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Was checking to see if an extension was available for Android yet when I saw a familiar word tucked into their screenshots lol.

Looking for anyone with experience with helping pick out hearing aides. It's hard for him to describe what he doesn't like about them so I can't provide much in the way of specific issues. One thing he has said was that they change how loud some things are compared to how they should be which I think he means they will make certain pitches louder than other pitches so something like setting spoon on glass plate will be loud but the sound of a low voiced man talking is quiet when normally the low voices are the only ones he can hear. He is the typical old geezer so it's easier to list all the numbers in Pi than it is to get him to a doctors office.

We have tried 2 different very expensive aids costing thousands each, we tried the new apple ones, he tried countless magazine ads hearing aids and doesn't like any of them. He's a very straight forward man so it's not his way of getting around using them or that he's embarrassed. He wants to find a pair he likes but he is also a very picky man who was a mechanical engineer so I feel like his expectations can be a little high sometimes for things to be perfect.

Just thought I'd see what other people's experiences were with hearing aides and if there's anything anyone can recommend.

What would it take for the Goliath to be the hero and David to be the pessimist? Not just in fictional narrative depictions but throught history too. The only scenario I can think of that kinda fits the mold was 9/11. Where America may not of been the hero or "good guy" but the underdog Taliban was unanimously viewed as the "bad guys." I'm not super knowledgeable when it comes to global geopolitical relations so I'm all ears for any scenarios that prove otherwise and would love to hear them.

Edit: I am loving all the responses and its a great conversation, I just wish I phrased the title differently so it wasn't getting downvoted. I didn't mean for it to come accross like I didn't think it ever happened.

I know most replies here will likely encourage Linux and I get it. If it were up to me it'd be done. The problem is I work from home and are bound to certain limitations.

So to the problem at hand, I hope to get some insight on:

The two culprits are bitlocker and Window's gaming service/overlay not sure what actual name of it is without having the error message in front of me. I'm not nearly as irritated at the gaming issue as I am with the bitlocker issue because the bitlocker is causing random crashes forcing PC reboots.

Where I find my hands tied is for both scenarios, I have gone thru Windows Services, Gpedit, regedit, and admin powershell command inputs that all show have successfully terminated the bitlocker and gamepad functions from even being able to be initiated.

As for bitlocker specifically, I have never enabled, used, activated or even owned a version of Windows 11 that provided access to bitlocker services.

I didn't know it even existed before the Windows 11 24h2 update. Neither issue was present before the update. Even went thru the steps back stepping the updates installed to before the 24h2 update.

So by all intensive purposes (lol) the PC is running on a Windows build before the update fucked it up, is running without any group permission, active services, or regestry settings that should allow bitlocker or gamebar to launch.

Yet here I am. Everytime I launch a game I have a popup that informs me there are no available apps to open the gamebar.

As well as almost every other day no matter what I'm doing or what I am in the middle of, my PC just shuts down and reboots out of fuckin nowhere.

When I check the event viewer, the "critical" error message just says "The system rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power suddenly."

The two warning error messages that occur almost in conjunction to the reboot critical message are two identical error messages that state, "Bitlocker timed out attempting to enumerate bands during volume discovery on this hardware encrypting drive."

Before i get to my questions, I would like to add I am also entirely exhausted of reaching out to microsoft for help. They are fucking useless and each ticket I've opened with them results in a redundant cycle that ends nowhere at the cost of hrs of my time sitting on hold or following their recommended troubleshooting suggestions that are just redundant to the previous attempts to help.

My specific questions are as follows:

1.0 Everything I google regarding bitlocker just returns bugs people experiencing from when the are trying to get bitlocker to work properly and not much for scenarios that want it removed completely from a system. Does anyone know of any recommened resources I can do some more learning on the matter?

2.0 Am I wrong to think that turning off, disabling and removing the means for these operations to launch/initiate/run in the background will also prevent the system from attempting to initiate those operations?

3.1 Potential work around I thought to try, any feedback is appreciated, if either of those event viewer error messages are actually telling me that I must install a bitlocker driver for the service to properly launch and the issue will work itself out.

3.2 The fallback plan is to reboot my approach completely and convert Windows 11 back to Windows 10. Have never done this extreme of a fix so any feedback is gratefully recieved. Does anyone have any goto resources for this procedure to help me keep from anything falling thru the cracks.

