Just be sure to get the edge release if you care about gaming or have current (like newer than 2021) hardware. Mint’s main release is on an old kernel, 5.15 I think. Mint edge release is running kernel 6.5, which is from earlier this year.

“The incident is widely characterized by critics as an example of mishandled manhandled customer service.”

Just a typo.

Microsoft will just enable it via an update once all the fervor dies down. They haven’t abandoned the plan, and won’t, not while your data is pure profit for them.

Hell with them, no more Windows PCs in my home. I’m sick to death of everyone and their mother trying to both advertise to me and sell my data without my permission and at zero benefit to me.

The fact this is even necessary makes me want to shit a brick.

“Do you want to make an online account?” No. “Okay, please set up your local account.”

That should be it. And honestly, even that’s egregious to me. Signing into online bullshit should be opt-in, not opt-out. Thank goodness I don’t use Windows anymore, finally wiped the last Windows machine in my house this past week.

Also if i want to make a plex server on an old PC, what would people recommend?

My plex server is headless, running Almalinux. Doesn’t take much, I have it running on a very old NUC8 (NUC8i5BEK). The box is also running Asset UPnP and AudioBookshelf server too.

Personally, unless the server will also be the client (as in, you’ll be watching from the server box and not a streaming box, tablet, TV app, etc), I’d skip any GUI and just install it from the terminal, save your resources for what matters. Desktop environment is pointless for a server machine.

If you were buying a cheap machine to handle it today, I’d probably recommend a Beelink (or other) mini-PC with a Ryzen 5000 series chipset (5500u/5560u models with 16GB RAM can be found very cheap, generally $215-$240 new these days). The 5000 series in particular are very power efficient for something you likely will leave on all the time, and have both 6c/12t and 8c/16t variants, though the 8 core ones will probably be more like $300-$320.

Whatever you buy, if it comes pre-installed with Windows, delete the OS. I wouldn’t trust preinstalled on these boxes, and in any case Microsoft is getting really sketchy with this whole Windows Recall thing anyway.

Try entering the pin wrong repeatedly. May not work, but there’s a setting to force a wipe if it’s entered incorrectly 10 times. Will only work if that was enabled that at some point, but it’s worth a shot.

For instance, you can’t factory reset an iPhone without connecting it to either an OSX computer, or a PC running their special program.

This is patently untrue. Settings -> General -> Transfer or Reset iPhone. You have the option from there to wipe all data, do a full factory reset, or transfer the phone’s data to another device.

I’ve no idea where you’re getting your info from.

Generally underscore _ works best for this, and should be viable for both OSes.

You’re not likely to do that for $150. You might be able to pull an old Dell Precision T5500 tower with a weak Xeon on eBay for cheap and refit it with more ram, better CPU and cheap non-redundant storage for $200 - $250.

For sake of power requirements though, seriously consider your use case and needs. You can get by pretty well with cheap mini-PCs like Intel NUCs or AMD minis like Beelink for pretty cheap and just cluster them with something like Proxmox to scale out instead of up when you need additional resources. This will be reasonably priced and keep the power bill and noise levels down.

But otherwise I learned the hard way many years ago to just buy Logitech after purchasing a stupid expensive gaming mouse from a brand I’ve forgotten whose left click died in less than a year.

Seems to be a problem in general. I’ve been using Elecom trackballs for years, first one I bought still works. Ones I’ve bought in the last year all started wigging out on left click within a couple months. I took one apart recently to swap the mouse switch with a quick solder job and it’s good as new. Seems like the newer ones are using really cheap Chinese Omron switches that die quickly. IIRC the older one uses a Japanese Omron switch. The new one I soldered in is a Kailh GM2.0.

I had really specific requirements on the car in terms of capability and price since I was moving to a rural area and my old car was a 14 year old Hyundai Accent with bad suspension. Didn’t want a truck or anything too large, but needed a car that could handle some off-road and country roads, and had around 7" or better clearance, and couldn’t have a dual clutch transmission (either traditional or CVT with no dual only). Basically it came down to the Honda CRV, Kia Sportage, and Toyota RAV4.

CRV was my first choice, but its front bumper rides low, reducing it’s clearance below the frame height, it can’t even get over low objects. RAV4 was ideal, but like… $8k more expensive than the sportage, at the time the sportage was just under $24k new (crazy, since I was seeing used ones with up to 45k miles going for $27-28k).

So, I was sold on the Kia and just considered it kind of around my hourly rate. Even if it took all day, I was saving minimal $8k compared to my next best alternative and my hourly rate at the time for work was like $42. Even if the prices were the same, just factoring the 0% finance deal when my best pre-approved loan rate was 2.5% would save me well over $1k on the life of the loan, and around $400 in just the first year, so I figured it was totally worth a few hours of haggling and stalling on them.

When I moved I bought some nice all-terrain tires (Nitto Nomad Grapplers) for a few hundred bucks and it’s been solid. No complaints, decent performance, and I don’t get stuck in the mud at all. :)

I mean, I was already preapproved for a 2.5% loan and qualified for the 0% offer, made that clear. I was very up front there would be no dealer loan.

