MystikIncarnate

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Anything that involves people at scale, will contain politics. Whether that's interpersonal politics or government politics. People will eventually become polarized based on their political views.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Depends on where you live.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 day ago (8 children)

As a nearly full time internet user since dialup, the web has changed a lot. Dynamic updates to websites is one of the nice things that's changed. You no longer need to mash F5 to keep up to date on anything. Wifi is way better, though for a while there it wasn't really a "thing".

The people have changed for sure. Originally it was a lot of techies and nerds, either by circumstance or due to the efforts needed to make the internet operate. Most people online had similar hobbies and interests, so most people online were similar, and their interests varied only a little on specific things.

Ads were basically a joke. Everyone had a website, usually on Geocities or something. You'd spend hours painstakingly putting together your website, then when you went to other people's websites, you'd skim over it and never look at it again.

No bots existed, if someone was talking to you, then you probably knew them somehow, or you were on a public forum/IRC. No YouTube, no Netflix, but mp3 file sharing was happening even before Napster.

There wasn't a lot to do at first, but after you found a few websites you liked, whether Slashdot or fark, 4chan or something else, you were hooked. People were brutally mean, especially for sites like hotornot. No social media or social networks, no corporations, just people mostly. Most sites selling stuff were scams. Early eBay was a trip.

This all morphed into a more congealed mass when social media became a thing and "high-speed internet" was more readily available. WiFi g ERA, back when it was always referred to by the standard, 802.11g. only laptops for a while then the iPhone dropped and it's been a steady downhill after that.

Now the internet is huge, everyone and their fridge is on social media. Ads are everywhere and worse than ever. Almost everything is trying to funnel you into one of a handful of categories that you don't fit into to sell you something. A few gems still exist, like the Foss community and stuff like Lemmy.

IDK, the old web sucked in some ways, but was awesome in other ways. Now there's just too much to keep up on, and unless you spend every waking moment consuming content, it's basically impossible to do. Some people have staked their entire career on basically aggregating memes and popular stuff, to give an overview to those who don't have the time to do it themselves.

Media streaming is pretty good, though, media companies keep trying to make it into the next cable TV bundle package, and keep raising the prices and enforcing rules that were not possible 20 years ago, and that sucks.

I'm don't think that this is better. It's certainly different, but not better. The way things are going well cause the internet to become a wasteland of AI bots and advertisements all run my corpos because everyone else will be unemployed and unable to find work because their job has been replaced by some AI or other technology that doesn't cost the corp as much as humans do. I'm sure minimum wage and salaries will be corrected to match inflation right after the majority of the workforce is laid off to be replaced with whatever technology does their job for them, which will create an elite class of super rich (moreso than they already are) who own the company either through shares or by being in an upper management kind of position, and a "middle" class of the people hired to maintain and fix the technology... There will be no lower class, just a massive pool of unemployed people, unable to work because all the jobs have gone to, what is essentially, bots.

My prediction is that when that happens, it will maintain a steady state until the vast majority is living on unemployment benefits, at which point the unemployment system will collapse because the money will run out for it, and either we'll go into a massive depression, which will set us back 50 years or more, or the entire system will collapse and either we will die off from all the pollution and destruction to the planet, or we'll have to move to something that's not capitalism to survive. I'm rooting for a star trek like economy, where your status is determined by reputation, and money no longer exists. Unlikely, but I still want it.

No idea when things will start to shift, but IMO, Amazon (the company) will make the first major move, since they burnout their workers so quickly (specifically in the warehouse and item delivery segment) that they're already seeing the effects of running out of people willing to work in their warehouses in some areas, and as a consequence of them being unwilling to pay appropriately for the work, and/or afford the workers enough latitude to handle the work without burning out, by either hiring more people to reduce the workload, or give people... IDK, breaks to use the bathroom.... They will very likely turn to robots to do the work instead. Once they get to that point, it's all downhill as other companies will follow suit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Depends on the UPS. Many cheap offline UPS units don't. Anything line interactive or online will.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

APC makes low end offline UPS units, which are cheap garbage.

They also make line interactive and online ups units, which are decidedly not completely garbage.

I pick up line interactive APC units from used locations like eBay, and go buy off label replacement batteries. Haven't had any problems with them so far.

To date, over the last ~10 years of running a homelab, I have used mainly SMT 1500 units, one was a rack mount. I've recently upgraded to an SMX2000. I've replaced batteries, but never a UPS, and never any server components due to power issues. I've run servers ranging from a Dell PE 2950, to a full c6100 chassis, plus several networking devices, including firewalls, routers and PoE switches. Not a single power related issue with any of them.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 days ago

To be fair, as long as they haven't been trying to get a parking fee waived like, every day or every week or something, I'd be like, yeah, seems legit, and waive the fees too.

