I’m rather concerned about what I do when my Surface Pro 7 dies

Well, most of what I’ve seen expects memory prices to be coming down in 2028. So if it’s got two years of use in it, you’re probably good.

If you’re desperate for a laptop sooner and cheaper, you can get used laptops on eBay (well, maybe somewhere else if you’re not in the US; dunno what the used PC market is like globally).

How in the ever living fuck does this dude get to have any say on healthcare?

Trump gave him the spot in exchange for the guy dropping out and giving Trump his endorsement.

I have a really hard time believing that both the Windows installer and a Linux installer don’t work without there being at least one hardware problem present. But you did swap out most of the parts that I’d think are likely culprits.

Hmm.

When you were swapping parts on this thing, did you have the system either unplugged (preferably) or powered down at the PSU switch? Not just the motherboard’s power off? I remember once accidentally pulling a video card without cutting the actual PSU power, frying both the motherboard and (though I didn’t realize it at the time) the video card, then plugging the video card (correctly) into a new motherboard and frying that motherboard as well, so that even after I swapped out the video card, I still had problems. That is, a damaged part theoretically can damage other parts. Never heard of anyone else hitting something like that, but…

I could imagine that an underpowered PSU could maybe cause a variety of other failures, but you said that you replaced it, and I’m assuming that you checked that it was rated for the components that you had.

Manually underclock the memory in the BIOS as far as possible? Try running with just two sticks (your motherboard manual will tell you which slots to use if you have only two DIMMs)? If the memory’s marginal with your hardware, that will help. Not saying that that’s a fix, but it’d isolate the issue.

EDIT: Maybe vacuum the thing? I guess if you have metal shavings or a screw or something like that rolling around in your case shorting stuff, it could cause issues.

I mean, something clearly isn’t working right there, and I can’t think of many things that would cause that.

considers

The keyboard (and mouse?) do work in the BIOS, just not in the Windows installer? While plugged into the port in question? (I mean, it’s possible to disconnect the cable running from the USB header on the motherboard to the front panel.)

Have you tried, while the PC is on and the Windows installer is active, unplugging the keyboard and mouse and then re-plugging them back in? That’ll reset the device and let the installer handle them. It’s not completely impossible, I guess, that the BIOS talking to them could somehow put them in some kind of wonky state.

EDIT: If the keyboard and mouse aren’t working in the BIOS either, try them on someone else’s computer to rule them out as a source of trouble? I doubt that they are the problem, but might as well get the data point, just to be sure.

The U.S. paints a similarly bleak picture. Roughly 45 million Americans read below a fifth-grade level.

I assume that they actually mean adult Americans, as a considerable number of Americans haven’t gotten to fifth grade yet.

https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2026/

About 40 million.

I would guess that immigration is gonna be the major variable in US literacy levels, since you’re going to have a significant chunk of people learning English as a second language.

searches

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp

U.S.-born adults make up two-thirds of adults with low levels of English literacy skills in the United States. However, the non-U.S. born are over-represented among such low-skilled adults. Non-U.S.-born adults comprise 34 percent of the population with low literacy skills, compared to 15 percent of the total population (figure 2).

White and Hispanic adults make up the largest percentage of U.S. adults with low levels of English literacy, 35 percent and 34 percent respectively (figure 3).

Yeah.

The WordPress plugin marketplace has a trust problem.

I think that the problem is really broader — that for any system, be it Linux distros or browser plugins or AI Python packages or NPM packages or whatever — even trustworthy software can change ownership. Most users are probably not monitoring those changes and are not in a position to evaluate the impact of those changes.

Some of that can (and probably should) be handled by compartmentalizing software, limiting the effect it can have, though that has some costs of its own. But I don’t think that that’s going to handle everything.

Throughout his nine-year relationship with Sotomayor, Noem reportedly expressed a desire to leave his wife, who was recently fired from her job as the Secretary of Homeland Security,

While texting with Sotomayor, Noem reportedly said he can “see us leaving our spouses for each other” and expressed a desire to hook up with and be dominated by the type of large-breasted woman he dressed up as.

report on Noem given his wife’s long history of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and action, including signing a Religious Freedom Restoration Act that allowed LGBTQ+ discrimination, banning trans girls from participating in women’s sports, and banning gender-affirming care for trans kids.

