If you already have a NAS, (since SMB was mentioned, I’m assuming there’s some sort of NAS setup going) then you may even be able to host Plex directly on the NAS. It likely won’t be powerful enough for things like video transcoding, but just audio should be fine.

There is also the hilariously misguided belief that good coders do not produce bugs so there’s no need for debugging.

Yeah, fuck this specifically. I’d rather have a good troubleshooter. I work in live events; I don’t care if an audio technician can run a concert and have it sounding wonderful under ideal conditions. I care if they can salvage a concert after the entire fucking rig stops working 5 minutes before the show starts. I judge techs almost solely on their ability to troubleshoot.

Anyone can run a system that is already built, but a truly good technician can identify where a problem is and work to fix it. I’ve seen too many “good” technicians freeze up and panic at the first sign of trouble, which really just tells me they’re not as good as they say. When you have a show starting in 10 minutes and you have no audio, you can’t waste time with panic.

Yeah, and you can dupe items in RuneScape by dropping them and pressing Alt+F4. Don’t worry, I’ll stand way over here to prove I’m not trying to steal it. If I try to pick up the item you’ll see me move, and you can just pick it up first.

Target is notorious for this. Loss Prevention has literal evidence binders for repeat offenders. They’ll tally up everything you’ve stolen, and then sit on it and continue tallying until you have stolen enough to be charged with a felony. Once they have a dollar over their local felony amount, they’ll send their LP team in to pull you aside and you get arrested for felony grand theft.

Shit you get to print yours? Look at moneybags over here. I have to copy the broad strokes down by hand, and walk back and forth between my console and the family computer on the opposite side of the house T.T

I actually figured they were against the vegan cat food thing, since the whole debate started due to cats being obligate carnivores and vegans killing them by refusing to feed them meat.

Yup. Pretty much anyone who knew anything about copyright law agreed that they were making a monumentally stupid move. And their only defense basically boiled down to “bUT wE’rE a LiBRarY.” Which completely ignores the fact that even libraries need to comply with copyright laws for ebooks, via licensing agreements with the publishers.

At least on iOS, it takes it a step farther and tells you specifically when an app is accessing your location, microphone, camera, etc… It even delineates when it’s in the foreground or background. For instance, if I check my weather app, I get this symbol in the upper corner:

The circled arrow means it is actively accessing my location. And if I close the app, it gives me this instead:

The uncircled arrow means my location was accessed in the foreground recently. And if it happens entirely in the background, (like maybe Google has accessed my location to check travel time for an upcoming calendar event,) then the arrow will be an outline instead of being filled in.

The same basic rules apply for camera and mic access. If it accesses my mic, I get an orange dot. If it accesses my camera, I get a green dot.

The rich engineers weren’t the demographic affected by the “rolling” brownouts. The people in McMansions had power the entire time, while the people in apartments were shitting in grocery bags because their toilets had frozen solid from lack of power for heating.

The “rolling” brownouts were really just rolling around the same poor areas.

I’d argue that’s not ironic at all; It’s perfectly placed.

I attended a PETA workshop about a healthy plant-based diet a couple years ago and everybody agreed on that.

Yeah, PETA wants to be the only ones who kill housepets. If all the cats are dead from vegan diets, there won’t be any left for PETA to kidnap and euthanize.
/s but not really because PETA habitually steals pets and immediately euthanizes them before the owner can reclaim them.

That’s because they’ve been pushing the iPad as a sort of Mac Lite, but they can’t do that unless you can plug peripherals or a thumb drive into it. You can 100% plug a USB-C laptop dock into an iPad, and it’ll work. You can even use a mouse with it if you really want to.

But they wanted to keep Lightning around as long as possible, because they made a commission on every single lighting cable that was sold; Companies had to license the rights to use the connector, and had to pay Apple for every one they used. That’s why Lightning cables were always a few bucks more expensive than a comparable USB-C cable. That extra few bucks was going straight into Apple’s pocket. It was a huge source of passive income for the company, which they were reluctant to let go of.

If you want Windows without a GUI, you should be using MS-DOS. The whole point of Windows is that it has a GUI.

If it really boils down to this, how can one fight back?

