Scottn1

I have to say I am pretty PO'd regarding this. A month ago I JUST finally bought a nice new i3-7100 PC to replace my 10yo Core2Duo for Christmas. Office tasks, web games for kid, work, etc.

I have measurably noticed the decrease in speed in various web benchmarks. Enough to make it feel like I was mislead in what I thought I had purchased. I wrote down two tests I did the day I first brought PC home and have run them many times since the first patches hit Windows 10. I got two clear hits - A small hit with the Windows 10 patch, then another hit with the PCU microcode update (through a BIOS update released by Lenovo).

Windows10 x64 1709

Edge: Jetstream: 271 in Dec, 246 today. -9.2% MotionMark: 307 to 245. -20%!

Firefox: Jetstream: 199 In dec on FF-57, 175 today FF-57.0.4. -12%

That is bad enough to me that I would just take this PC back to store for money back if it was still within return timeframe. I'd rather just wait for this to be fixed at the hardware level now or wait for a Zen APU in a few months. Imagine you bought a car a month ago and today got 9-20% LESS horsepower because of a "Fix".

I can only imagine how upset cloud providers must be at this. Or any company needing every ounce of CPU performance they paid for. AutoCAD farms/rendering comes to mind.

I hope there is a class action lawsuit for anyone who bought Intel CPU's. Obviously pro-rated by how long ago you purchased. I'd definitely sign up at this point for some $ back. Problem is it will only be like $5 in my pocket after lawyers get their payday.

I am very similar. Love to thinker sometimes so early this year downloading and installing many of the top and some obscure distro's. Just sort of felt like going doing an a No-Windows 30 days.

Antergos (arch made easy) was one of the distro's I tried last and it stayed on my Asus netbook the longest. I was fairy impressed with Antergos as it installed nice and felt pretty quick. But then things got too manual for my tastes. I just wanted to install Brave Browser. The tgz package didn't run and I couldn't obviously use the deb or rpm version. It wasn't in the default software add/remove when I searched. So I was thrown to using the command line (yaourt) and researching it's commands to get the repository correct, download and install a browser I simply wanted to try that would be a download from website and install on Windows as well as the more popular linux distro's.

That was one. Then a week later a update knocked out my wifi. I had to again mess around with some command line fix that worked. The real kicker was when I had not touched the netbook in about a month and when I finally did, I did the routine Pacman -Syu. This I found out the hard way was supposed to not go more than a week or so of not doing. This wrecked the distro so bad I couldn't even get the GUI. That was enough tinkering for me with Arch. I don't have time to research that as I didn't care anymore. Formatted.

I was most impressed with PClinuxOS. I just worked and had pretty recent packages on a rolling release. Never had any breakage and it also held hand enough I never touched the command line (even to install Brave). OpenSUSE, Korora and KDE Neon all were also decent and feel I could have used them long term if forced to.

In the end of about two months, I just wanted to crawl back into my comfy Windows 7 world and get some work done again. Be able to use literally any software I want and not be confined to lesser quality alternatives. Not have updates kill my install. Etc. I seriously applaud all the coders and individuals dedicating their free time to open source and thank them for that, but I guess I am fine with proprietary closed source that I've grown up on since 1984.

No, you are not. I too liked the K750 feel a lot, but ultimately returned it after reading some reviews the rechargeable batteries in it stop taking a charge (some relatively quickly for such an expensive keyboard). I also typed slower on it than others for some reason.

I have determined through a lot of time and money trying at least 25 keyboards over the past year I too like like the flat style like the K750. I bought and tried: Cherry MX Blue/Brown, Some Cheap Cherry clones on Amazon, Various rubber domes like K120/Kensington Keyboard for life/Microsoft 600, Matias Quiet-Click, K800, Razor's, Gaming BS, Vintage Rubber Dome, Etc. Even came close to buying Unicomp Buckling Spring and also even searched the Bay for old versions this article is about (holy grail vintage Model-F) but refuse to spend more for keyboard than a i5 CPU (and the reason I would never buy Topre either).

