MrFoof

It is absolutely an option. Some people simply choose not to pursue it for many reasons ranging from financial, to a matter of principal, effort required, or any other number of reasons.

They’re not cheap, but if you want some serious kit that also financially supports the OPNSense project, the Deciso appliances are tough to argue. Power efficient, durability-focused components, just work.

It’s nice seeing their commercial offerings getting beefier.

I can’t imagine this not having some additional economic impact.

Regarding 9 atmospheres, I've not seen the Mythbusters episode, but I'm assuming that was an attempt to recreate the Byford Dolphin incident?

I left to my friend's house and fueled elsewhere.

Friend informed me that it's law. However not every fueling station enforces it. The one right by his apartment complex did (and his family won't go to it).

Arlington is another case where it's rare that an attendant will give you hell or stop you, but some will, because the law is on the books.

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In the case of Weymouth specifically, they passed a law before Massachusetts passed a state law. Until Weymouth repeals it (it's attempted periodically), it remains on the books.

Weymouth, Massachusetts (under 10 miles from Boston city limits) is one such town where you have to let the attendant operate the pump: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/south/2013/11/14...

Also in Massachusetts is Milford, Upton and I believe Arlington. Huntington, NY is the other holdout I'm aware of.

What was funny about Oregon is self-service wasn't allowed based on county size (counties > 40,000 people). However, three counties allowed motorists to still pump their own gas at night (7PM and later I believe), just not during daytime.

The rest of the planet really didn’t see this coming on Friday. It was borderline late 1990s military-espionage-themed Hollywood action movie stuff.

There’s likely a couple of intelligence orgs that aren’t happy they ended up flat-footed, and didn’t see this coming when it did.

Absolutely occurred in under 30ms (upper bound). Possibly as quick as 2ms, and in all likelihood well under 10ms.

Another optimization I did was taking advantage of having BOTH a Traditional IRA and Roth IRA. So the advantage here is bonds that aren't tax-exempt get extra benefit from being in a Roth. One major benefit of a Roth IRA is that virtually all income earned within its protective shell is free from taxation. There are no dividend taxes, no interest taxes, no rent taxes, and no capital gains taxes. So the optimization you make at the custodian is keeping as much of the taxable bonds as possible in the Roth IRA, while keeping the Traditional IRA equity heavy, while still keeping on track with your target asset allocation.

These small differences add up to meaningful numbers after decades. Granted, the most important thing is contributing as much as you are comfortable with as early as possible -- compounding over 40+ years is a huge difference over compounding over 30 years.

Been on there for 15+ years, and have contributed to the wiki myself. It never stops being relevant.

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Like over recent years I went from being independent to being an employee. We have a 401K with a good match, but the TDF choices were subpar. Good asset allocation and underlying funds, but they only offer the $0 minimum versions which are 0.75% ER, whereas the $3000 minimum version (it's a tech company, people are putting $3000 in no problem!) would be 0.12% ER.

Most people would put in the TDF and call it a day, which I wouldn't fault them for -- keeping it simple is what reduces friction and gets people to contribute earlier and contribute more. Except if you were there for 30 years, maxing your 401K and match every year, you'd be eating at least an extra $300,000 in expenses. Compound interest works both ways, after all.

The better solution? I will eventually petition HR to also add the Investor Class TDF options, but for now I instead simply rolled my own 4 fund portfolio with the remaining options to hit the same asset allocation, with damn near identical holdings. Took a few hours of research and making a spreadsheet with two or three very simple worksheets. All basic arithmetic.

I didn't just go from 75 basis points to 12 basis points: I ended up at 6.4 basis points. By comparison, a Vanguard TDF is 8 basis points. I'll re-balance it and adjust my contributions once a year, spending 5 minutes punching a few numbers into a spreadsheet to then punch corresponding numbers into the custodian's website. Set a reminder so I'll do it every year. Easy enough, and I reduced my expenses by ~91.5%.

If you nerd out and dig deep into the Bogleheads wiki, this kind of stuff becomes A) increasingly obvious and B) increasingly easy to recognize these opportunities.

No roll cages historically was the result of no federal safety belt law. Roll cages are great until an un-belted occupant has their head hit the cage. "Second collision." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impact_(safety)

At this point New Hampshire is the last remaining holdout on state safety belt laws. Live free or die (in a car crash).

Even then, you still have the issue of noncompliance. Automakers don't want to end up on 60 Minutes in an episode about how their "safer car" kills some people, because some of those people were un-belted in a crash. Numbers are all over the place for people not wearing their seat belt, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 10.

There’s really only two things you’ll run into:

* Games that rely on some esoteric third party library, that for whatever reason wasn’t included in the installer because it relied on a redistributable from Windows Update or the audio driver installer for the sound card. Rare, but happens. Almost always an audio library. Quick search will find it on abandonware sites. Think I’ve done this for 2-3 games ever, last one being Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol.

* Games that relied on early DirectDraw (not DirectX) and were released before Windows 2000, and used fade in/out effects. With how DirectX was changed under the hood for the NT 5.0 kernel in Windows 2000, it ends up being a slideshow. This isn’t a virtualization issue, but a Windows 2000 or later instead of Windows ME or prior issue — you’d see the same issue on 20-25 year old hardware (I did back then)! However this is super rare. I think the only game I have affected by this is the installer (not the game itself) for Dark Reign, which was an RTS by Relic.

