I recently bought a small spot-welder in addition to soldering iron. I have already used it to replace NiMH batteries for things like hair trimmer and those solar-powered garden lights. They use the pretty standard AA form factor, so cutting the wires, removing the old battery, soldering the wires to nickel strips and then soldering those to the battery are not too difficult.

Haven't tried to replace lithium battery cells yet, but should also be doable as long as the BMS stays intact and proper care is taken (be careful not to start a lithium fire...). I did replace a battery (that came with BMS included) on an old GPS navigator though (only needed solder), but that's of course a bit different.

Anyway, I've already encountered that even in those cheap lamps you can put in the garden there's clear difference (we have about a dozen of them, obtained at different times). The best one actually had a replaceable AA battery. The others I could replace with the procedure above. And some were just sunken in resin so that if you try to separate the components you are bound to break something.

In my opinion there's a big difference between "dump when battery dies" vs "can be fixed with not-too-costly tools at least if you take them to someone who knows what they are doing". Youtube is full of videos on how to fix your gear. And if you break it while learning then, well, the device was unusable anyway so it's not like you lost anything.

It's the "dump in resin" or similar crap that I hate to actively prevent DIY repairs.

Now, with that said, are you REALLY trying to tell me that nearly half of society is this way? That sounds like an extraordinary claim that will require extraordinary evidence. That's why I wonder if there are not other issues at hand here besides just hunger pains. I know we all tolerate pain differently as well.

This part is completely anecdotal and based only on formed opinion, but I also tried to think back on when the "hungry all the time" started, and my best guess is sometime between 20 and 25. What was I doing then? Well, living on a shoestring budget and studying at university. What do you eat when you live on a shoestring budget and need to study for exams and courses burning midnight oil? Ready-to-eat ultraprocessed crap, fast food, all that jazz.

Not a problem at that time, but my belief without anything really to back it up, is that that particular diet hardwired something in my brain to make my body demand stuff at unhealthily regular intervals stayed even after graduation and better living conditions. After starting a family, diet as in the ingredients in food got even better (you make more effort in cooking when you are no longer just doing it for yourself). However, in your 20s and early 30s, your metabolism can still keep up.

My weight started rising late 30s/early 40s, and ever since then - for the past 10 years, I've tried "everything". Bloodwork and treadmill tests show I'm in excellent health and physical shape apart from that BMI indicator.

Is this something you can generalize to the massive number of people in US (and first world in general really)? Maybe. Don't know. For me, seems plausible but I have nothing concrete to back it up with except the popularity of fast and "ultraprocessed" food in the US. And no, I do not even have a definition for ultraprocessed. This part about original causes for the hunger is all just personal opinion based on following news on the subject.

I made my bed in my early 20s and I'm glad now there's finally some *hope* for fixing it, even if it costs a bunch of money right now. The constant hunger *is* real. It's the same for my two friends I mentioned in GP - I wouldn't have started the medication without discussing with them at length about this - they specifically felt the same way. Now for first time ever I can hope to get rid of it. And no, there are studies that placebo effect (the hope itself) alone doesn't cut it - 20% weight loss with Mounjaro vs 3% with placebo, tops *if* you previously had an inactive lifestyle.

To all of those who say "you just need better impulse control", piss off.

I have two friends who have lost 12 kg with Ozempic and 30 kg with Mounjaro, respectively. Both had starting weights over 110 kg. Both had good diets, exercised regularly. Tests showed good endurance and muscle mass.

I'm myself starting Mounjaro next week, starting at 105 kg.

The problem is *not* diet. It's the fucking hunger. If I eat my stomach full of fries and pizza and cheeseburgers - the epitome of "fat" food, then MAYBE I'll be without hunger for...two hours. Then the hunger comes back. I've stayed - note, *stayed* at the current weight by not eating at all until late evening, because then I can get some sleep with the hunger.

Diet doesn't help. Switching to veggies => fine, I'll eat 4 plates of veggies at a meal instead of the burger. Switching to keto diet => no help.

Getting exercise every day - no effect. Improves resiliency. I can easily bike around the city or jog for kilometers without a break. I can lift weights.

The hunger is *pain*.

We give medication for people suffering from chronic migraines.
We give morphine in palliative care to take the pain away.
We give insulin to diabetics.
We give statins to folks with high cholesterol.

Why the fuck shouldn't we medicate constant feeling of HUNGER?

GLP-1 medications do not "cause" weight loss. They remove the pain of overwhelming hunger. The weight loss happens as an effect to that cause.

There are studies that confirm this - if you are eating because of the feeling of hunger - your body signaling that you NEED food- GLP-1 medications help. If you are eating because of "feelings" - classic stereotypical example chomping chocolate ice cream after a bad breakup as "comfort food" and NOT as reaction to hunger, GLP-1 medication does not help. Because you are not eating because of hunger, so there is nothing to take away.

