But for gamers moving game installs that they don’t feel like rebuilding the mod load out for between an HDD and an SSD that might be moving an extra 100GB month or so, probably less frequently depending on how much they’re moving games around, plus it’s no more wear than if they simply uninstalled and reinstalled the game as needed. Ultimately I don’t think that’ll make much difference.

I’ll look at the wear stats on my main desktop with its 8 year old SSD when I get a chance and share

SSDs have limited write endurance, so moving a lot of large files on and off of them will wear the nand flash out shortening its lifetime and potentially killing it

This is the conventional wisdom, but honestly I’ve not seen any detectable wear on any of my several year old SSDs even with daily use. I’ve seen more SSDs fail just due to age/power on hours professionally and never wear-related

In regards to the DNS advice should I use that for both my PC and android ? And when would I use a vpn?

You should setup your preferred DNS server everything really. On your phone, on your computer and on your router if you can. DNS is the absolute easiest way to track and block/hijack browsing habits, so hardcoding your devices to use a standard one like NextDNS, Quad9 or Cloud flare will put you very far ahead

Regarding VPNs, commercial VPNs are really overhyped, and thats because they’re a cash cow for operators. See Tom Scott’s video on the subject if you prefer this britishplained to you. All a VPN is is a tunnel from your device to the VPN server wherever that is, so you’ll look like your traffic is originating from that VPN server, plus all of your traffic is going to that VPN server so you have to trust that that server isn’t compromised nor slurping up all of the data to sell/provide security agencies. Clear text browsing traffic will also be secured between your device and the VPN server, but that’s super uncommon nowadays. Realistically a commercial VPN is best for if you’re doing illegal activities such as piracy because it will add layers of abstraction should a private company or public agency wish to investigate your activities and try to identify you. I do use Tailscale with an exit node on my home network when connecting to public wifi just in case the network is misconfigured, but it’s really just another layer of Swiss cheese security.

I tried Graphene OS but my banking failed so back to stock Android

Any features in the mobile app that don’t exist on the website? I’ve had good luck checking my bank balance and all sorts of other things through Firefox on Android - pre-edit: I missed that it was app only. That sucks.

For browsing on Android I use Mull and on my android Proton VPN is always on. I visit twitter and twitter ocasionly but always through mull browser.

The VPN really doesn’t do much at all for privacy. It just moves the point of trust from the service provider for the current network to the VPN provider, plus now you have extra hurdles as you’ll show up as a VPN IP rather than a “normal” residential or cellular IP. Realistically set your DNS to be something like Quad9 or Cloudflare and you’ll already be several steps ahead on browsing privacy

For spending habniys I try to use Google pay as little as possible and use my master card.

Realistically any card is going to be selling your spending habits. Cash and crypto are about the only ways to have private purchases, and plenty of places won’t accept either

Personally I had a long hard think about my privacy practices and how they only isolated me and made me unhappy, and realized that if I’m already blocking all ads so I never get to see the results of the incredibly dystopian advertising hellscape, does it really matter that much if Google knows I spent $200 on random model train shit last month when they already know I watch a few hours of train-related content on Youtube? So I take smaller steps to not fully given in, but I don’t take steps that create extra hassle in participating in modern society and living my life to its fullest.

How are you spending so much? I spend half that on gas per week (rural area so I easily put 200-400 miles a week on the car) and your weekly grocery budget is about my monthly budget for a family of 4

As someone with 2 preschool aged kids I absolutely agree

Nah they would get freaked out by the smallest inconvenience and just getting to the gate was an odyssey for them somehow. With my own kids I’ve got plenty of things I look back on and go “oh yeah I understand why my parents did that now” but also plenty of things where its 100% “how the heck was this such a challenge for my parents to handle?”

I have memories of some random afternoons at the consulting firm my mom worked at, where everyone’s just poking at spreadsheets. I can’t imagine how cool the memory of going into the server farm and doing some hardware work there would be

Folder structures are a bizarre thing for many people

When learning about this I learned that in the analog days folks would actually put physical folders inside of physical folders and it both makes tons of sense and is mind blowing at the same time. -Late Millennial born to IT parents

With the amount of password resets I have to do at work, I can’t say I’m shocked

qbittorrent search makes it stupid easy too

it’s not just parents either. some people are just like that when they travel.

Dude I flew out somewhere for a work training and it was 11x easier than my parents ever made it out to be. Just read the signs, follow the directions and get there about 1-2 hours before boarding. The biggest hassle was finding coffee in the Orlando airport (I ended up finding it tucked in the back corner of a bar)

The whole experience was more enjoyable than I ever remember flying being and it just comes down to going with the flow and being ready to roll with the punches

Mothman has a hella nice butt tho

I know a dude who’s a retired doctor specializing in sports medicine (he was the team doctor for a Big 10 college football team), and he smokes like a chimney. He likes to joke that he’s the 1/10 doctors that they don’t quote on TV ads

This year was the first year I worked in an office that didn’t recognize Juneteenth. Someone still found a way to complain about people expecting Juneteenth off work and blamed Zoomers for it becoming the norm like it’s a bad thing

I feel that. I completed a degree that easily leads into being a sysadmin or network engineer, but my paid internship ended and I needed a job, so I snagged the best one I could get immediately, which happened to be as a cloud admin configuring a Salesforce-like SAAS product. The work doesn’t thrill me but the benefits are cushy enough and it seemed to be the best paying opportunity I had at the time (I could tell I was the top applicant for a couple of jobs I was applying to) I work close enough to IT to hear chatter about the things i actually care about and get roped into tasks that are more in line with what i want to do full time, but ultimately that’s not my job right now, so it’s just one offs that keep me thirsting for more.

But now my needs are shifting and I’m struggling to land an interview for a hybrid role in a city an hour away that I intend to move to. Seems I’m getting the most traction with state jobs (I’m currently “eligible for further consideration” on 3 of them, but have yet to get a call to interview) but I think I can swing it if it just happens to be a tight labor market right now. I’m taking my time to focus on myself as well and try to improve myself outside of work and just enjoy what life has to offer

This sounds extremely effective at shifting housing stock. My only question is what happens to people who can’t get mortgages yet? You can’t just give out a mortgage to anyone who asks. The banks did effectively that in the lead up to 2008 and we saw how that worked out (granted the specifics are far more muddy, but it is a period in recent history where many people qualified for mortgages they shouldn’t have qualified for, and a ton of people ended up foreclosing

No, but neither are my kids’ diapers. The way I see it is there are far worse things I could do to the environment and far more impactful changes I can make on my life for the environment than consuming 3-4 packs of baby wipes a year. I’m sure I’ll convert to a bidet sometime but right now I’ve got bigger fish to fry

Real men have painted nails when their kids say it’s time to paint nails

I’ve heard of kids who have been too corrupted by drink marketing to drink water drinking liquid death. If it gets demographics who wouldn’t otherwise drink water to drink water I can’t get upset about it