Mechanical keyboards do feel good and remind me of my youth, but to me are dinosaurs. Big, bulky and noisy. While it is fun to see them making a comeback and popular with the younger gen, I personally don't understand the appeal of them in 2017. Annoy co-workers and people on other end of phone calls. I even woke up my 6yo son with my Cherry Brown one night typing away.

Trying all of these I eventually caught myself sort of missing the low-profile laptop style scissor-switch ones I have tried. I really liked the K800 and K750. K750 I eliminated as mentioned above, the K800 I took back because Logitech purposely disabled key combo's on it and it was a middle finger to anyone who wanted to game on it, even a little.

I think the latest version of the Mac Keyboard with even less travel than the previous one is beyond what I like though. That is TOO little travel and feels like I am just typing on my desk surface. I am thinking of getting the new Surface keyboard as I tried the latest TypeCover and liked the feel.

Because the metric used to categorize is too simpleton (BMI) and unfairly counts more muscular frames into same categories. Muscle weighs more than fat.

When this guy goes to get a physical, he will go into database as "overweight" (BMI 26-27): http://ow.ly/KnTx30bsc3d

And this is "Obese": http://ow.ly/33ls30bsclV

Thanks for this. It is timely for me as we just bought a another home and I am wrestling daily to sell our current one when new one is ready, or rent it out. We are half way into a 30yr mortgage on it and I have grand visions of renting it to have other people pay off my mortgage for next 14 years and hate to let it go.

From the few in our circle of friends who have been landlords before, none of them have had any stories remotely like yours. They've all seemed to have had model tenants from what I've gathered. Worst cases are just a few have had their leases broken early and they are having to carry double mortgage payments for a month or two scrambling for another tenant. Or some have been late paying rent once in while and you have to chase them down.

They've all just told me it isn't that bad. Just make sure to do a thorough job in screening the applicants. Check credit history, job stabilty/length, etc. Some have even recommended to just pay a property management company to handle renting it out and such as the fee is well worth it.

I thought owning and accumulating real estate was the way to wealth and comfortable retirements so I wresting with letting my 1st house go so deep into a mortgage. I have some friends who own 3-4 homes. But reading this thread and story though, I am just not sure it is worth the trouble and risk of trying to rent it out. Unless of course I knew ahead of time prices would continue to rise unrealistically in my city forever.

I know of a guy who found out his wife was seeking divorce weeks in advance because he started noticing divorce lawyer ads in his browsing! He eventually asked her if everything was ok and she came out with it. Crazy.

Hmm, Contact lens wearer for 30 years now. For 28 of those years I was a RGP lens wearer. They provided much sharper vision for sports, were very cost effective (initial investment was high but lasted 3-5 years with proper care), and daily maintenance was pretty easy.

RGP lenses require a separate cleaner for 30 seconds then a solution for inserting/soaking (eventually they did come out for an all-in-one solution but I never got the same comfort from it). Since day one I was taught by my teenage eye doctor to used tap water as the rinse of the cleaning solution and did for all that time. If you didn't get the cleaning solution off real well, you'd feel it in your eye for a minute. The instructions say to use soaking solution as the "rinse" but I never did as it would be much more expensive and water always worked.

Maybe the type of lens is more susceptible to AK/Infections? RGP is a rigid almost hard type of lens. I've never had any sort of problem using tap water all this time. I've even slept in them a few times in my life. It would seem softer lenses would allow things to adhere more? I wonder if there are any correlations to the type of lens to infection?

I went to dailies two years ago mostly for comfort and convenience. I don't wearcontacts as much as I used to as i've gotten older (just throw on my glasses now because who cares now..) and RGP can get uncomfortable if not wearing them often enough. It appears dailies can give one a false sense as you get "fresh" ones every day. I've swam/showered with them at times and now worry after reading she got the AK even using dailies.

I am bewildered actually because you'd think dailies would be the best possible lens for your eye health. Soft, highly breathable and new pair every use.