I play even Windows 3.1 games that require 16-bit libraries just fine. Nothing special. Install and go. Maybe a bit of ye olde config for really old DOS games where you had to set up a sound card in a separate config tool from the game :). Some games may require you to right-click on the executable, go to Properties, and set the Compatibility Mode to an older version of Windows. This is built into XP itself. Honestly, I think I only have 1 or 2 total games that have ever required it.

Been doing this forever (15 years?) on both Intel Macs and x86 desktops for as long as I can remember. Moreover, this isn’t just my old memories — literally played a Windows 3.1/95 game (came out in 1994) this weekend while watching Le Mans.

I ended up forking out $58,000 (excluding 10 months of my lost wages fighting it) to attorneys to have a $412,000 balance bill for my mom ultimately withdrawn by a hospital.

You go in for X. Insurance company defines X as a set of ICD-9 procedure codes for that health care organization, for that treatment for that indication. Not all providers will use all of those codes, usually some subset as the exact treatment may vary across providers under that health care organization. The health care organization instead sends over claims for those ICD-9 procedure codes, plus some other ones that your insurance company feels aren't appropriate for your treatment.

You then get an explanation of benefits from your insurance company, stating that they covered X, Y and Z, but A, B, C, D, E, F and G are your responsibility, because it exceeds the negotiated or "allowable rate" between the insurance company and that health care organization.

Or worse, the whole claim was merely coded incorrectly by the health care organization. Insurance company feels it's then not their obligation, and straight up denies the claim.

A through G is some amount of money that would absolutely crush the average person.

Your insurance company stands behind what they laid out in their statement of benefits for the claim, and won't budge beyond that, saying the rest of the costs are your responsibility. After all, they feel those procedures weren't relevant for the treatment, and it exceeds the negotiated allowance with that health care organization for that treatment. The health care organization's billing department is aggressive, and says since your insurance company won't pay, you need to.

TL;DR: "Balance billing."

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Here's a case where your child falling off a bicycle and needing stitches could cost you $19,000 if you don't lawyer up: https://wamu.org/story/20/11/25/a-kid-a-minor-bike-accident-...

Entirely unrelated to the specific scenario I laid out is ending up in an out-of-network emergency room. Again, easy to end up with a $20,000 hospital bill for falling off a bicycle because your insurance company says it's not their problem: https://www.vox.com/health-care/2019/1/24/18195686/vox-zucke...

* Tires

* In-cabin air filter

* Windshield wiper blades

* Windshield washer fluid

* Brake fluid. It's hypergolic, after all

* Suspension realignment

* Suspension bushings

* Tie rod ends

* 12V AGM battery for non-powertrain systems

* Brake pads, though regenerative braking heavily reduces wear

* Rainwater drainage channels need to be cleared

* Air conditioner compressor

* Struts

* Wheel bearings

* Battery pack coolant. Eventually it will need replacement

* Battery pack coolant pump. Eventually it will need replacement

* Powertrain battery back

Over long enough timelines...

* Any rubber seals. Door seals, window seals. Frunk/trunk seals. Rubber oxidizes and degrades to UV over time

* Speakers

* Brake caliper rebuild.

* Brake master cylinder rebuild.

* Parking brake related items (modern electric ones just push out a cam against the brake rotor)

* Window regulators

* HVAC blend door actuators

* Soft-close door/trunk actuators

* Power seat motors

* Power mirror motors

* Seat foam and upholstery

* Door hinges. Eventually they won't stay open at a set position anymore.

* Auto-dimming mirrors

* Any backlit display

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Even eventually an electric motor may need re-balancing or servicing, but the timelines are very long. Powertrain costs are vastly reduced to internal combustion engine cars, but over a long enough timeline, all the other mechanical stuff needs replacing. Thermal cycling, oxidation, UV exposure, compression and friction affects everything eventually.

Some things people vastly underestimate as well. OEM-grade (not cheap aftermarket junk) door and window seals are NOT cheap to replace, and eventually the OEM ones may be entirely unavailable outside of collector grade cars. Even on VERY normal cars like a Toyota Camry you can spend $1500+ replacing door and trunk seals with OEM replacements.

Funny thing is the Sofel "X Kid" games (Casino Kid was the other) were very heavily rewritten from their original Japanese releases, presumably to make them less bleak to what was presumably a younger (kid) audience. If I recall correctly, Wall Street Kid's original Japanese story was more about a "salaryman" of below average financial success in an unhappy relationship that looked at day trading to get his girlfriend/wife off his back for not being successful enough to lavish her with luxuries.

The game itself is very 80s bubble culture with a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor given the situation you're placed in. In the North American "Wall Street Kid", your fiance's (Prisila) car breaks down at one point, and you're forced into the scenario of having to buy her a replacement car. It alludes that she was driving something fairly normal. Your options?

* A Ferrari 328

* A Porsche 911

* A BMW 7 Series

* Some other car I forget, that might've been an entirely normal economy car.

