dell’s been going down the crapper for at least a decade… ever since dell and the vultures took it private ~ 2013.

‘entry level’ specs have been 4gb ram for over a decade, and they’re still selling shit-tier laptops with only that today.

that would require the software companies to actually spend money on competent developers instead of tossing peanuts at prompt writers.

an 8gb pc with win11 is today’s equivalent of running vista on 1gb.

there’s a number of laptops already that do have 8gb on the board and no sodimm slots.

Not long ago that would feed you McDonald dinner for a month

in the 00s, that 75 dollars would have bought SEVENTY-ONE double cheeseburgers (including a typical sales tax rate of 5.5 percent). today, it would only get you seventeen of them.

decline of about one-third of a percent

something that can be easily offset by switching that in-person meeting into an email or cutting a useless middle-management position.

the poorest are cutting back their expenses

those people have nothing else left to cut back on.

hey now. there was that three-year window, jan 2020 to jan 2023, where win8.1 was the best.

and when the hot water heater is two floors down and the pipe from there runs up unheated parts of the building, it takes a very long time to get even a hint of warmth out of the hot water faucets.

i’ve lived 3 minutes away from hot water for nearly thirty years now. it sucks. if i ever get money enough to own a house, or choose where i live with little regard to cost, it will have instant hot water (tankless water heaters).

the greedy landlords can sniff it out too.

get a raise… or even just a tax refund check or one-time ‘credit’ (like the ‘stimulus’ shit), rent goes up at home.

business has decent quarter, rent goes up there, too.

it’s basically a guarantee. if you have money, they want it all

fuck those clowns. “paying” for your raise by reducing the employer share of the premium.

they were one of my favourites.

people got lazy about plugging them in

always have been, here. the old cdma flip phone went about a month between charges, even when it was 5+ years old. the new volte one sucks. with a higher power draw and the shitty 4g signal here, i have to plug it in every few days. the only ‘plus’ is that i always know where a charger cable is now, because it’s usb-c and i use that for other things, too.

i don’t think she has an ‘office budget’ yet. she hasn’t been sworn-in and seated because tiny mike johnson refuses to allow it since she represents the vote needed to force a house vote on the pedo files.

i think gnome is actually pretty good… for a desktop with limited duties. like launching a browser and email–perhaps a word processor, and not much else. think a chromebook alternative that could actually do more if you wanted. a lot of things are ‘hidden’ to the user by default, what a user does need to be able to access (wifi, etc) is relatively easy to find, nice big icons that you can put front-and-center while relegating system-related things to a folder. i’ve set up a number of systems like that.

for my own uses though, gnome does need a half-dozen extensions for me to consider it ‘usable’… but i would still prefer a ‘traditional’ desktop experience such as cinnamon

i haven’t watched a finale (that i knew going-in was the last episode) since seinfeld in 1998.

i don’t mind watching that kind of stuff with the little ones. heck, even when they aren’t around and the tv is just ‘on’ for noise, it’s most likely tuned to or playing “their” shows and movies.

whether the cart return kid had to return their personal cart along with the 200 other carts.

putting them in the corral, as illustrated in the comic is one thing… leaving them scattered in random spaces is another

Not sure how it works in USA but can’t you elect to not have your employer withhold your taxes for you and then have to pay your annual tax in a lump sum at the end of the fiscal year?

you can. they will get add penalties and interest to your tax bill if you owe too much at the end of the year, though, even if you did pay-in every check or every quarter but just not enough.