MrFoof

Yep. 9300s are very cheap now. 9400s are less cheap. 9500s are not cheap. 9600s are new and pricey.

As I said, you can't recoup the ROI from the reduced power consumption, even if you're paying California or Germany power prices. Though you can definitely get the number lower!

I had this system (and the 18U rack) in very close proximity in an older, non-air conditioned home for a while. So less heat meant less heat and noise. I also deliberately chased, "how low can I go (within reason)" while still chasing the goal of local NVMe performance over the network. Which makes the desire to upgrade non-existent, even 5+ years from now.

Not cheap, but a very fun project where I learned a lot and the setup is absolutely silent!

Nope. The extra E was for "efficiency", because they were better binned than the normal Gs. Think of how much more efficient 5950Xs were than 5900Xs, despite more cores.

So the Ryzen PRO line is a "PRO" desktop CPU. So typical AM4 socket, typical PGA (not BGA), etc. However they were never sold directly to consumers, only OEMs. Typically they were put in USFF (1L) form factors, and some desktops. They were sold primarily to HP and Lenovo (note: Lenovo PSB fuse-locked them to the board -- HP didn't). For HP specifically, you're looking at the HP ProDesk and EliteDesk (dual M2.2280) 805 G8 Minis... which now have 10GbE upgrade cards (using the proprietary FlexIO V2 port) available straight from HP, plus AMD DASH for IPMI!

You could for a while get them a la carte from boutique places like QuietPC who did buy Zen 3 Ryzen PRO trays and half-trays, but they are long gone. They're also well out of production.

Now if you want one, they're mostly found from Taiwanese disassemblers and recyclers who part out off-lease 1L USFFs. The 5750GEs are the holy grail 8-cores, so they command a massive premium over the 6-core 5650GEs. I actually had a call with AMD sales and engineering on being able to source these directly about a year ago, and though they were willing, they couldn't help because they were no longer selling them into the channel themselves. Though the engineer sales folks were really thrilled to see someone who used every scrap of capability of these CPUs. They were impressed that I was using them to sustain 55GbE of actual data transfer (moving actual data, not just rando network traffic) in an extremely low power setup.

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Also, I actually just logged in to my metered PDU, and the system is idling right now at just 44.2W. So less than the 50W I said, but I wanted to be conservative in case I was wrong. :)

44.2W that has over 84TiB usable storage, with fully automagic ingest and cache that helps to serve 4.5GiB/sec to 6.5GiB/sec over the network ain't bad!

You can go down to 50W idle, but it requires some very specific hardware choices where the ROI will never materialize, some of which aren’t available yet for Zen4.

I have…

* AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5750GE

* 128GB ECC DDR4-3200

* Intel XL710-QDA2 (using QSFP+ to a quad-SFP+ passive DAC breakout)

* LSI 9500-16i

* Eight WD 16TB HDDs (shucked)

* Two 2TB SK Hynix P41 Platinum M.2 NVMe SSD

* Two Samsung 3.84TB PM9A3 U.2 NVMe SSD

* Two Samsung 960GB PM893 SATA SSD

So that’s the gist. Has a BMC, but dual 40GbE and can sustain about 55GbE over the network (in certain scenarios, 30-35GbE for almost all), running TrueNAS scale purely as a storage appliance for video editing, a Proxmox cluster (on 1L SFFs with 5750GEs and 10GbE idling at 10W each!) mostly running Apache Spark, a Pi4B 8Gb k3s cluster and lots more. Most of what talks to it is either 40GbE or 10GbE.

There is storage tiering set up so the disks are very rarely hit, so they’re asleep most of the time. It mostly is serving data to or from the U.2s, shuffling it around automatically later on. The SATA SSDs are just metadata. It actually boots off a SuperMicro SuperDOM.

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The Zen 3 Ryzen PRO 5750GEs are unicorns, but super low power. Very tiny idle (they’re laptop cores), integrated GPU, ECC support, and the memory protection features of EPYC. 92% of the performance of a 5800X, but all 8C/16T flat out (at 3.95GHz because of an undervolt) caps at just under 39W package power.

The LSI 9500-16i gave me all the lanes I needed (8 PCIe, 16 SlimSAS) for the two enterprise U.2 and 8 HDDs, and was very low idle power by being a newer adapter.

The Intel dual QSFP+ NIC was deliberate as using passive DACs over copper saved 4-5W per port (8 at the aggregation switch) between the NIC and the switch. Yes, really. Plus lower latency (than even fiber) which matters at these transfer speeds.

