So I confirmed today that PLDT discriminates its customers. Kahapon nawalan kami ng internet. So I called customer service in the morning and got a service ticket. I suspected that the modem went bad. Probably due to recent power fluctuations. I knew from past experiences that it will be a very long process. Ire-raise daw nila sa next level for escalation. Wala naman akong gagawin so called in with an internet issue at the office and decided to call customer service again after lunch to follow-up with the service ticket. After checking on their end, they can't remote connect to my modem - either there's a cable cut from the post or the modem is bad. They will raise a new ticket a new ticket daw so that field technicians can visit within 36-48 hours. I demanded that technicians be immediately sent. Wala kakong nakalagay sa terms and conditions nila na need naming mga customers na maghintay ng 36-48 hours to fully resolve or get a technician visit. I know because I've read those T&Cs. Yung 36-48 hours kako eh SLA yan between PLDT and the contractor. Pero kaming mga customers we can demand immediate field tech visit. To make the ,long story short (because this is just the first part). I was on the phone with them from 2pm to 7pm. They were trying to contact field technicians and their management daw so that they can dispatch to my house. Umabot sa point na tatlong managers ang kausap ko sabay-sabay. Nalaman lang nilang iisa lang ang kausap nila around 5pm when they realized the ticket was getting updates from multiple persons. How I got to three supervisors? I called using multiple phones. Pag may naka-record nang ticket sa account mo, the IVR will tell you that you already have a service ticket and will not let you go futher. I bypassed that by selecting the billing option and then ask the billing agent to transfer me to tech support.
Eto na. kaninang umaga dumating ang mga technicians. Tumawag mga 8:30 and on the way na raw sila. Pagbaba ng sasakyan nila parang nagtataka ang itsura nung mga technician. May binanggit yung isa sa kasama nya, "Pre, ito yung VIP escalation?". Hindi ko na pinansin yun. Nag-inspect na sila dun sa NAP box, mga fiber cables and na-conclude na modem nga ang sira. Ang sabi sa akin eh may iba daw tech na parating na at dala yung replacement modem.
TInanong ko, "Sigurado kayo, parating na?". His reply was "Yes sir, papunta na po yun. Hindi pwedeng hinde kasi VIP escalation 'to. May kilala po ba kayo sa PLDT?".
I had to think fast and answered, "Kilala ko yung Operations AVP nila.". Sa totoo, wala akong kilala sa PLDT at hindi ko alam kung may role na ganun dun.
"Ah kaya pala. Naka-tag po kasi kayo as priority. Sige po paantay na lang..."
15 minutes later the guy with the modem called me asking for direction to my house. He arrived and replaced my modem.
So ayun, I therefore conclude that PLDT has a VIP lane for politicians, artists, business, big-wigs, and occasional GAGOs like me. Less than 24 hours after my issue came out, solved na.
So either today or on monday, an Operations AVP (if that role even exists), will get a notice that the case he/she escalated is already solved... or not...

Hey!
I’ve been a long time lurker and fan of this sub and about 10 years ago I bought myself a ThinkPad T420 as a replacement to my MacBook at the time which had broken (lol).
This beauty saved me and got me through university in which I wrote my entire dissertation on it.
However since I finished, I’ve gone from corporate provided laptop to corporate provided laptop and never used it since.
Assume for now it’s completely stock, which I believe it is, what would you recommend I could do with it to some what modernize it?
As someone who’s learning networking and wifi I was considering booting linux/Kali on it and playing around with that, but I recall rumors that the T420 could have a Cellular modem? Is this true? I’d be really keen in expanding the connectivity options where possible.
Budget wise I’m not too fussed, I can probably spend about £200-300 on mods if needed, but if I’m honest I’m not exactly the most dab handed so I’m not sure how confident I’d feel doing a screen replacement if available, unless it’s click and go haha.
What other things could you recommend?

Ok this is the first time i havent been able to fix a pc problem, especially with researching the internet.
Long story short, lost internet while connected to VPN. Killswitch activated. Came home, realized the issue, reconnected the VPN, all was fine. Except its not. Internet doesn't work AT all without VPN. EVEN with killswitch disabled, ExpressVPN uninstalled, and Network adapter reinstalled. After hours of research, nothing worked, EXCEPT manually changing the DNS on my IP4 (or whatever it is) to googles DNS 8.8.8.8 etc.
This fixed the problem... Sort of. I now have another unique problem: every so often, I will lose internet completely while on the wifi (Xfinity) on ANY device im using. Even my android phone. I turn on ExpressVpn on my phone, and internet works again, same for the PC.
The outage seems to be temporary; it just happened on my phone again as I was writing this post, and then a few minutes later, i disconnected from VPN and it works again.
If I were to hazard a guess, I dont think xfinity likes my google DNS and it's killing my connection from the PC every so often, causing the modem to perhaps reset?
Modems in the other room so I can't see what lights are going off as this happens.
I think if I could restore my pc without having to use the GOOGLE dns, id be fine. But i don't know how to properly fix my initial issue.
Thanks for reading!

