It boils down to chemistry. The nickle-metal-hydride chemistry used in rechargeable batteries just don’t produce 1.5V (explaining why is a lot more complicated), while the alkaline chemistry in non-rechargable batteries produces slightly more volts.In the same vein, lithium-ion batteries produce around 3.6V, while lead-acid produce about 12.4V.

To answer your other question, they should be able to power most things that aren’t an analog clock (which might run slightly slow).

LLMs are also really good at generating regex based on a short description. It’s saved me a bunch of time, since I don’t use regex often enough to become proficient at it, but it’s necessary for certain particular things (such as find/replace with Notepad++, or hyper-specific URIs in Bitwarden)

Personally, I would not recommend diving into Linux headfirst by installing it as your only operating system. If you can afford an additional small drive (128GB should be plenty), I would suggest buying one and installing something like Linux Mint on that, while putting Windows on your main drive.

That way, you can switch between them whenever you want to (when you turn on your computer, you can just use a menu to choose which drive to boot to), and get somewhat familiar with Linux before deciding if it’s worth your time to really dive in.

(There’s a way to put both operating systems on the same drive, but it’s really easy for something to go wrong and end up with one of the operating systems inaccessible. Since you’re inexperienced, I would avoid going that route for the time being, and just keep both on separate drives.)

No, you should not “generalize” when those generalizations are negative and targeted at a specific group of people. That’s called stereotyping and is widely considered a bad thing.

That’s a pretty sexist outlook. I don’t think the image makes an entire 51% of the population angry. And I think people like Jeff Bezos show that not all men require “so little to be happy”. It’s almost like genders are not hive-minds, and generalizing anything that broadly is only going to result in looking like a boomer who complains about how terrible their spouse is.

That’s fair, although I think that depends a lot on the type of car you drive. There’s an option to tell Maps what type of car you drive (electric, hybrid, or gas), which will change the results, because cars with regenerative breaking often get better “city” milage than “highway” milage.

It also probably depends on factors like how aerodynamic your vehicle is, because it makes a huge difference above ~50mph (air resistance/drag increases exponentially with speed)

It does indicate the “fuel efficient” route pretty clearly though, and always gives multiple other options including the quickest one that isn’t as efficient. If this is what’s causing the issue, OP just needs to look closer at what’s on their screen.

I’ve been running PiHole for awhile, in short it’s your own DNS server that’s configured to block DNS requests to known advertising domains. So when you load a website and it sends a DNS request to PopularAdvertisingCompany.com to load an ad, PiHole blocks the request so the ad can’t be loaded. It’s useful for devices that you can’t put an ad blocker on, like iPhones and smart TVs and such, but can’t block stuff like YouTube ads cause they come from the same domain as the videos themselves.

It also has bonus features like DNS caching which can speed up web browsing.

Any router from a mainstream brand is likely fine, just don’t enable any of their “cloud” BS and don’t use their smartphone app. I’ve had good luck with Asus, they have an app but you don’t have to use it at all.

For security, try to enable WPA3 on your Wi-Fi networks, otherwise WPA2 is probably fine unless you’re being targeted by a government-sponsored hacking operation. Choose a long password for your network.

Once you get it up and running, then worry about DNS and PiHole and VPNs and all that. Don’t get in over your head.

Ha, I just came here to post this! It’s seriously cool, and the Navajo’s history in the semiconductor industry is something I never knew about.

I would love a rug like that.

It’s pretty hard though. Without mass, everything travels at the speed of light and doesn’t experience the flow of time, which don’t really mesh well with classical physics (or quantum mechanics, and definitely not relativity).

Funny enough, a number of years ago a giant 4chan archive surfaced which included a lot of the very first SCP posts that had been lost. It actually confirmed that 173 was posted after Blink aired, meaning it was almost certainly inspired by the episode. Not that it makes the SCP worse, but it’s some interesting lore.

You took too much. That can happen with any drug when you don’t have a tolerance built up and take too large of a dose.

Of all the drugs you could take to help with autism symptoms, nicotine is one of the worst. Any benefits it might have are nothing compared to just how chemically addictive it is. There are many, many better options for helping with anxiety, both prescription and “experimental”. I’d really advise against trying nicotine again, it really isn’t worth it.

Basically the scheme from Office Space

If you were really lazy, you could also just cover the bottom circuit board of the drive with some electrical tape and just balance it on the jungle of wires running throughout the case.

Not that I would have any experience doing that…

Pretty much every food regulatory agency in the world has deemed aspartame safe. There were some worrying studies all the way back in the '70’s, but those were almost certainly bogus due to conflicts of interest with the sugar industry. It’s just as safe as MSG, which I personally believe people get so worked up over just because it has a “scary-sounding” chemical name.

First, the IRS is doing a pilot of it’s new Direct File program, which is free. Not everyone qualifies but it’s worth checking: directfile.irs.gov

If you don’t qualify, FreeTaxUSA.com is what I’ve always used. It’s dead simple, especially if you don’t have any weird tax situations like investment properties or inheritance or anything. It’s $15 for state taxes, but federal taxes are free.

I think Google Voice still gives out a free phone number as long as you tie it to your actual phone number. I used it for Craigslist all the time years ago to avoid giving out my actual number

And an ad blocker. Always an ad blocker.

Okay so genuine question from someone who’s used various distros for all sorts of things over the years, just never as a daily driver. What sorts of things have caused your revulsion towards Windows? Aside from Microsoft’s bullcrap like Alexa or MS Store ads which can all be disabled, I’ve personally never had enough of a problem with Windows that justified the effort required to move away from it. And I would consider myself a power user who loves to customize things.

Again, I just want to genuinely understand what sorts of problems people have that cause them to hate using Windows that much, even if they’re just subjective things.