Isn’t it wonderful when your VPN client refuses to connect repeatedly until you realize you need to reboot your PC or restart the VPN service… and then go change your underwear.
Isn’t it wonderful when your VPN client refuses to connect repeatedly until you realize you need to reboot your PC or restart the VPN service… and then go change your underwear.
I really wouldn’t write off the Shield completely. It’s a few years old, but it works really well. My TVs are all disconnected from my network, and each has a Shield attached. The Shield can stream 4k HDR from Jellyfin, play ad-free YouTube with SmartTubeNext, and handles remote game streaming at 4k/60 with Sunshine/Moonlight. It’s really a versatile little box.
I appreciate the suggestion, but that looks like a Java library. Interpreted languages make me feel dirty. Java makes me feel even dirtier. If it’s not C, C++, or ASM, is it really worth using?
I’m okay with the “human-readability,” but I’ve never been happy with the “machine-readibility” of XML. Usually I just want to pull a few values from an API return, yet every XML library assumes I want the entire file in a data structure that I can iterate through. It’s a waste of resources and a pain in the ass.
Even though it’s not the “right” way, most of the time I just use regex to grab whatever exists between an opening and closing tag. If I’m saving/loading data from my own software, I just use a serialization library.
It really depends on how far back you want to look.
If the US was to suddenly stop projecting its interests internationally, then as others have mentioned, then likely the world work become somewhat more socialized. European countries would probably step up and try to keep China in check, but without the US contributing to these efforts, it would cause a significant strain on their military resources.
If the US was to take an isolationist policy 100 years ago, then there is a good chance that WW2 would have been won by the Axis. The Allied forces likely would have put up a good fight, but I’m not sure they would have emerged victorious against the combined Axis forces. The war in the Pacific would have raged on much longer, and without nuclear weapons, there would have been an extreme loss of life invading Japan. At the very least, WW2 would have lasted much much longer than it did. Depending on the outcome, plenty of countries might currently be speaking German and debating if they should tear down 80-year-old statues of Hitler.
I think you might be misunderstanding what I’m trying to say. I’m not discounting the value of human culture. I enjoy various types of art, and I am grateful for the people who produce it.
What doesn’t interest me in the slightest is urban “culture.” By that I mean going to restaurants, attending parties, seeing live music, walking to the corner pub, etc. I haven’t done any of these things in years, and I’m happy. If I discover a musician I like, I’m going to spend some money and buy their record, but I don’t need to be surrounded by a crowd of people listening to them live.
You mention the term “anti-social behavior,” but that doesn’t describe everyone who’d rather live in a rural area than a city. Some of us just like our peace and quiet. As far as subsidizing roads and shipping to rural areas, you like to eat, right? Where do you think the food came from? You live in a house or an apartment, right? Where did the wood, concrete, and raw materials come from? A huge amount of agriculture and production comes from rural areas, and it’s always going to be necessary to have roads and infrastructure to support this. The fact that I live in the same area that supplied your food doesn’t mean that your tax dollars are paying for roads solely so that I can drive on them.
I understand that people like you enjoy the busy life of a city and that you can legitimately take advantage of what a city offers. I’m not like that. Large gatherings of people don’t make me happy; they just make me want to leave. My original argument was that a lot of people live in cities because they have to for work. Some of them, like you, live in cities because it makes them happy. For the people that live in urban areas because they have to, I was speculating that many of them might move to more rural areas given the option. I’m not trying to shit on your lifestyle (although I do have strong negative opinions about bicycles on roadways), and I would hope that you extend the same courtesy. Life is short, and in a perfect world, everyone could live in a place that they enjoy.
If you feel that way, then you probably should live in a city. Some people prefer city life; there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not for everyone. I have no desire to be around other people, and the “cultural” aspect of urban living holds no interest to me. I get enough human interaction through work. At home, I want to be un-bothered by other people and go about my business in solitude.
I’m interested to see if this rural/urban divide is going to shift in the future. With the ballooning cost of real estate and the rise of remote work, a lot of urban liberals are moving to more rural areas.
There’s certainly a group of people that enjoy city life, but a lot of people (myself included) just want some peace and quiet and only lived in or near cities to be close to work.
Personally, I’d be happy with a web browser that doesn’t make me jump through hoops to access a HTTPS site with certificate errors on a local IP address.
I don’t care if 192.168.1.1 is using a self-signed certificate. I just want to configure my fucking router.