Yep. Possibly from a malaise-era Ford or a Chevrolet straight to full size executive sedans or ultra-luxury sports cars! If you, "cheap out" you disappoint your fiance. The point is if you disappoint her too many times, she'll break up with you (or if married, file for divorce) which is an immediate game over. Again, this goes back to the original Japanese story line where the day-trading protagonist is constantly being goaded by his girlfriend/wife into buying her luxuries to keep up appearances, as well as meet your father's benchmarks for your success.

I’ve checked rpilocator a few times this week to find 4Bs available every single time. Not tons and not everywhere, but they’re starting to have availability again.

WOW! was fairly poorly advertised. We originally got it via a free CD at a store (Barnes and Noble or Office Max?), and they started doing TV advertisements a few months later. Though almost immediately thereafter AOL started their giant Unlimited Hours advertising blitz. Marketing truly won in that scenario. CompuServe had a shot, but no one knew about WOW! so it died in obscurity and under the weight of AOL's genuinely gargantuan marketing efforts.

Back in 1995, my local libraries did not have internet access available. This was a city of 100K a fair ways (about an hour) outside of Boston.

School? Super rare. Maybe ONCE OR TWICE A YEAR we would have a class scheduled in the Media Lab where we would learn about what the internet was, and then be able to barely poke at it in a highly supervised manner. This was despite the school having a few ISDN lines at the time, but that was mostly for backoffice administration, with only the one media lab having access outside of it, with a whopping TWO computers for a student body of 4500.

So even in a school with internet access, you might only get to get a vague idea of what the internet was ONCE A YEAR.

1998? Every high-level classroom in my high school of 4500 kids had two or three computers in the back with internet access. School added 8 computer labs (with 40 desktops each) that could be scheduled as frequently as weekly by a given teacher. If I recall correctly the school had upgraded to two DS3s from different providers.

I think it was 1995 when WOW!, which was a subsidiary of CompuServe, offered unlimited hours for $15/month. AOL followed shortly thereafter. Prior to that it was something like $4-6/hour, usually at only 14.4kbps - 28.8kbps.

Going from 2.5 - 4 hours a month to a household being able to easily surpass 100 hours a month (for households with multiple kids, easily 150-200 hours a month!) was an absolute game changer for internet adoption, at least in the United States. Then add in Mosaic (eventually Netscape Navigator) taking off and that's when adoption really ramped up. Then cable modems and DSL starting to become more widely available in 1997-1998. Plus instant messaging software basically being the precursor to what we would see later on with SMS.

Road going performance cars have fans first to help get things up to temperature for emissions, and after that, for when you’re at low speeds or stationary. So you don’t overheat (or catch fire) when you’re stuck in traffic after having the car at high load.

Race cars tend to not have any fans near their primary heat exchangers. You get more airflow without fan blades creating impedance, and you just rely on the airflow at speed to do all the work.

Game wasn’t a real commercial success because its demo was too good, and it wasn’t on store shelves. IP rights were sold to Decklin’s Domain, who at least seems to be a great steward, even if the website looks straight out of the mid-90s.

Original author is still around doing some startup consulting in the Denver area. Think he made the game damn near straight out of college.

Again, still loads of fun. Completely worth the $10. I’ve been having a blast with it lately, and the help file is exhaustive like an early 90s computer game manual.

Ignoring the Mercedes-Benz CLR, of course.

Honestly, I can only imagine what’s going to happen if movable aero is ever allowed at the top end of motorsport. Think something like the McMurtry Speirling (https://youtu.be/tHIbvYWhaxA?t=999), but as if it was put through some madman’s Kerbal Space Program fever dream.

Granted, I think the memory of June 11th, 1955 will keep it from ever happening.

Or older (pre-Steam) games in a virtual machine.

Hyper-V comes with Pro versions of Windows. VMWare has a Player that is also free (plus there's full Workstation). There's also VirtualBox, which sometimes is the packaged solution for very old titles sold on platforms like GOG. Never mind the solutions for Mac OS, Linux and BSD.

Recently my jam is going back to 1994 and playing a game from the Windows 3.1/Windows 95 transition era, rife with 16-bit libraries -- Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol. A game in which it was likely a lot of older folks here played the crap out of the demo, but never bought the game because it involved sending a check in the mail -- and because even the demo could provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment. Though you can legitimately buy it online from its current IP owner for about $10 (more if you want a boxed copy!), and it's just as fun as I remember it 30 years ago.

And setting it up in a virtual machine? Very straightforward, save for digging up some third-party audio library the game wanted. I actually just have a 40GB Windows XP VM I just maintain with all my old games from DOS and Windows 3.1 through 2002 or so. I can move it between hypervisors, between host OSes, etc. Just works. All my old games always ready to go.

Oh my dog. Before I set up Invidious to ensure my experience on iPad and such could be ad free, the one that really shocked me is one of the two ads that would show up mid-roll for a creator I watched regularly was SIXTY SIX MINUTES in length. Yes, an hour and six minutes! I can’t imagine what that must cost, but clearly whatever they were selling must cover the costs of a 66-minute ad well enough!