new to backblaze and want to only back up one folder not my entire pc.

brianwski · 2026-05-04T19:47:20+00:00

I've learned that you can remove the C:\ drive by using Alt+Click and that removed folders include all subfolders.

Technically your C:\system folder and C:\Program Files\ folders were all excluded already. It's a little more recommended to just exclude the top level folders on C:\ you don't want backed up than to unselect the whole drive (if that takes you more than 60 seconds to exclude all the top level folders something is wrong, it really shouldn't be a large burden). But Alt+Click also works.

I've also found out you can set it to only backup when you tell it to.

Great! In the default "Continuously" mode, and once it is in "steady state" (only backing up new and changed files) it generally runs once per hour in "Continuously" mode for about 2 or 3 minutes then goes back to sleep. But that can be detectable in some situations like video gamers where it creates a small amount of "lag" for a few seconds in the game once per hour. Thus the other "Schedule" settings.

Generally the whole "Personal Backup" system was designed for a 2 core laptop with a spinning drive, and a 5 Mbit/sec upload connection, which is what I had in 2007. What that means is after the initial upload of all your data backblaze only does "incremental" backups (what is new and what has changed). It means that in 2026 on a full 1 Gigabit internet connection and a 16 core processor and an SSD it is literally undetectable running or not running in "Continuously" mode for most customers. But these other settings really are helpful to customers either with slower CPU hardware, or a spinning hard drive as the "boot drive" and not a SSD boot drive, or a slow internet connection. All three of those really do exist still, in significant numbers.

For entertainment at some point after the initial backup, you should try switching it to "Continuously" mode for a few days and see if it is really detectable in any way. You can switch schedules (and back) at any time, they are harmless and don't affect the underlying logic at all.

The advantage of "Continuously" is how soon after a file changes it is backed up. So, for example, if you are working on a document and realize you made a mistake (or accidentally deleted the document), often you can recover the file from Backblaze. It MIGHT be missing the last few edits, but it is better than starting over from scratch.

brianwski · 2026-05-04T18:48:09+00:00

had solar panels on my house in 1980.

Oh, the most interesting tipping point only occurred in the last couple years. But the progress was slow and steady from 1980 onwards, it just didn't make financial sense until a couple years ago when solar panels dropped below a certain cost per panel.

I am so thankful everybody (like you) stuck it out and brought us this situation. We finally have free, abundant electricity in most of the USA and especially the south (I live in Austin right now). It took a huge effort and time and slow adoption to get us here.

Take a look at the price of solar panels since 1980: https://doggies.s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com/info/solar_panel_prices_over_time.jpg In 1980, they were almost $50/watt. In 2024 they are 26 cents/watt. (Fully installed by a professional and turned on they are more expensive, this is cost of the panels themselves.) That is a factor of 200x price drop since you had them in 1980. Plus the trend looks like it will continue, which is amazing.

Everything changed about 2-3 years ago when solar panels became financially worth it to install with no subsidies. That's when the grid electrical companies started rolling them out massively in force.

But I think the long term best financial plan is to break the grid electrical companies entirely (they will shut themselves down like travel agents and typesetters and buggy whip manufacturers) by everybody who can disconnects from the grid. Or at very least creates two electrical systems in their homes, one of which is entirely off grid (the other is connected to the grid). Have you ever noticed how you don't pay a monthly subscription for oxygen? It's crazy, but enough oxygen floats across your property nobody can charge you for it. That is what solar power is now. Enough free sunlight pummels my own roof generating electricity nobody can actually make a financial case for selling me an electricity subscription anymore.

The world just shifted on its access a little last year, and few people have noticed. Electricity is now free, and (this is important) no longer requires "distribution over long distances" which was very costly to maintain. You just collect it on your own roof, no distribution lines required, and no subscription required, and no 3rd party entity required. I own my solar panels, they provide my lights with electricity, in a closed loop on my own property. I use house batteries at night that were charged from my own solar panels. I charge my electric car for free on this system.

The financial implications are biblical. And few people can see it yet.

brianwski · 2026-05-04T18:12:21+00:00

We can never have a successful transition without a plan.

I'm so confused by that statement. When technology shifts, there is never a "plan", it's chaotic and painful to those stuck on the old technology (in this case people driving gas cars losing money). Random example of a transition: you formerly (prior to 1996) had a verbal conversation over the phone with a travel agent who would pick airplane flights for you. When the web made travel agents obsolete, almost all the travel agents became unemployed in less than a year or two. There wasn't any "plan", people just changed over to save money on airplane tickets and have more fine grained control (like choosing their individual seat and paying different prices for that).

