboard I had before it and costs less than 4c per day. I wouldn't even be surprised if this thing lasted another 10 years.
Personally I don't understand why people spend thousands of dollars on new PC hardware just to use a 10$ mouse and keyboard. Of course people are free to prioritize whatever they want, and I'm not suggesting everyone should have DIY custom $400+ keyboards, but if you put a 10 year old K120 infront of me with missing keycaps, I'd be measurably unhappy while trying to use my computer.
These days you can get solid mechanical switch keyboards in the $60 to $100 range. The only downside is that they all seem to come with LED backlighting and obnoxious gamer marketing, but once you turn off the light shows they're perfectly good keyboards. I think they would qualify for "Model T" status.
They have mechanical switches but often lack N-key rollover (I think the blog post gets this wrong) and instead have a watered down form marketed as "anti-ghosting". But that's more than enough for all purposes except maybe Emacs olympics and social prestige with keyboard-philes.
I bought a Filco Majestouch 2 three years ago when I finally had to retire my 8 year old Sidewinder X4, which was a $40 membrane keyboard with deeper-than-usual key travel. I can definitely say moving from that to the Majestouch 2 has not made me a better programmer, typist, or gamer. And it hasn't helped with ergonomics either. It just feels better the same way shelling out the extra couple hundred bucks for a high end graphics card makes games feel better.
I owned an actually ergonomic split-key keyboard as well (Goldtouch) when I developed RSI-related wrist problems as a teenager and kept it around for 15 years. That keyboard made an actual difference and I would take it out of the closet whenever my wrists started acting up even from the Majestouch 2. But you don't usually see ergonomics front and center in super expensive mechanical keyboards - because IMO in that price range and in that community it hasn't been about practical concerns for a while. And that's fine - I'm not going to judge someone's choice of things to collect - but I see no practical benefit to spending substantially more on mechanical keyboards.
I bought 2 of these in tenkeyless (for work and home) and both are still in great shape. I did switch to Kinesis at work about a year later but is 9-10 years of daily use and they all look almost identical to when new.
Finding a keyboard you like is expensive but once you do they pretty much last forever. At work the Kinesis has outlasted 5 MacBooks and serval PCs. It is by far the cheapest computer peripheral when time of use is considered.
I think a lot of the interesting keyboards are really small series, and such things cost - there is such thing as "economy of scale".
The cheapest KB I've built myself was a Kyria for just over 200 EUR with cheap keycaps but relatively expensive switches - Kailh Pink, as I remember.
Imagine building something like Keyboardio Model01 (https://shop.keyboard.io/products/model-01-keyboard?variant=...): You have to build a case in low numbers, you have to design and print the PCB boards, you have to order the switches (Jesse, the author of it told once, that Cherry was not even interested in talking to him due to the relatively low number of switches he could take off them) and you still have to solder and assemble it, which for small shops is a manual job. Even the most mass-produced ergonomic keyboard I know if, Kineses Advantage2 is still a very niche product.
So all the "endgame" photos of another 60% KB with "artisan" keycaps and expensive pre-lubed switches are indeed bullshit. But you can get a lot of gain out of it if you go for ergonomic keyboards, even if you get the cheapest switches and keycaps (gatreon, for example) because the ergonomic improvement you can get out of a keywell or a proper thumb cluster can be life changing. Especially if you have a predisposition for developing RSI or similar problems. But it will still not be cheap. Or you can buy one and stick to it, you don't have to do it as hobby. Buy a Kinesis Advantage and do not worry that much. If you later want to mode it, there are still multiple possibilities.
I own just one mechanical keyboard and it’s my daily driver, when I type lot I plug it in and off I go, otherwise I’m fine with the not so good-to-type-alot laptop keyboards. Mechanical keyboards are a good investment if you don’t go overboard and become obsessed with them. They do offer a very good feedback and are pleasant to type on. My typing error rate is the lowest on my mechanical keyboard, and I guess that says quite a bit. My mechkeb is a Leopold FC750R and couldn’t be happier with my purchase, which i expect I will own for quite some time.
