Many of our home customers’ feedback indicated a preference for the certainty provided by an annual plan. The annual plan offers assurance that you always have access to the latest version with innovations such as improvements we’ve made in compression speeds and algorithms. It also ensures you have access to critical updates and are protected against new threats and risks.

I think they made that up. I highly doubt their customers expressed any such preference.

$20 per month would be enough to discourage me. It’s another relatively costly computer-related subscription and I already feel like I’m losing a battle to keep those minimal. There would have to be some very clear benefits for that price.

They’re looking for something open-source. Draw.io’s readme says:

License

The source code authored by us in this repo is licensed under a modified Apache v2 license. This project is not an open source project as a result.

I haven’t been through the license to see what its restrictions are, but there must be a reason they give this warning.

Not as annoying as all these people being sent over from number 302.

Also, once you plug it in to your strand of lights, the other end of your lights will have a live male plug dangling off it.

None. Very occasionally reddit if I’m looking for help with something specific. I keep a Facebook account for advertising events on behalf of an organization but never use it otherwise. Twitter never appealed, and I didn’t pursue Mastodon very hard because that format just doesn’t really grab me. I hope the Fediverse keeps going strong and doesn’t end up swallowed by corporations.

Maybe they should, and also care about the many people still using these processors that are not very old.

I once stopped in urgent need of a toilet at the dirtiest little gas station in the middle of nowhere, where the one guy on duty directed me out back to a foul, stunningly filthy toilet. After doing my business I arose and, turning to face the toilet, flushed. It was an old flush mechanism where the water just kind of fell in from all sides, causing a kind of trapped tsunami to eject a single drop of fresh poop water 7 feet up in the air and down straight into my mouth.

If my many decades of life have taught me anything, it’s to close my mouth when flushing or scrubbing the toilet.

It also helps you gauge the poop’s internal temperature using the back of your scrote, if you are endowed with fairly loose balls.

And to savour the undiluted aroma.

I think this is why the “my code documents itself” attitude appeals, even though it’s almost never enough. Most developers just can’t write, nor do they want to.

You could avoid Google messaging apps, avoid Gmail, avoid Chrome and replace the Google keyboard with something else. But I don’t think you can really stop Google watching and listening on stock Android. That’s why the replacement OSs exist.

Google takeout is there so they are technically compliant with rules that say you must be able to download your personal data, but they make it so inconvenient to use that practically it’s almost impossible to download it. Google photos isn’t a backup service so much as a way for Google to hold your photos hostage until you start paying for higher amounts of storage. And by the time you need that storage, Google takeout download has become impractical.

Is btrfs RAID stable yet? This article is three years old, so maybe things have improved, but it contains some pretty strong warnings about the dangers of btrfs RAID:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/examining-btrfs-linuxs-perpetually-half-finished-filesystem/

To summarize, the article argues that btrfs is great for single-disk usage but its RAID implementations are idiosyncratic and unreliable.

(I use btrfs daily on several single-disk computers and it has been great, but I have never tried its RAID.)

How do you know you never had malware if you have no means to check for malware? It’s not like it will announce itself.

Am I likely to be annoyed about where the fiber comes into the house?

That one depends on the company installing it. When I got it installed they asked me exactly where I wanted the fiber to terminate and ran it through the house to an outlet under my desk. So let them know and they might put it where you need it.

As for the router, I recommend buying a mini PC with at least 2 Ethernet ports and 4GB of RAM and running OPNsense. It’s great and will give you all the control you need. Or you can repurpose any old PC you have lying around and just add some Ethernet ports on a PCIE card.

They’re not making YouTube videos because people prefer video instructions to text; they’re making them because they can make more money from YouTube than from text. I’m sure loads of people would prefer text.

Once the company goes out of business (or they focus on a different business) they tell you to get your tires or they will be discarded if you don’t. So you have to get them from them and you stop paying for the storage.

That’s where there’s no analogy for media purchased through streaming services. When streaming services withdraw content, the analogy would be the tire shop sending you an email saying “Just so you know, we’re burning your tires next week. No, you can’t come and get them.”

If the backup HDD was the only copy, it was an archive and not a backup, and you also need backups of the archive.

The only difference between Steam and the streaming companies is that Steam seems to have managed to create a lasting profitable business. If this changed and Steam faced more challenges, they’d put the screws on the users just like the TV and music services do.