I refuse to calm down and I demand help

uh, dunno if people have noticed but the Mediterranean is kind of goin through some shit right now. Also Italy has a pretty notable history of bombings and assassinations

But also what the other person said, dude is american. I’m so sick of my family members talking like sopranos characters because our grandparents were actual Italians. Plus they 100% definitely didn’t say gabbagool and proshoot before like 2003

I have an ibm qualstar lto8 drive. I got it because I gambled, it was cheap because it was throwing an error (I forget what the number was) but it was one that indicates an issue in the tape path. I was able to get the price to $150 because I was buying some other stuff and because ultimately if the head was toast it was basically useless. But I got lucky and cleaning the head and tape path brought it back to life. Dunno how long it will last. I’ll live with it though because buying one that’s confirmed working can be thousands

You’re right that lto8 tapes are pricey but they’re quite a bit cheaper than building an equivalent array for backup that is significantly more reliable long term. A tape is about 12tb and $40-50, although sometimes they pop up cheaper. I generally don’t back up stuff continually with this method, I back up newer files that haven’t been synced to tape once every six weeks or so. It’s also something that you can buy a bit at a time to soften the financial blow of course. Maybe if you get a fancy carousel drive you’d want to fill it up but frankly that just seems like it would break much easier

More modern tapes have support for ltfs and I can basically use it like an external hard drive that way. So it’s pretty much I pop a tape in, once a week or so I sync new files to said tape, then as it gets full I swap it for a new tape. Towards the end I print a directory of what’s on it because admittedly doing it this way is messy. But my intention with this is to back up my “medium critical” files. Stuff that if I lost I would be frustrated over, but not heartbroken. Movies and TV shows that I did custom muxes of to have my ideal subtitles, audio tracks, etc. all my dockers so stuff like my Jellyfin watch status and komga library stay intact, stuff like that. That takes up the bulk of my nas and my primary concerns are either the array fully failing or significant bit rot, and if either of those occur I would rebuild from scratch and just copy all the tapes back over anyway so the messy filing isn’t really a huge issue.

I also do sometimes make it a point to copy harder to find files onto at least 2 tapes on the outside chance a tape goes bad. It’s unlikely given I only buy new tapes and store them properly (I even go to the effort to store them offsite just in case my house burns down) but you never know I suppose

The advertised values of tape capacity is crap for this use. You’ll see like lto 8 has a native capacity of 12tb but a compressed capacity of 30tb per disk! And the disks will frequently just say 30tb on them. That’s nonsense here. Maybe for a more typical server environment where they’re storing databases and text files and shit but compressed movies and music? Not so much. I get some advantage because I keep most of my stuff in archival quality (remux/flac/etc) but even then I still usually dont get anywhere near 30tb

It’s pretty slow. Not the end of the world but just something to keep in mind. Lto8 is supposed to be 360MBps for uncompressed and 750MBps for compressed data but I don’t seem to hit those speeds at all. I’m not really in a rush though and everything verifies fine and works after copying back over so I’m not too worried. But it can take like 10-14 hours to fill a tape. If I ever do have to rebuild the array it will take AGES

For my “absolutely priceless” data I have other more robust backup solutions that are basically the same as yours (literally down to using backblaze, ha).

Never used goharddrive but can def endorse spd

Serverpartdeals has done me well, drives often come new enough that they still have a decent amount of manufacturers warranty remaining (exos is 5yr) and depending on the drive you buy from them spd will rma a drive for 5 years from purchase (but not always, depends on the listing, read the fine print).

I have gotten 2 bad drives from them out of 18 over 5 years or so. Both bad drives were found almost immediately with basic maintenance steps prior to adding to the array (zeroing out the drives, badblocks) and both were rma’d by seagate within 3-5 days because they were still within the mfr warranty.

If you’re running a gigantic raid array like me (288tb and counting!) it would be wise to recognize that rotational hard drives are doomed and you need a robust backup solution that can handle gigantic amounts of data long term. I have a tape drive for that because I got it cheap at an electronics recycler sold as not working (thankfully it was an easy fix) but this is typically a super expensive route. If you only have like 20tb then you can look into stuff like cloud services, bluray, redundant hard drive, etc. or do like I did in the beginning and just accept that your pirated anime collection might go poof one day lol

Exactly, my nas is currently made up of decommissioned 18tb exos. Great deal and I can usually still get them rma’d the handful of times they fail

This is one of those post 9/11 things that really fucked over countless people. I used to work with the homeless and inconsistently homed and the amount of times those people were taken in for “terroristic threats” was obscene

It depends on the state but generally the laws were hastily passed post 9/11 and give the cops free rein to jail you for saying anything vaguely threatening.

