Im very thankful that it appears this chapter of consumerist history is over. Last entry on Black Friday Death Count was from 2021 and I was going past my big local mall and I saw tons of parking. In past years that place was a zoo, but today, slightly more crowded than normal, but nothing dangerous.

I saw that clip… Its normal current-level unhinged. In times past, it would have been a black mark and his colleages would use it to mock him for ages, and it would cost him elections… But in [current year] its Tuesday…

[slaps buzzer] logical fallacy, Straw-man, you are awarded no points.

Hey now, Vance already has a restraining order, he isnt allowed within 200 feet of sofas, ottomans or Ikeas.

A bit of internet history, account age was a measure of clout on Slashdot.org. Your account ID was posted as part of your replies, so the lower the number, the longer you have been on the site.

Mine personally is in the 1.3M range, and I still read the site and I still see users posting on accounts as low as 500k ID, those have been around since the late 90s.

The site is just a news agrigator at this point with a comment section full of boomers and greybeards (sys admins that probably should consider retiring), but its been my home page for ~20 years and I have no intention of changing that.

The thing is that with W10 going EOL, everyone is going to be forced to learn a new OS, regardless if they want to or not (W11has been out for years, if you havent jumped, there is likely a reason). Lemmy users being the socially concious crusaders that they are, are encouraging people to make a better choice than defaulting to Windows again (given all its very real issues of useability and data harvesting).

Not having access to preditory games due to self-imposed tech limitations isnt high on the list of reasons to choose linux, but its good shitpost material.

Shhh, we do not speak of such places. We do not wish for people to know their names and seek such dark recesses.

Ha [Internet high five], there is a thing about EvE online players and being opinionated nerds about VOIP solutions.

Sounds perfect, my TS3 instance was running on a 10+ year old Dell Optiplex until a while ago when I moved it to a VM.

You seem to have everything covered, VOIP services are not that heavy, and its great having a residence on the internet where your nerds can drop in and out of. The main issue is getting people off Discord or understanding that old programs are just as if not more functional. (Plus, the whole “If TeH PrOdUcT is Fr33, UR da PrOduCt” thing, but im preaching to the choir here)

Some expirence on some self-hosted VOIP solutions from my EvE online days and I self-host a Teamspeak instance (my nerds like it, get off my lawn).

Mumble in terms of its UI and user expirence, the worst of the major VOIP projects (looks very 2008), however it is by far the best in terms of server stability, plugin compatibility and security. To quote my old EvE admin “Mumble will take the team two weeks to set up correctly, and drive them mad, but once thats done they will not need to touch the config again”. Plus it not requiring a license allows large orgs to use it freely. Ever have a need 2.5k+ VOIP users all trying to talk over eachother? Mumble is the only free application that will handle that without issue.

Teamspeak3 is what I run, and for small communities its perfect. TS5 exists, and the devs keep trying to make “We have Discord at home” and its just a UI fork, they all run the same server backend. As for features, TS3 has the best of ease of set up and granular permissions with API tools to allow for remote or automated managment. For user counts, anything beyond that of a small guild in any game will require a license, they are cheap (I just renewed my 30$ a year license and didnt have to reboot). Its drawbacks are that it struggles after several hundred users (its heavier on server hardware than mumble is) and user accounts with permissions can break the server. Fortunatly settings are managed by a local database so backups of server state and files are easy.

I remember Ventrilo existing, thats about it.

Hardware wise, a new pi should be fine, older models might have issues based on expected user load. Network load is not significant for normal hobbiest user counts, security is not any different than normal homelab internet services.

Let me know if there is anything I can help with.

This all happened in 24-hours. Nature is healing.

The dems have to engage the left they have completely alienated. The people on the edge of their overton window that think the dems are a complete and total failure and also invoke Godwins law every time a GOP policy is duscussed. Instead the dems think the people they need to seek are the centerists… And well… Look what that got them last time.

That is also the philisophical crux of The Witcher series (books and games, not the TV show now starring the least-hot hemsworth)

Support for what ever she decides is next, although I feel like the senate would be a better step. However the democrats dont really have a face to back that isnt some centerist that thinks its ok to play with the bully after they have taken your lunch money or someone that is older than Wonder Bread ™.

The most unbelievable part of that entire film is that President Dwayne Elizondo Mountian Dew Herbert Camacho didnt take credit for solving the crisis at the end of the movie.

Fair, plus the law never looked kindly on it. Just because you would get dressed up to shoot at some one does not mean you didnt shoot someone.

Idiocracy.

Back in the day, honor was a more tangible thing. People with beef would shoot at each other with smooth bore pistols. The point was they were wildly inaccurate and most people would stand their ground and walk away, honor intact. That isnt a thing in [checks year]… Guns are far too accurate, swords are very out of fashion, and Chess-Boxing never really took off. There does not appear to be a modern evolution of that tradition and I feel like society would do well to find something to fill that void (without the lethality… obviously… but that was partially the point back then).

VLAN setting are probably your best bet to prevent communication with your normal devices and lock the IOT devices off in their own section of the network where they cant snoop around. Same goes for Wi-Fi, make a new SSID for just IOT stuff and let them only see themselves and the default gateway.

Do not break the weekend safety brief.

• Do NOT add to the population.
• Do NOT subtract from the population
• Do NOT end up in the newspaper, hospital or jail.
• • IF you do end up in jail, establish dominance quickly.