It’s certainly possible (and probably even likely) that you’re correct. Most of the people I’ve spoken to about that are somewhat tech-inclined and probably much more likely to be using an adblocker than the average person.

So many years of ad-free media has just ruined me on ad-supported content. I sat down in front of a public TV tuned to a cable channel the other day, and it was absolutely unwatchable.

If you can afford one, I would strongly recommend going with a dual-conversion UPS. A line-interactive UPS like the one you posted essentially acts as a pass-through for your mains power until it detects a power loss or a brown-out. This works most of the time, but there’s a short delay during the switch from line to batteries (just guessing, but most likely on the order of milliseconds). This might not sound like much, but you’re counting on the capacitors in your server’s power supply to hold enough charge until the UPS kicks in.

The other thing to consider is that a dual-conversion UPS also supplies “clean” power to your equipment. It essentially acts as a DC power supply connected to an inverter, so regardless of how bad your input power is, you’re always going to get the correct voltage and frequency out. I connected my old line-interactive UPS to a cheap generator at one point; the voltage and frequency regulation was so bad on the generator that my UPS continually switched on/off of battery (several times per second), and the equipment attached to it immediately shut down.

I can connect my dual-conversion UPS to the same generator, and it keeps humming along as if it was connected to mains voltage. According to the datasheet, anything from 60VAC to 150VAC, it’s still going to output clean 120V/60hz power.

They’re much more expensive. Mine is 1000VA, and if I remember correctly, I paid something like 600 or 700 USD for the UPS. An add-on rackmount battery pack was another $300 or so. It was well worth the cost, though.

What devices are you using that support 3x3? My APs are set to 3x3, but every device I have ever tried only connects at 2x2.

I testing this after reading your comment. A few feet away from one of my APs, I got about 550 down, 650 up. 15 feet away through a single wall, I get 250. I had no idea a 5Ghz signal falls of that quickly.

The problem I have always had with cable TV, and now with streaming, is the advertisements. I understand why free services inject ads into their video stream; they have to make a profit somehow. I don’t like it, and I’ll block the ads, but I understand it.

Having experience what ad-free entertainment is like, be it from Netflix years ago, renting movies online, or Youtube with Adblock, I will never pay for a service that’s going to show me ads. Either make the service free and cash in on ad revenue or sell the service for an appropriate price that you can afford not to show ads. Sticking to the old model of “pay for cable TV and watch commercials” is never going to work, be it cable or streaming. I don’t think I’m in the minority here, either; I’ve heard this sentiment from plenty of others.

Even when I’m by myself, I often get the feeling like I’m in a “bubble,” and everything I’m looking at outside of myself is some other reality different from my own. It’s not a positive or a negative feeling, just kind of weird.

So to answer your question: Yes.

I was actually thinking about something similar today. We’ve already had an actor as president, then with Trump, we had a reality-TV star. Social media is the new “TV” for the younger generation, so it’s only a matter of time before we have an influencer or a YouTube creator as a candidate, right? Let’s see MrBeast go toe-to-toe with Trump.

In the US at least, most equipment (unless you get into high-and datacenter stuff) runs on 120V. We also use 240V power, but a 240V connection is actually two 120V phases 180-degrees out of sync. The main feed coming into your home is 240V, so your breaker panel splits the circuits evenly between the two phases. Running dual-phase power to a server rack is as simple as just running two 120V circuits from the panel.

My rack only receives a single 120V circuit, but it’s backed up by a dual-conversion UPS and a generator on a transfer switch. That was enough for me. For redundancy, though, dual phases, each with its own UPS, and dual-PSU servers are hard ro beat.

I probably should have specified I’m using libcurl, but I did try the equivalent of what you suggested. I even tried setting a list of user agents and having it cycle through. None of them work. A lot of anti-scraping methods use much more complex schemes than just validating the user agent. In some cases, even a headless browser will be blocked.

Speaking from experience, be careful you don’t become over-zealous in your anti-scraping efforts.

I often buy parts and equipment from a particular online supplier. I also use custom inventory software to catalog my parts. In the past, I could use cURL to pull from their website, and my software would parse the website and save part specifications to my local database.

They have since enacted intense anti-scraping measures, to the point that cURL no longer works. I’ve had to resort to having the software launch Firefox to load the web page, then the software extracts the HTML from Firefox.

I doubt that their goal was to block customers from accessing data for items they purchased, but that’s exactly what they did in my case. I’ve bought thousands of dollars of product from them in the past, but this was enough of a pain in the ass to make me consider switching to a supplier with a decent API or at least a less restrictive website.

Simple rate limiting may have been a better choice.

Is Creative Cloud a requirement for using Adobe products these days? Surely someone can just save data locally instead. Media files (especially raw video) can be enormous.