4.0 Last couple notes if it helps, another bug that I noticed but fixed is my one screen's taskbar does this wierd shit where the whole thing gets super fucking tiny and just floats in the middle of the lower screen. The issue only stopped when I reinstalled the back ported Windows 11 24h1 version or whatever it's called. Since being under the previous update version the taskbar glitch has gone away. Went thru 3 hrs of troubleshooting with Microsoft for this one and despite their most urgent attempts to prove otherwise, we came to the conclusion it was not the hardware, monitors or gou driver. It only happened to whatever monitor was assigned by the system to be considered monitor "1."

Nothing here is life or death so I'm not overly worried but at the same time I'd love to get some insight into either end of this shitshow but to reiterate, fixing the bitlocker shit is enemy of the state numero uno.

Any and all input to follow will be so appreciated. Thank you to anyone in advance who made it this far thru this rant and replies. To them especially but also to anyone else that pops in, I'd also like to wish you all a wonderful fucking holiday season!

My father is not a gamer by any sense of the meaning. He plays the mobile game kinda platform style shooters here and there but that's it.

Was racking my brain for something to get him when for no reason I found myself digging up memories of being 4 or 5 years old sitting on his lap playing some flying shooter game. Him and my mom were 17 & 19 when they had me so I often forget how much of life they missed raising a little shitbrick that early in their lives.

So I really went out on a limb and felt like I was reaching with this present. Going so far as to get an extra Amazon card either for someone else if he liked it or for him if he didn't like it.

Holy shit did he like it. Took me by full surprise. As soon as I showed him the library he was like a kid in a candy shop. So many stories and anecdotes about this game and that game. Told me how the "idiots" at megaman made sequels 1-8, then for reasons before he could google them, they skipped megaman 9 and went to megaman x, megaman x2, and megaman x3.

Told me how when I was around 6 or 7 I was obsessed with tecmo bowl, tecmo super bowl and tecmo superbowl 3. Which I remember. But what I didn't remember was that I used to shut the Nintendo off anytime I (playing only as the Buffalo Bills) was about to lose the game, would quickly shutoff the Nintendo so not to ruin my perfect seasons. Then would throw a bitchfit tantrum over losing that my parents would have to take away the controllers from me cuz part of my tantrum would be biting the soft rubber controller cords. Which were not in their broke ass budgets at the time.

Anywho... that's all. What I thought was a risky Xmas gift turned out to be a wonderfully appreciated gift accompanied by an amazing walk down memory lane with the rents.

Gimi 30 year old Ciri on a unicorn with new monsters, magic and a good ass storyline, and I'll be good to go.

Ok maybe they didnt steal my heart but they definitely stole my admiration! So here is my story of what happened and the snowball that came so fucking close to being the coolest thing a person will ever do in their lifetime.

The event was the Buffalo Bills vs San Francisco 49ers NFL game that aired on NBC this past Sunday night. Anyone who saw the game will agree it was one of the best displays of the world's finest athletes of their sport battling an unforgiving opponent known as Lake Effect Snow.

We are talking about a game between some of the best, if not the greatest, players of their generation and position who could barely keep their feet under them taking off from the snap. The finest route runners, sprint from the snap at a jogging pace, run in one straight direction, stomp their feet on the ground like anticlockwise breaks, and just turn around to try and catch the ball. Lol I digress but you get the point. It was a snowy wintery shitshow for anyone not raised by Bills Mafia.

Which brings us to the snowball. Now I know the snowball throw was undeniably the outcome of drunken luck but I don't care. The snowball throw was so beautiful that whoever is the thrower was either sent by God or the snowball was thrown by God themself.

Just put yourself in this mystery Tom Brady's shoes. The known knowns to any Bills game is that the tailgating isnt on a flex schedule. It starts at 9am regardless if kickoff time is 1pm or 8:15pm like it was on this day. At kickoff you are already piss drunk, sitting in the corner end zone seats, waiting for an excuse to throw some snow in the air.

Much to their dismay, the 49ers march down the field looking ready to score. The Bills D puts up a nice 3rd down stop and force the field goal. Reason to cheer. The mad snowballer begins warming his pitching arm.

As the snowman marksman packs his snowy ammunition, the 9ers line up for the kick. The moment escalates, the crowd chants their taunts, the ball is snapped!