I mean, as dumb as the request was, it basically reads as 'i made a mistake'.

As long as they're not making mistakes constantly, why not forgive it? Silly wording or not.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Were the ghosts friendly?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

There's certainly costs involved with solar. Even the act of cleaning the panels is going to increase maintenance costs. More panels to clean, more cost. More space needed for the panels, more cost. It might not be much per panel, but it's still a cost. The wear of the panels is more cost, they only last so long before they degrade, and replacements are not free, so if the panels degrade without doing a lot of "work" (aka the outcome of having them) vs the cost of installing and maintaining them, was it worth it? These are all economic questions that also need to be considered.

Yes, it's not free, but it's the closest thing to "free" power we have. Literally pennies for gigawatt hours of output. If that power isn't consumed, then it wasn't useful to produce. Whether that generated power goes into batteries, homes, or hydrogen production, that's going to be something we have to solve for.

I see a hydrogen reactor + fuel cell "generator" as a secondary storage system to batteries. When production is unusually high, push the power into hydrogen. It's not nearly as efficient, but it can be stored for much longer without losing any. It can be stored far more densely than what can be accomplished by batteries. If the batteries are full and your PV plant is still pouring out unused watts, rather then let that energy go to waste, pushing it into hydrogen storage is a better option. If you don't need it for 6 months, a year, two years? No big deal. When production is low and your batteries are almost out, just fire up the fuel cell and recharge from the excess energy you couldn't put in the batteries. It's inefficient, yes, but bluntly, it's better than letting any of the excess production go to waste.

There's other competing technologies for the same purpose. I see hydrogen as the second stage of storage. It's not as good as the first stage, but it's better than turning to fossil fuels to generate power.

I don't know if that's the right answer to the problem. I don't know if it's even a good idea. All I know is that it is possible. IMO, it's not a bad idea.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if I'm saying anything at all here, it's that we need to keep researching everything. I don't want anyone to drop research on another technology to dedicate to hydrogen, just as I wouldn't want anyone to drop hydrogen to research something else. We need to keep looking into this stuff.

There's no single solution to our energy needs, as of right now. I don't see one emerging in our lifetimes. The only goal I want to see pursued, if not obtained, is net zero for climate change. Stop the destruction of the environment, especially, but not limited to, our energy needs. Whatever gets us there, whether hydrogen, nuclear, fusion, solid state, flywheel, heat storage, thermoelectric, geothermal, hydroelectric, or whatever... I'm game. I feel like hydrogen still has a lot of discoveries that can be made, and I really don't want to see it abandoned because of a lack of popularity in the consumer space. It's there, it's green, it's got potential, let's keep trying to get it to a place where it can be beneficial, just like with everything else in that market segment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Yep. When you're using the energy quickly, within days or weeks, then hydrogen is extremely impractical.

The merits of hydrogen are in long term storage and cycles. A well built storage tank can last a lifetime. To be fair, a poorly built one might not last a year... So it's very dependent on the external factors involved.

Batteries have their flaws, which I think we all know by now. Weight (regardless of state of charge), volume (energy density), charging speed, cycle life, etc.

It's all about the application. Is the energy storage method going to be efficient for the desired outcomes.

Regardless of what other outcomes are in play, one that should be constant is to preserve the environment. Lithium technologies have reached a high level of development in recycling, so, for the most part, the environmental impact of end-of-life batteries is effectively mitigated to a large extent. This is a great thing that we have developed.

We need to do the same with solar PV panels, and mitigate as much of the environmental impact as we can from that as well. I know that's something that's being worked on, but we're not at the same level of efficiency as we are with batteries, probably due to the comparatively long life of PV panels, vs the comparatively short lifetime of lithium cells. We've simply had a lot more lithium to deal with and find ways to recycle, so far. I'm sure PV panels recycling will come along as more early adopters upgrade to something newer, and more panels get into the stage where they need to be recycled. I haven't checked in on PV panel recycling in a while so I'm not sure how outdated my information is.

To be clear, I am not, have not, and would never suggest that we move all our efforts into any technology, including, but not limited to, lithium, solar, wind, hydrogen, or anything else that's been discussed. IMO, we need to leverage several technologies to achieve our long-term goal of global net zero, while meeting the energy demands of everyone.

