I’ve been curious about that myself. On one hand, it still seems far away. On the other hand, it’s a bit over 13 years away now and I have gear actively in use that’s older than that today.

Squirrels also have a large, bushy tail, so I don’t know what that comic is supposed to be showing.

I’d say their search results have been in decline for some time now, though quality has taken a particularly big hit the past year or so. I’d switch to someone else, but I haven’t found a decent alternative yet. As poor as DDG’s results are, they are still a few rungs above the rubbish Google spits out.

It’s also an edition thing. The Home version is the worst, the Pro version is much the same, but the corporate Enterprise version cuts out a lot of the crap.

And what, have twice the fridge space for slightly less than twice the energy cost?

As someone who’s grown up in the Midwest, Menards used to be just a hardware store/lumber yard but in the last 15-20 years really has branched out to more than just a hardware store. Hence the home goods, pet supplies, clothing, groceries, appliances, etc in addition to the hardware store/lumber yard bit. In some ways it’s a lot more like Fleet Farm than it is like Home Depot, though Menard’s doesn’t have the farming supplies and tractor parts and stuff like that which can be found at a Fleet Farm.

Since they made this change, the newer and remodeled stores are the ones with the multiple floors since they need all the floor space. But I remember some of the original and smaller stores were also multiple floors (electrical was typically upstairs), but those might be all gone by now. The one we went to when I was a kid wouldn’t be anyway close to being ADA compliant today. That store moved locations and the old building is long gone now.

Depends on how old it is. Mine’s a 1995 model. I’ve measured its energy usage and a new fridge would pay for itself at around 9-10 years if I bought a basic model*. That’s around the lifespan I’d expect from a new fridge. So I’ll just keep using the old one until it dies.

(*) Current fridge is a basic, low end model, so assuming I replace with a similar basic, lower end model. Payback would be much longer if I upgraded.

Other than hoarding up the houses, everything is pretty general Monopoly strategy I figured out a long time ago. Basically try to get a monopoly ASAP and then develop it ASAP. I’ve found that strategy to be good, but it depends a lot on luck. Sometimes despite everything you try, the only monopoly you can get are those horrid green properties and you’re pretty much doomed.

I’ve often wondered if Atlassian even uses the products they sell. There’s just so many stupid bugs that I would assume no one at Atlassian would put up with if they had to eat their own dog food. Instead, those bugs don’t seem to get fixed and seem to linger in their products forever.

Maybe the old, discontinued on-premise version. The cloud version of JIRA is a huge step back.

With that said, Teams is not a good product either.

I don’t really see it as a conspiracy. What seems to happen is Apple does something like remove the headphone jack. Apple users essentially have to accept it as they are locked in and don’t have any choice in the matter. Plus you have the fanboys that have an amazing ability to rationalize anything Apple does. Everyone else sees that Apple got away with something, and they follow suit.

Losing the SD slot would still be annoying but not as big of a deal with everyone wasn’t also copying Apple’s model of massively overcharging for storage upgrades.

Besides there being no 1998 Aerostar, this is one of the early models. The badges on the front fenders went away after the first few model years, and the later ones have composite headlights rather than the sealed beams.

The way I look at is that Biden is the first non-Boomer president in 28 years. And that’s only because he’s too damn old to be a Boomer.

Especially since there was no way to shrink it down and have it look good on the computers of the time, back when 640x480 was the norm.

That’s the problem. A lot of those high-end, expensive appliances are built just as shitty as the low-end, basic models. The difference is just some bells and whistles and a higher price tag.

I have no problem paying extra for a higher quality, better built appliance. But the challenge is differentiating those from the low quality, built as cheaply as possible appliances that have just been marked up with a premium price tag.

At least when I buy the cheap, shitty model, I get what I paid for.

That’s who you are to all the people who aren’t your boss but think they can tell you what to do anyway.

They have the ability to turn off the web access now. My company recently did just that - if I try to access office.com on a personal device, my log in is blocked. Works fine on a company controlled device.

I’m not sure how they tell the difference since it’s through the browser. But my guess would be something to do with the lack of all their security software they load onto company controlled computers that have hooks into everything.

I would also never let corporate IT manage a device, e. g. a laptop connected to my private network at home.

That’s pretty standard for working from home. I’m expected to use the company provided, managed laptop with my internet connection.

I figured so long as I made sure of things like there weren’t any open file shares and things like routers and IP cameras were password protected there wasn’t a whole they could see.

If I was really paranoid I could set up a VLAN or something.

The reason we have timezones is because of the railroads. Before the railroads came in, every town would have its own time, typically set so noon is the time when the sun is highest in the sky. This really wasn’t a problem, as back then it didn’t really matter that the time was different in every little burg.

Then the railroads came in. They needed things running on a coordinated time table out of necessity, and having every town with its own time was unworkable. I’m sure the railroads would have loved running everything off of the same clock everywhere because that would be simple. But people were too used to noon being the middle of the day, so instead we got the compromise of having timezones so that the railroads can still run on a coordinated time table, but also so that noon is still approximately the middle of the day as people were used to.

So the solution is just go back to the 1800’s and convince the railroads that timezones are actually silly and that they really should run everything based upon UTC. And if people want rail service to their town, they can just deal with not having 12PM being when the sun is highest in the sky.

That’s disappointing, as one of the advantages of SPDIF is no ground loops between the PC and the receiver/amp. Maybe that’s not really as much of a problem now, but it solved that for me years ago and I’ve used it ever since.

Then again, I don’t have a surround setup, simple stereo is good enough.