Been with my wife 26 years. One kid. We are High school sweethearts. Just had "date night" again last night where we had dinner/wine and watched the magical movie La La Land after. Just about a perfect night.

I chose that despite having three good friends texting me all day to go out for drinks. Two of them are divorced and newly single. The third has been a bonafied "will never marry" womanizer his whole life who I sometimes would envy a once in a while in our 20/30's when he'd get an 8 or 9, but now it is really getting old and sort of pathetic in our mid 40's.

One thing that sticks out to me from something the womanizer friend of mine told me like 7 years ago. I tried to boost him up one night after breaking up with one of his 2 month fling (a pretty hot waitress) by saying he gets hot girls all the time so cheer up. He told me something along the lines of "yeah hot girl here, next month I'll have another but you get to crawl into a warm bed tonight with someone who loves you and you the same. I'll never have that".

How timely as I have just spent the downtime days of December catching up on current state of Linux (and BSD). I was a big visitor of Distrowatch and pretty much tested the big 5 as well as a few fringe ones that sounded interesting and were pretty up-to-date.

I was mostly looking for ease of installing as well as setting it up to be a workable internet/email machine, ultimately leaving it up for the guest who would house-sit for me over Xmas. My criteria on the opinions below are based on not only installing, but also; ease of updating, get it functioning fine on the current web (youtube, flash games, etc), install a few software choices I preferred and finally try to "break" the system by pretending I wanted the latest Mesa drivers than what came with it.

First, I see a lot of suggestions by many for Arch. I really do understand the following this distro and others based on it because of the super control of having complete choice of everything installed, BUT to recommend it is a bit much for anyone just wanting things to work for a while and then getting real work done after. This "rolling release" model of distro (and Gentoo even more so) is great for those wanting to learn more/experiment about linux or those who just can't stand having anything other than the latest release for every single item on the hard drive. Stick with binary distro's to save your sanity in the long run.

Off all the 10+ I tried, I recommend this:

1) OpenSuse Leap - Pretty up-to-date and long term support cycle. Even better look to the Spin GeckoLinux for well put together lite/minimalist Opensuse Leap spins. I really liked these and he has them made for all the popular desktop environments (I really liked Geckolinux Mate). OpenSuse "Tumbleweed" is their rolling release version for those wanting latest software.

2) Korora - A Fedora spin with great defaults, codecs, etc. Also has choice of DE and Korora Mate was the one I ultimately left on my machine for my house guest.

3) Any of the Ubuntu spins like Ubuntu-Mate or KDE, etc. I leaned more towards the LTS version (16.04) because I just prefer longer stability/support between major releases. I really liked the corny named Maui Linux. This is a spin of KDE Neon (which is KDE's own distro and based on Ubuntu). Maui has a cool idea to be part rolling when you want so you can get latest, then just freeze it and turn it into a long term just security updates LTS. I was able to get the latest KDE and Mesa just by enabling a repository, then I unchecked it and can stay with it. Maui was sort of ugly imo at default but I quickly was able to get rid of their theme to a vanilla Breeze/KDE. I also am enjoying KDE again because of Maui.

Also, Suse's Zypper (and now Fedora's dnf, which is based off of Zypper) I think are the best package managers, by far. Do research for why, but RPM has come a long way. I was able to update major versions of Leap and Fedora without a hitch. Install software and back out if needed. All very speedy on top of it.

Hope this was helpful.

I have been a ebay user since 1999. Have accumulated 200 feedbacks and currently at 100% positive. But I have entertained closing my account a few times in past two years and have started to cut back drastically on ebay as both a buyer and especially a seller.

First, as others have mentioned, they have a monopolistic marketplace where they require one to use their own Paypal for transactions. The combined fee's for selling on ebay + Paypal now are 10% of the final sold amount + the shipping amount. Where margins are slim as it is and things are already selling well below their value at times because of so many other competing auctions, the fee's make it not worth it in many cases. They are making a boatload in fees and I'm tired of it. I just sold $400 golf clubs and had to give them $42? Ebay provides value as the market is so large. I had those clubs on Craigslist for TWO months and not even a inquiry at that price. Ebay got sold in 7 day auction. But to pay 10% for everything is too greedy imo. They have NO competition.

