I'll admit I didn't open the article, as far as I'm aware the best way to sidestep silly requirements like warrants is to just purchase data intended for advertising. Databrokers really have an amazing wealth of info ready to be tapped into, all you gotta do is pay.

Debian is always my first choice, but I'm not playing the newest stuff (Far Cry 5/7D2D/Ark/etc), while it hasn't been 'smooth sailing', I haven't found anything that just refuses to play.

Well there was that one part where he turned off his laptop after (not wanting to drop what he did here as the article was pulled), but I could totally see a company freaking out and going nuclear. That being said, I'm just looking through the FreedomGoggles that recently saw a "hacker" using F12 to compromise a bunch of teacher data. You know, their important sensitive data that was definitely not sent to their device where it could be seen by right clicking and hitting view source.

Haven't played since 2e... Polymorph should have been a way higher level spell with how it was written. Mice fail saving throws constantly... Super useful to derail a campaign.

Define "freeloading" for me. They don't have access to big social services (TANF, SSI, etc) due to not having documentation, roads are funded through fuel taxes as far as I'm aware (so if they're pumping gas, they're paying for the roads), dog parks are usually paid out of local sales tax (again, only as far as I know, I live in GA and we're a fucked up state a lot of times).

Income tax is a big one, but not on a small scale (like municipal level)... Hell, I haven't ever had a local income tax that I can remember.

I remember it being iffy when I used it back then, the 8320 didn't have GPS so it was trying to use cell towers to figure out the turn by turn. It was slower, but not as slow as the connection speed would seem because every page load wasn't dependent on a thousand different CDNs and a hundred different trackers.

A dedicated GPS was essential for cross country (if you didn't want paper maps or printouts).

They also have electric ones. They use a UV bulb and some titanium compound that releases CO2 when hit by UV, pretty neat and work decently once you interrupt the breeding cycle. Dynatrap is the popular brand I think.

Cats can be taught how to do stuff, and if there is the right bond, they'll do the action when you ask. I say that because I've known a lot of people with cats that could do "tricks" (e.g. a friend had a cat that would go fetch his backscratcher after work because the cat LOVED that scratcher and knew it meant something positive to the cat.).

By contrast I know a few people with crazy cats and its almost like you (as an outside observer) can see the tension and dislike for each other radiating from both the cat and person. Most of the people with crazy cats only really seem to feed them and clean up after them. The people with awesome cats always seem to do more with them (playing, cuddling, etc), they just seem to have a better relationship with each other.

I know everyone has their own opinions of them but I'm a fan for what they are. Right now I have 3 of them that I've gathered over the years (one with ESXi hosting my firewall, one with TrueNas for backups, and one with ProxMox for a few LXCs).

Overall, they are great little boxes, I had three of them in my living room for years when I was renting and they were pretty much completely silent after boot. The dual core celeron that comes with it works, but can be upgraded to a Xeon e3-1265l v2 (quad core + HT) for $25-50. RAM I think maxes at 16GB, but if you want a box to run a dozen light services or so, its not a bad box (insanely quiet and pretty power efficient).

Mine is definitely a hobby... possibly a borderline addiction. I am an IT person by day and then selfhost a bit at home. Most of my equipment is good old eBay specials (R720xd, R610), or just accumulated over the years (a few HP Microservers, RAID enclosures, etc).

The uptime is decent but my ISP isn't great, plus one of the servers has been having issues so until I find a few hours to focus on it, it is not something I would consider "acting like a paid IT".

Not to make myself sound like a bad IT person, but my homelab is held together with hope and scripts to recover when it goes down. One day I'll cluster some lower power proxmox systems with portainer and ensure everything important has a way to fail over and backed up offsite (no, I'll probably just take a nap if I get a free afternoon lol).

Sometimes people in these communities don't realize how they come off, tone is hard over text, and I'm just as bad in person (thankfully I work remote most days).

I haven't had to do anything special for signal, Home Assistant has some issues with permissions and not always reporting back if its on in the background. Still trying to figure out why its fine on mine but not on my son's phone.

The fine tuned controls for things like network access, storage and contact scopes, etc. are just amazing.

I mean that is an option. Much like banning nuclear weapons, it's easier said than done.