I don’t even want promotions. Make it opt in rather than opt out. I buy things with the expectation that they will just quietly do their job.

Who needs a computer in their fridge anyway? Is the utility worth the materials and add complexity besides to advertisers?

Lets just add laws where if advertisers want something, we always do the opposite.

Diagnosing info:

I usually find this in YouTube videos or on auto forums, but every now and then they are written in the manuals.

If you feel a wobble (push in and out) on your brakes, then your drum is warped. If it feels mushy, then there is probably air in the fluid system that needs to be bled.

The manuals and third-party books mentioned are great resources, but YouTube videos and old auto forums are also very helpful. There’s nothing quite like watching someone do the process on video.

Another resource that’s helpful is online auto part wholesale stores like rockauto.com where you can often get parts cheaper. The problem with fixing your own car isn’t usually the parts, but the tools. They are a big up front coat, but pay off in the long run. I like AutoZone tools because they have a lifetime warranty, but they aren’t always the best.

For your squeaky brakes, you can probably fix everything for less than $100 in parts (maybe less than 50 if it’s just the pads that need to be replaced). To do this, you’ll need the following.

Tools (none of these are suggestions, they are random links I grabbed as examples):

• a Jack/lift, a hydraulic trolley jack works well

• jack stands and wheel chocks (for safety)

• a socket wrench and appropriately sized sockets or one of these. One that rachets and extends is nice. Do not get universal sockets, they are garbage. Get 1/2 inch or thicker connections or they will break.

• a breaker bar (long connector for sockets). Optional, but very helpful in turning very tight nuts on the wheels.

• a big c-clamp to compress the caliper piston (you can get a piston compression clamp, but this is much cheaper)

• gloves

• calipers (if you want to measure brake drums to see if they need to be replaced)

Parts:

• brake pads and hardware (usually some included metal clips) example

• drums (rarely need to be replaced, based on thickness measurement)

• brake cleaner (only if replacing drums)

• if you get into changing the brake fluid, you will need fluid and potentially hoses/attachment parts as those wear down. You don’t usually need anything fancy to bleed them, I use a piece of silicone tubing and a plastic bottle.

Start small and work up in complexity. It sounds like your pads need to be replaced. There is a piece of metal on the pad that starts grinding on the drum when the pads get low, this means just the pad and pad hardware need replaced unless you ignored it for too long. If you ignored it, the drums may need to be replaced too. It’s typical for the brakes to squeak a bit (different sound than the low-pad scraping) after you put new pads and hardware on. There are tricks to fix this if it even happens, but it’s more annoying than harmful and will go away on its own. I won’t tell them here, because it involves grease and I don’t want you to accidentally grease your brakes so they don’t work.

Normal brake service cost from 15 years ago before I started doing it myself: $300-400. Cost from doing it on my own: $30-50 and ~15-30 minutes.

Cost to replace my broken radiator at a shop: $600. At home: $80 and 1 hour outside in frigid winter weather.

Long-term, I think it’s worth learning to do the service yourself, but I’d stay away from more dangerous work like changing your suspension (springs under tension).

General brake pad changing procedure:

1. put on parking brake, emergency brake/handle brake

2. put chucks behind tires on opposite side of where you will be lifting. Kick them into the tire so they are snug.

3. loosen wheel nuts

4. lift car and place on jack stands (look up how to do this properly)

5. remove wheel nuts, remove wheel and set aside

6. loosen caliper nut, lift so it sits out of way (caliper is on a hinge)

7. remove old brake pad, replace with new pad and hardware

8. inspect drum and replace if necessary (new drums are greased, you will need brake cleaner to remove this if you are replacing drums)

9. open hood, unscrew cap to brake fluid reservoir

10. use c-clamp to depress caliper piston, retighten cap to brake fluid reservoir

11. reassemble in reverse. When you put the wheel on, get the nuts finger-tight, then lower the car.