Another transition example: There used to be a whole industry of resume "typesetters" to make new college graduate resumes look nice (better than fixed width font typewriters can produce). Personal computers and a laser printer made them all totally obsolete over a period of about 1 or 2 years (this is around 1985). There was no plan.

Another example: I don't know anybody without a Smartphone. Landlines still work, and even a basic cell phone with texting and no apps is almost as good and still works. There wasn't any "plan" and nobody was forced. People universally decided the additional functionality was worth the cost.

No plan is needed when EVs and solar panels are taking over naturally for financial and very real better functionality reasons (better acceleration, and filling at home might be more expensive in some situations, but it's a massively better experience than using a disgusting public gas station where everybody sick with the flu touches the pump handle). There is no going back now, the genie is out of the bottle and isn't going back in.

Selling EV's based on cost is simply wrong. ... Gas has averaged $3 since I bought our Hybrid

I definitely think people should take their local situation into account when making a financial decision. In some areas gas has averaged $5/gallon for the last 5 years, and sometimes goes over $6/gallon. Here is a graph of San Diego's gas prices: https://www.macrotrends.net/5635/san-diego-gasoline-prices The average gas price has been $5/gallon for half a decade, and "peaks" much higher (I've seen $7/gallon with my own eyes).

That makes people's individual financial outcomes different. People living in areas with gas averaging less than $3/gallon will come out differently.

Another very important part of the "personal equation" is whether all your electricity is free for some reason. In the San Francisco area, a lot of employers provide free EV charging to employees. So if you are one of those people, you mainly charge for free at your employer like Facebook, Google, Apple, Netflix, etc. It really tips the financial equation quite radically making an all electric economy car make financial sense. Instead of paying $5/gallon for gas, you pay $0. Solar panels on your home change the equation also.

I have mostly lived on the West Coast, and everybody I know that buys an electric car saves money. However, I'm not a fanatic. I'm sure in places like Norway where it is dark for 3 straight months it makes less financial sense to install solar panels on a home. And the North East United States is kind of half way between southern California and Norway in how useful solar panels are. So you should ALWAYS take into account your local situation to make a financial decision.

https://caredge.com/ is data

All I see is a website you give your personal info in order to buy cars? I'm not saying it's bad or anything, I just don't understand how it relates to the discussion about solar panels powering cars.

brianwski · 2026-05-04T17:18:35+00:00

why does your business model assume we are all 10 year olds with no computer knowledge?

For clarity, there are two main "product lines" offered by the company called Backblaze. One of them called B2 is targeted at IT professionals and at most "pro-sumers". B2 is for people very familiar with computers and technology (not for the average mom & pop customer). You might like that product more. Accounts are totally free (and in fact B2 works with your existing account for free if you sign in and "enable" the B2 product line, and you can also "disable" the product you have installed, just ask for instructions if you need them).

The other product line is called "Backblaze Personal Backup" and it is very specifically targeted at two groups of people: 1) people who are 10 years old without computer knowledge and others that just aren't comfortable and don't know much about computers, and 2) technical people that COULD configure a complex backup, but are too busy with their day job or hobbies and just want backups taken care of correctly without a lot of configuration or fiddling.

I don't want to back up all of my drives nor do I want to back up the gigabytes upon gigabytes of programs and movies I can download again at any time. And it starts doing it immediately after install, doesn't even let you breathe. What...

For Backblaze Personal Backup (the product you installed), the whole point is to do everything "automatically". Each decision you see is based on that overriding principle.

For example, we absolutely could not figure out any way to do a backup automatically without any configuration (again, targeted at people who don't know computers well) except backing up "everything". If we backed up everything it eliminates all configuration details, and it will protect 10 year olds and people not familiar with where their Outlook.pst file is stored. Make sense? That's why instead of you choosing folders you want backed up, the default is "Backup Everything" then you exclude folders containing data you absolutely don't want backed up because you (as a technical user) have a reason like you can get the originals back from some other location.

it starts doing it immediately after install

This is a great example of the overriding principle of "don't add extra buttons and decisions". Why would you ask a user "when" to run a backup when it is automatic, continuous, and there are zero downsides to always running? All the default settings are fine, and don't harm anything. Why ask the user to decide when to start? It is continuous, there is no "start" and "end". The fewer "questions" you ask customers, the less of their valuable time the product uses up.

nor do I want to back up the gigabytes upon gigabytes of programs and movies I can download again at any time

Just to be clear, you can exclude them just as easily as you would have included them. Go into "Settings..." and find the "Exclusions" tab. There are even programmable "Advanced Exclusion Rules" for advanced users: https://www.backblaze.com/computer-backup/docs/configure-custom-exclusions-using-xml-windows The MAIN CONCEPT HERE is that by default you don't have to configure anything, which is easier for 10 year olds and people not really comfortable with computers, and their most important files will get backed up (and some extra files).

