I prefer small shops with organic food. Small business Saturday is where it’s at.
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My trusty (internet) router is giving up the ghost and needs replaced, but I’m having a hard time finding ones that aren’t managed with a smartphone app, which is just about the dumbest “feature” I can fathom for a router …
Between this and pretty much anything else electronic or mechanical, I feel the only way to get quality hardware today is to buy it 20 years ago.
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The Red Starbucks Cup was a reference to the “war on Christmas” nonsense that Fox drums up every year. One year it was that Starbucks had a red cup and it didn’t say Merry Christmas on it. For the record, I never go to Starbucks. I just go to the local gas station for my coffee. They have a machine that grinds the beans right in front of you. It’s pretty cool.
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Just worked my first Saturday a couple of days ago and will have my first Sunday this week which is worse because at least I got yesterday and today off to make up for it. I’m working Sunday through Wednesday and Friday. Can’t catch a break. Told my job search company I’m a client of that I need to get back to the regular M-F warehouse job I had before COVID. I’m the only one of 3 at my group home who doesn’t work M-F guaranteed.
Delivery trucks are coming in on weekends now so that’s why.
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I’m enjoying LEDE on a Raspberry Pi (with a USB Ethernet dongle as the WAN port). No ISP backdoors, easy security updates that I install myself, RAM and CPU power for days, and no built-in Wi-Fi. SSH if you want it, and packages for installing VPN/torrent/media-server software if you want to get weird with it.
I guess LEDE is now OpenWrt again. I can’t keep track…
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I dare you to find a WiFi 6 wireless router built twenty years ago. I triple-dog dare you! 
Electronic product development and manufacturing is constrained by several factors, one of which is how long critical components are manufactured. You basically can’t buy a brand-new 802.11b-only router today despite it being cutting-edge, state-of-the-art technology twenty years ago because the integrated circuit fabs that made the critical chips have long since been repurposed to build 802.11g, then 802.11n, then 802.11ac (WiFi 5), and now 802.11ax (WiFi 6) chips. Smartphones have been a big driver for increasing wireless router speeds the last decade, so it’s hardly a surprise that smartphone apps to control the routers have become common.
Heck, even the 3G cellular phone networks are starting to be phased out, and they only went live twenty years ago. Their frequency bands are now sparsely used thanks to 4G/LTE and now 5G, and need to be reallocated to handle the data traffic on the 5G and future 6G networks. 4G/LTE will likely be sunset around 2030 when 6G is firmly established and 7G is in the later stages of development.
In the words of Yoda, “Always in motion is the future.”
[Edit] I’m assuming that you’re speaking of a wireless Internet router, since there’s obviously little (but probably non-zero!) point in a smartphone app to control an Ethernet-only router. And I triple-dog dare you to find a 10Gb Ethernet switch built twenty years ago!
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That’s not a Yoda quote. The dialect is all wrong.
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That’s what I thought, too, but it niggled at me until I double-checked my copy of Empire. This clip is accurate:
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Ugh I’ve been feeling off all day. Makes Monday that much harder to get through!
Lots of snow too… Ick
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There are people… out there. Being people.
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Well geez now I have a gripe. 
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Yeah! Yoda’s oddball grammar is inconsistently oddball!
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Oh god I hate that
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“You couldn’t smooth a silk sheet if you had a hot date with a babe… I lost my train of thought…”
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The one time in my life that after ~20 years of building my own computers, I decided to pay someone else for the convenience of not having to deal with power supply wires and thermal paste, and also to buy more computer than I needed for futureproofing… it arrived with a busted GPU and I had to dun-dun-dun… open a support request. (I kid, but it’s actually really anxiety inducing for me. Like fight-or-flight kinds of physical reactions. THEY’RE GONNA YELL AT ME AND THEN NOT EVEN FIX THE PROBLEM AUGH)
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That’s pretty cool, I had to look it up. I’m vaguely familiar with OpenWRT but hadn’t heard of LEDE.
A fair and comprehensive explanation! I’m just being a gripe – working hard toward my Grouchy Old Fart merit badge. The changes are certainly the only constant. I’m still coming to terms with the end of analog TV. (Not saying it wasn’t a good move, just that I like to ease into big changes. Maybe spread that one out over 30 - 40 years. 
)
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Well you’re in luck!:
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We started celebrating Yule last year. Once other kids realize ours get their presents a few days early, the true battle will begin.
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Also, a big FU to incomprehensible, interminable virtual meetings. Not how I wanted to spend the last 2.5 hours of my workday.
(I realize how fortunate I am to be employed and able to telework. But sometimes we all need to rant as this thread allows.)
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I’m so not psychology ready for winter. I admit I’m in denial despite wearing warmer layers.
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