I have an old HP Pavilion p6-2100 with an AMD A4 A4-3420 CPU and I am trying to dedicate it to Plex and Stremio. When I use it with Stremio the CPU is pegged and there is a lot of lag between the video and the sound. Would updating it with a new video card resolve this?

I have a new WD Blue 1TB ssd hard drive that doesn't want to get formatted or mounted. When I attach the drive via USB I get an error message of:

Unable to Mount 1.0 Tb volume
An operation is already pending

Eventually I get:

Unable to Mount 1.0 Tb volume
timeout was reached

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T570 running Linux Mint 22.1 Xia base. "GParted" and "Disks" don't see the drive. Is there something I can do to access the disc or is it toast?

Will my OS break if I make it the system Read Only? I am installing a raspberry pi 4 (Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit)) in my car and read on Lemmy that if I make the system files Read Only my system won't get corrupt when power is abruptly turned off. I will leave the 'home' directory read-write. I realize I will have to remove the drive and run updates regularly.

I know there are programs around (Libation etc) that let me download my Audible library. Is there a FOSS program that lets me down load my Chirp library?

Is there a simple text editor available for Android that doesn't sell my data?

I'm a helper and worked with an old time electrician and he did something a year ago that still troubles me. We wired a 50 amp 220 volt circuit for some heat pumps. he brought the wires into the panel, hooked them to ground and the breaker and left the white wire capped with a wire nut. He told me it will work fine and forget about it. Did we leave somebody with an open neutral? Is the ground wire the neutral now? Should I try and go back and fix this?

I always heard not to skimp on 'Tires, Shoes and mattresses'