if you’re american, manufactured 18 July 2023?

The oldest intact building in my city is from 1320 - so 700 years old. Baguely Hall, which is an old landowners hall.

The city itself - Manchester - dates back to the roman era and we have the remnants of an old castrum/fort in the city centre dating back to 79 AD - so 1945 years old. Surprisingly there were more complete ruins at the site but much of it was levelled during the industrial revolution.

Why “dr*g”? That’s a wierd bit of censorship - making a joke about drugs and sex workers and feeling the need to censor the word drug? I don’t get it?

I’m sorry you and your brother have been through so much and been so damaged. I experienced an abusive up bringing and I know it never leaves you, and shapes who you are for the rest pf your life. For me i was lucky and it shaped me to try to be a better person then my parents and not repeat their mistakes; it sounds like you are also treading that path.

My siblings were not so lucky, they are all damaged and have been unable to live “normal” lives. I lost one brother who died through severe mental illness, another sibling is crippled by mental illness and another is struggling but fortunately getting by.

I’ve learnt the hard way that you can’t fix other people, no matter how clearly you see what is going wrong. You can encourage people to deal with their problems, and you can support them when they try but ultimately they have to want to change or get better. Everything else you do, no matter how well intentioned, will not change anything if the person themselves does not see the problem or want to change.

Regarding your brother, you can reach out to him and try but sadly you may have to accept his life is stuck on a trajectory of self destruction and even sadly violence. I don’t think anyone is born bad, but are shaoed by their childhood. Your step dad and mum are also likely products of bad events or difficult up-bringings and it sounds like they couldn’t change their life paths either. Its a cycle of chaos and tragedy disrupting each generation.

But there is something you do have control over and can change - your own family. You can break the cycle by being a good parent to your children. You are now in the position your mum and dad were, and can be the role model for your kids and ensure they have a happy childhood. That is where you should focus your time and effort.

I’m sorry for your brother, despite his crimes, but your priority should be your wife and children and everything you do has to be focused on what is best for them. Sadly, if that means not including your brother in your lives then so be it. Be there if your brother reaches out for help but otherwise I think your time and energy is best focused on giving your children the upbringing and future denied to you as a child.

You succeeded despite your parents. Ensure your children succeed with your help and support. That will break the cycle in your family and that love, kindness and compassion will be felt by your grand children and great grand children. That is what you can realistically control and that could help many more than one person in your family long term. That choice could have positive echoes throughout your children and their children’s lives.

Disc and disk are varient spellings of the same word that pre-exist computing. Disc is more common in British English, Disk more common in American English. But yeah since computing came along disk has also been used more for magnetic media (hard disk) while disc has been used more for optical media (compact disc). I wouldn’t be surprised if this only happened because of how the CD was marketed and branded as a “compact disc” as a trademark while hard disks and floppy disks etc were more generic terms.

Its been a gradual decline over many years. I’d say the tipping point was Microsoft Edge or Windows 10 itself - that’s around the time the explicit attempts to “monetise” users started.

When Windows went “free” the focus became how to extract as much money per user all the time, so the advertising and edge based spying / data harvesting stepped up a gear.

Its not a surprise looking back - the drive for all these companies with stock holders is “growth”. That really means growth in the share price which means growth in revenue or profits amongst other tricks. Everytime a new generation of managers comes through they scrape the barrel for ideas and things get worse and worse.

I only use windows at work now; I’ve migrated all my devices to Linux (desktpp, laptop, media PC)

I do - there are old sites that have gone off line that I search the Way Back Machine to look at. There are also lots of archived files available that I’ve used more than once (Amiga files for example, Usenet archives and even old magazines).

It’s not really a day-to-day tool for everyone, but when you need it it’s irreplaceable.

Then I’d definitely set up a test system in a VM on your own PC (I.e. not the actual server machines). Even if you don’t want to use Docker, you can set up a complete version of your new server and practice deploying Jellyfin and Plex, and then test accessing it “remotely” to manage it. You can then decide whether switching away from Win11 is worth it.

If you’re not familiar with the process of setting up a linux server then I’d actually suggest Debian instead of OpenSuSe. Looking at the Jellyfin guide for example it specifically covers the steps for installing directly onto a Debian host (while OpenSuSE set up means using the Fedora RPM guide). There are also straight forward guides for setting up a Debian server.

Personally I’m not a fan of Ubuntu (because of Canonical and Snap etc) but there may also be a good choice just because there are so many guides out there for setting up Ubuntu server.

Docker is pretty easy to use, and is easy to play with either on your own system (linux or windows) or in VM guest system. The learning curve isn’t that high and Jellyfin for example has a clear set up guide for docker on their wiki.

But radarr, sonarr etc can be installed directly within linux without docker. The Servarr wiki (that these projects use officially to share information as they’re so similar) has lots of straight forward guides for set up on Linux, Windows, Mac etc as well as Docker.

I have a Linux guest VM set up with a Radarr, Sonarr etc set up, VPN and torrent set up. It was easy to do and means its network activity is all securely contained away from my host system. The tools let me set naming rules and file preferences. The library is a shared n folder in my host system, and that is included in my Jellyfin library. So all I have to do is subscribe to something i am interested in and it will just appear in my library once downloaded. The servarr tools are extremely convenient and worth looking at if you’re adding to that 30tb library over time.

OpenSuSE is a good distro with nice tools like Yast that have a decent CLI interface, and has server releases. The leap edition is stable but relatively up to date.

