Many modern routers have this exact capability - to take a USB-only printer and serve it up over the network. Even some ISP modem/router combo units are set up to do this. Check to see if your router has any USB ports on the back.

What is the difference between forced intervention and whatever Portugal did when it decriminalized hard drugs?

Portugal treats it as a mental illness health issue, and provides counselling. Only large non-personal amounts are treated as distribution, and therefore, criminal.

Only mental heath professionals can assign intervention, and typically only in cases where the user is a viable threat to themselves or others (imminent danger of harm through violence). This means that the vast majority of users are not coerced at all - they enter into counselling willingly, and with an intent to come clean.

The reason why things have backslid in the last little while has been due to funding cuts, and nothing else. Which is the same as any public service – funding determines effectiveness.

running it in an ssd is it can speed it up

Let me be absolutely clear: due to the finite write capabilities of solid-state technology, using SpinRite on an SSD is materially harmful to that SSD, and WILL shorten it’s operational lifespan by a non-trivial amount.

This is why SSDs have wear-levelling technology: to limit the number of writes that any one data cell will receive. By using a program that conducts intensive read/write operations on sectors, you are wearing your SSD out at a much higher rate than normal, dramatically speeding up any failures in the future.

I don’t care about living longer. I see no point in doing so when beset with dementia or unable to even walk, much less run.

Give me full vitality in body and mind until my last day, and I’ll be satisfied even if it’s only 80 or 75 years.

The Right wants forced intervention

Forced intervention has a near-100% failure rate. All it does is waste taxpayer’s money while making the wealthy (the owners of these “rehabilitation sites”) even wealthier.

It is quite literally another implementation of “trickle-up economics”, explicitly designed to make the rich richer by punishing the poor for their poverty and parasitizing off the incomes of hard-working working-class Americans.

And since forced intervention is no different than forced incarceration without any sort of a trial, I would argue that it is materially worse than doing nothing at all.

SpinRite is only meant for traditional “spinning-rust” mechanical drives.

SpinRite IS NOT meant for SSDs. The existence of TRIM makes SpinRite useless on any sort of solid state storage.

And since almost all laptops sold within the last half a decade use SSDs almost exclusively, it is highly unlikely your advice will be useful.

Crime is a result of desperation and lack of economic opportunities.

Chronic addictions are a result of untreated/untreatable trauma.

Homelessness arises from poverty and precarious economic conditions, and can trigger both of the prior two.

And yet, these people are voting for the parties that would seek to implement and perpetuate poverty, precariousness, trauma and economic inequality.

…the fuq?

Meanwhile in Western society, 40% don’t believe in evolution, flat-earthism and “birds are drones” have moved from silly jokes into serious movements, and a significant minority of people think that COVID was a hoax and the vaccines were made to implant mind-control chips.

No wonder China has surged ahead… even an authoritarian state can easily leapfrog a society crippled by anti-intellectualism, alternative facts, and cultivated ignorance.

NCS is a company that offers information communication and technology services.

Wait…

he used his laptop to gain unauthorised access to the system using the administrator login credentials.

Okay, what the guy did was immature and shitty, but holy hell this company is incompetent. How did their own internal IT not lock him out of anything even remotely sensitive the moment he was fired?

The real trick is in finding the genuine collector, and not just another Nazi in a collector’s Trenchcoat.

Came here to say exactly this, only I wasn’t expecting to be anywhere as concise and erudite as you have been.

Didn’t Red Dwarf have an episode that touched directly on this? I recall Lister having some very uncomfortable experiences

Unless you airgap the machine, Windows 7 is now becoming more and more insecure and out of date.

It’s like using Debian 9 or earlier in production… not something you want to do unless you enjoy being pwned.

I have always bought surplussed business hardware, which back in the day came with COA stickers still attached. My latest iron had two attached for some strange reason. So when Windows 10 came along with its “Upgrade Win 7 key to 10” plan, I fired up a VM (for this exact purpose) and went to work. Now (after moving them to 10 and then 11) I have a handful of Win11 Pro licenses for whatever machine I need to license.

Slowly moving away from Windows due to their AI and spyware shenanigans, but hey. Likely always will run at least one Windows rig, even if I have to spend the first day or two after install castrating it.

Love the smell of petrichor, the smell of the world after a good rain, especially if the temperatures are cool and crisp. Bonus if it’s deep in the temperate rainforests of the Canadian PNW, with no civilization near.

Love the smell of fresh-cut grass, reminds me of my youth even if it’s one of the only things that makes me sneeze uncontrollably (my only known allergy).

Marigolds bring me all the way back to childhood, as my mother had them planted around the entire house. I take one whiff, and for the briefest of moments I am a five year old without a care in the world. To this day I collect and re-sow their seeds everywhere I can. I particularly like the small ones with the dark orange and deep crimson flowers.

Hate the smell of tar with every fibre of my being. I could never be a roofer or a road worker or a street resurfacer for that reason. It makes me gag uncontrollably with even the faintest whiff.

Removed by mod

Well… looks like I’m going to have to find a new payment platform to use.

Yet more evidence that CloudFlare is inherently damaging and hostile to the Internet.

I just want a small […] phone that fits in one hand.

How bloody small are your hands??

Mine are just average for a man’s, and the iPhone 15 Pro Max is eminently usable with just one hand.

Most dumb phones aren’t.

Dumb, that is. Virtually all of them have some version of Android or KaiOS or some other full-fat OS cosplaying as something “simple”. Litmus test: does your “dumb phone” come with a map app? A Facebook app? Can you install apps from an external source? If so, you don’t have a dumb phone.

The hallmark of a dumb phone is the lack of an OS that boots. You turn it on, and everything should be instantly and immediately available, loaded from ROM. No boot sequence, no waiting for anything to load.

The only truly “dumb phone” out there - as something “new” and not actually vintage - is the Rotary Un-Phone.