Second, ebay has become a haven for scammers and overrun with them to point I am leery of purchasing anything like electronics, phones, etc on there. Software..forget it! DO NOT buy any licensed software from ebay no matter how good buyer feedback. Even if it claims new/sealed. The pirates have gotten too good. I'd venture to say 99% of software on there now is either a)counterfeit from get go or b)legit but "used" and/or illegal Volume Licenses. The problem is key will work when you get it but fail 5 months from now or when you need to reinstall. I've been victim of this two times now and NO more will I buy software off ebay. When it does fail, it is long enough you have zero recourse. Ebay you can't even file a claim as they give you only like 14 days after purchase. A pirate knows this and gets keys from a keygen. I had 8 legit looking MS Office licenses in sealed retail boxes register then 4 months later started to fail. Called Microsoft and they told me I had registered them too many times and they are now flagged. Huh? I only installed them ONCE. Credit card company didn't even help as it was past the time limit for a case. So basically the seller sold many of the same key and whoever bought from him, who knows how many of us, they are all worthless. Really upsets me that ebay allows ANY software even on there. They clearly know that this must be going on. I tried to inform them of the practice but couldn't even find a contact to let know. They don't care as they are making their fees! Tons of them from software. Their only concern is a small webpage to help identify counterfeit. From now on, I will only buy hard items that can't be counterfeited or scammed easily, like golf clubs.

Third, as this story is about, ebay is WAY to buyer-centric and I too was once bitten by similar story as topic starter. Not as blatantly bad as the OP or that amount of money, but bad enough I was pissed. Eventually also got someone from ebay on the phone and as similar was brushed off and there was no pleading my case. End of story, refund the money. It cost me out of my own pocket by time it was returned and settled.

Things make sense now... I had a client of mine call me late in the day claiming her back PC can't get internet (wired connection) despite the security PC right next to it is fine. Had her do the basic steps; reboot, check wires, try switching ports in the router and none worked. Planed to visit her today to see what the heck type of malware one of her employees infected her with somehow or NIC went bad suddenly.

I can answer this because I too wish I could have had my son sooner. I was scared to death of having kids for all through my 20's and early 30's. I now realize I was just selfish and didn't want the "burden" for lack of a better word, of something that doesn't go away. I now realize how wrong I was.

My wife of 10 years convinced me finally to have a kid when I was 33. I risked, at that point, a failed marriage if not giving her at least one. We agreed to just one kid. Had I'd known how hard it was going to be for us to just conceive of one, I would have agreed to start trying much sooner. It took us 5 years of trying the old fashioned way as well as some basic medical help until we finally agreed to pay the price of a new small car for IVF. The stress it caused my wife for five years of trying was hard to watch. She'd tear up seeing a teenager carrying two kids but we couldn't have one.

My life changed the day my son was born (who is now 6) and I can't put into words how much joy he has brought to me. He is like a mini-me and my best friend. To watch him grow, learn and pass through some early life moments (kindergarten, etc) has choked me up at times.

So the regret is because of not knowing how hard it CAN be to have a kid. And you aren't even in the first phase of it yet in which you have a mate you can devote to. Plus you hear about it all the time but it is so different to be living it, but children are exhausting. You want that to be hitting you in your 20's and 30's at peak energy. I am past 40 now and I feel like a zombie at times and many other area's of my life have suffered. I think back how much easier it would have been just to play soccer with him longer if I was 10 years younger.

Same here. Pre-teen kid fascinated by this new tech. Looking back I have no idea how my mom/dad afforded it. In fact, my mom went behind my dad's back to buy it for me as he said they could not afford it. I remember the exact location of the store we went to at the time still. I actually got a genuine IBM (only the best mom.. THANKS!). Something like $3000+ at the time. Later added a $300 modem after seeing War Games.