But there are lots of viable alternatives, and if you’re going to use Docker then the host distro is probably not as important as you think.

Simplest route may be to set up a demo server within a VM and see which one chimes the most with your style of use and maintenance. You could have a functioning demo server with docker and deploy both jellyfin and Plex in 20mins.

Most people who are using TRT don’t need to use it so be very dubious about what you’re reading on the Internet. Testosterone is unfortunately abused. People are taking testosterone as a performance enhancer and a quick fix to get what they want. Look up “anabolic steroid abuse” or misuse if you want to see the side effects and problems with inappropriate use. Example include aggressive behaviour, mood swings, paranoia, cardiovascular effects that can cause heart attacks or stroke, kidney problems, infertility and small testicles. This is when you use extra testosterone on top of normal levels of testosterone.

Your case is very different and a lot of what you see online does not apply. In your case you have low testosterone - that is an actual medical condition and you’re being prescribed testosterone to get up to normal levels. Having low testosterone can delay puberty, lead to low muscle mass, lead to reduced growth of the penis and testes, and lead to low sex drive, low energy, and long term infertity, erectile dysfunction and even osteoporosis.

If you’ve had a blood test showing you have low testosterone and are under a decent doctor who is prescribing this and monitoring it then you should follow their advice. You have a medical condition that should be treated for your benefit and quality of life. All the quackery from people who self medicate and abuse testosterone does not apply.

I’ve got plenty of flat pack furniture and never had to use wood glue.

If you buy quality flat pack you will get well designed and engineered furniture. The bad reputation comes from cheap tat, often mass produced in China.

Wood glue negates one of the big benefits of flat pack - to take the furniture apart and move it at any point in the future.

I’ve also come across shoddily built flat pack furniture when I was renting when younger and I always found the same problem - a failure to tighten screws. Wobbly bits of furniture became functional afterwards.

I remember my mum built a flat pack computer table when I was a kid and it wobbled all over. She lamented how poor flat pack furniture was. I got fed up of the wobble when I was a teenager and had a look - every single screw was not tightened. It took 10mins to sort and the thing never wobbled again.

I’ve fixed wobbly desks, wardrobes, shelving units - all with just a screwdriver.

Number one tip for flat pack furniture: tighten the screws. And number 2, get an electric screwdriver.

Not sure why IKEA is getting knocked? It has a good reputation for quality design. They also have quality ranges with cheaper and more expensive versions of the same furniture types if you want to splurge on the best.

Flat pack is a good way to buy furniture; you just have to get it from good quality sources and IKEA is definitely one.

I’ve got IKEA furniture that’s moved with me from home to home up to 15 years old and it remains in good condition. Never known their furniture to “fall apart”?

Generic drug names are widely used in the UK and europe - we don’t have US style advertising. There are brands but they don’t cut through in the same way when generics are so widely known and mandated for prescriptions coming from the NHS too.

Benadryl isn’t even a specific drug, it’s just a brand with different drugs in different countries (cetirizine in the UK). I’d just say “antihistamine”.

Also brand name drugs are largely a scam - pharmaceuticals are heavily regulated and generics are the exact same drug. Save yourself some money, learn the generic names and buy those. Otherwise you’re just paying the drugs company for their advertising and the big price mark up for their profit as a “premium” brand.

Just don’t buy off Amazon. I buy electrical goods from other retailers because Amazon provided products are pooled with 3rd party products in their warehouses - which means lots of counterfeit electricals even if you select something sold by amazon directly. Not worth the danger of a fire in your home buying a shitty knock off full price off amazon.

All the other shit you can literally buy on Ebay - they’re the same sellers reselling the same chinese crap. The reviews are meaningless.

Weird, it’s marked as both Native and Proton compatible on Proton DB, which I find reliable. People are saying the native version can be broken but Proton works. You can run non steam games (e.g. GOG version) via Proton too by adding the game to steam as a “non steam title”.

For witcher 2: https://www.protondb.com/app/20920

I’ve been building a sharepoint site at work as that’s what we have “free”. It’s such a poor tool - so clumsy and blunt and it annoys me that all this information I’m putting in to it is essentially in a proprietary inaccessible format. Even the integrations with the rest of the office suite and teams are clunky and a bit shit.

I’d much rather use a separate CMS but Microsoft bundles everything together in Office that you can’t get a look in for something else.

DRM-free doesn’t mean piracy. GOGs whole business model is built around selling games DRM free. I don’t pirate but I do use GOG where possible as I hate DRM - it punishes and inconveniences legitimate users for piracy and doesn’t even solve the problem. DRM is just an expensive waste of money for everyone involved.

Yeah, it’d be great if that were the case. But Saturday the 4th is also just the next Saturday in terms of Saturdays.

It’s an ambiguous term and so always needs clarify gbas you and the person you’re talking to may be thinking along different lines.

When I was in my late teens up to around 20 I still believed in God and religion. Looking back, largely to please my Mum.

My views changed because my brother was so dismissive about religion so I started to question it myself properly for the first time. I’d taken it for granted after being indoctrinated into Catholicism my whole life.

Once I started questioning and actually thinking about religion (rather than just accepting it as the dull background to my life) I moved fairly rapidly to become an atheist. I’ve never once doubted or regretted that change. I feel like it was a turning point in my life when I actually started looking around me and questioning everything, and developing as my own person.