I had a 9" HP mini 2140– the keyboard was surprisingly good given its size.

It’s just a shame the build quality matched the price and they fell apart in short order.

I contacted their customer support and had them delete my account. I also sent them an email as to why, and stated I’d be telling everyone I know not to shop at REI.

Fuck them.

They make a lot more than car navigation systems. Their recreational gear and avionics are top of the line.

Pretty sure it’s a joke/reminder about jury nullification. “Luigi Mangione obviously isn’t guilty – the guy they got on camera looks nothing like him.”

You can’t get a manual gearbox here any more.

Huh, let’s see why

Another factor contributing to the discontinuation of manual transmissions is the increasing emphasis on safety features and the integration of advanced driver-assist technologies.

Ew.

Technology has never been the problem: there’s nothing wrong with genetic engineering, AI, etc. They can (and have) been used for good.

The problem has always been the “greed is good” sociopaths using it for evil.

I flew from Jermany to Tanzania and saw some jeriatric jiraffes.

I say it “Jif” because:

• That’s what the format’s creator named it.
• It’s weird, but “soft G” is a thing and acronyms and the only “rule” for pronouncing acronyms is “it’s easy to say”.
• It annoys people that are way too invested in it. Sure, it’s immature – but it’s low stakes and not particularly “shitty”. I enjoy it and you only YOLO once.

In places where natural gas is cheap and electricity is expensive cost is a factor

Every city in the western world already has at least one rack of servers running 24/7. The have their own domain names, they have a web presence, etc – running a mastodon instance on existing infrastructure hardly qualifies as wasteful.

It’s not and if anything the fact it’s small has advantages. Small is easier to turn into an echo chamber.

If you can push bullshit onto a small but passionate group of people online they’ll do all the hard work for you. They’ll recruit, polish/tailor the message for other audiences, and spread it across the wider internet.

And we know it works, because that’s exactly how the whole “Q-anon” thing operated. Some vague, crazy bullshit on an obscure imageboard became a nearly mainstream “movement”.

Normally when you’re on a VPN all the network traffic to and from your device is going through the connection to the VPN server, e.g. browsing the internet, online games, etc. It can cause issues with other online services and uses bandwidth (cheap as it is) many VPS provider charges for.

A split tunnel tells the VPN client to only send certain traffic through the tunnel. My wireguard setup assigns IP addresses for the VPN interfaces in the subnet 192.168.2.x, so only traffic addressed to IPs on that subnet get sent through the tunnel. In wireguard it’s a single line in the config file:

AllowedIPs = 192.168.2.0/24

I’m in the same situation.

Fortunately there’s a million companies that offer VPS with a static IP address for only few bucks a month. I set one up to run a wireguard VPN server which all my devices and home servers connect to as clients. I also configured everything to use a split tunnel to save bandwidth.

It’s an added layer of security too.

You mean like the “multi-million units sold” Linux based Steam Deck?

I can’t tell if you picked up on their sarcasm or not.

Well, good news. Anthem BCBS rolled back those plans (at least temporarily) after “backlash”.

Stay mad and loud, folks – it’s the only thing they fear.

The states have limited power to defy the feds.

Case in point: legalized marijuana. That said, my fear in regards to states defying laws is:

• Targeted attacks by MAGA terrorists, particularly regarding anything LGBTQ+ or reproductive healthcare related.
• The fed withholding federal funds to punish states that don’t fall in line.

The former is particularly concerning as police and the national guard are predominately right-wing. My state passed the SAFE-T Act to address abuses in the police/justice system. Naturally, various police departments weren’t happy about this, and through obtuse interpretation of the act they’ll claim they can’t legally do vital parts of their job – something I’ve seen multiple times first hand. Refusing to do their job competently in response to MAGA terrorism isn’t hard to imagine.

The later gets tricky. Most of the states that would push back against unjust federal laws are also states that pay more in federal taxes than they receive in aid. The “obvious” solution withhold tax dollars going to the fed to make up the difference … which would be next to impossible in practice. Even if states mange to do it they’d be playing into Republican hands by defunding essential federal services.

Well, when the Nazis initially started “getting rid” of Jews they started with deportation and other countries refused to take them.

Given how that turned out I’m sure it will be fine.

The CHIPS act? You mean one of the things the Biden admin bragged about?

Good thing the incoming administration isn’t petty enough to nuke anything associated with the previous administration…

There’s “knowing” on a theoretical level, and knowing having experienced it. As the generational knowledge of people that have experienced fascism dies off the younger generations have to learn the hard way. Seems to happen every 100 or so years.

The idea of “European exceptionalism” is no different than the idea of “American exceptionalism”. People are fundamentally the same regardless of where they live – we all have the same base instincts, the same hard-coded tribalistic tendencies, and the same fears. Every population on the planet is susceptible to fascism because it preys on the aforementioned.

Hands you a random laptop.

“The thing doesn’t work.”

Refuses to elaborate and leaves.