I just feel like hydrogen is treated like a dead end technology, and I can't blame the public for thinking so. A lot of the information about it as an energy storage solution is either very old, or still in its infancy. From electrolysis, which is a very old idea, to hydrogen fuel cells, which are extremely new by comparison. IMO, there's a lot of work that can be done here, and we need to keep looking into it. Maybe it goes nowhere, maybe it becomes so practical that other solutions seem like shit by comparison. I don't think either of those is likely, we'll probably land somewhere in the middle of those extremes. I don't know, and I'm not a scientist, so I'm just hoping we, as a society of people, keep working on it.

One thing I'm particularly excited for in this field is solid state batteries. But that's also in its infancy. I know a lot of work is being done on them, so we'll see what happens.

My point, if I have any point at all, is that we need to keep researching varied technologies for it. While solid state might be the right answer for EVs, and cellphones and most consumer electronics, they might not be the best solution for other applications. We need answers to energy demands of all sorts and giving up on something like hydrogen when there's still research to be done, isn't a great idea. We don't know what researching a technology could uncover. Maybe an air battery that's hyper efficient and has a high energy density, better than solid state technologies could hope to achieve. Maybe a lot of things. We just don't know.

Let's try everything and figure out what works for what application.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

We're hoping that happens, and you don't get stonewalled by idiots. We're cheering for your efforts.

To be fair, we have our own share of problems, including, but not limited to, hardline conservatives pulling similar crap, and even the odd Canadian Trump supporters, which always confused me.

We're coping okay. Hopefully it doesn't get any worse.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (5 children)

This is what gets me. Relative efficiency of stuff is pretty much nullified when the energy used is free. Total power use still matters because it will determine the total size of the array of solar panels to generate the power needed.

But this is near and dear to my heart. I like hydrogen as energy storage. If you burn it, you get water. Natural gas is just CH4, so the output of burning it is 1CO2 + 2H2O. But a lot of natural gas stuff can also use hydrogen with little modification, so we don't have to upend entire industries to adapt. Machines can be updated to use the new fuel type with little expense and we're not throwing out entire production lines to replace them with ones based on electricity.

Why hydrogen? Simple, hydrolysis. Using power generated for free from the sun, you can split water into its base components. Hydrogen and oxygen. With some fancy knowledge, you can capture pretty much all of the hydrogen and none of the oxygen, and store it for use.

It's inefficient compared to some other technologies, in that it takes a lot of power compared to how much hydrogen/oxygen you get, but bluntly, if it's coming from solar, who cares? Not like we're paying for the power anyways.

I keep thinking about this in the form of industry. Say a factory uses natural gas in boilers to make something hot. Whatever the material, whatever the reason, that's what they're doing. With little modification, the system can be adapted to hydrogen, and the company can build a hydrogen hydrolysis reactor on site using either city water, rain water, lake or river water.... Even an underground well. The reactor runs all day and generates hydrogen, stored in a large, high pressure tank, also on site, then pipelines run it to the machines, boilers, whatever, to run the production lines. It's free to run, and only requires a single capital investment.

Hydrogen, also, can be stored indefinitely and not "lose charge" unlike other, battery-based storage systems (or heat, or flywheels). So hydrogen is ideal for long term energy storage. Fuel cells are still the most efficient way to convert hydrogen to electricity, and yeah, you lose a lot of potential energy in the electrolysis/fuel cell conversions, but the energy input is free in the first place, so who cares?

I'm not saying we should go all in on hydrogen. I'm just saying that it's worth continuing to develop the technology for it. Batteries, capacitors, storage via heat or flywheels, they all have their place in the energy future. At least until fusion makes them all obsolete (once we find a way to make that self fueling or use materials that are not extremely limited. IMO, we're making good progress but we're decades, if not centuries away from something practical, given our currently known planetary resources).

And yes, battery EVs are a good thing. Hydrogen electric vehicles... Let's just say "too soon", and leave it at that. Batteries for daily charge/discharge for home use, absolutely. Larger scale heat/flywheel storage, absolutely. But longer term than days to months, hydrogen may be the better option. It's certainly a good option for industry that currently relies almost exclusively on natural gas.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

I hate to say it, but, these things don't change a lot, or quickly.

IP blocks, or "large groups of IP addresses" are assigned to regional internet registries, or RIRs which then hand them out from there. There's a couple RIRs. I think five in total? ARIN covers North America, and has, by far, the most IP addresses given out.

There's also RIPE, in Europe, APNIC, for Asia and the Pacific areas, including China and Australia, AfriNIC, which is basically all of Africa... If that wasn't obvious. And lacnic, which is South America.

