My network is named “Hot Signals In Your Area”. It used to be “Routers of the Lost Ark”. My guest network is “Guesty McGuestface”

Unfortunately, no one else in my building has anything creative.

I’ve seen “Leader Desslock”, “NSA_Hotspot”, “Wicked Evil Jowls”. In college someone in my dorm named their’s “Business Isn’t a Real Major”

This article is about software tools, not those other things.

Oh, but you can have TV still. Jellyfin

The bathrooms at SEA airport are unisex. They’re great! The toilet stalls are large and totally private. There’s a special urinal area too. I honestly don’t know why more places, especially big public places, aren’t unisex.

Here’s what I did: I bought a $50 Dell Optiplex desktop with a 4th generation Intel CPU on ebay. I stuffed in 3 HDDs from ServerPartDeals and a boot SSD I had laying around. This machine draws 50 to 60 watts continuously.

I got caddies for the HDDs from my local used computer parts store. I got 5.25 in to 3.5 in adapters from Amazon.

I added a 10 gig SFP+ card (which isn’t fully utilized since my network is mostly 2.5 Gig). Realistically, the onboard gigabit port is adequate.

I got a SATA PCIe card so I can add a 4th drive if needed.

I also bought a Nvidia Quadro P400 graphics card (similar to a GTX 1050, but half the price) for $30 on eBay for Jellyfin transcoding. I couldn’t get the onboard Intel GPU to play nice with Jellyfin.

Excluding the cost of the drives, this setup cost me about $130.

Tailscale works pretty well, but I usually use Wireguard to connect to my router remotely. I’ve had issues getting Tailscale to work well with my reverse proxy, but I suspect that’s a me problem rather than a Tailscale problem. I have OPNsense and Adguard running on an ancient Mac Mini that serves as my router. (If you follow this route, make sure you get a Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter, not a USB one.)

At least in my case, my DOC IS 3.0 modem was having connectivity issues. My neighbor in another apartment had similar issues: dropped connections, slower than expected speeds, etc. Switching to DOCSIS 3.0 modems solved the problem. I guess Comcast upgraded their hardware and it wasn’t compatible with my modem anymore

I had a phone with a back cover that popped off without screws. It was the stupidest fucking design.

Drop your phone? Phone explodes and battery falls out.

Put your phone in your tight pants pocket wrong? Back cover comes off.

Toolless designs are great for things you access frequently. The only time I had to open the back of that phone was to put a sim card in it. Phones should be more repairable, but I want them to be held together with screws so they don’t fall apart during the 99.9999% of the time they’re not being opened.

Fatigue is real and it sneaks up on you. Don’t be afraid to pull off the road and close your eyes for 20 minutes. You don’t even have to sleep, just resting for a few minutes is super helpful.

Similarly, use your car’s automatic features when possible if they reduce fatigue. In your case, that probably means using cruise control. I’ve found that if I don’t have to actively manage my speed, I get less tired.

Assuming you’re in a tight hand drive country: Keep right except to pass!

Certainly!

I’ve never used this one, but it could also work for you.

There’s PairDrop. It might have what you need. It’s for transferring files rather than uploading and then downloading later. You could get creative with authentication. Maybe put files in an encrypted archive file.

Companies pay money to law firms to fight for them. If their law firm rolls over and just accepts something blatantly illegal without putting up a fight, why on earth would any company continue to retain them? If the law firm won’t fight for itself, why would it fight for someone else?

It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a sensible business decision.

“For some of us the suffering of millions and the early deaths of tens of thousands is a feature not a bug”

You and me both.

In my mind, as long as you’re not listening to a horrific song (like Kanye’s Heil Hitler), and as long as they’re not seeing a penny from you listening to them, then I don’t think it’s a huge issue. You’re getting something from them while screwing them out of some money.

My guy. It’s “Buttery Males!”

There’s an easier solution. Just make New Year’s Day it’s own thing, not attached to any month. Then every 4 years, you’d have 2 New Year’s Days. Or something.

I would die on the opposite hill. No spaces, only tabs.

What’s your reasoning for liking spaces?

Well, a group backed by Leonard Leo and the Koch brothers sued Trump because of tariffs. I’d say that’s giving a bit of a shit.

These goons run companies who are notorious for only caring about this quarter’s profits. If they see profits drop because of bullshit tariffs, that’s going to hurt them today. And any benefits, if they ever appear, will take years to show up, so they’re not worth supporting.

I’ve found Linux Mint to be easier to install and use than Windows. (I don’t have to enter the console and allow myself to setup an offline account because no network drivers were working in Linux. Windows 11 did that).

I’ve never had issues with graphics drivers, despite using Nvidia cards. The only issues with Linux have been because I broke something when I was messing around.

Get a USB drive, burn a Linux ISO to it, and try it out without installing it.

When I build my NAS/server last year, I bought a used Dell Optiplex from 2013 on eBay for $50. I tossed in an old SSD I had laying around, and squeezed in 42 TB worth of HDD drives. I added a PCIE SATA expansion card, and a 10 gig network card for 60 bucks to improve performance.

The only real downsides of doing it this way are

• No realistic way of upgrading hardware
• Limited space for internal drives
• No hardware transcoding abilities out of the box
• More power consumption than buying something newer