What is human connection, though? It’s your brain releasing dopamine because you spent time with another person. It matters to you because it makes you feel good. Other things can make you feel good, too. The difference is that hobbies and activities won’t let you down. They won’t stop being your hobby because they’d rather spend time with someone else. People are unreliable and ultimately selfish at heart.

Say you make a friend. 60 years from now, you and your friend are both dead, and what’s left behind? Nothing. I’m not old, but I’m certainly not young either. It took me a while to realize that other people just don’t matter. In the end, nothing matters at all; everything you and I do is ultimately going to fade into irrelevance when we’re dead. Might as well make the most of the time we have alive, then; do something that makes you happy. Don’t rely on another selfish human being for your happiness.

You don’t. People need fulfillment, not human interaction. Find something you are passionate about and pour your time and effort into it. Buy a classic car and restore it. Learn how to make your own furniture. Start learning photography. Write a book. Develop a program or app. Start a fitness routine. Brew your own beer. Learn a foreign language. The list is endless.

What matters is doing something that brings you satisfaction. A hobby that involves creating something or improving yourself is so much better than wasting time with other people. Spend a day hanging out with friends, and what do you have at the end of the day? Nothing. Spend a day planting a garden, and what do you have at the end of the day? You have a nice garden.

Microsoft knows that the addition of adds to Windows, Recall, data mining, etc are not suicide. As far as tech news goes, Lemmy really exists in an echo chamber. The vast majority of us at least have some interest in technology. For the majority of the population, though, this isn’t true. The typical person sees a computer as a tool to be used for other things. They’re not reading articles about the latest release of Windows, new CPU technology, the latest GPU, etc. They’re using their computer, and when it’s time for an upgrade, they buy whatever suits their needs.

If I was to ask any of my family, or most of my coworkers, about any of the latest “controversies” surrounding Microsoft, they would have no idea what I was talking about. Microsoft obviously thinks that the added profits gained by monetizing their customers will offset the loss of 1% of their users that switch to Linux. They’re probably right, too.

I like Windows, personally (well, Windows 10 at least). My unofficial rule has always been if it needs a GUI, then it runs Windows, otherwise, it runs Linux as a headless machine. Once Windows 10 is no longer a viable option, my unofficial rule will be “it runs Linux.” Most people will not make this switch.

I think one thing that’s very important for the worldwide audience to consider is what the involved countries count as “peace.” Peace for Ukraine is “give us our land back and stop attacking us.” Peace for Russia is “We’ll stop attacking you if you let us have a significant portion of you country as our own.” Obviously, the Russian “solution” is not an acceptable one. Sadly, I feel like China and other Russian-aligned countries probably support the distorted Russian version of “peace.”

What do you mean specifically? If I’m already testing between two VMs, doesn’t that already isolate any issues to Proxmox? Is there another performance metric you think I should be looking at?

When I use OpenSpeedTest to to test to another VM, it doesn’t read or write from the HDD, and it doesn’t leave the Proxmox NIC. It’s all direct from one VM to another. The only limitations are CPU are perhaps RAM. Network cables wouldn’t have any effect on this.

I’m using VirtIO (paravirtualized) for the NICs on all my VMs. Are there other paravirtualization options I need to be looking into?

I still enjoy the second-wave stuff from time to time, but you’re absolutely spot-on with what’s been coming out in recent years. I’m really into groups that have kept the original BM music style but embraced modern production. A few that come to mind are Faidra, Spectral Wound, Asarhaddon, and Funeral Winds; fantastic bands that play “true” BM but have good recording quality.

Like you mentioned, the big change is just how many “crossover” bands there are, and I’m all for it. You didn’t ask for suggestions, but I’m going to offer some of my favorites anyway:

• Harakiri for the Sky - One of the best post-black bands.
• Anomalie (shares members with Harakiri for the Sky) - BM plus what I can only call “tribal” elements.
• Psyclon 9 (at least their older albums) - BM plus industrial/aggrotech.
• Dawn of Ashes - See above.
• Anaal Nathrakh - BM + grind + industrial + ?
• Darkthrone (yes, THAT Darkthrone) - Blackened hard rock? I don’t know what to call their new stuff, but it’s not bad.
• Gaerea - Radio-friendly BM
• Kanonenfieber - Blackened melodic death metal? Maybe?
• Afsky - Folk-inspired BM. Seems like this is a really popular combination.
• None - DSBM, but with the exception of their filler tracks, more on the BM, less on the DS.
• Ernte - Fairly traditional BM, but with female vocals.

It was a good suggestion. That’s one of the first things I checked, and I was honestly hoping it would be as easy as changing the NIC type. I know that the Intel E1000 and Realtek RTL8139 options would limit me to 1Gb, but I haven’t tried the VMware vmxnet3 option. I don’t imagine that would be an improvement over the VirtIO NIC, though.

Every VM is using VirtIO as the network card; they’ll all on the same bridge to the physical 10Gb NIC. As far as I understand, any traffic between VMs should not be leaving the Proxmox server.