• 126 Posts
  • 8 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: March 6th, 2021

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  • I can barely see the point to BIOS passwords. They are slightly useful if you don’t want guests using a machine for some reason. If you don’t have a bios pw, the OS login is good enough unless you need to stop them booting their own media. All desktops are rightfully easy to clear the bios. There are jumpers specifically for this purpose, apart from also just popping out the cr3202 battery or unseating the bios chip (old models). The bios pw does not (and should not) protect from data access at the hands of someone who can open box.

    The only failure I see here is the fact that Lenovo tried to make the bios unclearable in the first place, thus increasing e-waste. That’s the real story. The security fail is nothing interesting… it’s the attempt of ecocide that should have the focus.


  • I would say mostly true.

    I moved to a region where my lifestyle (accounting for wages, tax, cost of living) was effectively cut in half. Yet it was still the right move. My initial thinking was I will live anywhere for a year to get a different experience - I can always bounce back if I don’t like it… if the pay reduction bothered me. I ended up staying ~10 years.

    A big factor is where you are in life. Fresh out of university, it’s important to gain ground right away and perhaps get the house paid for, or nearly so. But once you’re a senior dev and at a point of calling yourself “privileged class" with a decent sized 401k built up (which is great to convert to a Roth while abroad), you’re only cheating yourself out of life experiences by continuing to chase the money. Some research concluded around ~10 yrs ago that people’s overall happiness improves as income increases up until the $55k/year mark. Beyond that, income doesn’t matter much. Of course that would be a little higher now with inflation but I guess the OP has cleared that figure.

    I think it was around 15 years ago I started researching typical incomes around the world and I noticed that Japan paid SWEs double the US average. Cost of living was about 50% higher in Japan but it still worked out that a US→Japan move would have been a lifestyle upgrade. So there are some rare exceptions.


  • I think you would benefit most by moving abroad. Staying in one country your whole life is very one-dimensional. If you move to another country, esp. overseas, you will look back on your current boredom as wasting your life and you will regret not having done it sooner. Go for just one year. You can always return if you don’t like it. You might be someone who says “I went for 1 year, but stayed 5”.

    But first move to a purple swing state like GA or PA for just a month or two, then move your stuff into mini storage. Two reasons: you get to experience a different part of the US, briefly, and you can register to vote in a place where your future votes will count the most. Because that’s the state you will vote in while abroad. OTOH, isn’t Texas on the edge of being a swing state? It’s probably not a bad place to vote from.