Acers are like that in my experience. The last one I got with the complaint of “being too slow” had half the case empty because they re-used the old case that was supposed to have a CD-drive in it. And, in it’s place, there was a fan with no heatpipes, no radiator, nor even any holes on the bottom, just some spacers so it sucks and recirculates the air from within the case, and blows it somewhere in the general direction of the motherboard, where, a fucking mile away, there’s a G-shaped piece of foil with just TWO fins slapped on top of the CPU.

The two gigs of ram are, of course, soldered on, and there was already an ssd (though, on SATA and no secondary port either). So I just settled on blowing the dust out and swapping whatever sludge they had for a decent thermal paste, put Xubuntu on it and advised the nearest recycling plant’s address. Of course, I could drill some holes and hack some better thermal solution, but I found that this 5+yr Celeron machine with 720p TN panel is just not worth any effort. It was brand new, btw…

For some reason the only electronics I get asked for help with are literal e-waste which existence must be considered crime against computing, engineering and even humanity. Because of that, my success rate is less than half of cases. Is it bad, or should I consider it good that people only call me in worst possible cases where everything else failed?

The classic card payment and subscription model is actually insane. You literally have to beg companies to stop taking money from you. Good thing it is changing with more modern payment systems - you literally just stop paying for services you don’t need and it’s on them to stop providing them to you. Nothing is ever charged off my account without an explicit action from me.

But what about TESO?

Hey, wanna be friends?

And a pinch of asbestos

Oh god, please don’t. Just use utf8mb4 like a normal human being, and let the encoding issues finally die out (when microsoft kills code pages). If space is of consideration, just use compression, like gz or something.

No, not really, kind of. VPN protocols are cut regardless if it’s domestic or not. You can still use something like tunneling or proxies, but at this point you’d be better off just connecting to a box abroad directly.

It is indeed total ass. Reporting from the ground here, mobile internet is effectively dead - cloudflare is banned and most vpn protocols are cut after 20kb. There are still ways, like ssh forwarding, amnezia and zapret, but the trend is towards blocking all encrypted traffic going abroad. Complete outages are also common as well.

Wired is a bit better, I see disruptions frequently between my ru and non-ru nodes, but it’s usually between two hosts and relayable, no complete ban like on mobile.

Max is on track of becoming mandatory. It already is for school students and their parents. Gosuslugi (gov services) already show an option to use it for auth, there are alrwady deeper integrations on the way that would make it a requirement.

It is pretty openly spied upon. I’m not touching that shit with a six foot pole, but there were already arrests over things said in voice-calls and I’ve even heard reports of FSB agents interjecting right in the middle of the call, saying they’re being too annoying and force-hanging the call.

Doesn’t work, though. Every other business in Russia is still asking for WA for contact. I’ve been using extremist excuse for the past year as for why I’m not in it, because I can’t be too arsed to explain that I’m not using an aggressively proprietary phone-only garbage from a privacy-violating corporation. They’re still asking, even after the recent ban. Honestly, I should just straight up report them to the police at this point.

But dont try to use it in Russia (or Iran, or anywhere with authoritarian government). That’s how you put a target on your head.

I’d suggest matrix but it kind of sucks as well.

Any other options?

Eh, games just used to have terrible level design. Literal mazes for levels, main path going through tiny crevices somewhere underwater, random vents, behind seemingly indestructible/immovable foliage, with buttons that trigger who knows what somewhere on the opposite side of the map. Games just can’t get away with it anymore, can’t make player stuck for weeks when they have literal hundreds of games still waiting to be played.

I just find the concept hilarious. Borrow some expensive… sex… to then immediately sell it… then regularly pay lender with small amount of sex as a fee for the sex loan… then when the time is right buy some cheap sex, return sex to lender… and that’s how one gets sex when sex is in decline.

Think I’m way pass that point… My current itch scratchers of choice are Maddie Ashman for microtonal, Means End/Chromaform for harmonic, and Car Bomb for rhythmic crazyness. Surprisingly, I haven’t ever given “Behold…the Arctopus!” a serious listen, even though I’ve seen that meme video a long time ago… guess I wasn’t ready for it yet. Thanks for the reminder, will def check them out!

Any suggestions for something microtonal? Preferrably polyrhythmic as well.

I’ma short that shit to the ground

You tell me

Think they had a typo in the word “infarct”

Haha, thanks, please do.

Guess they’re not manly enough to just snip whatever wire is going to it.

On an tangentially related note, one thing that Georgia (the country) has taught me is to always check buckle first before pulling the belt when riding an Uber or any local taxi. Used to pull belt instinctively right away, but in there, too often have I found that, while the belt is still present, the buckle has been completely removed and the driver being visibly annoyed seeing me fumbling trying to find it. I didn’t fuss about it, though, the city traffic was so slow I didn’t feel unsafe without one, the road police was non-existent(=no fines), and it’s not really my business as a tourist to tell locals how to drive.