My installation process for a new mouse is as follows: 1 - Attempt to plug it in. 2 - Flip the USB connector. 3 - Plug it in. 4 - Use the mouse.

Is there anything at all to be gained from installing the software that comes with the mouse? Even with extra side buttons, I’ve never had anything not work out of the box.

Edit: OP is remapping buttons. Got it.

Personally, my problem was always that math concepts were never presented in a way that actually made sense in the “real world.”

I was taught that complex numbers were real numbers with imaginary parts that had something to do with the square root of -1. Yeah, I get it, but… why?

Fast forward a few decades and I’m writing code that processes a digitized waveform. Now it makes sense. Math isn’t hard when you have a frame of reference. Learning math concepts solely for the sake of learning them is very hard.

Isn’t this kind of a roundabout way of saying “I’m a libertarian that isn’t into wearing tinfoil hats?”

macOS

I definitely get that. The big thing for me is music, and I routinely buy physical and digital copies of albums to add to my collection. I don’t mind sending some money to help my favorite artists keep producing content that I enjoy. With video, though, it’s just so much harder. I’d be happy to pay $50 or more per month for what Netflix used to be, or even buy downloadable copies of a TV series that I like. That’s just not possible these days. I’d be subscribing to Netflix, Discovery, Paramount, Apple TV, probably a few more. It’s ridiculous. Forget buying and downloading TV shows; there’s no option for that at all. I’d rather just not watch TV or find an “alternate” means of getting the media I want.

I canceled Netflix several years ago after having used it as my primary source of media almost since they first started their streaming service.

The problem I had is that the quality of their content decreased so dramatically that even though it worked fine from a technical perspective, there was nothing I wanted to watch. They used to have extensive back-catelogues of shows from all sorts of different national cable networks, tons of interesting foreign shows, documentaries, obscure indie films, etc.

Slowly but surely this all disappeared. Networks stopped licensing content to Netflix. As soon as they realized that streaming was the way of the future, they wanted to capitalize on it with their own streaming services. In a way, Netflix was a victim of their own success.

Now they’re essentially just a TV network of their own and not the aggregator of media that they used it me. The few decent originals that they have were just not justification enough for me to pay for a service I might use a few times a year.

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.

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.

Email is still really useful when you have a lot to say but don’t want to write a letter. If I’m catching up on the last several weeks with my parents, I’m not going to write a 10-page text. I can write a nicely formatted email and attach a few photos, though. It’s far more convenient than writing a letter and stuffing a bunch of printed photos into an envelope.

I’ll start: 39/M/US, so yeah, I fit the demographic.

Maybe I’m totally wrong, but doesn’t EGR stand for EXHAUST Gas Recirculation? Is the Volt a hybrid? I thought it was an EV and thus had no exhaust.

Edit: This was a joke, wasn’t it?

I was born in the 1980s. I remember growing up, I always had the impression that by this time in the 21st century, we’d have figured out some way to break the established laws of physics. Maybe it was because of watching so much sci-fi, but I feel like I’m not alone in this. The media seemed to reflect the same line of thinking. “Back to the Future 2” with its hoverboards and flying cars is now set several years in the past.

Be it anti-gravity, interstellar travel, teleportation, whatever, I always kind of assumed that by now, we’d at least have a working theory of how we might implement it in the next few decades. I think a lot of that has to do with the start of the “information age.” Computers and the way they could connect us were so revolutionary, it seemed like “magic” to the layperson. More “magic” would only be a few years away, right? If we could fit all this power into a box that sits on your desk, then it wasn’t beyond the scope of reason to think that anything was possible; it’d just take a few more years for us to figure it out, then we’d be planning the first NASA mission to another solar system.

What I never would have predicted is just how rapidly computer technology would advance. We now have supercomputers in our pockets, powered by CPUs that are well into the realm of nanotechnology and are now starting to run into limitations imposed by quantum physics. As a technological society, we’ve probably progressed farther than I would have ever imagined, just not in the way I expected.

I don’t know the statutes offhand; I’m basing this on what I was taught in my CCW class years ago.

The general idea is that the state sets limited laws on where you can’t carry concealed. Government buildings, etc. These restrictions hold the force of law. For a private property owner, they can certainly say “no guns,” but it has the same legal weight as if they said “no hats.” They can set rules for their property, but those rules don’t magically become law. That’s where trespassing laws come in; if you’re asked to leave, they have the right to ask you to do so.