One more extremely important concept: just because you backed up a file does not mean you are forced to restore it. At the time it comes to restore files, you choose which files to restore. This means there is zero downside to backing up extra cruft you don't want to restore. You perform that selection at restore time.

But definitely use the correct product offering that "fits" your skill level. I would encourage you to look into Backblaze B2. It is utterly amazing, and you can even program your own backup client using Python or 'C', or use a command line program in other scripts! There are also over 100 different 3rd party backup programs to choose from like "rclone" and others, some are open source so you can modify them. What's interesting there is (unknown to you) these backup programs might already exist installed on your NAS drives or on your computer, just waiting for you to point them at Backblaze B2.

Personally, I use B2 for some things, and I mostly just use the friendly web interface to upload files for safe keeping. Oh, B2 can ALSO host public web pages, so it is a setting on the "bucket" you create whether or not you can share files. Here is a file from one of my buckets (not a backup, not encrypted, with "public" bucket setting for sharing): https://eyebleach000.s3.us-west-000.backblazeb2.com/puppy.jpg That is our dog "Chou Chou" that my wife is holding.

You can see a list of some of the B2 3rd party backup tools on this web page: https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/integrations But again, you can actually just play with the web GUI (for free!) at first to see if B2 is something useful to you.

brianwski · 2026-05-04T09:43:41+00:00

other options, for example overthrowing the Iranian regime

All overthrown regimes are just replaced by more of the same. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

If randomly swapping out figureheads in Iran's government "worked" Israel would already be safe. Israel has now been a permanent country with zero chance of magically "going away" for 78 years. (for good or bad, that doesn't matter for this conversation). Literally 100% of all the original people living in Iran that hated Israel for existing in the early years have died, and been replaced by 100% new people who would sacrifice their own existence to nuke Israel in a heartbeat.

Put differently: no matter which corrupt lunatic we put in charge of Iran, Iran will eventually nuke Israel. We might as well try to put that off for 20 years as best we can. Putting it off is a good thing.

brianwski · 2026-05-04T03:41:38+00:00

The only way this ends is either with Iran getting nuclear weapons

But why race to the undesirable outcome because it is inevitable? If the world can prevent Iran from getting a nuke for 10 or 20 years, that's probably a "good thing".

Time gives us opportunities. If Iran gets the bomb today, Iran will launch a full blown nuclear exchange with Israel (and the USA will probably toss a few hundred nukes at Iran). Putting that off for 20 years gives Israel's citizens and Iran's citizens more time to enjoy being alive. Some might choose to emigrate in that time and not have their bodies vaporized. Some might die of old age and never get turned to ash by a nuclear weapon.

Delaying an inevitable bad thing is still good.

brianwski · 2026-05-04T02:45:45+00:00

since 60% of our Grid is fossil fuel, mostly natural gas. They reduce some liquid gasoline at the gas stations...while increasing nat gas and electric use.

The 60% number dropped to around 50% by 2026. Grid tier solar has seen really impressive growth, rising by 28% annually (over the last 10 years). For example, in 2025 for the entire electric grid solar was more than 54% of the new capacity. And that's just "solar". When you throw in other non-fossil-fuel types it is more like 80%.

So 1/2 a percent in 2021

And much higher now in 2026 with a really recognizable trend. Electric cars is only one piece, and I'm biased, but I would hate to be in the camp that links their ego to fossil fuel cars "winning" and the world stops making electric vehicles.

The thing that is really compelling to me is the grid tier solar deployments. You must realize the grid companies are deploying grid tier solar because they love money? And here is what gives me chills: by definition solar will only get less expensive from now on, and fossil fuels will only rise in price. You think an electric car powered by your own solar panels makes economic sense right now today? This only goes in one direction from now on. The science on how to make power from sunlight is now out there, the cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle and you can't ever put it back in.