Or maybe he just didn’t give a shit about any of that and was just really pissed off at health insurance companies, felt that all representation had failed us, and the only solution left was violence

But people will read an article that has barely any info and jump to wild conclusions based on pure speculation to categorize him on one of the “teams” rather than assume he is one of the vast amount of politically apathetic individuals that make up america.

so tons of the right wing will move to paint him as a leftist, because it’s simple with the lack of info available and the current rhetoric surrounding the event, because it is advantageous to them. the left wing will move to distance themselves because there is info available that casts doubt on his being a leftist and again it is advantageous for them to distance.

And while both spend time shitflinging away responsibility for this person, who never claimed either side, it will deflect from discussing the very real issue he exposed with his act: the health care system in this country is so fucked up that when it drives someone to murder an executive a huge amount of people cheer them on

just get a clamp one?

This will depend wildly on what you are planning to put onto it

That said I have a 2 cyber power 825va (I think that’s the model, not sure). It’s like 450watts each iirc. I got them 2 for 1 for about $120 new. One has my server/nas, for which it’s grossly underpowered (maybe 7-10 minutes of runtime, at best), and one powers basically everything else critical in my rack (modem, switch, poe switch, etc) and powers that longer but still not as long (my primary switch is a business switch that was pulled from an ewaste place for nothing, like $15, but it’s got 48 gigabit ports and 5 10gb ports! But it also uses a shocking amount of power).

They work great for my use case. I live in a rural area with a horrendous power grid so I lose power about once every 6 weeks. As a result I have a (very pricey, can’t recommend unless you lose power a lot like me) whole house generator with automatic transfer switch. When power drops out the generator kicks on and switches the house over to generator power which takes about 45-90 seconds, so I really only need these to keep my gear on for that period. Beyond that it’s generator monitoring and if the fuel supply for that is running low network gear is shutdown to conserve power

In a perfect world where I was financially independent I would probably upgrade the server one to at least a 1500va to ensure my storage pool could fully stop and everything could shut down even if power was lost

But most ups will work with monitoring in one way or another. APC and cyberpower work with the apc daemon (probably others) which can easily be implemented into all kinds of software and has support in mac, Linux, windows

Determining battery life depends greatly on load. Rough calculation with power supplies of gear connected, better calculation with something like a kill-a-watt or multimeter and taking a reading for a little while under load, add it all together and add 20-30% to be safe. APC, cyberpower, etc have calculators for this

Buying used can be okay but you do have to be comfortable changing the battery. Additionally there is the risk of something being wrong with it of course, they’re not bulletproof. They’re usually pretty decent though, the bigger thing is that they’re just really expensive to ship, even without batteries

I have a similar experience with the am6b+ and a similar sized library. Even on the stock android browsing my iptv provider which has 23,000+ channels has no issue

But you mention cec - does the x4q+ power off and on with the original display remote? That’s my one nag about the am6b+. Ugoos locked the boot loader and refuses to unlock so cec power on doesn’t work, every other cec command does though.

I just have it wake on lan by having homeassistant send it a packet when it notices my avr turns out as a workaround but this isn’t the most elegant solution and like 1:20 times it hiccups

How is the x4q plus? I frankly dont care about av1 (I’m a store everything in remux/flac person) but the x4q, theoretically, should have a faster processor than my aging am6b+

One suggestion I would make is to copy your install of coreelec onto the emmc directly. In my experience that makes everything a bit “snappier”, it’s easy enough to do, and only takes a few minutes.

“SSH into you device; then run ceemmc -x; type in Y; then type in 1. Once the process is complete, remove your external media and enjoy. To speed up CoreELEC installed on the eMMC on Ugoos devices, go to Settings-> CoreELEC → Hardware → eMMC Speed Mode and change it to HS200/HS400”

ugoos box with coreelec. I use the am6b+. Only format it can’t play is av1

stock runs a stripped down version of android with 0 ads that is very barebones so if you just want streaming apps this is for you. I use this part for my IPTV client but basically any streaming app available on the play store or that can be side loaded with an apk works

You can also flash coreelec and run kodi natively. You can just use the android build of kodi but using the coreelec build has many advantages; it can boot directly to kodi, it’s much snappier within the ui, and most importantly there are far less (basically no) issues with content playback. This option can basically play any file you throw at it natively. You can also set it up to stream files from a pc/nas with jellyfin/plex/emby but this is really the setup for weirdos like me that refuse to subscribe to streaming services (aside from an iptv provider).

Notably the ugoos is the only device, currently, that is licensed to playback Dolby vision content and actually does so properly.