I've come here to see if I can get more perspective to save my marriage. My wife and I are high school sweethearts, and we've been together for about six years now. There's a few major issues she's having, and it finally reached a breaking point about two days ago. She's to the point where she's asked for a divorce, but I begged her to let me try to fix the problems. She's asked me to leave and give her time to think in the meantime.
For a little more context, we're both from NY, and we're two years apart as seen above. When we got together I was wrapping up my senior year of HS and getting ready to head to college, and she was heading into her junior year. For the first two years of the relationship, we were practically long distance. She couldn't be open about being with me because of her home life, but at that point we loved each other already, and we made it work. We both struggled in our childhoods, and have our own mental health struggles, which has led to both of us having major communication issues. Back then it was much worse on both sides, but over time we tried to learn to be better about it. She has definitely grown more than I have in that department, which I didn't realize the true extent of until everything spiraled.
I dropped out of college just before covid started, while she was still in her senior year of high school. I spiraled into a deep depression, but she didn't really see the full extend of it since we spent so little time together still. When we were together, I was so happy to be spending time with her it was like everything was ok. This still put a lot of strain on our relationship, but we loved each other, so it felt like we just powered through. I didn't ask for help like I should have, both from her and from my family. I've always had a very hard time admitting I have issues, and I hurt the people I care about by doing it. I spent the first half of the year like this, until I got a steady job, and the stability helped level me back out. At the end of the year, I convinced her to move out of her parents house for the sake of her mental health. I picked her up and brought her to her best friends house, and she bounced around places to stay for the next couple of months.
She's the hardest working person I've ever met, so she was hitching rides to a restaurant to work while still finishing up her first semester of college. I did what I could to try to support her, but staying with my parents, I couldn't just invite her in to stay. During this time, she reconnected with her family that she had been forced to cut contact with by her mother. This aunt and uncle acted as her mother and father figure growing up, and their daughters are like her sisters. They're both grown up and moved out of the house, so her parents were empty nesters. That is, until they invited us to come stay with them. On a whim, we decided we would move across the country with them to get away from the trauma of the past, and give ourselves an opportunity for a fresh start.
When we first moved, I was having a very hard time. It was the first time I'd been so far from home, about 22-26 hours, and we were both having a hard time finding jobs. It got to the point where I sprialed into another depression. I know it was wrong, but I practically gave up on finding a job, while she got one working for Walgreens. I didn't do much of anything, I was lazy and didn't help around the house. It wasn't expected of me, but it bothered her a lot that I was just taking and taking. It wasn't fair of me to any of them to not try to better our situation, and it definitely put more strain on our relationship than I should have allowed. She was very stressed about getting money together so we didn't have to rely on their help, and I just didn't care like I should have. A few months later, she got me a job at another Walgreens store. I only lasted ~5 months, but I transitioned into my first sales job a few weeks after I quit. This helped us move into our first apartment, but as it was throughout the whole relationship, she was the one who had saved up enough for us to actually do it.
I wouldn't say we ever fight, but we had our first big emotional discussion since we had moved south on our way home from Christmas with her sister in 21. I didn't want to admit it at the time, but I was having a very hard time spending the holidays without my family. I didn't think anything of it, but I was talking down to her basically the whole week we were there. Her family all commented on it to her, and told her she deserved better, which I know she does. We cried so much on that drive home, but she put it all out on the table, and I told her I would be more mindful of how I spoke to her. I never meant to hurt her, but that doesn't excuse the way I was acting. I thought I had gotten better about it, but she told me I still do it to her, and I make her feel like she's lesser than me, even though she's always been the driven one and the provider in our relationship.
Fast forward to this spring year. We haven't had any huge issues since the one I just mentioned, and we've taken big steps in our life. We spent a year in an apartment, and then we bought our first home together just over a year ago. I jumped into the car business from my year in sales at att, and I had gone from earning double what I made at att in 23, to making next to nothing this year. I hit my breaking point, and I quit my job. I thought I could take a week off and collect myself, but being out of a routine spiraled me into a deep depression. This was the worst I've ever been mentally while we've lived together. This put all the burden on her shoulders, both financially and emotionally. She tried her heart out to help me, but I just couldn't admit that something was wrong, the same problem I've had time and time again. This is where she hit her breaking point with me. In her words, she felt helpless seeing me like that, and she grew to resent me for what I put her through and what I was doing. I did remote work for about a week, but I hated it so much it was drastically effecting me. She told me not to worry about it and just quit, but this put more burden back on her shoulders. She had to go back to worrying about me, and me being more depressed. It lasted about a month from me leaving my first car dealership, to me starting at the one I'm currently at.
Now, to where the bomb went off. She spent 2-3 weeks being incredibly distant, and she wouldn't really talk to me. She would make little excuses about not wanting to talk or touch me, and it really started to bother me. But, I was stupid, and I tried to give her space. I finally snapped on Wednesday night, and said she was acting like she wanted nothing to do with me anymore. That was because it was true. She had talked to a therapist, and she said that my wife had disconnected herself from the relationship completely when the resentment grew. All the little things I do wrong became more clear to her. I thought I had gotten better about the way I speak to her, but I still make her feel like less than me, even though she has fought so hard to support us. I don't pull enough weight around the house, even though I felt like I was putting more effort in. I couldn't handle her telling me she thought we should get a divorce, so I got up and said I was going for a drive to calm down. She was terrified I would hurt myself, she still loves me despite everything I've put her through. I got home about an hour later to her pacing outside. We went to sleep in separate rooms that night because I couldn't stop thinking about how awful I felt while I was laying next to her.
The next morning we had a much longer conversation. We both cried and cried, but she told me she thinks we want different things for our future. She wants to bust her ass to be the best at whatever she ends up doing with her college degree, but she feels I'm just coasting. I've been trying to change careers for about six months now, but I've had no real luck outside of finding opportunities at other dealerships. She said she wants kids, which we had agreed for a long time we did not want. We have five dogs, and I got a vasectomy a year and a half ago. I told her I think we should talk to someone about why I don't want kids, I think something snapped in me growing up that changed my mind on the idea. She said it wasn't her problem to figure out why I don't want kids. I begged her to try couples therapy with me, but she said I should have listened to her saying it sooner. I've always had such a hard time opening up to anyone, and the same happened when I tried therapy on my own. I thought it was a waste of time then because of it, and I told her I thought it would just end up the same again. I know that doesn't make it right, but it just hurts so much hearing her saying it like that.
I've had two mental breakdowns over the course of these last few days. The first was on Thursday, while she was asleep. I shaved my head, when I've openly told her several times I hate having my head shaved. I think I did it so I could feel like I was in control of something going wrong in my life, even though it was just a stupid thing to do.she walked in to me sitting on the floor in the bathroom like this, and I ended up crying hysterically in her arms. I just can't believe she wants to leave me when we love each other so much, which she still confirms despite all the things she's said. In that moment, it completely broke me. She was so scared she made me go to the hospital, making her relive past trauma. It wasn't fair for me to put hwr through that, but I completely lost control. By the time I saw a doctor, I had collected myself. I told them what happened, but everything was fine now. I don't know why I thought lying like that would help, but it got me out of the hospital I so desperately didn't want to be in. She dropped me off at home, but she immediately had to head to work. I turned my phone off to ignore all the concerned calls and texts from my family and went to sleep.
I woke up at 4:30 that morning, and I couldn't handle what I was processing from the days before. I got up to get something to drink, but I really just ended up sitting blank faced on the kitchen floor. I bashed my head off one of the cabinets, like I used to do when I was a frustrated child. It woke her up, and she came out to see if I was ok. I had another breakdown when she came out. I told her I was sorry for trying to hurt myself, but it hurt that I did it when I told her I wouldn't. I was able to collect myself this time, but the damage was done. I went to therapy that afternoon, and it honestly helped me a lot when I was able to tell the therapist what had happened. I talked to my wife afterwards, and she said she was proud of me for being able to open up like that for the first time.
Originally we were going to spend the night apart so she could have more time to think, but she changed her mind after my therapy went well. We had another long talk, and she had decided she wants to end things. She wants to be treated better, she wants someone that has more desires for the future, and she doesn't think I could be the father of her children. I'm fighting so God damn hard to get on the path to bettering myself and our relationship, but she's convinced it's too late. I talked her out of divorcing yet, but she wants time to think more about it. She wants me to move back in with my family and show her I'm serious about bettering myself. I'm worried that if I leave, I'll be putting the nail in the coffin. She's the love of my life, how do I save this?
Upon finishing this, I've realized it's way longer than I intended it to be, and it took me an hour and a half to dump all this. If anyone actually reads all this, thank you. I'm sorry if my grammar was awful, I started typing this again 2:30am because I woke up and I couldn't sleep thinking about this.

