Insurance is a good bet for things where the cost of a loss would be a big deal. I put fire insurance on my house because if my house would burn I couldn’t afford to replace it. Because I can bet my house won’t burn down I dare live in a nice house. Without that insurance I’d have to live in a mud hut (or maybe a step above).

streaming what? Streaming one mp3s. Streaming a dozen different video re-encoded to something else probably can’t be done any affordable machine.

Maybe. How much does it use when you use it? For lightly used servers idle power matters. However a modern CPU often uses much less power to get the same amount of work done and so if the server is doing something idle consumption isn’t important.

That is most of them saddly

Why did you stop? I still manually crank most of my engines. (between lawn mowers and collectables I have a lot of engines without electric start) . I spend a lot of time filing points as we… Even when I have electric start, I find getting moving and popping the clutch works just fine.

Generally you are allowed to drive whatever you could at home. Since US licenses allow you to drive a manual you can drive a manual even if you never had. By contrast if you are from a country that makes the distinction you can’t drive a manual even if you have been practicing (how?) and just need to do the final test to drive a manual. (I’m not sure how someone without a manual endorsement would go about getting it in such countries, but whatever that process is)

The older I get the less sense this makes. I cannot dodge a car, and the roads I’m on have a narrow shoulder such that I cannot move off. As such seeing the car doesn’t’ help me at all. Worse if there is an on comming car someone has to stop because there is not room, at least if I’m going the same way as cars they can slow down to a walking speed (granted they probably won’t, but…)

a band saw the blade is a contiguous loop, in a scroll saw the blade is just 5 inches long (6?). You can thus put the blade through a hole in the work and cut inside parts (if you can weld blades you could do this with a bandsaw). Bandsaws have a blade guard which makes it a bit harder to see where you are cutting. For find work like the above a scroll saw is better than a small blade in the bandsaw. However the bandsaw can do much heavier work (resaw) and so if often a good enough compromise for people who don’t do much fine work.

Every music store sells humidifiers because it is well known that if you don’t keep your acoustic wood instruments (not just guitars, violins, harps, pianos…) at a very consistent humidity year round they will crack. If you go looking for antique musical instruments you will see a lot of them with cracks. The ones that are not cracked are the ones where the owners have cared about humidity and temperature.

China is making moves on Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, and the Philippians. They are building up their military. Nobody knows what will happen in the future, but there is a reasonably possibility of war in the region which the EU will get involved in. The cold war wasn’t all unreasonable fear even if some was.

You don’t need to phone home. A radio is something you can hide in a chip, using the board itself as an antenna. Then the chip listens for the signal which can be broadcast many ways (the local embassy, satellite, or spys) Isreal already proved that you can attack pagers in ways like this (their radios were hidden in a battery, but the point remains). The engineering is tricky, but well within something China can do.

That requirement is easy to appear to meet while still allowing whatever remote actions they want to do. Remember the first step of evil here would be appearing to work perfectly long enough to get a massive install base. Then the setret signal to all fail goes out to them all. i can come up with the above attack so we can safely assume China can too - they likely have other ideas as well.

https://curlie.org/ was trying to be that, but they seem to be down right now.

The best gifts are the ones where I get something great that I didn’t even know I wanted. Or something you make yourself because that knowledge you made it is part of the gift.

For a kid a great gift is something they know they want but cannot afford. For adults though if we want it either we buy it, or it is outside your budget as well. (if you are filthy rich and your target is poor you can perhaps afford something they could never afford, but this is rare - but even then be careful not to show off your wealth)

Sunk costs are sunk and don’t count. It doesn’t pay to build a coal power plant but is already there so you only pay for fuel to run it. This the ammortized costs and current costs are different and so it pays to run the old plants.

Many of you live in a state with right to repair laws. If you are one of those people make sure you study what your local laws say you can do. Different areas have different laws, and some of you will have a lawyer begging to represent you for legal fees if you win…

Good point, put a hat on the ground in front of you can you can make a buck or two… (this isn’t legal in every city, but it should be)

I have noticed that too, which is really odd because they well know I’m the center of the universe not them. \s

The city in question is in new zealand. While new york may be temperate (though it doesn’t show up in the maps I see - might be looking at maps on my phone) that doesn’t mean it is really comparible.

Four seasons yes, but not cold enough for snow - coldest normal temperture would be -3C. Different plants grow than summer but you can get something if you choose your winter plants. Or maybe you only lose out a month of growing season.

The “medium sized city” in question has a population of less than 100,000 people. I think most of us would call that a small city at most. The city is also has a temperate climate meaning year round growing seasons are possible. Yet still the city would need a lot of farm land around.

In short this doesn’t apply to you. If you are a “survivalists” you best preparation is to the ability to get to a rural place where you will be welcome. They will need extra labor and they have the crops already, but if they don’t know you they may refuse to let you in (or only allow you in as a slave?) If you can’t get out (which you may not be able to!) knowing your neighbors is a good second best, if neighbors looks out for each other they can find a lot of ability to survive and there is some hope that you can grow food in your city.