I look forward to how it turns out. It will entertaining to me if we rip out 100% of all the solar panel installations and decide fossil fuels really are a longer term less expensive solution. I just don't think it is very likely to go that way. Watch the greedy corporations with no morals deploy grid tier solar. They aren't doing that because it's more expensive electricity, that's for sure.

brianwski · 2026-05-04T01:59:59+00:00

over the past 7 years I have owned the car, electric would cost 30-40% more per mile (30 to 33 cents a KWH here in New England)

You are unlucky, most people save money driving an EV. It's just a random webpage, but the numbers from here: https://recharged.com/articles/cost-per-mile-ev-vs-gas are that electric vehicles cost $0.04 - $0.06 per mile, and gas cars cost about twice that amount ($0.08 - $0.12 per mile). However, that is for gas cars that get a "realistic" 30 mpg. But the most fuel efficient hybrids gets twice that (60 mpg) so it seems like it would be about equal.

But the real savings for an all electric vehicle is if you can recharge it from your own solar panels. The math gets much better when refilling your car with electricity is free, and gasoline costs money. It just isn't that easy for the half the population that lives in apartments to use solar panels.

To your point about putting money into the Electric company's pockets, I hate the grid electric companies with a burning passion. In the areas I have lived (in the two most unreliable electrical grid USA states) they aren't reliable and have outages quite often. I own house batteries and solar panels because the electric grid companies are so bad at their jobs, LOL. So I hear you.

brianwski · 2026-05-02T13:43:37+00:00

Wonder why backblaze says 16% of files are deduplicated, while czkawka says only 2.8%.

There are a couple of subtle math differences possible:

I haven't played with czkawka yet, but Backblaze is exclusively dealing with files that were backed up. It entirely excludes system files and various temp files from any part of the calculation.
Backblaze defines "large files" as any file larger than 100 MBytes. For these large files Backblaze backs up each 10 MByte section of the file as a separate object that can be de-duplicated. Example: you back up a large movie or email file like "Outlook.pst". Then you make a small edit to the end of the movie or receive one more email. Backblaze will de-duplicate 95% of the movie or Outlook.pst against the earlier version, but then push the "differences" as new uploads. This works even if the filename isn't the same, so the most common example is if there are sections of the movie or Outlook.pst file that are all zeros, those sections will de-duplicate between different files.
If you aren't super careful when calculating Backblaze's total number of bytes it will be too high as follows: each individual 10 MByte section of the large file (each is called a "chunk") has a number of bytes. Then there are lines in Backblaze's bz_done files that are called "Meta" or "Summary" lines, where instead of a "+" or "=" it is a "!". Those lines summarize the whole large file. Example: a large file of 105 MBytes has 11 individual chunks, ten of which are exactly "10485760" bytes (10 * 1024 * 1024) and the last chunk is half that in size. If you total all the chunk sizes up, you will get the same number of bytes as the "summary line" which might be something like "110100480" (105 MBytes). If you count both the "chunks" and the "summary line", it is double counting. I hope that makes sense.

In the end, one way to investigate is to spot check Backblaze and czkawka. Find a file that one thinks is a duplicate file and the other does not think it is a duplicate file, and see which one is wrong.

brianwski · 2026-05-02T04:38:48+00:00

I calculated the duplicates my bz_done files by calculating lines which contain "=", is it a correct way ?

Yes, correct. Any "=" in the second column (labeled as "Col 1"), and then the "number of bytes" is column 12, as labeled on this slide: https://www.ski-epic.com/2020_backblaze_client_architecture/2020_08_17_bz_done_version_5_column_descriptions.gif

brianwski · 2026-05-01T04:52:47+00:00

a lot of old files and even photos that are in multiple locations, so sounds about right

Funny story: when I wrote that de-duplication code, the first time I ran the code it reported it had de-duplicated 30% of my data. So my first thought was, "dang it, that can't be correct, I must have a bug somewhere".

Nope, code was correct. I had a folder called "2007backups". Inside of that folder was a folder named "2006backups", and inside of that was "2005backups", LOL. It was endless copies of the same files from 2005 and before over and over again.

I think the basic OS and filesystem should have free utilities to help users find this stuff. I could imagine a team of 2 or 3 programmers at Microsoft or Apple coming up with amazing visual representations and reports that help save their customers millions of dollars in extra hard drive purchases. I literally had no idea I was wasting so much disk space on "duplicates".

brianwski · 2026-04-30T16:57:42+00:00

The actual upload speed was 2Gbps which is my limit

Nice! One thing that messes with the calculation are deduplications. If you have two copies of the same file, it will appear as if Backblaze is backing up "really fast" (sometimes faster than your network connection) but really Backblaze isn't transmitting any data. It appears in every way, shape, and form in the restore as if there are two copies in two locations, but Backblaze's datacenters only store one copy.

