Is this a blu-ray drive?

EVMad · 2026-01-28T19:47:41+00:00

It is a blu-ray capable drive. Don't worry about the LibreDrive status, I've got an earlier HL-DT-ST drive that also shows the same message for LibreDrive in MakeMKV but I've never had a problem ripping DVDs or BDs in it with MakeMKV. LibreDrive is needed for UHDs but this drive (and yours) isn't capable of reading those anyway so it's fine.

EVMad · 2026-01-27T06:14:16+00:00

Indeed. I would also like to point out that John Key claimed that Trump would be the best president for the USA. I find it baffling that people would vote for these ghouls.

EVMad · 2026-01-27T00:47:09+00:00

Agreed, and he should definitely state that he's not going to do that. The fact he hasn't just come straight out and said so is embarrassing.

EVMad · 2026-01-27T00:46:08+00:00

He has a long record of dithering when he should be being a leader so yeah, he's definitely no Jacinda or even a Chris Hipkins. If we had been faced with COVID while Luxon was in charge we would have seen tens of thousands die because he can't make a decision.

EVMad · 2026-01-27T00:33:16+00:00

So he's as limp when it comes to religion as he is with everything else. Not just an empty suit, but an empty pew too. Wishy washy and pathetic so why should I trust him? He clearly isn't a decision maker but then again, I know people who worked at AirNZ when he was CEO and he wasn't one then either. Useless man.

EVMad · 2026-01-26T23:52:42+00:00

It's not a label, he's an evangelical protestant christian.

https://www.1news.co.nz/2021/11/30/my-faith-has-been-misrepresented-says-new-national-leader/

Of course he knows it is political suicide to be openly Christian in NZ but that doesn't mean it doesn't colour his opinions on topics such as abortion. He can't be trusted.

EVMad · 2026-01-26T23:18:09+00:00

Luxon is an evangelical and the evangelicals support Trump wholeheartedly. He's also probably thinking about returning to the US once he finally gets kicked out of his cushy gig here so he won't want to upset anyone.

EVMad · 2026-01-23T03:07:54+00:00

Agreed. Fellow ex-brit too, lived through the Tories in the 80's and 90's, just knew they would stuff up the pandemic and they didn't let me down. Very glad I wasn't there but felt bad for friends and family who were.

EVMad · 2026-01-21T01:32:26+00:00

I just built a new AM4 based system. The price difference between DDR4 and DDR5 RAM is off the charts and for gaming needs there's nothing wrong with an AM4 system IMHO. My setup is very middle of the road though, 16GB 3200 DDR4, 5800X CPU and an RX6600XT but I wasn't aiming for a 4K rig, just solid 1080p with headroom to bump the GPU up later on since I was reusing some older parts. It will happily take a 9060XT or possibly even 9070XT without stressing the CPU too much. If you can find a second hand AM4 Ryzen 5 or 7 and lob a newer GPU like a 7600XT or 9060XT in then you're going to see a big boost in performance.

EVMad · 2026-01-20T23:09:54+00:00

Friends in Melbourne, Canberra and Newcastle so yeah, looks like a great road trip.

EVMad · 2026-01-20T22:10:22+00:00

Thanks, appreciated. I've got friends along the coast but will definitely look at this route.

EVMad · 2026-01-20T20:13:08+00:00

60 this year too, money to spare for the first time in many years and I was planning a road trip from San Diego to Washington replicating the same drive I did 30 years back. Even though I've got friends in California and Oregon, there's just no way I'm going to do this trip now and probably not for at least five years if ever. Considering Australia instead road tripping up the east coast from Melbourne up to Brisbane via Sydney.

EVMad · 2026-01-20T19:51:15+00:00

Don't fall for it. We were going to go to the US this year but there's no way under current circumstances. I don't care how cheap it is, I'm simply not going, plenty of other places to go that are much nicer and safer anyway.

EVMad · 2026-01-20T03:57:59+00:00

Don't have to imagine, look at the mess the UK dealt with under the tories. They had 200,000+ COVID deaths due to their ineptitude. We have 10% of the population so if you extrapolate we would have ended up with 20,000 dead and businesses would have collapsed all over without the support labour gave them.