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions in the Main Motte

@gattsuru:

• "Some legislation made it easier..., but the grander problem is that you now had thousands of people who's job was to find discriminatory actors, who were trained to notice the most subtle hints of it, and in no small part who believed in the mission."

@BahRamYou:

• "I've heard stuff like this before, that Hispanic is a nonsense category. But I actually think it makes sense..."

@johnfabian:

• "Short attempt to explain an upcoming Canadian constitutional snafu"

@2D3D:

• "There are a few extremely interesting nightlife entertainment options that are not commonly experienced by westerners, so I think it is worth sharing the mechanics of Southeast Asian seediness with the fine denizens of themotte."

@urquan:

• "We need transformational leadership, and a positive identity."

@FCfromSSC:

• "I was a Blue for a number of years, and the Blue habits of thought die hard."

Contributions for the week of April 29, 2024

@FCfromSSC:

• "All this has been done to us; tit-for-tat is the correct strategy given the state of play."step. Impose costs anywhere and everywhere."
  
• "I believe that 'We know how to solve all our problems' is a brief, common-language encapsulation of the core thesis of a specific ideological movement, and that this ideological movement is best understood as the central example of the Enlightenment."
  

@NullHypothesis:

• "Factors Playing Into Korea's Gender War"
  
• "It would be interesting to see how people would respond if you asked them would you rather be stuck in a forest with a bear or a black man."
  

@Felagund:

• "South Africa's Election"

@self_made_human:

• "My personal working hypothesis is that therapy acts as a decent substitute for a friend, a non-judgemental and understanding one who has seemingly endless time to listen to your problems, and is forbidden, on the pain of losing the way they make a living, from disclosing your troubles."

@Tenaz:

• "I recently heard of yaslighting, which is where instead of convincing someone their true beliefs are delusional, you affirm their delusional beliefs and convince them they're true."

Contributions for the week of May 6, 2024

@gattsuru:

• "The Death of Trust in Bipartisan Lawmaking"

@cjet79:

• "Government Programs Should Have Legible Budgets"

@SlowBoy:

• "It's been a long time since we've discussed Trump, and there have been a number of developments in the court cases against him, and so I'm here to say that our long mottizan nightmare of peace and tranquility is finally over."

@Ben___Garrison:

• "The time when Trump sabotaged immigration restrictions, and the alt-right cheered"

Contributions for the week of May 13, 2024

@gattsuru:

• "Taylor, also known as CarbonMike, was both a CTRL-Pew 3d printing enthusiast and a New Yorker, a combination that Didn't Go Well."

@OliveTapenade:

• "That is, here we have people immediately concluding that whites and Asians are both in the 'domesticated', Dragon category, but here's a Chinese voice utterly convinced that whites in the wild barbarian Wolf category."

@NelsonRushton:

• "Identity Politics and the Russian Revolution"

@Gaashk:

• "People should be able to be pleased with their children living normal, functional lives!"

@ares:

• "This occurred back in 2005-2006: hunting Somali pirates before hunting Somali pirates was cool."

@Folamh3:

• "If you are demanding that men not interact with you, and the only men reading (or caring about) that demand are men who care about respecting your boundaries - it should come as no surprise when the only men who interact with you are men who don't care about respecting your boundaries."

@faceh:

• "I think the main thing that boomers and even elder Millenials might be missing is that literally EVERYTHING in Zoomer culture is in a constant state of molochian hypercompetition/red queen races thanks to the influence of social media and algorithmic ranking of every aspect of their performance in life."

@Dean:

• "To believe in an international rules-based order, you have to believe that there are actual rules, or else it's an arbitrary vibes-based order."

@Amadan:

• "So, simply saying 'The Palestinians have a clear moral case,' even if you're right, does not solve the current problem."

@flitter:

• "Is private equity delivering the Georgist promise?"

Contributions for the week of May 20, 2024

@Walterodim:

• "It's not possible to distinguish by merits, preference, difference, or interests if the top goal is to provide an inclusive environment to everyone in every place."