Literally every other option, amazon stuff, shield, chromecast, appletv, pc directly connected to tv, the internal players of TVs, etc don’t play back Dolby vision content correctly in some way. Either they fail at playing certain profiles, they have issues with color accuracy, they flicker, etc. obviously this depends on your setup though, if you have a Samsung dv is meaningless unless you plan to get an oled at some point. That said even if dv is pointless for you it still does hdr/hdr10+ and all the lossless audio stuff/audio pass through

If Dolby vision and av1 are important to you the coreelec team have extended their work to other devices that have av1 support. Do research though because not all of them are fully supported, like some you need a usb Ethernet/wifi adapter which is dumb

Downsides are that it’s tough to set up, like you should be a tinker type person. This is a bit more of a pain than an apple tv or a shield. Also it’s not the easiest thing to get support

But if you’re like me and you’re super paranoid about streaming services harvesting your watch data and selling it, plus super frustrated that they continually fragment and want yet another $17 to access another library that you only want 3 shows of while increasing prices every year and still shoving an excessive amount of advertising in despite having you pay for the service, I would highly recommend just pirating media and using kodi/jellyfin to locally stream.

As an added bonus you get a noticeably higher image quality if you download stuff sourced from physical media because most (tbf not all) streaming networks have shit quality, much less likely to have issues with buffering or the stream dropping from 4k to 480p because the bandwidth wasn’t there for 4 seconds, often can get much better subtitles that are timed and syncd (and in the case of anime like animated and shit), etc. plus no ads, ever, no data harvesting (disconnect your tv from the internet so it doesn’t use brightness patterns and power usage to determine what you’re watching!), no corporate censorship (my collection has Daria with the original music and not the “soundalikes” because mtv couldn’t be bothered to relicense the music. It also has all the blackface episodes of various shows like community and it’s always sunny because I can decide whether something is offensive or satire for myself without netflix or disney to act as a nanny)

They’ll continue to “care” about it because it’s ultimately about courting evangelicals, who very reliably vote and are often swayed by that issue alone

I would not be surprised if this was the case or if they paid slightly more when all was said and done. Billers aren’t cheap

Remember this when they talk about how they give a shit about small businesses

You deleted it your post, you coward, but you said this was too long so here’s the summary.

Insurances have created a web of confusing regulations that give them a million reasons to take back tens of thousands of dollars sometimes years after paying you, the only real way to protect yourself from that is to join a massive healthcare network who has leverage of their size to push back against the insurer, but joining a healthcare network as a mental health worker means earning peanuts because our reimbursement rates are nothing compared to physicians so we have to work independently to actually earn money.

As a result we take on all the risk, we shoulder the financial burdens, we do the unpaid administrative work, all for an average of 70k annually as contract workers (no benefits with that salary so consider that we also have to pay for health insurance, retirement, time off, etc). And that clawback can’t be written off as a loss on your taxes by the way, whether it’s $1000 or $40,000

You do but at the end of the day target or starbucks won’t randomly take back 3-12% of your gross income. They also pay you consistently. I like my job but there are a lot of times I get real fucking frustrated at a period where my pay is super low for an extended period of times. Insurance companies are also assholes about paying. To be fair most of the time they’re on top of shit but sometimes they’re not and there’s nothing I can do about it. Sometimes they’re weeks behind on payments and it’s just like, oh well, that sucks, hope you have savings! But if I’m late submitting billing to them they will often raise a stink about. and this can absolutely be one of the things that later becomes an issue during an audit that results in them clawing back a payment. 0 sympathy if I am overwhelmed but if theyre overwhelmed? Tough shit, I’m getting no pay that week.

The last time this article was published I almost posted a reply to this but didn’t. Now I have time so I will. The denied claims are tragic, obviously, and this behavior is insidious. But something this article only touches upon at the end is what this system is really designed to do: extract previously paid monies from providers

This is such an important issue. I get why they lead with denied claims, because to the average person that is the issue that impacts them. But the above issue destroys mental health care systematically by burning out providers, slashing their income, and shuttering practices. And United is the worst, for sure, but they are not the only offender

What the article describes is what happens, generally. Something in the insurance providers “system” gets flagged. So they audit on their end. Then they may audit on your end. Or they may not even need to. They may find that an error in their system resulted in them paying you for months of sessions that someone wasn’t actually covered. Now they want their money back. They want it all, now. Or they do what United does, they audit you, and they find something that justifies not paying. They almost certainly will because the regulations are extremely complex.