The “pig” is honestly the ASRock X570D4U because the BMC is 3.2W on its own, and X570 is a bit power hungry itself. But all in all, the whole system idles at 50W, is usually 75-80W under most loads, but can theoretically peak probably around 180-190W if everything was going flat out. It uses EVERY single PCIe lane available from the chipset and CPU to its fullest! Very specific chassis fan choices and Noctua low profile cooler in a super short depth 2U chassis. I’ve never heard it make a peep, disks aside :)

If you drop Prime and then go to order something on Amazon, more often than not, you'll be offered to have a "1 week trial" of Prime for $1.99. Sign up, get your delivery faster, and set a reminder to cancel it immediately or at least after your order ships.

If you spend enough, you'll sometimes be offered a full full month of Prime for free. Same thing, once your first order ships, cancel.

I did this all 2023. I had Prime for nearly every single shipment over the year, and it looks like I spent a whopping $14 total for all of it.

Joakim Sandberg made, “The Iconoclasts” entirely solo, which was impressive for a modern Metroidvania that had 20+ bosses with all sorts of varying fight mechanics. It also included multiple console ports.

Granted, he’s done a ton of animation work over the years, including for WayForward, so it’s not a surprise that The Iconoclasts looks as great as it does.

A similarly interesting story is regarding the NES homebrew game, Micro Mages.

The goal with Micro Mages was to get a full-featured game into the same footprint of the original, "Black Box" NES releases for the North American launch, where a fair number of games fit in 40KB of ROM or less.

Video, but it's a good summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM

Morphcat has done other great NES games as well, such as Space Gulls and Bobl.

Indeed, banks have a lot less money up front and on-site now. A lot of this is how much is done electronically nowadays compared to decades ago, but a lot of this was change in protocol after big hits in the 1990s became too commonplace.

The Boston area was already particularly had hit during the 1990s, with multiple scores in the $120 - $500K range by just one gang, all laid out in the last paragraph: https://www.southcoasttoday.com/story/news/state/1997/12/23/...

Boston area here, and genuinely can't complain for the past 15 years over 3 different cities or parts of Boston.

About 6 years ago I had some spottiness when I had moved, but a call had a senior tech rolled out, it was identified as too strong a signal as I was so close to the head-end in the building, put an attenuator on the connection to get it smack in the middle of its target range and it was perfect after that.

Even right now my bill has dropped from $90 to $80, and again recently from $80 to $75 with no contract, for 1.2Gbps down, 35Mbps up. In which I actually get the full 120% over-provisioned speed all the time. No bandwidth cap in Massachusetts, either. I run my own DNS servers in my homelab, and with the network equipment on UPS backup, even power outages have failed to cause a service interruption in the 4 years at my current location.

My area is going to soon start piloting its municipal fiber rollout soon. That I'm looking forward to as it'll give another option and increase competition. I look forward to having improved options -- likely at lower prices still, since the cities are targeting 1Gbps symmetrical for $50/mo -- one way or the other in the coming year or so.

Porsche will sell you a new dashboard for your classic 911 that appears visually identical to the original, but is entirely modern in its construction.

Porsche's classic division is really setting the standards for supporting older cars. They realize over time it'll become an increasingly relevant portion of their business and just increase revenue. You can even send a car out to Germany and they'll fully restore it (at quite a price). The big thing though is they simply produce parts for their older cars.

Mercedes-Benz is also pretty up there for supporting their classic cars. Aston Martin also increasingly building out their support for their cars. Ferrari and Lamborghini starting to get more into the game, but for those brands it very much remains going to a big few shows in the EU to round up parts at times. Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Chevrolet also have some levels of support.

If you're willing to look at 1L form factors (think Mac Mini), you do have options there.

Intel has vPRO and AMD has AMD DASH for remote power on. A Mac Mini won't have remote power on, but if you're willing to just keep it slept, Wake-On-LAN is an option.

You are correct, my bad! Updated my post.

There's cheaper still.

I'm still in contact with someone who lives in the west slope of Colorado. Lives in a small city of ~20,000, and splits a 2BR with a friend. His share of the rent and utilities is under $350/mo. I think the actual rent is $550/mo. He's in walking distance (5 - 15 minutes) of everywhere he needs to go, including no fewer than two supermarkets and a Wal-Mart.

The Dakotas do tend to be very cheap, but also parts of the Rocky Mountain rain shadow, parts of Appalachia, and a few other pockets around the country.

They were actually owned by different franchisees!

The spaces were significantly different as well. The one that shut down was so small it couldn't even physically accommodate the equipment to make the sandwiches!

Dunks is a New England institution with a pretty fanatical following, at least for the coffee.

To put things into perspective, until very recently, the Back Bay subway and commuter rail station had TWO Dunkin' Donuts inside the station, within ~100 feet of each other, one on each side of the platform (on the floor above the platforms). One was smaller than the other, but you could literally hit someone in the other line with a thrown donut they were that close.

Two Class B office buildings totaling ~150,000 ft2 in Boston just sold for $4.1M, when in 2016 they had previously sold for $16M https://archive.ph/AADPP.

