Like you, OP, I benefited hugely from a car extended warranty. Audi hatchback, 4 year factory warranty was extended to 8 years for like $2k? Didn’t seem like a lot to spend for the added insurance in case something catastrophic happened. And something catastrophic did happen! In year 5, a factory sparkplug came apart and bits of it got sucked through the cylinder, gouged the cylinder walls, got sucked through the turbo, shattered all the turbo fins.

Without the warranty the car would have been a write-off. The entire engine plus turbo were replaced under warranty. They don’t make that particular engine anymore so the replacement was used but had lower mileage. A lot of parts connected the engine are considered single-use by Audi as well. Engine mount pads, bolts, nuts, hoses, clamps, etc., their policy is to replace those parts when the engine is replaced. The list of parts replaced was four pages long.

All told, between all the parts and labour I’d estimate it was at least a $20k repair. Utterly worth the $2k I paid on the extended warranty. Oh, and I had a loaner for about six months while they were sourcing the replacement engine, so six months of putting wear on someone else’s vehicle. Probably the best $2k I’ve ever spent.

You should be fine as long as you can refrain from wearing a MAGA hat or advocating for Canada to become the 51st state. I haven’t talked with any Canadian who believes that all Americans are in favour of Trump’s nonsense, so you shouldn’t have any issues personally unless you start spouting some Trump-y talking points.

Do expect to see a lot of “buy Canadian” rhetoric. Don’t take it personally, we’re just really pissed at your president. Grocery stores in my area have started putting maple leaf symbols on Canadian made products, and most (maybe all) liquor stores have yanked US booze from the shelves. Anecdotally, I saw a lady yelp in shock and full-on hurl a package of berries back onto the shelf when she saw “Made in USA” on the label. From what I can see there is a strong, spontaneous “boycott US” movement. US produce is barely selling. Before stores added the maple leaf tags, shoppers were turning US products backwards and/or upside down on the shelves so other shoppers would know they were US-made.

The Canadian psyche is a bit different when it comes to patriotism. At a national level we’ve never been able to agree on what it means to be Canadian. Our identity is most firmly defined in the negative, in that we’re much more likely to agree on what we are not. The absolute number one thing Canadians have historically been able to agree on? We are not American. We like and respect our neighbours to the south, but as the saying goes, good fences make good neighbours. We are adamant that the current US administration must stop trying to tear down the fence between us.

My parents are snowbirds, they have a condo in Florida. That condo is now on the market, and they’re not planning to go back while Trump is still president. Maybe never, they’re not sure. I only mention it because snowbird friends of theirs have experienced harassment from Florida locals. “Go back to your own country”, etc., with clear hostility. I would absolutely stunned, hugely disappointed and utterly embarrassed if you were to encounter anything like that during your visit to Canada.

Holy shit, I didn’t even notice the multiple abominations with electrical connections in that picture, I was mesmerized by the plumbing madness.

The PS5 uses liquid metal as the thermal interface material. That stuff conducts heat super well, which is why they used it, but it has some serious downsides. It’s electrically conductive for one, and unlike thermal paste or epoxy it stays liquid and can flow over time. Most liquid metal applications use some kind of gasket to ensure the liquid metal stays between the CPU and the heatsink. Apparently it’s a known issue that the PS5’s liquid metal can settle over time and develop gaps, especially if your PS5 is normally kept vertical. Since your PS5 still works, it’s unlikely it’s leaked out entirely because if it had it probably would have shorted something and killed the unit. Check out this ifixit article for details on how to get to the CPU and reapply liquid metal. Fair warning, it looks like a hell of a disassembly.

I agree that stability, durability and ease of manufacture were the likely reasons.They probably weren’t intended to be seen as webbed feet though. More likely they’re meant to depict taloned claws clutching a sphere.

I switched to AirVPN about 6 months ago and I’ve been really happy with the service. Was previously using NordVPN, which was fine, but I was looking for a VPN provider that offered port forwarding and AirVPN does that. I don’t have hard stats on this, but I do feel that having access to port forwarding has improved my overall torrent speeds since switching.

Here’s the exact post that got the Proton CEO in trouble:

Maybe Gail Slater really is a great pick for Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division. Frankly, I have no idea. But I won’t do business with any company that carries any water whatsoever for Trump.

I’d recommend AirVPN. Here’s why I’d recommend them, in their own words:

No traffic limit. No time limit.

No maximum speed limit, it depends only on the server load

Every protocol is welcome, including p2p. Forwarded ports and DDNS to optimize your software.

Be lucky if we get out of this with only a recession. The slogan might as well have been Make America Great Depression Again.

The two situations are different. In your situation, your presence or absence in the lunch room didn’t directly affect other children. Unvaccinated children can put every other child in the school at risk. Vaccines sometimes don’t take effect, and some children cannot be vaccinated due to other medical conditions. We need a very high percentage to receive vaccines to achieve herd immunity. If too many parents refuse to vaccinate then the only way to maintain herd immunity is to remove the unvaccinated from the herd. That’s what this does. It’s not about punishing the unvaccinated, it’s about protecting everyone else.

Man, just don’t go to the US, full stop. At this point if my employer asked me to go to the US, I would straight up refuse.

Canadians have two moods. The first is “I’m sorry”, the second is “You’ll be sorry.”

Second mood activated.

Not the person you replied to, but I’m in agreement with them. I did tech hiring for some years for junior roles, and it was quite common to see applicants with a complete alphabet soup of certifications. More often than not, these cert-heavy applicants would show a complete lack of ability to apply that knowledge. For example they might have a network cert of some kind, yet were unable to competently answer a basic hypothetical like “what steps would you take to diagnose a network connection issue?” I suspect a lot of these applicants crammed for their many certifications, memorized known answers to typical questions, but never actually made any effort to put the knowledge to work. There’s nothing inherently wrong with certifications, but from past experience I’m always wary when I see a CV that’s heavy on certs but light on experience (which could be work experience or school or personal projects).

