Microsoft allows you to subscribe to Microsoft 365 personal or family without AI for a small discount, but they hid the option on a page you can only get to if you click cancel on your subscription.

Microsoft are currently being sued in Australia by consumer protection (ACCC) over this practice.

And when they lose they will fix it in Australia only.

Iirc Microsoft increased the pricing on existing subscriptions on next renewal citing AI as the reason for the increase, they then added a no AI version at the original price, effectively opting all users into the 'upgrade' rather than requiring them to explicitly upgrade their licence.

[un]believable. Thank you.

H..how is this legal.. in 2026

Likely illegal in the EU. But in the US? 2026 is the year of open corruption, as long as the administration likes you you can do whatever you want.

It’s really surprising to me that after the US public hasn’t internalized how corrupt the country has become. It’s all coming from the top

The US has never been strong on consumer protection. It’s that individualism and buyer beware culture.

Some of us have internalized it! It's like walking around in the twilight zone or the bodysnatchers movie sometimes. In a dream society we could agree on some values and argue about how to direct our shared efforts. In this one we can't agree on values or even facts. It's equal parts maddening and terrifying.

We need help in avoiding the worst futures that could come from this.

Nah, not illegal in the EU. Giving a retention offer to leavers is something magazines sometimes do. It's a bit sleazy, but not illegal.

If you have enough money nobody can tell you what you do.

> I'm fond of pointing out the stat (true as of a year ago) that Massachusetts (I think it's MA?) has more MRI machines than the entire country of Canada.

I'm also quite fond of pointing out that Canada and the state of California have roughly the same populations.

Canada's population is incredibly spread out, but also concentrated in about 5 major cities.

When I needed an MRI on my brain is was roughly a week, and that was in a smaller (under 100K people) city.

It's a triage system, although I wouldn't want to suffer through a "less important" issue.

I don't generally suck on the tailpipe of my car like a cigarette or vape.

I believe you, and think I know why that would be so.

USB is unreliable but it's working for me. I've had zero disconnects in a couple of years of using a Terramaster USB-C DAS. I've heard of the problems enough I've even searched logs for it.

I've wondered if my experience is different because I'm using single disks (but still ZFS) instead of any RAID. There is rarely transfer happening across all of the disks.

Can't say. The power source for the drives is also important. I do use a USB 2.5" HDD without an external power source for one of the SBCs I have, and that's stable, but that SBC is powered directly from the GPIO pins, not USB.

Unfortunately, where I need it the most - the router which is also a NAS - can't use directly-powered USB HDDs. Not enough ports. I had to use a hub. I tried 4 models, two self-powered and two powered by router's USB, and none of them was stable. I also tried 3 models of USB-SATA adapters. Two self-powered, one powered by hub (connected to the hubs that had separate power - didn't work otherwise). None of them was stable. It was always the USB-SATA adapters/racks that disconnected, not the hubs.

Then I bought a mPCIe 4-port SATA controller, Marvell chip. Didn't work. It freeze randomly and woudn't even unfreeze with a router reboot. Possibly too much power draw. Then I put a 2-port SATA, ASM1062 and a port replicator. That one works. 2 years and not one disconnect. The cables are a complete mess.

I'm using RAID on my Terramaster DAS and it's been working fine for me. I think it's less "USB is unreliable" and more "Some SATA-USB adapters are unreliable".

The Terramaster one is pretty widely used in home setups and seems perfectly fine.

Be warned that Terramaster does RAID with 512B stripe size. If it fails, you can't mount the drives in Linux.

> I still use Btrfs because I know it is guaranteed to always be present on any Linux without any effort on my part.

Except RHEL. They don’t include it in their kernels.

Alma Linux started including it again though.

It can never be easy.

This sounds like FUD, do you have any references? Genuinely asking. I follow LWN reporting religiously, which in turn follows Fedora development (and associated drama) closely, and haven't seen anything said in this direction. Just had a quick look on LWN and Fedora development resources, and nothing came up.

This is what I read here and elsewhere bunch of times, which is why I said "supposedly". A quick search did not reveal any meaningful proof, though. I'll ask next time I hear someone say this.

unlikely. reference please. btrfs was the default filesystem on fedora installs last time i checked. to remove it they would have to first change that, then give it a few years before even considering removing it from the kernel. redhat could remove it because it was never default and never recommended.

This is what I read here and elsewhere bunch of times, which is why I said "supposedly". A quick search did not reveal any meaningful proof, though. I'll ask next time I hear someone say this.

I think it’d really help on the highway with traffic.

I don’t need it all the time, but that doesn’t stop it from being useful.

I seem to remember being able to select all of the photos in iCloud in a browser and clicking download. It zips them and it worked.

I would imagine this doesn't work well after a certain amount of data. I’m also not sure they were the originals.

I think that I would get more enjoyment dropping $20 in the parking lot at a casino and seeing somebody excited to find $20 than going inside to gamble it away.

I was surprised that the “fix” for the failed storage module in my slim 4GB Xbox 360 was to tear it down and remove the storage module. It isn’t usually that easy.

I am also impressed they managed to use worse flash than the 15 year old $10 USB 2.0 drive I plugged in as a replacement.

Yes, it was one of those projects you see what you still have in the bin. Hey, this one is period correct!

unfortunately you need hot air for most slim motherboards if the 4GB NAND fails. only trinity revisions (early slims) have the pluggable module

Sounds like I won a lottery I didn’t know I was entering.

Most work for least pay is just business, I thought?

Beatings shall continue until morale improves.