Disqus - Latest Comments for sfoskett

Re: Scam Alert: Fake DMCA Takedown for Link Insertion

sfoskett — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 17:46:27 -0000

Thank you! You are correct. I was jumping mentally to link farm and that's not really what this is.

Re: A death in the family - our tribute to the inimitable Kurt Marko

sfoskett — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 14:35:43 -0000

I'm so sorry to hear this. Kurt was amazingly sharp and interested in everything. Although he was opinionated, he was truly a class act and always enjoyed a great conversation. I will miss him so much.

Re: Introducing Rabbit: I Bought a Cloud!

sfoskett — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 08:29:46 -0000

Excellent! I haven't finished my Jetson TK1 writeup, but the summary so far is "it kinda stinks". Mainly because it's painful to install Tegra Linux, and the one you get is painfully outdated. I hope Armbian works better.

One issue though is that the TK1 appears to have a buggy USB controller. I get typing issues, and the network is slow. Apparently there's some mojo about uploading firmware on boot or something.

Re: Introducing Rabbit: I Bought a Cloud!

sfoskett — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 15:13:08 -0000

Yes sorry - 2230 of course. But yeah we shall see! Anyway, SD boot is working fine so for now I'll just do that. SD cards are cheap!

Re: Introducing Rabbit: I Bought a Cloud!

sfoskett — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 13:28:47 -0000

Thanks for the tip!

I was excited to learn that the NUC6s support more than 8GB RAM!

Also, I did find a 3320 M.2 SSD so I ordered one to try. If it works, this would be an amazing storage platform for the NUCs!

I'm trying to side-load the Jetsons now but am having issues with them. So far two have refused to boot and I'm just following the Nvidia install instructions. Which OS are you using? Where did you find it?

Re: 14 Drives For 14 Ports: A Case For FreeNAS

sfoskett — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 10:22:16 -0000

I think there's room for one more drive somewhere in there, but the title was a musical theater reference rather than a literal drive count... :-)

Re: Peanut Brittle is the Best Thing Ever!

sfoskett — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 17:37:48 -0000

When you dump in the peanuts and butter you'll swear there's not enough candy. It gets super stiff and looks dry. And the temperature will drop from 240 to below 200. But have no fear! It will work!

Once the mixture heats up again the candy will coat all the peanuts and it'll become slightly easier to stir. Then as it approaches 300 it'll really get liquid and awesome like in the photo. Trust me, it works!

I actually don't use the thermometer most of the time. I just stick it in to verify soft crack and hard crack. I use my eyes and ears the rest of the time and leave the thermometer on a dish.

I appreciate salting it. Not how I like it, but it does taste good. But (heavily) salted peanuts make it way too salty for my taste. I notice that they sell "lightly salted" peanuts now. So maybe use those!

Re: How To Remove Raw Images From Apple Photos and iCloud

sfoskett — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 13:50:49 -0000

I just open the Raw archive library with Photos, and there are the raws and my edits. Easy.

Re: How To Remove Raw Images From Apple Photos and iCloud

sfoskett — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 16:16:33 -0000

Exactly! I don't want to delete my raws, just get them out of iCloud. The process described here allows me to move them to an archive library with all the original tagging intact, including any edits I've made to the photos.

Re: Go Get a ProtonMail Account and Protect Your Online Life!

sfoskett — Wed, 19 Jul 2017 11:34:06 -0000

You're right that an obscure Gmail account could work similarly. But I like that ProtonMail adds a lot that Gmail can't match: Secure back-end storage, secure client access, and a secure jurisdiction (out of reach of most governments and courts). Gmail could be hacked in bulk, but it is also subject to more other areas of exposure than ProtonMail. It's always best to avoid concentrating risk, and since it's free, ProtonMail is a simple decision.

Re: ZFS Is the Best Filesystem (For Now…)

sfoskett — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 15:24:51 -0000

I see no reason that hybrid has to impact availability any more than any other striped pool. We should be able to add redundant SSDs (a mirror or RAIDZ) to match the HDDs and have it move data between them. This is how enterprise storage systems do it. Wouldn't it be good? I definitely would not add a single SSD any more than I would add a single HDD (which goes to my point about flexibility above).

Re: ZFS Is the Best Filesystem (For Now…)

sfoskett — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 11:29:32 -0000

My point is not that SLC is useless but that ZFS has no way to create a real hybrid pool with the cheap and abundant large SSDs available today. Personally, I have a flash pool and a disk pool and manually place data on each depending on my expectations of performance vs. capacity. This is a decidedly old-school approach to storage management. I would love to see something better implemented in ZFS in the future, such as true hybrid pools or perhaps just a better caching mechanism than L2ARC.

Re: ZFS Is the Best Filesystem (For Now…)

sfoskett — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 16:07:38 -0000

This is really good news. I am impressed by what Btrfs has promised and hope to see it become "the ZFS of Linux". I'll be watching!

