I hate this so much. This is identical to the slop shows my toddler has been into recently. Super Kitties, Spiderman and his Amazing Friends, Paw Patrol, PJ Masks. I hate them all.

Hah, I’ve totally done that. I’m thinking about doing it again, because it worked way better than my desktops built-in wifi adapter that has no external antenna.

Don’t know yet! I would assume get a phone that supports Graphene or Lineage. But I’m not opposed to some PDA sized Pi Zero Frankenstein abomination if it does what I want it to.

Wait until it affects me. Just like when I ditched Chrome. Just like when I ditched Windows. I used Vanced long after they were stopped, didn’t switch to ReVanced until Vanced literally could not play anymore. I’m the latest adopter, for sure. By the time I make a change, the path of what I want to do has been well-tread by others.

I have a copy of Popular Science from May of 1958, and they talk about nuking the moon twice, then building a missile base on it. That seems way more realistic.

I think i have more Laserdiscs than Blu-rays

What do you use yours for?

I’m using hardware encryption, i.e. my data is too heavy to be stolen. The manual actually recommends two people lift it.

I mean, I am aware of that. But 16k wouldn’t even cover my mortgage, let alone food and utilities. Adding up just the essentials, housing + food + electricity + natural gas + phone + water, I’m at 27k. Being in the US, I’d say car and health insurance are also necessities. So, you can easily add another 5k or 6k to that.

Well, I could have just bought it. But it’s a 0% interest loan. Same thing I did with my other two luxury watches, and it’s almost done. Having a two year commitment to it definitely keeps me from looking at any more! I really like watches. It’s probably my last one for a long time, anyway. Kids are expensive. $8600 for a watch over two years is cheap compared to $15k a year just in childcare. That’s just one kid.

You can have a car for a lot less, but we have relatively new cars and I opted for a lot of insurance for my own peace of mind. If we had any public transit options, we could get by with one car for sure. But there is nothing here. There is a city bus system that primarily caters to the low income, which is a great start. But it really only goes to like, the grocery stores and the urgent cares. Nowhere near our daycare, and definitely way short of the 30 miles to my office. We also have a shuttle bus that you can call for, that’s only $3 a ride, but thats really just for the disabled and elderly. I’d say we have better transit than a lot of metropolitan cities I’ve been to, but obviously our society is completely car-centric.

I was thinking wrong. I was going off my salary rather than my take home. After taxes, health insurance, and retirement, it’s about $6k.

$1360 for my mortgage, which is really quite good as it’s only 3.25%. Im pretty stuck in my house with current interest rates. $516 for one of my cars. $343 for one of my watches. About $300-400 for electricity in the summer, $80 for natural gas. $368 for car insurance. $168 for phones. $87 for internet. And $309 on a loan for some renovations. $30 planned parenthood donation. Typically about $40/week for gas.

Amazon prime, Disney+, Spotify, Netflix, Paramount+. Idk what else. I guess the rest is just groceries, eating out, and hobbies.

That’s just the stuff I pay from my income, my wife and I never got joint bank accounts. She takes home about 3k, and she pays for our other car, which is $327, her student loan, which is $300, and childcare which is $295/week. Plus she puts money in the savings account.

This discussion is making me think about the number of subscriptions I have, and the amount of expendable income I waste.

My last job, I was an engineering team leader. They had me working so much, with different time zones, I was regularly working 70+ hour weeks. There was no time for vacation. So, I had weeks left at the end of the year. It would have gone poof. There was no carry-over. So, December 4th, I made myself go poof. That last paycheck was absolutely delicious. It was multiple paychecks worth. Suck it, old company.

What really sucks is that it was a German company, and the Germans got awesome perks like 35hr work weeks. Beer in the cantina for lunch. They were FORCED to take all their vacation. Instead of asked to cancel.

I have questions. How were you able to live for a year on 16K? Even if we disregard healthcare, that wouldn’t even cover my mortgage. Let alone food, or especially travel and fun. You Were able to afford a phone? Utilities? Did you have any extras, like streaming services? I’m guessing you have the luxury of public transportation, so I can understand no car payments or gas and maintenance costs.

Granted, I do live in the US. But I can’t imagine everything is that much more expensive here. £16K is like, $20K right now, I’d live for maybe 2 months on that.

Probably because people above the waterline don’t know Mozilla exists, and people below have seen how things have been going lately.