8Tb optical disks don’t exist. Much cheaper to just do spinning-rust or cloud.

and super invasive of customer privacy (their privacy claims are "only we will know everything about you" which is creepy AF)

Completely false. If you enable advanced data encryption, your iCloud data is encrypted such that even Apple cannot access it.

Which is why they introduced Legacy Contacts for next of kin… if someone with an iPhone dies, and their relatives want access to the deceased’s data but no-one knows the phone passcode or the iCloud credentials and don’t have legacy access, they can spend hundreds of millions of dollars suing Apple and Apple will be unable to provide access.

As someone who has actually worked on a system like this in another capacity, it really does works as advertised.

My parents are reaching the same point, only with positions swapped - my father with dementia, my mother in incessant hip and other pain that has no cure. They are both researching options, frustrated that the Canadian MAID program offers neither a dementia option nor a couples option.

And as their eldest, it is my duty of care to implement whatever choice they make. They took care of me in the beginning, I take care of them at the end. And choice is the most powerful gift I could possibly help them retain.

I have a Pixel 4a (with Calyx) for a few years already (start of 2021)

2021. That’s just a little over three years ago.

This is why I run with Apple. Because even though their repairability sucks even more than Android, they are built like tanks and they get six to seven years of full OS updates, and not just security patches.

And the security patches continue for another year or two after that.

Nothing else comes close. Sure, the big players in Android have now claimed five years of OS updates, but I was promised Android 13 with my Nokia 7.2, yet I am still on the original Android 11 that the phone came with - Nokia never even released 12, much less 13 for that model.

I will believe these vendors once they are actually pushing Android v.X+5 to a phone that launched with v.X.

If you want truly bulletproof clothing appliances and live in America, look up Speed Queen. They’re built to commercial standards and are trivially repairable. Many last for decades with only minor maintenance and upkeep.

Unfortunately, Speed Queen not available outside of America. 😭 Or, at least, absolutely not available in Western Canada.

I went with LG, as Bosch didn’t have the capacity I was looking for. Pretty happy with LG for both washer and dryer, four years and counting without a single issue. Would be nice if the front-loading washer came with an automatic dehumidifier, tho, as we have to leave the door open to avoid funky smells developing.

VW really dropped the ball on software

Why bother with software, then? Late-80s and 90s Type III Jettas can be absolutely bulletproof if you find them in not-bagged and well cared for condition.

Depends on when it was produced.

My 1998 HP 4050DTN is still going strong, an absolutely bulletproof beast of a machine. Plus, I can get extra-stuffed cartridges for it that can do 20,000 sheets at 5% coverage. Even after two degrees and a quarter century I am only on my third cartridge.

My HP 5000DTN wide-format printer is much the same.

Of course, this was years before the DRM enshittification path that HP started down, so there is that.

Depends on when it was produced.

My 1998 HP 4050DTN is still going strong, an absolutely bulletproof beast of a machine. My HP 5000DTN wide-format printer is much the same.

Of course, this was years before the DRM enshittification path that HP started down, so there is that.

killing a person is at odds with their hippocratic oath.

I think you need to review what that oath entails. Because it does not include not killing someone. It is about doing the least amount of harm… and there are some harms that are much worse than death.

If you provide a service, you should not be able to discriminate.

Or, on other words,

If your religion prevents you from doing your job, find a different job. If your religion prevents you from being a kind and decent person, find a different religion.

And I would extend that to being “a merciful and empathetic person”, as well.

By many metrics we have already passed 1.5℃ of warming, according to some as far back as five years ago.

The only reason why politicians still punt that line is because the political benchmark for “passing the 1.5℃ mark” is to have twenty consecutive years past that point.

You know how to do that? Eliminate the entire right-wing political structure. The regressives are virulently - and likely to be violently so, sooner than later - against science of any kind. Anti-reality theology is their poison of choice, and they will fight until dead to put that first.

Except that capitalism’s lust for obscene quarterly profits will make the Parasite Class keep us on “business as usual” until the guillotines come out. Which is likely to be when 4-5℃ of warming is locked in, dooming most of humanity if not all of it.

If the punishment for a crime is a set fine, then it is a law that targets only the poor; the wealthy will just pay that fine with the spare pennies at the bottom of their pocket as “a cost of doing business” and move on like nothing ever happened.

Antibiotics.

Their discovery and development is what has directly enabled our sudden rise from 2B to 8B humans in only about a century. Without antibiotics, we would likely still be under 3B humans world-wide. Yes, disease really did kill off a lot of humans back in the day.

Graph out the human population over the last two centuries, and you can even see the very decade when Penicillin use became widespread, along with doctors washing their hands and other basic hygiene tasks.

In most western countries any unintentional mistake made by the employee is considered a cost of doing business… after all, if such a mistake is doable, there is a problem in the business processes that needs correction.

Now don’t get me wrong, many shady business owners will still try to pin things on employees and take it out of their pay. But that is illegal here.

And there are ways of having that entry removed from the list of options entirely, and not just shifted to the drop-down menu. Makes it harder to physically shut down, but its absence can be a WTF big enough for you to realize which machine you are working on.

I don’t bother doing that to VMs, which can be trivially restarted, but their Hyper-V hosts? You betchya I do it to those.

All I am looking for with one of these is LHD, PW, AC and stick. All other non-default creature comforts are superfluous.

But yes, would love one of these, especially if it came with a 2m³ capacity dumping bed.

Now, TBH the truck in the back can carry a much heavier and/or physically larger load. Even though the beds are the same length, it’s bed is slightly deeper and likely a good foot or two wider. But how many truck owners transport such loads on the regular? In fact, how many truck owners have anything other than Pavement Princesses?

The truck in the front is more than enough truck for most “truck owners”, they just choose the back option for it’s utility as a penis extender.

Many modern routers have this exact capability - to take a USB-only printer and serve it up over the network. Even some ISP modem/router combo units are set up to do this. Check to see if your router has any USB ports on the back.