@MadMonzer:

• "I think most scissor shootings that do not involve cops (Zimmerman and Rittenhouse) are fighting situations and the scissor is that DRT and SYG are working from completely different moral frameworks."

@NelsonRushton:

• "Censorship and Authoritarianism in the Russian Revolution"

@urquan:

• "Police reform and accountability would be a winning issue in the US if the left would stop making it exclusively a racialized issue and the right would acknowledge that at least some police corruption hits black people worst."

@FCfromSSC:

• "At some point down the line, the escalation for one side or the other will be unsurvivable to the system as a whole, and it will fail. Again, people counting on the system's survival should be made aware of this."
  
• "I don't see any value in the HBD hypothesis. On the other hand, I don't actually see positive value in diversity in and of itself, and I'm not willing to go along with the polite lies our racial "conversation" consistently demands."
  

@Throwaway05:

• "Every physician I know who doesn't have a financial stake in midlevels (and isn't in admin) tells their friends and family to only see doctors whenever possible. That's for a reason."

@coffee_enjoyer:

• "Status in the progressive art scene"

Contributions for the week of May 27, 2024

@jeroboam:

• "It's pretty amazing how today's Antifa members have nearly the exact same ideology as a Harvard professor or WaPo journalist."

@blooblyblobl:

• "The case for space mining is a complete, unsalvageable disaster."

@Rov_Scam:

• "Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait"

@FiveHourMarathon:

• "Naz Reid, Romance, and Regret"

@satirizedoor:

• "Since you can't separate yourself from criminals through law enforcement, you do so by proxy using price."

@blooblyblobl:

• "I think once the Dominion CEO demonstrably perjured himself by claiming that Dominion voting systems don't have modems in them (photographically, demonstrably false) and then again by claiming they weren't connected to the internet (demonstrably false again per the dominion records leaked by Dar Leaf), I decided that voting machines are completely ridiculous and no one should ever assume an election in which a voting machine is involved is fair."

@gorge:

• "But prosecuting high-level officials for technical crimes and gray-area crimes and crimes invented in the last 80 years gives far too much power to the bureaucracy."

I'm seriously considering switching to TMobile's 5G Home Internet at this point. It's half the cost of Spectrum with a bit less speed, but I'm just here for the reliability at this point. Spectrum was great for about 3 years, but in the last 3 months my internet has been going down every hour or two until I not only unplug/reconnect reboot my modem, but also until I disconnect and reconnect the coax cable from the back of my modem. I've had Spectrum techs out here 3 times in the last 2 months to "fix" it, and each time they've said "Oh it's fixed" only for the problem to pop up again about 3 hours after they leave. I'm sick and tired of paying more than $100/month when my internet connection requires manual intervention multiple times a day. They are literally my only option outside of proper "DSL over actual copper phone lines" from Frontier at around $150/month.
Does anyone here have experience running a homelab setup off of the TMobile 5G internet? The only things I host are a Jellyfin server for friends/family, and a Minecraft server for my friends. Is the 5G home internet able to support this? I'm not worried about a static IP address, I can tunnel to a VPS in the cloud and use that as an egress point, I'm more worried about consistency in speeds, their supposed "Unlimited" data, and the potential that a 5G router doesn't have an ethernet port on the back since I have a ton of devices wired with Ethernet that do not have the option for WiFi cards.
Is there anyone here that is running a homelab setup on TMobile 5G that can provide more insight into exactly how their service has been?

Trying to use my Tenda router to extend internet connectivity on a different floor in my home.
ISP modem+router is the regular JIO Fiber router(Router A). I have connected its 2nd LAN port to the WAN port of my Tenda router (Router B) using a DLink CAT6 cable. Internet speed for Router A is 300 MBps but I receive only ~90MBps on router B.
Router A configuration IP Address: 192.168.29.1 Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 DHCP: Enabled Start IP address: 192.168.29.2 End IP address: 192.168.29.99 DNS Servers: Use DNS from ISP (other options are "Use DNS Proxy", "Use Below") Domain name: 192.168.29.1 Lease Time: 23
Router B configuration Operating Mode: Router (Other modes are WISP, Universal Repeater, AP) IP Address: 192.168.29.3 Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway: 192.168.29.1 Preferred DNS: 192.168.29.1 Lan Parameters: DHCP Server: Enabled Start IP address: 192.168.30.100 End IP address: 192.168.30.200 Preferred DNS: 192.168.29.1
Why is the speed so slow as compared to Router A? Am I doing something wrong here? I tried to follow the steps mentioned here https://nuclearrambo.com/wordpress/how-to-set-up-router-connection-for-lan-lan-or-lan-wan/

So I used to have a Belkin RT3200 and could restart the modem as many times as I wanted without restarting the router. Now I have a Netgear Nighthawk RAX29 and anytime the modem is restarted I have to turn the router off until the modem has finished rebooting and reconnecting, then I can turn it on otherwise the router will act like it has no connection to the internet.
Ultimately its not a huge problem as the modem doesnt get rebooted too often but I mainly wanted to know if this is just how routers are nowadays or if its this specific model thats the issue and if so can I fix it or would I just need to get a new router?

I just purchased on Amazon an unlocked Google Pixel 6a. It arrived today, and I inserted my AT&T SIM card from my old phone. I had trouble activating it, and I got a text from AT&T saying

Hi, it's AT&T. The device you tried to activate does not work on our network. We're here to help. Go to att.com/device for more info and learn how to stay connected.

After some investigation, it seems that the Amazon seller actually sent me a phone locked to Verizon, as there are a few Verizon apps pre-installed. I'm not happy that Amazon sent me the wrong product, and I can probably just request a return and try and get an unlocked version.
Before I do that though, I want to know if this is actually a problem. I found that I was able to make calls, send/receive texts. The only thing is I can't use any mobile data to access the internet. I don't know jack about how phone networks work, but it seems everything is working fine on my AT&T SIM card.
Is there a way to get this phone to use AT&T mobile data? Is it alright if I just keep and use the phone anyway with my AT&T SIM card? Is performance going to degraded compared to if I got an unlocked phone? Are either AT&T or Verizon going to send me a bill for this for some reason? Any help is appreciated, thanks.

