Edge and Chrome are basically very similar at this point. Firefox is my browser of choice these days. It’s not perfect, but at least it isn’t anti-adblocking and doesn’t freak out when I block 8.8.8.8 like Chrome and the Google devices in my house. I’m moving away from Google as they move away from not being evil. Moving to self hosted stuff as much as I can for photos, email, file storage, and soon, home automation.

In my opinion, the difference with Google is that Google is actively using your data and you’re giving them a lot of it. For Cloudflare, what do they have exactly? Depends on what services you use, but really all they get from me is the list of servers that connect to my domains. Google does that too if you use 8.8.8.8, or if you have any of their hardware that overrides router DNS settings like Chromecast and Google TV.

I’m slowly moving away to open source, self-hosted applications where possible. Changed search to a combination of Gibiru and Yep. Email to a mailcow server I host on a vps, and I’m moving photos to an Immich server I’m setting up. Home Automation is next, I have a Raspberry Pi 5 to act as the Home Assistant server. And a few other projects in the works to split from Google as much as I can and mostly it is all better.

I mean it depends on the intensity of the surge, but basically you’d be making it so your PSU is unable to protect the devices from surges. The more sensitive the electronics, the more critical the ground is and CPUs are pretty darned sensitive among other things. And depending on the type of components in the PSU, “surges” also include things like inrush current. Basically, when you turn on a transformer or certain other devices, there is a surge of sometimes as much as 10 times the rated current to create the initial magnetic flux. Depending on the components, this excess energy may end up getting shunted to the ground to avoid pushing it through your electronics. So if it can’t do that, you likely will blow fuses a lot when switching the power on (hopefully there are fuses), or if you’re touching the case which is supposed to be grounded, you may end up getting that jolt.

Anyway, without grounded outlets, and especially if your electronics are cheaply made because many expect there to be grounding and don’t build in extra components to deal with not having a ground, you are likely to significantly reduce the life of your electronics, your life, or start a fire without even considering major surges. If you have a high-end PSU, you may never have a problem until that surge happens. How stable is your power? Because even a normally small surge combined with a cheap PSU, and no ground, is pretty likely to end up in damage to electronics at the best case.

I’ve never seen any math that disproved that. Now if you’re looking at actual federal income tax paid, maybe, but social security tax is based on income, it doesn’t get reduced by often fraudulent deductions and credits. So a lot more income is taxable under social security tax than federal income tax which is laden with loopholes and complexities. So when Jeff Bezos in 2007 paid $0 in income tax, he likely would have paid tens or hundreds of millions in Social Security tax if there wasn’t a cap, because he did have income. Of course, we aren’t legally able to get the actual numbers because of privacy laws, but there have been some leaks recently if you want to see some of the numbers.

Because computers have come even close to needing more than 16 exabytes of memory for anything. And how many applications need to do basic mathematical operations on numbers greater than 2^64. Most applications haven’t even exceeded the need for 32 bit operations, so really the push to 64bit was primarily to appease more than 4GB of memory without slow workarounds.

Or eliminate the cap on the tax so they actually pay their fair share. That would fix all the problems that Social Security and Medicare have in an instant.

Automate as much as possible. I rsync to both an online and home NAS for all of my hosted stuff, both at home and in the cloud. Updates for the OS and low level libraries are automated. The other updates are generally manual, that allows me to set aside time for fixing problems that updates might cause while still getting most of the critical security updates. And my update schedules are generally during the day, so that if something doesn’t restart properly, I can fix it.

Also, whenever possible I assume a fair amount of time for updates, far beyond what it should actually take. That way I won’t be rushed to fix the problem and end up having to revert to a backup and find time later to redo it. Then most of the time I have extra time for analyzing stats to see if I can improve performance or save money with optimizations.

I’ve never had a remote provider just suddenly vanish though I use fairly well known hosts. And as for local hardware, I just have to do without until I can buy a replacement. Or if it’s going to be some time, I do have old hardware that I could set up as a makeshift, temporary replacement like old desktop computers and some hardware that I use for experimenting like my Le Potato that isn’t powerful enough for much, but ok for the short term.

And finally I’ve been moving to more container-based setups that are easier to get up and running again. I’ve been experimenting with Nomad, Docker Swarm, K3s, etc., along with Traefik and some other reverse proxies so o can keep the workers air-gapped for security.

Yes, this is exactly what it’s for, as well as Winnie the Pooh in China, LGBTQ+ materials in Florida, or any other ridiculous laws. As fascism is taking over many countries, including the US, UK, and other Western countries, they are pressuring content storing companies to add backdoors to allow hunting down dissidents.