Historically? Guillotines in the village square, and/or Molotovs through the front windows of the overlords’ house. The rich learned a long time ago that when no other recourse is left, people will eventually turn to violence. And they learned that keeping the poors placated is a matter of life or death. Because money and fame won’t stop an angry mob, and even trained soldiers will get overwhelmed by sheer crowd size.

I believe Sun Tsu wrote something applicable in The Art of War, along the lines of “Always leave a surrounded army a way out. Show them a way to life so they will not be compelled to fight to the death. Because even an exhausted army will fight to the death if they have no other option.” So the rich and powerful set up systems that are heavily skewed in the rich’s favor, but at least attempt to appear fair on the surface. They set up a visible “way to life” so that people could at least feel like they had a viable way of fighting back without resorting to violence.

But recently, the rich and powerful seem to have forgotten that, and have dropped all pretext of fairness. Now it’s just blatant “you’re going to be killed and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Which means that the people are eventually going to be forced to fight to the death, because they’re cornered and see no other option. And I genuinely believe that if things carry on this same trajectory that people will turn to violence as a means of recourse, because it’s quickly becoming the only effective recourse that is within reach.

Well there’s already WinToys, which does a lot. It may be a new project for them to just add in a legacy Control Panel tab.

Yeah, the history of the blue LED is actually really interesting. It basically exists because one Japanese dude refused to take no for an answer, and continued working on developing them even after his company stopped funding his LED project.

Yes, the US tends to call them HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle, or Human Ordinance Vehicle) lanes, and they’re typically denoted by a large diamond painted along the center of the lane. Usually the far left lane on the highway, so it’s even past the fast lane. It often has limited entry/exit, and is often a double-solid white lane marker, meaning you’re not allowed to enter or exit the lane except at specific points. Sometimes there are even soft barriers, to further deter people from entering/exiting except at the designated points.

It’s a lane that is reserved for moving people rather than cargo; You’re only allowed to travel in if you have more than one person in the car, or are on a motorcycle. The theory is that by restricting specific lanes to carpoolers, you’ll encourage more people to carpool and have fewer cars on the road. And by restricting lane changes, you avoid slowdowns from people entering/exiting the lane. You typically only see them in major metropolitan areas with lots of commuter traffic.

In reality, it’s one of the most commonly broken traffic laws, with commuters often camping in the HOV lane even when they’re by themselves. Or people attempting to use it as a faster version of the fast lane. It is typically only a minor traffic ticket if you get caught. So enforcement is often very lax, and cops will often only pull you over for it if they’re looking for an easy ticket.

This comic is referencing a lady was pulled over in Texas, and cited for being in the HOV lane without another person in the car. She argued in court that she was pregnant, and since Texas considers fetuses to be alive, the court had to dismiss the ticket because she had a second person in the car. The judge ruled in her favor, mostly to avoid creating a major challenge to written laws over a minor traffic ticket.

I can’t believe I didn’t do this…well, 15 years ago.

For what it’s worth, your experience 15 years ago likely would have been very different. It’s only in the past few years that things like drivers for basic hardware have become widely available on Linux without a bunch of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And even today, there are still certain drivers that often don’t like to play nice.

Ask anyone who had an nvidia GPU 15 years ago if they’d suggest switching to Linux. The answer would have been a resounding “fuck no, it won’t work with your GPU.”

Yeah, alcohol licenses are typically divided up into served vs sealed alcohol. And the two are often mutually exclusive, because one usually prohibits the sale of the other. Sealed licenses typically prohibit on-site consumption of liquor, while an open license will require it.

So a liquor store with a sealed liquor license can sell you bottles of hard liquor, but you can’t consume them on the premises because that would be an open container. And their liquor license only allows for sealed bottles on the property. And inversely, a bar with an open liquor license will uncap bottles of beer before handing them to you, because their liquor license doesn’t allow them to sell sealed containers, and also requires that all the alcohol they sell remains on the property.

I’d be interested to see what kind of licensing allows for both sealed and open containers. It’s likely some sort of new anti-addiction initiative, similar to needle swaps/safe injection sites for heroin users. Or they only have the open liquor license, so they’re requiring that all liquor sold be consumed on-site. Thus the “but you can’t leave” part of the meme.

Ah yes, the Apple “we know design better than you do” of the Linux world.