u/One-Sprinkles-4833

So the UK is about to implement a new law that will force all mobile devices to scan apps like the camera and messaging for nudity and the only way to opt out of it is to verify your age. I'm not sure yet if using a vpn is a valid way around it yet because it's not being implemented until September. Under no circumstances do I want this technology on my devices. I have a Galaxy S23 phone and a Galaxy Tab A9+. For now, I've disabled automatic downloads in my developer options but I know that's far from a foolproof fix.

I'm open to rooting the tablet because I don't really use my banking apps on it, I do frequently use them and tap to pay on my phone though, is it true that rooting stops these apps from working? For the alternate method of executing commands on a PC using ADB, I've seen quite a few people say that even that didn't stop them from getting updates.

I've seen people mentioning firewall apps that block certain apps from connecting to the internet, but I think I would prefer a solution that doesn't rely on these apps remaining available. If any of those were to be discontinued, I would have to find a new solution anyway.

Losing access to my mobile banking isn't the end of the world for me, I'm happy to just check my balance online whenever I need to and go back to carrying my physical debit card around. I know there are security risks, but I'm already very careful about what apps I download and what websites I visit. I haven't had a virus on my phone or my PC in over 10 years.

What's the best course of action here?

I spent my entire 20s battling severe mental illness. Currently, I'm finally doing mentally well enough to look for a job, and physically only well enough for something part-time. I know not to mention my physical condition or any accommodations I might need until *after* I've been hired (realistically this would include frequent breaks to sit down for a few minutes, if it's a job where I'll be on my feet, and sitting down at the register if it's a job that usually requires standing at a till). But other than that, I'm pretty lost on the rest. I didn't go to college but I at least have a high school diploma.

What are some common entry level job questions and some ways to answer them that are honest and not fake or like, self-glazing?

This is super embarrassing to admit but, for like the past hour I've been doing mock interviews with Google Gemini and it asked me *so many* hypothetical scenario questions like "a customer comes up to you rudely complaining about not being able to find an item in store that the website showed was in stock, how would you handle this?" And I get that if I was coming in with job experience, the question would just be "tell me about a time a customer was rude to you and how you handled it", but because I've never had a job, that's not an option. But how common are these kinds of questions? If they ask me say, 8 total questions, would half of them include hypotheticals, or maybe only 1 or 2?

Considering I'm only applying for minimum wage entry level positions, how should I respond to questions like "why do you want to wok here" or "why should we hire you for this role."

My obviously inappropriate instinct for the first question is "well, I wasted my 20s being suicidal and can't afford to go to college and I'd like to help my partner with the bills" but my current more professional reframing of that is "Well, I've been a househusband for 10 years and I'm looking for a change in routine, to meet new people, and something to get me out of the house more." Is this an okay general answer?

And for the second question something like "I'm going to take this role seriously, show up on time, and I have high standards. I take pride in my work, no matter what that work is." And then throw in something personal, or a little quip based on what the job is like, there's a pizza place near me hiring that offers free pizza on shift "and free pizza is such a great motivator, I'll put my best foot forward if it means free pizza!"

None of that is a lie either, I do take pride in the work I currently do to manage the household, everything from cleaning to grocery shopping to making sure I get to appointments on time. But does saying it that way sound too generic and fake?

Are there any good online resources for mock interviews and other practical advice?

Would really appreciate your thoughts and prayers, I'm going to need them because this whole process is so intimidating for someone like me, a recovering agoraphobic with zero experience.

My whole life, I never really washed my face. I did as a teenager when puberty made me get acne, but past age 16 I stopped getting zits, so I stopped washing my face. I would just exfoliate with a wet washcloth in the shower every other day, no soap, no cleanser, and my skin was clear except for some blackheads on my nose and chin.

​

Now, at 32, I finally decided I wanted to get rid of the blackheads. Got some cleanser, scrub, and moisturiser with salicylic acid in it and use the scrub every other day and the cleanser every other day and moisturise daily. Been doing that for like 2 months and I still have blackheads AND now I'm getting zits regularly! Am I doing something wrong?

I have been having issues with my audio dropping out and the only way to get it to come back on is to restart my PC. I am a musician and I use my PC for audio daily so this has been a massive hindrance to the creative process. I have been looking into this problem and trying so many different things to solve it.

So far I have, disabled the windows power save settings that sometimes shuts off USB ports and headphone jacks, I have changed my power settings to high performance and disabled USB selective suspend setting, I have disabled fast startup, I have fully updated and reinstalled the following drivers multiple times: Audio, WiFi, Bluetooth, AMD chipset, and graphics, I have the most up to date audio firmware update for my motherboard, I have changed the audio bit rate to match the native bit rate in FL Studio, then changed it back to the default, I have disabled global C state control and disabled XMP in my bios, and since I am not using Ethernet I also disabled Realtek Gaming 2.5GbE Family Controller in my device manager.

