

Just FYI, those are almost all on the same instance, and you can block that instance as a whole. It’s dedicated to anime, so there’s not a ton of collateral damage.


Just FYI, those are almost all on the same instance, and you can block that instance as a whole. It’s dedicated to anime, so there’s not a ton of collateral damage.


That’s where the “cheap bastard” part kicks in. The desire to spend less money outweighs things like social acceptance.


I have a problem with their methodology, although I concede that better metrics would be hard to find.
I’ve known a number of right-wing people that own and love their Prius. They are the “cheap bastard” type, and it’s hard to argue with the value (albeit not the styling nor associations) of a Prius.
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.
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.
The one I had would frequently drop the drives, wreaking havoc on my (software) RAID5. I later found out that it was splitting 2 ports into 4 in a way that completely broke spec.
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:
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.
To anyone reading, do NOT get a PCIe SATA card. Everything on the market is absolute crap that will make your life miserable.
Instead, get a used PCIe SAS card, preferably based on LSi. These should run about $50, and you may (depending on the model) need a $20 cable to connect it to SATA devices.
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.
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.
Call his fucking bluff. The only way anything would close is if it isn’t profitable (enough). And if they can’t turn a profit, well then they need to be better at business! (/s).


The change is regarding “permanent” installations, which the article also infers to mean directly hardwired. Those of us who go the route of a NEMA 14-50 outlet are likely unaffected.
That said, I wish they’d ban the cheap, shitty outlets that can’t actually provide continuous power. These are the very popular $10 outlets, vs the $50 ones that also can’t fit in a standard box.
The big caveat is that the BIOS must allow it, and most released versions do not.


What is your use case? I ask because ESXi is free again, but it’s probably not a useful skill to learn these days. At least not as much as the competition.
Similarly, 2.5" mechanical drives only make sense for certain use cases. Otherwise I’d get SSDS or a 3.5" DAS.


I found the specs a bit interesting. 52.7 kWh battery and a curb weight of 3,600 lbs is nearly identical to the Chevy Bolt, but this only has a range of 150 miles instead of 240. Is it really that much less efficient? The only thing I can think of is the aerodynamics, but that’s a 40% difference.


In some backwoods places, like the US, this could cost a few hundred dollars just to get a simple answer. Just like human medical care, many people simply cannot afford it.
Thinkpads are extremely well documented. For how to repair/replace parts, you need the HMM. Just Google for “Thinkpad t14 Gen 1 HMM” and you should find the official PDF on their site. That will tell you, step by step, how to replace the keyboard.
As for the part itself, you can again check Lenovo’s site for all compatible parts (FRUs) and find the item number and details. While I wouldn’t recommend buying directly from them due to cost, this should give you the information needed to find it elsewhere. eBay has tons of Thinkpads being sold for parts, and many of these will be parted out. You should have no issues finding what you’re looking for.


There are some public numbers on how many occurrences are found each year on the major platforms.
IIRC, Facebook deals with around 75 million reports per year. Twitter, Reddit, and others were around 20 million reports per year.
I don’t know how many are dealt with on Mastodon or Lemmy (or how you’d even get reliable numbers for that), but something tells me it’s a lot less than the bigger platforms these days.
Yes, but that’s only an issue if you are interested in those other communities. In this case, the instance is dedicated to anime, so it’s only an issue if you want to browse those other anime communities.