When my mom had cancer, I swear every relative and distant acquaintance came out of the woodwork trying to sell some kind of nonsense. It was already a devastating time, but on top of that it was insulting being forced to hear about all these delusional snake oil cures and conspiracy theories.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet - have a good backup solution. If there isn’t anything on your computer that can’t be restored, then you’re not going to feel as much pressure to protect things.

Of course there’s crypto miners, identity theft, botnet stuff, all sorts of things that run undetected and don’t simply render your computer unusable. But if you’re absolutely sure you’re not losing anything, then “nuke it from orbit” becomes a more paletteable solution for virus removal. A hassle for sure, but format and start over again becomes an option that results in no loss other than the pain of having to reinstall everything.

I wouldn’t call compressed air extremely dangerous, but more than you’d think.

It can hurt you in a lot of ways and it’s often played with like a toy. Like blowing air in somebody’s face, don’t do that, think of it like coming at them with a handheld drill. Treat an air compressor like any kind of power tool, not exactly dangerous but can hurt you.

I think there’s a place for both. But sometimes I tire of anti-heroes, sympathetic villains, bad guys who were right, bad guys who turn good in the end, that kind of thing.

Sometimes it’s refreshing when the villain is just evil for no reason. Just bad, that’s it, just a bad guy who is defeated in the end because he was bad. No redemption story, you don’t feel sorry for them, none of that. I’m thinking like Ernst Blofeld, the T-1000, Palpatine, Sauron, Wicked Witch of the West, Skeletor. Uncomplicated villains, their motivation is just evil for the sake of evil.

Time and a place for both, and sometimes it seems like we only get the one. Like I can’t think of a recently popular movie villain who was simply evil.

Yeah even as a technician that’s one I run on the off chance that it actually does something.

Which, sometimes it does, just often enough that I wouldn’t call it useless.

Predatory loan practices, rate hikes, agreements where you can’t pay extra on the principal, can’t just straight pay off.

Like, I was lucky, I didn’t get screwed over too hard. But I was in school before it got really bad. So, my low fixed rate federal loans were sold to a private company after I graduated, and they raised the rates considerably. Not only that, but paying extra on the principal raised your interest rate. I got out of that by just paying interest until I had saved up enough money to pay in full. These days you would pay in full plus interest over the original life of the loan.

Friend of mine, her student loan’s interest rate is 18%. It was much lower when she took out the loan, but now it’s so much she can’t pay it off. Current plan is to pay interest for the rest of her life.

This shit should be illegal.

I’m reminded of the “I love The Beatles” and “I hate The Beatles” stickers - both sold by the same guy.

Same with preventing the circumstances that caused this problem in the first place - regulate the banks? That’s communism!

Same here, I’ve tried plenty of them and landed on Nova Launcher. Even put it on my dad’s phone because I couldn’t get things to be simple for him with the default launcher.

Just speculation here but I’d say at the very most it’ll be house arrest. People like this don’t go to jail, they just don’t. Not even “club fed” as they call it.