George Carlin explains the MAGA cult almost perfectly:
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Health Net is one of Centene's companies and they pull this crap and worse every single day.
Health Net's provider lists includes a huge number of ghost providers. In my case even the ones that were real were the wrong kind of specialists. Heath Net insisted I go to these providers despite the fact they couldn't help me and refused to see me.
I ended up having to regularly make a 220 mile trip to get the healthcare I needed.
It gets worse. Health Net regularly refused payment for services that were covered under their policy. I easily spent 10 hours a week on the phone trying to get legitimate claims paid by this horrible company. The first 45 minutes of the calls were spent trying to get past their first line "customer service" people to someone who could actually deal with the problem. Health Net repeatedly refused coverage on DME that they had previously paid for and said the previous approvals were a mistake. They weren't.
Health Net even refused payment for a visit to specialist after they had provided pre-approval for the visit in writing. It took seven months and probably 20 hours on the phone before the crooks paid the bill.
Centene and their subsidiaries should be shut down and their executives should be in prison.
MAGA morons are going to be furious.
Texas counties have already outlawed the use of their roads by women traveling to other states for reproductive care.
With billions of batteries in use there are going to be plenty of complaints about issues. My specific experience is with an ancient Dell Venue convertible that's been in regular use for 9 years with charge limiting applied that entire time. The battery still looks new and for what it's worth, Dell's UEFI reports it's in excellent condition. This while the rest of the system including the charging port is completely worn out and at the end of its useful life. That computer is running Debian 12, HA and Frigate with only 4gb of ram and (outside the physical problems of a very old, heavily used laptop) is working fine.
Are the computers you have bought from Aliexpress UL listed, or do they have a European safety listing? I've read reports of some equipment and appliances sold by Chinese companies on various sites (including Amazon) causing fires. Not that those mean that much though. Even my UL listed Cyberpower UPS has had reports of internal shorts and fires.
There are literally billions of lithium batteries in use and you have a better chance of being struck by lightning that having a lithium battery fire. Your concern about the battery life isn't realistic either. These batteries last for many years when the charge is limited to less than 100% and can be replaced when they finally wear out. If you run a UPS you'll eventually need to replace those batteries too and your backup time will be usually be measured in minutes rather than hours.
As far as the ram limitation is concerned, it's plenty for a supported Home Assistant installation and that's exactly what this post is about.
Every machine has advantages and disadvantages, but I'm not sure why having a screen and a battery fall into the disadvantage category. The Aliexpress machines have some serious disadvantages including fans and an almost complete lack of support for most of them. And long-term support is a fantasy.
Dell sucks in many ways, but their support is in English and they produce firmware updates for several years after a product is released, especially for machines used by enterprise customers like this one.
Besides, if you add a UPS (and they all have batteries) to any of those Aliexpress mini PC's you're well over the price for this machine even with a gigabit Ethernet adapter.
For me $70 extra for a silent system with display, keyboard, UPS, a real warranty, and long-term support is a bargain.
Interesting, that sounds much more complex than using some backup software to image the drive!
I've found it to be simpler. Booting off a USB SSD allows full disk cloning to that same SSD without worrying about mounted partitions or using a separate USB thumb drive for Clonezilla. Once booted I can access the machine through SSH or NoMachine to create the backup and it is far faster than backing up to a network drive. For incremental backups Timeshift works fine.
The screen and keyboard are invaluable for backups. I have a portable SSD with Ubuntu installed for creating backups, but I often have to manually set the boot device on startup to get it to work. Setting a USB SSD for the first boot device in the BIOS/UEFI doesn't seem to work reliably on any of my systems.
The point of a UPS or equivalent is to protect the SSD during a power failure. I've lost Raspberry Pi configurations several times due to power failures when I'm away from the house. It has been a major PITA and time consuming to recover from.
The one I have draws about 6 watts when running Home Assistant which means at $0.25 per KWH it would cost $1.10 per month to run. Just adding a UPS to any other platform is going to cost more per month and have a much shorter run time.
Capacity : 256GB. Latitude 11” 3000 (3140) Laptop. YOU AGREE THAT DELL’S LIABILITY IN ANY DISPUTE WILL BE CAPPED AT THE TOTAL AMOUNT YOU PAID FOR THE ORDER OR PRODUCT AT ISSUE. Explore Latitude. Windows 11 Pro.