Now you have a hell of a decision: do you spend a ton of time appealing? Remember: many outpatient mental health practices in the us are independent because attaching to a healthcare network means losing 50+% of your income. So if you appeal it means you’ll spend 5-10 hours a week on phone calls and paperwork, for free. Not to mention if it’s in reaction to an audit you may need an attorney so now it’s costing you money, and a significant sum at that.

Do you give in? If you run a medium sized practice and this included a handful of clients you could be on the hook for 20, 40, $50,000 or more. Do you even have access to that? Would a line of credit like that cripple your business?

Do you penalize your staff? You’ve already paid them, do you tell them what’s going on and ask them to pay back the funds? (no, this is unheard of, they’re all not making terribly much money usually)

Do you penalize your clients? In some cases this is genuinely what the insurance company expects you to do. If it’s a case where the policy was not actually active and they paid out in error but didn’t catch it for weeks or months they will claw back their money, guaranteed, and tell you to bill the client $3800 or whatever.

I had a client who was on permanent disability and they didn’t process his disability paperwork for some reason. By the time this was caught by his insurer it was 4 months after the time it should have been. 15 sessions had occurred, they asked for 1767.90 returned immediately. Now what am I supposed to do, demand he turn over two entire disability checks? Turn him into collections when he can’t pay because his (subsidized) rent alone takes up over 60% of his income and destroy his already wrecked credit? I’m here to help him improve his mental health, not destroy it, fuck that. So now I eat that 2 grand. What am I supposed to do? How do I balance that? That’s a 3% pay cut in a day because once again it’s put upon me to subsidize my clients care when the system fails.

I run a lean practice. It’s only me and occasionally I’ll bring on one supervised staff who is in post grad that I give a very fair fee split too. I still keep a secret savings account of 15,000 for clawbacks.

The reason is because I’ve had colleagues with medium practices, roughly 10-12 people in the group, go out of business because they get hit with a 40+k clawback that they simply weren’t prepared for. Or they just burn out dealing with that shit. Or they stay in business but now they no longer accept insurance at all, have ridiculous policies ($125 missed appointment fees! 48 hour notice required!) and inaccessible to anyone who makes less than 150k/yr

Then overnight a practice with 12 clinicians is gone and the community, which is desperate for clinicians, has 10 or so scrambling for new jobs and the 1-2 who ran it considering just getting a manager job at target or something. Then my inbox gets that many more emails even though my psychologytoday says “not accepting clients” because my waitlist is already months long.

Don’t even get me started on commercial rental prices

I’ve done a few of these and it’s possible to do it much faster without pulling the board

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHaw6w_Iw70

That said I would not recommend doing this if you’re not really comfortable doing this kind of work. It’s not a terrrrribly difficult repair if you’re good with working on repair unfriendly modern laptops but if you’re not good with that it can be quite challenging. It’s not as hard as it looks though, the main pain in the ass is the goddamn battery adhesive

Keep in mind that a slipped tool can be devastating (torn ribbon cables can be a nightmare and costly scenario, scratches on the logic board even more so), if you’re impatient while prying the battery and haven’t used enough solvent it can actually be quite dangerous, even stupid shit like if you push down too hard on a stubborn screw to gain torque you can break the lcd (which is easily like $300+ and a much more involved repair)

It’s also verrrry difficult for anyone but Apple to source a legit Apple battery (and people will shit on apple for this but literally every company does it; try to buy an oem battery for any laptop or phone. It’s not that Apple is good, it’s that they all deserved to get shit for it). Keep that in mind. A lot of third party shops will use whatever they can find and those batteries from aliexpress/ebay often have significantly inferior management controller boards and spot welds. You’ll never know but they’ll fail faster (and sometimes spectacularly). This is a fucked up situation and I don’t know what to tell you; you can try and find someone selling oem batteries pulled from units broken for other reasons but these generally are $$$ for batteries with questionable life. Plus there are a ton of sellers that are happy to say they are selling oem batteries with counterfeit labeling (and will often have “warranties” that say if you remove their counterfeit labeling to prove it’s fake you can no longer return it)

The big things are to somehow indicate to manufacturers that it’s not absolutely critical that a device has to be the absolute thinnest thing in the world. More importantly by far parts need to be available, especially things that absolutely will wear like batteries. This needs to happen via political pressure and regulation because Apple, hp, acer, dell, etc have shown consistently that they will not do this. They will produce those parts for a limited period of time internally and they will almost never make them available to external suppliers (exceptions of half hearted efforts like apples self service program, which has parts purposely priced just high enough to make it so it’s about the same as just getting the service from them).

This won’t happen. It’s consistently failed. Political machinations in the USA (where many of these companies are based out of) consistently favor corporate interests and lobbying