• 222 Posts
  • 820 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • For years there were opinion pieces in publications about how much better renting is than buying. Financial experts made the case that the expense of purchasing and maintenance weren’t worth any benefits of ownership, especially in the long term. After dealing with big rent increases, insane landlords, and apartments being shown while I was living in them I wasn’t convinced. When adding in the relative stability in the of costs of ownership I always thought those experts were full of crap.

    Turns out none of those articles took sudden increases in property values and rent into account. Trying to rent an apartment for someone on a moderate fixed income in my area has become damn near impossible. Rents have gone up ~60% in 5 years far exceeding the COL increases most people see from retirement income or even the raises they may be getting from their employers if they’re working.

    Buying a home was one of the best financial decisions I’ve ever made.


  • Let’s see here… Billions paid for illegal tariffs, massive increases in food prices, a collapse of international tourism, reduction in all travel due to the refusal to fund TSA, massive DOGE layoffs, further layoffs and closures of multiple government agencies, multiple government shutdowns, fuel price increases we’re just seeing the start of, double digit electricity rate increases, doubling and tripling of healthcare costs for millions of Americans, and international boycotts of American products. That’s just some of the dumpster fire Trump and the Grand Old Pedophiles have provided us. Too bad there’s not a way to include Trump’s misery factor.

    We’ll be very lucky if it isn’t a full blown depression.







  • A Dell 3140 laptop. With HA and a number of other apps it loafs along at about 5% CPU. When Frigate is enabled it jumps up to 14% or so while drawing between 6 and 12 watts. The battery prevents power blinks in our area from being a problem, unlike my Pi4 that crashed and didn’t recover when I was hundreds of miles away. The battery lasts hours when the power fails and the keyboard and display are convenient.

    For those concerned about the battery, it’s firmware limited to a 70% charge so it will last years. Current Li-Ion batteries have about a 1 in a million chance of fire. A car parked in your garage is hundreds of times more of a risk.

    It’s been excellent and I’d buy it again.





  • Try testing TLP in battery mode even if you’re not using a laptop. You can configure all kinds of things to your liking with it.

    I tried it out a few years ago and none of my server apps showed any noticeable decrease in performance with it running, but my power monitoring plug did show a reduction in power consumption. I ended up leaving it enabled all the time.