All excellent advice, thank you very much! I like the idea of actually calling the companies, my introvert brain hadn't come up with that.
I'm on the west coast of the US, BTW.
I could be wrong about the price being dependent on volume of data recovered, that's was the impression I got from a lot of the company's marketing sites.
Has anyone used a hard drive data recovery service, and if so do you have any tips?
We recently had an unfortunate situation where an external magnetic hard drive was dropped while spinning. I knew before we even checked that the heads were gonners, and sure enough the drive seems dead. Unfortunately this was a drive inherited from a deceased relative that were starting to backup at the time the accident happened and now a lot of family photos are inaccessible if not gone forever.
I'm just getting my feet wet trying to find potential recovery services to get quotes, but I thought it was worth asking you fine folks if you have any experience that might help out. Companies to avoid or who may be worth it even if their quote is high.
One specific question I have pertains to what's recovered (since most of these services seem to charge based on the amount recovered): We're only concerned with photos but this was, at one point, the single drive in Mac, so there's tons of OS and other files we don't want or need. Are we likely to get charged for it anyway?
Stash Tea is reasonably local to me. I drink their English Breakfast and the Cranberry Pomegranate.
I couldn't really think of much to add, but I reworded it so the points aren't so jumbled together.
Many of the people most dependent on income from redeeming bottles and cans struggle to get those items to the places where they can turn them in for money. A new project in Eugene will bring a mobile bottle drop to the people and places it's needed most.
> “Ten dollars is what you need on average to live a day on the street, and so that’s about two bags of cans. If you’re saying you can only bring one, you need two bags, (so) that’s two trips on the bus. How do you protect that one bag of cans while you’re going and canning on another?”
On missing redemption facility hours: > “If you don’t make it and you have to keep them,” she said, “if you’re homeless that means you don’t get to sleep that night. You have to stay awake and babysit your cans or someone’s going to come along and steal them from you.”
In one of the games with my group we screwed up getting to a heist so badly that 2 of us ended up downed and the other 3 were facing prison. That's when our bard decided to use Wish to try to jump us all to a timeline where our initial plan had worked. The DM let him do it and go back to playing the heist itself.
The DM also used it as an opportunity to reveal some lore, and as we transition to the new timeline we got to look in on some others where the BBEG was winning.
This was 2018ish and we still talk about it. Save scumming can be a lot of fun in the right context.
This reminds me of when I'd have my devs play Artemis as a "team build exercise" and totally not as an excuse to Star Trek LARP at work.
Banana cream pie.
The bakery we usually buy bread at has had banana cream tarts as one of their desserts of the month, and the sweets case has been a lot more tempting than usual the last several trips. I'm both relieved and bummed they'll be gone tomorrow.
Project 2025 is a report from a far right think tank, the Heritage Foundation that MAGA aligned groups are all pushing into the news cycle.
There are plenty of centrist, progressive, and/or left wing (the 3 camps that make up democrats) think tanks but those are producing 3 fairly different paths/goals - compared to HF's singular message of "lets make a white christian nationalist state."
So it's easier to for them to build a critical mass of polling (1 high profile UltraCon idea vs 3 different voices out of the Democratic party). The media ultimately magnifies apparent support because extremism drives ratings/clicks and they're all dependent on popularity to make money (or keep what funding they have in the case of NPR/PBS).
Edited for clarity.
I have an external DVD-RW on a shelf just in case. Every once in a while I need to bring it out and I wonder if a giant boulder is going to start rolling at me when I grab it.
It owes money to Universal, Sony, Lionsgate, Warner Bros., and more.
> informed employees of the filing late Friday [...] that it had filed for a debtor-in-possession loan — a way for companies that are reorganizing after filing for bankruptcy to secure additional working capital to meet payroll. [...] employees have been waiting for paychecks since June 21st [...] it’s not certain that the company will be able to secure such a loan.
> Chicken Soup took on $325 million in debt when it acquired Redbox in 2022 and has since been sued over a dozen times over unpaid bills.
Now we know how to beat AI. We just have to pass the No LLM Left Behind act.
Spock met T'Pring when they both spun at Vulcan's hottest club "Illogical."
This place has everything: Kal-if-fee dance pits, Trynars (Bynars that are in a thruple), Tamarian shadow puppet theater, and every Thursday features slam poetry by Admiral Jeffrey Combs
Wow, Dodge is worse than Telsa and almost down to Polestar.
I've been calling them McMansions on wheels, but considering how much tracking they do, I may start using your analogy.
CBS laugh tracks are like nails on a blackboard to me now.
And let's also not forget... let's not forget, Dude... that keeping wildlife, a telepathic species, for uh, domestic, you know, within non-fluidic space-- that isn't legal either.
