For years there were opinion pieces in publications about how much better renting is than buying. Financial experts made the case that the expense of purchasing and maintenance weren’t worth any benefits of ownership, especially in the long term. After dealing with big rent increases, insane landlords, and apartments being shown while I was living in them I wasn’t convinced. When adding in the relative stability in the of costs of ownership I always thought those experts were full of crap.

Turns out none of those articles took sudden increases in property values and rent into account. Trying to rent an apartment for someone on a moderate fixed income in my area has become damn near impossible. Rents have gone up ~60% in 5 years far exceeding the COL increases most people see from retirement income or even the raises they may be getting from their employers if they’re working.

Buying a home was one of the best financial decisions I’ve ever made.

Battery charge limit will allow you to set it to stop charging at partial charge. Doing so greatly increases the battery lifespan and can reduce possible fire risk even further while still leaving far more backup time than a UPS would provide.

See if that laptop model allows you to limit the battery charge. If the battery’s still holding a charge, isn’t swollen, and is kept at room temperature you have about a 1 in a million chance of a battery fire.

Parking your car in your garage has hundreds of times more fire risk.

Try testing TLP in battery mode even if you’re not using a laptop. You can configure all kinds of things to your liking with it.

I tried it out a few years ago and none of my server apps showed any noticeable decrease in performance with it running, but my power monitoring plug did show a reduction in power consumption. I ended up leaving it enabled all the time.

Putin’s lackey just needs an excuse to follow his boss’s orders.

Haven’t tried that yet. For now I’ve blocked most of Roku’s BS with Adguard Home.

Roku is every bit as bad. They bricked all customer’s previously purchased TVs by implementing a new user agreement through their UI without warning. It couuld not be bypassed. Opting out required first opting in, agreeing to those new terms and then mailing a letter within a very short window with explicit, detailed requirements.

My next TV won’t be connected to the Internet and definitely won’t be a Roku or Visio product.

This is the best flan we’ve ever had. It’s also the best our friends in Mexico have ever tasted. They had thirds.

I set up KeepassKC with Syncthing temporarily years ago while looking for other options. To my surprise it’s worked so well there’s been no reason to change to anything else.

The database file is always backed up to multiple devices. With Syncthing file versioning turned on older backups are available if that file gets corrupted, but in 8+ years I’ve never had to use one of those older backups.

Initially I was using Syncthing discovery servers which allowed syncing from anywhere, but I’ve since moved away from that. Now everything is run locally and I use Wireguard to connect to my home network when I’m away.

I’d get that old Pi running with a cheap SSD, set up Wireguard (or just use the Syncthing discovery servers), put it on a shelf and forget about it. It’ll probably run for years with minimal attention.

Officers who falsify charges should be in jail, but in the U.S. wearing a badge gives criminals almost complete immunity to the law.

The only reason Microsoft is doing anything is their enterprise customers have had enough of their BS.

HP is a garbage company. My laptops typically last until the hardware is well past obsolete, but not HP’s crap. My HP X360 laptop’s motherboard failed completely and the hinges just fell apart for the 2nd time. This POS didn’t last for 3 years of occasional use. Never again.

Many of the prominent https VPN protocols are for evading the great firewall of China. OP had that as a requirement

OP said exactly the opposite. Where the fuck do you get this stuff?

Thanks for the link. Will take a look.

Who said anything about China?

OP: “I don’t need strong censorship resistance; it just has to work in offices and hotel WiFis.”

I’ve run Wireguard on 443 (on my router) for exactly that purpose and never had a problem, even when my standard WG port was blocked by some businesses. I’ve since had to move to port 587 due to router conflicts and it’s worked fine so far too.

The battery drain on Android is negligible (at least for my uses) and WG is activated by Tasker whenever my home wifi is out of range. From what I can see WG is configurable via Docker compose.

I’ve been using Linux for years, but on my hardware I’ve never been able to get Ubuntu to work reliably. I now only use it when booting from a USB for backups, but even on a relatively recent Dell laptop with Intel graphics the GUI crashes constantly. IMO it isn’t worth the trouble, but of course someone here will be oh-so offended by that.

After trying dozens of distros I went back to Mint because it just works.

Next step: When a 3rd party cartridge is detected HP will degrade print quality just enough to make them unusable while blaming the cartridge manufacturers for the problem.

They’re not the only ones. Foscam demanded I fill out and sign an extensive multi-page developer’s agreement before providing 2 HTTP commands to control the siren and light.

When I get to 20 or so I have to start closing some tabs to keep track of things. How do you find the tab you’re looking for when you have that many open?