Check out cloud nine. Full sized, split mechanical, and looks near identical to the Microsoft Ergo 4000. I typed full speed immediately. Still pricey, but feels like a tool to me.
I'm typing this on an Ajazz Ak33 which I've owned for several years and it's still working perfectly fine. You can find it for less than $30 on aliexpress. There are quite a few options of mechanical keyboards for less than $50 .
It’s interesting you mention this, as I (somebody who has always used basic keyboards) just recently bought a split ortholinear mechanical keyboard for this exact reason. Curious to see what the experience is like.
The ideals of improved ergonomics and typing efficiency were much more interesting to me than fancy keycaps... but looking cross-sectionally at the keyboard space while researching my purchase, I found that the opposite was mostly true in terms of what attracted the most attention. Strange.
>looking cross-sectionally at the keyboard space while researching my purchase, I found that the opposite was mostly true in terms of what attracted the most attention. Strange.
It is not that strange - people who aim for ergonomic builds are a small community of an already small (if increasing) community. Most people do not want something like a new keyboard to mess too much with their motor memory.
That fits for me. I got two mechanical keyboards at the same time. One mirrors the Microsoft Ergo: cloud nine. The other is unique in the layout: ergodox ez. On this, my typing speed dropped to a third of normal. With the cloud nine, i typed at full speed minute one. The twice as expensive ergodox ez sits in my closet.
In my experience it doesn't take very long on a new keyboard set or even a new layout entirely before one gets fairly up to speed. When I built my Lets Split v2 ortholinear, I put dvorak on it and getting up to speed was surprisingly fast.
The ergonomic reasons behind the lets split/ergodox make them quite worthwhile. I love my HHKB2 but a split keyboard in general feels much better for my posture.
I enjoyed the hobby, not amymore. Since around 2016, the money grab situation became a joke, it all started with Drop (former massdrop) and it all went downhill..
I have been a mechanical keyboard user for decades and I have no idea what you mean or who or what this is talking about. There are people for whom keyboards are a hobby?? What is "Drop"?
If I want a mechanical keyboard I just buy it directly from Cherry, the quality is high, the prices are fair, the customer service is great, I've never had any problems.
If I want a mechanical keyboard I just buy it directly from Cherry
As with just about everything, while most people are perfectly happy just buying the thing, there are always people who prefer to buy the pieces and build their own to their exact taste and preference.
It could be computers or sailboats or guitars or, as in this case, keyboards.
A hobby as in building and customising keyboards. If I want a mechanical keyboards I'll spend weeks researching various pcbs and kits, looking at keyswitch datasheets and listening to recording of sounds they make, choosing keycaps with perfect font, color and manufacturing process. Don't get me started on keyboard cases...
A couple of years ago, a buddy convinced me to sign up. Personally, I’ve only found them to be expensive. Like, they show it as a bulk sales price drop, but it feels more like gimmick original prices (though I don’t think they are doing that, maybe it is just normal prices outside my comfort level).
Thanks. How was this one company able to distort the market? Is this an American thing? Here in the UK mechanical keyboards are readily available with no such issues. I don't think we suffer from any "money grab" situation.
A few months ago, I finally built my own board from scratch. I used an Arduino-alike (based on one of the bigger Atmega parts)
It was an interesting endeavour-- designing a PCB, mounting plate/casing, sending them out to be be drilled, soldering it all together, configuring QMK firmware. It's the order of something like assembling Heathkit audio gear was in the 1960s-- the finished product is on tier with a good quality commercial product, but you also get complete control over any substitutions and customizations you like.
Unfortunately, due to low economies of scale, I paid about $500 for the board.
It's like most things. You can buy most things at a decent to good quality easily, but if you want something bespoke, it costs more.