Some states do have laws in place stating that “no guns” signs are legally binding, but the signs must meet certain legal criteria as far as wording. Surprisingly, I think Texas is one of these states, but I could be wrong.

My state is solidly blue, so it does seem strange to me that the laws are written as they are.

In some states, these signs don’t even mean that a person can’t carry a concealed weapon into the shopping center. In my state, for instance, assuming you are otherwise able to legally carry a gun (meaning you took a class and aren’t a felon), the list of areas where you can’t legally carry a gun is very limited: Federal buildings, courthouses, etc. If a business has a sign posted stating “no guns allowed,” you can still legally carry your weapon in that business. If an employee sees that you’re armed, they can ask you to leave, and you’re trespassing if you refuse, but nothing legally stops you from carrying a gun into the establishment in the first place.

As a disclaimer, I’m not arguing this one way or another. I have a license to carry a concealed handgun, in fact. Just sharing information.

There are really two reasons ECC is a “must-have” for me.

• I’ve had some variant of a “homelab” for probably 15 years, maybe more. For a long time, I was plagued with crashes, random errors, etc. Once I stopped using consumer-grade parts and switched over to actual server hardware, these problems went away completely. I can actually use my homelab as the core of my home network instead of just something fun to play with. Some of this improvement is probably due to better power supplies, storage, server CPUs, etc, but ECC memory could very well play a part. This is just anecdotal, though.
• ECC memory has saved me before. One of the memory modules in my NAS went bad; ECC detected the error, corrected it, and TrueNAS sent me an alert. Since most of the RAM in my NAS is used for a ZFS cache, this likely would have caused data loss had I been using non-error-corrected memory. Because I had ECC, I was able to shut down the server, pull the bad module, and start it back up with maybe 10 minutes of downtime as the worst result of the failed module.

I don’t care about ECC in my desktop PCs, but for anything “mission-critical,” which is basically everything in my server rack, I don’t feel safe without it. Pfsense is probably the most critical service, so whatever machine is running it had better have ECC.

I switched from bare-metal to a VM for largely the same reason you did. I was running Pfsense on an old-ish Supermicro server, and it was pushing my UPS too close to its power limit. It’s crazy to me that yours only pulled 40 watts, though; I think I saved about 150-175W by switching it to a VM. My entire rack contains a NAS, a Proxmox server, a few switches, and a couple of other miscellaneous things. Total power draw is about 600-650W, and jumps over 700W under a heavy load (file transfers, video encoding, etc). I still don’t like the idea of having Pfsense on a VM, though; I’d really like to be able to make changes to my Proxmox server without dropping connectivity to the entire property. My UPS tops out at 800W, though, so if I do switch back to bare-metal, I only have realistically 50-75W to spare.

I have a few services running on Proxmox that I’d like to switch over to bare metal. Pfsense for one. No need for an entire 1U server, but running on a dedicated machine would be great.

Every mini PC I find is always lacking in some regard. ECC memory is non-negotiable, as is an SFP+ port or the ability to add a low-profile PCIe NIC, and I’m done buying off-brand Chinese crop on Amazon.

If someone with a good reputation makes a reasonably-priced mini PC with ECC memory and at least some way to accept a 10Gb DAC, I’ll probably buy two.

It really depends on how far back you want to look.

If the US was to suddenly stop projecting its interests internationally, then as others have mentioned, then likely the world work become somewhat more socialized. European countries would probably step up and try to keep China in check, but without the US contributing to these efforts, it would cause a significant strain on their military resources.

If the US was to take an isolationist policy 100 years ago, then there is a good chance that WW2 would have been won by the Axis. The Allied forces likely would have put up a good fight, but I’m not sure they would have emerged victorious against the combined Axis forces. The war in the Pacific would have raged on much longer, and without nuclear weapons, there would have been an extreme loss of life invading Japan. At the very least, WW2 would have lasted much much longer than it did. Depending on the outcome, plenty of countries might currently be speaking German and debating if they should tear down 80-year-old statues of Hitler.

Everybody who keeps saying “just go” seems to be assuming that OP works in an office job where you can just come back and finish your work after your appointment.

What if they’re an air traffic controller, they’re operating factory equipment, monitoring a nuclear reactor, etc. Some jobs require a person to be present and attentive. Now they have to talk to their manager, find someone to cover for them, etc. Mental health treatment should be easily available without having to jump through hoops. I understand their frustration.