I'm not sure what happened, but I called costco tmobile and was on the phone for like 2 hours going back and forth with the sales rep about what the best plan was for me. (I'm with att currently) decided I was going to do the carrier freedom program and have tmobile reimburse me for paying off my ATT phones ($350) per phone and trade me phone in to get a newer model and recieve ($800) off new S24 ultras. I also posted about this yesterday asking if this was the route to go and this seemed to be the best route for my situation.
So RIGHT before I went to sign the contract my freaking phone cuts out and I lose the lady I was talking to... (Which put me on hold every question I asked b/c she had to ask someone as she gave me wrong information multiple times) so, I call back and get a different guy and he informed me that I'm good to go all I need to do is sign the contract and things will get rolling.... then he stops me and starts explaing this...
He basically says in his opinion I should come over as a new customer with no trades ins and port my number over.
He said I get this if I do it his way
($150) per line in costco store card so ($450) total for 3 lines. Which I would get either way. Then... I would get ($250) for each number ported over so ($500) for numbers ported b/c all I have is 2 the 3rd line will be a new numbe. This he said I can't recieve if I do the carrier freedom program.
He explained it would be better to just pay off my phones from att ($700) and keep them as spares and recieve the ($500) in shop cards instead as our s22 ultras we currently have are worth much more then $100 a piece.
So basically he talked me out of doing the carrier freedom program to come over as new customer and port my numbers over to get an extra ($500) in shop cards.... but I keep to keep my s22 ultras for the price of ($100) per phone. I was so exhausted after being on the phone for 2 hours that I was over it and ended up just signing the contract and now I have 2 new s24 ultras being shipped to me but I'm so confused how I even get the ($950) in shop cards.... can I use these shop cards to just pay off my new phones? He said I can use them at costco or tmobile for anything.... If I can use the $950 to pay my bill or pay off phone balances I now have with tmobile I think I made the right choice???
Sorry for the long story. Edit (grammer)

I have been using Pi-hole for roughly a month now, but in a rather different setup. My ISP here in india (Jio) doesn't really have the most open/configurable router and neither does it allow being put into bridge mode without jumping through 11 hoops and having a argument with their "tech" department.
So I got a tplink deco mesh to just be connected to their router and it just be a modem. Initially it started well enough but since both the deco and the jio had DHCP it was often conflicting, in turn Alexa, CS2 and other to stop working.
To remedy this I stuck the pi to the jio router and changed it's dns (surprisingly this was changeable) so with this my queries go to tplink→jio→pihole. And this fixed a lot of things for me CS2 finally let me connect to matches and play. My isolated tplink vlans also had internet now
This was yesterday, now I'm again back to phase 1 with cs stating matchmaking failed, alexa offline and so forth.
I really just need some help sorting this out, as seeing all the blocked queries and how much of my data is going through makes me want to not disable pihole but loosing these services leave me no choice.

Say i do plug my laptop into my modem and rock n roll?
Isn’t windows firewall just as good as a cisco asa or what ever?
Can’t we design a workaround in the os for lacking features like geo blocking, throttling ect ?
Im just blowing smoke but having your real workstation be a vm you run and the host has like a honey pot and hecka logging, can i run pfsense in docker on my laptop and use its ip as default gateway for the vm?
Im literally just talking like an idiot but if you just had to connect to a modem what would you do to your laptops OS first?
Just seems like if Meraki can have a vmx firewall run in cloud why cant I on my laptop damnit ?
Thanks for reading and i dont mean to invalidate any awesome networking folks
EDIT:
Im asking see how we’re addressing work from home when patty in finance is updating your direct deposit form on the same WiFi as timmy downloading anime torrents

I went through the process of changing my email address on my Kia Connect account today, and discovered something. TL:DR if you have the patience to go through this, you can swap the ‘root’ email address on your Kia Connect account and you’ll get another three months of Kia Connect for free.
So first off, this is in America - I’m not sure how this might work elsewhere.
The Kia Connect app won’t actually allow you to change the email address you use to login - it’s sort of ‘set in stone’ when you first set up the account. You CAN change the communication email address in your profile but that DOES NOT change the login email.
You can also not create a new account that has the same email address OR phone number as any other existing account, because both must be verified when making a new account (and if either is detected as connected to an existing account, it won’t be allowed).
So here’s what I ended up doing. Note that I’m a week from losing my initial free year of Kia Connect, and closing my old account was only going to result in losing that last week of Premium so it was neither here nor there for me.
This is VERY IMPORTANT: when you delete a vehicle from your account, you lose any of the remaining free trial period OR the remaining part of ANY PAID PLAN.
My intention is/was to re-up and start a paid plan (I’m not here to discuss the good and bad of that) so this seemed like a good time to go through this. At worst I’d lose a week of free trial and have to spend time on the phone to someone at the 1-800 number.
(1) I logged into my existing account, and in the profile, changed the phone number to my wife’s phone number, and verified it with the SMS
(2) I logged out, and at owners.kia.com, created a new account with my new email address (and used the ‘verify’ link to confirm it via an email message), and for the phone number, I used MY number (because it was no longer associated with my old account) - and verified that by SMS
(3) While creating the new account, it asks to add a vehicle by VIN - or you can skip that step. I skipped it.
(4) I got into the car, went to settings -> Kia connect and kept that screen open - I didn’t click either button (reconfigure modem etc)
(5) I logged back into my old / original account and from the top level profile, deleted my vehicle from the account, and almost immediately the screen in the car changed to “ready to set up Kia Connect”
(6) I logged into my NEW account and then went through the pairing process (starting with the button on the screen in the car, and working forward from there - same as when the car was new), and after a couple of minutes, my NEW account was successfully linked to my existing vehicle.
It’s quite a chore to do this - but it does work - and as a bonus, once my existing car was linked successfully to my new account, it popped up a banner welcoming me to Kia Connect and informed me I now had three months of premium for free.
The only thing I lost in doing this was the drive history. Otherwise all the other stuff like charging limits and such (the stuff you can set in the car too) remained.
I wanted to post this in case someone wanted to know how to swap the “root” email address of their Kia Connect account.

