When I want something cheap, I usually hit Aliexpress (website). As I was looking at the Aliexpress app page on the Google Play Store to check its privacy details, TEMU came up as a recommended app.

Now, my wife has used TEMU in the past, but since she often can't find her way around things, I downplayed her negative experience as "user error". That said, I went to the TEMU website and started looking around.

I found something that was a reasonable price, but then get this message saying I could get this item free through the app... sigh. OK. I sign up with my usual fake/random credentials and add this "free" item to my cart.

A spinning prize wheel comes up. Hey, I can get THREE free items now! Sweet. I spend the next 3 hours looking for stuff I can actually use, doom-scrolling through everything from women's underwear to t-shirts with assault rifle print. Literally something for everyone. LOL

Then I select my third "free" item, and another spinning prize wheel comes up. "100% off the next $35". Ok.

I didn't need more stuff, but hey, 100% off sounds like more free stuff!

I spend another hour looking, keeping an eye on the amount "saved" (apparently $600+, for stuff that is sold on Aliexpress for maybe $25).

When I finally get to check out, I get another spinning prize wheel. "100% off $100"!! Goddamn, I'm on a roll here. How do these guys make any money?!!

More time looking... I must have spent well over 4 hours on their app. Time to check out.

$67? Huh? What about 100% off and all that nonsense? Enter your phone number*

• You must agree to get promotional texts, or you can't check out... hmm, maybe my wife wasn't wrong.

In any case, there was no way to actually get anything "free". I deleted the app, deleted my account, and will never touch this scam ever again.

Do people actually end up getting anything from Temu? I thought AliExpress was bad, but the experience is 1000x better.

Ok, so here's my problem.

I own quite a few padded shorts, ranging from $30 - $250 (bibs), and they feel great for the first 2-3 hours, then I get really uncomfortable in them. Not pain, but quite uncomfortable.

I was able to ride 200km wearing only compression shorts with no padding, but I think I got lucky.

Regular shorts/underwear always have issues because of the seams, so they aren't viable.

I heard that triathlon shorts are lightly padded, so they may offer a nice in-between.

Does anyone wear them? How do they compare to traditional cycling shorts?

My current trackball has lost its smoothness and feels "sticky" no matter how well, or often I clean it.

So, I'm looking for a trackball (thumb controlled) with the following features:

• Bluetooth wireless with support for at least two connections (for laptop and PC media station).
• Uses AA or AAA batteries.
• Uses bearings.
• Set at a tilt/ergo angle.
• Repairability is also important, but not a total dealbreaker if the mouse is high-enough quality.

So far, most that I've found will lack one of those features, but I'd really like to have all of them, if possible.

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who offered tips on getting my current trackball working better. Today, trying to roll the ball left became very difficult, like it didn't want to move. I took it out, looked at the little white ball (bearing?) supports that the ball should be rolling on, and noticed that the left-most one was almost pushed in, and flush with the cup that the ball sits in. The other two are higher up, so the ball can "float" on those, but not this other one. The manufacturer is already sending a replacement mouse, so it should work better, but I'd still like to find my unicorn 😄

Five months left for 2024, and Toronto has already broken their record for most cyclists killed in a single year.

This is shameful.

Five months left for 2024, and Toronto has already broken their record for most cyclists killed in a single year.

This is shameful.

Amazon Prime Days ran on July 16th and 17th (at least here, in Canada).

This price jump happened a day before and ended two days later, but this item was "on sale" during those two Prime Days.

I've been seeing this scam far too often, especially with food items. Why isn't this illegal yet?

I'll start by saying that I really love Tube Archivist. It works flawlessly in doing what it does (archiving YouTube videos), and the UI and UX are great.

However, no matter what browser I use (Edge, FF, Opera, Samsung mobile, FF mobile, etc...), I run into issues where the video will play, but the interface freezes... I can't do anything on the screen until I refresh.

I don't have it set to any strange codecs, so videos are in vp9. But I also tried a few different codecs to see if the quality/size could be better optimized, and had the same issues with freezing UI then.

If I run the videos through Jellyfin, they work fine. It's only through the TA web interface where things lock up.

Is this normal? Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get this working better?