I made it dirt easy, like “I’m qualified for this zero interest deal, I’m willing to pay up to $10k in cash up front. Make it happen for $300 a month or less with those terms and you have a sale.”

They still fucked around so hard. I really was ready to walk out empty handed, they made the deal literally with me unlocking my old car to leave.

You’d be surprised, it depends entirely on where you’re willing to live.

I used to live in the Denver Metro Area in Colorado and houses were going for like $400k-650k in the area.

Ended up moving to a smaller town ex-urban/rural area since my work is remote anyway. Had my home built in 2021. 1050 sq/ft 2 bed 2 bath for $210k. And even better, I snuck in before rates climbed. With $6k in points at closing, I got it at 2.25%.

Even after doing a full solar and battery installation and insuring the place for an additional $50k to accommodate that and value increase, my mortgage (including insurance and tax escrow) only comes to $1215 a month. I’ve been paying extra on principle every month to reduce interest amortization, and hope to pay it off within the next decade most likely. Retirement won’t be easy, but actually seems like a possibility now.

And bonus, I’m near a ton of nature, get to enjoy deer chilling outside the house, and the night sky out here is beautiful.

Nah, I bought it because there wasn’t going to be a better deal, I did my research for weeks and months prior and that 0% popped up in the middle of reviewing options.

I think they tried the push because it was the last day I could get it before the deal expired. The zero % financing was via the manufacturer, not dealership.

0% was a brand-wide deal (manufacturer, not dealership) to get rid of previous year stock, there was no cash back option on it. Plus, there’s no lower rate than zero, and best I could get with a different loan was 2.5%. Though I did reference said pre-qualification during negotiation when they made the crap offers. Made it clear I wasn’t walking out with a dealer loan.

This article pisses me off. Back in late 2020 I went to a dealership to buy a new car, very high credit score, 1/3 cash down, and qualified for a 0% interest deal that was going on at the time.

The dealership came at me with the most bullshit offers, tried to get me to take dealership financing at 4%, then 3.5, then 3% at a longer loan duration and acted like they were doing me a favor the whole time. Finance guy was being such a dickhead about it even the sales guy started getting pissed at him.

Took nearly 6 freaking hours to close the deal. Finally got my 0% offer and expected financing/cost because it was 20 minutes to closing time and I was like “fuck it, I’ll go check out your competitors tomorrow,” keys in hand, walking out the door. Sales guy literally chased after me and stopped me at the car to say the finance dude finally caved.

Fucking scumbag stuff. Dealership changed their name a year later and I don’t wonder why.

I found the trick was to steal spells from the enemies and then run away. Get a bunch of water spells, link to your attack and you’re a monster at like… level 3.

Presumably because the saline quantities were tracked and documented just like the fentanyl was. Tap water isn’t a medical supply. Still completely fucking heinous either way.

You’re probably right with the bullshit going on now. IBM just loves fucking up everything it touches. You wouldn’t believe the headaches all the RHEL 9 crap and the end of CentOS has caused for some of my customers. AlmaLinux seems like a decent alternative, but not sure how well it’s going to be received long term.

I’ll add that I don’t know if there are good certs for it, but SQL admins are pretty much always in demand, and I hear that kinda thing can pay well. I knew some folks in business Intelligence (BI) that did nothing but SQL and outputting charts and data for analytics and they made bank. Seemed like a pretty neat job too, I have to admit. It’s cool to take data like that and turn it into something useful for everyone else.

And having occasionally mucked around in postgres DBs, yeah, good on them. SQL can be both completely simple, and at the same time, ridiculously complex and involved, all depending on how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go. Blows my mind all the things you can do with it with so few commands.

This person got in somewhere good early on and rode that career train. These opportunities rarely exist today unless you arre a charismatic super talented genius.

Not really true. It takes a bit of knowing your worth, advocating for yourself in interviews, and job hopping as needed for pay raises every year or two while continuing to build your skills both on the job and outside of it. IT isn’t an industry that lends itself to job stability and high pay if you stay in a role long term, and stagnation can certainly be a factor if you decide to stop learning things.

Also. it’s still very possible to get in, but focus these days is DevOps, automation, virtualization, and more recently, AI. You won’t make bank in some shitty low tier helpdesk role.

A good start would be certification path to pick up some straightforward “guaranteed to get you work” kind of certs like:

• Linux+
• Network+
• VMware VCP-DCV (and later with experience maybe VCP-CMA)
• Any Redhat cert
• Security+ if you’re interested in cybersecurity and/or federal work (USA, not sure about other places)

Alternately, getting a few programming languages under your belt is totally doable for free with Youtube and other online courses and then doing your own projects with public repositories on Github for prospective employers to see. Getting a foot in the door with dev is gonna be very luck of the draw though.

You definitely wont’ start out making a wage that high on the Ops side, but finding a foot in the door at between $25 and $30 an hour shouldn’t be hard once you get some bare minimum experience under your belt.

College grads may have an easier time, but I wouldn’t know, I dropped out and went the certification/experience route some 15+ years ago.