Candy Crush

That ancient USB to PATA adapter I had, before it got stolen anyways, was actually a repurposed adapter for an external USB 4X CD burner, so it kinda makes sense that it would never support any drives over 128GB (120GB in practice), as it was never actually meant to be used on hard drives in the first place. But for 120GB and less, it worked just fine.

It sucked for me though, as I had and still have a 1.8" 160GB hard drive from an OG iPod 1 and all the other relevant adapters to connect it to 2.5" PATA. Also sadly, my old Dell B130 apparently also has the 120/128GB firmware limit, so I can’t even use it natively, I had sooo wanted to upgrade that thing from 80GB to 160GB…

🤷

Sadly I’ve never seen a PATA to SATA adapter that supports SMART stats either. I spent quite a while late last year on eBay looking for a direct USB to PATA only adapter on eBay, with no luck though, all I keep finding are those combo adapters ☹️

The last ancient USB to PATA only adapter I once had did actually support SMART stats, but apparently the adapter’s firmware didn’t support drives over 128GB ☹️

Sigh, maybe I’ll stumble into something someday at a thrift store or something 🤷

I don’t know about TRIM compatibility specifically, but I must suggest you don’t get one of those combo SATA/PATA adapters. Although I don’t know about TRIM compatibility, I do know for a fact that those combo adapters do not support SMART stats for mechanical hard drives. So I assume combo adapters won’t support TRIM either.

I would go back to 1955 (yes, kinda ironic to think of it), with more modern medical instruments, anesthesia, sterilization, etc, and try to save my Baby Blue uncle who I was named after. He was born with his intestines on the outside and only lived one day ☹️😭

Yeah I’m no medical expert nor surgeon, but holy shit he might have had a better chance with more modern medical equipment and knowledge, I would have surely tried to do my most cautious best…

On the first frame, ‘The purpose of life is to reproduce’…

Shouldn’t that frame be an X-Ray of testicles, not the brain?

I think our human form is just guided by sperm and eggs, and we walking humans are the mobile creatures to carry them around…

Mr. Norris told Satan to fuck off…

Now that it’s daylight and I’m fully awake, I just verified, that neither our Hisense/Roku TV nor our separate Roku dongle have any microphone in their respective remotes, verified by disassembly, and I disassembled the dongle and verified the dongle doesn’t have any microphone either.

Whether the TV itself has any microphone or not, I’m not quite sure, and I’m not about to disassemble that to find out, nor do I care as that TV will never be connected online.

But I can 100% confirm that neither of our Roku remotes have a microphone or microphone button.

Guess what? It might be the year 2026, but our TV was manufactured in 2022, and the Roku dongle was manufactured in 2019, so the microphone thing must be a newer feature in recent years.

Thanks for the heads up, I’ll never purchase any new Roku device again.

Ignoring our Hisense TV (we’re never gonna connect that online anyways), we do have a separate Roku dongle adapter that is connected online.

I just disassembled it to verify, it does not have any microphone, nor camera.

Umm, then we must have a pre-spyware HiSense/Roku, no microphones to be found here, none that I know of anyways.

Also, no WiFi connection either, so…

Where do you get this information that the microphone is in the remote? That’s about the dumbest shit I’ve heard all year, unless your remote is now Bluetooth or something.

Infrared remotes are output light flashes only, and only work when you point them in the general direction of the television.

Now if I’m mistaken about the most modern ‘smart’ televisions, well just let me know, with reference. Because I’m an infrared hacker, and Hisense and Roku televisions still give to my infrared hacks, output signals only.

Heads up OP, while your pet may be naturally prone to epilepsy, seizures or other neurological disorders, it could actually be something in their diet that you might not be aware isn’t safe for your pet.

I learned quite a bit about this after the one and only time our dog had a seizure and went doing some research. The day before, a friend of ours casually gave our dog some rather tasty pork, cooked along with onions, garlic and other mystery spices he refused to reveal.

Apparently that was a BIG mistake! Onions and garlic are on the list of dangerous foods for dogs, and around half the list of dangerous foods list side effects such as seizures…

https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/nutrition/human-foods-dogs-can-and-cant-eat/

After studying this list and being more careful what he is and isn’t allowed to eat, he hasn’t had any seizures since then.

Of course, if you’re asking about another sort of pet such as a cat or whatever, make sure to do similar research on what is and isn’t safe for your pet in particular to eat.

Fuck I dunno, I haven’t used the Play Store since Covid lockdown. I rather prefer to sideload most apps and avoid Google for the most part anyways.

Money is a scam anyway.

I couldn’t agree more 👍

Oh, I have a choice alright, I chose to withdraw all my money and cancel my bank account like 11 years ago, because my bank refused to accept my tax return as a direct deposit. TurboTax had to reprocess it and send my return as a paper check after the bank refused a fucking direct deposit!

Besides, when the electricity goes out for two weeks after a hurricane or other natural or manmade disaster, how you gonna get groceries or gasoline with electronic money anyways? Give me a paper check to exchange for paper money, paper money still spends even when the electricity goes out.

If it’s a service that only deals with electronic transfers, well I ain’t signing up, and you can just keep that gift card if it requires an app to even use.

Every single day I assume that tomorrow there might not be electricity, it’s amazing to me that people have come to rely on it so much and assume it’ll always be there.

Ask anyone in Cuba how that’s going right now…

Riddle me this, why do people use banking apps on mobile devices in the first place? Why put all your financial data in an eggshell just waiting to get dropped or stolen?

Bank cards have had the whole tap to pay thing for quite a while now. I drop my phone, busted. I drop my bank card, it’s fine, I just pick it right back up, and it stays in my wallet unless in use, not in my hand where it’s infinitely more likely to get lost or stolen.

You want a banking app, do so from your home computer, not a fragile mobile device literally designed to fail if it so much as falls out of your hands.

Anyways, riddle me that…

Sadly, there’s truth in everything you say. Scammers are gonna be scammers, and they’ll just find a new technique plus the long standing social engineering to continue their efforts to rip people off of whatever they can.

Still, it’s something in the middleground, to help grandma be less likely to get scammed, while also giving power users an out and way to keep using their devices the way they want.

Graphene is still only for Pixel phones right now isn’t it? I heard something about them working to expand out to other model phones eventually, wonder how that’s going and how many more devices it’ll eventually support? 🤔

You could take extreme measures like Louis Rossmann has said he does to his phones.

He said he disassembles his phones and desolders and removes all the microphones. He said if he wants to make or receive a call, he’ll use his Bluetooth headset or earpiece.

I don’t see why the same can’t also be feasible for televisions either, aside from how difficult they can be to properly disassemble and service.

Fair enough, you have a point. Although, I do think the developer verification thing will make it easier for Google to weed out bad actor developers altogether from the Play Store.

Sure there’s no perfect solution, but at least they’re trying to make it a lot more difficult for the scammers out there, while still leaving power users a path to keep using Android the way we want.