I’ve honestly been trying to figure out this move for weeks. What was the point of grabbing it ALL when it’s so easy to rip whatever you want with some of the tools? Was it just a big “F you”? And peace - that’s a reason :) In that case they could care less what they get sued for. But to me it seems like unnecessarily whacking at the hornets nest. I hope it doesn’t bite them in the arse someday.

Too late

And people make fun of me for turning off secure boot and tpm. They just cause grief for no benefit.

Crazy. I have a Sony XBR 46” lcd that’s almost 20 years old. It still looks great for what it is (1080p and all). It was a top of the line tv back in the day that’s held its own for a very long time. It’s sad to see great companies/products fail.

Forget ram. Wait until there’s widespread power outages yet you’re somehow paying 10x for your electricity bill because of the new data center down the street.

I dunno, smells like teen spirit hit pretty hard. It was a new sound and many people’s first exposure to grunge. I agree, there are better bands (STP was better than Nirvana and I’m dying on that hill). But they were first, and it explains how they blew up overnight.

Word.

Real rs-232 ports are magic.

LOL nope ;)

Distributed control systems

Some job advice:

Look at industrial automation companies. DCSs, PLCs, historians, MESs, etc. Those are “old” technologies now. Their world was one of proprietary hardware, networks, and code. But it’s been converging with traditional software and IT for decades. There’s a huge need to connect those “behind the firewall, closed systems” with corporate data so it can be mined, reported on, used in ai applications, linked with corporate ERP systems, e-commerce, you get the idea. Old farts like me can engineer circles and build cool things with panels and power and ladder logic and fancy bus networks and pumps and valves - but we have zero skills to take our closed system data and put it in a webpage, or link it another application. People like you who come from “the outside”, learn a bit about industrial automation to be dangerous, and then help companies do the above tasks - well they are invaluable to me.

The reason I say this is two fold - 1) it’s an unmet talent need and 2) you would never find an insulting interview process like that. In fact, you’d find the opposite- they want to meet you in person and regularly take you to meet with customers.

It’s more traditional work and that’s not for all - but it sure doesn’t have all that intrusive interview bs.

TLDR - try slowing down “bad” ram

RAM is tricky these days. When you buy “fast” ram - in my case 6200 dominator sticks - what you really are buying is ram that the manufacturer says can be overclocked to 6200 speeds. But this is shady at best. It is entirely possible for that ram to run fine in your rig, and fail miserably in mine - showing itself as errors in memtest. This can be a result of the motherboard or say your cpu - and nothing is broken. Not the chip, not the mobo, not the ram - they just don’t work together at those speeds. Two sticks can work just fine, and then fail when you add two more (for a total of four). I’ve even had sticks that were on the edge, works for a year, and then started giving me trouble.

Most people just RMA those sticks - which I support - if it’s marketed to run at those speeds, then they should run at those speeds everywhere. But if you have “bad” memory laying around that was out of warranty, and given today’s prices - it might be worth pulling them out and trying to run them a little slower. It’s not like you have to take them all the way down to 3200 and turn off the overlock. For example, on many amd rigs, 6000 is the sweet spot. My “bad” stick of 6200 immediately fails a memtest at 6200 (even running that single dimm), but infinitely passes at 6000 (even with 4 sticks plugged in). I can’t even tell the difference between 6200 and 6000.

So ya - try slowing those bad sticks down manually. It might only be a little bit of a performance hit, but at today’s prices, could save you $1000

Any couple that fights over the toilet seat (or toothpaste or whatever other stupid thing) is doomed - get out now before it gets worse.

My wife of almost 30 years can have whatever she wants and I’m happy to provide it - especially if it’s something as stupid as the toilet seat. I spoil her, she spoils me. We’re happy.

GenX here. I was alive and remember the older folks the millennials and later didn’t get to meet. Boomers were, and still are, much more liberal than their parents and grandparents were. It’s hard to imagine but it’s true. Example: god forbid you were a girl - you could be one of three acceptable things 1) a baby factory/cook/maid for your husband 2) a nurse 3) a nun. And 2 and 3 were sketchy - those were just for the ugly girls….I’m serious… They shouldn’t vote, they didn’t have credit cards, and they certainly didn’t need to “think” - just do what your father said until your husband took that job over. GenX girls literally could be whatever they wanted - we were the first generation where that was possible (even if it came with disapproving side eyes - it was still possible).

