I’m one of those people that has the technical knowledge to repair most electronics. I still buy new sometimes.

A while ago, I had to repair a faulty pellet stove. It was obvious that the main control board was bad (there was a single small circuit board connected to a handful of relays and sensors, all of which tested as good). This board contained a small cheap microcontroller, a few MOSFETs, and a handful of discrete components. A replacement was $500. Maybe $10 in parts at the most, and they wanted to charge me half the cost of the entire appliance.

I was able to isolate the problem to a bad MOSFET and order a new one for about 50 cents. Had this been a complex circuit, there’s no way in hell I could have found the problem without a schematic.

So in my opinion, the problem is twofold. Manufacturers want ridiculous prices for replacement parts, and no documentation exists to repair the parts themselves. They obviously have schematics from when they designed the board. They should be forced to release them.

I can kind of get the logic behind this if you were an overseas call center. If you’re already based in the US, why lie? I can’t imagine why a call center would think being located in CA instead of OR would make the slightest difference.

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“Start a business” almost certainly means “Buy into an MLM scam.”

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.

Does she still do this when she’s the one paying the bill?

I really don’t understand this. What does the Army gain by commissioning tech execs as reserve officers? Wouldn’t it be far more effective to just hire their companies as contractors? Or commission high-level engineers as officers. A tech exec’s skillet is running a company. Sure, offer commissions to their most skilled employees, but to the execs themselves, why?

You always hear about big pharma having deep pockets for lobbyists. Why are they not fighting this? I want my yearly vaccine, and they want profits. It’s a win-win situation if they push back on this.

Not really. While I don’t have the exact numbers, the output of an infrared LED is no higher (usually) than an LED in the visible range. My security cameras have an array of 10 or so LEDs.

So looking at a security camera would be roughly equivalent to staring at a light bulb.

Why? If everyone does poorly, everyone should fail, provided the opportunity to learn was there.

This has always seemed overblown to me. If students want to cheat on their coursework, who cares? As long as exams are given in a controlled environment, it’s going to be painfully obvious who actually studied the material and who had ChatGPT do it for them. Re-taking a course is not going to be fun or cheap.

Maybe I’m oversimplifying this, but it feels like proctored testing solves the entire problem.

I sincerely hope this is the truth. I don’t give two shits what they recommend. I haven’t had COVID yet, and I’m not about to get it. Let me and my doctor decide if I get the vaccine yearly.

Also, the government isn’t paying for my COVID shots any more. I am. Even if it only decreases my chances of infection by a small percentage, let me make that choice.

I’ll pay for good software. Developers deserve a decent wage, too. I’ll pay a lot for really good software. I’ll buy new versions of the tools I use often.

What I will never ever do is subscribe to software, no matter how good it is. Software is not a service and should not ever be sold as such.

Mathematically, I think it’s hard for people to truly understand the obscene wealth that some people have accumulated. 100 billion doesn’t sound that different than 100 million.

100 million is magnitudes closer to ZERO than it is to 100 billion.

If you don’t want offline maps, and you don’t want to use data, what exactly are you looking for? The map has to come from somewhere.

As the article mentions, this isn’t a security “feature,” it’s anti-competetive. The worst part is that Nextcloud isn’t even really in competition with Google. Setting up a Nextcloud server isn’t hard, but it’s not a trivial task. Sharing it outside your local network also requires a bit of skill, especially if done securely. That is to say, Nextcloud users probably tend to be more tech-savvy.

The people using Nextcloud aren’t going to suddenly decide to switch over to Google Drive. I’ll get it from FDroid before I downgrade to Google Drive. If that wasn’t an option, I’d set up an FTP server or even WebDAV.

This isn’t an AI problem. This is a “most humans are assholes” problem. How hard is it to say “Oh, you don’t have what I need? That’s too bad. Can you please cancel my subscription?”

I’m not even sure what that could mean. Maybe using chopsticks instead of a fork? I’ve always just eaten food with whatever utensil is typically used for that type of cuisine. I think most people, Chinese or otherwise, eat Chinese food with chopsticks, don’t they?

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.

Gas turbines produce a lot of power, as in 1MW or more per turbine. Is this a backup system, or is the facility using so much power that they literally need their own electric plant to sustain it?