I also unplugged the psu for a while. It makes a slight buzzy noise after powering the computer, but I do not know if this is normal.

I’d recommend starting with the PSU. A buzzing noise is not a good sign. This article has details on how you can test your PSU: https://www.howtogeek.com/172933/how-can-i-test-my-computers-power-supply/

You can perform a basic test with just a paper clip or a bit of 16 or 18 gauge wire.

It sounds like the PSU is giving some power, given that the keyboard lights up. The issue could be isolated to one or more rails, e.g. it’s not delivering anything / enough on the 12V or 3.3V rail. I’m guessing 5V is OK since that’s USB voltage and your USB keyboard gets power. You’d need a multimeter to check individual power pins on the PSU connector.

Edit: if you have access to a second PC, you can swap PSUs between them. If the problem follows the PSU then that’s the faulty component. If the problem stays with the original PC then it’s likely motherboard, CPU or RAM.

If you can determine that the PSU is OK then the next step is to try booting with the bare minimum amount of hardware. That’s motherboard, CPU and one stick of RAM. If that won’t boot then you try with a different RAM. If it still won’t boot then the issue is motherboard or CPU. Before you replace either of those expensive components, try replacing the cheap CMOS battery as another poster recommended.

That’s just what happens to CEOs of publicly traded companies when they have a bad year. And Intel had a really bad year in 2024. I’m certainly hoping that their GPUs become serious competition for AMD and Nvidia, because consumers win when there’s robust competition. I don’t think Pat’s ousting had anything to do with GPUs though. The vast majority of Intel’s revenue comes from CPU sales and the news there was mostly bad in 2024. The Arrow Lake launch was mostly a flop, there were all sorts of revelations about overvolting and corrosion issues in Raptor Lake (13th and 14th gen Intel Core) CPUs, broadly speaking Intel is getting spanked by AMD in the enthusiast market and AMD has also just recently taken the lead in datacenter CPU sales. Intel maintains a strong lead in corporate desktop and laptop sales, but the overall trend for their CPU business is quite negative.

One of Intel’s historical strength was their vertical integration, they designed and manufactured the CPUs. However Intel lost the tech lead to TSMC quite a while ago. One of Pat’s big early announcements was “IDM 2.0” (“Integrated Device Manufacturing 2.0”), which was supposed to address those problems and beef up Intel’s ability to keep pace with TSMC. It suffered a lot of delays, and Intel had to outsource all Arrow Lake manufacturing to TSMC in an effort to keep pace with AMD. I’d argue that’s the main reason Pat got turfed. He took a big swing to get Intel’s integrated design and manufacturing strategy back on track, and for the most part did not succeed.

Being a private company has allowed Valve to take some really big swings. Steam Deck is paying off handsomely, but it came after the relative failure of the Steam Controller, Steam Link and Steam Machines. With their software business stable, they can allow themselves to take big risks on the hardware side, learn what does and doesn’t work, then try again. At a publically traded company, CEO Gabe Newell probably gets forced out long before they get to the Steam Deck.

We need a pithy, demeaning nickname to sum this up, something that’ll really get under his thin skin. I’ll suggest PINO, “President In Name Only.” Open to suggestions tho!

As a Canadian, I’m all for targeting red states where possible but I fully expect the blow back to hit all Americans. Tariffs are a relatively blunt instrument. If we put a 25% tariff on softwood lumber for example, I don’t think we get to say that only purchasers in red states have to pay it. Every American purchaser has to pay an extra 25% for those 2x4s, or car parts, or potash, or crude oil, or electricity, or aluminum, or steel, or raw minerals. Those purchasers will inevitably download that cost onto their customers, which means that ultimately American consumers collectively are going to foot the bill.

Some of these Canadian response measures will even come back to harm Canadians! There are plenty of instances where Canadian companies sell raw materials to US companies and then Canadian consumers buy back finished products that incorporate some of those materials. As such, some of the added cost of Canadian tariffs is going to be paid by Canadian consumers. Regular citizens on both sides of the border are in the some boat, and Trump put us there with his stupid, stupid choice. Canadian or American, we would all do well to remember that because I’m sure that Trump would love nothing more than to see us divided and hating one another.

I’m sorry for the economic damage that this fight is going to cause all of us, on both sides of the border. Please remember that Trump started this fight, and Canada will not roll over. I think Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney summed it up best in this BBC interview. The whole interview is worth a watch, but the link goes to the highlight to which I’m referring. Here’s the transcript of that highlight:

Interviewer: It’s pretty clear that [Trump] thinks [Canada] can be pushed around.

Carney: We can’t.

However, it’s worth mentioning that WireGuard is UDP only.

That’s a very good point, which I completely overlooked.

If you want something that “just works” under all conditions, then you’re looking at OpenVPN. Bonus, if you want to marginally improve the chance that everything just works, even in the most restrictive places (like hotel wifi), have your VPN used port 443 for TCP and 53 for UDP. These are the most heavily used ports for web and DNS. Meaning you VPN traffic will just “blend in” with normal internet noise (disclaimer: yes, deep packet inspection exists, but rustic hotel wifi’s aren’t going to be using it ;)

Also good advice. In my case the VPN runs on my home server, there are no UDP restrictions of any kind on my home network and WireGuard is great in that scenario. For a mobile VPN solution where the network is not under your control and could be locked down in any number of ways, you’re definitely right that OpenVPN will be much more reliable when configured as you suggest.