So all you holier-than-thou fucks who keep repeating "just have some self-control" - stick some thorns in your ass and don't take them out or treat the pain, and you are arriving at the same situation as those of us who just feel hungry ALL the fucking time except 15 minutes since previous meal.

I can see that Air France apparently had a pilot who wanted to fly off into space and stalled the plane, and denied doing that until it was too late, but what was Airbus'es fault? The plane would have survived if the pilot had just let go of the controls...

Personally, I've shifted to equal-weight ETFs. Yes, I missed out on the rise of the past 1,5 months - S&P has risen 1000 pts since end of March, but it just means that the value has gone up a bit less. If the bubble bursts, I expect the damage to also be a bit less.

In my own systems, I've just compiled my own kernel, but obviously you can't do that if you have a huge farm of devices to support.

Anyway, I have always thought that the whole point of a modular kernel for typical Linux distributions is that if your hardware or software configuration does not need a particular model, it is not loaded. If there's some piece of software (e.g. Virtualbox) that needs kernel-level access, those do get loaded as part of the software installation. Same for most package-managed software (install a VPN server, you get IPSec/ESP networking modules included). So with devices, they are autodetected (load driver module when you detect hardware, including when plugged in to USB or other removable port), and with other kernel features, they are brought in when some software requires it (some might of course be there by default, like firewall). Only case where you would manually edit /etc/modprobe.d is if you manually install some software...right? Why would a kernel load every module it has come with of most of them are not even needed?

Not sure what benefits or working hours have to do with this.

You are starting to see news like this:

https://www.techzine.eu/news/i...

It's not a mass exodus as such, but when contracts are up for renewal, there *are* European options, and they are starting to look attractive. Yes, that article is about Lidl (well, Lidl's owners) growing their cloud offering. If AWS grew out of a bookstore then I guess such a platform can be grown out of a grocery store as well.

This info seems to be relatively hidden to get as summarized form, but since I'm running Gentoo I actually wanted to know what kernel versions are affected...Anyway, here goes. Look for commit 3d14bd48e3a.

First appeared in 4.14.

Fixed in:
        7.0+
        6.19.12
        6.18.22
        6.12.85
        6.6.137
        6.1.170
        5.15.204
        5.10.254

I'm still typing this on my Lenovo Thinkpad T25 because it is the last laptop ever released with a proper 7-row keyboard.

There have been some concepts on frame.work's forums. I have always used cursor keys and the "Ins/del/Home/End/Pgup/Pgdown" set as a nice 3x2 array.

And trackpoint. Don't forget the trackpoint.

I also like the idea that if you stick a copper SFP into modern "merchant silicon" switch (Broadcom Jericho), you may or may not get working autonegotiation. And copper devices like to have that on by default, even if it's technically not needed for Gigabit Ethernet. And then there might be half-assed support where support for autonego is only for clause 37, but not clause 73 (or vice versa, don't remember which. Anyway, it meant that hooking up a Juniper SRX to a Cisco NCS 57C3 (or anything else using Jericho 2) does not work if autonegotiation is on...)

Then there's the whole thing that if you use copper SFP, even if the SFP itself would support it, the switch doesn't like downgrading to 10 or 100 Mbps.

Of course, complaining about the fact that 10/100Mbps or autonego does not work sounds odd when on the same device you can stick a QSFP and 400G optics, but if you'd prefer to have a single 1U that could handle everything it would be nice to have maximum compatibility... Because now we have to stick another unit into the rack to handle "legacy connectivity", usually just some IPMI or similar stuff.

Who exactly did you think made that multi-billion trade on oil futures just before the war started? Bill Cosby?

Well, "just before the war started" would have been easy guess. Even I bought some oil ETCs when that second carrier group appeared to be in position and made some quick bucks on first week of March. I just assumed it was going to be something like last summer with the bombs on supposed nuclear facilities and everyone would have gone after a few days.

That 1.5B trade 5 minutes before announcing "negotiations" that happened just now is of course a different story.

So we have a guy who is overwhelmingly for coal and oil.

Manages to get the entire world economy that is dependent on said oil to crash and causes shortage.

=> Demand for EVs going up
=> Demand for non-fossil power generation going up

https://www.euronews.com/2026/...

So DJT manages to pull off what environmentalists and advocacy groups haven't been able to do for decades...by sheer incompetence?

Knowing him, he'll probably turn around at some point and claim that it was his intention all along...

They should add AI and quantum computing into the mix just for maximum buzzword coverage.

4) Just ignore Bitlocker completely and use NTFS's built-in encryption (EFS). No reliance on TPM. Yes, it's per file (or directory), but works just fine. And you can export the key and protect it with your passphrase, so moving to a new PC is also not a problem.

Can you authorize an 3rd party app repository to install APKs from there, but prevent random stuff downloaded from the Internet?

Overall, I like this approach, and maybe *slightly* more idiot-proofed than the current one where you can just install anything after one prompt. But I'd like the possibility to allow permissions for a trusted source to install additional ones and have the 24-hour counter for other stuff.