I attribute a large part to my mom, basically no questions asked, in getting me that first PC to my whole career in IT. As well as a tinkerer of tech stuff and still prefer fixing electronic stuff and building my own PC from parts than buying name brand ones. I'm 43.

I need to tell her thanks again next time I see her for basically taking a $9k loan out (in today's $$) for her 10yo son for this gadget computer stuff that was starting to take off that no one else in our circle of friends really even knew much about.

It is amazing to me how we even learned anything advanced back then. It was almost like we were so "dumb" compared to today's kids. The library and the bookstore at the mall (WaldenBooks) was my main staple as a young pre-teen kid. I'd never pass up a chance to go with my mom to either the library or the mall.

I remember as a 16yo trying to buy my first car (used 1979 Camaro) and how I thought knowing about the NADA guide you could browse through at the library was secret knowledge and used the copied page as negotiations tool. Now that info and more is readily available in few clicks on your portable phone/computer you carry in you pocket when at the dealer.

+1

My Lumia 735 does all the modern basics very well and everything I need in a phone. But the App store is like a ghost town so very little to distract you. It has some popular apps, but even then they not updated or poorly done to same ones on iOS/Droid.

I am coming from two years with a Blackberry Z10 myself and using WM10 now for 6 months has pleasantly made me a believer in it. It is simple, smooth and pretty well thought out. I am really surprised it doesn't gain more ground, but the world is all about APPS rather than the technical merits of the OS (otherwise BB10 would have become more popular).

The WM10 virtual keyboard is the best stock i've used and even beats the 3rd party ones i've tried on droid. It has awesome word prediction and built in swipe typing for those that prefer that. Cortana is VERY well done and again easily competes with Siri (I've actually had to whip out my phone a few times to quickly just find what my wife was asking for on her iPhone). Edge browser is fast and nimble (plus will be getting extensions soon I hope). Maps also is good enough. But best feature, to me, is how well WM10 ties into your Microsoft life; Office/Outlook plus Onedrive.

Just go through the settings to turn off any privacy stuff you may have concern with and it is a good modern phone for someone like me who has zero social media life other than texts. You can also get even a flagship phone used pretty cheap now as well. I am looking forward to the new Surface phone.

All I know is turning the brightness control on my iPad all the way down to far left with lights out and in bed then just browsing boring stuff like news, Car and Driver, etc and it works like a sleeping pill for me. In about 15-20m of this and I can barely keep my eyes open.

Might be this minimized blue light effect as they suggest, or could just be a sort of recognized pattern/habit my brain now associates with bed. I don't know why, but it works for me. I'm getting sleepy now just thinking of it..

I can relate to Dell shady tactics and deceit. I too was a big fan of Dell products and recommended them plenty over the many years. Black Friday 2015 I got wind of Dell having a great deal on Xbox "bundle". I waited all day for the timing to be right so I could order it when it went live.

When it finally arrived at my house, I was missing several items that were part of the "bundle" I paid for. I was Missing the headset as well as the extra controller and free game they advertised. Calling their support was an exercise in patience as it turned into a debate about what I ordered. Dell had purposely sent the included receipt with tactically chosen wording that I had just ordered a normal Xbox bundle they always sold. A classic bait-n-switch.

I had an argument with the support person about that being wrong yet they insisted, DESPITE my time/date of order showing to purposely take advantage of the BF deal and a screen shot of my order. They still fought it as the included receipt was their trump card. So basically all a company has to do is fix the sent receipt and change the order wording and there is no defense for being taken advantage of? I was livid.

A quick search of the net found out I wasn't alone in this bat/switch Xbox bundle BF deal. Eventually they gave in to the headset and sent me a Dell gift card for the amount to order a headset through them. This was now further proof I had ordered a SPECIAL BF deal as they admitted it by comping the headset. But they still would not budge on the extra controller or the free game.

I decided to try and stick it to them instead for their deceptive tactics and issued a complaint with my credit card for not getting what I paid for. I filed for full amount of purchase of the BF deal and explained what happened to my CC company. They mentioned they had similar complaint already about same thing for someone else. So I did a chargeback. Not intending to get free Xbox but rather try to scare Dell to just make good.

