It’s not a scam, it’s a link from FedEx (or in my case UPS) to pay tariff and duty charges. Believe you me, I triple checked the whole thing and it was legit before I even considered paying for it. If you are shipping an item directly from outside the US, a lot of times those charges are left for you to deal with (resellers on eBay or Amazon for stuff from China would pay for those in advance, which is why it’s not always normal). It’s a bigger thing than it used to be, because it used to be that if the value of an item was less than $800 (I believe, it’s been a min), there wouldn’t be duties on it unless it was a big item or some other unusual circumstances. However, Trump screwed that up with the tariff changes, so extra charges are collected by the shipping company directly. The problem is that I wasn’t warned ahead of time (I thought it was coming from the Philippines so the charges wouldn’t be a thing), and that seems to be increasingly the norm for ordering directly from the manufacturer, given soo many are in China or countries we have decided it is a “good” idea to impose tariffs on (which the customer has to pay).

Yep. Accidentally imported some parts for my car (thought they were in the states, but no, China), got a random message about duty fees. I initially thought it was a scam, but got another, so I followed the link on a safe device (laptop running Linux). It gave a valid address from the shipping company with details that verified my order, so I had to pay or it wouldn’t be delivered. Very annoying, should have been told earlier that I needed to pay duties/tariffs so I could plan accordingly.

Another idea you could try instead of the foil is maybe making some basic window inserts. They’re mainly for keeping the heat in, though they definitely improve the r values of windows which can help keep the heat out for next year. Not really an excuse for the cops showing up, but should help head this off from happening in future.

I mean, it’s not like it’s gonna wrap up anytime soon, might as well get some points against Trump while they’re at it…

Not particularly, no. A lot of tech people have been pushing the idea for years largely because it means that they would know what everyone would get on a monthly basis, and could adjust their subscription fees accordingly. The real solution is just to make society more equal, would effectively accomplish the same thing (at least in the US) if there were no more billionaires and public funds were properly allowed (ie Medicare for all) to improve the basics of society.

HTC m8 and m9. Those were such good phones…

Just hollow out a mountain, like the US did with Yucca mountain, plenty of storage (if you’re politicians let it be used for its purpose) that is pretty easy to secure for centuries (and after that probably pretty easy as well). Assuming you close it up well when full, even future historians probably will have an idea that it’s dangerous by the level of difficulty to just get into it.

Not trying to discount the issue, just point out that there generally are solutions to the issues around nuclear waste, just that politicians have mucked it up quite a bit in the past (especially in the US).

Yup. Grew up listening to classic country, and while there were definitely stereotypes (he/she ran off and left the singer heartbroken/they died and left were heartbroken), they were obviously not formed by committee. This new stuff has no “soul” or underlying point, and is very obviously pushed because it targets a specific type of person.

My point is that while it’s a pc, it’s more positioned to be a console. If steam limited sales to one per customer and only for established steam accounts for the first runs (like they are already beginning to do for the steam deck and controllers), then they could force it to be more of a console. I do think it’ll still be a bad launch, as the goal of the steam machine clearly is to put them in Xbox territory for regular consumers, and the current price and any other changes probably won’t help that for new customers.

If only. Instead you will hear songs about trucky-trucks, beer, and fishing sung in only the most generic pandering tones with influences of whatever music is currently popular at the time.

Not particularly. Steam gets 30% back on all game sales, so if they can make sure the steam machine gets only to people with established steam accounts, then they’re probably coming out ahead.

It will make the steam frame sell, probably not the steam machine (I personally suspect that they have hl3 as the killer game to get people to buy the frame, cause I’m not dropping $700-1k for something to just play beat saber). They did already make the last hl game for vr.

Yeah, but surely they have much more limited ad revenue than YouTube, given that a lot of the ads I see on those sites are ones that pay out less (like the shitty porn ads). Personally, I suspect it’s actually competition between piracy sites that has lowered the overall ads, because you have more choices than just one in comparison to YouTube, where you can use it or leave it.

Uh, you gotta pay hosting somehow, so most piracy sites rely on ad revenue to exist. It’s less overhead, but it ain’t completely free.

Oh, I agree, I just found it rather funny that a random person was able to bring down teams ram usage without much trouble, something that Microsoft doesn’t seem to care about. Teams really needs just to be paired back to messaging and video/audio calls, all of the other stuff just aren’t used.

Yep, not to mention it’s a basic messaging program, but it regularly uses 1-2gb of ram on a lot of machines at my workplace. Had a coworker vibe code a lightweight version (terminal based), he pretty easily got it down to 80ish mb, and it mostly worked (the whole thing was mostly for shits and giggles, but surprisingly usable).

Sounds great unless you don’t really agree with them, and then you’re forced to stay with people that you are constantly arguing with, often without much of the outlet of other places to go that a lot of places that have had multi generational households have had.

Happy Birthday!

Yeah. You show me a Linux user, I’ll show you someone who has worked in tech support with primarily windows machines.

Also maybe last longer, but the hold your pee is probably more applicable.