u/PowerPCFan

I'm going to be planning a trip to Finland for sometime in 2027 and I was looking for some advice on a few things. I've never traveled internationally and live in the United States, so a lot of this is unfamiliar.

One of my first ideas was to visit Iceland, Finland, and Estonia over the course of 12 days - fly from Boston to Keflavík, stay in Reykjavík for a few days, and then move on to Finland (Helsinki + Turku) for the rest of the trip (+ the Tallinn day trip).

However, the rough draft itinerary I planned out seemed quite rushed and filled with a lot of travel, so I figured there was definitely some room for improvement there. Extending the trip to 14-15 days probably would have just masked the underlying issue with my plan.

So I started thinking of some more ideas - on the way back, instead of flying direct Helsinki -> New York City and then driving/taking the train to Boston, I could go back to Iceland and then connect directly to Boston. This very well might be the move, but I also had a few other considerations- I could fly from Helsinki to London, and then London to Boston - although I probably don't need to tack on a fourth country to a not even two week trip.

Then I had the idea to flip around the trip and fly from Boston to London and connect to Helsinki, then finish off the Finland part of the trip with Turku, before going to Reykjavík (this time at the end of the trip) for a few days and then home to Boston.

Anyways, sorry for talking about my trip-planning so extensively :), I also had some questions about what I planned on doing in Finland:

• Helsinki - Over the 3-4 days that I plan on spending there, I was thinking of checking out Sipoonkorpi, Torronsuo, Nuuksio, and Liesjärvi National Parks (day trips, no overnight stays and/or camping), however I wasn't sure if that was too much to pack into a short amount of time, or if some of those parks weren't worth it? We'd probably be able to fit in all four, but with transportation times and stuff taken into account we also don't want to miss out on other stuff while we're in Helsinki. Also I'm sure there are plenty other things that are worth doing in southern Finland other than national parks, what are some of those?
• Turku - Should I try to rent a house/cottage in the Turku archipelago? It looks like a pretty cool area, but I'm not sure if there are any dealbreakers I haven't heard about or if there are better places I could stay in instead. Also, what are some must-see sights and activities to do in this area? More national parks? Fishing, boating, kayaking, etc? Other stuff?
• Time of year - I was planning this whole trip around Summer 2027 (Likely Late June/Early July), but would it be a better idea to go in the winter, or is Finland great in the summer as well? It would be nice (but in a different way) to check out Lapland in the winter.
• Hotels and dining in Helsinki - what are the best hotels to stay at, and the best places to eat at? This probably depends on the area of Helsinki which I'm also looking for suggestions on, I'm aware that Helsinki is overall a very safe city but I've also heard there are some areas that aren't quite as safe/nice (Kallio? Kluuvi? Itäkeskus?) but not sure if people are just overreacting or if there are legitimate concerns lol.

Thank you all very much in advance for any help!

I've been a long-term AirPods Pro 2 user (pretty sure my Reddit flair is still set to that here lmao), and I absolutely loved them. ANC and transparency mode worked great, they were quite comfortable, and the sound quality was great.

However, after an accident my Pro 2s broke (long story and I'm still not quite sure how it happened, but the outcome was that one "pod" broke and the other got pretty banged up), and I decided with the price down to $179 on Prime Day that I would pick up some Pro 3s.

I have noticed some pros, such as noticeably better ANC and better bass/overall quality, but I'm also experiencing a lot of issues:

• Transparency mode sounds more unnatural, on the pro 2s i could barely tell I had them in, but on the pro 3s, it sounds more like i'm listening to myself through a recording. Maybe not quite that bad, but not as good either.
• This doesn't affect operation, but the case and buds themselves feel cheaper.
• Finally, the worst issue and why I made this post: comfort. I've tried fitting them in multiple positions and with different ear tips but no luck. I could leave the Pro 2s in all day and barely notice them there, but the 3s start hurting my ears after only an hour or two. I think the new design just does not work well with my ear shape and sits very awkwardly, causing the pain/discomfort.

