Giving permission by saying yes to a “would you mind” question is the hill I die on. Usually I say “I would not mind” but if I’m feeling frisky I’ll say no and watch their brain melt.

It’s a nightmare to search for anything about GUID Partition Tables (GPT) now.

I’d love yearly Debian releases instead of just every 2 years.

My biggest concern is that everyone will eventually be forced by societal and institutional expectations; for now people can easily choose not to wear them, but if/when your employer requires it for work or if/when the only way to talk to your friends is by using it, then you won’t have much of a choice.

For example, Zoom has very shady ties with the Chinese government (and several reports say that they’ve used it to surveil and censor people), yet many schools and workplaces required it (and many still do now). You could refuse to install/use it, but then you’d lose your job or fail your classes. It’s a similar story for TikTok, Discord, and Facebook before that.

Thank you for interjecting.

In exchange, FF uses Google search by default. So they’re also getting direct value from the deal.

The classic gonewild is a bit sexist, though. They say it’s for porn of all sexes, but male posts get buried. It’s fine to be female-only, but then just say that.

I vaguely remember the advice actually being to leave it running but disconnect it from the internet. Although maybe hard disconnect the backups if you can.

The real problem is the government not protecting consumers from such predatory business practices. It’s almost certainly not legal, and if it is then it shouldn’t be. After 3-4 companies are absolutely destroyed, companies will stop doing it.

I still enjoyed the first movie.

My biggest problem with The Matrix is where the machines are getting the food from to feed the humans. You need a continuous supply of food to support continuous energy conversion; that energy isn’t being created from nothing. Normally that comes from the sun photosynthesizing plants (which then works its way up the food chain), but with no sunlight then plants can’t grow. They say they feed the liquified remains of dead humans to the living ones, but even if digestion were 100% efficient (which it definitely isn’t), the amount of usable “food” would constantly decrease until there’s nothing left.

…Because no one else wants to write my documentation.

There was a thread about that on c/selfhosted a few weeks ago. Created by a particular wild-cat-inspired sysadmin, I might add.

But on a more serious note, the interactions between a sysadmin and their servers (that they have enough responsibility for to be able to name) are much more intimate than the interactions between a dev and their variables. The server names also exist in a much larger namespace, so they need to be more unique.

Ever since we found out that Grindr has been tracking their users’ locations at all times and then selling that data to private companies, Grindr has been dead to me.

Good bot

If you care about security, use FDE. Then a text file with proper file permissions is probably fine.

I really like that bluetooth devices can still work at distances farther than a typical cable would allow. I have a decently-sized studio apartment and I can see my computer screen from most places. It’s nice to continue watching a video as I move around the apartment to clean, get up to stretch, play with my cat, etc.

You could probably get wired headphones that long, but then you’d be dealing with that giant cable all the time. Or you’d have to constantly swap cables and interrupt the audio during that time. My AirPods work reliably from 15ft away. I can’t argue with that convenience.

Pi-hole works by giving clients non-routable addresses in response to DNS queries of known ad-serving domains. If the client (web browser, phone, smart device, etc) doesn’t let you set its DNS server (as many no longer do) and doesn’t obey DHCP, then you can’t feed them those addresses. You could block outbound DNS traffic from all clients except your Pi-hole, but in response some clients will just refuse to work entirely. And if they require DNSSEC (or DoT/DoH with a pinned certificate), there’s nothing you can do.

Customers have more power than companies would like you to believe. Politely explain the situation to customer support, and ask for a refund. If they refuse, mention that you purchased a game that was promised to work for at least several months, and you haven’t received the product you paid for. Because of that, you’re considering charging back through your bank. If that doesn’t work, say you’ll charge back if they don’t refund. If that doesn’t work, actually charge back through your bank. Banks are surprisingly cool about it as long as you don’t do it too often. Of course, you need to buy the game directly (no account balance) from a credit card.

Just don’t be a jerk to the support person, because it’s almost certainly not their fault. It’s also less likely to get you what you want. They’d rather give you what you want so you go away, and you just need to give them reasons that they can relay to their supervisor if necessary.

Business decisions are almost always influenced by the personal preferences of people in charge. While OP probably can’t change the existing infrastructure right now, when the infrastructure is eventually changed, OP’s pro-Linux input could make a big difference.