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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • This is a pretty big overstatement.

    DO NOT USE AN SSD to store your data long-term! Solid-state storage has a very short, finite life-span.

    This has not been true for years. SSDs are generally more reliable than HDDs except in write-intensive applications (and even then… It really depends on what exact models you are comparing). SSDs have a life-span mostly talked about in terms of TBW (terabytes written) rather than years for a reason, if they’re powered on and not written too they’ll last as long as or longer than a hard drive. (Note: Powered on regularly, SSDs can lose data if stored unpowered for a long time (months)). If you just have an archival drive you’re not constantly erasing and rewriting data to, an SSD is a great choice. Reads also barely affect the lifespan of at all, so you can still access the data you want to protect (hell, write-lock the drive even and it’ll last decades if powered on).

    What you want to do is buy an even number of hard drives, plug them in long enough to copy your data to, and then unplug them and store them in a climate-controlled area. bout once a year, copy the data to a different hard drive

    This is just plain silly. Yes, the mechanical wear of the drives spinning up and down means they’ll die faster. But we’re still talking MTBF measured in years. And replacing a hard drive that’s barely used every single year? That’s not just bad advice it’s creating e-waste for no reason. Also note drives fail on a bathtub curve… If you have two good drives that lasted a year, you are increasing your chances of a failure by swapping them for two brand new drives… The best thing you can do for your hard drives is to not power cycle them constantly, any typical usage is fine. Also mechanical parts can actually wear out from disuse as well. Even archival services don’t go to these extremes you’re recommending.

    If you really care about saving your data follow 3-2-1. 3 copies of your data (live, archival (external HDD or similar), off-site), two-different forms of media (HDD, SSD, cloud (yes cloud is an HDD or SSD but they have their own redundancy)), one off-site (in the event of a fire etc.)

    Honestly 99.9% of consumers would be fine with a 2-2-1 scheme, 2 copies (live and off-site/cloud), 2 forms of media, 1 off-site. If you don’t trust Google or don’t want to pay for cloud storage, set up a server with redundant disks at a friend’s house. Just keeping a second copy on a server with redundancy is plenty of fail over for most use cases. 3-2-1 is for data centers and businesses (and any cloud service you rent from will follow 3-2-1…) Let’s not overcomplicate how difficult it is to keep data intact, if I tell someone to buy a new 12tb HDD each year they’re just gonna give up on keeping it safe.




  • I’ve heard that, but once I tried to refund a game at 3 hours and got nothing but an automated response (denial) everytime I requested a refund.

    In this specific case it was actually a game I played 2 hours of during a free weekend approximately 4 years before buying it, played one hour after buying it to see if it had gotten better, decided it hadn’t and refunded it. But Steam counts free weekend playtime towards the refund window…

    If there’s any actual way to ensure a human reviews it, that’d be neat. 100% it was automatically denied by some code just checking my playtime and seeing it was past two hours.




  • You’d think those giant loop videos would be taking up far more space

    Someone above posted an article saying they aren’t actually. But you’d be surprised at how little space those 10 hour videos can actually take. They’re highly compressible since they’re just the same still image and the same audio on repeat. A good compression algorithm (which Google certainly is using) would basically compress it into one instance of the song and how many times to repeat it (more complex than that, but that’s the idea)





  • I have not researched these specific cases, so may be wrong about them.

    You’re not obligated to do research on every individual bill the political parties push and what rider clauses they slip into unrelated bills. That’s fine.

    You, however, should have research and examples to back it up if you’re gonna “both sides” this. The Democratic party is far far far from perfect or what I would want, but at the very least most of them seem to be campaigning in good faith or at the least not inciting actual violence and treason.

    Saying “so may be wrong about them” isn’t a free pass. Know that people read what you say, and we have a huge problem of political apathy (circa 2016) due to the constant repetition of “but both sides are the same.” Let’s please not exacerbate it unless we’re bringing facts and evidence to the table.


  • 12V sealed lead-acid batteries are a standard size and chemistry… They are absolutely not comparable to a BEV battery. The lithium ion 12V batteries are built to the emissions standards and regulations of the 12V lead acid, that’s a known quantity and a hell of a lot less energy. BEV batteries contain kwH of energy, they are significantly larger, are a nonstandard size on every single vehicle. Even if Toyota made it the same size and shape, the energy density might be enough to fail EMC regulations (without having to change the size and shape)

    I don’t know what else to tell you man, I work on electric vehicles for my job. Literally an engineer. You can choose to not believe me but it just isn’t anywhere near as simple as you’re acting like it is. Just because you think it’s like swapping an alkaline AA for a NiZn AA doesn’t make it true.


  • Different battery chemistries do not behave identically in terms of failure modes, EMC emissions and interference response, and tons of other things. Just swapping one battery for another has a huge effect even before you consider auxiliary components like charging circuitry.

    My assumptions as to why you can just drop in an aftermarket battery and crate motor into an existing ICE vehicle (also, far from any vehicle, it is a relatively niche product) are that A. The batteries are way smaller and aren’t structural to the frame the way they are in BEV-first designs (but this is how we get good range out of them). B. The companies selling these probably aren’t held to the same emissions standards that an automaker is.

    Again, these are assumptions, I don’t work in conversions but in BEV designs primarily. I know there’s a ton of red tape for us to even think about changing battery chemistry, and we 100% would have to get all new certifications for it.


  • What certification does it need other than be certified by Toyota for use?

    Engineer in the automotive industry here. Vehicles need a ton of certification by tons of different governments and face very strict regulation.

    Just a battery alone is going to be subject to lots of EMC emissions and interference tests. Then you have the capability to survive crashes, fail operational requirements, how does the battery fail (does it explode or just disconnect itself?), etc. etc. These are all dependent on the chassis the battery is in, so they can’t just swap it into an existing chassis and say “Oh it worked with battery A, it’ll work with battery B.” Unfortunately the requirements are just way too strict for that.

    Additionally I can’t go into details but the sentiment others are echoing of “If it’s coming in 2028 they should have a functioning prototype” are true in my experience. It takes several years to design and release a car, and when you’re introducing a new battery tech or drive train or similar changes it takes even longer.





  • How do we intend to pay a person who contributes nothing to society?

    Why must we value how a person “contributes to society” via their output for capitalism?

    Is studying philosophy useless? Is making art? Is reaping the benefits of a society built upon tens of thousands of years of human innovation to just sit back and relax a bit?

    Humanity worked hard to get to a point where this is even a question. If you listen to the capitalists saying “If you’re not working you’re worthless” then you’ve been tricked. Tens of thousands of years of human innovation and suffering to advance society to a point where we don’t all have to work, but the rich want you to think that’s a bad thing. It is not natural that the benefits of all of that effort and suffering should all collect in the hands of a few at the top while everyone else suffers.

    The “simple answer” is UBI because there literally is no alternative short of outright killing people that don’t work to maintain automation. You and everyone else deserves a cut of that pie, we and all of our ancestors put blood, sweat, and tears into it. Let the people relax and enjoy the fruits of that society.