ares35

i’ve seen two of these things around here. they’ve both been on the flatbed of a local towing service.

ad-skip to present day. encryption and drm is being introduced into the new atsc 3.0 broadcast standard, and some stations are already using it.

i bought a few smr drives, knowing they were smr. they were cheaper, a lot cheaper than the same amount of space in cmr. used only for static media storage, so that’s not a big deal, really., but holy hell was it slow getting stuff on them initially.

i have a few self-powered externals that are also smr (quite common with those as they use 2.5in notebook hdd). when those things have to start shuffling bits around and rewriting tracks, sustained write speeds fall well under what even usb2 can send.

i bought a big external hdd recently on impulse… a clearance sale. it was really, really cheap. with the thinking that i could ‘shuck’ it because i’m short on space in a couple storage systems. i checked. i can, but i haven’t. hell, i haven’t even used it yet other than to run a full smart diag on it, followed by a full format and a read/write verify. took days. then i put it back in the box and have basically forgotten about it until now.

you have to be careful on what models you buy. some have usb built onto the controller board (no internal sata) or other things (e.g. encryption chip, weird power) that make it more difficult or even impossible to use the internal drive in an environment other than the enclosure it ships in.

fire the computer. go back to the pigeons

patents is what you’re thinking of. and all (afaik) of them relating to mp3 format have expired.

verizon did the same thing awhile ago, and it was more than five bucks a month.

was still cheaper for us to keep the old plan than to switch to a new “unlimited” one, though.

usb nvme adapters are not expensive and it likely won’t be the only time you need it. they are a handy accessory to have on hand if you have nvme storage.

don’t mess around with imaging to a file on the zfs, then restoring it. simply clone nvme -> nvme using a usb nvme adapter then replace the internal with the clone.

same deal with the far-right alternatives to aarp. just scamming money from america’s most gullible.

my knees and back say i don’t need any further reminders. but thank you.

first boot: no i don’t want a 365 trial.

still first boot: no i don’t want 365 ‘basic’, either.

(you should know this msa already has a one-off office license on it, you fuckwits)

and yea, still in first boot: no i don’t want game pass trial.

then game pass notifications shortly after from the ‘store’.

this was this past weekend setting up a new desktop with 11 pro.

didn’t go to full HD(or even 720p) on Firefox on Linux

you will run into similar restrictions on other services that use drm.

or onlyoffice

my old phones (going back all the way to the ‘real’ nokias) went a full month between charges. the last two with 4g volte suck so much power, it is every 2-3 days now, including my current hmd-made nokia (only a couple weeks old) with same capacity battery as what’s stated in the article for the ‘new’ one.

i have a flip phone. i don’t use sms, but occasionally i make a quick note in the little ‘notepad’. the good ol’ tap-tap-tap is more efficient than its horrible predictive text.

it was spun-off from asus in '02, then acquired by a different spin-off in '10 which asus retains significant ownership of. so, yea, basically asrock is their “discount” brand,

you’d be surprised at how many people look for lowest price and fail to read even part of the rest of the item’s page below the item title at the top.

kindle. check.

lowest price. check.

buy now.

click-click-done.

(oops. they just got a ‘trial’ to prime, too. that takes actual reading of pages to find and click-through the cancel process before the payments start)

amazon still sells the ad-supported versions of kindles. and not just the fire tablets, but the readers, too.

for every person that figures out how to disable this stuff, there are many thousands of others who don’t, don’t bother, or don’t even know it might be possible to… which is why they pull this shit in the first place–and (usually) get away with it.