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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • You have to keep in mind the scenarios where it will be used. While truly fast charging does exist today (20 minutes or so for 80% charge), that is not widespread, nor is that the way it’s typically done. Level 3 (DC fast charging) is expensive (moreso than gas), potentially detrimental to the battery, and still usually not very fast (an hour at least). As such, you aren’t going to charge at your local gas station the same way you get a fill up today.

    Most people use a level 2 charger, either at home or at work. This means it can sit for 8 hours to refuel. Many parking garages have this as well. Level 2 chargers deliver AC directly to the vehicle, meaning you don’t need a lot of infrastructure- just a 240v line and a billing system. This in turn means it’s cheap and relatively easy to install. Sometimes you’ll see these outside of Starbucks or a grocery store, but not especially often. You’ll get ~25 miles of range per hour charging using level 2. But even if you spend 2 hours drinking coffee, or buying groceries, you’ve only added 50 miles of range.

    This is where level 3 comes in. It requires some pretty significant equipment (which is part of why they’re always broken), because it has to convert AC into high voltage DC. It also has to chill the cables internally, otherwise they’d quickly overheat from the electricity passing through. But this takes up space that’s probably not really available in the lot.

    I am seeing fast chargers now being installed at travel centers/truck stops along major highways. It fits in nicely with regular stops on a road trip for food. I’m also seeing them being installed at most Walmarts, since that’s perfect for grocery shopping.

    Around here, that last group has been from Electrify America, which does NOT require an app. They have a standard credit card reader.


  • Licensing and activation are separate, and only loosely related. If you are at anything resembling a large org, they don’t even use the HWID or OEM key- they will be using an internal KMS server.

    It really sounds like you have way more permissions than you should have on a work device. You should’ve hit a wall even attempting to install Win11 (I can confirm that my work blocks this very effectively). I also question why you would want to do that at all. I’m also not sure you needed to do anything to activate- I believe 10 and 11 use the exact same HWID/keys/etc






  • Unless you’re on a self-hosted VPN (defeating the whole purpose), it’s not especially hard to identify VPN connections. All of the common ones are known, and many use IP ranges and reverse lookups that clearly identify the VPN/seedbox provider.

    It’s a bit harder when you are connected to one that resolves to a residential-looking hostname. But again, unless it’s truly unique (defeating the purpose), simply sorting users by IP will reveal almost all of them.

    Some trackers used to do this to weed out people with multiple accounts. Some of the big ones still actively detect and block (or punish) anyone connecting to their website with a VPN (torrent traffic is still generally allowed, though)




  • TorrentLeech has open registration several times per year. Keep an eye on Opentrackers.org for any of these. Note that some are open, while others are open application. The latter means you must meet certain criteria to be accepted. Typically this is proof of your stats on other trackers, but sometimes it’s exclusively for refugees from one that failed.

    Keep in mind that you will not ever find open registrations on an established, reputable tracker. They don’t need more users. They only recruit from lesser, more accessible trackers. You will need to start on these to establish yourself. There are plenty of guides on this, with most starting on RED or MAM.

    If you aren’t on any of these, it’s not because they’re too hard to get into- it’s because you don’t want to put in the effort. Which is exactly what private trackers want to avoid.

    Also, smaller doesn’t always mean bad. TorrentDB was a rising star, with regular open invites, right up until its collapse. Even the giants like PTP started from nothing. Getting in early is a perfectly viable strategy, especially if you help grow it.



  • You’re overlooking a very common reason that people setup a homelab - practice for their careers. Many colleges offer a more legitimate setup for the same purpose, and a similar design. But if you’re choosing to learn AD from a free/cheap book instead of a multi-thousand dollar course, you still need a lab to absorb the information and really understand it.

    Granted, AD is of limited value to learn these days, but it’s still a backbone for countless other tools that are highly relevant.


