I got a ton of use out of hanging a hydration bladder/camelbak off the back of my seat. Being able to drink water one handed without have to fiddle with bottle caps felt much safer on the road.

Tooth brush, towel, and basic toiletries are nice if you want to get a quick shower at a truck stop.

You can download maps from google in advance in case you run in to spotty coverage. It might be worth getting an old school printed on paper road atlas in case you have any trouble with your electronics

Ymmv, but i have a couple of magnetic “yay police” and other right wing brainworms bumper stickers for driving through hostile territory. Idk if it helps, but anything that keeps thieving rural cops off your tail is worth considering.

Sunscreen! I’ve gotten sunburn on my left arm while driving for long distances before. I though car windows had uva/uvb filters but i guess not?

Bring some change in case you run in to an unexpected toll road somewhere.

Toilet paper! You never know.

Extra socks and an extra pair of shoes.

I hope you have a fun trip!

Seconded. Enclosing the commons and doing a little primitive accumulation to actual knowledge. Love when a private corporations own colors, random snippets of genome, common words and phrases, and endless inventions that they’re squatting on to ensure they don’t compete with their own products.

It is unspeakably bizarre to me that people who know how to turn on a computer forgot that Gates is Satan’s personal programmer at some point during the 21st century. I take it as an article of faith and my younger Millennial and Zoomer friends think I’m bullying a nice old man.

Every time I’ve been asked to learn about Windows this year has resulted in “Haha fuck you who do you think you are? The owner of this computer? Eat shit pleb you belong to steve balmer now”.

You wouldn’t believe the amount of bullshit you have to go through to exorcise Edge. Some people told me “This is to protect the user” so i sent them back a picture of system.32 in the recycle bin.

Good too know. I guess i need to do more reading.

Yeah, that’s a good analysis. I’ve gotten in to it with friends over “consumer choice”, where they tell me “Oh, the customers didn’t want x thing that’s why you can’t get x thing” and I’ll hit back with “The manufacturers decided they didn’t want to support x thing for whatever reason, or that they could squeeze people for more money without x thing, and they have hegemonic control over the market share for that kind of product, so they can force the consumers to do what they tell the consumers to do” and they look at me like I have three heads. : p

Makes me think of the guy who, afaik, is the only guy in the world who is a reliable source for working floppy disks. The little ones, the big ones, the really big ones that are from before even my time. He works really hard to track down any intact ones he can get, then re-sell them to people who have ancient, ancient systems running key infrastructure.

Dammit someone turned on accessibility features and now there’s confetti on my screen whenever I click. Ted stop messing with my machine!

Gimme a sec I’ll see if I can hunt down an article.

Okay here are some start points

https://techcrunch.com/2013/12/27/how-the-content-industry-almost-killed-blockbuster-and-netflix/ - Broad overview

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc. - Here’s the wiki on a really critical case that basically decided the future of media

I love that Fred Mother-Fucking Rodgers, ie Mr. Rogers, ie “I fought the Klan and I won” Fred Rogers, had a critical role testifying in front of the supreme court in favor of allowing people to record things at home for later viewing. Such an incredible man. |

If you’re not familiar with it check out the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, probably one of the most destructive censorship regimes in terms of sheer scope in human history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

Another one to check out if you weren’t around for it, the Sony BMG Rootkit Scandal back in ought-5.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

Is this a serious take? It’s a 5-second search on Google or any large store.

I just don’t have any installed physical media drives anymore. Haven’t for years, so I haven’t bothered to look.

North Korea Down BAD?

This is an emergency

I think a lot of it depends on your ISP. Some of them are nosier than others.

Honestly people should probably be thinking about future-proofing things and putting as much media as physically possible on to drives in anticipation of whatever the next wave of bullshit. At some point Samizdat2.0 will probably be the only way to preserve and share media under the capitalist censorship regime. They’re just going to keep cracking down and cracking down and cracking down until no one can move without bleeding for the privilege.

As they said in the bad old days: Keep circulating the tapes.

Until we can pull this whole bullshit edifice down, kick it in the kidneys a few times, and set it on fire the only way to protect media from the companies that “own” it is going to be little people with really big RAID arrays.

As far as I know internet advertising is an economy destroying sunk cost fallacy. No one makes money off of it, but if they stop basically everything collapses catastrophically, so they just keep pouring more money in to it in hopes that someone will find a way to make it profitable before the bill comes due.

Might fuck around and start invoicing companies for attention time, comprehension time, storage capacity, and of course the 500$ per instance recall fee.

We really have a moral duty to make piracy as easy, one button, even grandpa can do it as possible.

Not for any, like, good of humanity reason.

But as part of my revenge against The Mouse.

Techbros gonna techbro. This barely counts as gossip. I wish them all a very accidentally trip in to the torment nexus where they suffer for a simulated eternity or something.