Large IP blocks can, but rarely ever do, get transferred between RIRs.

But wait, it gets more complicated. IP addresses allocated in one region could be used anywhere in the world. The vast majority are not, and it's important to note that because of global routing, you can't have a block smaller than 256 addresses allocated in the default free zone (DFZ). The DFZ is the part of the internet that doesn't have a "default gateway". All routes are advertised, and by those advertisements are learned by others. The routers in the DFZ only have so much memory, and there was a crisis a while ago when the memory of most of the routers in the DFZ were dangerously close to being full.... That was around when ipv6 was first switched on. The routing memory is extremely fast, because it needs to be. Looking up a route in a table with a million+ entries takes time, but that time needs to be so short that latency is effectively mitigated. So that memory is some of the fastest used in tech at times, notwithstanding newer technologies.

I'm off topic. Anyways, my point is, ARIN is big. They have a lot of IPs. However allocation doesn't and shouldn't imply usage. A large number of addresses are allocated for US military use that are basically unseen in the internet. There's a few infamous /8 blocks of around 16.7 million addresses that don't get advertised and can't be used by anyone besides the US military. I forget which branch of military owns it. They've owned it since the internet started giving out allocations (more or less) and today one of those /8 blocks is worth billions, with a cost of about $50 per IP.

So yeah, the US has a lot of IP allocation, they also have a large amount of unused IP addresses.

 

This is probably more of a Lemmy specific thing than what's normal on this community, but I posted on a community from lemmy.ml and the mods there banned me from the community.

They didn't remove my post or message me about it. I only found out because when I was going through replies, I couldn't reply and I noted that my account is banned from that community.

I wasn't saying anything untoward or encouraging anyone to do anything illegal or anything like that. It was a comment about systems of government. I don't believe I put any emphasis on whether one was better than another, but the post was in a non-political community; so it should not lean one way or the other on the matter, and the post I was replying to introduced the political discussion, so I was on-topic.

The specifics aren't super important. What I want to know is whether there's a built-in system to inquire with the mods or something to try to get an official reply as to what rules they believe I had broken to deserve a ban, and whether that ban is permanent or not. I tried simply messaging one of the mods, but it's been hours with no reply.

Is there any way to find the information? Previously on Reddit, I would almost always get a message from the subreddit about what happened, what violation caused it, and allowed me to message the mods to try to argue my case, though, me getting banned on that platform was quite rare. This is my first time knowingly being removed like this and I don't understand the process here.

Can anyone enlighten me about how these things are supposed to work on Lemmy?

 

So, I just need to rant for a minute about what's just happened. It's made me feel fairly disposable as a worker. I work in I.T. support. I help people who can't operate technology with highly complicated issues. I am highly skilled, well trained and I have a diverse set of understanding for technical issues.

Last year I took a new job. The old job was an MSP, or Managed Service Provider; if you don't know what that is; an MSP is the IT department for companies too small to have an IT department. That's the summary. The new company is both an MSP and an ISP as well as just about everything else you can imagine for IT.... hosting webpages, and all the associated nonsense, phones/VoIP, colocation (Datacenter stuff).... everything. Basically, when someone was signed onboard with this employer, we did it all.

Starting out, everything seemed fairly normal, a bit more involved, since we do more than the last company, but nothing too crazy. The part that irked me, is that as MSP, we own a client, we do everything for them, including, but not limited to all their computer/server/network work (which I expected), but also their phones, internet service, hosting, email, etc. everything.... which is a bit more than I expected, but I was managing okay.

In March/April, things changed in my personal life, where I was having to drive my SO to work (she doesn't have her license, and we don't live in a place where she can reliably get a taxi/bus/other transportation), the problem is that her work is 3-11, where I work 9-5, in another city. So I tried to work with my workplace but they wouldn't let go of working from the office, so I ended up on an insane schedule of commuting to the office (over an hour drive each way), then leaving the office at 1PM, to be home for 2PM, to get her to work for 3PM, then GOING BACK TO WORK. I wasn't able to keep up with my workload.... in addition, I'm driving her home at 11, getting home at midnight, then getting up at 5-6AM to get a shower and do it all over again. I couldn't sustain that for any reasonable length of time, and I burned out. My doctor issued a notice to my workplace that I am unable to continue working for the time being, they accepted it and I went on disability as of early may, until now.