From everything I've read the changes on the Pro 3s seem to be pretty split, with some people liking them and others disliking, so I figured I'd make a post here to gather some opinions on them.

Anyone else experiencing these issues? Any tips to make them fit better/more comfortably? I'd really like to enjoy these without constantly wishing my Pro 2s still worked, because right now they're feeling like a downgrade despite spending nearly $200 on them.

Title - looking for recommendations on VPS providers that can offer decent specs (although I don't need anything crazy), low prices, and good uptime for PowerDNS. Based in the US but European providers would work as well.

For years, we've been having intermittent internet issues and lots of cable tv issues (pixelation, complete interruptions sometimes, etc.) and as of recently our cable boxes entirely stopped working.

My dad called an Xfinity technician to take a look at our setup, results of his tests were somewhat unclear, but the consensus seemed to be that there was a wiring issue somewhere between the street and our modem/cable boxes. Signal coming from the street was sufficient.

He also said that we should get a new cable box as we have the original X1 from the 2010s, and that we'd need to use the rented Xfinity Gateway instead of our own modem... not a fan of that, just seems like they're trying to get us to rent more pointless stuff lol (well, slight correction - their new system does seem to require the Xfinity Gateway due to a wireless approach but I don't see why they couldn't just install one of the wired X1 boxes. They also said the modem impacted their ability to troubleshoot, which would make sense since they probably have admin access on all Xfinity-owned modems)

Our current equipment:

• Modem: Arris SURFboard S34
• Router: Netgear Orbi RBR750 (Firmware V4.6.9.11_2.3.5)
• Wiring: standard coaxial wiring, around ~20 years old (original wiring everywhere, house built in mid-2000s)
• Xfinity cable box: old X1, model XG1-P

Our modem statistics (I just discovered our modem had a login page (never thought to check)! and did some of my own diagnostics just a few minutes ago.) Here are some dashboard screenshots:

General stats

Downstream stats

Upstream stats

Not going to send event logs as there's likely sensitive info (IPs, MACs, etc) but there are a lot of critical issues, if those would be helpful I can censor them and send them over

Things I noticed in the provided stats- high upstream power and low downstream power (apparently indicates weak signal), a LOT of uncorrectable errors

Questions:

1. Are these stats likely causing the issues? (mainly our cable TV and sometimes internet)?
2. Is the coax line going from the street to our house likely the reason for this poor signal? Can the cable company replace our lines? (Pretty sure they're underground, but I'd imagine they're in some sort of conduit so perhaps they'd be able to use the good ol' trick of tying a new cable to the end of the old one and pulling the old one out)
3. Is there anything else I should check or try before trying to get the wiring or equipment to be replaced?

Thanks for any help in advance!

Edit: to add more layers to the story, after the guy left, our upload speeds are noticeably better, reaching to almost 300Mbps, when they were previously sitting around 40. Additionally, our cable box error, XRE-00250, is supposedly caused by my dad's request over Xfinity support chat to have our system rebooted? The only reason why he made that request was to fix severe pixelation and signal issues, so even if the error is caused by what the support chat person did, there's still likely an underlying issue from our signal

Let me know if you have any questions about this situation because I'm probably leaving out something lol

I recently acquired a 2020 M1 MacBook Air for free - screen is slightly messed up from what I'm assuming is water damage but it's still quite usable and I've been happy with it so far.

However, I use my other computers on a daily basis as well (running Linux/Windows) and I've been finding the shortcut differences to be quite annoying. I am a very heavy user of keyboard shortcuts and on the first few days of using this MacBook, I found it quite hard to get used to the shortcuts.

Now that I've been using it on-and-off for about a week, the MacOS shortcuts are getting slightly more intuitive, they still feel a little off but that's to be expected and somewhat besides the point

Essentially, my issue (other than the shortcuts being new to me) is that when I switch between computers, my brain wants to use the shortcuts for the other platform. This is not only happening on macOS but also on Windows/Linux when I switch to my desktop or other laptop from the MacBook.

Anyone else out there hopping between operating systems - does this get easier over time? Does your brain learn to separate the environments and choose the right "shortcut system" depending on the computer you're on?