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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • This is a good tool for visualizing your raid needs from your capacity and total number of drives.

    https://www.seagate.com/products/nas-drives/raid-calculator/

    I’ll preface that I’m no raid expert, just a nerd that uses it occasionally.

    The main benefit of most raid configurations is the redundancy they provide. If you lose one drive, you do not lose any data. It’s kinda obvious how you can have 1:1 redundancy, you just have an exact copy of the drive. But there are ways to split data into three chunks so that you can rebuild the data from any two chunks, and 5 chunks so that you can loose and two chunks. Truly understand how raid does this could easily be an entire college course.

    Raid 0 is the exception. All it does is “join together” a bunch of drives into one disk. And if you lose an individual disk you likely will lose most of your data.

    Another big difference is read/write speed. From my understanding, every raid configuration is slower to read and write than if you were using a single drive. Each raid configuration is varying levels of slower than the “base speed”

    I typically use raid 5 or 6, since that gives some redundancy, but I can keep most of my total storage space.

    The main thing in all of this is to keep an eye on drive health. If you lose more drives than your array can handle, all of your data is gone. From my understanding, there is no easy way to get the data off a broken raid array.



  • I’d double check that language you need isn’t already on iPhone. They’ve added pretty much every language spoken by at least 100k people.

    iPhone is really the only choice for the computer/smartphone illiterate. You can’t easily put the device in an unrecognizable state, you can’t install a launcher that drastically changes the GUI from the app store. iPhone justifiably gets tons of shit, but this is the exact use case it’s designed for. They also have really good accessibility features, and they actually work in apps.

    Android has tons of benefits, and I’ve had only android for the last 14 years. I think if you are planning on removing the settings app all together, you know it’s not a great choice for them.


  • It really depends on what you buy. Some stuff is crazy cheap, others are pretty much the same price. If you’re buying a single shirt from Sam’s you’re probably better off going to Walmart. Always check the per-unit price, and only buy what you’re sure you will use. My favorite brand of yogurt is cheaper per unit than the great value brand at Walmart, and is almost 50% lower compared to buying it in packs of 4… But it takes up half a shelf in the fridge. But generally meat is just as expensive at Walmart/Kroger, often you can get it cheaper on sale at Walmart/Kroger than you can get at Sam’s, and it’s already in packages that you can just toss in a freezer.

    Also, I don’t know if Costco has it, but the Sam’s app lets you scan and pay with your phone, so there’s no lines for checkout or anything. That doesn’t work to use the gift card trick though.


  • Excluding variable energy pricing, it’s much more energy efficient to only heat and cool your home while you’re actually at home.

    Think of it like a tea kettle. It’s definitely not energy efficient to keep the water boiling for the hours when you’re not home just because you might want a cuppa when you get home. The only benefit keeping the water hot is to brew your next cup quicker. The water is cooling off at the same rate it would if the heater was off, but energy is being pumped into it to keep it hot and therefore it is constantly losing energy.

    This is also assuming your HVAC’s coefficient of performance is constant, which it’s not, but it still generally is way better to avoid heating and cooling while you’re away from home, especially if you live in an older less insulated home.

    If you do have variable energy pricing, that can change things, and that’s when a smart thermostat can really save you money. Instead of heating and cooling around your schedule, you do it around the pricing treating your house like a battery. See: https://youtu.be/0f9GpMWdvWI?si=LjiAjNf6t8cU8OZ2

    This video really only really works if your home is relatively well insulated (as he points out). If it’s not well insulated, you’ll be uncomfortable basically all the time.

    Generally if you’re on a variable rate it’s better to set the thermostat closer to the outside temperature when you’re gone for more than 5 hours. If you’re not on a variable rate, that break even point is like 30 minutes.



  • Toss your incandescent and fluorescent lights. Get LED bulbs (not smart lights, just white LEDs). Where applicable, install timer switches.

    It’s crazy how efficient LEDs are. They are a little bit more expensive but you’ll save it on your energy bill over time and you’ll have to replace them less.

    People also don’t realize how much of their energy bill is heat & air conditioning. If you don’t have pets, turn your heat off or way down while you’re at work. Just make sure it stays above freezing and above the dewpoint. If you can get any smart thermostat for cheap, they’ll save you a ton of money over the long run if you’re like me and constantly forget to set the temperature before you leave for work.

    Also, thick drapes work wonders at keeping the cold out of cheap windows. You can get them and the hardware to hang them pretty cheap from goodwill. You can also wrap them in Saran wrap if you really want to keep the cold out. They sell kits, but painters tape and a cling film are way cheaper if you can hide them behind some drapes.

    https://youtu.be/tbq6uZ9Y0nQ?si=m1Z9kp21PTQFhGnx


  • If you have a Sam’s or Costco in your area, you can get past the membership by using a gift card. You can also buy a gift card without a membership. Sometimes they’re sticklers about it if you’re there super early, because that’s apparently “special members hour” or some shit, but the worst that happens is they tell you to leave.

    If you can save up $15-20 for a 25lb sack of rice, it’ll last about 100-150 meals, which means it’s about 10-20¢ per meal. Just keep it in a plastic container to keep bugs out.

    Get some cheap frozen vegetables and bulk, dried beans and you can eat pretty good for like a dollar per day.

    Honestly it’s kinda cruel that buying in bulk saves a ton of money, but the people that need it most can’t afford to.








  • I also eat at Chick-fil-A occasionally, but it’s mainly because there are so few places I actually like the food. I do feel bad each time because I know the profit from my meal is going to fund some pretty awful lobbyists. It’s not just giving money to a bigot, it’s giving money to a bigot who is very active in politics.

    It’s increasingly hard to avoid that though. It seems like every single owner of each company in the fortune 500 is actively trying to drag us back into feudalism.