Currently, I feel much better, compared to when I was burning out in April, and I feel a lot better about going back. The SO has also been working on getting her license and her own car, so within a few months I won't have to even think about whether she can get to work or not, since she will have a car and her license to drive herself there. A week or two ago, I contacted my workplace to let them know I was ready to return. We had a few emails back and forth to resolve the matter of the doctors recommendation and disability diagnosis. Once all that was completed, I thought I was ready to go. Big nope.

I got word yesterday that instead of bringing me back, they're laying me off.

So not only did they have the callous attitude to force me to drive to the office and back several times a day to try to maintain a poor life scenario (I asked to WFH, which they absolutely could do, since they did it over COVID without significant issues).... but when I burned out as a result of their ridiculous demands, and took some time off, instead of welcoming me back and holding my position, they filled in the gap while I was out on disability, and laid me off when I was able to return.

I feel so abandoned. I won't complain about "where's the loyalty" because there's never been a time in my career where "loyalty" has ever been something I've felt that my workplace ever gave me; and all evidence I've seen says that companies have zero loyalty to anyone. Maybe one day in the past that was true, but it's definitely not been true for the entirety of my working career; but here I am, a highly skilled individual, with specific skills that will absolutely help the company succeed, that they know I have, that they're just going to throw away... and for what?

The excuse they gave me was financial downsizing, but it's a company of about 12-18 people, so it's not like my job was part of a larger dismissal of people, they've lost, laid off, or otherwise shed employees at a very slow rate. Some of my (now former) coworkers have said that several people who have voluntarily left their positions, have been replaced during my time away; but me? no. Apparently my knowledge isn't worth enough to them.

I'm currently on the hunt for a new employer. IMO, these guys are fools to throw away everything I know. The only challenge I face right now is finding someone who will see my value. IT support jobs are usually underpaid in my local area, and too many companies are going return to office and I'm not easily able to find remote (WFH) type employment. The jobs are there, but it's hard to find one that's worth my time. The core issue IMO, with the low pay, is that it's a non-union position, but if I can find a union job, I'm all in.

Wish me luck!

 

Looking for some advice here, I'm out to complete two things:

  1. restore saves from the games I played using the stock firmware to GarlicOS
  2. get two player/two controllers working for couch gaming over HDMI

Specifics: I picked up a 16G microSD for the OS, and a 64G for ROMs, pulled the original (kinda garbage) SD and replaced it with the 16G that I loaded with GarlicOS. I copied the relevant roms that I loaded onto the original SD to the new set and moved the save files ( .sav) over to the saves folder in the relevant subfolder. Launching the game results in a blank save. I can't continue the save.

For dual controller/two player, I haven't tested HDMI yet (on the list) I'm just trying to get controllers working at the moment; I have an Anker USB 3 hub. What works right now, is if I plug my Stadia controller in, it gets picked up, no problem. but my xbox controller will mess everything up. If I just do my OTG adapter to the stadia controller, it works, OTG to hub to stadia, no problem. If I either go OTG to the xbox controller, or OTG to hub to controller, it does not come up in GarlicOS. If I plug OTG to hub to both controller, neither shows up. I added waitForUSB (I also tried waitforUSB) file to the OS SD card, with no effect (the file still exists).

With stock, I was able to use a controller (just the stadia controller), over USB OTG with HDMI, so I know that works, and it should still work. The Xbox Controller I'm using is almost brand new, it's an XBOX One controller, connected by a USB A to C cable, I picked up 10ft cables from Anker for the purpose. I'm fine with wired, but I also have a USB xbox wireless dongle for PC that I can't seem to find right now, and I'm wondering if that would do any better (and I would prefer this since it would be wireless).

Does anyone have any hits or tricks or information related to this that I can use to push this along? is the new series of xbox controllers not compatible? do I need to change the drivers or something to make it work better? I'm new to retroArch, and GarlicOS, and the 35xx is my first dedicated retro handheld. I'm refreshingly not new to linux or SBC's, so I'm very comfortable with making changes and taking chances. All my saves are archived on that original SD card, and I have a backup on my laptop, so I'm not worried about losing saves or data at all. If the controllers are not viable, I'm sure I can find something that works and pick that up, maybe something from 8bitdo.

Thanks in advance.

 

Two subreddits I used to be very active in were for techsupport and networking/home networking. Anyone know if there's Lemmy communities for the same?

Also, related, is there a way to list communities available from a specific instance? Like if I wanted to see all communities local to Lemmy.world or something (that's not my local instance), can I do that? If so, how?

I'm still getting used to the fediverse way of doing things, I love it here, I'm just having trouble getting myself up to speed relative to all that I was subscribed to on Reddit.

TIA

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