Eh, I legitimately like Google Sheets more than Excel. Yeah, it doesn’t have all the features, but it has a lot of features, way more than I actually need. My main issue is that it’s run by Google, so I’m looking for alternatives (trying to switch to LibreOffice Calc, which is painful).

Yeah, we’re right in that awkward window where EVs are almost good enough to replace the family car, but not quite.

We can usually get 400 miles out of our minivan, and filling up gas only takes a couple minutes. We usually pack lunches and whatnot for these road trips, so there’s really no reason to stop any longer than that. I guess it’s nice to stretch our legs or whatever, but we’d really rather just get to our destination and relax there.

With an EV, we’d probably get about 250 miles range since highway speeds are about 70-80mph in my area (probably a little less since fast charges aren’t everywhere), and then 20-30 min waiting to charge. For a typical 700-800 mile trip, that’s 3-4 stops, so if it’s 30 min each time, it would add 2 hours to the trip.

If we could get 400-500 miles range, we could recharge once, which is totally reasonable. But we’re not there yet, so we’re looking at hybrids for the family car and an EV for around town driving.

I’ll have to check those out, I keep forgetting all about them. We don’t urgently need a new car, so that’s probably a good idea.

Yup, they’re just a bit hard to get ATM because they’re super popular, so I’m not going to be able to haggle much to get a better deal. Used Rav4s go for the same if not more than new Rav4s.

The Ford Escape, however, is pretty decent and a lot more available than the Rav4, so I can probably get a decent discount. There are several 3-4yo Ford Escapes at $10-15k less than new that look interesting in my area.

That said, neither the Rav4 or the Ford Escape has an option for a third row/jump seats, which sucks.

I really just want a station wagon…

Your photo and docs

At least in my case, it’s really handy to share photos with other family members. But certainly you don’t need all of them available on the same public service.

EV won’t work because we do road trips quite a bit, charging infrastructure in the US sucks, and range would suck in the winter. If I’m going to get an EV, I’d need about double that range for a family car since we regularly go about 300-400 miles between charges, and often 800 miles in a day (takes about 13-14 hours driving). An EV would add a day to those trips, as well as require longer stops.

I’m planning on getting an EV for my commuter (only need about 150-200 miles of range), but not for our family car until range improves significantly.

Is a vpn always safer then a reverse proxy?

Depends on what you trust, I guess.

A reverse proxy on a standard cert is a bigger target for automated scripts than a reverse proxy on a non-standard port. A VPN runs through the VPN’s authentication, whereas a reverse proxy relies on whatever that app’s authentication is. So whether it’s secure enough depends on the VPN configuration, what you’re hosting, etc.

I’m behind CGNAT, so I have limitations you don’t, but here’s my setup:

• VPS at the edge for my public services - basically the same as a reverse proxy because the application is directly exposed
• self-hosted VPN at VPS to facilitate reverse-proxy - I could shut down public access any time and just login w/ the VPN
• static DNS entries on my router so I can use my domains inside my network (TLS also works properly)

I like this approach because I can eat my cake (nice domain names instead of IPs and ports) and have it too (fast connection inside LAN, can disable reverse proxy if I want better security). You could get the same w/o the VPS, and if you require WireGuard VPN access outside the LAN, you get better security than a public-facing service.

It’s basically UBI, but with income caps. So if you make above a certain threshold, your benefits reduce and completely disappear by a second threshold.

Milton Friedman was a pretty notable supporter.

Yup. I have no trouble running modern games on my Ryzen 5600, which doesn’t even have the massive cache of the 3D chips. I’m not spending >$1k on a GPU, so my CPU is likely more than sufficient for quite a while.

And for some reason my state still doesn’t have properly reflecting paint, so everyone drives with their high-beams on because otherwise you can’t see the lanes. The net result is that nobody can see anything because they’re constantly being blinded by oncoming traffic.

It sucks all the way down…

We’re looking for a new car, but unfortunately there’s nothing between “sedan” and “minivan” that we want. We have three kids and a minivan, and we hardly use the extra seats or storage. It’s still working fine (it’s a mid-2000s Sienna), but my wife and I hate driving it, it has terrible gas mileage (20-ish MPG), we don’t need the space 99% of the time, and we never need the storage space and people space simultaneously.

What I want is:

• AWD
• >30mpg, ideally 35+
• flip-up third row (will be used like 1-2x/year, if that)
• >30 cubic feet storage w/ third row unused (Prius is super close)
• as small as possible
• if I have to get an SUV, at least 1500lbs towing capacity (prefer >3000lbs)

If they still made them, a station wagon would absolutely fit the bill. But now, I can’t have that, so I’m stuck in SUV-land.