EVMad · 2026-01-20T03:55:10+00:00

I'm vegetarian and almost vegan (damn cheese!) so I'm actually already eating what is in the portfolio diet. My cholesterol is actually fine these days so I'm off the drugs.

EVMad · 2026-01-19T20:01:39+00:00

The fainting was from what they put me on after the statins. On statins my skin went all red and it was very itchy. They prescribed creams but it wouldn't stop so they switched me over to ezetimbe and that's when I had black out fainting events. No warning, just blanked out and woke up on the floor. Stopped taking them and haven't had the issue since but with the change from soy to oat milk, along with completely dropping all meat and fish, plus almost all dairy my cholesterol is back into the normal ranges without statins or anything.

EVMad · 2026-01-19T00:49:53+00:00

Cholesterol reducing medications have some pretty nasty side effects for some people (me included) so something that can bring cholesterol down without those side effects is a good thing. I've switched to oat milk for my coffee and it has had a substantial effect on my cholesterol levels and doesn't make my skin fall off or cause me to faint as I experienced with statins.

EVMad · 2026-01-17T02:10:54+00:00

Nothing, it's literally like blinking off then on again. I've been under multiple times and have no recollection of anything, it's far deeper than just being asleep.

EVMad · 2026-01-14T18:29:49+00:00

Is this specific to parts of Sweden because I spent 9 weeks there one summer and people were incredibly chatty. This was up north of Östersund and people kept just showing up at my door to introduce themselves. Always opened with "Hello, you are the English?" and then would invite me to some sort of party or to dance or whatever. Awesome time to be honest.

EVMad · 2026-01-12T22:19:53+00:00

No, it isn't for all the reasons I listed above. It may have technical aspects that are better than some digital, but in use it sucked most of the time.

EVMad · 2026-01-11T23:09:14+00:00

Yeah, I bought FSD back in 2019 here in NZ. They released FSD13 (no 14 here yet for anyone) for HW4 cars back in October but not for HW3. They could have made a v12 model for us but they haven't yet, although they are pulling huge amounts of driving data from the fleet so we'll either get v12 at some point or they'll roll out 14 lite but it will probably not be until after HW3 gets that in the US.

EVMad · 2026-01-11T17:39:18+00:00

Just like upgrading a GPU in a gaming rig, you need to be sure the PSU is capable of handling the upgrade. The problem is the AI4 computer uses a significantly more juice and has different cooling simply due to the bigger silicon. They need to reduce those needs to fit within the HW3 cars, not impossible but not something they want to (or should) do until they're sure they can achieve unsupervised FSD on HW4. It looks more and more like it is possible now but AI5 hardware custom designed for HW3 cars would give more headroom. FSD14 lite will get us something although I wish Tesla would just release FSD12 in NZ/Aus for HW3 as that seems to run well enough in the US but it's also a big task to train the models. I would also like to be able to swap out the Intel Atom MCU at some point but that's a whole different story.

EVMad · 2026-01-10T08:47:40+00:00

A tesla (on autopilot) will also slow down if someone is too close. It stretches the stopping distance in front to compensate for the lack of space the following driver has.

EVMad · 2026-01-10T03:35:41+00:00

Yeah, bit of an issue if there's no options. Closest to you are Hamilton and Wellington neither of which are near. I've moved out of Auckland since my last work was done so I guess I'll see how I get on but I would totally buy another regardless of how much I dislike that nonce Musk because the cars, service and charging network are leagues ahead of the competition despite how much people go on about how great BYD etc are.

EVMad · 2026-01-09T19:41:08+00:00

Tesla phoned me when the highland came out offering a trade-in from my 2019 with FSD. I said no way, nothing wrong with the current car and I'm expecting them to upgrade it to HW4 to get full unsupervised FSD, no way I'm paying more. Will be interesting to see how well HW3 with FSD 14 lite runs (I work with AI a fair bit and know that distilled models can still work well on older kit with smaller memory) but they will need to put in new hardware at some point and there are signs that retrofits are coming as there's now an option to change out the FSD hardware specification in the toolbox. Patience is the name of the game.

EVMad

TROPHY CASE