I like building things, so I'm making my own keyboard. I decided on a switch type. I like a strong tactile switch so MX Browns are too soft for me so I'll pay a bit more for something that suits my taste.
My PC is in the living room, I like having a pretty living room, so I'll pay a bit more for a pretty keyboard case, a pretty rotary encoder and pretty keycaps.
I'm French and the problem to me is that the hobby of building custom keyboards is increasingly popular in the US and in Asia but very little of it is European. This means few keycap sets have the big ISO enter key that doesn't exist on ANSI keyboards. Pretty keycaps are expensive. Shipping to/from the US and Asia is also expensive.
I also use a non conventional keyboard layout (Canadian Multilingual Standard) which has small differences with more standard layouts and though I can type mostly without looking at my keyboard, I still look a it sometimes and it's confusing to have something completely different printed on the key. I've started working with blank keycaps but those aren't much easier to find. Especially in some profiles. (You can have an idea of profiles here : https://www.keycaps.info/stack)
Another factor to the cost is that a lot of the parts are produced for limited runs. I'm not exactly sure how it's organised but a designer submits a new design, if enough people are interested they order a bunch of them with a little extra but they can't easily buy a lot of stock to keep selling. I feel like a lot of the designers do it a side thing and can't afford to invest in it.
Compare it to cars, where people will buy extremely powerful cars, with crazy interiors and using enough petrol to power a small country when a good old second hand Voxhall would be enough for their needs.
Oh yes, it's similar to a lot of other 'enthusiast' things, like high-end audio, cameras and guitars.
I got into keyboards because I wanted a lockdown project. I figured I could learn a little about electronics and firmware, learn how to solder, and even perhaps make something that would be useful at work. Keycaps can be a complete rip-off, and my keyboard is fitted with a mixture of caps that I've scrounged from various places.
And when we finally get back to the office, a super-noisy mechanical keyboard will help my project of being allowed to WFH as much as possible ;-)
I love how Cherry Browns became déclassé key switches, due to their popularity and everyone ran to the other extreme (extremely stiff tactile switches) and are now running back to the other extreme (softer tactile switches like the Browns) with special lube and keyfilms to improve their sound and subtle typing feel.
> same old keycaps vendors that have months if not years of intentionally delayed orders
Got any source on this? I don't disagree with the rest of your claims, but this sounds completely wrong; for example GMK is actively expanding their production capacity and already offers a selection of keycap sets without shipping delays.
Orders are delayed because the "same old" manufacturers are flooded with an ever-increasing demand for customized low-quantity productions, each of which introduce an overhead. And the appearance of new, cheaper manufacturers only seemed to make the demand explode even more.
That explains a lot to me, as a (almost) user. Wanted to buy one, loved hackers keyboard, but the whole thing was more expensive then a modern mobile ryzen 4xxx mini pc with lots of ram and m2 ssd, wifi6 and so on. It also not locally available so basically no real warranty for me.
Got one of those curvy ergonomic divided keyboards from MS and forgot about the whole thing, while saving $500.
What makes it a problem to orders switches yourself?
Mechanical switches are not a rocket science, and any electromechanical OEM would've been happy to work on them with such premiums.
I myself been thinking of ordering double action switches, so you don't need debouncing them. I even contemplated adding some ultra low power latches to be overmolded inside, so you get a single output out of the box.
I have never been interested in the "online community" part of this mk fad but I have been happy to buy off the shelves from hhkb maybe 20 years ago, the Unicom, then EZ/sza.
It’s expensive for sure but there are functioning suppliers for quality boards.
This one has always annoyed me and really annoys some people I know. I had the opportunity to buy a DisplayWriter (full system) a few years ago and when doing research on it was horrified to find out it was popular to gut the keyboard and replace the circuitry with a modern custom keyboard controller.
Big productions are in a huge % american media, national media for some ~40million population country, limits itself to talkshows, entertainment world, sports and so.. not movies, series or sitcoms