Back in the day, I used to grab any piece of paper, and then walk around the entire office with a slightly angry and urgent look on my face as if I was going to talk to someone important. Do a lap. Back to your desk. Job done.

Dell Latitude 5000 series are usually bought by corporations for employees. They are made of sturdy metal, and have features like backlit keyboards and physical trackpad buttons. Then, after 2-3 years, or if they have some minor problem, they end up in a giant stack that either never gets diagnosed, or just gets sent to recycling.

I have had fantastic luck getting a couple of these either direct from the company I’m working for, or from ebay or a company that recycles laptops. They usually don’t actually have a problem, and if they do, parts are readily available on ebay. You can end up with a high-spec laptop from just a few years ago for practically nothing.

I’m really interested in Graphene and Google privacy, but what does it mean when you say "Sandboxed? Like… I want to use Google Maps, does Google still track me? Maybe only when the app is open, and not when it’s closed?

I work for a company that does marketing, and they are seriously struggling right now because TV and Social media ads are getting more expensive, while at the same time becoming less effective.

Yes. This is true.

Because ads suck and people hate them. Whats the new way? Be good at what you do so people talk about your brand. Show up in searches when I’m looking for you. That’s it.

I still like it. But it does have two problems:

1. Post spam. There is no enforcement of the posting rules, and nobody reacts if they are reported. For example, I’m looking for a Volvo, and people post a Dodge but put every car manufacturer name in the listing so they show up in every search.

2. Scam fucking overload. Every time I post anything for sale, the scam traffic is overwhelming. I listed a car and got like 12 similar scam responses. Most appeared to be chat bots with no human behind it. Some surprised me by responding to my sarcastic replies.

But I still look there. The site works for the most part, especially if you use the search modifiers. And selling stuff works too. Sometimes you get murdered, but it’s rare.

Oh good. Because if there’s a profile of my advertising preferences out there, it knows that when I am forced to view an ad, I look away from the screen, turn off the volume, sigh dramatically, and say “Fuck <this product> right in the ass.”

Personalize away.

I got an idea.

Aggressively develop and move everything to non-fossil fuel technology. Share that technology with the rest of the world. Then, boom: Iran loses 70% of it’s GDP, and everyone wins without any shots fired.

The HR person who works with my team actually said “I actually really like firing people. Well, that didn’t sound right… but I do like making these changes.”

ha ha ha… ok. Cool.

My HR team has been doing layoffs inside their own department. It’s kind of interesting to watch.

Yeah. To break down why this meme is bad information, in simple terms:

• You can’t deduct “your mortgage”. You can only deduct interest on a loan.
• You can’t take this deduction on a rental property. You have to live in the home part of the year to take this.
• Since the tax changes in 2017, most homeowners don’t deduct mortgage interest anymore, because it’s better to take the standard deduction offered to anyone.

Don’t share or believe bad information.

This was happening to some extent 10-12 years ago when I first signed up for Facebook. There would be an ad for Target and it would say “Your friend Jimmy Smith likes Target”. And then I’d ask Jimmy if he follows the Target account on Facebook, and he’d say hell no.

This always seemed shady as fuck, and that was before Facebook got much much worse.

I remember back in 2017, I didn’t really need any big desktop apps anymore. All I used was Salesforce, Netsuite, O365, Postman… I asked my company to just give me a Chromebook. Now I hate Chromebooks and I could very much do my job on a Linux distro mainly using web apps if needed.

My IT dept would never allow it because they can’t install security software on it. Obviously I’d be pretty safe from malware, but they’d have to trust that I set up firewalls and password protection because they couldn’t enforce a group policy, and their data loss prevention tools wouldn’t work.

Kinda. I’m using Elementary OS right now, and I think of it more like a Chromebook… with more options to expand it.

You joke… but isn’t that what Amazon Sidewalk was invented for? And isn’t it sort of what AirTags do? They don’t connect to the internet… they connect to partner devices in ways that are unseen by the owners to co-opt their internet access.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Samsung TVs without internet access are using nearby Samsung phones to connect to the internet. Or maybe they partner with the ISP to use those default guest wifi networks. If news broke tomorrow that this was already a thing, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

This may be unpopular to hear… but most of the justifications for not having roommates are like the ones in this thread. People say they can’t have roommates because they have social anxiety or other people are just jerks.

To an older person it sounds like “My generation can’t have roommates because we don’t get along with other people, and they don’t get along with us.” That’s not an economic problem.

It’s actually far far more worrying than that. What happens to a generation that has no ability to coexist with other people? What happens to the world when they are in charge of it?

Surprised to not see anyone in here mention Movies with Mikey (on YouTube under FilmJoy). He does really thoughtful movie analysis with great audio and video production. He’s one of my favorite creators.

He’s also on Nebula for people who’d rather see a video edit that can employ fair use without being taken down automatically.

https://www.youtube.com/@filmjoy

Interesting. I just tried it and that worked: I launch the site from a shortcut, and I appear to not be logged in… but if I click refresh, I am logged in.

I’m on Brave Version 1.60.125 Chromium: 119.0.6045.199 (Official Build) (64-bit), running on elementary OS 7.1.

I’m an American and I had a pretty decent job out of college and the idea of moving out of my parents house without roommates was impossible. In fact I don’t know a single person who did it.

Not to pick on you specifically, but I’ve never understood the modern generations’ seeming aversion to housemates.

I had housemates from after college until 7 years later when I had a wife, starting in the mid-90s. My mom had housemates in the 60s after college (my dad had the GI bill, which afforded flexibility, but had other drawbacks).

It seems weird to me that people these days seem to think that’s unacceptable. That’s how people do it when they are just getting started. Either that, or they live somewhere less desirable, far from cities, small, old, crappy. Personally I did both… housemates in a rural area in a shitty place. :)

In January, I thought I was going to be asked to leave my job. In June they gave me a huge promotion.

I’ve resisted making an account at Walgreens for years and years. The last time I went in there, the prices for things I wanted were literally double if I didn’t give them a rewards number. Fucking ridiculous.