Are you sure? There's so much money tied up in circular loans and IOUs based on potential profits that I'm not sure they are.
For example: NVidia invests billions into OpenAI and Anthropic, who then use that money to buy NVidia products. Has NVidia actually made any money, or does the "demand" for the product simply drive up the speculative stock price?
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Why spend even more money on more equipment that you have to store and maintain, and buy increasingly expensive fuel for, when you can dual purpose what you already have?
That's assuming you can even get fuel of course. When Sandy hit (last big hurricane in this area) most of the gas stations around here were inoperable for the first day or two because - you'll never believe this - but fuel pumps ALSO need electricity and there weren't enough generators rentals to go around. The stations that were operating over the next few days quickly ran out because the depot infrastructure, located on the shoreline, was damaged.
So sure, all you need is a generator, and an entire evening to wait in line for your rationed fuel hoping they don't run out by the time you get to the pump. So easy and much more convenient than just running an extension cord to the EV in your garage, which also runs silently, indoors, all night if you want.
If you want to go full prepper mode buy some solar panels and lay them out in the driveway or lawn. Even a kw or two worth (about 4-7 panels) would be able to easily cover your daily emergency needs with an EV battery to store it in.
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The run time will obviously depend on the size of the battery, which will likely be available in at least two sizes. I'm willing to bet you can also set reserve limits so the truck doesn't completely discharge itself, and that further limits the run time.
Battery capacity has yet to be announced though.
All that said, I'd say at least 30kwh which will keep most homes running 2-3 days without any change in usage habits. With some very conscientious usage you can probably get a week out of it.
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I use AirBNBs as locations to produce adult content. I'm not joking.
An AirBNB is perfect for my needs; it's a literal godsend. I want a clean home-like setting that is relatively generic and free from personal items, that also doesn't look like a hotel and can be unique for the amount of content being produced there. I believe this is a relatively common practice.
That being said, I bring my own bedding, towels, pillows, cleaning products and tools and I take my trash with me when I leave and dispose of it elsewhere. I am conscientious that I'm staying at another individual's property.
In one case, I found out the property owner was still home, in his basement, while I was working with performers upstairs. He wanted to know what we were doing and didn't actually have a problem with it, but talking with him informed what I should do going forward. Even if I wasn't responsible for messy human activities, I'd still choose to leave as little work as I can for service staff.
I realize that many AirBNBs are owned by property management services and in some cases even hotel groups, but what I'm paying for is exactly the thing I want: clean and not-a-hotel.
> Respectfully, that's not what banning "tasks that require significant effort or time, or would typically be performed by a cleaner" means.
Respectfully, you need to read a little more carefully. Those items are generally, but not strictly, prohibited. The criteria is "reasonable" and "significant amount of time." Words like "reasonable" and "significant" need to be legislated over between AirBNB and the hosts on a per-case basis.
Case in point:
> And basic cleaning has been a pretty standard clause right from the beginning
So what constitutes "basic cleaning" and at what point does it become a "significant effort?" Is cleaning the dishes you used really that big a deal? Collecting your trash and putting it in the can outside when you're done? These are not property maintenance tasks like you implied in your original post either (" literally-condemnable shack").
What is explicitly prohibited: "Hosts may not communicate new house rules or requests in other sections of their listing page or after booking, including by message, signs in the home, or in person." There is no room for debate here; hosts must be upfront with all of their requirements. That's the real meat here and the real underlying problem; it's less about doing your own dishes and more about penalizing you for not doing them despite never having been told to.
> AirBNB / VRBO / whatever gets a cut of every dollar. They benefit from junk fees,
Apparently not as much as they benefit from cracking down on them, apparently, because that's what they're doing when they say "Hosts are generally not allows to.... Impose fines or other penalties on guests."
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> This has nothing to do with taking out the garbage, and everything to do with making it impossible to be an "absentee landlord" (or at least hiring a cleaning service)
This is about not being able to stick extra requirements into the agreement after the space is booked, which prevents property owners from sticking guests with extra fees for not doing things they were not told they had to do.
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You know you don't have to install Adobe Reader, right?
FWIW, I had an interaction with the person responsible for PDFGear online somewhere and I've been using it since I found out about it. It's a free (gratis) PDF viewer and editor. Maybe the full, paid Acrobat product can do more things, but if so I haven't noticed.