Kind of a long story here so bare with me.
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About 2 weeks ago I started having problems with my internet disconnecting randomly maybe 10 or more times a day... seemed like more so at night time then day time (weird). I can only verify this by checking the data from some security cameras.
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The TV would randomly disconnect and stuff, as well as the xbox's in the house. At the time I called spectrum service to come out and take a look, me thinking the equipment itself was bad, I asked if the tech would replace it for for me as I suspected it was bad. He agreed and ran some tests prior to replacing.. i was on their 500mb internet plan, and he gave me the latest and greatest equipement and now running their 1gb plan... anyway, during his testing he came back with the main line inside the house was reading like -9 on his scale and said that was out of spec. he suggested that the main line inside the house be replaced or a splitter is causing issues with the internet.
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The tech left and I ordered a new cable 100ft coax to run myself.. for my test i took the new line and ran it directly from the main line outside, straight into my modem. Everything came back on, my phone using its wifi was finally working for the first time in 2 weeks, went to turn on the xbox's and still not connecting properly, it says its connected to the internet but nothing will load, and says I have to be online to play games.. so great still not fixed, mostly....
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I'm getting frusrated and at at a loss here overall really. TV's work, cameras work, cell phone wifi does NOT work, xbox does NOT work, seems like my PC connected to it also has some issues, id say it 50% works on the computer.
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Should I be running my own/possibly better router? Is there some kind of setting I need to mess with in the MySpectrum app router access to "allow" certain things internet?
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I have another router in the house that is bridged off the spectrum router, its a Netgear brand, i can connect to it and it works mostly fine with everything. its been set up like this for years without issue.... I just dont understand what changed in the last 2 weeks to cause issues like this. Just dont understand how half my electronics connect and work fine, while others struggle (pc, phone, xbox)
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any advice or help is appreciated.

The recent changes to collector, IE, absorb life, and shiv has personally pushed me towards this one build. To be clear i'm hardstuck emerald 1 every season, but I think despite that, this build is pretty obvious.
Statikk Shiv is insanely good for 2800 gold. It's competing directly with zeal items. You trade 25% crit for 55 AD. that's nuts. insanely nuts. it now comes with %MS as well. Absorb life in the first few levels is pretty much the same, but even just that nudge of a buff has made me consider it over PoM. IE being slightly nerfed means it's no longer necessary to rush it every game. Essence reaver is especially buyable now that its price has been reduced by 100g, but manaflowband is a good enough bandaid. Blue tree also lets you run the best rune for sivir: gathering storm. ATT speed is just mandatory on sivir. you're not outbursting any other adc in the game. You're an aoe DPS bot.
So what's the build?
Runes
Conqueror or Fleet, Absorb Life, Legend:Bloodline, Cut down. It's always cut down, and it's typically Fleet Footwork so you can get past the early game.
Manaflow-Gathering storm
Items:
Cull->Shiv->Kraken->Navori->IE->Lord Doms.
You can get lord doms before IE depending on the enemy team. I know. Crazy right? Why am I focusing on a full build theorycrafting when most games end before then? It's because Sivir is a nightmare. Why Cull? IMO you can safely build it now. shiv is cheap so you won't be tanking laning phase for too long. Not to mention it's insanely stat efficient so you'll be spiking harder than anyone else who isn't also rushing shiv. The overall gameplan is to use fleet and absorb life to farm hard. It looks weak, but you'll be fine. trust me. The movement speed from sivir's passive+ your first two items allows you move properly. You might not be the #1 1v1 dueler, but you don't need to be. Clear waves. Catch waves. Join teamfights only, and repeat. It's braindead simple and it's why I believe it's effective. I considered dropping kraken but there's no good 2nd item to get, so Kraken Slayer is your stopgap to your 1v1 damage. auto-W-auto is an easy and effective trading pattern.
Overall game tips? Ban jhin. It used to be Jhin and MF but Crit ADCs are what's strong now. Basically you only throw Qs when manaflow band is up because sivir's mana situation is awful. You're unlikely to be dominant in lane, but you're very likely to be able to farm entire waves safely.
This is just what i'm using, and it feels really good. It's kind of hard to drop the ego and not contest as many cs, but knowing that I have a gameplan that's near foolproof works for me. It's not just "I HAVE AN IDEA". Riot is shoving statikk shiv down our throats and they clearly dislike how overwhelming IE rush is. honestly you can likely substitute statikk for Essence reaver to have a smoother late game transition, but it's genuinely just so unnecessary once you fully stack manaflow band. 1 W clears an entire wave at 1 item.

I really enjoy diving into advanced stats for NFL players because I think it can give a deeper appreciation for players' strengths and weaknesses, but unfortunately, I can't find anything like that for the UFL (thanks, FOX). So I decided to do a manual investigation into some of the top UFL QBs to see if there was enough data after 9 weeks to give any interesting insights.
Methodology: I used FOX's play by play pages to track how the top 3 UFL QBs performed on deep passing plays. I did not actually watch the video of each play, so there is no way to differentiate between an inaccurate deep pass and a drop.
I defined a deep pass as a completed pass that covered at least 15 air yards, or an incomplete pass listed as "deep right, deep left, or deep middle" in the PBP. I excluded any plays with defensive holding, pass interference, or targeting that resulted in incompletions. I also excluded 1 play without a listed receiver which I assume was a throwaway.
Why 15 yards? First, because anecdotally that seems like FOX's cutoff between shallow/mid level throws and deep throws. I found a 14 yard pass not listed as deep and nothing over 15 yards listed as shallow. Fox only shows yardage on completed passes so this is somewhat of an assumption for the incompletions. Second, I like 15 yards because not many UFL QBs are throwing more than 20 yards downfield so this gives a bigger sample set while still testing a QB's deeper ability.
What are air yards? Air yards are how far a pass travels past the line of scrimmage before getting caught. So a screen pass that goes for 20 yards is not a deep pass, but a post route caught 20 yards downfield is. This separates out QB skills from Yards after Catch.
This was a pretty laborious process to calculate manually, so I only did it for the generally accepted top 3 QBs - McCarron, Martinez, and Perez. If someone else wants to extend this to other QBs, have at it.
Results:
Starting off with raw results:

