Most “American” food is derived from another country’s cuisine. I haven’t spent much time in the south, but I have heard that Cajun food is one of the few styles that is unique to the USA.

If you didn’t already think humans are mostly all huge pieces of shit, you will after reading this article.

This may be going off on a tangent, but it seems appropriate here. I am sick and tired of hearing about every little minutia of clickbait bullshit related to Trump. If Musk wants to buy and tank TikTok, great. I don’t give a fuck one way or another. Trump isn’t buying TikTok, and I truly don’t give a shit what his opinion is on it.

I want to stay aware of current events in my country. If the president signs an executive order, I want to hear about it. I don’t want to hear about what his friends are doing. I couldn’t care less who made his wife’s hat. I’d rather watch paint dry than a video of him and his wife dancing. I hate that I know he consumes McDonald’s slop and Diet Coke in the oval office.

People argue about how news outlets are biased right or left. The real problem is that news outlets are just entertainment outlets, and not legitimate journalism. I don’t care if you’re reading Fox News or CNN; you’re still going to wade through a river of worthless celebrity worship before you actually find something of substance. Scroll down far enough, and you won’t be reading about Trump any more. Instead, you’ll be reading about which actors are fucking each other and the latest and “this year’s hottest budget-friendly Temu styles that are now made of only slightly toxic synthetic fibers.” If you’re lucky, you might find an article about how some random nobody met another random nobody on vacation and got married. Good for them. I’m glad they’re happy. I still don’t give a shit.

The fact that this dickhead won’t see justice is a major problem. The fact that the media is giving him a platform is more of a problem.

Technology exists to keep all your personal data exceptionally secure. Modern encryption is incredibly difficult to break (impossible really).

Humans are fundamentally insecure. Any time you read about a data leak, it’s because somebody stupidly opened an attachment or fell for a scam. Any time someone gets “hacked,” they didn’t. They gave away their information. Human error and a lack of education are the problems.

I’m also in agreement with you there. I’d rather use Windows 11 than macOS, but that’s kinda like saying I’d rather have a lobotomy with a short icepick instead of a long one.

macOS

Private entities have the right to decide what is or is not acceptable content on their platforms. Consumers also have the right to choose which services they want to use.

I encourage everyone to stop using anything involved with Meta. I personally have a list of Meta domains blocked on my home network.

If enough people did this, the problem would resolve itself.

I am virtually never out of town, but if I was, then no, I wouldn’t worry.

If there was a technical problem that left my servers inaccessible, then oh well. It’s the same scenario as if I had shut them off. I’d fix it when I get back. This has never happened, though. I’ve had VMs crash, but I have never had a situation where any of my servers were completely inaccessible.

The only situation I can think of where I’d need to immediately shut down a server would be a drive failure in my ZFS array, but the chances of this happening in conjunction with a loss of connectivity are exceedingly unlikely. If it was a major concern, I’d write a script to power down the server when a drive fails.

You didn’t mention it directly, but if you want to access any of your hosted services remotely, you will almost certainly want some kind of VPN solution. I host a few things over HTTPS, but there’s no way I’m exposing anything critical directly to the internet.

I suppose it depends on your use case, but I would disagree with points 1 and 2. Network connectivity has an effect on your entire network and is absolutely crucial. Pfsense/OPNSense, DNS, etc should always be on server-class hardware. I run these as VM, but I would argue that best practice is to have them on their own bare-metal server-class hardware. File storage is also incredibly important, and even with backups, I don’t want my NAS going down. It also runs on server class-hardware.

The two items you mentioned are the two items I would be least comfortable running on consumer-grade hardware.

My server rack gets shut off in only two cases: I lose power and am too slow in firing up the generator before the UPS shuts the servers down, or I need to do major maintenance (like replacing a PCIe card). So, virtually never for the most part.

Too many important sevices need to stay running, even when I’m not at home.

I completely understand what you’re saying; in general, I tend to agree that if a firmware update is available, it’s best to install it. I keep the firmware up to date on all my networking equipment, and the first thing I do when I set up a new PC is install Windows updates (or apt-get update in Linux).

I have two TVs. One in the living room, and one in the bedroom. After the brief time I had my bedroom TV connected to my network, it immediately started serving me advertisements. I hate ads with a passion. When it comes to network security, privacy probably comes second to blocking ads in terms of priority. When it came time to replace my living room TV, I first tried to repair it, but after spending too much on a replacement mainboard that didn’t do shit, I just bought a new TV. There was no way in hell I was letting it connect to the internet and download advertisements.

I have an extensive Zigbee network for home automation, 10GB fiber links between my servers and my home office, etc. My home is very much “connected.” TVs are just one of those things that I will never, ever, under any circumstances, allow to connect to anything other than a video cable. If I’m paying $1000 or more for a device, I’ll be damned if it’s going to show me advertisements.

I use my TV as basically just a dumb display panel. If it can display 4k/60, then there is no bug that needs to be fixed. I don’t even use built-in audio.

I connected my other TV to my network once when my Nvidia Shield wasn’t working. That TV is still showing advertisements in the main menu for shows that were released 3 years ago.

I’m in this same situation and at least for me, no, not even once for a firmware update.

If the TV is displaying the image that’s coming from whatever input source I’m using, then the firmware is already just fine.

I love it, and for anyone else who does, I have a suggestion.

Get a SodaStream (or whatever your carbonator-of-choice is) and a cheap adapter to run it from a standard CO2 tank. Not only do you save money on CO2 refills, but you save money on buying cans of seltzer, too. The concentrated flavor additives are only a few dollars at the grocery store.

I think my SodaStream was something like $100. The adapter and hoses were $50-ish. The flavor syrup costs around $5 for enough to make gallons. Every few months or more, I might pay $50 or so to refill a 20lb CO2 tank. It’s already paid for itself, and it’s incredibly convenient.

Holy shit. I’m paying less than 10c per kwh even in the “high usage” tier.

I’m right around the same level, and it actually keeps my server room / workshop at comfortable temperature during the winter. I also have my gaming PC mounted in my server rack; when that’s running, there are times where my AC will still kick in even when it’s 40 degrees outside.

For two servers (one with a lot of spinning rust), two switches, and a few other miscellaneous network appliances. My server rack averages around 600-650W. During periods of high demand (nightly backups, for instance), that can peak at around 750W.

I generally buy almost everything online, but clothes are one exception to that. I generally have 1 or 2 brands of clothes I normally purchase, but even within those two brands, size can vary quite a bit, especially after they’ve been washed a few times.

I can buy two different size 36 pants from my favorite brand, and after washing, one fits comfortably, and the other only fits if I leave them unbuttoned. Being able to test them in-person at least gives me a general idea of if they’re still going to fit after they go through the dryer.