I've bought exclusively WD storage for many years. Mostly because I've never had a failure, and hadn't read anything terrible about reliability. Well, all that changed this year.

My newest portable drive (Passport Ultra USB-C 2TB) has only 30 hours (40 power cycles) on it, and is clicking/chirping and abnormally slow while writing anything. Probably dying, at least it warned me. It will need to be replaced, at my cost (just out if warranty of course). Combined with SanDisk failures, and complete silence from WD... I'm done with them.

I'm moving to Samsung. I've already bought a replacement (T7 Shield SSD 2TB), and also an M2 NVME (980 Pro with Heatsink) for PC OS refresh later. Hoping to move almost all the things to Samsung SSDs in coming years, outside of 1-2 large Seagate HDDs for NAS.

Bye WD. I do not tolerate reliability issues when it comes to data storage. Or silence from companies when there are massive public failures. Or buying out and destroying the competition.

Hold on, maybe I've figured it out. Endless magical profits, here I come!

Step 4. Be ultra-wealthy. (Bonus for not paying taxes.) Step 5. Do anything. (Bonus for pretending it's profitable.)

How dare you. No, this one. (Really, though. It's been a while and I wanted to see it again, happy to be of service.)

I'm not too worried, until a Republican is president (and controlling military). Until then, I think "The Deep State" is well prepared now for insurrection and coups, and T**** guilty verdicts. Hope the GOP keeps cowering to the cult for a decade or so, they will continue to lose key elections. Those hardcore red states are going to be a tragedy, though.

I never thought about this at the time. It was all just shocking and frankly pathetic. Didn't realize the men had the least at stake, while women had the most, but were not allowed to join the fight. Many men probably didn't care or even resented the "changes". (Women's rights. Sounds familiar. MAGA?) Unwilling to put up any kind of fight for that kind of future for their partners and daughters.

I wonder what most Afghan women think of these men now. And if joining the military was ever a realistic possibility, and could have changed the result.

Nice! I've never caught one exiting. What a showoff with this backward dive. Somehow I've actually seen them more times screaming from a bird's mouth...

I wonder what DeJoy is really doing behind the scenes. Slow walking everything? Inserting his companies into transactions? Are there literally any electric USPS trucks delivered or in service yet from the (very strangely) "chosen" manufacturer? How is the quality? He has not earned the trust back yet.

Yup, Pulsar feels exactly like Atom, which I've enjoyed for years. Portable mode still works, bonus. My main complaint is the massive file size of install (over 1GB, no lighter option), which seems excessive and unnecessary for my use.

Republicans like Abbott went on Fox News and blamed windmills for the storm outage. The party is very different than they were when these projects started, when economics mattered. Texas politics may still accidentally allow a select few progressive things to happen, but the builders and owners must be extremely "friendly" and perfectly thread the needle. Oil and gas owns this state, including the windmills, probably.

Is fish considered meat?

We’re not sure what this all means for the fish sticks from deep in the freezer aisle, but from a definitions-based perspective, a fish out of water sure appears to be meat.

I'm afraid we'll all just be experiencing extremes from now on. Rain for months, drought for months. Not much "normal". California was panicking over drought and fires, then it finally gets relief, and... then it's flooding. Quite surprised that hurricanes haven't been too wild yet.

It's miserable in Texas now, second year straight with all-time heat. Vegetation and wildlife suffering. Year before last it felt like it rained for months, even into summer. While winters have been all-time cold (with rare snow for two years). I mean, I get it, we're basically in Mexico, I guess it's to be expected. Envious of Colorado, looks like a nice spot and honestly I'd like to visit.

raises hand

I actually like cars. (They're... "cool". I play Forza sometimes, lol.) But the reality is they're fucking expensive to maintain, along with insurance and taxes and fuel. And very much not fun to drive under normal circumstances, next to removeds and idiots. And terrible for the environment, at absurd US numbers at least.

I'd rather save thousands of dollars and have public transit or easily maintained bike. But bikes are not viable when planet is trying to kill us (Texas is 100-110 °F for 2 months straight now).