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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • DV is difficult to get working properly on PC, and last time I tried to set up an HTPC I ran into tons of remote control issues and it wasn’t simple enough that I could just hand the remote over to a guest (or my spouse).

    2019 Shield has plenty of issues sure, but it still seems like the best option for me, personally.

    Agree about disable network on the TV itself.




  • I think you are correct that there are parts of the protests that are difficult to verify.

    Some parts are easy to verify. There are videos and photos. People were killed brutally in the crackdown.

    But the reporting and sources from that time (and now) can be a bit lacking. Information was spotty, and of course anything official can’t be taken at face value.

    We went through some of this in a Chinese Government class I took. This about 10-15 years ago at a U.S. university. We were looking specifically at how many people died. The Chinese government said a couple hundred. Some western media said over 10,000. Hospital records were like 500. The true answer is difficult to know. We sort of have to interpret the claims based on other information that we can verify (photos, different accounts of the events) and make a best guess to what the true range might have been.

    Like anything that’s been turned into online propaganda these days, a lot of extreme claims are thrown around to support an unrealistic interpretation of facts. For example, western media claiming over 10,000 deaths turns into “western media was lying to make China look bad” turns into “it didn’t happen”.

    If I have time later I’ll try to revisit this thread and point you to some of the better sources I found.

    TL;DR: good faith skepticism of specifics can help us learn. However, tankie/wumao skepticism is not really grounded in fact







  • Dempf@lemmy.ziptoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldUsage
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    4 months ago

    Something like a v60 or an aeropress saves a lot of money in the short term. But you lose out in the long term by increasing your standards for coffee and basically falling down a coffee rabbit hole.

    I bought an aeropress 10 years ago to save money…

    Signed, someone currently in the market for a 4 figure espresso machine.


  • I really hope they do…

    I love my Nvidia Shield, but it’s definitely aging, and sometimes getting it to actually play 2160p Blu Ray remuxes without stuttering is a chore. Plus Dolby Vision does not even display properly due to “red push” issue, and Nvidia has no plans to fix (they have abandoned the device and the entire market segment).

    Currently the only method to get a streaming box to actually display Dolby Vision properly (profile 7 FEL) involves installing Linux (CoreELEC), and I believe the only device with all the proper support (licensing, hardware, etc) is the Ugoos Am6b+.

    I much prefer the Jellyfin android client to Kodi, so I’ve been sticking with the Shield for now. I’d love another Linux based competitor, and hopefully a more polished streaming box from Valve could spur some development of better clients and tools.

    I am a bit nervous about Valve actually being able to get all the licensing in place to pull this off.

    When I think about how many hours of my life I’ve wasted and how much room in my brain is dedicated to all these stupid modern formats…my hope is that a player like Valve entering the market could do some good work. We are in a very sorry state when it comes to compatibility.

    Though again… While I don’t have a deep understanding of the issues, it seems like a large chunk of it revolves around licensing, and I don’t know how much of a dent Valve can make in that.


  • Yes, what you’re saying is the idea, and why I went with this setup.

    I am running raidz2 on all my arrays, so I can pull any 2 disks from an array and my data is still there.

    Currently I have 3 arrays of 8 disks each, organized into a single pool.

    You can set similar up with any raid system, but so far Truenas has been rock solid and intuitive to me. My gripes are mostly around the (long) journey to “just Docker” for services. The parts of the UI / system that deals with storage seems to have a high focus on reliability / durability.

    Latest version of Truenas supports Docker as “apps” where you can input all config through the UI. I prefer editing the config as yaml, so the only “app” I installed is Dockge. It lets me add Docker compose stacks, so I edit the compose files and run everything through Dockge. Useful as most arrs have example Docker compose files.

    For hardware I went with just an off-the-shelf desktop motherboard, and a case with 8 hot swap bays. I also have an HBA expansion card connected via PCI, with two additional 8 bay enclosures on the backplane. You can start with what you need now (just the single case/drive bays), and expand later (raidz expansion makes this easier, since it’s now possible to add disks to an existing array).

    If I was going to start over, I might consider a proper rack with a disk tray enclosure.

    You do want a good amount of RAM for zfs.

    For boot, I recommend a mirror at least two of the cheapest SSD you can find each in an enclosure connected via USB. Boot doesn’t need to be that fast. Do not use thumb drives unless you’re fine with replacing them every few months.

    For docker services, I recommend a mirror of two reasonable size SSDs. Jellyfin/Plex in particular benefit from an SSD for loading metadata. And back up the entire services partition (dataset) to your pool regularly. If you don’t splurge for a mirror, at least do the backups. (Can you tell who previously had the single SSD running all of his services fail on him?)

    For torrents I am considering a cache SSD that will simply exist for incoming, incomplete torrents. They will get moved to the pool upon completion. This reduces fragmentation in the pool, since ZFS cannot defragment. Currently I’m using the services mirror SSDs for that purpose. This is really a long-term concern. I’ve run my pool for almost 10 years now, and most of the time wrote incomplete torrents directly to the pool. Performance still seems fine.



  • Seems like people have been doing this enough that companies have started to disable the functionality. Comcast will just hang up on you nowadays if you spam zero.

    My trick lately to speed things up with Comcast is just go straight to cancellations. I always immediately get a human on the phone. I them tell them what I’m actually calling about, and they will then transfer me to the correct department.



  • For me digital wallet is a bit more convenient than using my real wallet, but not essential. I have one credit card that I use all the time, but it seems my bank hasn’t bothered to make it work with NFC payments yet for some reason, but it works with Google Wallet so that’s nice.

    I also always keep my wallet with credit cards and a little bit of cash as a backup. One time I was out at a bar and there was a power outage. They were still serving drinks, but instantly all transactions switched to cash only. I think it makes a lot of sense to have backup options.

    The opposite can be good too – your phone as a backup just in case you forget your wallet.

    It’s probably not entirely been worth the effort to stay up to date with changes whenever Google breaks things. At some point I may stop. I guess one immediate value has been that watching things unfold has hastened the souring of my view on Google. I am now frequently looking for ways to avoid their ecosystem, and avoid big companies / non open source in general. I’m far from ready to leave the ecosystem on every front. But at the very least, I would never recommend a Google product in my professional life at this point, at least not without careful planning of an exit strategy.



  • Even with a free forum host, it’s difficult to keep things running for a long time.

    Awhile back I was unsatisfied with how quickly my (new) furniture was degrading, and found a furniture forum run by a guy in the biz. So much knowledge on there about different furniture and how to actually find quality stuff that will last decades.

    The owner retired this week, and he had been paying for an IT contract to do basic maintenance / upgrades on the forum (I think he started on a free host, but as it got bigger he eventually had to move it). He needed IT help basically to apply security patches and do upgrades. He’s stated that he no longer plans to pay for the maintenance contract. I’m guessing the forum will disappear soon.