Use something like Backblaze or Hetzner storage boxes for off-site backups. There are a number of tools for making this painless, so pick your favorite. If you have the means, I recommend doing a disaster recovery scenario every so often (i.e. disconnect existing drives, reinstall the OS, and load everything from remote backup).

Generally speaking, follow the 3-2-1 rule:

• 3 copies of everything on
• 2 different types of media with
• 1 copy off site (at least)

For your situation, this could be:

• 3 copies - your computer (NVMe?), TrueNas (HDD?), off-site backup; ideally have a third local device (second computer?)
• 2 media - NVMe and HDD
• 1 copy off site - Backblaze, Hetzner, etc

You could rent a cloud server, but it’ll be a lot more expensive vs just renting storage.

And my kid wants a fingerboard. What’s next, pogs?

I want to use their launcher, but can’t, because they refuse to support it on Linux. That doesn’t feel great. Yeah, I can use Heroic, but I can use that for EGS as well. Offline installers aren’t nearly as valuable if that means I need to mess with WINE myself.

Steam eliminates all of that headache for me and gives me a first class experience. Buying from GOG feels like so much of a downgrade, so I have to convince myself to do it every time. I like that they’re DRM-free, but many of my Steam games at DRM-free as well, so it’s not a huge value add for me.

Ooh, maybe they’ll make a Linux client next! That was 2013 for Steam.

All of them? Maybe an international consortium that pays devs in their home currency.

Yup, there are a lot of bad charities, and the good ones often can’t handle billions in donations. And doing that takes time away from things you enjoy. There’s a reason he didn’t step away from his position until his 90s, he likes what he does.

And I argue it’s not a given that someone is a bad person just because they have billions of dollars.

If the mere fact of being a billionaire is bad, which it obviously is,

I don’t think that’s obvious at all. Becoming a billionaire just means you have a billion dollars worth of assets, and it doesn’t say anything about how you got that money.

There’s a high correlation between billionaire’s and being a bad person, but it’s not 1:1.

Bill & Malinda Gates Foundation

It’s a fantastic charity, and it funds a lot of other great charities. I’m very much not a fan of Bill Gates’ career (I’m a diehard Linux user), but his charitable endeavors and recommended book lists are fantastic.

I don’t care if the person running a charity is a billionaire, I care that they do a good job. He has made philanthropy his life’s mission, and that’s exactly the kind of person I want backing a charity.

ethical billionaire

A close example is Warren Buffett. He’s about as ethical as they come IMO. He still lives in the same house he bought over 60 years ago, and he has given away a ton of money:

As of June 2025, Buffett had donated over $60 billion to charitable causes.

Hearing him talk about it, it’s apparently really hard to give away that amount of money. He wants to give away something like 99% of his money, but he seems to really like his job and that takes priority for him. He has claimed his children are tasked w/ giving the rest away within 10 years of his passing, outside of the little he has marked for inheritance.

Maybe he’s planning to, or maybe he has, idk. We can only really evaluate him on what he does.

I don’t misunderstand your point, I reject it. When have we ever seen a government care more about taking care of its people than gaining power for its rulers? The more money and responsibility you give to a government, the more corrupt it becomes.

That said, I do think something like UBI makes sense. Make it a simple cash pass-through where everyone is brought above the poverty line. I personally would prefer to structure it as a negative income tax, so you qualify if your income is below some amount, and everyone is brought between the poverty line and a “living wage” (say, 2X poverty line). It’s equivalent to UBI, just with less sticker shock and a clearer paper trail (need to file a tax return). Look at the government shutdown, social security is still going out, I want NIT to be the same (and ideally replace SS).

I say we replace all welfare programs with a UBI-type system. Charities would then exist to help people manage that money, get out of addictions, etc… If people are mistreated at work, they’ll have the option of leaving. If a child is mistreated, child protection services (could be a charity) can move the child and those tax dollars to a better home. UBI would solve a ton of problems just by ensuring everyone has enough.

If we touch billionaires’ money, it should be with inheritance laws. I think we should tax all assets as if they were liquidated if they aren’t donated to a qualifying charity. That’s the biggest loophole I know about, and it should be closed.

GabeN is hardly rich enough to end poverty or even just hunger, and that’s not the only important cause people could work on. I’d be happy if every billionaire picked some cause and donated to it, no need for society’s input.

I have three kids to support, and $1M would only produce about $30k/year in income if I use 3% withdrawal. I can’t realistically use a higher withdrawal rate given how far I am from retirement.

I probably only need $2-3M (current spending is $60k or so), but $5M gives me plenty of cushion and lets me donate generously to causes I believe in. At $2-3M, I need to be careful when the economy is bad, $5M means I’ll never need to worry about money again.

Give me a bunch of money and I’ll show you. 😜

Likewise, shame should be where shame is due, like with the whole lootbox gambling economy thing.

And while theirs is bad, it’s also one of the less bad of the MTX nonsense since you can trade stuff on the market, no? So even when they’re bad, they’re on the less bad end of the spectrum.

It would be nice to have no billionaires,

I agree, but the next best is to eliminate generational wealth. Maybe there should be caps on how much can be inherited, with the rest going to charities the heirs don’t directly benefit from.

I don’t think billionaires are automatically bad people, but there is a strong correlation between huge wealth and bad people.

How? All you’re really doing here is stereotyping rich people.

For example, Americans are generally fat (higher obesity rate than much of the world), but that doesn’t mean all Americans are fat. To determine whether a random American is fat, we need to actually look at them, not just know their nationality.

No, I’m explicitly rejecting your point.

Why does he need society’s input? Last I checked, charities didn’t ask society at large, they just get funding from the people who care. Am I wrong to go to the park to pick up litter without asking society at large if that’s the best use of my time?

We don’t need to have everything go through a committee. If he wants to do a good thing, that’s awesome.

I would probably donate most of it to a worthy cause. I don’t need anywhere near that amount of money, anything over $5M gets donated.