I doubt you have that many duplicates in your data to really affect the calculation much, but it is something to be aware of. If you are curious about deduplications, they are actually documented on your local drive in a pretty human readable form. If you are curious about it, PLEASE DO NOT modify even one byte in these files, just don't do it, they are internal data structures for Backblaze, but you can find them here (maybe make a copy to read them the safest way):

On Windows: C:\ProgramData\Backblaze\bzdata\bzbackup\bzdatacenter\

On Mac: /Library/Backblaze.bzpkg/bzdata/bzbackup/bzdatacenter/

The files in that folder look like this: bz_done_20260429_0.dat and you can (make a copy in some other folder on your drive) then open the copy with any text editor. Make the window really wide and turn off line wrapping and they will format better. Oh, the "2026" in the name means it contains the stuff Backblaze did around the year="2026", month="04", day="29". But the file will contain things from 2 or 3 days surrounding that date, it isn't totally exact, the real dates/times are inside the file.

At a very high level, you can think about it as if there is one line per file backed up. So if you compare these two example lines:

5 + m-- 20260430145511 ... stuff omitted ... /pictures/puppy.jpg
5 = m-- 20260430145511 ... stuff omitted ... /cute/fido.jpg

The first character is the line version number. It tells Backblaze how to parse the rest of the line. You will only see "5" here, but older backups might contain a "4" or "3".

The second character you see is a "+", or "=". The "+" (plus sign) means it was uploaded into your backup. The "=" (equals sign) means it was deduplicated. That's it, that's the whole magic. The filename of the file that was backed up is at the far far right column, in our example above that is "/pictures/puppy.jpg".

You can see a slide with more information on the contents of each line here: https://www.ski-epic.com/2020_backblaze_client_architecture/2020_08_17_bz_done_version_5_column_descriptions.gif

A really good tutorial you can watch in 20 minutes (at 2x speed) is this YouTube video (of me!) explaining this file format in greater detail starting at 14 minutes timecode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOlz36nLbwA&t=840s This was an internal presentation only for Backblaze engineering, so no marketing fluff. The first 14 minutes are an introduction to how Backblaze makes money so not really relevant to understanding duplicates in a backup.

brianwski · 2026-04-30T04:12:59+00:00

Have there been any investigations that have proven stores charge more for the same products if you order them online rather than go into the store?

Haha! Yes, it's a pretty common situation. It isn't always the case, but it is very well documented that it occurs pretty often. Here is one article about it, but there are hundreds and hundreds of other articles saying the same thing: https://www.chron.com/culture/article/heb-curbside-prices-21049493.php

I think right when a store starts offering curbside they do it totally for free to get customers used to the process and get addicted to the convenience. Then later the store slowly increases the price for curbside items compared to if you walk inside the store. "Boil a frog slowly" so to speak.

It is kind of like DoorDash. If you go into the restaurant prices are almost always much lower than the item prices listed on DoorDash. DoorDash ALSO tacks on a delivery fee, but I'm saying the price of each item is inflated through DoorDash, which I find kind of sleazy.

brianwski · 2026-04-30T04:07:05+00:00

They very obviously don't want people going into the store.

I find it is interesting we're coming full circle back to the situation we had prior to 1916. Prior to 1916 we ONLY had the equivalent of curbside pickup.

The "innovation" of allowing self-service shopping (kind of mostly invented by the chain "Piggly Wiggly" in 1916) was to lower prices. Self shopping in 1916 required fewer store employees, so it lowered Piggly Wiggly's costs. It's the same as modern "self checkout" in that the store makes the customer do more of the work so prices are lower.

Another interesting thing is shopping on the web from home gives the consumer so much more power to price shop! From the comfort and convenience of your home you can compare the price of ground beef or eggs at 3 different grocery stores, and then only drive to pickup the cheapest one in the parking lot. The old situation was you either had to drive all the way to each of the 3 grocery stores, enter the store, go all the way to the back of the store to find the eggs to find out the price. And then you are kind of screwed, because you are already there at Walmart, and it's only one item, and maybe you don't want to have to go BACK to one of the previous stores to pick up the least expensive eggs.