Here's the location: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ezkNUEPAVCJJ2rps8 Things to note:

* Within HALF A BLOCK of Boston Common

* Within one-to-two short blocks of THREE subway stations serving THREE of the four subway lines

* A Dunkin' Donuts 30 seconds away on foot, with multiple other cafes within a block.

So prime transit location for workers. However the occupancy of the building has been crud for a long while (hence being sold), and hence why it went for nearly 75% off in the auction.

And before anyone goes, "but what about the condition", take a look for yourself (https://i.imgur.com/rubVC88.jpg not all photos are the building). It's certainly not bad! No, it's not like a top-end Class A skyscraper such as 101 Huntington or 200 Clarendon (or newer stuff I've not been in), but it's far from garbage! It certainly appears to be Class B space, and I say that as someone who actually built out offices (as an employee, not an architect) for two companies about 10-15 years ago!

The sale price works out to just $27.33/ft2. The monthly rent for Class B in 2022 was $32-38/ft2. So these just sold for the (EDIT) one year's rent of Class C space. Yikes! Someone took a bath!

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There's no office demand. Period. Boston has no shortage of vacant office space right now either, and even the buyers of these two buildings are looking to repurpose them.

Mate Rimac was also functionally placed in charge of Bugatti by Rimac and Bugatti becoming a joint venture.

Moreover, Porsche has invested heavily into the brand and currently has between a 45 - 58% stake in it following the formation of the Bugatti-Rimac JV. I'm giving a range for Porsche's ownership because there are multiple conflicting sources.

This is just the new green line extension, which for a brand new multi-billion dollar line extension, is bad enough.

Take the Red Line? You might be seeing 56-88 minutes of delays (compared to years ago) compared to years prior, per data published by Transit Matters (https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/red/). Long distance trips (as in, much of the entire line) that took 40 minutes taking more than twice as long now.

In 2019 a train derailed taking out a signal house (https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2019/09/16/red-line-dera...). Per the TransitMatters chart, immediately after the derailment the average delays were about a half hour, but it’s since grown to twice to triple that!

The result is Red Line service is now under 60% of pre-pandemic service levels, with only about 45-50% of its previous ridership. (https://recovery.transitmatters.org/)

Per other articles, the restaurant basically employs nearly as many employees as any normal store. The automation is for order taking and delivery (conveyor belt), not cooking.

Basically it eliminates the human interaction component for customers, but humans are still doing all the cooking, assembly, and packaging.

Think similar to a 1920s automat, but with mobile ordering and drive thru.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/23/mcdonalds-a...

Absolutely not.

As others have mentioned, in-app coupon. Haven't seen it recur since (this was a few weeks ago).

Normal price of a Double Cheeseburger at that location is $3.89 ($4.13 with sales tax).

My local McDonald's just renovated with what I assume is their newest layout concept. The front counter has exactly two registers/terminals, of which even at a busy time (school out, so tons of teenagers packed into the place), only one was staffed. Very small ordering counter. On the other side of the area is a much larger pick up area with order status screens.

There's only two electronic menu boards down from the previous four. Yet six total self-order kiosks (three double-sided), but the real expectation is people will just place the order with the phone via mobile ordering. After all, that's what most of the teenagers order did, in order to get their $0.50 Double Cheeseburger (with no additional purchase).

Moreover, you can't see into the kitchen anymore at all. It was a solid wood-decorated wall behind the counter, clearly a "hallway" or partition behind that, of which behind that is likely the actual kitchen. They increased the space of the dining area somewhat as a result.

Oh no, far worse than that. Imagine some Game of Thrones character breaking into a three minute uninterrupted dialogue on how they’re protecting their communication throughout the kingdom with XVPN.

Honestly, I think what I see next is not just ads, but sponsored content within the content itself. No different than YouTube.

Yet then, then… we can have tiers. There can be more interesting sponsors and advertisements in the pricier subscription tiers. For the bargain tier, you get the literal 90-120 minute “advertisements” I’m aware exist on YouTube (yes, as ad breaks!) that are basically financial scams. Except on Prime they might be unskippable depending on the device you’re using.

Then Bezos will have so much money he’ll need a second monocle.

Moreover, Cambridge’s Harvard and MIT produced many scientists that worked on the Manhattan Project. There’s always been interesting military tech where research started in Cambridge.

As for People’s Republic, that was long immortalized in the bar, “People’s Republik” close to Harvard. Closed down I think around or just after the pandemic.

No, but a situation that happened right outside my home is someone too busy looking at their phone bashed their BMW 3-series into the curb and utility pole, and then decided to put the automatic transmission in park before they got out of the vehicle.

And when they got back in, they were unable to remove it from park and put it in neutral.

The previous model you would’ve apparently been able to remove some center console trim on the transmission tunnel and insert the key into a covered keyhole to release the parking pawl. On this newer generation? Jack the car up, get underneath, remove an access panel, and then use a wrench to back out the parking pawl. What a pain in the ass.