Months went by and I find out Dell fought it, as expected. Dell now was offering me a full refund and to send everything back. I was ready to do just that and buy from elsewhere now BUT, get this, Dell said I had to pay for return shipping! So now instead of getting everything I paid for, they now expect me to be OUT $30 to ship it back with now NOTHING to show for.

So that is where it ended. I gave up. I wasn't getting the advertised controller or free game and just wasn't going to be -$30 at this point for nothing than to prove a point. So I kept the Xbox, paid for it and just accepted Dell has now become a piece of shit company. And I will NEVER buy or recommend to anyone, including many clients, Dell or anything the sell again.

Wow, that was a downer to read and I'm sorry you feel that way. I feel much different.

In fact, some of my best memories and seemingly happiest times were my pre-teen through post teen years through the 80's and early 90's. Without internet but was still immersed in the geeky stuff. Simpler times as the cliché would say.

Things like seeing what my friends were up to actually involved a sense of more freedom and independence because you had to actually get on your bike and knock on their door as your parents told you to stay off the phone (that cost like .3/minute to call a block away). The only "tech" that interfered with our lives was in our homes. Parks, lazing around with friends, exploring, baseball.. etc. Whatever you could do to pass time and enjoy ones company. Driving my bike to nearest field to see who else was there and sharing baseball cards, stories, flirts, etc was our Facebook.

But this was also a time of exploring the exploding world of hobby electronics (Radio Shack, Popular Electronics, First IBM PC and DOS, etc) but was more hands-on physical rather than the post-internet software/webpage intangible is king. Like I said before it was all in your home and my house was the epi-center of this stuff in my neighborhood as I was the one known to have it. If not outside getting dirty, we'd be in my house playing Earl Weaver Baseball or NFL Challenge. A pittance compared to todays sports games graphics-oriented games as these were more numbers/strategy based.

I also remember once modems became affordable that there was actually an "online" world BEFORE the internet. BBS's, usenet.

>> Edit: You're comical to the point of absurdity.

I agree.

Claims of being an IT pro for 20 years and then reading that typical Windows 10 FUD website as well as the laughably wrong statements in the comments here is the actual cringe-worthy stuff. Hope he isn't in IT for any companies I rely on for my info to remain secure.

Another is The Bat!. I've personally been using this email client for PC for 10 years now. https://www.ritlabs.com/en/

It has extremely powerful filtering, multiple inboxes for all my accounts (I prefer to deal with them separately rather than the unified inbox trend), IMAP and recently redone outlook.com/Exchange pipeline, can encrypt local store, and it's very customizable (can have it do threading/conversation for example). Reminds me of the old Opera in this regard.

The UI is a bit dated imo as it has stayed true to it's same look the whole time I've used it and skipping the modern trend of Outlook-like email client looks, but this to me is part of it's appeal. Once you get used to it.

I used Opera as my daily browser for years, up to the 12.x release. It was my little "browser that could" vs the big guys. Chrome was gaining huge ground but I kept with Opera as sort of the underdog and knowing the Presto engine was just as good at the time.

Then the switch to it being a skinned Chrome. That was tough for me to swallow as it always was on the back of my mind. I still gave it random tries for days at a time as the new blink/chrome skin, but a discovery had turned me off for good.

Over a year ago, I noticed outgoing traffic to 1-2 IP's in addition to the URL I was visiting. Turns out it was to Opera's malware scanning and to Akamai. Opera and Akamai had info on every web page you visit and there was NO way to turn this off. You can turn this off in Chrome simply in the settings, but Opera purposely spent time removing that ability from Chromium. By-default URL/malware scanning is probably a good thing for the masses, but I did not need it and also felt it was a privacy violation being it was also involving Akamai.

I raised this issue up SEVERAL times with Opera through the desktop blog comments as well as survey's with them. To this day I don't think they even acknowledged the posts I made and just ignored the issue. I recall, I think, one Opera employee saying they will look into it for future versions, but every new release I saw nothing.

