Recent content by Mercutio

Well, I let a drive train specialist look at my car. His official diagnosis is that the people at my original mechanic's shop just encountered a sound they didn't want to look into and so wrote it off as someone else's problem. I still need work on my car, but it's basically all suspension...

A Samsung S23/23+ is worth about the same amount as an iphone 14. You can also find Samsung S24FE, a Pixel 8 or 9a or 2025 Moto G Power for somewhere between $300 and $400. Another curious option is the Samsung A56, which isn't MEANT to be sold in the USA, but can used on US networks. The A5x...

iOS is evil and should not be countenanced. Some fun things to know: There are three and a half real phone carriers in the US, Tmobile, Verizon, AT&T and the half is US Cellular, which is only available in some parts of the US Midwest. There are DOZENS of MVNOs, resellers of services from one...

I think I got a death sentence for my Element today. I'm going to get a second opinion but my mechanic seems to think I need my rear differential replaced at a cost roughly on par with the value of my car. I am not sure what I want to do about it, but I haven't had a car payment in 10 years and...

Given that they tend to live in places that are pretty hard to get to, like private islands, fortified mountain compounds and Montana, I'm not sure digging them out would be the best use of limited revolutionary resources.

I think there is only one name being protected. Not the minimize the issue, but the fact that actual millions of deaths can be laid at Trump's feet for his administration's handling of Covid, not to mention the cuts to medicaid and food assistance that will kill even more, is a far greater crime...

The people working at the three letter agencies are just as Trumpy as everyone else. No one is coming to save us from ourselves. I don't believe that a poor showing in 2026 elections will be allowed to stand. I think we're done.

Honestly, even pictures of NYC have value. It is the epicenter of Western Culture, after all.

Google AI Studio. AI doesn't do a whole lot for me and I kind of think most of the people who are pushing it have no idea what people actually DO with their devices or for their jobs, but my partner actually brought this to my attention: AI Studio can interact with live audio video, either from...

First thing is there are no blue states. There are CITIES and not-cities. Everyone has access to the same tech and same training, and you're as likely to find urban and rural dwellers who know how to conduct drone warfare or cybercrime. What cities largely don't have is a widely distributed...

There is something wrong with your PC if Firefox is using 100% of your CPU. Maybe you're missing some video codec and stuck rendering something that should be handled by a GPU on your processor? Every browser is a RAM hog. All of them. Especially if you're blocking ads, which IMO is not...

Mubs, I've never heard of that. Maybe it is something in the full driver package that nobody bothers to install? I use 3x 32" displays with the one on my left in portrait mode, plus my Samsung tablet as a drawing tablet/display. My 4k screen is set to 125% scale but the others are just 100%...

Firefox with non-crippled ublock origin.

None of them require phone activation if you're the first person to use a particular key. Most of the time, if you use a reseller key, you won't be. Microsoft will still activate it though.

If I want plausible deniability on an Office license, I get it through g2a.com. I'm sure the storefronts there are just selling generated keys or something, but at least I have a bill of sale. If you use a Microsoft product key purchased from ANY key reseller, fully expect that you'll either...