You can do quite a bit with 4GB RAM. A lot of people use VPSes with 4GB (or less) RAM for web hosting, small database servers, backups, etc. Big providers like DigitalOcean tend to have 1GB RAM in their lowest plans.

Just keep an eye on the power usage, depending on how expensive electricity is in your area. I live in California which has very expensive electricity, and buying newer, more power efficient hardware works out cheaper than 10+ year old Xeons over the long run, even if you get the Xeon system for free.

I got so worked up today over someone calling restaurant work “entry level jobs for teenagers that don’t deserve 15 an hour

The people that say things like this are usually people who have never had to work in the job.

Microsoft are going to significantly limit what can run in the kernel (including anti cheat) after the Crowdstrike issue. A side-effect of that should (hopefully) be better Linux compatibility.

Hmm, yeah, good point. It could be based off a hash of the serial number or something similar.

Companies are probably doing the easiest thing, and it seems easier to make it completely random. I can imagine something very basic like a giant spreadsheet of all the devices being produced, and running some formula to enter a random value into every cell in a particular column.

What do you mean by starting to die? Have you tried factory resetting it?

My recommendation is still the 2019 Shield Pro, unless you’re all-in on the Apple ecosystem, in which case the Apple TV is pretty decent.

One issue with a PC is that you won’t be able to stream 4K or even 1080p content from services like Netflix if you run Linux, as Linux only supports Widevine L3 which is limited to 720p. Widevine L1 is needed for 4K content, and it’s only available on more “locked down” OSes (Windows, MacOS, unrooted Android, etc). Of course, that’s not an issue if you’re using Plex or some other form of non-DRM-protected content.

The HDMI Forum are also blocking open-source implementations of HDMI 2.1, so it likely won’t come to open-source Linux drivers for a long time: https://www.phoronix.com/news/HDMI-2.1-OSS-Rejected. DisplayPort is superior to HDMI (as it does basically all the same things except it’s an open, free protocol) but TVs tend to not have DisplayPort ports since the major manufacturers are on the board that receives royalties from the usage of HDMI. That’s an argument for another day…

default credentials

Wifi doesn’t have default credentials any more… These days, there’s legislation (at least in California) that requires default passwords to be randomly generated, but it’s recommended to have no default password at all and instead prompt the user for a password when setting up the device.

That’s why some access points have the default password either printed on the box or on the bottom of the device.

Neither my wife nor I own any Apple devices, but living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’m surrounded by people that do. There’s no need for other companies to copy Apple’s questionable decisions.

SearX is dead; you should use SearXNG now.

“Ultra96” sounds like it could have been a codename for the Nintendo 64.

simplified naming scheme with labels like ‘Pro’ and ‘Max.’

How is that “simplified”? Which one is better, Pro or Max?

Actual simplified naming would probably be names like “Basic”, “Business”, “Gaming”, or numbers like what Intel does with Core 3/5/7/9.

How though? Is “pro” better than “max”?

That’s what self checkout or online shopping is for.

No worries - it’s a pretty common misconception that tech companies sell data. I’ve worked on ads systems at big tech companies so I’ve seen some parts of how it works. The companies are very protective of their data as it’s essentially their highest-value asset. Employees can’t see any of your data either - it’s very tightly locked down, with strict ACLs and audit logging.

Large advertisers generally don’t get any special access either - the tools/apps that large advertisers use are mostly the same as what small advertisers / individuals can see and use.

less interest than Google in selling data for advertising

Google don’t sell data. The data is what makes them valuable, so it wouldn’t make sense. If they did sell data, the other big tech companies would just buy their data to remove their competitive advantage.

What Google actually sells is your attention. Advertisers can target people based on demographic data, things you like, etc, but the advertiser never sees the data used for targeting.

You can use Google and Facebook’s Ads Manager sites yourself and see exactly what advertisers see.

On the other hand, Apple mostly keep their collected data for their own ad network. Yes, they have one - it’s mostly just used for ads for “recommended” apps in the app store, but last I heard, they have plans to expand it.

I’m curious as to whether the industry will start moving from last-touch attribution to first-touch (or multi-touch) attribution instead.

The only reason last-touch (last affiliate link gets all the credit) is commonplace now is because it’s easy to implement. No need for long-term tracking. What the industry really wants is either first-touch (first affiliate link or ad you click gets the credit) or multi-touch (the payment is split between every affiliate), depending on who you ask.

They’d replace affiliate link cookies with their own

Practically every coupon site does this too though, as do other coupon extensions.

The fact that BugMeNot and RetailMeNot grew so huge is interesting. They were created by two Australians, and for a while were only popular in Australia.

Praise be to canned biscuits. Amen.