I’m guessing the reason to create an entire store was so they didn’t have to pay Google a higher percentage?

I have heard several stories like this from my boss who worked at a previous place where he was asked to remove an entire team like you did. He says he will never forget it and is soul crushing. He tried his hardest to cut budgets and even found a few things were he was able to save the money and brought this to upper management where they had to break it to him that it didn’t matter what was saved, that wasn’t the point… people are just names on paper to them and if they decide this is what they want there is pretty much no stopping them. He then said he was there long enough after that where they realized it was an awful mistake and the work you get in return is not nearly as good as the original team you had so they had to hire new people back. It’s a never ending cycle these days.

I also work in IT Healthcare! It’s a brutal industry huh! Thankfully I have been with the same place for 19 years now, but it have witnessed it all. When I started we grew exponentially throwing money at everything, then the owner sold and I got to witness the “no changes expected” followed by everything changing. Then saw partners separate from us completely which was crazy work, and then the boom of covid followed by almost going belly up with massive layoffs for the past 2 years and consolidation of everything basically back to when I started in 2006!

I honestly don’t have too much to back up, so I run one full backup job every Sunday for different directories I care about. They run a check on the directory and only back up any changes or new files. I don’t have the space to backup everything, so I only take the smaller stuff and most important. The backup software also allows live monitoring if I enable it, so some of my jobs I have that turned on since I didn’t see any reason not to. I reuse the NAS drives that report errors that I replace with new ones to save on money. So far, so good.

Backup software is Bvckup2, and reddit was a huge fan of it years ago, so I gave it a try. It was super cheap for a lifetime license at the time, and it’s super lightweight. Sorry, there is no Linux version.

Honestly, I’m starting to agree with this as well. I feel like i saw this same article maybe a month ago and the same comments as this, but at that time I think it was only half of the drop it’s at now. Keep it going!

Think I found it.

Yield:24 squares (one 9-by-13-inch pan)

¾cup/170 grams unsalted butter (1½ sticks)
Nonstick cooking spray or neutral oil
1¾cups/385 grams packed light brown sugar
¾cup/170 grams canned pumpkin purée (not pumpkin pie filling)
2teaspoons vanilla extract
2½cups/320 grams all-purpose flour
2teaspoons ground cinnamon
1teaspoon baking powder
1teaspoon baking soda
1teaspoon kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal)
1teaspoon ground ginger
¼teaspoon ground cloves
¼teaspoon ground nutmeg
1½cups/9 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips

Step 1

In a small (preferably light-colored) saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Continue cooking, stirring constantly to prevent the milk solids from burning, until the butter foams, darkens into a light amber color and becomes fragrant and nutty, about 3 to 4 minutes more. (Watch closely to make sure the butter doesn't burn.) Immediately pour the butter along with any of the browned milk solids into a large heatproof mixing bowl. Let cool for 20 minutes until warm but no longer hot.

Step 2

While the butter cools, heat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 9-by-13-inch metal or glass baking pan with cooking spray or oil and line with a strip of parchment paper that hangs over the two long sides to create a sling.

Step 3

Add the brown sugar, pumpkin purée and vanilla extract to the cooled butter and whisk until smooth and glossy. Add the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cloves and nutmeg and stir with a spatula just until a soft dough forms with no pockets of unincorporated flour. (Try not to overmix.) Add 1¼ cups/216 grams of the chocolate chips and stir to evenly distribute throughout the dough.

Step 4

Transfer the dough to the prepared baking pan and press into an even layer using a spatula or clean hands coated with nonstick spray or oil. Sprinkle the top with the remaining chocolate chips, pressing them in so they stick. Bake until the bars are puffed, the top is lightly browned and a skewer or knife inserted into the center comes out clean with just a few moist crumbs attached or with smudges of melted chocolate, 30 to 45 minutes.

Step 5

Let the bars cool in the pan on a wire rack for at least 1 hour. Using the parchment paper, lift the bars out of the pan and cut into 24 squares. The cookie bars will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.

Wow, I for one, can’t wait until we have peak content like this over here.

