Exempt employees are expected to get their work done, but the work does need to be reasonable. If they give you 40 hours of meetings you can have a good case they are asking too much to expect anything more. While hours are not given by law, there is still an expectation of reasonableness.
Which is to say they cannot fire you for not getting your work done. However at-will means they can let you go - but that is not firing you for cause and there is a big difference in how the law treats that.
That does happen. The law doesn't back them up, but many companies have that culture and good luck proving you were let go because of that vs something that is legal.
There are plenty of jobs that are more reasonable. They tend to be boring jobs though, so many are willing to pay the price to work a more exciting job.
There are plenty of people who openly admit that they don't want anyone to own guns. Gun control doesn't have to mean you won't be able to own guns, but it is a reasonable fear of those who want to own guns that it will mean they can't.
Unfortunately war keeps proving the mines are a very useful tool, and they work well as part of a battle plan when used early. That makes the shoot and forget strategy a very useful one for any military commander.
The better answer is limited lifespan. Maybe remote triggers - if the enemy doesn't learn how to trigger them. That is when we think the current battle is over any mines left should just destroy themselves in hopes that nobody happens to be near them.
This is a good thing if you love non-fascist governments. The rule itself is something to support, but it was created in the way of fascism and so needed to be struck down on that basis.
The task now is to rebuild the rule in the correct way.
The bigger point about cloud that most miss is make sure you are paying them a reasonably price for the service. So long as you are the customer and not the product the cloud can be good.
That has not been my experience. There is always more work to do than I have time. However it doesn't pile up because lower priority work just doesn't get done.
First question: what will you do about data backup? Nextcloud and Immich both imply important data that you don't want to lose. You say you have some harddrives, so look for some computer that can take more than one harddrive and then setup RAID with snapshots. I'd go for a RAID setup such that you need two drives to fail before you lose data, but there are plenty of debate. We often say RAID is not a backup - you should start thinking about the next step in your backup setup soon.
Used vs new is always the question. In general the newer the system the less power it will use to do the same work. However ARM will almost always use less power than x86 even if the x86 is much newer. I specified work here, your computer will nothing most of the time so idle power matters too.
People don't cross tracks for fun. They cross when there is something on the other side. Thus good city design (look up desire paths!) will ensure the places people really want to cross are safe and they can leave everything else alone. The picture is too small to get a clear picture of what all is around the track, but I see no indication there is any reason for anyone to cross in this area.
Nobody who has been following data (including satellite pictures) has said anything for a while that I can find. I assume government spies have good information but they are not talking.
About a year ago the predictions were late this year, or early next year. At the time Ukraine was typically getting about 60 artillery per day, for the last several months it has been around half that most days. Is this because Russia is better at protecting artillery and so it will last longer, or because they are seeing the end is near and so not using as much - I have no way to know.
If anyone knows of a source of information that is reasonably accurate who is talking let me know. I don't follow many such sources, but generally the sources I do follow will report when others share useful data.
In the cases where I've been asked to do things like this it was instead of my regular work, not on top of it. US labor laws are tricky, but in general they need to assign you an amount of work that can be done in a reasonable amount of time. (contact a lawyer for details)
Asking about the culture and work environment is what you are supposed to be doing when they ask "are there any questions". I've never had a problem finding a job where I'm expected to work about 40 hours and go home. Once in a while they ask for extra work in an emergency, but that is rare and they have all made it up to me somehow.
The protection isn't great I'll agree, but it isn't hard to find places that don't treat you like that. Don't work for the rest no matter how interesting the job is.