Alex Jones was a CIA plant, to make conspiracy theorists look crazy… And it worked really really well.

The government was nervous because there were some conspiracy theories that were a little too close to reality. Shit like MK ULTRA and the Harvard mind control experiment sound fake, but we have the declassified docs. We know they happened. And there were lots of conspiracy theories that were likely hitting just a little too close for comfort. But outright disputing the conspiracy theories would just add credibility to them, in a “methinks the lady doth protest too much” sort of way.

So instead, they set out to discredit the people making the claims. They wanted to poison the well. So they found a dude named Alex Jones who had potential. He’s easily manipulated, so they can basically feed him wild conspiracies and he’ll eat them up. And all they had to do was boost his message. Jones never even needed to knew he was a plant, (and in fact, it would work better if he remained clueless.)

They gave conspiracy theorists a face. Before Alex Jones, conspiracy theories were something the average person jokingly threw around while drunk at the bar. But suddenly, conspiracy theorists were up front and center. And here’s the important part: the theories didn’t have a good spokesman. Suddenly, the average person’s view of conspiracy theories shifted. They weren’t funny anymore; They had your crazy uncle ranting about dead kids being fake.

By giving conspiracy theories a face, then having that face spew the most insane bullshit alongside the true (or nearly true) theories, the government was able to discredit the true theories. They were able to poison the well, because the main person ranting about the conspiracy also thinks Sandy Hook was a hoax.

Ding ding ding. Make it technically possible to private the sub, but then add 5000 bots to every new sub so it’s not actually possible.

Cats do pant, but they’re also just better adapted to heat than dogs are.

Smaller frame means less body heat to disperse; As size increases, the volume:surface area ratio heavily skews towards volume. More volume means more trapped heat. By minimizing volume and maximizing surface area (skin) cats are able to effectively stay cool passively.

Cats also have a higher basal metabolism, which means their body temperature is naturally higher. And creatures don’t feel heat in an absolute sense. Temperature is felt relative to your own body temperature. That’s why a warm shower after swimming feels downright scalding, (because you’re cooled down from swimming, then hopped into a warm shower,) or why the regular room temperature bedroom feels chilly when you have a fever (because you’re warmed up from the fever, so the room feels colder than it normally would.) You’re feeling those things relative to your own body temperature. Since cats have a higher base body temperature, they feel warm environments less than we do. This is also why they spend so much time lazing around in patches of sunlight, or snuggled up next to the radiator; Room temperature is comfortable for us, but slightly chilly to them.

Third, they are originally adapted from the desert. This means they also have some quirks, like tolerating high temperatures better, and having a high tolerance for thirst, (the latter often leads to kidney issues later in life, since cats don’t tend to drink enough water even when it’s readily available.)

My neighbors had the FBI Surveillance Van SSID, so naturally I set mine up as “Definitely Not Russian Hackers”

I still remember where I was when I saw that things had mathematically tipped past the point of no return for Hillary. It wasn’t a huge shock to me, but that’s mostly cuz I saw the writing on the wall when Hillary’s entire schtick for a while had been “no worries, we’ve got this, it’s not even a problem.” Democrat victories have historically hinged on whether or not they can motivate people to vote, and Hillary’s entire strategy did the exact opposite of that. Every single person independently went “she’s been saying for months that she already has it in the bag, so why bother voting?” And that led to her losing a lot of votes.

If you already have a NAS, (since SMB was mentioned, I’m assuming there’s some sort of NAS setup going) then you may even be able to host Plex directly on the NAS. It likely won’t be powerful enough for things like video transcoding, but just audio should be fine.

That would actually be the safer scenario, as a failure in the PD handshake simply defaults to 5v which every USB device can accept. It would be more dangerous to only have the PD negotiation be on one of the three ports, because then you could potentially burn out devices on the other two by sending them too much voltage.

I guess the best case scenario would be to have the PD signal run on all three, then default to low voltage if any of them fail. But that’s likely not what they’re doing, because then things would only fast charge if all three ports are plugged into fast charge devices. Because an unplugged tail would likely register as a failed PD handshake.

I’d argue that this is petty, because you’re still technically able to get support for your issue in the end. It just takes a lot more effort in everyone involved; More effort on your end to actually get support, and more effort on support staff because they have already answered your question a hundred times further up the thread.

Discord is not a good replacement for support forums. Discord isn’t searchable by search engines.