Sounds like a solid plan. I’m glad I could help.
I understand what you’re saying. As far as using your school account to sign in to Microsoft Office, the fact that you use a school account should not make a difference in terms of privacy. If you’re using Outlook and Teams for school, just don’t use them for personal things, and you should be fine. If you’re using the web versions through a web browser, then you have nothing at all to worry about. If you actually install the apps, you still likely have nothing to worry about, although I would make sure they’re at least signed out and closed when you’re not using them. You don’t want to accidentally send a message to your school’s Teams group when you’re drunk and watching YouTube videos at 3am.
As far as “enrolling in your school’s environment,” I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean by that. I know that some companies will install corporate nanny-ware on systems that they issue out to their employees (you’ve probably heard about CrowdStrike), but if you’re using a personal laptop for school, that’s not going to happen unless you hand it over to the school’s IT department and say “please fuck up my computer.”
Most likely the “cloud” file you see in your documents is a Microsoft OneDrive account that comes included with your school’s Office subscription. You can use it as a backup for schoolwork, ignore it completely, or just uninstall OneDrive. I like keeping my important stuff on local storage, but if you want a place to back up a project, go ahead and use it. Maybe don’t copy your porn stash over to your OneDrive account.
I am a strong advocate for keeping things separate on your computer. Not necessarily from a privacy standpoint, but more so just to keep everything tidy and easy to manage. If I was just using Teams and Outlook, maybe logging into an online portal, I’d probably just do exactly that without a second thought. If you find that you’re installing a lot of different applications for your studies, like I mentioned before, you might consider setting up a VM. A VM (Virtual Machine) essentially acts as a second computer within your own. You would install a hypervisor (I’d recommend VirtualBox for you), and inside the hypervisor, you can create separate “virtual” computers. You install your operating system, boot up the virtual machine, and use it just like you would a whole separate PC. When you’re done, you shut it down, and when you no longer need it, just delete the VM, and your PC isn’t cluttered with a bunch of stuff you don’t need. The “hard drive” for your VM lives in a single file, and once that file is deleted, it’s as if your virtual machine never existed. One way to think of it is like building a house inside a room in your own house. You still have a bedroom, a kitchen, bathrooms, and a living room. Only in this “virtual” house, you can paint the walls, throw parties, trash the carpet, invite hobos to live on your couch, whatever you want. When the house gets too trashed to live in any more, you just hit “delete” and it disappears; the actual house you live in is still in pristine condition.
So just as a summary, my opinion is just use your computer normally. Log into whatever school resources you need and don’t worry. If you need to install a whole bunch of school-related stuff that you don’t want cluttering up your PC, set up a VM.
It’s probably also worth noting that your school almost certainly isn’t trying to damage your computer or catch you doing something you want to keep private. They’re providing resources (a free Office subscription, for example) that they think might help facilitate your studies. You can use those resources, or not, but your computer is still your personal property, and your school isn’t trying to infringe on that.
You may need to elaborate a bit more on what your are trying to achieve; it looks like your post is missing a bit of backstory. It sounds like your concern is keeping your personal business and school activities separate, though.
What you’re saying doesn’t really make a lot of sense. A lot of people here are probably happy to help you out, but you’ll need to be a bit more clear on what your goal is. I get the impression that you’re concerned about your school having some kind of privileged access to your computer because you check your school email and work on school assignments using personal computing resources. That’s not something you need to worry about; it’s really not how technology works. Logging into your school’s online portal doesn’t give them access to your files any more than buying something on Amazon.com lets Jeff Bezos browse your system.
If you’re really, REALLY concerned about privacy, just set up a VM using VirtualBox (it’s free and easy) for school stuff and continue to use your computer as you would normally. If you’re already comfortable re-installing Windows, then you absolutely will be able to set up a simple Windows VM. To be clear, I wouldn’t consider this necessary, but if you want to do it for peace of mind, then you have nothing to lose.
This situation becomes vastly different if you have a company or school-issued computer. In that case, then I wouldn’t use it for anything other than strictly business (or school)-related activities. Given the fact that you’re able to reformat and add/remove accounts, though, it doesn’t sound like you’re using a computer managed by an IT department.
On a side note, if your school did some how manage to gain access to your personal computer without your permission, find information that was detrimental to you, and somehow use it against you, I would ask you two things:
I’m old. Not old enough to need a prostate exam, but old enough to potentially have children in his target demographic. That being said, he essentially has found a winning formula for videos that amounts to “give away lots of money and make it entertaining.” I’ve watched a lot of his videos; they are entertaining and a decent way to kill 10 minutes.