Dell Outlet on Ebay has the Latitude 3140 laptop, an excellent Home Assistant platform on sale for $176. A Raspberry Pi 5 or NUC with the hardware needed for these features would cost far more. The same machine is nearly 2x more on the regular Dell Outlet site.
Debian 12 supported out of box - no additional drivers needed Fast N200 Intel processor - ~60% faster than a Raspberry Pi 5 256gb SSD 8GB ram Advanced BIOS options OpenVino support for Frigate BIOS battery management. Can limit charge to 75% for years of battery life 6 hour indicated battery life at 75% charge Very low power usage - ~6 watts when running Home Assistant with several USB devices Fanless and completely silent Built like a tank
Negatives:
Built like a tank. Chunky for a small laptop No integrated Ethernet port Mediocre screen
I bought one of these last year when it was on sale from another vendor and have been really happy with it, especially for the cost.
I just checked and Reddit did the same with my account. I spent hours editing and ultimately deleting my posts and comments, and the Spez Gestapo just undeleted years worth of content. I'm going to go through them again and this time I'll leave the gibberish.
Not the first time. I thought a Windows 10 update wiped grub, but Microsoft actually deleted my entire Linux partition. Others have experienced the same thing.
Windows is required for a couple of apps I need with no alternatives, but the only way it runs on any of my computers is in a VM.
I have mine behind a Pihole too. It blocked all the ads at first but Roku seems to actively varying the ad servers and they've started showing up again. I haven't had a chance to see if I can block them again.
Could be a bad board. I have a Pi 3B+ that intermittently crashes and shows insufficient voltage no matter what power supply is used.
I've been using DD-WRT for many years and just moved to OpenWRT. Although there have been various generic vulnerabilities that effected all IP devices and needed to be patched on these platforms too, I can't remember a single vulnerability that was specific to either DD-WRT or OpenWRT.
Roku is chocked full of ads too, and regularly sets the default for the "Select" button to open those ad sites or apps. Roku used to be great. It has now been completely enshittified.
Susceptible to intrusive ads and viruses.
My Windows computer was infected more than once by virus spreading ads on legitimate websites. The site owners denied any responsibility for the viruses saying it was the fault and responsibility of the ad companies. Never again.
I have a convertible laptop with a MicroSD slot. A 4TB card would be great for backups.
These idiots are not only harming themselves and their children, they're harming and sometimes killing others who are medically prevented from receiving vaccinations. These scumbags are literally spreading disease.
People are having trouble following Harris’s campaign X (formerly Twitter) account.
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Amid his Sunday campaign rally, the former president made a quip about the heat affecting his attendees.
A nuanced attempt by Sen. Linsey Graham (R-SC) to assert that the U.S. should never have been in the position to have to launch the Normandy invasion 80 years ago fell with a thud on Sunday morning after he told a CBS host that D-Day was a "failure."Discussing battling Russian President Vladimir Put...
Judge Juan Merchan notified Donald Trump's legal team and prosecutors on Friday that there was an explosive comment about the ex-president's jury posted online, but that comment looks increasingly likely to be a hoax, according to a report.The judge overseeing the criminal case in which Trump was co...
A Texas billionaire, known to have cozy relationships with high-profile conservatives, footed the bill for two 2019 trips to Bali and membership to a private California club for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, according to a report published Friday.The trips were disclosed for the first time ...
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Marjorie Taylor Greene's proposal to cut funding to NATO received the backing of 46 Republicans in Congress.
Andrew Taake was out on bond on a charge of soliciting a minor when he attacked law enforcement on Jan. 6. A young woman launched a sting operation that got him caught.
The federal government’s antitrust investigation into price fixing in the rental market appears to have found a fulcrum in Atlanta after a surprise FBI raid of multifamily property developer Cortland Management.
Other sources:
- https://crooksandliars.com/2024/06/fbi-raids-corporate-landlord-management-co
- https://www.dailydot.com/debug/high-rent-prices-social-media-lawsuit/
- https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/is-one-company-to-blame-for-soaring-rental-prices-in-the-u-s/ar-BB1nDhl4
Democrats expected the GOP to filibuster the legislation and brought it up to make a point to voters ahead of the 2024 election, viewing reproductive rights as a winning issue.
The New York City Police Department is preparing to revoke former President Donald Trump’s license to carry a gun, a senior police official told CNN.
The Democratic president is leading his Republican challenger in three key states ahead of the presidential election.
Trump lost out twice in one day in appellate court on two issues central to his public criticisms of the hush-money case: the trial venue and the trial judge.
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