Hey guys, just a quick update regarding my question: https://lemmy.ca/post/22882437

I did end up successfully riding from Oshawa to Vaughan and back over the weekend, using Finch as the bridge between Pickering and Scarborough.

For the most part, I'm really happy with my route choice. The total trip was just over 162 km, and some highlights included:

• The trans-Canada trail along Duffins Creek in Pickering was amazing.
• There's a long-ass hill on Old Finch, just west of the zoo, that almost killed me on the way back (my folding bike is NOT geared at all for climbing, and I burned off any glycogen reserves by that point).
• The Finch hydro corridor was nice... taking McNicoll before and after was not. Poor roads and aggressive drivers.
• The Duncan Creek trail is also stunning. I'd 100% do this trail again if I'm in the area.
• The cycling infrastructure in Vaughan was great... until it's not. There's a section of road along HWY 7 West of Centre St and east of the 400 that's just downright terrible. Where there is no bike lane, the roads are garbage and traffic is fast and aggressive. Where there is a separated bike lane, it was COVERED in rocks, metal, plastic, wire, and pretty much everything else you can imagine; the road, FYI, looked as if it was cleaned using a toothbrush. The raised cycling lanes west of the 400 were really, really nice.

Overall, a really great ride. I'm not sure if I'll attempt the same ride using Taunton/Steeles at some point, since aggressive motorists going far in excess of 80 km/h just doesn't sound like fun.

As a side note, my Varia radar clocked one guy going 126km/h...

Hey guys, hopefully this isn't too far out of the city to offer suggestions, but here's my problem:

I'm planning a ride from East Oshawa to central Vaughan.

I'd like to keep the route safe, but don't want to detour so far out-of-the-way, so a 4h one-way trip becomes a 7-hour one, since I'll still need to come back on the same day.

I'll obviously need to avoid the waterfront trail, as it's quite out of my way. So, my options are either taking HWY 7 or Taunton/Steeles.

Google street view shows me some pros and cons to both, but they also lead to totally different parts of Markham, and some cycling infrastructure there seems either disconnected or forces me to take some rather busy roads.

Has anyone taken HWY 7 or Taunton/Steeles between Pickering and Markham by bike? Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

EDIT: Finch Ave. looks to be another option.

This has been bothering me long enough that I figured I'd check to see if anyone else is having the same issue, and more importantly, if there's a fix.

Some websites, like Google Earth or various weather radar sites get so slow that they are unusable in Firefox.

When I load the same sites in Edge, it's blazing fast, as I'd expect.

Even Librewolf chugs on these sites.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

ADDITIONAL DETAILS: First, thanks for all the input, guys.

I wanted to say that I've tried a fresh FF profile, and the same slowness happens in Google Earth.

I also confirmed that hardware acceleration is enabled.

This problem isn't on all websites. For example, playing www.slowroads.io actually gives a higher framerate on FF than it does on Edge. So it seems to be that certain websites just suck ass.

Some of you have said that Google Earth on FF works perfectly fine... on linux. At least it seems not to be a FF problem. LOL

EDIT: Opera browser is just as smooth as Edge with G Earth.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION?? Ok, so even though I was able to confirm that hardware acceleration was enabled, and the GPU was active while using FF, and the about:support showed that webrender was enabled, I noticed that on about:config the gfx.webrender.all setting was set to false.

So, I enabled it, and tried again. Google Earth seems much smoother (not as good as edge, but better than before), and Tube Archivist no longer seems to freeze while a video is being played.

Could this be the reason for my issues? If so, why was this option set to false by default?

Now that summer is almost here, I'm looking for better ways to protect myself from the sun. I generally dislike sunscreen, but I do wear it while riding.

The helmet visor "Da Brim" (website) caught my attention. Since I wear a huge-ass sombrero-style hat when I'm off the bike, I'm fine with the way Da Brim looks.

For context, some of my summer rides might have me in 8-10+ hours of sun, which isn't good, even with sunscreen on. If Da Brim can make the experience more tolerable, I'm in!

I'm curious to hear from anyone who has one, and what their experience has been.

I've tried a few jellyfin plugins that are supposed to sync metadata and thumbnails from tube archivist, but it's just not working right.

I can see some thumbnails, but then the titles are just random gibberish. Or the titles somewhat work, but no thumbnails.

Any secret I'm missing?

Both are running in docker containers on a synology nas.