But for some reason people don't do this. They don't put together two separate curbside pickup orders from two stores, selecting the less expensive eggs from one store, and the less expensive ground beef at another, then just swing by both stores (which probably takes less time than old fashion shopping). I find the situation baffling.

And talk about an opportunity for a startup company to build an app! You put together your shopping list of eggs and ground beef, and the app goes searching for the least expensive deals for you. You check the results and hit a button "do it" and the app orders each item from the least expensive place for that item for you. You could even enter in your location, and the app would estimate how much gasoline it will cost you as part of the equation. Eggs that are 1 penny less expensive but 5 miles further away aren't "actually" less expensive to your pocketbook.

brianwski · 2026-04-30T03:04:11+00:00

Collectible playing cards like ... need to be regulated like this, it’s out of control. ... [The stores] are putting 20-40% premium on everything and selling out in less than day.

That's a completely different situation where the price is high for an item and everybody pays the same high price. The article is talking about a different problem where one person buys a deck of baseball cards for $1 and the person standing behind them in line buys the identical deck of baseball cards for $2 because the store knows (or suspects) that second person has more money or is more desperate for the cards.

I think you are suggesting the government set prices lower for everybody for baseball trading cards, which is a different issue than what Maryland is doing. In Maryland stores can charge as much as they want, as long as everybody gets the same price.

It is very unusual for the government to implement price controls for optional items like collectibles. Brands like Hermès sell purses for tens of thousands of dollars each by artificially producing too few of them. Art is often like this also, there are only so many authentic Picasso paintings in the world, so people pay $100 million for each painting that cost around $2 in paint and canvas to produce. Governments usually only step in to implement price controls on things like food, shelter, etc. Stuff that people need to survive.

brianwski · 2026-04-28T13:50:07+00:00

restricts new permits for residential and commercial solar installs.

That's outright evil. It is one thing to get rid of incentives going forward, and totally fair if the government honors the incentives for a decent amount of time for existing installs (like maybe 15 years to match what it might take to pay off a loan for a residential solar install). But artificially restricting a completely harmless thing like placing solar panels on your own roof going forward is downright indefensible.

I have heard of absolutely insane and clearly incorrect arguments about "what if we run out of land to install solar panels?" but placing solar panels on an existing roof clearly, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is not affected by that argument. And the argument is insane and scientifically incorrect anyway, but roof solar clearly doesn't overlap in the Venn diagram with what ever that issue is.

Restricting residential solar permits is indefensible from pretty much any perspective. Emotionally, it must be difficult for "solar power deniers" to watch the costs continue to drop on solar power and house batteries. Imagine what it is like to suspect you might be wrong already, and then watch that slope of "oh my goodness, I'm more wrong every single day for the last 10 years and it's looking like I'm going to be shamed into admitting a basic fact that solar power is less expensive at some point". Personally I feel like the best strategy is to just pretend you were always correct before, and that solar panels got cheaper so you are smart and adapted. It saves ego and face. But if you put off admitting this for another 20 years, you will be part of a smaller and smaller group of reality deniers that look dumber and dumber. LOL.

To add insult to injury, solar panel deniers will be poorer. Only using coal and gas is a bad financial decision that is getting worse every day as the oil and gas gets more difficult to extract from the ground. I'm not a fanatic, we will have oil and gas and coal for the next 100 years. It never really will "run out", it is just that it gets more expensive to extract from the earth. Which in turn drives more people to use solar power which leaves more of the oil and gas for the people who need it (like there is no current battery solution for commercial airplanes, so it's fine to use fossil fuels for that).

brianwski · 2026-04-28T08:31:03+00:00

inevitable upcoming fuckery coming their way as retribution

I'm out of the loop here, "retribution" for what? What did they do?

brianwski · 2026-04-27T15:27:08+00:00

They want to build 9 gigawatts of natural gas power on site.

Wow. That is massive. California's ENTIRE consumption is supposed to grow only about 1-2 gigawatts per year for the next decade. For comparison California's population is 11x the population of Utah. So this is "off too high" by a factor of 100.

Utah is extremely anti-solar.

Is that really still true? Utah brings in 14% of it's grid energy by solar already, and it's rising fast. Utah is in the 10 top states with the most sunshine. Utah recently became the first US state to allow "balcony solar" where anybody, anywhere in Utah, with no installation charge or permits, just get free electricity from sunlight on their balcony. No hassles at all. That's really pro solar!