The thing you are looking for is the Group Policy Editor. There are Group Policies that can disable the prompts to use Microsoft accounts and the ability to use OneDrive or Windows AI features, the hook Bing has in Windows Search (i.e. no more searching in the start menu and having it list web sites before the file or application you wanted) and all the "consumer experience" features in non-Enterprise Windows. There are a few GPO settings that get ignored unless you're on Windows Enterprise or Education. Most of them related to Microsoft Datamining.
It is also possible to transition a Microsoft account back to a local one without losing your Profile. This is done in Settings > Accounts > Your Info in Windows 11.
gpedit.msc is normally only available to non-Home Windows SKUs, but it is unlockable with a tiny bit of Powershell:
Get-ChildItem @(
"C:\Windows\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package*.mum",
"C:\Windows\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package*.mum"
) | ForEach-Object { dism.exe
Open an Administror-elevated Powershell or Terminal session, paste that in and even your $200 Acer vomit-grade notebook can work the way you want it again.
The reason we need GPOs for this stuff is that Microsoft's software updates will occasionally re-set registry changes. If the changes are made with GPOs, the settings get reapplied and overwrite changes no matter what state Windows is in. This is particularly annoying for stuff like OneDrive, CoPilot and Edge preferences. You either have to regularly re-run scripts to alter the registry to the state you like it and hope nothing makes a structural change to where those settings live, or you set a GPO.
I mean it's a cut and paste of three lines of powershell.
I wouldn't call the ins and outs of operating gpedit.msc trivial, but enabling on Windows Home is a couple clicks and maybe six key strokes.
I really do agree.
I maintain system images as part of my job, but it always made sense for me to extend that to individual devices since I am asked to help with them anyway. For me, this has been just adding a tweak here or there that grew over time. GPOs for Windows Home didn't become standard in my image management until Microsoft started inflicting Onedrive on everyone. Now I view it mandatory.
For what it's worth, I have a similarly long list of things I do when I configure a Linux system or MacOS. I definitely have to do the most arguing with MacOS since I hate some of the OS default software and Apple has a long history of breaking things that should be scriptable.
You can exclude them from installing through an autounattend.xml (see Schneegans.de for help building one) and prevent them from display via a GPO. You really want to use a group policy object because otherwise a Windows Update might put them back; it'll override a plain old registry change or user preference any time it wants but GPO changes persist.
It is trivial to restore Local Group Policy editing on Windows Home SKUs with a little powershell.
Get-ChildItem @(
"C:\Windows\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package*.mum",
"C:\Windows\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package*.mum"
) | ForEach-Object { dism.exe
Some GPO settings are ignored outside the context of Windows Education or Enterprise SKUs, but most of those are related to user behavior data mining. I can verify that if you're just trying to supress OneDrive, Bing Search and Microsoft Account sign-ins, those are all maintained just fine even on Windows Home.
> Communism is a classless form of socialism.
No need to engage with you any further. Thanks for saving me the time.
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That has nothing to do with socialism.
That has everything to do with authoritarianism.
"Ooga booga Socialism" is authoritarian propaganda. Unfortunately it's very effective against people who don't actually know what Socialism is, such as yourself... for example, you seem to be describing something closer to Communism (but still wrong).
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It's highly unlikely that anything you'd do in the course of normal desktop use would make much of a subjective difference from a SATA SSD to an NVMe drive. Most sustained IO operations don't take so long that you'll realize the difference. I can tell when I'm copying 30GB files from my camera card or doing full database dumps, but for just loading up a game or booting an OS? They're subjectively almost exactly the same experience.
That being said, there is such a thing as a cacheless drive. SSDs used to have a certain amount of DRAM or SLC NAND as a faster intermediary interface for storage. Low-cost drives might not have THAT, and that seriously reduces the utility of the SSD in the first place, especially on no-name drives. Those guys are sometimes no better than mechanical drives. Since your system is a refurb, it's possible they did just stick a POS drive in.
> AM radios in cars only cover the small intersection of people who don't already have an emergency kit containing an AM radio, but do happen to be in a working vehicle during a disaster.
I feel like the number of people with a working vehicle is much, MUCH larger than the number of people with "an emergency kit containing an AM radio."
The main point being that, if you happen to be traveling at the time in a potential emergency situation (either because bad luck or actively trying to evacuate), you can use the AM radio in the car to receive news and important information.
Just put the radio in the car where it's most likely to be used when needed.
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User hostile.
