bluGill

If you must shoot where there are non target animals with ears then you should protect their ears by using a suppresser. Non target includes the person holding the gun.

Validating restore is one of the harder things. There are some people who restore means it works on the exact same hardware - commonly hardware vendors will change internal details without changing model numbers so this plan often fails when it turns out the computer restore to is slightly different and so you don’t have the right driver on your backup (My dad used to repair computers for people who did this - he often charged thousands of dollars to fix a 10-30 year old machine that a new PC could run circles around. IIRC most of the machines were HPUX and not PCs so the cost of porting to a new machine was ). Most people figure they will be replacing the computer with something newer and so instead install the latest OS and then restore just files, now you face the question of do you restore applications or not?

I would test restore on a cheap raspberry-pi, assuming the backup is from x86, or on a cheap ebay x86 if the backup is from ARM. For most self hosted people this is really what they want to know can be done because they don’t know what the replacement hardware will be. The goal here isn’t a usable system, it is enough that you can show your files still exist.

Well for sure that is better than nothing, so since you have it keep doing it until/unless you have something better.

Your next task is to make sure you can restore the data. Since the data is - probably - saved, you have good odds. Practice restoring means that when a computer breaks you will faster be able to get the replacement running again. Practice also means in the off chance something isn’t saved you find out about it while your old computer is still running.

Then we need to think about threats.

Ransomware that encrypts your disk will encrypt that shared drive too. I don’t know what unraid offers, but you should enable read-only snapshots (now practice restoring them!), and save those snapshots. Ideally you want some pattern like all backups for a week, then 1 backup a week for a month, then 1 backup a month for a year, and 1 backup a year for the next 7 years. This way you can just go back to before the ransomware and restore from backups.

You might delete one file on accident. You are likely not to realize it for a while. One more reason for the pattern saved above. Make sure you can restore individual files.

Your house might burn down destroying all computers. You want a copy of all that data someplace else, maybe more than one someplace elses. Though perhaps you only want a yearly and weekly copy. If the data is encrypted (very good idea for off site!) make sure the key is saved someplace else secure where you can find it - a key you can remember is a bad key so thought about how to save the key is important.

You might die or become mentally disabled with important files that your heirs need. Pictures, wills, tax/bank data (including passwords!). document the above well enough that someone else can at least figure it out. Ideally you would know someone unrelated to you into computers and leave them a lot of money ($5000?) to figure out your system and get your heirs the important files after you die. (this should be a great business opportunity, but odds are not enough people will pay for it)

There are a lot of variations I didn’t think of, but I think I covered enough to start you out. You get to decide how far you go. I’m not far enough myself, but at least I have one backup in my RAID.

One last thought - you might have some data you don’t want backed up. If you delete the evidence of your crime but the backups are there they can get you. Your secret porn collection might be legal, but still not something you want your heirs to find out about, maybe keep it in a different way? Your call here.

It isn’t hard to make a drone. I have confidence that I could do it, and I’ve never tried. They are available off the shelf, and nobody will bat an eye if that becomes my hobby - just keep a few around and ready to fly with cameras and post photos of my various outings and I look just like any of dozens of other people I know who have drones.

I would need a place to test my first attempts, but it isn’t hard to find a farmer’s field in winter where nobody will see what I’m doing. Which is to say I couldn’t stage such an attack today, but I could next year.

So long as you roll the weighted die first, the odds the unweighted die lands on the number you need is 1/6. If you roll the unweighted die first though, your odds of getting the needed number are no longer 1/6.

I don’t want to donate to Mozilla, I want to donate to Firefox. I can donate to Mozilla, but little if any money would go to firefox, instead it goes to various causes unrelated to web browsers.

Code allows painting the white conductor black which is what i do. Or at least it did 10 years ago when I last checked.

Running more than one outlet on a 220 circute is generally against us codes. It will work but don’t do it.

I have a phev with only 30 miles of range - ofen I get home with a nearly dead battery and need to leave again soon - I want faster charging. I’m sure someone with 200 miles of range can be fine on 110 volt slow charging as there likely enough time over a week that it works.

5 year olds dressed up to look like a 19 year old going out for a one night stand. Kids are cute, and I was never into one night stands, but when the girl is 19 I can appreciate looking at a lot of skin.

get a popcorn popper pan. They are not expensive and well worth it if you like popcorn. You can buy bulk popcorn kernels, choose you oil and salt thus paying for the special pan in weeks - all while getting much better popcorn.

Jellyfin is on his nas which we assume has more power.

Whatever the local small sales and service guy sells. There are a bunch of good ones - but the local guy will know what they need to service more often and what they can get parts for if you need it.

To quit driving you need to live in a world where that is possible. Go to all the hearings about transit and speak up - make it clear you care about service not the distractions that so often get money. Trains are useful but don’t let an expensive train to nowhere take money from the bus budget - but also don’t blow your budget on more buses when you need a metro.

there is no place in the world where transit couldn’t be better.

It has long been thought that cheap drones are too easy to counter long term and so they wouldn’t last long as major battlefield forces (they will still have much use in minor battlefields). Doesn’t help Ukraine though which is in the now not 10 years from now. Only time will tell how drones play out over time.

I’ve known more than one person who found a completely different career and never went back. You might take a job in Real Estate as one person I know did and discover you like it better and so all that time in school was a waste now that you know you don’t want to do that. Or maybe not - you might take that job to make ends meet (as I once had to take a non-tech job) and decide you hate enough that you don’t want to go back.

I’ve been hearing that line for more than 20 years. Anytime there is a tech downturn you hear it loudly - this has happened several times since 2000. However the fact remains that most coders make far more money than most people in construction. The exceptions tend to be people who own their construction business - though if you do the paperwork construction is one of the easiest businesses to work for yourself in once you have skills.

He can only charge what the market will bear. Since he has skills he can do the work fast and make a good living. However he cannot afford to invest in someone new who can’t work as fast and thus could not make a good living. If a new guy would work for free for a couple years the new guy would be good and could get a good income - but I don’t blame new people for not wanting to work for free and it is likely illegal anyway. Also while there is a good income possible, I wouldn’t call it great, and so I’m not sure if it is worth getting into vs other options.

So yeah, he needs to charge more, but he can’t because people will just do without masons if they charge more.

Having been around for a few decades now I can tell you that the job market comes and goes. Things have been tight before, and there has been more openings than people to work them many times in the past. I can’t tell you when things will turn around, but odds are they will. (this is sadly not helpful if you are one of those currently needing a job)

The plumber wasn’t making that much though. That $300/hr includes a lot of buisness costs - someone needs to pay for the fancy van they drive in, the office workers (which is often private equity backed and has a lot of office staff and CEO that you don’t care about), advertising, and whatever other costs. Plus the plumber often only has 20 minutes of work in your house, but between jobs taking an unknown amount of time, and drive time to the next job they need to charge for a lot of time that they are not working.

That is what it means to be a liberal: you respect people who are different than you to as large an extent possible. (there are limits - I don’t respect cannibal cultures …)