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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • Some quick googling suggests that their single-thread performance is really close, but the AMD has triple the cores. Plus extra RAM is always good, and looks to be the newer and faster DDR4.

    The main question for you becomes how multi-threaded your needs are. If you don’t need more than 4 cores, then switching won’t give you anything more. There’s also the smaller question about RAM, with the same criteria.

    If your needs are highly multi-threaded, or RAM-constrained, then switching will be very worthwhile.


  • I left them years ago, but their VPN software has (had?) a critical bug - the killswitch treats “connecting” the same as “connected”.

    Meaning that if the connection drops for any reason and is not immediately reestablished, you not only lose all protection, but you have a false sense of security.




  • The biggest problem I had with the Jodie era was the companions.

    Doctor Who has a rich history of the Doctor/Companion interactions following traditional gender roles. The Doctor is a powerful man who can bend time and space to his will, and his companion is an empathetic woman who can keep him grounded and retain his humanity. While there have been exceptions, this is the default formula.

    When Jodie started, this all got turned upside-down. How should a woman Doctor act? Do they maintain the same character archetype (as they did with the Master/Missy), or do they make the character more feminine? What effect should that have on her relationship with her companions? Should the companion continue to be the traditional feminine role? Headstrong and masculine, but powerless? Wise and sage, like an advisor? This is a difficult plan for even the most accomplished writer.

    Chris Chibnall was apparently not up to the task. Instead, he threw all of the options in at once. At best, it felt crowded and disjointed. But more often, it felt like they were focus-group testing. And by the end, it seemed clear that Kaz was the most popular with test audiences.




  • There are a few, but a dirty secret is because gym attendance is EXTREMELY cyclical. Jan/Feb are loaded with people signing up as part of their new year’s resolutions. If they are month-to-month, then they cancel before April. Locking them into annual contracts means they can’t cancel once they realize they aren’t going anymore.

    There are a few that genuinely do monthly contracts from the beginning. Planet Fitness is the best known, and they use it as a selling point for people that know they probably won’t stick to it. It’s also cheap enough that they don’t feel any urgency to cancel, and can let it ride for a long time while promising themselves they’ll get back to it.


  • Nollij@sopuli.xyztoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldAm I corrupting my data?
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    29 days ago

    Kind of. They will be multiples of 4. Let’s say you got a gigantic 8i8e card, albeit unlikely. That would (probably) have 2 internal and 2 external SAS connectors. Your standard breakout cables will split each one into 4 SATA cables (up to 16 SATA ports if you used all 4 SAS ports and breakout cables), each running at full (SAS) speed.

    But what if you were running an enterprise file server with a hundred drives, as many of these once were? You can’t cram dozens of these cards into a server, there aren’t enough PCIe slots/lanes. Well, there are SAS expansion cards, which basically act as a splitter. They will share those 4 lanes, potentially creating a bottleneck. But this is where SAS and SATA speeds differ- these are SAS lanes, which are (probably) double what SATA can do. So with expanders, you could attach 8 SATA drives to every 4 SAS lanes and still run at full speed. And if you need capacity more than speed, expanders allow you to split those 4 lanes to 24 drives. These are typically built into the drive backplane/DAS.

    As for the fan, just about anything will do. The chip/heatsink gets hot, but is limited to the ~75 watts provided by the PCIe bus. I just have an old 80 or 90mm fan pointing at it.



  • First, this approach is going to fail at some point. Depending on how far away it is, that could be a major issue. It also makes some very bold assumptions about connection speed and latency that are probably not true.

    Second, IP doesn’t reliably show location. My cable ISP is typically geolocated to Chicago, despite it being 2 states away. Same for T Mobile connections.

    Third, it’s incredibly unlikely that the employer is going to be looking at IP addresses to determine location. Even if they wanted to use tech for this purpose, they would use location services/GPS/etc. Which a VPN won’t conceal.

    Fourth, changing the physical mailing address on file would be a bigger flag. But presumably he’ll list that family’s address, which could create other implications.


  • I don’t want to speak to your specific use case, as it’s outside of my wheelhouse. My main point was that SATA cards are a problem.

    As for LSi SAS cards, there’s a lot of details that probably don’t (but could) matter to you. PCIe generation, connectors, lanes, etc. There are threads on various other homelab forums, truenas, unraid, etc. Some models (like the 9212-4i4e, meaning it has 4 internal and 4 external lanes) have native SATA ports that are convenient, but most will have a SAS connector or two. You’d need a matching (forward) breakout cable to connect to SATA. Note that there are several common connectors, with internal and external versions of each.

    You can use the external connectors (e.g. SFF-8088) as long as you have a matching (e.g. SFF-8088 SAS-SATA) breakout cable, and are willing to route the cable accordingly. Internal connectors are simpler, but might be in lower supply.

    If you just need a simple controller card to handle a few drives without major speed concerns, and it will not be the boot drive, here are the things you need to watch for:

    • MUST be LSi, but it can be rebranded LSi. This includes certain cards from Dell and IBM, but not all.
    • Must support Initiator Target (IT) mode. The alternative is Initiator RAID (IR) mode. This is nearly all, since most can be flashed to IT mode regardless
    • Watch for counterfeits! There are a bunch of these out there. My best advice is to find IT recyclers on eBay. These cards are a dime a dozen in old, decommissioned servers. They’re eager to sell them to whomever wants them.

    Also, make sure you can point a fan at it. They’re designed for rackmount server chassis, so desktop-style cases don’t usually have the airflow needed.




  • I did this back in the days of Smoothwall, ~20 years ago. I used an old, dedicated PC, with 2 PCI NICs.

    It was complicated, and took a long time to setup properly. It was loud and used a lot of power, and didn’t give me much beyond the standard $50 routers of the day (and is easily eclipsed by the standard $80 routers of today). But it ran reliably for a number of years without any interaction.

    I also didn’t learn anything useful that I could ever apply to something else, so ended up just being a waste of time. 2/10, spend your time on something more useful.



  • I’m assuming you’re in the US and looking at Dell Latitude, HP EliteBook, or Lenovo Thinkpad, possibly on eBay from a recycling company.

    Many large corporations buy these with a 3 year warranty, and stretch those to 4 or 5 years unless they break. Once the devices are too old, they go through a decom process. This usually includes sanitizing the data. Depending on the corporation, this could mean a secure erase, or it could mean physical destruction with a grinder. Then they send it to a recycler or refurbisher, who pays them a pittance for the remaining value. It’s also why they are frequently missing the hard drive caddy - the difference in value is minimal, so they remove it the fastest way possible.

    Power bricks and docks are usually usable on other models/generations, so those aren’t sent to recycling until they are useless. That’s why you often see laptops listed without bricks.



  • It won’t officially work, but it’s not too hard to get it going. I just moved a similar box to 24H2 LTSC.

    OP, you’ll probably need to run “setup.exe /product server”, or follow a recent guide. You’ll also need to do this for every major upgrade (i.e. yearly)

    I agree though with the plan to use this as a test ground. I also recently upgraded a Lubuntu system to similar specs, and it runs pretty smoothly. But learning Linux takes a lot of time they don’t have.