Sure, but Biden is also super old (way older than previous presidents) and was showing clear signs that his age was catching up to him, hence the 50/50.

No worries!

One thing I didn’t mention is value vs growth, and you’ll see that a lot. Basically, “value” means companies that are undervalued by the market, and “growth” means companies that the market believes will continue to grow (i.e. higher dividends, established brands, etc). Funds that provide one over the other are betting that one will outperform the other, and people are on either side. I think that if picking winners was that easy, everyone would do it, so I instead just try to build a balance.

But anyway, there are a few resources I really like that can help if you want to dig further:

• Bogleheads wiki - Jack Bogle started Vanguard, and this wiki is dedicated to low-cost, index-fund investing; there’s a ton of great info there, and it goes pretty deep
• Investopedia - I don’t recommend browsing the site, but if their content shows up on a regular search, they’re usually pretty high quality
• The Money Guy - YT channel more about personal finance than investing, but they have some great videos and I rarely find something I disagree with; I think their advice is much better than Dave Ramsey (and Ramsey’s investing advice sucks, steer clear), and I haven’t found a better, general purpose PF resource on YouTube

Have a great day, and don’t hesitate to make another post here if you have questions.

Exactly. Just like any other kind of proselytizing, it’s better to just live by example and answer questions as they come. For example:

• personal finance - manage finances properly, and people will notice that you’re not stressed about money
• religion/philosophy - live a worthwhile life and demonstrate the value it brings to your life
• products - use them and mention them when relevant (e.g. my coworker loves their Remarkable and shills it at every opportunity)

People aren’t going to change their behavior because you’re pushing something on them, they’ll change their behavior if they see something they want more than what they have. I think more people should self-host, but I don’t get anything from others switching, nor do I have much control over them deciding to switch.

I don’t hate totp, I just recognize the faults in it.

Same, I wish I could use security keys everywhere. I have an older YubiKey (version 4?), and it doesn’t get used because only like 2 services I use support it, and those support TOTP. I would switch all of my banks today if I could.

So I stick with TOTP because it’s “good enough” and works everywhere. If I had more than a small handful of services that worked with my YubiKey, I’d absolutely bring it with me everywhere.

hate the trend of companies requiring an app for 2FA…

Yeah, it totally sucks. I have decided to just not install apps if I can get away with it, which is nice because tons of them don’t even work with how my phone is set up (GrapheneOS, no Play services). So I’m going to be a thorn in their side as long as I can. They should just support TOTP since it’s already ubiquitous, and ideally also support security keys.

Eh, I haven’t convinced anyone, but I have gotten questions from my brothers about it. They don’t come over often, but I’ve done a lot of work on my self-hosted setup, so I’ll probably show it off at our next reunion (next summer).

My brothers both want to host video, and they’ve asked about ripping DVDs/Blurays. I’ve now finished ripping my entire collection (took a few weeks), so now I’m more well-equipped to answer questions.

would you be using that HDMI port?

Yes, absolutely. At work, we use MBPs, and I often ask someone with the port to connect to the TV so I don’t have to go find a dongle (and those dongles can be very finicky). I’ve had to work around the lack of an HDMI port, and it’s been incredibly annoying for the almost 4-years I’ve had my MBP.

My personal laptop has an HDMI port, and I also use it frequently to connect to our TV. It’s something I’d use weekly, if not more frequently. This laptop is older, yet I still prefer using it to the MBP, largely because of the HDMI port.

Exactly. And with AI tools, getting a transcript and generating a summary shouldn’t be all that hard.

All I’m looking for is a handful of bullet points that give me a reason to watch the video. I’m not watching a random video someone posts just based on the headline, I need a bit more reason to invest my time to contribute to the discussion. And if you provide a basic summary, I’ll probably do the legwork and find some articles to add to the discussion while I’m watching the video.

Yeah, I’d need to run cable if I moved my machines to a closet, and I’m putting that off. I do plan to do that though, so maybe someday. :)

Yup, VFIAX (the Vanguard S&P 500 index) is what everyone is saying.

Here’s what you’re invested in:

• VFIAX - S&P 500 fund; 500 biggest companies in the US
• VEIRX - basically a “value” tilt version of the S&P 500, but with far fewer companies (~200 vs 500)
• VSMGX - conservative, properly diversified fund - 60% in stocks (diversified with international stocks), 40% in bonds
• VUSXX - basically cash

So overall, here’s what you’re looking at (back of the napkin math):

• 35% - cash and bonds
• 55-60% - US stocks
• 5-10% - international stocks

So you’re pretty lightweight on international stocks.

Personally, here’s what I’d invest in:

• VITSX - Total US market, meaning there are smaller companies in there as well; 85% of it is the same as the S&P 500, so it’s not that different, but small companies have historically done better than big companies, so it’s good to have some of that exposure
• VTMGX - pretty much total international market

To be evenly diversified globally, you’d do something like 60% VITSX and 40% VTMGX, but I personally think the US will outperform, so I do 70% US and 30% international.