QB	Att	Cmp	Cmp %	TD	INT
Luis Perez	50	25	0.500	8	2
AJ McCarron	34	14	0.412	4	1
Adrian Martinez	41	17	0.415	3	3

So on an initial scan, Perez is significantly ahead of the pack. But any stats person will tell you the devil is in the details. I was curious how the best/worst games might be impacting these results as outliers, so I ran the same calculations excluding each QBs best completion% game and worst completion % game

QB	Att	Cmp	Cmp %	TD	INT
Luis Perez	42	21	0.500	6	1
AJ McCarron	25	11	0.440	4	1
Adrian Martinez	27	10	0.370	1	3

Perez essentially stays the same while McCarron slightly ticks up and Martinez slightly ticks down.
However, if we expand that to the top 2 outliers (best and worst games), that changes significantly.

QB	Att	Cmp	Cmp %	TD	INT
Luis Perez	32	16	0.500	5	1
AJ McCarron	13	6	0.462	2	0
Adrian Martinez	17	5	0.294	1	3

I was curious why Perez and McCarron stayed so consistent while Martinez dropped so rapidly, and then I remembered Martinez got 2 games against Memphis where he absolutely blew them up. That led to 1 last break down. In this comparison, I removed all games played against Memphis. Why? Because they are by far the worst passing and scoring defense in the UFL. Before anyone says I am doing this to pick on Martinez, I also excluded the games where Martinez was not the full time starter and couldn't develop a rhythm (arlington and michigan). That leads to these results

QB	Att	Cmp	Cmp %	TD	INT
Luis Perez	45	22	0.489	7	2
AJ McCarron	32	13	0.406	4	1
Adrian Martinez	18	5	0.278	1	2

Perez and McCarron are again consistent with their overall numbers, but Martinez is drastically worse against opponents that include 1-8 roughnecks twice as well as StLouis and San Antonio.
My takeaways:
1) Unless the Memphis Showboats are on the schedule, Skip needs to take deep passes out of the playbook. Let Martinez hit slants, screens, and crossing routes where he can put it between the WRs numbers. Deep throws are a wasted down at best.
2) Any DC that plays prevent defense or gives Birmingham a 10 yard cushion off the line of scrimmage should be fired for malpractice. Martinez will dink and dunk all the way down the field an beat you unless you make him beat you deep
Just for kicks and giggles, Matt Corral was 4/10 with 2 TDs. 4/8 with if you also exclude the Michigan game where he rotated heavily with Martinez.

Just wanted to post what has been happeing with us and Shentel. I use to post a lot on this Sub-reddit helping people out with their posts under a former reddit username that I deleted but we have since had a lot of issues with Shentel and they were unwilling to really fix them or even look into the issues. It's pretty sad when you miss the likes of Comcast/Xfinity while their customer service sucks at least they are good at monitoring and fixing issues internally.
I've been a Shentel customer for around three years. While I was happy to pay the plant extension fee to build out to us (over $5,000) and happy to pay the monthly fee of $252/month for internet service (Gigabit, Unlimited Data), which was later lowered to $135, it was only acceptable if we had a good, stable internet connection. We both work from home and rely on the internet, having both a primary and a failover 5G connection that our routers automatically switch to when there are issues.
Unfortunately, Shentel is no longer our primary connection as we had to cancel their service within the last month. For about six months it has not been reliable. We constantly had to switch over to our secondary internet service due to momentary outages and frequent packet drops. Latency was also rather high from the Redwood CMTS. We have switched our primary provider to Starlink, and while we have slower speeds, the connection is not only more stable but has less latency than Shentel did.
The Shentel infrastructure in our area is a very dated system of hardline coax directly to the CMTS in our area, not HFC where there is fiber to the node as is typical with most cable providers, which I believe contributes to the problems. Additionally, Shentel has been focusing on deploying fiber in other areas in the local markets (as well as in other markets through GloFiber).
Additionally, their DOCSIS networks are not very secure, as they are not using BPI+, which means your traffic could be viewed by malicious users on the DOCSIS network, while I understand traffic should be SSL encrypted from the sites you are browsing this basic protection should still be inplace to provide layered protection. They are also not updating the firmware on the cable modems, which is another major security hole.
While it's understandable from a business point of view why they wouldn't want to invest in and properly maintain this old coax system as it's not only expensive to maintain but also harder to properly troubleshoot and diagnose RF problems (along with finding good RF techs) compared to modern GPON systems, it is what is in place today, and what they extended when I paid. There seems to be no plan in place to fix the plant or replace it with GPON or at least fiber to the node as a stop-gap.
I've never in my life experienced this many problems with a cable company. On top of that, I do not believe they have good tools in place to properly monitor the coax plant. They are using BBX, which is much more limited than what the bigger companies use. Tech support always just brushes you off, saying there are no problems. For example, Starlink has proactive monitoring and specifically informs you about any issues. Shentel doesn't even have basic status monitoring portals for customers. You must call, but typically you are just told to reboot your modem, and they see no issue.
When Shentel fixes their coax plant or, at this point, gets GPON to my address, I will return as a customer. My last request asking them to monitor the area, or even my connection specifically long-term in some manner before I would reconnect, was completely ignored. Until Shentel decides to fix their infrastructure, I will not consider returning as a customer. I believe they may be more interested in selling off their legacy markets at this time based on how they treat these markets.

