Also, don’t put all your eggs in one basket: diversify, diversify, diversify. Make a main account, but have more on at least one other instance. Instances go down for maintenance, software gets updated, owners change moderation policies, so on. If you can’t get to Lemmy through your main, use your secondary.

Personally I use lemmy.sdf.org as my secondary. It’s run by a bunch of retro-enthusiast Unix nerds who more care about the functionality of the tech than anything else. No blocked communities there, and AFAIK they haven’t defederated from any instance outside of ones that were hacked/compromised. That does not mean you can just go there and be a shitbird though, they do have standards.

Good as that is, I gotta endorse the Utah Philips version. It comes with context and a story, and also he’s hilarious.

Thanks, though I am honor-bound to point out that Sandbox6 has been maintaining YUP for the last several years now. Doing a great job, too.

AFAIK they’re not on Lemmy or I’d tell you to thank them more directly. Still!

I didn’t check literally every one, but I did a few spot checks and none of them had problems.

That’s me. Nevadan to the bone, even if it’s the opposite end of the state.

We’re not yet at the point where people are huffing drugs made from fermented cow poop, but I feel like that’s not as far away as polite society would like us to believe.

Sparks, Nevada. Reno’s parasitic conjoined twin.

Good point. For all I know I’ve got the last viewable copy of “Sodomy Cream Pies” in existence.

Child’s Play is my go-to. They provide video games and consoles to hospitalized and often terminally ill children who literally can’t go out and play. It was founded by the creators of Penny Arcade back in the early 2000s and so far to my knowledge hasn’t had a single controversy or hint of anything nefarious. It’s just nerds helping other, young, sick nerds/would-be-nerds get their nerd on.

I mean Doctors Without Borders definitely does more important work on the balance, but giving pediatric terminal cancer patients countless hours of joy isn’t a trivial thing either.

I answered that elsewhere, so lemme just cut/paste:

Fair question: I saw they already had a partial spindle of mixed disks for sale. Just the one though, so I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a fluke. Turns out it wasn’t.

The spindles weren’t the only thing I donated, just so we’re clear. I just mixed them in with the rest of boxes of stuff, some of it pretty good. Someone can now snag an OG release copy of Bioshock 2 or Doom 3 for a song. Oh, and the entire Half Life Collection.

Almost all FM transceivers that aren’t put inline with the actual car antenna are crap. FCC rules limit their broadcast strength severely and even crosstalk from an adjacent FM frequency can be enough to overpower them, or at least seriously disrupt them. Inline transmitters don’t have that problem, but at that point you have to pull the radio anyway so you may as well replace it with something that has bluetooth or at least an aux input.

The only time an FM transmitter is a good solution is when you’re dealing with things like early 2000s Chevy vehicles, where part of the cruise control module is in the stereo. The best practice for replacing one of those stereos is “add a long wiring harness so you can keep the original stereo hooked up and stashed in the back, then wire the new stereo in to the actual speakers and nothing else.”

Seattle, too. As far as I can tell from my time spent there during multiple years of PAX the only thing the Seattle cops do is harass the homeless and local rappers trying to push their demo albums.

I went through every single disc before I donated them, yeah. Actually I did some organization so one spindle was all Anime, another was all SciFi, so on.

…found a fair bit of porn. I kept the porn. TV series are ephemeral. Porn is eternal.

They often have no damn clue what they’re selling and clearly just make up prices on the spot. I’ve flipped a few things for a 500%+ profit from the super-ultra-Jesus-ey thrift stores. Computer hardware in particular is something they just don’t grasp the value of. If you ever need a managed switch or a spare monitor, check the thrift stores.

Fair question: I saw they already had a partial spindle of mixed disks for sale. Just the one though, so I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a fluke. Turns out it wasn’t.

The spindles weren’t the only thing I donated, just so we’re clear. I just mixed them in with the rest of boxes of stuff, some of it pretty good. Someone can now snag an OG release copy of Bioshock 2 or Doom 3 for a song. Oh, and the entire Half Life Collection.

For religious people they’re sure eager to sell used “personal massagers” for $10.

Also, frankly, here in the Reno area it’s basically impossible to find a thrift store that’s not run by incredibly religious wackadoos. Best you can do is Goodwill, which is far from irreligious. Salvation Army is one of the few that isn’t blasting Jesus Rock on the speakers when you’re in there.

My man.

The thought of burning some BD5s filled with a bunch of new series and/or movies fills me with a joy that’s hard to describe. Getting stuff for myself is one thing. Making it easily accessible for others is just a different level entirely. I’d love to know that I’ve given someone down on their luck countless hours of entertainment for a $3 investment.

This, right here. Live Closed Captions are often a fair bit behind the actual video, because when it comes to accessibility it’s more important to get the text right than to get the timing right.

Thrift stores are getting in on the piracy game I guess. Can’t say I’m disappointed.

Look, I might have better copies now, but if someone wants to spend $3 and get the first 150+ episodes of Bleach and Naruto burned to KDVD I’d say they’re gonna walk away happy with the deal they got.

For the actual Windows image you can legitmately download ISOs for most every version of Windows from Microsoft directly, you just need your browser’s user agent to say you’re using a non-Windows OS. Since you say you’re looking to “test Windows” it sounds like you’re on another OS, so you should be able to just download an ISO normally.