I’m sure there are more settings that I’ve tweaked I just can’t remember them all at this point. Pretty much the only things I haven’t tried yet are reinstalling windows and updating my bios. In my extensive reading about this issue I have seen a few people say that they reinstalled Windows multiple times and still had the problem so I would rather not do that until every single other option has been exhausted. I have also read that updating the bios when it is not needed can cause problems and the manufacturer of my motherboard has not listed fixing audio issues in any of their patch notes for bios updates since I bought the motherboard around this time last year. I also have not yet tried to do any registry edits because I had at one point turned to asking AI for help and I don’t trust that a chat bot would be giving me accurate information on something like that.

By far the biggest issue I have had with trouble shooting this issue is the fact that the problem is completely random and seems unrepeatable. It can go days, sometimes even up to a week without happening and it happens no matter how I am using audio, with iTunes, YouTube, or in my DAW. Bluetooth seems slightly more stable, sometimes I will lose audio, switch to Bluetooth and it will work for a few hours and then my Bluetooth driver appears to crash and it will display an error in my device manager. I have no idea if these problems are related or if the Bluetooth issue and audio issue are entirely independent of each other.

I checked for any latency in latencymon and appeared to have a mild issue with dxgkrnl.sys and wdf01000.sys. I’m aware some of the solutions I have tried also doubled as possible solutions for the directx kernal latency, however none have worked so far. And my understanding of the wdf01000 is that this number coincides with a non-specific driver on my PC. I’m not currently sure which one it could be.

My specs are as follows: MSI MAG B650 Tomohawk motherboard, Ryzen 7 7700 CPU and 32GB of Corsair Vengeance ram. I don't have a GPU. Using Windows 11.

Any help is greatly appreciated as I have been pulling my hair out over this!!

I have been having issues with my audio dropping out and the only way to get it to come back on is to restart my PC. I am a musician and I use my PC for audio daily so this has been a massive hindrance to the creative process. I have been looking into this problem and trying so many different things to solve it.

So far I have, disabled the windows power save settings that sometimes shuts off USB ports and headphone jacks, I have changed my power settings to high performance and disabled USB selective suspend setting, I have disabled fast startup, I have fully updated and reinstalled the following drivers multiple times: Audio, WiFi, Bluetooth, AMD chipset, and graphics, I have the most up to date audio firmware update for my motherboard, I have changed the audio bit rate to match the native bit rate in FL Studio, then changed it back to the default, I have disabled global C state control and disabled XMP in my bios, and since I am not using Ethernet I also disabled Realtek Gaming 2.5GbE Family Controller in my device manager.

I’m sure there are more settings that I’ve tweaked I just can’t remember them all at this point. Pretty much the only things I haven’t tried yet are reinstalling windows and updating my bios. In my extensive reading about this issue I have seen a few people say that they reinstalled Windows multiple times and still had the problem so I would rather not do that until every single other option has been exhausted. I have also read that updating the bios when it is not needed can cause problems and the manufacturer of my motherboard has not listed fixing audio issues in any of their patch notes for bios updates since I bought the motherboard around this time last year. I also have not yet tried to do any registry edits because I had at one point turned to asking AI for help and I don’t trust that a chat bot would be giving me accurate information on something like that.

By far the biggest issue I have had with trouble shooting this issue is the fact that the problem is completely random and seems unrepeatable. It can go days, sometimes even up to a week without happening and it happens no matter how I am using audio, with iTunes, YouTube, or in my DAW. Bluetooth seems slightly more stable, sometimes I will lose audio, switch to Bluetooth and it will work for a few hours and then my Bluetooth driver appears to crash and it will display an error in my device manager. I have no idea if these problems are related or if the Bluetooth issue and audio issue are entirely independent of each other.

I checked for any latency in latencymon and appeared to have a mild issue with dxgkrnl.sys and wdf01000.sys. I’m aware some of the solutions I have tried also doubled as possible solutions for the directx kernal latency, however none have worked so far. And my understanding of the wdf01000 is that this number coincides with a non-specific driver on my PC. I’m not currently sure which one it could be.

My specs are as follows: MSI MAG B650 Tomohawk motherboard, Ryzen 7 7700 CPU and 32GB of Corsair Vengeance ram. I don't have a GPU. Using Windows 11.

Any help is greatly appreciated as I have been pulling my hair out over this!!

Lately, I've really been trying to get my music to sound more professional so I've been looking into mixing and mastering. I think I've boiled it down to two, (technically three?) questions. Well, the bigger question that comes up the more I look into this *really * boils down to: what is the point of mastering, especially if I'm a solo producer?

Firstly, I keep seeing this idea of leaving "headroom" crop up. Supposedly, this means that you lower the volume of your mix so that when it's mastered, it has somewhere to go without clipping or distorting. This confuses me though because if I already have it as loud as it can go without clipping in my mix, why would I then need to make it any louder? Is this step only needed if I'm going to send my music to be mastered by someone else? Because I am definitely not going to do that, probably ever.

Secondly, from what I understand, mastering is done with a WAV of the song, not in the DAW project file. Again, what is the point of doing that? I understand that if I'm sending my music to be mastered by someone else, this makes sense because they probably don't own every DAW known to man. But if I'm working alone, I'll always have access to my DAW and can tweak all of the levels individually.

So if everything sounds good in the mix, what's the point of mastering?