Are they wrong? This is the equivalent of getting customer support from an otherwise unreachable tech company because your story went viral. It's the exception that proves the rule, not the status quo.

Undeniably it's a good reminder of the power of publicity for accountability, but at some point the news media won't be interested in airing another "neighbors taking action" human interest story.

I'm struggling to put this in context. For comparison, what was your budget for refreshing the pc you had? Were the planned upgrades going to exceed $5k at current prices? Or is the situation that a pre-build machine with far better components was now only marginally more?

Or is it that pre-built gaming PCs have stopped being a joke? I had the experience building a bicycle: I was certain I was taking the frugal path sourcing each component individually and putting it together myself. At the end I was horrified to realize I spent far more than a new bike with superior components. It was pointed out that bicycle makers are buying by the pallet and will beat diy every time — so long as they're building something I want to buy.

> ... and I forget what's going on with Russia...

Well they relaxed sanctions on Russia in the hopes it would counteract the effects of their blunder, that's how it's going.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-oil-sanctions-iran-war-hor...

https://savestandardtime.com/chart/?city=6173331&clock=pdst

I know it sounds crazy, against the whole purpose. But all I want is to patch it into ArgoCD in my homelab k8s cluster...

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/compare/v0.220.2...v0....

Yes it will hurt, they argued, but the long term effect will be a stronger and more independent domestic economy. And the pain is worth it for that end. There's plenty of evidence that what actually results are inferior products from domestic companies insulated from international competition, but that was the pitch.

There's also a large group in the base that voted for this who already had an ideological "buy local even if it costs more" philosophy, so to them the proposal was just to force everyone else to join their cause.

https://lataco.com/federal-immigration-agents-halloween-mask...

Also if it is indeed mold, the source is typically some source of moisture. You want to rule out roof leaks and plumbing leaks, and bear in mind that water is incredibly non intuitive and creative in getting from point a to point b.

Another major source of humidity is the human body. Between sweat and respiration, we emit quite a bit of water. This goes into the air and into the bedding and requires ventilation to dissipate. Tightly sealed under-bed areas prevent the mattress from breathing. You might consider stripping the bedding and lifting up the mattress to see how things look.

Consider the rooms' ventilation system. Are the filters new, are the ducts clean? Hiring a professional to check the HVAC system is good routine maintenance.

A final source of moisture leading to mold to consider is condensation. Anywhere warm air meets a much colder surface leads to liquid water and mold. This can mean cracks and poor insulation in exterior walls during winter, or the air conditioning parts during summer. I've seen this combine with the bed-human moisture where under a bed against an exterior wall in a poorly insulated house was staying cold. The bottom of the mattress was moldy.

Mold is insidious. You often need to get into the mindset of a detective, or hire one, to find it. Good luck.

https://signal.org/blog/group-links/

Yes, absolutely. I have a second Google account I created and lost the password to. I can't reset it because it wants to know the exact month I opened it. I don't even know if it was 2012 or 2016, I'll never guess the month.

> privacy was not their objective. Only secure communications was.

> Signal is demonstrably anti-privacy by design.

But your second is uncharitable and misses Signal's historical context.

The value of a phone number for spam prevention has been mentioned, but that's not the original reason why phone numbers were central to Signal. People forget that Signal was initially designed around using SMS as transport, as with Twitter.

Signal began as an SMS client for Android that transparently applied encryption on top of SMS messages when communicating with other Signal users. They added servers and IP backhaul as it grew. Then it got an iOS app, where 3rd party SMS clients aren't allowed. The two clients coexisted awkwardly for years, with Signal iOS as a pure modern messenger and Signal Android as a hybrid SMS client. Finally they ripped out SMS support. Still later they added usernames and communicating without exposing phone numbers to the other party.

You can reasonably disdain still having to expose a phone number to Signal, but calling it "anti-privacy by design" elides the origins of that design. It took a lot of refactoring to get out from under the initial design, just like Twitter in transcending the 140-character limit.