Whatever of Kristi Noem’s stuff was just politicking to appeal to her voters and what wasn’t, if the leaks are accurate, I kinda feel like this isn’t likely going to result in Kristi Noem being any more enthusiastic about transexuality.

EDIT: “Kristi and Crystal” doesn’t really roll off the tongue.

So, I don’t have a comment on specifically doing Zuckerberg, but a practice adopted by a number of companies that make a product that can reasonably be used by employees is to try to have employees actually use the thing, because that makes them aware of things that need to be changed or other issues or improvements and more-interested in doing so. That is, in general, as a company, you’re likely better-off in terms of filling user needs if employees actually use whatever they make, especially if they’re in a position to make decisions about how it works.

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

Eating your own dog food or “dogfooding” is the practice of using one’s own products or services.[1] This can be a way for an organization to test its products in real-world usage using product management techniques. Hence dogfooding can act as quality control, and eventually a kind of testimonial advertising. Once in the market, dogfooding can demonstrate developers’ confidence in their own products.[2][3]

Not everywhere I’ve worked has done that, but at places where it was applicable, they tried to do so, including one handing out free hardware if necessary to use the product, as well has having the company itself make use of the products if possible. I think that it’s generally a good idea; it makes people at the company in a position to improve things very aware of pain points.

If — and I have no idea if this is actually the case — Meta is trying to position AI models they make to act in a “contact the company” role, they might want to have their employees actually doing that themselves.

Have you tried plugging them directly into the USB ports on the PC? I have seen BIOSes that don’t deal well with some USB hubs.

The overall fertility rate decline in the U.S. extends beyond just teenagers, Siegel noted.

“Dana, people are having kids in their 30s now, not their 20s,” he told the anchor. “And again, that’s leading to one thing I want to point out. The replacement rate is down to 1.56, meaning every couple is having, on average, 1.56 children in the United States. We need two or above to keep the population at the same amount.”

It’s actually a bit more than 2. About 2.07, IIRC.

EDIT: Though you’ll often see it rounded to 2.1.

EDIT2: Basically, at about the Great Recession (~2007), it took a major wallop and didn’t recover, and then kept declining through the COVID-19 era. My understanding from past reading is that it had been expected that the Great Recession would send it down — economic uncertainty causes fertility rates to drop — but the problem is that it didn’t rebound afterwards.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=US

I have a KitchenAid hand mixer that’s been fine. If you’re happy with your KitchenAid stand mixer, seems that it might be reasonable to get the hand mixer version. I mean, you’ve already got a picture of one posted.

Note that I’m assuming that “variable speed” here translates to “discrete number of speeds in a given set of increments”, and not some “continuous-variable speed where you can just move a slider” thing.

so I figured that using pipewire to co-ordinate this would be the easiest way forward, except it turns out that it’s a (GUI) user space process, which doesn’t make sense on a server with no GUI users.

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “(GUI) user space process”, but if it’s that it’s a systemd user process (e.g. it shows up when you run $ systemctl --user status pipewire rather than $ systemctl status pipewire, which appears to be the case on my system, where there’s one instance running per user session), then you probably can run it as a systemwide process, where there’s just one always-running process for the whole system. IIRC, PulseAudio could run in both modes. I don’t know if you have concerns about security on access to your mic or something, but that could be something to look into.

searches

Sounds like it’s doable. Not endorsing this particular project, which I’ve never seen before, but it looks like it’s possible:

https://github.com/iddo/pipewire-system

PipeWire System-wide Daemon Package (Arch Linux)

This package configures PipeWire, WirePlumber, and PipeWire-Pulse to run as a single system-wide daemon as the root user. This setup is optimized for headless media servers, HTPCs, or multi-user audio environments.

every hardware website I’ve checked so far, either don’t have any mini pcs, nucs or similar, or they have zero information about the hardware.