The generational hate is misplaced IMO. It’s hard for my kids to understand what life was like after ww2 and the fifties. Boomers really did think and act quite liberally compared to the world they grew up in. We gen Xers saw a glimpse of that world and for all the boomer’s faults, we appreciated what our parents tried to make for us. I’m not saying they were perfect, there tends to be a lot of selfishness in that generation as well as pulling up the ladder behind them. GenX ain’t like that generally speaking. I don’t think you’ll see that type of behavior from us. If you want to criticize us, you’d have to point at our apathy and “fuck it” attitude. We’ve seen some shit yo, and we were tired of it all by high school. Some of it is the same rage boomers rebelled against, some of it directed at all the fucked-up-ness that was new (the economy, the environment, drugs alcoholism and physical abuse, the rich’s exploitation of the working class, having to care for both kids and our parents on a pauper’s salary, etc.). We ain’t perfect, and some older GenX might as well be boomers - but in the end I’m not sure any of it matters. There just ain’t enough of us compared to the rest of you. Boomers croak, and millennials, genz, and alpha have like 75%+ of the vote (someone should fact check me on that but I think I’m in the ballpark). And I would HOPE my generational cohorts would vote more in line with the younger folks - because otherwise they are posers who sold out (they should listen more closely to their Rage Against the Machine lyrics).

Remember, it’s class warfare, not generational warfare.

I used an HP RPM calculator through college. It could do cool stuff like graphing and solving equations. Very helpful for an engineering student, not so helpful later in life. I used that calculator until about a year ago when it died (got about 35 years from it). I didn’t use the super fancy stuff anymore, but for a scientific calculator it was pretty solid.

So when it broke, I had to find a replacement for a device that I’ve used for my entire life. Needless to say, I was kind of picky. I tried emulators, and newer TIs, and there’s a bunch of knockoff crap like the article points to. Only one made me happy. A silly little iOS app “PCalc” (it has an icon of “42”). It was like $5, runs on my phone, and honestly I probably should have switched decades ago.

I’m not associated with that app or the author or anything, just a recommendation for anyone old and stubborn like me - I know I’m not alone here with calculator attachment issues :)

Guild wars reforged. I was thinking of firing up the old cd roms and then I saw the whole thing was re-released on steam. Been giving it a go - has held up well over 20 years.

Drain uncloggers are a caustic. Meaning they are a strong base that eats stuff away. They are generally safe to use except for two very specific circumstances.

1. you really don’t want to use them if you’re on a septic system. It will kill the good bacteria that eats your poop. It’s not a deal breaker, your system will repopulate eventually. But it could lead to a backup. In my opinion - just don’t use that stuff with septic tanks ever.

2. if your pipes are old af and on their last legs. Or some of your joints are shoddy. Draino might eat through that last little bit of metal and cause a leak. But to be fair, a snake could bust something open too. This isn’t a problem with modern plumbing. Nothing you can do about it except watch for leaks no matter what you do (or replace that old plumbing).

I’ll offer some advice. For like $35 bucks you can buy a real honest to goodness plumbing snake that’s hand operated. Mine has a little orange saucer thingy the snake coils up into. You pull out some of the snake, and stick it in the drain. You push with one hand, and you use the other to twist the snake via the big hand crank knob thingy. You push a foot or so of the snake down the drain, then pull out a bit more of the snake from the saucer, and then push that bit down the drain (always hand crank spinning). It’s SUPER easy to do.

The one I have is like 25 feet long, and I have cleared some of the nastiest clogs with that thing. I’m talking 5 foot long clogs of my wife’s hair/grease/soap grossness. Draino would never clear that - but the snake makes short work of it in less than 10 minutes. I spend a few bucks on some rubber gloves instead of hundreds on plumbers and expensive Draino.

TLDR: get a hand snake. They work amazing, are super easy to use, and are less money than Draino (and plumbers)

Edit/update: I’ve got one like this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/RIDGID-EZ-SPIN-Drain-Cleaning-Snake-Auger-80168/332294628

Food. I’m a fat ass. :/

Seriously

I’d give my left testicle to be 30 again.

Good to know, I hadn’t heard that. I still am leery though - they showed their hand.

I’ve been a synology user and fan for over 15 years now. Both personally and at work. They used to be powerful-for-the-price, efficient devices with good software. Photos, drive, media server, file storage, and docker containers were the big use cases. They were easy to set up securely for remote connections, and I’ve never seen one fail.

Nowadays though, I’d recommend something else. They have started on the enshittification journey. They removed hardware decoding features, they force you into their hard drives now, the hardware is overpriced, and other diy systems have caught up wrt features and ease of setup. Synology isn’t bad today, it’s just not the only game in town anymore. You can get more for less money with the same amount of effort.

WRT to data collection-I don’t think they collect anything now. But I’m not sure I trust them anymore. It probably won’t stay that way.

And many of us were laughed at for saying recall was going to come to win11. This is worse than recall ever was.