Nollij
@Nollij@sopuli.xyz
- Comment on Well, That’s One Way to Sell Americans on Electric Cars. The U.S. has been wary of EVs. As the cost of gas soars, we’re now paying the price. 5 hours ago:
Level 1 charging can work for a lot of people, but it ends up needing a lot more mental energy. You have to more carefully calculate capacity/range, daily needs, charging speeds, variances, and unexpected needs. The end result being that it’s not a great experience.
Level 2, even at the slowest speeds, are enough that you can fully recharge most vehicles overnight. And you have enough capacity to last through the day unless you are a super commuter or drive professionally.
- Comment on Well, That’s One Way to Sell Americans on Electric Cars. The U.S. has been wary of EVs. As the cost of gas soars, we’re now paying the price. 6 hours ago:
Used EVs are remarkably cheap. The problem is that it still effectively requires you to be able to charge at home, which is not common on cheaper housing.
- Comment on USB-C PSU is 9v *only*. Is that compliant? Did a PD-compliant charger fry my gear? 1 day ago:
Digging up the manual and promotional material showed a few things. They regularly refer to it as USB-C by name, and the manual lists the models as OBELIEVE OBL-0901500E / OBL-0901500B. I can’t find much on these, but they are manufactured by DongGuan, suggesting an off-the-shelf part.
IOW, the damage is unlikely to be from plugging in a standards-compliant USB-C PD adapter.
- Comment on USB-C PSU is 9v *only*. Is that compliant? Did a PD-compliant charger fry my gear? 3 days ago:
What’s the model of radio, and if you have it, the official charger?
- Comment on USB-C PSU is 9v *only*. Is that compliant? Did a PD-compliant charger fry my gear? 3 days ago:
Does the device (actually, both devices- radio and charger) say it’s USB (logo, etc), or does it just look like a USB-C connector? Kenwood (now part of JVC) is pretty big. They’re unlikely to use the logo if not compliant.
Also, you mentioned plugging the display unit to power. Was that to an official charger, or to your own charger? Is it possible that your charger is bad? A lot of cheap, generic ones (anything from Amazon or AliExpress) can damage electronics.
It’s also entirely possible that your unit was defective before you even opened the box. Missing the charger means it probably wasn’t just unsold inventory.
- Comment on Lenovo’s New ThinkPads Score 10/10 for Repairability— Repair goes mega mainstream with the launch of Lenovo's new T-series laptops 2 weeks ago:
I presume you are referring to the SuperFish scandal in 2015.
- Comment on Lenovo’s New ThinkPads Score 10/10 for Repairability— Repair goes mega mainstream with the launch of Lenovo's new T-series laptops 2 weeks ago:
First, you have to define “comparable”. These are Enterprise-grade laptops. Their class includes the Dell Latitude and HP Elitebook. It doesn’t include anything you will ever find at Best Buy. It might be tempting to do so, since your visible specs like CPU and RAM are the same. But they really aren’t the same.
Within their class, Lenovo has (for over a decade) been noticeably more expensive than their counterparts. Roughly $100-150 more per unit for the T4x0/T14 vs a Latitude 74x0 (now Dell Pro) or an Elitebook 840.
Current prices are: HP Elitebook 8 G1i 14 - Core Ultra 5 236v, 16GB/512GB, $1249
Dell Pro 14 - Core Ultra 5 236v, 16GB/512GB, $1659
Lenovo Thinkpad T14 Gen 6 - Core Ultra 235u, 16GB/512GB, $1809.
All have integrated graphics.
I don’t think the detailed specs/pricing for Gen7 (what the article is about) has been announced yet. I would expect it to be in line with previous generations, since their 9/10 repairability score was.
- Comment on WhatsApp officially names Mullvad and Amnezia VPN as go-to tools for bypassing censorship 2 weeks ago:
Now is probably a good time to remember what a VPN can and cannot do. It can block your ISP from knowing which sites you’re going to. It can bypass ISP-level blocks, including geo-blocks.
It cannot stop the endpoints (WhatsApp, both the client and server) from harvesting whatever data they want from there.
Meta is clearly concerned about bans on WhatsApp. This is nothing more than their own self-interests.