If you’re risk-averse and feel like you’d sell if there’s a market downturn, you can add some bonds (VBTLX) and put something like 10-20% in it (assuming you’re young-ish; if you’re over 50, increase it to 30-40%). But honestly, there’s not much point if you’ll just set it and forget it. If you want something super simple, VASGX looks pretty decent (20% bonds, so a bit less extreme fluctuations in a downturn).

A lot of people honestly just go 100% S&P 500, because a lot of those companies do business in other countries, so you’re kind of getting international exposure. I personally prefer explicit international exposure though, hence my recommendation.

Fair. I grew up with 140 character limits for SMS and having limits on how many texts I could send, so I get it. But instead of cutting out punctuation, I used more direct language and abbreviations. Now that there’s no real limit on texts, I’m a bit more wordy and am extra careful about punctuation, especially since I use swipe texting.

Agreed. And I really wish we’d have a popular resurgence of privacy, but it seems we’re going the opposite direction where people prefer convenience and “safety” to control.

Yup, started with 0 and working my way through.

Some genres I especially like:

• puzzles - Return of the Obra Dinn, Manifold Garden, etc
• platformers - absolutely loved INSIDE and LIMBO, currently enjoying A Hat in Time, loved Psychonauts (Psychonauts 2 is on the list, but it’s not really “indie” anymore), little nightmares
• metroidvanias - Blue Fire, Hollow Knight, etc
• point and click - Darkside Detective, Deponia, etc
• fighting/souls-like - Furi, Titan Souls
• story - What Remains of Edith Finch
• other - Recettear, Grand Mountain Adventure, Human Resource Machine

Basically, if it has really good gameplay or story, I’ll probably like it.

It’s probably more interesting to point out what I tend to not like:

• roguelikes
• city builders - I like high quality builders like Cities: Skylines, but indies tend to not have the budget
• rhythm
• stealth
• shooters - very samey; I’d rather play AAA, such as Doom

But then again, there’s an exception to each of these (e.g. I loved Slay the Spire and Black Mesa). So honestly, I’d probably enjoy anything that really stands out as being unique or interesting.

I’m more interested in multi-bay enclosures, but as you said, the chipsets tend to be kinda crappy. And that’s what makes me hesitate to use these mini PCs, my use-case is for a NAS, but these enclosures are kind of expensive and seem to have pretty poor components.

So for now, I’m using larger cases to hold the drives. But it takes up a lot of desk space, so these mini PCs are very attractive, if I can get a compact external enclosure to work.

TerraMaster, Orico

I honestly have never used either of these, yet they show up at a lot of retailers.

ASUS is a bit sketchy these days IMO, so I try to avoid them.

But why in-person? Surely the priority should be resetting passwords quickly, and doing it in-person is far from quick.

manually validating employees’ identities on camera

A password has nothing to do with validating your identity, it’s merely about authentication. Authentication and authorization are completely separate concepts. They should be resetting authentication to limit chance that an outside attacker can use compromised credentials, and then perhaps re-verifying identities separately for people with access to critical systems first.

Resetting passwords in-person sounds terrible. I use a password manager, so I would be more likely to make a bad password than a good one if I have to do it in front of someone in an interview.

I’ve heard good things about Proxmox, but I have no direct experience with it. That would be a separate box that manages the VMs and everything, and it has a remote GUI option (webpage I think?).

If you want something on an existing box, just use KVM directly, or a simple frontend like GNOME boxes. I don’t know about remote configuration, but once it’s set up, do you really need to check in on things remotely? KVM will do hardware acceleration (definitely CPU acceleration, GPU if you configure it properly), and it has no GUI by default.

Yeah, I tried using a security key, but the only financial institution that looked halfway interesting that supports security keys was Vanguard, and they fall back to SMS, so it’s functionally useless.

I have zero problem using security keys, but if it only works for a handful of inconsequential services, why bother?

LibreOffice has had this for quite some time. It’s nice to see Microsoft finally catching up. :)

I always use a period.

Just to reiterate, having more funds doesn’t mean you’re more diversified. For example, let’s say you have the following (ETF/Mutual Fund tickers):

• VOO/VFIAX - Vanguard’s S&P 500 fund
• VTI/VTSAX - Vanguard’s Total US Market fund
• VV/VLCAX - Vanguard Large Cap CRSP fund
• VONE - Vanguard Russell 1000 ETF

These are all basically the same thing.

Let’s compare to just two funds:

• VTI/VTSAX - Vanguard Total US Market Fund
• VXUS/VTIAX - Vanguard International Total Market Fund

This is way more diversified because VXUS/VTIAX has a lot of stocks outside the US, so if the US tanks relative to the rest of the world, you’ll be better off. You can even make it just a single fund, VT/VTWAX, which gives you global exposure (something like 60/40 US/international).