I’m assuming you asked this question because of all the recent information that came to light calling him a fraud, and to be honest, it’s kind of a big deal. Part of his brand has always been “these are random people, competing or doing a challenge to win a life-changing wad of cash.” He’s made a point on multiple occasions to say that his videos are never faked. It’s not too dissimilar to any cable TV game show. The fact that these aren’t random people and are employees or actors, and that the outcomes are fixed, makes the audience feel deceived.
It’s the difference between why people watch pro wrestling vs MMA or boxing. With pro wrestling, we all know it’s a show; it’s a scripted performance, just like a movie or a play. People still watch it and enjoy it, but they know it’s no different than watching a fictional TV show or going to the theater. In MMA or boxing, you’re watching two people compete to see who’s the better fighter. It doesn’t have a predetermined outcome; you’re watching a real competition.
The problem is that he has always presented himself as being “boxing” when in reality, he’s “pro wrestling.” The people featured in his videos aren’t random subscribers trying to win money to send their kids to college or put a down payment on a house. They’re employees or paid actors who are putting on a show for our entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with mindless entertainment, but call it what it is.
TLDR: Fake videos, unsubscribed.
Apple.
I refuse to pay a premium for locked-down proprietary hardware solely because it looks more visually pleasing than an alternative that performs better.
I don’t want to buy 2 or 3 burgers to feed homeless people. I mentioned this in another comment, but the group of people who are homeless and the group of people who are addicted to meth, heroin, whatever are largely the same group, maybe with a few outliers. Why the hell would I want to buy lunch for someone who’s going to go out and rob or harass someone for $20 so they can go buy a bag of their drug of choice?
People like myself (and others in this comment section) don’t hate the homeless. We hate drug addicts who shit all over society (sometimes literally) in order to get their next fix.
Here’s an experiment you can try: The next time you see a homeless person begging for money so they can buy some food, refuse to give them money and offer to buy them food instead. They’re probably going to call you a piece of shit and if you’re lucky, they might leave you alone after that, but probably not.
People need to have sympathy for the homeless, but not for addicts. We should have social programs to house the homeless, as long as they can pass a drug test. Food banks, work-placement programs, they should all exist and be taxpayer funded, as long as those using them can pass a drug test.
It’s true that not everyone fits stereotypes, but be realistic. The vast majority of homeless people are drug addicts, alcoholics, or both. Addicts with no legal source of income are going to steal.
I don’t hate homeless people at all, and I legitimately have sympathy for someone who fell on hard times and is trying to get their life together; I do hate addicts who are willing to take advantage of hard-working people. The venn diagram between homeless and addicts is very close to being a circle.
I tend to agree, but I would set the age lower. A person can graduate high school at 18, get a 4-year degree, and still be 3 years away from “adulthood” by your definition. There are plenty of professionals in the first 3 years of their career who are contributing members of society. Shouldn’t they be able to drive to work, sign a rental contract, etc? I’ve been in my career for over 20 years, and I have always worked with young people who may be lacking experience but are still productive employees. I think you’d be cutting out a significant portion of the workforce by excluding those in early adulthood.
I was actually thinking about something similar today. We’ve already had an actor as president, then with Trump, we had a reality-TV star. Social media is the new “TV” for the younger generation, so it’s only a matter of time before we have an influencer or a YouTube creator as a candidate, right? Let’s see MrBeast go toe-to-toe with Trump.
I still enjoy the second-wave stuff from time to time, but you’re absolutely spot-on with what’s been coming out in recent years. I’m really into groups that have kept the original BM music style but embraced modern production. A few that come to mind are Faidra, Spectral Wound, Asarhaddon, and Funeral Winds; fantastic bands that play “true” BM but have good recording quality.
Like you mentioned, the big change is just how many “crossover” bands there are, and I’m all for it. You didn’t ask for suggestions, but I’m going to offer some of my favorites anyway:
One day, you’re going to die. Unless you are fortunate enough to die suddenly, you’re going to experience the terror and the pain the comes along with dying. Anyone who cares about you is going to be saddened by your passing.
None of that would be true if you had never been born. Your parents, every parent, has condemned their children to death and has ensured sadness for anyone who comes to care about them.
The worst thing my parents did? Not using protection or having an abortion. Conceiving a child is the most selfish act any person can do.