It hasn’t even been an entire month yet…

Absolutely, I don’t disagree with your statement at all. I work heavily in systems administration and recently transitioned to networking. I deal with Linux systems, servers, vm’s, Azure daily, and for stability nothing beats Linux. I just tend to agree with the statement above commenting on how you always see these Windows articles, yet almost none actually affect you in the end.

There is an episode where he tries it and says something that basically hints that he just ate himself and didn’t think it was bad.

It’s been the same on win 11. The only experience i have had was at work. I work closely with the updating team, and there have been a few times where things would break like printers, and we would revert the updates to stop it from going to everyone and uninstall. Sometimes, that meant a help desk guy had to go to the pc or remote in to do it manually. I’ve been there 19 years now, and it’s happened twice?

I would say yes just because it’s asked every year I do my taxes. I’m pretty sure you have to report it when you do this, but I am not sure if it’s just as information or to tax you some more. I never had to say yes to find out.

I learned this the hard way as well… I did a big OS update on mine once and it broke almost every application running on it. Docker worked perfectly still. I transferred everything I could to Docker after that.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-netanyahu-gaza-cabinet-tariffs-02-05-25/index.html

Looks like it is about to get even worse.

I thought about this and imo I give them a pass. It’s just the successor to the switch, it is just called the switch 2. Why would we expect it to offer or be anything different than what it already is? Honestly, I wonder how much time they spent trying to decide if they should even go the new console route or just call it a pro edition.

I think the next console release will tell a lot more regarding this. More than ever, the next console releases will really need to bring something new to the table since, at this point, there’s very little difference between getting a nice PC or a console outside exclusives. I think those lines will continue to blur so consoles absolutely need to start evolving into something more or possibly lose more people to PC rigs.

I would say the GameCube was new and different for them because they transitioned from cartridge to disc, and of course, they had to use the mini disc to be extra different from the rest.

Thank you! I use Quad9 and have noticed these links stopped working about a week or 2 ago. The problem was I redid my network at that time and kept thinking it was something on my end. I have a firewall with recursive DNS setup and I was able to add my own entry for it, but I’m guessing the IP changes because it only lasted a few days. Now that I know why I’ll see what else I can do since I do enjoy Quad9 otherwise.

Definitely not… I was pointing out how the raising of both cable and subscription services led me specifically to find alternative cheaper services to go to. Because they keep rising them so aggressively, it’s super noticeable and a kick in the face. Obviously, my situation isn’t the same as others where I was already spending too much due to live tv, so figuring out how to get it as low as I can now felt like an accomplishment for me and a wake up call. I hope, just like everyone else here, that rising prices hurts them, but I really have my doubts seeing the stats that show otherwise.

Started with cable and paid about $120 excluding the internet. Ditched that like 5 years ago, but my wife really wanted live tv. We went with Hulu live, and I wanna say it was like $40 fully loaded with unlimited screens and no ads. Then it went up and up and up. I think 1 year it went up twice. By the end, after ditching the no ads and unlimited screens, it was still $85 a month… just ditched all that last August and convinced my wife to ditch all cable except for 1. We now use Peacock with teacher discount for the live tv. She likes the news, some sports, the Olympics, and SNL, which is about the only things she watches live. It comes with other stuff as well, so for $9 a month, it was an incredible deal. We opted to also get Netflix with ads since we were saving so much anyway, which is about $8 i think, and paid for 1 additional year of hulu at $80. With all 3 theres not much thats missing honestly. We never use Hulu anymore, but occasionally she tells me a show we dont get and find out most of the time its on Hulu. We will probably cut it once the year is up as well. They keep rising the costs, and we keep consolidating. I love that after all that we somehow got everything, and for the lowest cost it’s ever been at just under $20 a month. I host my own music, so we never cared about stuff like spotify.

I got my Windows 11 key and office key from here:

https://shop.lifehacker.com/sales/microsoft-office-professional-2021-for-windows-lifetime-license-5

There may be better places but the prices were better than I expected so I tried it. Site was fine, and both licenses worked perfectly. I think i saw get another 15% offer if your a new user so don’t forget to sign up at the bottom to get more off your first purchase. I actually see office 2024 as well now and it’s a bit much at $160, but from what I see Amazon and newegg are selling it for $250. I would still wait, I honestly have no idea what new stuff they ever add that is useful to me anymore, 2021 is probably fine for $100 less.