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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • When I bought my 3 it was $2200 including the harness for my car. Now the newer 3X is $1450 including harness (economies of scale!). I’ve been running it for 2 and a half years now and have 80,000 miles logged in my unit.

    I’m using it in a 2016 Civic Touring which was their original dev car model so it’s well documented and had a modification available to get necessary torque in tighter highway turns and be able to slow to and resume from stop. Other cars may work better or worse in terms of torque and ability to control speed. They have pretty extensive vehicle listings on their site and GitHub detailing the capabilities they are available depending on the car.

    https://comma.ai/shop/comma-3x

    I don’t work for Comma or anything, just am a fan of the tech and how it has allowed the controls in my car to get better over time rather than being stuck with what they shipped in 2016. My wife’s 2021 CR-V has better stock driver assist than my 2016 Civic, but my Comma’s assist experience today is far better than either stock system.


  • A Comma 3 driver assist system for my car. I drive a lot for work, and it’s an absolute game changer for driving distance as an enhancement to the stock LKAS and ACC systems. Highway miles are dramatically less strain and effort, and it makes me more able to watch the flow of traffic and keep an eye out for hazards. Their tagline is that they’re “making driving chill” and it’s definitely the case as long as you have a fully compatible vehicle.




  • Even on the Windows side of things they’re frustrating. Company took my perfectly working Thinkpad and replaced it last September with an “upgraded” Dell Inspiron laptop. It’s a piece of crap. Wakes up all the time in my bag, randomly drops wifi, and randomly drops ViewSonic monitors. Official IT solution: this happens sometimes, we don’t know why, and we’re going to send you Dell monitors instead.

    *Edit I guess it’s actually a Precision, not Inspiron. I don’t buy Dells so I don’t know all the names!


  • The better upload requires using their modem/router, or one of the specific users owned ones that are approved by them to work with the mid-split tech. While my old modem could technically do it, it wasn’t “approved” for the speed. I was limited on upload to 35 but could usually hit 45 from over provisioning. I had to buy a new modem but now I get 1400/200. They just flipped the switch on being able to use consumer owned hardware at all with the mid-splits this fall.


  • Great advice from everyone here. For the transcoding side of things you want an 8th gen or newer Intel chip to handle quicksync and have a good level of quality. I’ve been using a 10th gen i5 for a couple of years now and it’s been great. Regularly handles multiple transcodes and has enough cores to do all the other server stuff without an issue. You need Plex Pass to do the hardware transcodes if you don’t already have it or can look at switching to Jellyfin.

    As mentioned elsewhere, using an HBA is great when you start getting to large numbers of drives. I haven’t seen random drops the way I’ve seen occasionally on the cheap SATA PCI cards. If you get one that’s flashed in “IT mode” the drives appear normally to your OS and you can then build software raid however you want. If you don’t want to flash it yourself, I’ve had good luck with stuff from The Art of Server

    I know some people like to use old “real” server hardware for reliability or ECC memory but I’ve personally had good luck with quality consumer hardware and keeping everything running on a UPS. I’ve learned a lot from serverbuilds.net about compatibility works between some of the consumer gear, and making sense of some of the used enterprise gear that’s useful for this hobby. They also have good info on trying to do “budget” build outs.

    Most of the drives in my rack have been running for years and were shucked from external drives to save money. I think the key to success here has been keeping them cool and under consistent UPS power. Some of mine are in a disk shelf, and some are in the Rosewill case with the 12 hot swap bays. Drives are sitting at 24-28 degrees Celsius.

    Moving to the rack is a slippery slope… You start with one rack mounted server, and soon you’re adding a disk shelf and setting up 10 gigabit networking between devices. Give yourself more drive bays than you need now if you can so you have expansion space and not have to completely rearrange the rack 3 years later.

    Also if your budget can swing it, it’s nice keeping other older hardware around for testing. I leave my “critical” stuff running on one server now so that a reboot when tinkering doesn’t take down all the stuff running the house. That one only gets rebooted or has major changes made when it’s not in use (and wife isn’t watching Plex). The stuff that doesn’t quite need to be 24/7 gets tested on the other server that is safe to reboot.






  • Prosthetics. Costs are always blown way out of proportion because the media looks at just the device and ignores the professional expertise and custom fabrication work that goes into the devices. They also all like to hype that arms are “mind controlled” when they’re all using different variations of the same myoelectric technology that’s been around for years. There have certainly been dramatic advances as a result of better battery technology and 3D printing improvements to rapid prototyping, but what the media presents is typically very out of touch with reality. It’s even worse when you go from news media to movies and TV shows that set completely unrealistic expectations for patients.


  • Not necessarily. I’m on a daily medication that has a generic but is available in both extended release and immediate release forms. The extended release provides a more consistent dosage and has historically prevented me from getting sick. The immediate release causes inconsistent spikes and I have a history of getting sick on it. Insurance refused to pay for the extended release type for about 2 years before it made it onto their “formulary.” In the meantime I was using GoodRx and paying $100/mo instead of my paid health insurance pharmacy plan to make sure I wouldn’t get sick. The person I spoke to at the pharmacy management wing of the insurance company literally told me “you can get an app on your phone which will tell you when to take the immediate release medication.”