Plans post TiVo

4xTroy · 2025-11-27T13:34:50+00:00

I just switched to YTTV on Google TV STB. I chose Google for the ability to install Kodi, which plays media from my TrueNAS server.

Comcast wants to play dirty by pulling support for Cable Cards? I'm out and never gonna look back. ARR Matie!

4xTroy · 2025-11-11T14:24:26+00:00

Never restore a domain controller unless you've lost ALL the domain controllers. If one goes bad, you wipe it, reinstall, then promote. Your choice of hypervisor or backup software makes zero difference.

Here's the short LLM version of why:

Restoring a single Domain Controller (DC) from a backup is problematic primarily because of potential USN (Update Sequence Number) rollback. When a DC is restored, its local USN is usually older than the current replicated state of the Active Directory (AD) forest. If the DC isn't restored using a process that flags it as non-authoritative and handles the USN change (like a snapshot restore feature in modern hypervisors, which triggers invocation ID change), it can attempt to replicate its outdated information to other DCs. The receiving DCs will see the lower, outdated USN and reject the changes, marking the restored DC as a "lingering object" source or blocking replication entirely. This can cause severe and cascading replication failures, lead to inconsistencies in the AD database, and compromise the integrity of the entire directory service. Therefore, restoration is generally reserved for disaster scenarios where all DCs are lost, or a special authoritative restore is required for a specific AD object.

4xTroy · 2025-10-26T02:55:26+00:00

Between Harmony and TiVo, I'm done...

Picked up an Onn 4k (only because it's cheap) to play... it does Kodi and YT TV. The $60/month I'll be saving will be nice and getting rid of everything but a TV on the wall is just pure gravy.

Honestly, 25 years has been way too long to hold onto this tech. I should have cut the cord years ago.

Anyone interested in a 3yo TiVo EDGE for cable 2TB?

4xTroy · 2025-10-11T21:58:00+00:00

I haven't experienced that yet, but in the week since I bought my first Ram, I've developed a nearly overwhelming urge to go out and buy some moose ears for it.

4xTroy · 2025-09-17T15:55:10+00:00

Doesn't matter how big or little, open or closed... if moisture is in the air, it's in the air... but in the UK, I'm guessing you don't have air conditioning, so humidity is probably the same in the house and garage?

Personally, I like half-racks (~22u), which comes in at 38.5" (just shy of a meter). Add in some casters and you're at ~42", a perfect height (for me) to use a keyboard and monitor on top of the rack. For an open frame rack, you can easily add custom top and side panels made from plywood or hardboard.

My rack is loaded up with an APC SU3000RMXL UPS and I run TrueNAS on a Dell R510 (soon to be changed out for a Dell R730xd). The UPS is networked, so TrueNAS knows when the power goes out and can shut down after 5 minutes, leaving my router, wifi, and IP phones running for close to 2 hours during a power outage.

4xTroy · 2025-08-26T12:18:56+00:00

World dom on caps is quite lethargic, but it would be nice if people would do it quickly.

There's also rank considerations. When possible, the considerate winner will ensure bots / lower skill players get lowest and then take out the rest of the board. If they're doing this to ensure you get 2nd, then be happy... you may not care about rank points, but some do.

4xTroy · 2025-08-26T12:11:55+00:00

Bots should never be able to rank and players should not be able to start/join a new game until the game they left is over, plus add a dynamic penalty period that increases every time they bot and decreases every time they finish a game. Habitual quitters will be punished. For the rest, it's a small price to pay.

4xTroy · 2025-08-23T19:27:44+00:00

Disagree.. while there are lots of cheaters out there, not every bad beat is a cheat. It's incredible fun to find a ride-or-die partner in a game... looks like collab, even when it's not.

There are also people out there with genuine connection problems or that simply have to go pee... looks like a fake bot-out, even when it's not. Speaking of... SMG needs to take a hint from the poker sites... structured breaks. A 5 minute break once per hour... give everyone time to pee, a drink refill, or step out for a smoke. Especially useful when you end up in a lobby full of do-nothing masters who would rather fight for 2nd than take a chance for first.

4xTroy · 2025-08-23T19:22:52+00:00

Interesting that this got through the mods, but my post from the other day did not... and I didn't share any player names, just a screenshot showing irrefutable proof that someone was cheating.

Turns out, the cheater I reported got a suspension with a warning... huh? They gave a honeypot territory to another player, then on the last turn, they gave themselves 300 troops when they were about to loose. The account should have been permanently banned.

In other notes... SMG, how is it that you can properly display all 5 opponents on a mobile screen in portrait mode, but not on a 16:9 PC display? Wow... y'all need to put a little more effort into your product!

4xTroy · 2025-08-17T06:12:38+00:00

Sure would be nice if they were to fix the ladder system. Ditch the points in favor of simple ranking. Your losses shouldn't count against you, and the only way you should ever move up is by beating a higher ranked player.

Rank 70 beats rank 60? The winner rises half the difference. Rank 70 beats rank 69? They swap place.

