You have to go out of your way to find keycaps that aren't MX-styled. But you may want to double check the layout and particularly the size of the spacebars, shifts, and the keys in the bottom row. Some gamer boards have nonstandard layouts.
M system is pretty much EOL'd, so it may not be the best choice for future proofness as the OP wants.
It's a good point about lens availability, though. The best selection in the mirrorless world will be Sony, due to the system being more mature and Sony not being hostile to third party makers like Canon and Nikon are.
If you enjoy learning via youtube, I would say, check out James Hoffmann's channel for info on different kinds of brewing methods and how to get the best out of them. Hoffmann is a really good resource because he does a great job of breaking things down in detail in a way that's comprehensive but also digestible. (And funny.) Lance Hedrick's channel is also really good and informative, but a bit more nerdy and chaotic.
When looking at different brewing devices, the main category split is between immersion and percolation. Immersion means that the coffee is sitting in the water and steeping like tea. Percolation means that water is flowing through the coffee. Percolation is more efficient at extracting solubles from the coffee, which creates different brewing dynamics. One isn't better than the other, although immersion may be more forgiving.
Immersion or mostly immersion brewers:
- French Press: Pure immersion, no filter. This means that you will have a much thicker body as you're getting all the oils and some of the fines in your cup
- Aeropress: Mostly immersion, with a paper filter. The brewing part is similar to a French Press, but you'll get a cleaner cup because the filter is taking out some of the oils and fines. (If you don't want that, you can also get metal filters to use in the Aeropress.)
- Clever Dripper: Similar to aeropress, but I think probably better for doing large batches?
Percolation brewers:
- A drip coffee machine like a Moccamaster
- Pourover / manual drip, which is a huge category with lots of different kinds of dripper with different materials and shapes. Plastic brewers will have the best thermal retention. (I.e., your brewing water will stay hotter)
- Conical (cone-shaped)
- Hario V60 is the most popular enthusiast pourover dripper. It's known for emaphsizing acidity (sourness) and clarity of flavors. It's not the absolute easiest to get right, but there are a ton of detailed recipes you can follow.
- Kono dripper or Hario Mugen. These are similar to the V60 but have lower "bypass" meaning that less water is getting outside the filter and around the coffee. They are a little more forgiving than the V60 but there are fewer easy to find recipes. The Mugen is designed for single-pour recipes that are easy to do, and is intended to be more user friendly than the V60.
- Flat-bottomed brewers are supposed to emphasize less acidity and more sweetness/florals as opposed to conical
- Kalita Wave is probably the second most popular enthusiast dripper. There are several different models, I think the "Tsubame" ones are supposed to have the best flow rate and thermal performance but they're pricey. Easy to find recipes, but some of the models have a reputation for clogging
- Orea, Timemore B75, Fellow Stagg are more "modern" flat bottom brewers that are designed to have faster flow rates, less clogging, and better thermal performance than the Kalita. They tend to be a little pricey, although the Timemore B75 seems like a good budget option.
- "Zero bypass" brewers like the Tricolate, Next Level, and also heritage brewers like the Vietnamese phin and South Indian filter. These are sort of like a subclass of flat bottom brewers where bypass is impossible. The historical ones are normally used to create very concentrated coffee that is often consumed with sweetener, while the modern ones are meant to optimize efficiency. These often have very long brew times.
- Conical (cone-shaped)
Percolation/Immersion Combo
There are also now brewers that let you select between immersion and percolation, like the Hario Switch, Goat Story Gina, and the upcoming Next Level Pulsar. These let you use either all immersion, all percolation, or interesting combinations of both.
Espresso and not-quite-espresso
There's also espresso, which is a form of percolation brewing performed under pressure, resulting in a very concentrated beverage. Espresso is kinda complicated and expensive so most folks skip it unless they really love espresso in particular. If you want to get somewhat close to espresso without the expense, most folks go for a Moka Pot.
If you're doing your own PCB, you could add splitkb tenting puck https://github.com/splitkb/tenting_puck
I guess we'll have to escape to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism
I like Lance Hedrick's pourover recipe for requiring less dialing in *between *brews due to the fact that you're adjusting the agitation on the fly *during *the brew.
I will also tweak any or all other variables, depending on what seems like it will help or if I'm just feeling like messing around. Dialing by ratio is very underrated, I think, because it's a good way of targeting bitter/sour balance. Bypass brewing is also cool and something that I'm trying to make use of more often.
If coffee has bitterness that resists other adjustments, then dropping the temperature by 5+ degrees can really help.
Hoffmann hasn't yet reviewed the Opus, only the Ode 1 and 2, as far as I know
Some folks won't be able to access some communities due to defederation, and in other cases folks may want to start a community on their home instance for certain reasons. This isn't the end of the world; probably in the long run either everybody will centralize on the biggest one, or you'll end up with one or two alternatives that have a bit different culture or focus.
That being said, if you like to read comments, it can get confusing when a bunch of different communities all have high interaction posts about the same topic at the same time.
You can certainly get a functional mechanical keyboard on Amazon. If you haven't used a mechanical keyboard at all and you want to try one out, I think buying a cheap gamer keyboard on Amazon and treating it as semi-disposable is quite reasonable.
If you want the ability to experiment with switches, look for one that has hotswap and cherry MX-style mechancial switches. If you want the ability to swap out for nicer keycaps, check and make sure the board uses a standard layout. Some consumer boards have unusually sized shift keys or space bars etc. that make them incompatible with many keycap sets.
Re: loud, this is also relative. Linear switches (red for lightweight ones, black for medium weight ones) will usually not be ultra loud, and you can also get "silent" switches, which have some dampening components.
It's easy to find cheap fullsize boards with numpad and arrows. (It's harder to find high end customs like this, though, as most enthusiasts prefer smaller boards.)
You're posting to the beehaw tech news community ("magazine") though.
I think the place for kbin feature requests is: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues
Qobuz and Tidal are less evil than Spotify and support higher quality audio, but also have smaller selections. Where practical I'll buy albums I like on FLAC from Bandcamp or HDtracks but it is also nice to have a streaming service for discovering new stuff.
Yep, adding water is a perfectly good solution! You can do it a little at a time until it tastes right and then make a note of however much water that was.
Bypass brewing seems underutilized in pourover -- although it's pretty common in aeropress recipes. Crown coffee has an interesting post about it from a while ago.
Bypass will reduce your extraction and hence efficiency, but that only matters in a commercial setting IMO. That being said, if you want to achieve the same thing without bypass at the end, probably what you'd end up doing is using a longer ratio (more water) and then possibly needing to tweak another variable such as grinding a bit coarser to re-balance the flavor.