- Comment on xkcd #3211: Amperage 3 weeks ago:
In the US, most protection comes from the breaker. It’s not common (or at least, not standard) to have overcurrent protection on extension cords, power strips, or even the outlet itself. And for typical wiring and uses, it usually works well enough. But it is possible to connect a space heater or hairdryer (1500w and 1800w respectively, due to the 80% rule for continuous draw) to that standard 16-gauge extension cord, or connect multiple space heaters to one circuit. Some homes are wired… Creatively… Making it easy to do. In these cases, you’re relying on the 15-amp breaker to trip, which would happen quickly. Not quite as quick, but still happens on a 20-amp. But it might melt a 15-amp receptacle first
If it’s a 30-amp circuit, it won’t trip at all, unless the outlet melts to a short. And this is all assuming the wiring in the wall is rated for that amperage, which is implied but not stated. There are certainly a number of stories where someone upgraded the breaker to keep it from tripping, but didn’t upgrade the wiring.
If we assume he’s talking about the wiring in the wall, this gets very simple. I once lived in a place where the upstairs bedroom and downstairs living room were on the same circuit. I currently live somewhere where a single circuit controls ALL of the bathroom outlets (multiple bathrooms), the garage, as well as outside outlets. Apparently GFCI outlets were more expensive than the entire mess of running copper all over the place.
- Comment on How bad of an idea is it to use computing HDDs in a DIY NAS? 3 weeks ago:
This is highly dependent on what your needs are and how you plan to solve it. SATA-3 maxes at 6gbit, which SAS-2 had in 2009. Most cards are x8, and have at least 4 full speed SAS lanes (of whatever generation). That means 24 Gbit. PCIe x8 2.0 (from 2007) had 4 GB (32 Gbit). So if that meets your needs, you can run it on an ancient board.
However, if you need something more advanced, such as SAS-3, a SAS expander, or a card with more native lanes, then you would need to plan accordingly.
I’ve been running on an LSI 9211-4i4e, which is only a PCIe 2.0 card, for many years. I did notice my speeds dropped when I expanded the 4e to a 15-bay DAS (plus the 4 internal SATA drives), but it’s still enough to meet my needs.
- Comment on How bad of an idea is it to use computing HDDs in a DIY NAS? 3 weeks ago:
It’s not really about 24/7, but it is about quality of components. Enterprise gear is made using slightly better parts and tighter tolerances. Things like more expensive capacitors rated for more hours/cycles, better power filters, things like that.
The end result (and this is easily verified) is the failure rate is much, much lower than comparable consumer-grade equipment.
There is sometimes a blurry line between what counts as enterprise vs pro-sumer vs consumer gear, though.
- Comment on How bad of an idea is it to use computing HDDs in a DIY NAS? 3 weeks ago:
If you can use SAS (you’ll need a SAS PCIe card, roughly $50 used), get SAS drives. They are enterprise-grade exclusively, there is a massive supply of used drives as servers get refreshed, and a very limited secondhand market because most people can’t use SAS drives.
You won’t get the latest or largest drives, but you’ll get something that works perfectly fine for home use.
- Comment on How bad of an idea is it to use computing HDDs in a DIY NAS? 3 weeks ago:
I recommend against Go Hard Drives. They get drives that previously failed but currently test ok, then wipe the SMART data. I had a whopping 133% failure rate (all 3 original, plus 1 replacement) before I returned the whole thing.
If you insist on using them, do the most extensive burn-in testing you possibly can. I would use at least a full week, to make sure it’s actually (semi-) reliable.
- Comment on Gentoo Linux begins Codeberg migration to eventually phase out GitHub repo 4 weeks ago:
Many, many years ago (20-ish?) I spent a full weekend trying to get Gentoo working on an even older PC. I wasn’t completely new to Linux (having installed and used a bit of Mandrake and Fedora Core), but I was certainly no expert.
I spent the entire weekend trying and failing to get a usable system, reinstalling numerous times with different options, installing countless packages, and following innumerable guides on troubleshooting. I never had a system even close to as usable as Fedora was out of the box.
Still, I consider that weekend a complete success. I learned more about Linux in that one weekend than at any point since. Everything after that has been little tidbits needed for the task at hand, without much of the base foundational understanding. Failing with Gentoo taught me so much.
- Comment on Is ironing clothes significantly less common now? 5 weeks ago:
Not OP, but I saw this at an old-school Fortune 500. To get Casual Fridays, you had to donate a certain amount to a specific charity (ours was a local food bank). It wasn’t a lot, something like $25/quarter, but it was definitely an expense
- Comment on Europe’s $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard Has Begun 5 weeks ago:
A credit card the account is with visa, tho it may be managed by your bank thanks to partnerships and bank end integration. Depending on the circumstances you actually will be directed by your bank to contact visa or who ever directly or be forwarded by your bank.