Its at that moment the future walk on NFL Super Bowl MVP, cocks his arm, waits... waits... the ball is kicked and the Snowball is released.

Time fucking freezes. Finish this out as if you are the thrower:

You see only your snowball at first. Prolly with one eye closed and your buddy clenching your jacket with thrill as he and the surrounding fans watch as the snowball they watched you throw, CLEARS THE FUCKING BACK NET.

"No fucking way" starts getting murmured as people start to see the snowball's path to greatness.

You follow the line of the ball, as it approaches the goal posts your line of sight SEES THE FUCKING KICKED FOOTBALL CLOSING IN ON THE GOAL POSTS FROM THE OTHER SIDE!

CLOSER!

CLOSER!

ITS GUNA FUCKING HIT THE BA-awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwe

All kidding aside I want to genuinely meet the person who let it fly. That is not a short throw. That is not a still wind. That snow ball moved too little to be a lucky throw. It was launched as hard as someone could throw it, at the football being kicked from 40ish yards away, AND NARROWLY MISSED! Fuck I'd be telling all my grandkids I could throw a snowball over them mountains if I were the mad snowthrower.

Lol my glass slippers:

What is Britain?

Is it the same as the UK?

What is Briton?

Wtf is up with Canada?

Is it it's own country?

If yes, then why do they still salute the queen or king?

If no, how are they operating as it's own country?

Same for Australia I guess, too?

Was there an Australian revolution?

Are all parts of the British island the same country?

Or are Scotland and Ireland seperate countries?

What the shit happened to freedom of information act? Now we not only have to sacrifice our privacy to some 3rd party contractor but I must also create a fucking account in order to access information our government provides? Fuck that shit. I'm just guna make a throwaway account. Scrape the fucking site dry and upload the shit to my own website. Fuck them.

I'm on 24H2 Windows 11 with a local account set up, ran windows debloat tool and have CoPilot/onedrive/other data mining features un-installed.

Edit: I have a plan to make the switch to Linux. For now I was just looking for any feedback on how to handle current Windows OS. I whole heartedly hate Microsoft as much as the next, I promise lol.

I think it's the same color as the color designation for:

Avg.: 72°F | 58°F

But I have no idea what the graph is showing if the blue line is showing the Temperature at that time of the day. All the values change with the vertical slider for to change the time of day.

I want tonpreface that I use exclusively Lemmy for my source for all news. I have no real social media accounts, will never be caught dead watching network or local news on TV (idc if im 37 its cartoons of gtfo lol). I use duckduckgo, Firefox for search and browser ever since I was tasked at work to keep a pulse on seo rankings. Id give cancer permission take my testicles befor ingive any fuckin company's ai permission to my data. If any of my hardware or software is using "AI" it is not at the front end or a configurable setting. What I'm building to is that I feel I put in more effort than most to not have the news I am fed influenced by anything more than what is happening in the world right now and the decisions news outlets make to report on.

Now we have that established, I can elaborate on my question. When I see reports of protesting in the US (live outside of Buffalo, NY obligatory Go Bills!), I see primarily protests in opposition to an event or thing. I get the literal definition of protest, I'm speaking of the mission people are protesting under. Protesting police brutality, protesting oil line, fuck the insurection that doesnt fall under this example but there have been other actual protests against election results (see Buffalo ~~shithead~~ I mean mayor, Byron Brown's most recent election).

Why are the so few:

Protest for improved living conditions. Protesting for higher wages (ok I admit I forgot about this one till now. I do see unions protesting for this) Protesting for lower tuition costs. Not loan forgiveness but legitimate improvements to the corrupt financial structure allowing shit like Alabama's highest paid public office position is Nick fuckin Sabin. Protest for better medical billing regulations.

Is it just the way news headlines and articles are written domestically vs globally? Is it a vernacular thing where US English grammatical structure dictates a protest must be against and never for? Or is it cultural thing where American laziness has evolved into something horrible needs to happen for action to happen (We don't become known as one of the fattest countries thanks our love of working hard). On the same note different page, is it that protest I see for better living conditions don't have the luxury to protest against something? Whether it be a question of freedom of speech, governing corruption or other similar issues.

ORRRRR do you think I am off base here and there actually isn't a difference between domestic and other counties protests?