12. right wheel nuts. This needs to be done in a star pattern like you are drawing a five-point star. Do not tighten one and then the one next to it, tighten one, then skip a nut and tighten every other nut. Continue until all are tight while the wheel is on the ground (or it will rotate)

I had this exact experience with creative cloud about 10 years ago. Adobe is actual malware and I will not allow it on my computers any longer.

I refused to log in…because I didn’t actually have one, I was just wanting to try it or something. Ended up having to go mess with the registry and use a tool from git to remove all traces of it.

Side-note: I used to use CCleaner too and I believe there was something that happened a while back (I don’t remember what, but it was related to security) and you shouldn’t use it any longer. I haven’t kept up with it, so maybe that’s not true any longer.

The notable part is that it indicates sophisticated tool making behavior 600,000 years before we previously thought it occurred.

Using windows is just so tiring. I shouldn’t have to actively fight with the OS to do the things I need to do. Not even power user shit, it’s just that the windows experience gets more and more hostile every year.

Meanwhile, Linux quietly does what needs to be done, and offers to make it even easier to do those things, but only if I want that help.

*If it is older than 2023

It means it’s time to take that copier to pasture.

Can confirm, but if it wasn’t him, they’d go out of their way to find someone just as bad.

I want to live in a better world. You can’t change the world (win) by giving up. You can’t change the status quo easily and I can’t live with myself if I do nothing.

I don’t think of them as “losing causes”. While it’s important to be realistic about the current state of your cause, framing it this way assumes they have already and permanently lost, so nothing can ever change. Assuming a mindset of defeatism is demoralizing even if it is only in the language you use.

They do, but they are vestigial organs that aren’t used any longer. Contemporary tigers use LIDAR to detect movement.

Many post their articles on Researchgate. I find requesting the article there has a higher success rate and it’s just a click of a button.

Except that they used the chemicals that do find their way into everyone’s blood to make nylon. So it tangentially fits the meme.

In my experience, the liberals will now say your source is incorrect/misleading/seeseepee propaganda for some unfalsifiable reason (their opinion) or they will immediately jump to racism and call the Chinese robots who cannot think for themselves.

The first is typical online, the second offline, where there is no paper trail.

Unless whatever group is in power has expressed that they wish to destroy those artifacts, I would prefer to work with whatever government there is to not only transfer the artifacts back, but help them setup whatever infrastructure is required to maintain them, including training of staff in their care.

Your bias is exactly the same on that led to those artifacts being stolen. It can be summed up as “these are savages, how can we trust them with their own things?” The West stole these artifacts and in many cases destroyed other artifacts or defaced historical sites to take them in the first place. It’s chauvinistic to continue this cycle. Give them back, try to make things right, and if things get destroyed, that’s just how it goes. It wasn’t the West’s to take in the first place. More progress is made by working with people than pearl-clutching. This is accepting the world as it is and trying to make it better all at once.

I know you just copied the headline of the article, but that headline is doing some serious heavy lifting in terms of saying the US has no control over its actions.

“Oh no, we bumbled our way into a war again! Couldn’t be helped, not our faults. Whatever are we to do?”

Much like the theft of historical artifacts by the UK et al, ISIS was the result of decades of imperialist meddling by the US. Maybe just leave things be and let the locals work out what they want to do with their land, their people, and the artifacts on it. Offering assistance without strings attached is good, interventions are bad.

It’s like offering to help your neighbor with their yard: it’s acceptable to offer to lend them your mower, but it’s not acceptable to dig up everything on their property, replace it with grass sod, and spray it regularly with herbicides because you didn’t like the look of their local fauna and are afraid the dandelions and clover would spread to your lawn after your first intervention.

In my experience, there’s always a way around parental controls on these devices and if there isn’t, there’s always a way that your child will subvert them in other ways.

Half the time it’s a well-intentioned and ignorant adult providing them the means.

Why burn the plantation when you can expropriate it and burn the scumlords profiting off your exploitation?

arXiv, not QrXiv.

arXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for nearly 2.4 million scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. Materials on this site are not peer-reviewed by arXiv.