Nollij

@Nollij@sopuli.xyz

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3211: Amperage⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨days⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Seems like a hit that combined “make it look like an accident” with “leave no witnesses”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fake moo⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Uh oh, it’s caught in a loop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you have to deal with this during your morning commute?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app”⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  FWIW, Office (or more accurately, everything that was part of Office) was renamed Microsoft 365 years ago, in 2020. That was long before the AI insanity.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft kills official way to activate windows without internet⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re asking the wrong question. You should be asking “who is trying to use Windows without any Internet access at all?”

  Which is definitely some people/situations. It’s not the standard user-centric use case that Microsoft expects, but it does exist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK Tempur Mattresses fail quickly and the warranty is fake⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  While the AG has a number of options available, most common are civil suits. But even before that, simply having the AG in the middle is putting them on notice that they need to really, REALLY be confident that they are in the right. In most circumstances, they will simply approve your warranty claim to avoid the risk.

  When you see headlines of “[state] AG sues XYZ Corp for not honoring warranty claims”, it means there have been a ton of complaints, or a lot of complaints where they still refused. You should never purchase from a company that’s had one of these headlines recently.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK Tempur Mattresses fail quickly and the warranty is fake⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Adding onto this, every state AG regularly pursues companies for not honoring their warranty. It takes some paperwork (usually original purchase receipt, original warranty terms, and your desired resolution), but it’s usually not too bad. Yours might even list it as a common category for your complaint. Probably takes about 20 minutes.

  Companies don’t usually fuck around when the AG is watching. You probably aren’t the only one to complain, and too many complaints can lead to a full-blown lawsuit from one of the most capable organizations in the state. The penalties can include your entire company - including parent, children, and sibling companies, being banned from doing business in the state.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK Tempur Mattresses fail quickly and the warranty is fake⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This one is tough. A longer warranty is a way to reassure customers that it’s made better, with the promise that it will be repaired/replaced if it breaks. And if they honor their warranties as promised, it’s probably valid. Warranty claims are expensive, regardless of industry, so they go to great lengths to minimize claims. Whatever the warranty is, you can reasonably be sure that it will last that long, but probably not a second longer. Again, assuming a trustworthy company that will honor the warranty.

  Otherwise, anyone can shit in a box and mark it guaranteed. If it’s from Amazon/AliExpress, the company probably won’t even exist in 6 months (but a strangely similar new company will).

  The flip side is that an unusually short/weak warranty, below that of its competitors, is almost certainly a shit product. They aren’t even going to pretend it’s up to industry standards.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Solder-It-Yourself DDR5: Russian modders pitch the Idea of making their own RAM⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s still the same key problem - the memory chips have a very low available supply. Increasing the supply requires new semiconductor fabs to be built, which takes a very long time.

  Outside of that, I guess it could be described as right-to-repair. If you have a bad stick of RAM, it’s likely that some or all of the chips are still good and could be reused.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The dominoes are falling: motherboard sales down 50% as PC enthusiasts are put off by stinking memory prices⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Asus is a significant ODM, supplying boards for brands like HP. I’m not sure what lines/models they make today, but they are a lot bigger than just their consumer lines.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Neither do I, Mr. Raccoon⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re right, and unfortunately this will be used as an excuse for the next cop convicted of brutally murdering an innocent person to avoid prison.