28 is a perfect number of years to shut down after.
I'll see myself out.
Nine years after hackers targeted Ashley Madison, the dating site for wannabe adulterers, many people still don't grasp what was truly chilling about the scandal, says Annalee Newitz
Found via the author's Mastodon Post
> Generally, the media has focused on the (mainly) men whose names and desires were taken from the company’s subscriber database and shared with the world. [...] Ashley Madison was never really about that. Avid Life Media, its parent company, wasn’t in the business of sex, it was in the business of bots. Its site became a prototype for what social media platforms such as Facebook are becoming: places so packed with AI-generated nonsense that they feel like spam cages, or information prisons where the only messages that get through are auto-generated ads.
Being the emissary to non-temporal beings leads to some fun misdials
In my headcanon Sisko walks out of corn field one day, a few years after the end of DS9, and gets promoted to admiral.
Dr. Reid/Lt. Tendi with Dr. Cox/Dr. T'Ana
Inspired by ummthatguy's Dr. T'Ana as Dr Cox posts. This one specifically reminded me of this Elliot line exchange Dr Cox.
> Sony Pictures Entertainment has acquired the popular movie theater chain Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, the two companies announced on Wednesday.
> Sony, which will oversee the theaters under a new Sony Pictures Experiences division, says it “will preserve Alamo Drafthouse’s distinctive movie-dining experience,”
> Sony is acquiring Alamo Drafthouse from Altamont Capital Partners, Fortress Investment Group, and Alamo founder Tim League — a group that took ownership of Alamo after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2021.
Glory to you and your House music
I blatantly stole this from a bsky thread my friend reposted, though I'm sure its history is longer and full of more tales of honor than that.
Taskmaster (UK) Series 18 Cast
> Join Andy Zaltzman, Babatunde Aléshé, Emma Sidi, Jack Dee & Rosie Jones in Series 18
I just Rosie Jones on something talking about taking a first date to a posh restaurant and then seeing Greg, Alex, and Tim Key at a table, and her being torn about wanting to give her attention to her date but also really wanting to be on Taskmaster. I'm glad at least one worked out.
The leak reportedly details what data Google collects for ranking.
> A purported leak of 2,500 pages of internal documentation from Google sheds light on how Search, the most powerful arbiter of the internet, operates.
> The leaked documents touch on topics like what kind of data Google collects and uses, which sites Google elevates for sensitive topics like elections, how Google handles small websites, and more. Some information in the documents appears to be in conflict with public statements by Google representatives, according to Fishkin and King.
Working behind the counter
This is the first time I've found a squirrel sitting in the tray. They usually sit on the countertop to eat. This is also smaller than most of our brown squirrel customers.
ICQ, One of the Oldest Instant Messengers, Is Shutting Down
> ICQ will stop working on June 26. It's encouraging users to migrate to a messaging app from Russia-based VK, its parent company.
I stopped using ICQ in the very early 00s. I didn't know anything of it still remained.
Subheading: If the trend continues through 2030, the state could lose its recently added sixth U.S. House seat, a think tank says.
> What does Oregon have in common with West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Louisiana? > > They all lost population in the year ended July 1, 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest estimates, along with California, Hawaii, Illinois and New York.
> Overall, Oregon’s population fell by 6,021 people, or 0.14%, to 4,233,358. That’s the seventh-largest loss in the nation, just behind high-cost California at -0.19% and ahead of Rust Belt Pennsylvania at -0.08%. > > The declines, though small, are dangerous for a state like Oregon, which has relied on in-migration for much of its economic growth.
Meet our new buddy Timber
We adopted Timber (age 4) today from the a rescue in Springfield Oregon. He's only been with us about 4 hours but he's already settling in.
We met him at a multi-rescue adaption event this afternoon and were told we'd be called this week to finish the process. Then about 45 minutes later they called to tell us the loud event was making him miserable and they'd be happy to have us take him to our nice quiet home. He's currently in our 2nd bedroom to let him acclimate for a week or so before introducing him to our other cat and the rest of the house. He was very stressed at first but by the end of the first hour he was already training us how he likes to be petted, and how he drools when you're doing it right.
Izakaya Meiji is Izakaya Meiji again.
I never tried Junglefowl. Did anyone else?
Certification awarded for 2.5m acres offering pristine views of night sky, with hopes for expansion to 11m acres
> With clear skies and sparse trees, the Oregon outback has long been regarded as a stargazers’ paradise. Now the region is home to the world’s largest dark sky sanctuary, offering pristine views of the night sky across 2.5m acres.
> ...becoming the largest of 19 sites around the world with the same designation. The sanctuary covers Lake county in south-eastern Oregon, a remote area roughly half the size of New Jersey, and could eventually expand to include more than 11m acres.