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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • While I appreciate your sentiment, it’s important to consider how it will actually play out. Above all else, (nearly) every corporation will take the path that is the most profitable. That will decide each step along the way.

    First, ABC will happily replace Kimmel with whomever brings in the money. It might be a full-on Nazi, or it might just be inoffensive Kimmel-lite that won’t rock the boat. The time slot will not simply go empty.

    Something similar would happen to Fallon, Stewart, and the rest.

    At this point, the influencers begin to lose their influence. They are no longer the voice of a frustrated nation. They become a former voice. Someone that we used to listen to. This is actually where Jon Stewart was for a number of years, and I’m still not convinced he’s regained his influence.

    When the voices we need are silent, other voices will rise to the top. By definition, they will not be what we need. They will probably be working against us.

    I don’t have a solution to any of this. I’m merely analyzing the problems of one approach.


  • 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.







  • Are you able to physically replace the HDD (preferably with an SSD)? If so, you can use the (Win10) Media Creation Tool to create a USB installer.

    When it prompts for a key, just skip it. If you have an OEM mass activation laptop (i.e. anything from a major brand), it’ll activate automatically after. If, for whatever reason it still doesn’t activate, you’ll have a nag screen telling you to activate. It won’t significantly limit what you do.


  • It’s nearly certain. OEM activation has been stored on the motherboard since XP. XP-7 required a matching OEM cert (easily found online), while 8+ have a unique license in the BIOS. For these, you just reinstall the OS, skip the key during setup, and let it connect afterwards for all of the updates and whatnot.

    Now, licenses to other apps, such as Word, are not so simple.








  • Nollij@sopuli.xyztoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldAm I corrupting my data?
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    1 month 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.