Before the switch off Presto, Opera would quickly work on resolving bug comments as well as community feedback. I felt the major difference once it went to being Google's b&tch (even making it very difficult for some time in changing off of Google as default search from address bar), that Opera no longer became a browser for the fans and somewhat of the underdog you could cheer for to a cold, commercial sellout. On their own path adding features no one asked/wanted yet several times reverting them back. Much energy spent on throwing stuff out to see what sticks with Speed Dial, theme, bookmarks, but nothing at all in bringing back the features and customization that made Opera 12.x great.

This latest news though is the FINAL straw for me being sold to shady Chinese companies with KNOWN attachment to malware and tracking in whatever they put out. I already had issues with the URL scanning mentioned above and having my info sent to Opera servers was one thing. I will not even let Chinese Opera touch my PC going forward. Opera is good as dead and I will not even look at it anymore.

RIP Opera: 2/11/2016

FF is our last hope in a browser that still worries about privacy to an extent and is still pretty customizable. For daily use I will use Edge and FF equally.

+1

I'm in my early 40's and have been a NO for as long as I can remember. To at least 5th-6th grade, and my mom (she too is a NO to some extent) tells me even before then I was up later than rest of house. Reading books/mags, a little late TV, etc. Needless to say, school was not easy for me.. ever. Elementary school wasn't so bad as I still got enough sleep, but junior high - HS was basically a half day for me as I was a zombie until lunch. Grades reflected it.

When I saw him say "midnight" and that was his concern, I was like, "Really"? That is like the near end of my prime time most alert. I too have been known to start mopping the house at that time or change the oil on my car, then go to gym after then come home and do some client work, work on my PC, etc. I have always felt most productive when I have my time when house goes to sleep and it is quiet. It is no different than the morning one early risers claim they have. That serenity. Just different time block.

The majority of people have no idea what it is like to be a NO. It is reflected negatively and many many times in my adult life have had to brush off the topic when it comes up in gatherings. Little jabs and stuff like "I have to go to gym at 6am tomorrow, hey you could give me a wake up call". Or stuff like "what do you DO all night"?. I really feel like it is looked upon as just being lazy or associated with deadbeats UNLESS you have a direct NEED to be a NO (your job is overnight shift for example). Even then, you are still considered odd because masses just don't associate success with the NO schedule and it is considered a rut to get out of. I guess it is true to some extent because how many 6-figure+ professions are there that are night-owl's?

I am very lucky to have a wife I have been with a long time and just rolls with it. She has not always been happy with my schedule and wants us more in-line, but overall it works. My son, now five, also makes it tough to continue being a NO. It was perfect first few years as my wife and I had whole day covered without either of us being zombies from lack of sleep, but now I just feel weird coming down at 11am when him and mom been up since 8am.

The best fix I have come across though is to just travel east for like 10 days and get up to that time zone. Then come home. When I go home for summer every year it is two hours later than where I live. Even sleeping in there till 10 is 8am where I live. Doing that for a week plus and when I come home, I can't keep my eyes open past midnight for few days. I could then stick with it but I just start to slowly revert. Or one diet coke too late and I blow past the midnight till 2am once and now am ruined again.

I sometimes do wish I was early person. Just for the conformity of it and the associated praise from others that I see all around me, as if it is something regarded as accomplishment. My wife sometimes gets up at 5:30am to run 6 miles and all of our friends "wow" her and tell her how awesome that is. If I were to tell them right after that I too ran 6 miles but it was at midnight, I just get a laugh like I am goof. Just not the same stigma. Benjamin Franklin's saying "early to bed..." still has powerful influence.

This test is flawed as kazinator alluded to. It is just try to find the lowest quality one and pick one of the remaining two as choice. So even with that, chance plays too much of a factor. A true test needs to be double-blind and I would wager that very very few could reliably tell a difference between wav and modern lossy codecs at 192kbit/s or higher. And I know MANY can't even tell anymore, in proper double-blind testing, at 128 or even 96kbit/s using todays better codecs of aac or ogg (mp3 improvement has stalled and currently aac as well as ogg or opus are much better).

