If I enjoyed what I did absolutely. If not I’d still be finding another job/charity/some form of work to supplement or fill the time. People who retire without a purpose tend to mentally decline rapidly regardless of their financial outlook.

They usually cover the basics of something pretty well, so I guess mostly positively? I use them maybe once a year at most though so no idea if they’re turning to garbage lately or not.

One thing to note in the US, often times these companies require drug testing including for pot. My wife’s company often times takes over 6 months to fill a hole due to that issue.

Not just no vetting the odd time I’m in there I report that shit and they NEVER take it down. Just say they deemed it “didn’t go against facebook’s community standards.”

Some people like them, they do have at least some ties to a Russian company which is a no from me at the moment.

If I remember right the nicotine quit rate is in the single digits for adhd folks so I’d definitely believe it.

Found distractions like exercise the first few weeks and tried quite af few times before it stuck. I will note though, after I quit I got diagnosed with/started meds for adhd. Turns out most of my withdrawal symptoms were exactly the same as feeling my meds wear off while tapering into them…haven’t had a craving since the meds normalized. Probably would’ve had a way easier time quitting if I’d gotten that diagnosed earlier in life.

I’ve bought a number of raspberry pico chips abs a pack of generic esp32s over the last few years and every time I think I have enough as backups I suddenly find more uses for them! I have an old floor radio converted to act as a light/dimmer control, makeshift hvac control, and flip a night light (also made from a pico w) in the bedroom, another one in the living room in a little coffee table box using home assistants api over WiFi. I also have 3, soon to be four (adding some really fun electromagnet parts) to convert an old electric organ to a full virtual pipe organ. This project was what got me started, the “off the shelf” conversion kits looked like they were running off an esp32 ish and mcp23017’s and cost $1,500-2,000 for just the pcbs, no wiring and no speakers etc. doing it with the picos and a crap loads of doorbell wire $160+$600 for high quality speakers, and $260 for a touch screen and vesa arm. So complete project cost me $600 less than just the pcbs. The fourth one I was waiting for cheap used parts to appear on eBay, they are insanely expensive new ($30-50 each) and I need 56 of them. It’ll be a similar price saving at the end of the day!

Long ramble to say these chips are cheap and don’t take long to help make life more convenient, and sometimes way cheaper if the project was niche.

That sounds like a pretty decent graduation. Here in the US we don’t have that but I was always taught to do the smallest thing legally called a motorcycle (250cc) here. Fast enough to be useful in town and maybe the highway, fun but not powerful enough to do anything too stupid.

The new attack, named Pixnapping by the team of academic researchers who devised it, requires a victim to first install a malicious app on an Android phone or tablet. The app, which requires no system permissions, can then effectively read data that any other installed app displays on the screen. Pixnapping has been demonstrated on Google Pixel phones and the Samsung Galaxy S25 phone and likely could be modified to work on other models with additional work. Google released mitigations last month, but the researchers said a modified version of the attack works even when the update is installed.

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If you’re mainly using Bluetooth earbuds or other cheaper speakers there likely won’t be that much of a difference in perceived sound quality.

My 2016 versa is crank windows, no power locks, no cruise control, 5-speed manual transmission, no touch screen/complicated electronics in the dash. It’s been really nice minus I do miss cruise control.

If you’re in the US, you may be eligible for mail pharmacies. Your insurance company may have one they prefer that is also cheaper than pharmacy. There’s also cost plus drugs which does mail order for pretty cheap on generics at least. Otherwise I’d say best bet is to talk to the pharmacist they may be able to finagle an adjustment to the timing if they call the insurer.

I use bsd containers for everything but home assistant on my home server and love them! The downside for most people at the moment is having to set them up manually. I can export the thin jail and move the archive across computers as backups and the fine tuned control is beautiful. FreeBSD offers a way to check for security vulnerabilities in installed packages (pkg audit -F) that I run as a cron job and email myself daily to check for needed updates.

Problem is most people want a single docker install and it’s all set up, not something that needs manual configuration. Bastille has templates that can do this for bsd jails but there’s not a lot of services with templates.

Edit: also frustrating is a lot of new apps for home servers only offer a docker install so installing from source becomes a huge pita and makes bsd jails harder to use (looking at you gramps-web specifically).

There really isn’t anything I couldn’t replace my phone with a tablet that stays in the house for, and it has been a growing thought to switch back to a dumb phone.

It is an incredibly rewarding instrument! I rewired a conn 650 for midi to practice at home, but most of my practice and learning came from where I got lessons. Since they’re not exactly a portable instrument if you talk with an organist/music director if they don’t have an organist there’s a good chance they’ll let you practice on the church’s instrument.

I’ve played the trumpet for 27 years now, and have played the pipe organ for 3. Both of them professionally, and the issue with picking a favorite is there’s a ton of fantastic music!

On the trumpet I’d recommend a listen to Bugler’s Holiday, or Great Gate of Kiev. Possibly my favorite gig as an anecdote was an old Catholic Church in a poor part of the city. They had built an elevated stretch of subway what felt like inches from the church and the priest had to stop his homily every 5 minutes so the subway could go through. The organist ended with the Hallelujah Chorus and it might be the reason I have tinnitus but it was the most heavenly sounding space to play in!

On the organ, I played Schriener’s adaptation of Louis Vierne’s Maestoso in C. Straight from the get go it’s a fantastic piece to rattle the floors and wake up a church. I’d also recommend Scott’s arrangement of Hymn of the Cherubim as it is much softer and a good idea of the breadth the instrument can cover style wise.

I’d expect similar at least. When one doesn’t keep up to date on new information and lets their brain coast it atrophies like any other muscle would from disuse.

Could yes but they are definitely training new ai’s. So same as I’ve cut most meats out of my diet I’ll do the same with ai and talk loudly about how catastrophic their water and electricity usage is until it’s no longer true. Both are not good for the environment and both are completely unnecessary to our survival.