I haven't used badblocks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badblocks in about 10 years, but I was annoyed that this exact feature wasn't available for testing accidental swapping of block locations. badblocks only writes the same data to each block and thus they are all indistinguishable.

If privacy is your primary problem with cloud storage, I would suggest veracrypt containers. And if you aren't storing too much data, I would also suggest DVD/BluRay optical media with DVDisaster and PAR2 archives. I keep a DVD spindle in a safe deposit box that gets updated each year.

I've seen "dd if=/dev/removable of=/dev/removable" suggested. I don't know if it actually works or if the OS optimizes it to a no-op.

the risk of catastrophic data loss from misuse of `dd` makes my hackles rise just looking at this.

I DDGed for mar a lago look and first hit was a Wikipedia page. I was not expecting that lengthy of a page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_trends_among_American_c...

Redundancy is closer to "layoff" than "fired". One is for a clear cause, the other is just "we don't feel like paying you money because a second employee can do that job in addition to his own".

The image search is terrible on DDG. If I search for multiple keywords, the search only cares if an image matches just one word. Google ranks the results so that images that match all the keywords are presented at the top.

I would add sugar.

Egg nog is listed on the triangle as away from flour, but it is extremely high in carbs. When I was a kid, I loved egg nog and a couple of years ago I decided to purchase some. I liked it so much I drank the whole half gallon in a day. That night I had horrible painful bloating and looked at the ingredients label to find "sugar", "cane sugar". "corn syrup", and "high fructose corn syrup".

It's not so much that it's high in carbs, it's extraordinarily high in fat. Its main ingredients are egg yolks and heavy cream along with the sugar. What you're describing is like eating an entire cheesecake or drinking a pitcher of melted premium ice cream. The bloating is from the enormous amount of fatty calories that are slow to digest. Not really about the sugar. (And of course it has sugar, it's essentially a dessert drink.)

My money is on the amount of lactose in all that dairy. There's a lot of lactose in a half gallon of nog.

Right? I felt bloated just thinking about drinking a half gallon of nog.

I can't remember what the topic was, but I remember hearing a story about a company that was soliciting ideas from the public for maybe a joke book or maybe tv show plots. They got into a lot of legal hot water once they found out that the ideas weren't original and people were actually just taking them from other sources.

If anyone else knows what I am talking about, I'd like to know the name of the company.

When my state was debating creating a state-run lottery to fund education projects, my preacher gave a sermon on the evils of gambling. Religions can't realistically stay out of politics because every law can be reinterpreted as a moral argument.

That's fine. It's different when it's telling people how to vote.

Some people buy lottery tickets specifically because of who they benefit, which is very different than going to Vegas or certain forms of investment. (IE, uneducated investment is often just gambling.)

I think that was the previous posters point - any teaching on a moral issue will ultimately have overlap with real world issues.

A homily about gambling would be right in line with religious teachings - the timing is really what is at the apex of your post.

I make the same argument when I buy a computer. If I just wait a little longer, there will be a faster cheaper version of what I can buy today. When buying anything that depreciates, the best strategy is to wait (possibly forever) and only buy when you really need it now.

Until you wait too much and end in a RAM shortage period due to AI...

My limited understanding of RAM prices are that they are very cyclical. Very expensive followed by very cheap. You just have to be willing to wait.

I hope you are right, but maybe this one is not like the previous ones. Micron leaving consumer market sounds like the real money will be on the AI hardware market.

Personally I bought my new laptop a month ago. Let's hope when I have to buy the next one this craziness will be history.