Do you have a source on this? Because it directly contradicts EVERYTHING I have ever experienced. Visa is a payment processor, but more as a middleman. I’ve even been redirected (through automated systems) back to my bank when making a purchase using a Visa card. Any disputes are handled by bank. You can’t get a Visa card without going through a bank. My debit card has a MC logo and can be used as such, but it’s also my ATM card.
Your point about debit vs credit is valid, though possibly more convoluted than needed. On credit, it’s someone else’s money in limbo, until the bill is paid.
- Comment on Facial recognition error: Customer misidentified by Sainsbury's 1 month ago:
Your math is off, by two decimal places.
- Comment on Substack won't let me in without verifying age, and VPN doesn't work; any ideas? 1 month ago:
There are a number of indicators for where someone is from that might be visible to site operators, far beyond a simple IP address. You could try an incognito window (because cookies), as well as changing your region settings.
Beyond that, try spinning up a VM (VMware has a free version, as do many others). Install a fresh OS on it, always pretending to be in whatever your destination country is. Install the (e.g) UK keyboard, select a UK timezone, etc. Install your VPN right away, before opening a browser.
- Comment on What if you printed all of Wikipedia? 1 month ago:
Why would you even do the calculations based on inkjet printers? Even at a simple glance, inkjet is the wrong solution. While they acknowledge at the end that laser would be the way, that was clearly an afterthought and not calculated into anything.
- Comment on Is OpenAI dead yet? 1 month ago:
I just want to add that the crash will take down the entire economy, not just AI and tech companies.
Simply by subtracting AI companies from the equation, the US is already in a pretty substantial recession. The process of them crashing out will make that even worse.
- Comment on OnePlus update blocks downgrades and custom ROMs by blowing a fuse 1 month ago:
Why would they start with the harder one? Samsung is much better funded, and therefore will be a much more difficult case.
And no, it does not matter that Samsung did it first.
- Comment on RAM Prices Got You Down? Try DDR3. Seriously! 1 month ago:
This is basically the exact scenario that led me to detail that I was only talking about consumer gear. Server gear is a very different beast, with a variety of tradeoffs that I didn’t want to get into. For instance, I’m assuming you can only use Registered RAM.
- Comment on Microsoft Gave FBI BitLocker Encryption Keys, Exposing Privacy Flaw 1 month ago:
Most (US) companies don’t consider the US government to be a significant risk to their business, partly because they’re already subject to it.
They also commonly believe that Microsoft can secure these keys more effectively than they could do so in-house. And they’re probably right.
Now, it’s an entirely different story for any companies not subject to US law.
- Comment on RAM Prices Got You Down? Try DDR3. Seriously! 1 month ago:
The biggest problem with DDR3 is that the last (consumer) boards/CPUs that could use it are really, REALLY old. 5th-gen Intel or AM3 AMD. Which means you’re looking at a full decade old, at the newest. These boards also probably can’t do more than 32GB.
Now, I suppose if you only need 32GB RAM and a CPU that’s pathetic by modern standards, then this is a viable path. But that’s going to be a very small group of people.
- Comment on The $20 USD bill is the new 5$ bill 1 month ago:
They introduced the Sacagawea dollar coins a while back with the expectations that people would use them for daily transactions. After an initial brief interest, they quickly fell off. Turns out that people in the US don’t really care to use coins, and used the paper $1 bills at every opportunity.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Seems like a hit that combined “make it look like an accident” with “leave no witnesses”
- Comment on Fake moo 1 month ago:
Looks like McDonald’s changed their sourcing about 10 years ago. Now they use trimmings as you said; previously they used pink slime.
For the record, I never said (nor implied) that it would be fed to food animals. I was thinking more like dog food
- Comment on Fake moo 1 month ago:
McDonald’s gets the very last stage of leftover beef from the carcass. If they don’t buy it, it goes to things like animal feed.
I don’t know how much McDonald’s-grade beef is on a cow, but I’m guessing the real numbers are how much non-McDonald’s beef people are eating, divided by the average weight of cows
- Comment on COVID's "new normal" = safety hysteria, digital dependence and "expert" obedience? 2 months ago:
Uh oh, it’s caught in a loop.
- Comment on Do you have to deal with this during your morning commute? 2 months ago:
There are many reasons that people would use a particular schedule. Congestion is only one, and not even a big one usually.
A far bigger reason is to be done with it so they can get on with their day, whatever that might be. That way the errand(s) are done and won’t interrupt them or weigh on their minds.