u/AltruisticPie1544

I've been using the S20 FE 5G (Snapdragon) as my main phone for the last 4 years and felt it was time for an upgrade. While it's still generally a decent phone for light / medium use, I felt performance was suffering a bit and lag was becoming noticeable in some apps. Probably poorly optimised apps but what can you do. Screen brightness on the S20 FE was also really bad in sunlight. Those were the main reasons for wanting to upgrade.

I didn't want to spend a huge amount and was shocked at how much prices have risen. I paid £350 for the S20 FE 4 years ago and was looking to spend around the same this time around. I could probably get something like the A56 for that budget, but I would have preferred something more high end, like the S25. As phones these days don't come with SD card support I also needed 256GB storage minimum.

Common advice is to go for last years flagship as there isn't a massive difference between that and the latest model, and you typically save a lot. But I was still looking at spending around £500 for a suitable Samsung option.

That's when I started looking at other brands and came across the Xiaomi 15. I found a fantastic deal on Amazon for a "Used - Very Good" condition phone. It ticked all the boxes. 12GB RAM, 512 GB storage, Snapdragon 8 Elite, great camera, etc. And the best part was it only cost £337. To my delight the phone arrive in perfect condition without even a scratch. It even came with a spigen case fitted from the last owner which I would have bought separately anyway. When I checked the battery stats it only had 2 charge cycles and 100% battery health.

I've now been using the Xiaomi 15 for about a week and first impressions are it's super fast and has a much brighter display, adequately visible in sunlight. The screen is a little smaller at 6.3" and it feels more compact and easier to manage with one hand. The fingerprint sensor is ultrasonic which works more reliably and faster than the S20 FE. The camera is a definite step up. Also I've been enjoying the Xiaomi HyperOS3 experience so far, it's actually been surprisingly decent. Perhaps not as polished and feature rich as Samsung's One UI, but for the most part it's perfectly fine once you get used to it. Just took a few minutes to remove a small amount of bloatware which isn't too big of a deal.

The S20 FE has become my new backup phone, allowing me to retire the S8 which had been previously serving that purpose.

I feel like reddit has a lot of potential to make it easier to discover new content on the platform. I'm not talking about news or what's popular because quite frankly those are depressing and kind of suck. I want to be able to discover smaller and more interesting / niche content and subreddits. Things outside of my current interests and which I may not even have considered to search for myself.

The current explore page does have some suggestions of top subreddits in different categories, but honestly i'm not going through all that one by one looking through posts for things that may or may not be interesting. A curated feed would be kinda nice though.

Does anyone remember stumbleupon back in the day? I loved using that to find random interesting websites and kill time as a casual internet user. I think reddit could implement something similar but instead of a random website, you get a random reddit post. Perhaps with options to filter for text, images, videos and include or exclude certain categories. It could use a dynamic algorithm to tweak your feed based on likes and dislikes. I guess it would be something similar to Mix platform but within the reddit ecosystem.

Just curiously really. I recently looked into this stock and decided to invest a small amount as a speculative high risk high reward position, alongside a mainly big tech focused portfolio.

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RDDT is currently around 3% of my portfolio, with an average price of $175.

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I've seen how volatile this stock can be so if there's a dip I'll buy more, otherwise will just accumulate gradually over time.

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As a higher rate tax payer I only have a £500 allowance for earned interest before having to pay 40% to the tax man.

I plan to hold about 6 months worth of expenses as an emergency fund, which is around £12k. In addition I may want to build up some short term savings set aside for future planned purchases. Things like house repairs, car purchase, etc.

I currently have my savings split across a number of top paying regular savers which I am drip feeding from a chase easy access account currently paying 4.25% in the first year.

By my calculations I will surpass the £500 threshold, meaning any interest earned over that amount will be taxed heavily e.g. if held in the chase easy access account I'd effectively be earning 2.55% instead of 4.25%, and potentially losing to inflation over time.

I'm aware of ISAs, but I plan to maximize my ISA allowance in my stocks and shares account, so there won't be anything left over for a cash ISA.

Where would be the next best place to keep my savings?

I'm new and have recently started my journey to make fresh coffee, grinding beans for the first time, but so far have been getting poor results with the equipment I have. I've read a lot of information, watched guides and tutorials and gone through a whole bag of coffee experimenting, but failed to get anything reasonable in so many attempts. It's getting expensive and frustrating.

I have replaced the stock portafilter in the stilosa with an unpressurised bottomless portafilter from Amazon. The manufacturer says the basket can hold up to 16g of ground coffee.

I bought some medium roast coffee from a reputable roaster and let it rest for a week before using. I started experimenting with a dose of 16g but have since dropped down to 15g. There is enough room in the basket and it's definitely not overfilled.

Kingrinder suggest a grind setting of 40 clicks on the K6 for espresso. My K6 is fully closed at -6, so if I understand correctly 40 clicks on my grinder would be an indicated setting of 34 on the dial. Is that right?

In any case, when I tried that it choked my machine. It took 20 seconds from starting the pump to getting the first drop in the cup, and well over a minute to pull the complete shot. From what I understand I should be aiming for around 25-30 seconds as a ballpark figure for a 1:2 shot of espresso.

I guess the grind might have been too fine, so I have tried grinding coarser to 50 clicks (44 on the dial) and while the shot is a little faster it still takes far too long, maybe around 45-50 seconds. It was also pretty sour, and I don't see how grinding even coarser will improve the taste. Wouldn't that just make it even more sour?

It seems there is too much resistance in the basket, but I'm not really sure why. I'm tamping with moderate pressure, although I heard you can't tamp too hard? I'm already grinding coarser than expected. I've seen many people with this grinder use around 30 clicks. Another guide I found suggests a range of 0.22 - 0.45 (https://honestcoffeeguide.com/kingrinder-k6-grind-settings/)

Is there anything else that might be causing slow extraction other than grind size?