I have an i7-11700 based dell SFF i got for my little home 'server', and running with a normal commercial old ASUS router (RT86U) connected to ATT fiber.
Right now I have a lot of power on the table for this box and was looking into opnsense to create a router proxmox VM and going that route vs the old ASUS. No real need to, my speeds are fine for what I do, no NAS, no crazy transfer or number of clients or anything... just nerding.
The only thing I don't like is how it manages the 2.4/5 ghz frequency bouncing, as a few things in the house seem to prefer the 2.4 instead of the 5. (basically the firestick and smart tv) everything else seems to like the 5, which yay.
I am wondering a few things... Right now I am only using 2 physical ports on the router, and the rest are all wifi connections (16-19).
My dell has a single 1g nic and no built in 2230 wifi card.
1 - would the internal 2230 wifi card be worth using for the opnsense wifi connections or would an external access point be much better? (guessing they would be dirt cheap on ebay and for cleanliness of the area)
2 - id have to get some kind of switch for the wired ports, a bank of 1g ports would be fine, as thats what i have now anyway and the att model is a 1g port.
3 - how much processor does opnsense take up? Would 4 cores of 11700 be good, or 8? I have enough free, just wondering if it will kick my processor use % up drastically. (right now the asus is only running about 15% processor usage)

I bought the new Thinkpad T14s Gen 5 after months of deliberation. I am coming from the XPS 13 (9300) which was an incredible workhorse for me as a developer running Ubuntu Linux as a daily driver. It only had two shortcomings: relatively short battery life with my daily workload (VS Code, browsing, and making good use of that 500 nits screen), and its warranty had expired without the possibility to extend.
I got the Intel Core Ultra 7 155U version, with the Full HD 400 nits non-touch no-glare screen, an integrated smartcard reader, fingerprint reader, 1TB performance SSD and 32GB of RAM.

The alternatives

The current iteration of the XPS 13 was out of the question because of that awful touch bar. A colleague bought the Thinkpad T14s Gen 4 AMD and I liked its form factor, weight and design, but he was unable to produce the battery life results I was hoping for: 8 hours of development workload on Linux. The Carbon X1 Gen 12 was the most appealing option with the Intel platform being generally well supported on Linux and Meteor Lake promising longer battery life. Unfortunately its price tag of 3000 EUR in the configuration that I wanted was just unjustifyable when the competition was in the 1500-2000 range, and all it would buy me was fewer ports and a 100 g weight difference.
I had also looked at HP Elitebooks and even the new Macs (but neither of these fulfil my requirement of next-business-day on-site support. Since I live off this machine I cannot afford to spend time waiting for a "Genius" or a mail-in repair).

First impressions

The device came in a no-nonsense box. The inversed notch isn't ugly but not pretty either. The screen bezels are thinner than expected, the design is classic and appealing. The debossed Thinkpad logo and speaker grills are going to be massive food and dust traps. The screen isn't quite as pretty as my XPS's (especially blues are a little bit less popping) and at 400 nits it is less suited for use outdoor. I wish they'd make a 500 nits version. But it's by no means bad.
The ugly? It has two USB-C charging ports on the left side, but none on the right. Which means you may have to loop an awkward cable around. On the right side there are two USB-A ports. It's nice to have one, but two seems overkill, especially as I hardly ever missed the USB-A ports on my XPS 13. Also it's not like I don't need to carry a dongle anyway: the T14s G5 is missing an RJ45 port.
The keyboard is great although that copilot logo looks stupid. Switching Ctrl and Fn around feels weird to my hands in the presence of a TrackPoint. Also the Fn button is the same size as the Ctrl button so I have to reach a bit further. I think I'll switch them around again. The TrackPoint works great but the TouchPad should reject brushes better when I'm using the TrackPoint buttons. I might disable the TouchPad altogether.

Installing Ubuntu 24.04

I ordered it with Windows Home (so I could dualboot), but turned off secure boot and bitlocker so I could install Ubuntu 24.04 alongside it. I turned on LVM with an encrypted volume (I am yet to figure out how I can let the TPM handle this but I think I like having the safety of a passphrase). Installation went smoothly and after a few minutes Ubuntu 24.04 was operational.
I noticed that the fans would turn on while I charged the device. Internet taught me that I could change a BIOS setting: Power mode to Balanced instead of Performance (apparently independent from what software setting you have), and the noise was gone.

Running Ubuntu

ALMOST EVERYTHING WORKED STRAIGHT OUT OF THE BOX! Screen, webcam, fingerprint reader, wifi, smartcard reader, sound, bluetooth ... I didn't have to look for a single driver, kernel 6.8 handled everything perfectly. I am not looking for raw performance but everything seemed snappy (snappier than my XPS 13's i7 which I thought was plenty fast). I am also yet to hear the fans spin up (perhaps they're spinning but I don't hear them).
The only thing that has tripped up so far has been hibernation. At 5% battery, Ubuntu warned that it would "hibernate soon" and almost immediately after it did, and this hung forever until I cold restarted it.
I did not get the WWAN version because I always use my phone hotspot anyway so I cannot comment on how that behaves.
I did upgrade to Kernel 6.9.2 later just to be on the bleeding edge side.

Battery life

I've barely had the computer for 24 hours, but I decided to charge it up and use it for as long as I could. I've had WiFi and Bluetooth on all the time and varied the brightness as I would normally during a day. I did the fairly intensive task of restoring a compressed and encrypted 150 GB backup over WiFi as well as installing and configuring all of my daily programs.
At night I watched some YouTube videos in bed, and let the computer go to sleep after. When I woke up the computer still had plenty of juice left for some programming on the train and another hour of work at the office. After that it said it would hibernate with 5% left (which at the present workload was about 20 minutes).
In total it has been disconnected from the battery for 22 hrs of which it has slept about 12. While my normal workload is probably a little more demanding, I have a pretty good feeling that I can last a full workday on this 58Wh battery. I'll update when I do a full day of VS Code on battery.
Also pretty impressive is that the laptop goes from 5% to 90% in about an hour, so I'm feeling a lot more mobile with this thing.