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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • Part of this is exactly why your boss exists. Raise your concerns with them, and get them on your side. They can also (vaguely) let you know if you are alone on it, or if it’s affecting the entire department.

    Your boss is also in a much better position to talk to the other guy’s boss, or someone further up the chain. It also removes the emotional component (similar to how even lawyers should not represent themselves in court), and keeps it focused and level.

    There are a lot of other good comments in this thread. Bring them to your boss as possible solutions, and let them fight the battle for you. It also shows you have a desire to solve this (rather than just gripe), and gives them options they may not have considered.






  • It probably depends on how personalized the ads are. It should come as no surprise that targeted ads have been a thing as long as ads have existed. Coke ads during family shows, alcohol ads (you’ll be cool if you use our product) on MTV, etc.

    There are already a number of algorithms to deliver one ad for a product over another, based on likely demographics. Streaming has greatly increased this, since specific demographic details are immediately and directly available when the ad is shown. I won’t get the same as on Hulu that you get.

    As for generating ads on-the-fly, that seems unlikely. Few ads are fully generated at all, let alone in response to demographics or the specific viewer(s).

    There are also risks when deploying ads without vetting. Some of these viewers will be dressed as Nazis, and will happily share the video to everyone.




  • The biggest problem I had with the Jodie era was the companions.

    Doctor Who has a rich history of the Doctor/Companion interactions following traditional gender roles. The Doctor is a powerful man who can bend time and space to his will, and his companion is an empathetic woman who can keep him grounded and retain his humanity. While there have been exceptions, this is the default formula.

    When Jodie started, this all got turned upside-down. How should a woman Doctor act? Do they maintain the same character archetype (as they did with the Master/Missy), or do they make the character more feminine? What effect should that have on her relationship with her companions? Should the companion continue to be the traditional feminine role? Headstrong and masculine, but powerless? Wise and sage, like an advisor? This is a difficult plan for even the most accomplished writer.

    Chris Chibnall was apparently not up to the task. Instead, he threw all of the options in at once. At best, it felt crowded and disjointed. But more often, it felt like they were focus-group testing. And by the end, it seemed clear that Kaz was the most popular with test audiences.




  • Kind of. They will be multiples of 4. Let’s say you got a gigantic 8i8e card, albeit unlikely. That would (probably) have 2 internal and 2 external SAS connectors. Your standard breakout cables will split each one into 4 SATA cables (up to 16 SATA ports if you used all 4 SAS ports and breakout cables), each running at full (SAS) speed.

    But what if you were running an enterprise file server with a hundred drives, as many of these once were? You can’t cram dozens of these cards into a server, there aren’t enough PCIe slots/lanes. Well, there are SAS expansion cards, which basically act as a splitter. They will share those 4 lanes, potentially creating a bottleneck. But this is where SAS and SATA speeds differ- these are SAS lanes, which are (probably) double what SATA can do. So with expanders, you could attach 8 SATA drives to every 4 SAS lanes and still run at full speed. And if you need capacity more than speed, expanders allow you to split those 4 lanes to 24 drives. These are typically built into the drive backplane/DAS.

    As for the fan, just about anything will do. The chip/heatsink gets hot, but is limited to the ~75 watts provided by the PCIe bus. I just have an old 80 or 90mm fan pointing at it.



  • I don’t want to speak to your specific use case, as it’s outside of my wheelhouse. My main point was that SATA cards are a problem.

    As for LSi SAS cards, there’s a lot of details that probably don’t (but could) matter to you. PCIe generation, connectors, lanes, etc. There are threads on various other homelab forums, truenas, unraid, etc. Some models (like the 9212-4i4e, meaning it has 4 internal and 4 external lanes) have native SATA ports that are convenient, but most will have a SAS connector or two. You’d need a matching (forward) breakout cable to connect to SATA. Note that there are several common connectors, with internal and external versions of each.

    You can use the external connectors (e.g. SFF-8088) as long as you have a matching (e.g. SFF-8088 SAS-SATA) breakout cable, and are willing to route the cable accordingly. Internal connectors are simpler, but might be in lower supply.

    If you just need a simple controller card to handle a few drives without major speed concerns, and it will not be the boot drive, here are the things you need to watch for:

    • MUST be LSi, but it can be rebranded LSi. This includes certain cards from Dell and IBM, but not all.
    • Must support Initiator Target (IT) mode. The alternative is Initiator RAID (IR) mode. This is nearly all, since most can be flashed to IT mode regardless
    • Watch for counterfeits! There are a bunch of these out there. My best advice is to find IT recyclers on eBay. These cards are a dime a dozen in old, decommissioned servers. They’re eager to sell them to whomever wants them.

    Also, make sure you can point a fan at it. They’re designed for rackmount server chassis, so desktop-style cases don’t usually have the airflow needed.