Re: ZFS Is the Best Filesystem (For Now…)

sfoskett — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 15:45:56 -0000

Yes! Without ECC RAM you might as well store without data checksums because you just don't know what you're going to get out. Happily, lots of Intel CPUs (even cheap ones) support ECC now with the right motherboard, so although the memory is expensive the CPU doesn't have to be.

Re: ZFS Is the Best Filesystem (For Now…)

sfoskett — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 15:44:44 -0000

I disagree. Today's large hard drives absolutely need data checksumming to avoid unrecoverable bit error issues. That's why I'm not a fan of ReFS or APFS at this point!

Re: ZFS Is the Best Filesystem (For Now…)

sfoskett — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 15:43:46 -0000

Thanks for the pointer! I had not heard of bcachefs but now I'll look it up!

Re: ZFS Is the Best Filesystem (For Now…)

sfoskett — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 15:43:23 -0000

Exactly. I wouldn't trust my data to anything other than ZFS in the small office marketplace. I was a Drobo fan but they lost me (slow and expensive) and I'm definitely not going to trust Btrfs for a while to come!

Re: 2016 MacBook Pro USB-C/Thunderbolt Survival Guide

sfoskett — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 13:43:29 -0000

I pre-ordered the OWC TB3 dock. I have faith that it will work as you and I both intend.

Re: 2016 MacBook Pro USB-C/Thunderbolt Survival Guide

sfoskett — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 13:43:00 -0000

Short answer: No on TB3 DP compatibility. Wait for TB3 native docks and use multiple cables until then.

Thunderbolt 3 (which uses a USB Type-C port) is backward-compatible with Thunderbolt 2 and 1 using an adapter (which Apple sells). If you plug a TB3-TB2 adapter into the USB-C port you can connect any TB1 or TB2 device, which uses the Mini DisplayPort cable.

Native Thunderbolt monitors (including the old Apple Thunderbolt Display) will work using this adapter. And the video displayed is DisplayPort protocol.

However, TB3 _does not_ natively support non-Thunderbolt displays. Any non-native-Thunderbolt monitors use USB-C Alternate Mode (HDMI/DP). And it's either/or on each cable: Plug in a USB-C Alt-Mode cable and you're not getting TB and vice-versa.

Docks are a different story. Many docks include their own video chips, so USB-C or TB docks (like the forthcoming OWC, which I pre-ordered) can support native DisplayPort or HDMI along with Thunderbolt, USB, Ethernet, etc.

When shopping for docks, I strongly suggest waiting for native TB3 docks. USB is much slower than TB3, so you will likely be bandwidth-constrained if you buy a USB-C dock. TB3 is literally 4x faster so you will have much better performance (more displays, faster ports) if you wait. For example, look at the Apple-recommended LG monitors: The 4K one is USB-C and only has bandwidth left over for USB 2.0 ports, while the 5K one is native TB3 and has USB 3 ports.

Yes, it's super-confusing.

Re: Beware! USB-C HDMI Adapters are Flaky with 2016 MacBook Pro

sfoskett — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 21:02:49 -0000

Oh boy I didn't notice this. Wow! I wonder if that's going to cause issues with other monitors too!

I think a software update should fix this. Let's hope Apple is paying attention.

Re: 2016 MacBook Pro USB-C/Thunderbolt Survival Guide

sfoskett — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 21:00:41 -0000

Yeah you're out of luck unless you can find a native USB-C monitor that also provides power. Like the LG 4K one Apple is selling.

Re: 2016 MacBook Pro USB-C/Thunderbolt Survival Guide

sfoskett — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 20:59:54 -0000

I just bought two more for work. Since Monoprice is sold out, I went with this StarTech one from Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ghHAuo

It should work. But I won't know until it arrives!

Re: 2016 MacBook Pro USB-C/Thunderbolt Survival Guide

sfoskett — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 20:58:25 -0000

That won't work. I tested it and as expected there's no DisplayPort signal at all. A NATIVE Thunderbolt monitor should work but not a native DisplayPort monitor like your Asus PB277Q or my Dell. You'll need to use a native USB-C Alt Mode DisplayPort cable like the Monoprice or Google one. I just bought another from Amazon, Cable Matters brand.

Re: Total Nightmare: USB-C and Thunderbolt 3

sfoskett — Sat, 26 Nov 2016 17:02:10 -0000

This, my friends, is the issue I am trying to raise. Poor Shani here is confused just as I expected most people would be!

Shani: No, Thunderbolt 3 and USB are not the same, even though the ports they use look exactly alike. Re-read the article above. Hopefully your answer lies within.

Re: 2016 MacBook Pro USB-C/Thunderbolt Survival Guide

sfoskett — Sat, 26 Nov 2016 16:59:36 -0000

I've had no issues at all with this cable connecting to my own 4K monitor, the Dell P2715Q. I have the 15" model.