  • It’s all shades of gray, and lawyers and courts spend a lot of time on it. This one would be a slam dunk ADA violation. A tougher case would be fired for having lower performance, because the elevator is slower than the stairs. But these only catch small, stupid companies. Anyone that’s heard from their lawyers (i.e. any company with more than 50 employees) will know that in nearly all cases, you simply state that they are no longer employed. You don’t need to give a reason unless you are fighting unemployment, which is a fool’s errand from the beginning.

    But, you don’t need their statement. A collection of events/documents/etc showing that you were unfairly targeted, possibly as a protected class, can be enough. But it will really depend on how extensive and detailed any notes are.


  • They may be interested in shoplifting, but they haven’t actually done it until they leave. I remember reading one of those amateur shoplifting posts (possibly entirely fiction from Reddit, but claimed to have since it with great success for a long time) and something stood out. Even if that’s your entire goal of being there, abort most attempts. If you get to the door and you can see that you’ve been made, or you’re being watched, etc- drop the merch and immediately exit. Don’t come back for a while until they forget you. Which they will, because you didn’t actually take anything.

    This has nothing to do with the OP, just about shoplifting in general.


  • To anyone else reading this, there’s something you should know:

    Memory errors don’t always mean the memory itself (hardware RAM stick) is bad. It can also be a power issue (bad PSU, incorrect voltage set in the UEFI), compatibility, defective memory controller (CPU or motherboard), and more.

    OP almost certainly has a bad stick, but it’s worthwhile for anyone building a PC to run a slew of stress tests and diagnostics before using it for anything that matters.




  • What do you mean by “last”? I know it’s a common term, but when you dig deeper, you’ll see why it doesn’t really make sense. For this discussion, I’m assuming you mean “How long until I need to buy a newer model?”

    First, consider the reasons you might have for buying a newer model. The first is hardware failure. Second is obsolescence - the device cannot keep up with newer needs, such as speed, capacity, or interface. The third is insecurity/unsupported from the vendor.

    The last one is easy enough to check from a vendor’s product lifecycle page. I’ll assume this isn’t what you’re concerned about. Up next is obsolescence. Obviously it meets your needs today, but only you can predict your future needs. Maybe it’s fine for a single 1080p* stream today, and that’s all you use it for. It will continue to serve that purpose forever. But if your household grows and suddenly you need 3x 4k streams, it might not keep up. Or maybe you’ll only need that single 1080p stream for the next 20 years. Maybe you’ll hit drive capacity limits, or maybe you won’t. We can’t answer any of that for you.

    That leaves hardware failure. But electronics don’t wear out (mechanical drives do, to an extent, but you asked about the NAS). They don’t really have an expected life span in the same way as a car battery or an appliance. Instead, they have a failure rate. XX% fail in a given time frame. Even if we assume a bathtub curve (which is a very bold assumption), the point where failures climb is going to be very unclear. The odds are actually very good that it will keep working well beyond that.

    Also of note, very few electronics fail before they are obsolete.

    *Technically it’s about bitrate, but let’s just ignore that detail for simplicity. We’ll assume that 4k uses 4x as much space as 1080p

    TL;DR: It could fail at any moment from the day it was manufactured, or it could outlast all of us. Prepare for that scenario with a decent backup strategy, but don’t actually replace it until needed.



  • I think you’re being down voted because IP and encryption serve very different purposes in different ways. Look into the OSI model, which is the standard for modern network connectivity. IP lives at layer 3, network. TCP lives at layer 4. Encryption, such as SSL, lives at layer 6. I’m not even really sure how the IP layer would even have security, short of a VPN, which itself breaks the mesh network model.

    Also, the Internet and many of its standard protocols were created a very long time ago. TCP/IP was created in 1974. The “Internet” at that point was acoustic couplers and directly dialing your destination, typically a university or major research company.

    I agree that all websites should be HTTPS these days. It’s why Google has been pushing it (and punishing those that don’t) since 2017. But it’s built on ancient designs.