So my plan is to completely abandon the third row and get a compact hybrid SUV. If we buy new, it’ll be a Rav4 hybrid (the CR-V hybrid has a dinky 1000 lbs towing capacity, and if I have to get an SUV, I want the option). If we buy used, it’ll probably be a Ford Escape hybrid, not because it’s good, but because it’s cheap and good enough (Escape and Rav4 can both do 1500lbs towing). I don’t want either, but since there’s pretty much nothing in the sedan w/ storage space market (and I want more than suitcase storage, we camp quite a bit), I’m essentially being forced to get an SUV.

I hate SUVs, but I guess that’s what we’re getting. I’ll probably get an EV for the second car (currently a Prius), if only for the convenience of never having to fill up gas again.

Well, there are some strategies:

• data collection - remove/disable the antenna/broadcasting chip - in some cars it’s as easy as removing a fuse, in others you need to take things apart to remove the TCU or modem
• subscription-based features - don’t buy them and look for hacks to enabled them w/o buying
• death of sedans - buy sedans

Unfortunately, that’s a drop in the bucket since it seems the market in general wants larger cars with more spyware, and aren’t pushing back enough on subscription BS.

I’m actively looking for a car, and unfortunately the process is:

1. find models we want to try out
2. look up online about how to disable the spyware nonsense
3. actually go look at cars
4. repeat from 1 as necessary
5. play dealership games because the private used market is essentially gone
6. actually remove spyware

We’re on step 3, and I’m not looking forward to step 5. I’ve actually never purchased from a dealer before, because I’ve bought everything before now from a private seller. Wish me luck…

Yup. “Capitalism” has become a punching bag for people who are frustrated about some form of government protectionism or lack of interventionism. If you ask someone to define it, you’ll get wildly different answers based on whatever they’re frustrated by. The real problem is cronyism, where the “haves” get special treatment from those in power so both sides benefit.

Capitalism is intended to be a system where the market is largely separate from the government, but everything is co-mingled and people point to the knotted mess as “capitalism,” when really it’s a mess of different political ideologies all messing with market forces. What we actually need is for more capitalism, as in less government interference w/ the market, so market forces can actually fix things.

“More capitalism” doesn’t mean screwing over the poor either. In fact, if you look at the Nordic countries, they’re actually more capitalist than the US ins many ways, and they have solid social programs. The difference is that there are clearer boundaries between government and the market, so you don’t end up with as much weird “collaboration” between companies and the government.

I personally believe in UBI/NIT (Universal Basic Income/Negative Income Tax) instead of most welfare programs (perhaps keep Medicare/Medicaid, but replace Social Security, food/housing assistance, etc) to minimize the disruption of natural market forces. That would be a very capitalist-friendly solution where the government and the market stay in their own lanes.

ntel was waiting for ATi to circle the drain a little more before swooping in and buying them cheap, AMD beat them to it.

They had strong iGPU performance, a stronger process node, and tons of cash. There’s no reason they couldn’t have built something from the ground up, they were absolutely dominating the CPU market. AMD didn’t catch up until 2017 or so when they launched the new Zen lineup.

Intel sat on their hands raking in cash for 10+ years before actually getting serious about things, and during that time, Nvidia was wiping the floor w/ AMD. There’s absolutely no reason Intel couldn’t have taken over the low-end GPU market with a super strong iGPU, and used the same architecture for a mid-range GPU. I bought Intel laptops w/o a dGPU because the iGPU was good enough for light gaming. I stopped once AMD’s APUs caught up (bought the 3500U), and I don’t see a reason why I’ll consider Intel for a laptop.

Intel lost because they sat on their hands. They were late to making an offer on ATI, they were late in building their own GPUs, and they’re still late on anything touching AI. They were dominant for well over a decade, but instead of doing R&D on areas near their core competencies (CPUs), they messed around with SSD and other random stuff.

It’s annoying to find something in the mod log. I’ve looked for my own removed posts (I pissed off a mod without actually breaking any rules, and they temp banned me), and it was a lot more effort than necessary.

What I’d really like is to see all of the removed content, and selectively have content removed by people I trust instead of the actual moderation team.

Huh, for some reason that loop isn’t visible at all on the product page, but it is visible on a few Amazon review videos.

Looks cool, I might just get one. :)

I was talking about a lack of a loop or something to connect to the rest of my keys. I don’t use USB devices that often, so I need it to be attached to something or I’ll just lose it.

Yup, that’s my dream too. I’ve started working on something like that, but it’s far from production quality. I hope someone beats me to it, because I haven’t been making near enough progress.

How well does that work though? My understanding is that there are still quite a few caveats, but it’s been a while since I actually looked into it.

Anything that would work on a keychain? The ports would need some kind of protection.