Well, if they give you the manufacturer and model number, you should be able to look them up with the manufacturer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeC0ZTT8n7E

On maybe a more-helpful note, I have no idea if it might have consequences for your system (spend time every reboot trying to reinstall?) but you might try doing something that’d cause the installer to fail. Whatever update mechanism they have might back off if the installer just can’t succeed. Maybe uninstall Copilot, then replace one of the files that’s associated with Copilot with a directory or something, and if the installer can’t handle replacing that directory with the file it tries to install next time it runs, it bails and backs out?

I’ve occasionally used that trick when some program writes massive log files and doesn’t have an explicit way to disable log file writing — just drop a directory in the way.

Okay, this one is kind of funny (Windows 11, but I ran into it when searching for an answer for OP, and chuckled):

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5630906/how-do-i-completely-get-rid-of-copilot-and-stop-it

Thomas4-N 13,070 Reputation points • Microsoft External Staff • Moderator
Nov 22, 2025, 12:47 AM

Hello Alex P, welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I understand how frustrating it feels when features you’ve opted out of keep showing up.

Copilot is now integrated into Windows and Microsoft Edge as part of the operating system design, so there isn’t a supported way to remove it completely. Even if you uninstall the app or hide the button, some components remain because they’re tied to system features and will return with updates.

Here’s some steps you can try to partially reduce its presence:

• Uninstall the Copilot app: Go to Settings > Apps > Installed apps > Microsoft Copilot > Uninstall, or use PowerShell. This removes the app temporarily, but cumulative updates or the Microsoft Store can reinstall it.
• Hide the Copilot button and sidebar: Use Taskbar settings or apply Group Policy/Registry changes to turn it off. Keep in mind that updates may re-enable these settings.
• Disable Copilot in Microsoft Edge: Open Edge settings > Sidebar > Turn off Copilot. This is separate from the OS-level integration.

However, in the whole picture, there’s no supported method to permanently block Copilot. It’s treated as a protected system component and will reinstall with cumulative updates and Store auto-updates.

If you prefer an environment without these integrations, switching to Linux is a valid option.

Warm regards,

I still cannot, for the love of AntiChrist, boot the thing. At. All. Not even from a usb. Attempting to fresh install windows and i have zero input from any devices.

I"m not following.

It sounds like you can get to a BIOS screen. Does “zero input from any devices” mean that you’re trying to use a mouse or keyboard in the BIOS or with the Windows installer up or what?

I’m not on there, but you might have more luck in [email protected]

You might also want to list the hardware that you plan to use, since that’ll constrain what you can reasonably run.

You’re not wrong that you’re not safe posting on Reddit, but if this case is any indication you’re not any less safe posting in Reddit than any other site, including Lemmy.

You can choose the location (and thus legal jurisdiction) of your home instance, but yeah, in general, I think that people need to be aware that server operators on the Threadiverse are probably not going to fight legal battles on your behalf.

We had someone ask about turning over IP addresses to law enforcement a while back on lemmy.today. The lemmy.today server admin gave what I’d call probably a pretty accurate answer.

https://lemmy.today/post/7255213

How will Lemmy Today handle IP subpoenas?

Lemmy instances are run by volunteers who wants to see a social media network without big tech.

I dont think you can trust any of those volunteers, including this one, to not comply with law enforcement. Thats not why we are running instances. Its about providing a platform without tracking, ads and algorithms for talking to other people and having a good time.

Hope that makes sense.

Use a VPN if you have a reason to. :)

It linked to a similar question for lemmy.dbzer0.com:

How will dbzer0 handle IP subpoenas?

Don’t know man. I’m not making enough in donations to pay for the server costs, never mind hiring lawyers. I’ll deal with this when I have to 😅

There are platforms more-aimed at providing harder pseudonymity. I’d put Hyphanet fairly high on the list of “a pain in the ass to track a poster down due to technical barriers” list (though that comes with very real performance and latency and suchlike costs).

Donenfeld, the WireGuard developer, told TechCrunch in an email: “If there were a critical vulnerability to fix right now — there isn’t! I just mean hypothetically — then users would be totally exposed.”

Well, the Windows users would. I assume that they’d still release builds for the other platforms.