Normal turbocharged 4-popper, not a hybrid or a BEV. Once it was put in park after a crash, car decided it was game over.

It was ultimately dragged up onto a flatbed, probably partially flatspotting the tires in the process. The guy sent by AAA had no intention (or the equipment) to safely jack up the car on a busy street to remove the pawl, and probably didn’t even want to even if he knew what to do.

Most electronic handbrakes just push out a cam against the rotor. Most designs have a way to back the cam out with a wrench or tool.

However sometimes access can be ridiculous I believe BMW's release requires you digging around in the rear seating area for a socket to put a allen-key like shaft into to ultimately back it out. Some vehicles you'd have to jack up a corner to ultimately back it out.

It can vary widely from manufacturer to manufacturer, so it's unlikely something a recovery service would know off-hand since in general a "stuck" parking brake (or automatic transmission parking pawl) is an edge case situation for them.

What’s funny about those kind of deals is if people actually maximize the benefit, those deals get adjusted way upward, or eliminated entirely.

4-5 years ago, Smashburger did their first, “Smash Pass.” Daily (excluding national holidays) free entree burger — via a daily one-day-only expiring coupon - with no additional purchase required, for 100 out of 102 calendar days, for $100 including sales tax. So the theoretical benefit was $800ish worth of food for $100, plus not paying sales/service taxes. Best part of a 90% discount depending on where you lived. I couldn’t make a comparable burger on my own for anywhere near that price.

I lived right near a Smashburger at the time, and it was literally on my walk back from a subway station I would exit on my commute back home. I got 100 of the 100 burgers. Only twice did I ever order something with it, because I was only a 7-minute walk from home and could have something else or a drink at home for much less.

Next year? 30 one-day-only-expiring-coupon burgers for $50. I was apparently far from the only person willing to structure part of their day around a free burger. I guess some of their stores were eaten alive by the promotion.

Value of iron and coal for Australian exports in 2021 was even higher than in 2019. Iron at $118B, coal at $54.3B, or $172.3B/343B (50.2%). That’s definitely going to hurt.

Yes. The sidewall only accounts for a specific section of the side of the tire. You're excluding the portion which has to mate with the outer diameter of the barrel of wheel, as well as the entire outer tread. There's a LOT of material there in those two parts that aren't, "sidewall", nor accounted for in the size code.

For example, I have 35mm sidewall sports car tires on 20" (only wheel offered by the manufacturer) diameter wheels. That would be less than 23" if we calculated as you did. The actual total diameter of an inflated tire though is ~27" (26.947") per the tire manufacturer (Michelin).

I confirmed my assertion that it's 35s by running it through a tire diameter calculator (I do track days), and looking at outer tire diameters for tires for 23" wheels as a sanity check. Moreover, several media outlets (Autopian - partly run by a Jeep fanatic - The Drive, others) agree with me -- they are indeed 35".

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To be fair, for off-road tires, they're usually coded different. For example, a Hummer H1 which indeed has a 37" outer diameter tire, is coded as 37X12.5-16.5. But the Escalade IQs tires are coded as normal passenger tires, or 275/50R24.

The upcoming Cadillac Escalade IQ is going to have an optional 24" wheel fitment. With the 50mm sidewall, this makes the total outside diameter of the tire 35". That's the same tire diameter as you'd put on a rock crawling Jeep Wrangler to take to Moab, but it's instead on a (estimated) 8500lb (3855kg) full-size luxury crossover marketed as an "executive" vehicle.

For comparison, the Hummer H1's tire outer diameter was 37". We're quite nearly to that level of insanity.

I'd reckon just a tire is going to weigh nearly 50lbs (22.6kg), with the wheel about the same. I can't imagine how "fun" changing a 100lb wheel+tire is going to be when rotating tires. Moreover, the reality is the cost of the those tires will be comparable to near R-compound top-end performance car tires. Never having personally considered tires/wheels that weighed anywhere near this, I wonder what the point was when shops had to get entirely new wheel balancing machines, etc. to adequately accommodate these ever larger sizes and weights.

The battery impact for an EV is also going to be substantial, as is the impact to braking performance. It's really just maddening.

Small businesses in particular.

I remember back in the day working in companies of 15-40 people. There'd be ONE server. That ran everything you needed -- auth, DNS, file sharing, email server, application servers, web servers for internal apps, database server for internal apps. Usually sourced from a local MSP - or at least you had a support contract with them.

You didn't need a rack. You also had something that wasn't designed for a rack, so it could be in a secure back room with the switches, a UPS, a router, maybe some external storage... where it'd just sit quietly. Just has some big slow fans because that's all it needs.

Trust me, still a thing in small businesses, small retail stores, restaurants, etc.