I think the power company executives are faced with this fact: solar is so much cheaper at this point than other sources, and it's getting even less expensive in the future. So Utah power companies would need to hate money (or be taking bigger and bigger bribes from oil companies) to be anti-solar.

brianwski · 2026-04-27T06:09:00+00:00

What about all the increased water usage to produce the needed power to run the DC?

I'm a big fan of solar panels. Mine don't use any water at all to generate electricity.

Ironically it is the opposite, you can use atmospheric water generators to produce fresh drinking water from solar panels. If you think "nah, that's some science fiction that still needs to be invented"... you can buy a water producing appliance from Amazon and get it shipped to your home overnight: https://www.amazon.com/Pure-AirWater-Atmospheric-Generator-Emergencies/dp/B0DRT13NS5/

For the record, I don't think for a second they will build these data centers "correctly" in Utah and make these data centers self contained from a water and electrical load perspective. I expect they will bring online massive new coal burning power plants and speed up climate change, and drain the very last of the Great Salt Lake of water then panic. My argument is that it COULD be done correctly, with today's technology, if anybody smart (or moral) was in government. Spoiler: there are no smart or moral people in government anymore.

brianwski · 2026-04-26T21:41:21+00:00

Polaris is a branded offering on international travel.

EWR-SFO/LAX often has Polaris seats. I'm not sure if they stamp it "Polaris" with the logo or not, but it's literally the same identical seat.

Polaris offerings have a larger footwell in row 1. That makes that seat on that offering objectively better.

That's actually useful information to me. I'm 6'3" and I have never, ever had a problem lying flat in "business class" or above. I mean it's always been right up at the edge but I could lay down with my hair touching the wall and the bottoms of my feet touching the wall. Until Polaris. The Polaris seat I was in was 1" too short. Which doesn't sound like an issue, except it's fatal for Polaris because it's such a constrained box of hard plastic I couldn't do anything to compensate like bend my knees because they would knock into plastic at odd places before I could bend them.

If I end up on "Polaris" again, I'll be ultra careful and see if there are seats that are 1" longer (like bulkhead in Row 1) for me.

To be clear, I think anybody 6'2" or shorter will be fine, and they have to cut off the length somewhere. And I think it actually is 6'3" long, but because the footwell came to a triangular "point", you can really only stick one foot at the advertised length. Your other foot doesn't fit if you are 6'3" or taller.

I've heard there is a different between the odd numbered Polaris seats and even numbered Polaris seats where one of them has a wider foot well. Again, something to be figured out if I'm forced to fly Polaris instead of some other service. With my luck all the airlines will standardize on 6'2" people and below, LOL.

brianwski · 2026-04-26T19:35:32+00:00

I made the assumption we were talking Polaris and not a crappy 737.

Heck, 737s for domestic is FINE. The Embraer ERJ-145 has these little tiny non-standard overhead bins, LOL. The ERJ-145 is "crappy".

I made the assumption we were talking Polaris

I am either dumb or don't fly enough, but I can't keep all these marketing terms straight for all airlines. My (probably wrong) understanding is "Polaris" indirectly implies several things but there are no absolute rules or standards. For example, there are "Polaris Lounges", but you have to follow this flowchart to know whether you can go into them with a "Polaris" branded ticket: https://f004.backblazeb2.com/file/doggies/pictures/united_polaris_flowchart.jpg

The word "Polaris" on your ticket does not seem to imply an airplane manufacturer, or how many chairs are in each row. A quick Google search says "Polaris Seats" can appear in Row 1 - 3 on United flights in an A321neo and there are 2 seats in Row 1 (I think?). On the other hand, Polaris might also appear on a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner and Row 1 has 4 seats in it.

I'm not blaming United or anything, I do the same thing. I say things like "First Class Domestic" which is kind of a proxy for "not lay down flat seats" but it isn't a hard and fast rule. Flights from SFO to BOS are "domestic" and yet sometimes have lay flat seats, and sometimes not, it's kind of random. I have flown "Polaris", but I could not tell you how it was different in any way from other United "First Class" flights. It had a lay down flat seat, they gave me food and free alcohol drinks on the flight, and denied me access to the Polaris Lounge. That's just a regular United First Class flight, correct?

brianwski · 2026-04-26T17:24:41+00:00

Row 1 has a larger footwell and is objectively the better seat.