In fact, I was JUST reading about this sort of stuff last night when I decided I didn't think I have a need to keep my archived lossless flac almbums anymore. I carefully ripped mine and many borrowed CD's to flac using EAC like 6 years ago with intention that I could get rid of the cd's themselves to Goodwill. I then just converted them to 128kbit/s mp3 for portable/phone listening. Knowing at the time 128 mp3 had its limitations I would just re-convert in the future as the writing was on the wall we were getting close to near perfect compression in regards to the limits of human hearing.

I re-converted several of my favorite albums to Nero aac a couple years ago as I could not distinguish at the time with enough certainty Nero aac (@ 192kbit/s) vs flac using good headphones and my computer. Nero has also stopped development around that time but aac has continued to advance through Apple and Fraunhofer to where we are today.

So last night I ripped all my archived albums to 160kbs iTunes aac and just deleted the archives themselves from my hard drive saving huge chunk of GB's. One, today's codecs are basically transparent at that level for 99.9% of us and two, if I ever do want a full lossless copy of an album in the future for any reason, my high speed internet connection can get them in about 1-2 minutes each (since I purchased them once already I legally owned a copy? Technically though I don't have the hard version anymore).

Then went about enjoying some music for an hour that I had forgotten about.

Some links. More on aac: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

more on Opus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_%28audio_format%29

Here is more info on ABx testing and codecs as well as some results of scientific listening tests done by the audiophille community.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec_listening_test

Particularly the most recent test in 2014 where Opus is basically transparent to very discerning eats at a surprisingly low 96kbs bitrate. Apple aac also at 96kbs as well as Ogg and latest LAME mp3(needed higher around 136kbs) are not far behind. We are just about at end-game for lossy formats.

http://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm

I guess I forgot this part from elementary school, but craziest for me (42) was Saturn has only been around the sun once since I was born. And earth has added 3.4b people.

OMG brings back memories and makes me sad at same time it failed to gain ground. I was a BIG BeOS fan. In fact I'd probably be able to dig up from my storage the actual purchased BeOS package and the "The BeOS Bible" book I bought too. It was the "Opera Browser" of operating systems at the time to me. Lightweight, nimble, fast and just completely felt it was well thought out by brilliant engineers that weren't tied down to legacy.

I remember pitching it to my co-workers and praising its ability to still play multiple movies smoothly in a dragging window even with other tasks running in the background, which at the time was really cool considering same hardware Windows/Linux could not. And to this day, it had my favorite all-time newsreader (can't remember the name but it was threaded news that used multiple windows)

In the end, it just didn't the apps and the world was Microsoft centric and this thing called "Linux" was the buzz, along with Apple gaining ground.

Blackberry Z10.

"To explain the Fermi paradox needs a big killer, like an innocent looking physics experiment that sterilizes a solar system."

As I've mentioned elsewhere: Gamma Ray Bursts

It is not really the same because any of your examples would not supposedly coincide with a 1500 BC civ. So none of it would be observable. You would only be talking about stuff in the way distant future that did not exist at the time and only a time traveler would be able to describe.

The Fermi Paradox is a discussion based on that there currently SHOULD be advanced tech and colonized civs at the SAME time we are and have been looking for them. So where are they?

Even ruling out a Earth or even Solar System visit, they should have evidence out there that can be seen. Some sort of energy signature, a space station, satellite, giant mothership as it checks out life detected as us. SOMETHING. The Fermi Paradox says, by now, there should have been at least one Type III civ in our galaxy given how old it is and they would eventually tip their hat to their existence, unless they purposely try and are able to hide themselves.

I've read two books on this and my current favored solution to the Paradox is Supernovae and/or Gamma Ray Bursts. Particularly GRB as they have to ability to sterilize whole galaxies. There is a possibility even Earth has already faced one 440m years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HIokbQMHB8