Dempf

I notice the difference with an ABX test. Spent about $700 or so on my audio equipment, so I guess it is “budget” in the audiophile world.

I agree with you and I think she was taken somewhat out of context, though it’s not exactly fake or making things up either. My interpretation is that she is agreeing with specific parts of Sec. Burgum’s statements. The headline of the article (calls Trump admin’s climate denialism “fantastic”) is sensationalization. They do link to the source video though and to Google’s whitepaper.

Her remarks are at around 9hr 5m. She says “fantastic” and then talks specifically about nuclear, grid permitting & modernization. She focuses on the “AI arms race” and the need to act quickly on energy policy. She does not make any statement on Burgum’s climate denialism.

Most of what she is saying is in line with what’s in the whitepaper (of which she is an author). And in my view, the whitepaper outlines an energy policy that both achievable in the current administration and reduces emissions. It is certainly not perfect, and I wish the conversation was different, but there’s some good stuff in there.

I have been a volunteer advocating for climate policies at the federal level for the past few years, and we have had a lot of conversations around nuclear, geothermal, clean energy tax credits, permitting reform (NEPA exemptions, transmission). I was happy to see mention of the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 in Google’s whitepaper – we lobbied pretty hard for that. It definitely would have reduced emissions.

I don’t personally like that Google is advocating for natural gas, even if they talk about carbon sequestration and satellite based emissions monitoring in the same breath. Natural gas is definitely part of the current state of climate / energy policy conversation, and we’d rather have natural gas than coal. In my advocacy work, I don’t demonize natural gas, but I try to shift towards talking more about geothermal and nuclear to cover base load power needs.

Burgum’s comments are around 47m and there is definitely a lot of denialism in there. But he also talks about decarbonization, sequestration, cleaner sources of base load power (hydro). A few years ago, Republicans were not using any of this sort of language, and we’ve been part of helping to change that. Our strategy has included a strong focus on common ground around energy, and side-stepping the climate change debate entirely.

If the end result is a reduction in emissions then personally I don’t really care as much about ideological purity. The article to me seems more focused on purity and less on the full context.

I think it’s pretty cool, but I just love train stations.

I think I remember being able to switch to anonymous user with it.

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.

SmartTube

When I use the word “private” I mean that stores, for the most part, are not owned by the government. I am saying that laws related to private property apply in this situation.

Technically what we are talking about here is a private business open to the public. And we are specifically talking about non government here, since getting trespassed from public property is a bit different in some ways.

Yes, there are many laws that apply to a private business open to the public (ADA, civil rights, food safety, etc.).

But the store is still owned by a company or an individual. They have the right to determine who can be on their property and when, within the bounds of any other applicable laws.

For the most part my response was concerned with legalities, as you seem confident that a store could lose a lawsuit merely for trespassing an individual. It seems you are claiming that a private business does not have the legal right to trespass an individual?

I’m not questioning your ability to walk past receipt checkers without talking to them. I do the same thing.

I do not dispute that refusing to talk to the store makes things more difficult if their goal becomes trespassing you from their property. However, the store does not need your name to tell you that you’re not welcome on their property. If you return, you will be in violation of trespass law. The store also does not need your name to call the police and report a crime. In reality, yes, this is unlikely to happen to you, but it has certainly happened.

I am not attempting to put under scrutiny your ability to file in court the paperwork necessary for a lawsuit in the event that a store trespasses you.

My question is: what would be the legal basis for such a lawsuit?

If a private business decides to trespass you for any or no reason, what would be the basis of your lawsuit?

You are correct that you own the items after you purchase them, and the store has no right to stop you unless they are asserting shopkeeper’s privilege. For that, I believe they would need reasonable articulable suspicion just like any investigatory stop by law enforcement.

But at the same time, a private business has every right to ask you to leave for any reason at all, as long as they are not discriminating based on a protected class. They can tell you that you’re not welcome back, and if you return then you will almost certainly be breaking your state’s trespass law.

In reality, I don’t really see any store wanting to start the widespread trespassing of customers who are just walking out of a store with their purchased items (assuming no prior agreement with the store to stop or show receipt). It would be a big customer service risk on behalf of the store. However, it’s also untrue to say that just walking past a receipt checker is completely devoid of the risk of a store banning you.

To put it another way: you’re at a friend’s house, and he says you must stand on your head and sing the alphabet. You refuse. He has no legal way to compel you to comply. But he can ask you to leave his house and not come back. Your refusal to comply with his ridiculous alphabet related request is perfectly valid, but doing so can also bring some amount of risk that you’re no longer welcome.

Why does he suck?

I see a lot of comments in here against the cloud and saying that on-prem is better. My question is, why would on-prem uptime would be any better? Or is it more about a loss of control in moving to the cloud?

By the way, if you want something at a cheaper price point but still high quality for your son, I’ve been buying from these guys:

https://www.stirlingsoap.com/collections/eau-de-toilettes

I don’t think they have anything that smells like Chanel No. 5, and most of the scents are more masculine. But a few are feminine (duchess, queen of hearts, evie, sweet stuff, witchy woman). Some of their scents are “inspired by” (basically copies of) more well known and expensive scents.

My personal favorite is Haverford, named after the Parks and Rec character.

I am seriously not into perfume/cologne at all, and I’m sure someone more knowledgeable would have better suggestions. But thought I’d throw in my 2c. Especially since the stuff that Sterling scents are inspired by is often 5x or 10x the price.

Some places in mountain towns the avalanche danger can rise to the level that authorities declare it illegal to leave any building, and violators will be arrested. It’s called an “interlodge”. Basically it’s saying “it’s so dangerous outside that we don’t want to have to mobilize search and rescue just because your dumb ass couldn’t follow the rules”. Interlodges can potentially last for days.

Right, but if you want a digital video library that hasn’t been compressed to hell by some streaming company then your only option is using Blu-ray as a source.

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.

Now that Truenas Scale supports just plain Docker (and it’s running on Debian) I think it’s a great option for an all-in-one media box. I’ve had my complaints with Truenas over the years, but it’s done a really great job at preventing me from shooting myself in the foot when it comes to my data.

I believe raidz expansion is also now in stable (though still better to do a bit of planning for your pool before pulling the trigger).

I am actually in favor of tariffs in a couple of limited situations:

1. Foreign goods are cheap due to non-existent labor laws

2. Foreign goods are cheap, but produce more emissions than domestic manufacturing

#2 is also called a carbon border adjustment mechanism, or CBAM, and the EU voted to implement one last year that goes into effect in 2026. The USA desperately needs one IMHO. I’m involved in a nonprofit that’s been lobbying Congress to implement our own CBAM.

It’s silly though to think that a tariff is anything but a tax. It’s not any different than any other way that we use our tax laws to try to regulate “pure” capitalism by encouraging certain behavior and discouraging other behavior.

I thought Republicans were the anti-tax party?

Streams flac. Good supplement to piracy. I might switch to Qobuz sometime, but it works well for now.

Please just don’t let the Cart Narc have a scandal. His work is too important.

Could be they want to hit a certain category (groceries) on the card. Maybe they are also trying to meet minimum spend on a new card.

For those who shop a lot on Amazon, the Chase Amazon Visa is probably worth it since it always gets 5-6%, but if you don’t have that card, using gift cards to hit a grocery category seems reasonable. Slightly more hassle, but at least you can split purchases on Amazon.