Historically, if I had an issue with a product and I googled “[product] [issue]” I’d be met with a support forum post, with someone describing the same issue. I could read the thread to find how they resolved it. I don’t actually have to interact with the post at all, and I don’t need to ask the same question again. For most (decent) forums I don’t even need to make an account just to read the post.

Discord throws that all out the window. Now I’m met with a “JoiN OUr dIScoRd SerVEr to GEt suPPorT” page. Nothing is searchable via a search engine. And Discord’s server searchability (even in the app) has always been, at best, absolute dogshit. You already need to know exactly which text thread things were posted in, (because you can’t search the entire server at once), and you need to know exactly what was said, (because there’s no fuzzed search terms).

So 99% of the time, you just end up asking the same question that has already been asked a hundred times in the past, and now you need to wait for someone to respond. It also puts a lot more strain on the support staff, because they’re answering the same question a hundred times instead of just the once in a forum.

And don’t come at me with the “but Discord recently added a support forum feature where people can start threads and save the conversation for later” bullshit. That’s a band-aid, at best. It still isn’t searchable via search engines, so it means the above issues with Discord’s search function still apply, and the forum function is essentially useless as support forums.

Lastly, why the fuck should I be forced to join another server just to get support? What if I don’t have a discord account? What if I live in a region that Discord doesn’t support? What if I just plain don’t want to clog up my server sidebar with dozens of servers that I have only visited once? What if I just really hate the fact that your server has been configured to push notifications for every single message by default? What if I just fucking want to google my issue, and get an answer without any further effort?

Not gonna lie, I was worried your second paragraph was going to turn into Mankind throwing Undertaker off of Hell in a Cell

She spearheaded the selection for Australia‘s break dancers, excluded anyone who was better than her in the preliminaries, and then picked herself to go to the Olympics. Then once she got there, she realized she was going to get her ass handed to her by the competition, so she decided to be goofy instead of actually trying (and failing) to keep up.

She doesn’t deserve any praise.

Wait, the UK wires their ovens and stoves directly into the wall without a plug?

You’re correct. They’ll read the transcript to you if asked, but can’t provide a written copy of it for the jury to keep and reference.

Sure, but that feels a little bit like saying “We don’t need guards inside the prison, because we already have them patrolling around the perimeter.”

It’s important because it allows them to directly modify the CPU’s microcode. Basically, the CPU has its own set of instructions, called microcode, which controls how the chip functions on a physical level. If they manage to change your microcode, even a full system reformat won’t kill the virus; You’ll need to either re-flash the CPU (which is not something the standard user or even power user will know how to do) or replace the entire CPU.

Yeah, the Overton window has been pushed so far right that neutral sources with no added opinion are now considered center-left.

Honestly, if a health insurance provider finds out you’re antivax, they should have every right to drop you as a customer. It’s just too much risk on the insurance company’s part.

Or hell, the insurance companies could start tracking outbreaks to sue the antivaxers for damages. Because the antivaxers are intentionally putting others in harms way, which is increasing costs to the insurance companies.

It only affected our time clock system. So we just used paper timecards for a week while IT worked on getting it back up.

It’s really up to the individual organizations to fix. There’s not going to be some global “congrats, we pushed and update and now everything is fine” patch, because the crash is preventing a patch from being loaded. It requires manual intervention on every single affected machine. If it’s a large organization with a lean IT team, that could mean days or weeks until every single machine is actually fixed; They’ll be prioritizing the mission-critical systems, so they’ll triage. Start with the wide reaching systems, then the most important employees. The intern will just have to wait.

Yeah, the “Linux is easy” rhetoric doesn’t really do Linux any favors. If you’ve been told “Linux is easy” and it’s not, then you have a tendency to give up because “well if it’s easy for everyone else but I can’t figure it out, I guess it’s just not for me.”

Trying to convert someone to Linux needs to be an honest conversation, and “Linux is easy” isn’t honest. There will be growing pains. You will need to re-learn things. You will need to google things. You will get an insane amount of toxic “lul rtfm noob” responses from the community if you ever have the audacity to ask for help. If you’re lucky, they’ll at least include a link to the relevant documentation.

But at least that’s honest, and will give the person realistic expectations. They won’t go into it expecting a direct 1:1 Windows replacement, only to be disappointed. People who say “Linux is easy” are like the vegan trying to convince you that soy bacon tastes exactly like the real thing, in an attempt to convert you. When it tastes worse than the real thing, you’ll just be disappointed and less likely to convert to veganism in the future.