I value free time very highly and a 9-5 job that doesn’t demand constant OT results in a nice work-life balance, IMO. I personally found the transition very pleasant. Main negative was getting time off for chores that must be done during work hours. But, many places are pretty chill about that.

Is this odd? Most cars have had several recalls, and if you have never taken your car in for recall work, you need to go look up what work was (not) done on your VIN and take care of it. Lots of cars are still out there with claymores for airbags, make sure your car isn’t among them.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls

Even Level 1 charging is pretty notable, means the vast majority of your daily miles still come from charging at home. This should be achievable if you have an outside plug and an outdoor extension cable.

Though, I suspect from your statement even that isn’t possible due to ownership issues.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/02/business/20110102-metrics-graphic.html

On that 20-year diagonal, there are only eight of the seventy squares that didn’t have returns higher than inflation. And in every one of those few cases, holding just a few years longer made the investment outpace inflation. When even black swan events don’t break the strategy, this simply is more confirmation that investing in an index fund for long periods of time is a proven strategy.

Note that light-red boxes are investments that outperformed inflation. No clue why they would color making more money than inflation red…

The key phrase is ‘over the long run’ and ‘holding them for years’. That 90yo wants to have long-ago moved their investments into bonds because, as you point out, a stock market downturn may not come back up before they die. Waiting out a downturn takes years and they are drawing down on their investments regularly.

Buying enough lottery tickets to guarantee a payout just ensures you lose money as the house always takes a cut. Investing, unlike the lottery, has the benefit of not being a zero sum game. There is wealth generated and buying something like an index fund and holding for years puts you in the group making a profit along with everyone else.

Example: If you bought VTI (an index fund) just before the 2008 crash (and subsequently lost a bunch of value during the crash), you would still be up 257% today. And that isn’t some outladish example; do the same with the S&P 500 and you are up 279% today. Purchasing for the long term and with a wide array of stocks is investing.

Edit: And in both of those examples you would be earning dividends the entire time as well, which is not part of the quoted %.

Spreading out stock purchases across the market guarantees returns over the long run.

Buying one stock is gambling, buying a wide spread of stocks (or an index fund that does so) and holding them for years is investing.

The reduction of monitoring is worth it. DJI calls home with your location and even provides tools for police to view the location of drones and drone operators in real time.

Click on page 1; OP linked to page 2 which is chaotic to read first.

Are they going to drop the constant data collection, or is that data collection also considered ‘secure’?

Microsoft admitted that it could have taken steps to prevent two aggressive nation-state cyberattacks from China and Russia

Microsoft spent years ignoring a vulnerability while he proposed fixes to the “security nightmare.” Instead, Microsoft feared it might lose its government contract by warning about the bug and allegedly downplayed the problem, choosing profits over security

Jesus fucking Christ Microsoft.

Edit: OP, the article currently links to page 2, which is a bit odd to read first. Here is page 1.

Yeah, a friend had their basement cement cut and repaired to fix a sewage line. I can’t imagine how much more expensive that would be if they had to worry about the entire basement floor immolating when cut.

O, yeah, completely forgot about air gaped machines. Very strong point!

Retro gaming on period-appropriate hardware and OS in 20 years will. (And there likely won’t be security updates for the OS, you would be dumb to connect it to the internet)

Heavy machinery shipping with windows today does.

Your OS not having the correct lan/wan driver happens even today (just less often).

Having an internet outage happens today as well.

Yeah but none of these use cases call for Windows 11.

All the use cases I mentioned are relevant with Windows 11. There is a reason people have been yelling Linux around every corner, and it is because of continued bad decisions by Microsoft like requiring and internet connection for stuff that simply shouldn’t.

I remember it used to be quite common to install an OS and not have internet access. The OS simply lacked the correct LAN or WAN driver; alternatively one might be setting up an OS during an outage.

What would you even do with a PC that never has internet access? (apart from controlling some machinery maybe).

This is actually a massive use-case. Basically every piece of heavy machinery is using the OS it shipped with. Those systems naturally are forbidden from connecting to the internet but happily plug away at their job.

Legacy software in general is a great reason; retro gaming on period-appropriate hardware and OS, for example.

I want one that can do annoying manual labor tasks. ‘Remove all the paint from the concrete porch’ would be a nice command.

Though, with how well AIs are going lately, I could see it deciding to destroy the front door instead if I were to entrust it with a power tool.

I guess the farm really isn’t bringing in the money anymore.

Solar panels on the roof and hood of a car are dubiously useful. This car has panels on the sides of the doors? Those are going to get but a fraction of the light the roof ones will. This just looks like someone tried to shove as many on as possible with zero thought into the efficacy of the idea.

A few of them have. The core issue is it doesn’t add much range, while at the same time adding more cost, weight, and complexity. On a sunny summer day you can expect to get single digit kilometers added to the range, while on a cloudy winter day you won’t get even a full kilometer added.

They do make some sense on hybrids, as they are lighter so the range increase is a bit more and people are less likely to charge a hybrid. But, they still suffer from not adding much range, while adding cost, weight, and complexity.

Edit: Auto Focus did a re-review of the Fisker Ocean, which has solar panels. Linked to the timestamp where he is talking about them.

Ryzen laptops which feature capable integrated GPUs serve light and medium gaming tasks well. For heavy use, there are desktops, which is where the real power is. Portable systems like the Steam Deck are also hitting from the mobile side as well.

Gaming laptops have always been an extremely niche product and have gotten squeezed from all ends in recent years.

I’m really hoping this shit is banned on all government and corporate computers. But, with how poor IT competence is…such a ban will be sporadic at best.