Oh, and also this is a way to allow selling the content to train AI since it’s less obvious that it is allowed with this kind of vague wording.

But it’s not just Detroit that matters in this case since the presidential election hinges on total for the state, not individual voting districts. So sure, he’s not going to win the district but that doesn’t affect the race. So since Detroit is the largest city, it’s still the place to convert more people at once. And he doesn’t need to convert them to vote for him. He just needs to convince them not to cast a desperation vote against him.

Sounds like she had some kind of violent allergic reaction to the drink or had taken some sedatives or other medications that might have caused a bad reaction. Or maybe just before the flight she drank a whole bunch and it just hadn’t hit her yet. I can’t see a single drink doing that, even for someone with a phobia or trauma. Hope that if it was something she had no control over, they’ll at least take that into account. But if it was a mix of sedatives or she really was that drunk, then yeah, totally throw the book at her.

Good to know. Wish I knew about that month ago. I was told at the time that it wasn’t covered and that’s it. Guess everyone should get it before August.

Problem is that insurance companies follow requirements, not recommendations. So once the requirements and funding are gone the coverage is removed. Recommendations then take time to be considered for implementation based on if they are going to save the company money. But that needs to be proven to executives with data. And since many states no longer track COVID cases due to political biases and there’s no longer funding to pay for the expensive vaccines or the research to provide that data, and with most large corporation executives being right leaning and the current political right being against vaccines, many are choosing not to cover it, except for people over 65 which is the at risk group. Just like it was always recommended that everyone get the HPV vaccine, but it wasn’t until recently that it was covered for adults. It’s all about cost vs risk since our healthcare system uses an insurance model instead of a public service model.

So, if your insurance will cover it, definitely get it. If not, it’s pretty expensive and the government is no longer picking up the bill. I just had COVID from traveling and that was my first time. Likely mostly because I didn’t have the booster this time.

“A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular”

If all he does is leave, that will be fantastic. More likely he’ll just cripple the company in his rage. That’s the real reason a lot will vote to pay him.

But it hasn’t always been free to file electronically. The government made it required for them to offer free versions for simple returns, but that was recent.

Also, access to the Internet isn’t universal. You’d be surprised how much of the US doesn’t have affordable Internet and a fair number don’t have Internet available at all, or limited to just dialup which is not very useful. And a lot of apps don’t work right on phone browsers, especially older phones, so then you need a desktop or laptop which a lot of people don’t have. Some have access in libraries, but a lot don’t or traveling to a library is a burden. And lots of other reasons that internet isn’t a given for a large portion of households. So paper is still not just necessary, but the easiest way.

I self host a lot, but I host a lot on cheap VPS’s, mostly, in addition to the few services on local hardware.

However, these also don’t take into account the amount of time and money to maintain these networks and equipment. Residential electricity isn’t cheap; internet access isn’t cheap, especially if you have to get business class Internet to get upload speeds over 10 or 15 mbps or to avoid TOS breaches of running what they consider commercial services even if it’s just for you, mostly because of of cable company monopolies; cooling the hardware, especially if you live in a hotter climate, isn’t cheap; and maintaining the hardware and OS, upgrades, offsite backups for disaster recovery, and all of the other costs. For me, VPS’s work, but for others maintaining the OS and software is too much time to put in. And just figuring out what software to host and then how to set it up and properly secure it takes a ton of time.

So break the bubble, show us the people hurt by the “poison”. And not just one or two who happened to be allergic. That can happen with peanuts, like my little sister the first time she had them as a child. I had chicken pocks before the vaccine existed. I saw tons of kids suffering because of it. Now I see none except the ones who didn’t get the vaccine and the few unfortunate enough to be near too many of the unvaccinated people.

Yeah, very limited, but it’s very good for more than half of the population that don’t have enough deductions to exceed the standard and don’t own property (if you properly count houseless “households” that earn income as not owning property and not just renters like most statistics). It’s dumb that they have to file a return anyway just to acres money that never should have been collected. Most just don’t know how to properly file their W-4 to not have taxes withheld in the first place. Mostly because they follow the directions and/or are afraid of paying a fine plus interest.

Anyway, it’s a step in the right direction. And if we can unbury all of the staff out of the pile of paper returns, we can devote some to go after the rich and their frivolous, often fraudulent deductions and have them pay the tax they owe.

Been there, done that. Salaried workers have no limit on how much they can be required to work without additional pay.