Recent content by Mercutio

  1. Mercutio

    Empire in Decline

    Great now do RFKjr, Hegseth and fucking Stephen Miller. I see the war with Iran ultimately playing out identically to Iraq. We're going to HAVE to put boots on the ground. Air Power is great for a lot of things, but it doesn't hold land. Eventually we'll get tired of their ability to lob...
  2. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Think about all the weird stuff we use that technically has an OS and probably talk to the internet. Copy machines, medical and industrial equipment, routers and switches, IoT gear... how silly is this going to have to be? I am mostly concerned what this does for the state of anonymity online...
  3. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Several US States and multiple countries are in the process of trying to force OS vendors to add an age verification tool to their account generation process. This is something that could put the nail in the coffin for Local Accounts on Windows, but moreover, how the hell would niche OSes like...
  4. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I remember having scads of desktop systems around a dozen years ago. I realized I needed to stop collecting them about around the time I realized even my low-end systems had 12 threads. I still have more systems sitting around than I use with any regularity, but I'm down to actively using only...
  5. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The Consumer Council of Norway posted this on Youtube yesterday and goddammitsofuckingmuch if it doesn't describe our entire world now.
  6. Mercutio

    Empire in Decline

    A decapitation strike on a reactionary religious state is not going to end well for anyone. This is just going to turn into another Afghanistan. We'll have to occupy and then spend decades and trillions dealing with bombs and drone strikes that kill a few of our soldiers a week until we decide...
  7. Mercutio

    Laptop time?

    I was able to get a bunch of 15.6" Vivobooks with Ryzen AI 5 330s, 500GB SSDs and 16GB RAM last week for $400. They're not as well constructed as typical Asus laptops, but for $20 more than my Ideapad 1s, that was a crazy good deal. I sold them all within a day and now that same model is $600.
  8. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    I'm looking at a direct trade with Samsung; maybe other carriers have different offerings, but not the weird little one I'm using. I'll need to check retailer trade-ins. Maybe Best Buy will give me more for the phone than Samsung will, but its discounts are usually tied to big carriers...
  9. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    In the final accounting, as much as it completely sucks, I can't justify the cost for an S26+. In past years, the preorder bonus was a $100 coupon and a storage upgrade. This year, the preorder bonus is a $30 coupon AND a vastly lower valuation on my trade-in, with no storage upgrade at all. I'd...
  10. Mercutio

    Something Random

    It's pretty easy to get heavily discounted rate at Trump Tower Chicago. I've been known to use rooms there for affordable (sub-$100) photo shoots . Normally I hate working in hotel rooms but it's a very tall building with great views on every side, so sometimes it works for me. Eventually, the...
  11. Mercutio

    Empire in Decline

    Chicago named its newest Snowplow Abolish ICE.
  12. Mercutio

    Something Random

    If you were at all worried if the RAM crisis is a real thing or not, I just traded a G. Skill 2x32GB DDR5-6400 kit that I think I paid about $150 for a year ago for an Asus TUF RTX5070 Ti.
  13. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    Today in useful things for Windows Admins to know, here's the recipe for putting the Windows Recovery partition at the beginning of your drive. This is super helpful if you are maintaining disk images or Windows virtual machines. This is assuming there's only one drive in the system and you're...
  14. Mercutio

    Black History Month

    Greg, do please go be an admitted racist someplace else.
  15. Mercutio

    Empire in Decline

    I will leave this here without additional comment. 😔
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