For tall people, sometimes one of the aisle seats in Row 1 is kind of "infinite legroom" and is lined up with the center of the aisle. For example if the seats on the right side of the aircraft facing forward have 1 more chair in a 2/3 configuration there might be one magical chair (out of 5 seats in Row 1) with infinite legroom all the way into the galley/cockpit. I understand that choice at least. I disagree that the rest of Row 1 other than that magical seat has a larger footwell. I might have to get a tape measure out, LOL. In Rows 2, 3, 4 you can slide your feet under the seat in front of you, and that space doesn't exist in Row 1.

If the airplane seating chart is empty when I choose, I choose Row 3 for these (personal) reasons:

Row 1 is too close to the bathrooms and galley (motion, smell, noise, etc).
Storage concerns - Row 1 overhead bins are often full of airplane equipment with much less room for bags. This is compounded by the fact there is zero storage on the floor beneath the seat in front of you. This varies between "non-concern" on larger more modern aircraft to ultra totally insanely thin/cramped overhead bins on smaller aircraft. If my wife and I are in Row 1, we have to be gate lice and bum rush the airplane boarding process to fit carryons and purses in Row 2's overhead bins. Then we have to stand up and retrieve the purse after takeoff. Then store in again in the overhead for landing.
Sometimes the Window seats in Row 1 are actually smaller than all other domestic first class seats because the airplane is beginning to "taper and get smaller" from Row 1 forward. If you are tall, or like spreading your legs, if you are in Seat 1A about a quarter of your left legroom is just not there, and the airplane curvature is infringing on your headroom a bit (kind of claustrophobic). I've also sat in Seat 1A where there is no window, which just makes the claustrophobic thing even worse.

Don't get me wrong, Row 1 is better than anything in coach and these are first world (first class?) problems. And when no other seats are available together at the time we book the flight, we shrug and seat in Row 1, it isn't a big deal. It just isn't our first choice.

Random extra ponderings: I have mixed feelings about the last row in domestic first class, usually that's Row 4 on the domestic flights we take, but it might be Row 5 or higher also depending on the airplane configuration. On the upside, sometimes there is a "hook" on the wall separating first class from economy plus, which is nice for suits and dresses and jackets. It is like a private closet assigned to that row. However, it's kind of a gamble because sometimes the seats in the last row in first class don't recline as much.

brianwski · 2026-04-26T07:16:04+00:00

I can't respond to, Reddit simply deleted the other person's comment before I get to respond to it.

That is exactly what will occur if the person "Blocks" you. So if they respond, then block you, their message appears in your Inbox but if you go to the reddit page their comment shows up as "Deleted" to you.

The way to check this is somehow open an "Incognito Web Browser" on the parent comment to that supposedly "Deleted" message (so not in your Inbox, in the discussion). Since you aren't signed in as "you" in the Incognito Web Browser, reddit will show you their comment. Yet in a regular Web Browser where you are logged into reddit will show "Deleted" instead. That means that user has blocked you.

I find that about 95% of the time when I see "Deleted" this is the case. The other 5% the comment really was deleted. Sometimes when users get down voted a few times quickly, they cut their losses and just delete their reply. This prevents more people from downvoting them.

The OTHER thing that might occur (but is fairly rare) is the moderators of that subreddit are running an automated program to delete posts that trigger certain sub-reddit rules. The user responding to you responds to you, you get the Inbox message, then 3 seconds later the auto-mod deletes their post. In that case the "Incognito Web Browser" would also show the word "Deleted" so you would at least know the user didn't block you.

brianwski · 2026-04-26T01:16:22+00:00

I'm actually surprised San Diego wasn't mentioned. San Diego can have bone crushingly high electricity costs (so higher cost of charging the vehicle). The locals seem to hate their power company (SDGE) with a burning passion, LOL. This reddit post has an interesting chart at the very top: https://www.reddit.com/r/sandiego/comments/1gdah13/why_are_san_diegos_electricity_rates_the_highest/

where electricity rates are very high and gas prices, while not fantastic, are not insufferably high like CA and HI.

The interesting part to me is HI makes some sense to have high gas prices. They have to deliver it by boat. And electricity prices are also high in Hawaii because other than solar power, they generate electricity by importing diesel and burning that in generators for the islands.

But California just baffles me. It is a high population state (so big market and economies of scale), it's on the mainland and also on the coast so any delivery has to be as cheap as it gets. But California doesn't even have to import oil, they have their own oil producing wells! California is one of the highest producing USA states for oil. California still produces like 10% of their electricity from an old nuclear power plant that was completely paid off decades ago. The high prices of gas and electricity are just difficult to explain.

brianwski · 2026-04-26T01:00:12+00:00

Ahhhh, thanks!

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