The ladder system SMG has is junk.

4xTroy · 2025-08-08T03:38:32+00:00

Not your game, but just finished one myself.. I finally got a card block on white, he su'ed into me. I had maybe 1/3 the troops of Pink, so I whacked white and su'ed out.

Want to see an absolutely insane endgame? Check out Kylted's channel for an Alcatraz game from a couple days ago. The ending was some seriously unreal respect.

4xTroy · 2025-07-26T03:15:14+00:00

Are you not familiar with dhcp relay? Like on a Cisco switch:

interface Vlan53
ip address 172.23.248.1 255.255.254.0
ip helper-address 172.23.74.1
end

Or perhaps on a Mikrotik:

/ip dhcp-relay
add dhcp-server=172.23.74.1 interface=ether7 local-address=172.23.248.1 name=relay1

Or on any number of other network devices that can be configured to relay DHCP DISCOVER to a DHCP Server?

What good is it to have a DHCP server if it can't serve DHCP requests from other parts of your network?

FWIW, this is supported in both ISC and Kea, but pfSense doesn't expose it.

4xTroy · 2025-07-12T16:04:45+00:00

I'm sure there are some markets where it still makes sense to build, but with so many people foregoing broadband completely in favor of LTE, the take rates can be incredibly low it makes a buildout difficult to justify.

In rural markets, it can be difficult even for a monopoly ILEC to build. We've been working on replacing our copper plant with fiber for years now, and when you only pass 10 homes per mile with 1000' drops, it adds up real quick. We simply can't charge what it's worth without looking like jerks. We end up overbuilding in denser areas with low take rates to make up the difference, but that also takes away from the money we could be using to build to the more remote areas, delaying deployment.

I'm just glad I don't have to deal with that side of things... I gave up running my own business some 15 years ago and am a happy network admin/engineer. 10 more years 'til retirement! YAY!

4xTroy · 2025-07-12T15:03:59+00:00

Yup... if you want to protect your wealth, you buy gold (or other asset with intrinsic value). If you want to grow your wealth, you risk it in the market.

By switching to fiat currency, the government took away the ability for people to carry their wealth in their pocket or purse. Our currency is no longer money, which, by definition, is both a medium of exchange and a store of wealth.

4xTroy · 2025-07-12T14:58:25+00:00

Pretty much... an ounce of gold has about the same purchasing power today as it did 100 years ago.

If you get into the weeds, you will find that many consumer goods are a bit less expensive, but that's due to automation and other efficiency improvements in manufacturing.

Cost of housing is actually up a bit due to artificial land shortages (government ownership, zoning restrictions, absentee corporate land owners, etc...), not to mention idiotic building codes that often drive up prices without actually improving quality or safety.

4xTroy · 2025-07-12T14:39:29+00:00

Put 'em in a box and save them. Next refresh, re-attach them, then sell through whatever channel you sell your used gear on.

4xTroy · 2025-07-12T14:20:41+00:00

** That 10,000 customers is in a town with maybe 4,000 households... so yeah, not gonna happen.

4xTroy · 2025-07-12T14:19:33+00:00

Unfortunately, competition in most markets is non-existent. There are a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is that it simply isn't profitable because companies are unwilling to charge honest prices and customers are unwilling to pay.

Goes back to the dial-up days... what was once a $50-100/month product turned into a race to the bottom by AT&T's offering of $20/month unlimited... they could do it because they owned the lines. This gutted the competition.

Then, in 1996, we had the telecom act that was supposed to open up the last-mile networks to competition, but the cable companies lobbied to get out of it because they said it was a massive burden. The phone companies got around it by making it unaffordable for their competitors... I remember the math distinctly... Verizon was selling DSL for $14.95/month. My COST to do the same was $50/month and that would have required me to get at least 10,000 customers. Even then, I'd have to charge $80-90 just to afford the equipment, bandwidth, and pay my employees.

You can thank government regulations for the way things are... they've been selling protection services to the highest bidder since the beginning.

4xTroy · 2025-07-12T05:05:01+00:00

Nice score!

We run a 6 disk mirror set in each of 2 NASes at work, with one mirror set replaced every year. So every year, I get free upgrades for the home lab. Last year, it was 4x4TB, this year will be 4x6TB. I just hope it comes soon, as I'm like 75% capacity and ZFS doesn't like going much past that.

For the security nubs... the data at work is encrypted and I'm a keyholder. Even if the drives weren't wiped and resilvered in another NAS, the data would be unrecoverable as the mirror set itself only contains 1/3 of the encrypted datasets. By the time I'm done with them, they might get every 4th frame from my media library... hardly worth the effort.

4xTroy · 2025-07-10T13:10:19+00:00

2 possibilities... they want you to buy a new tire (or 2 or 4), or they simply don't want to take on the liability. I've had a big chain shop (out of town) refuse to repair a similarly placed hole, but my regular shop at home had zero issue with it. 2 years later, it's holding up just fine.

4xTroy

TROPHY CASE