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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • So they progressively increase closing force if it keeps detecting something but the owner keeps trying to close it. I can vaguely see the reasoning only if they aren’t confident in the frunk sensor for some reason. I mean garage doors solved this problem forever ago without having to resort to something like that.

    I wonder if the “vision-based everything” mandate from Musk applies outside of autonomous driving features? Makes sense to not be confident in it if it’s just a camera…



  • Instead of pretending One Man With A Gun is going to do something

    I used to agree with this train of thought, why be armed when the government has tanks?

    But the realities of the past several years have shown us that an armed rebellion can be significantly more powerful. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, look at Myanmar today where the rebel groups are literally 3D printing carbines. A guerilla group with small arms can put serious pressure on a modern military. Will lots of them die? Probably. Will they “win”? Probably not, but they could easily wear down the enemy with attrition. When you need to move a couple dozen men with rifles it’s an entirely different game than coordinating 12 tanks and 500 men, you can employ completely different tactics. Especially on your home turf that you know inside and out.

    Is an armed rebellion happening anytime soon? I sure hope not. But the threat that an armed populace can at the least put some serious hurt on a military/government is a deterrent to tyranny. Just the possibility of it is a huge deterrent, compared to authoritarian countries where citizens aren’t armed and get run over by tanks.

    I’m not saying gun violence isn’t a huge problem, but saying armed citizenry is zero deterrent is just factually untrue.







  • 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.



  • Owning a ghost gun is a crime, right?

    (Ignoring the fact that “ghost gun” is a meaningless and intentionally emotionally charged term)

    In New York, yes. In the vast majority of the US, no. It’s illegal to file the serial number off an existing firearm, but 100% legal in most states to manufacture your own unserialized firearms for personal use. Just cannot be sold/transferred.

    I’d note the article you linked says nothing about how many of those are actually 3D printed, it is infinitely easier to deface the serial number on an existing firearm than it is to 3D print one.