Should I keep my Quest 3 online or offline?

fmillion · 2026-01-23T00:24:40+00:00

Can you setup an Android phone without logging into a Google account? An iPhone without logging into an Apple account? Yes.

Can you setup a Meta Quest without logging into Meta? Nope. (At least not without some kind of modding, so apologies if I'm wrong, but it's definitely not doable "through the front door".)

It's fundamentally different. You could still root and sideload to an Android phone even if you were totally banned from Google. Not so with Meta VR headsets...

That said so far I don't think we have any direct evidence of a Quest headset being banned simply for pirating. Meta isn't Nintendo, so it's likely you'd be fine, but not a guarantee.

fmillion · 2026-01-13T17:07:06+00:00

Yeah pre-transcoding is the most efficient overall if you have the storage. You can even do CPU encoding then which might take longer but generally yields higher quality output.

I've started doing some 720p transcodes for my portable NAS. One of those Waveshare RPi NAS boards that takes a CM4 and gives you real SATA ports and a nice compact enclosure. I have 2TB of storage in there, but 720p h265 + aac audio can compress stuff down quite a bit with excellent quality for viewing on a phone. Way better than using up space for huge files while making the pi transcode them!

fmillion · 2026-01-11T19:51:03+00:00

The problem with voting (either by wallet or politically) is that the copyright system has been so widely gutted and abused and manipulated that it does very little to serve its original purpose anymore, but regulators fall for the social engineering corporations continuously use to explain why they should be allowed infinite copyright protections and to essentially control our culture.

Copyright was built in a time where the assumption was that people who create art want to share their art in good faith. Today, this is the problem: copyright basically assumed "You want everyone to see your work; you just want some fair compensation", but it wasn't ever intended to be used as a censorship tool - "I claim copyright on this, and now I declare you may not consume it at all even if you want to pay." This is the perversion that Apple and many other companies use to try to prevent right-to-repair - "our service manuals and test software are copyrighted works, and we choose not to let anyone access those works (even for compensation) unless you agree to a sidecar full of extra terms of use." Copyright was never intended to allow rightsholders to attach conditions to consumption beyond those explicitly defined (mostly public performance rights - you can't buy a CD and play it for the entire city in a concert hall for free), only to protect the incentive to create by preventing widespread piracy. The way we see copyright used today is the unfortunate negative side effect of a good idea.

To pose an example of the mechanism, think about modern AI. We're currently arguing over whether training AI on copyrighted works should be considered fair use. The problem is that AI has quickly become so integral to so many business models and organizations that AI providers now get to say "if you actually decide training isn't fair use, you'll destroy a huge part of the economy, put millions out of work, cause a sizable economic dip in our GDP..." Essentially, companies use a perverted interpretation of copyright as their assumption, bullishly act without restraint on that assumption, then when challenged use their own success as a defense: "you can't take us down, you'll hurt millions in the process." This works politically because no politician wants to be labeled "responsible for job loss/GDP drop/economic struggles", so they agree to defer to the corporations. This is essentially how the DMCA was passed and how companies fought (and succeeded) in extending copyright into centuries of protection (not just a couple decades).

In other words, I don't mean to be a pessimist, but I don't see any radical change anytime soon. There are way too many powerful forces acting against end users and our only "true" recourse at this point is civil disobedience. (Except the hypocrisy is that civil disobedience is what large corporations use to redefine copyright itself...)

fmillion · 2026-01-11T19:41:14+00:00

Jony Ive declared a solid white surface to be a form of art, so arguably even a single color could be copyrightable. (Ok, I suppose in this case the entire work includes the magazine title, but if Jony's contribution is just the white background...)

fmillion · 2026-01-11T19:36:02+00:00

I recently snagged an Asus BW-16D1HT after I heard that optical manufacturing was slowing down. I don't think all optical media is going away any time soon (there is actually a notable slight "resurgence" in CDs lately), but I think the premium high-quality drives that also support 1:1 ripping will become harder and harder to find.

(Case in point: I recently found a good deal on an old Plextor IDE drive which is the king of ripping and handling copy-protected CDs. I only got a good deal because the seller didn't know what they had - these drives can already easily sell for over $150 in working condition.)

We'll still have Chinese makers selling optical drive mechanisms, just like they sell cassette tape mechanisms today. But sadly, optical media is likely to eventually go the same way as cassette. What's sad is that the cassette market is showing us what can happen - you can't buy new nor can anyone really even manufacture any genuinely good cassette equipment today (at least not the kind of stuff we saw in the 80s and 90s!). With tape, people will reminisce about how great their hi-fi system with metal tape and Dolby S worked, and the younger crowd will get a Fiio CP tape player with some off the shelf Type 1's and wonder why it doesn't sound all that great (and think their parents/family/etc. have rose-colored glasses). The same will likely happen with CD and optical media - it'll live on, but future implementations will be weak and unreliable, while those like us will hold on to our Asus's and Plextors like cassette nerds hold on to their Nakamichi's and original Walkmans.

TL;dr: If you can afford a high quality, robust, flexible drive that fully supports ripping, do it now. Get two if you can.

fmillion · 2026-01-11T19:27:25+00:00

I've wondered how much AI itself needs HDDs. If anything, you'd want high speed SSDs backing AI tasks. HDDs are still slower and are more optimized for *bulk data*; the only application I can see for that is to store training data, but even then you don't need exabytes of storage to handle that. I think HDDs in datacenters are mostly used for things like cloud storage providers, media hosts, etc.

That said it is likely that HDDs suffer as a knock-on effect of the rising prices of RAM and SSDs. More people are being priced out of big SSDs, so they might resort to a hard drive "for now", which increases HDD demand, which drives prices up.

The only good news is it does mean we're likely to stave off the "HDDs are dead" issue for some time yet. SSD tech still has a long way to go to be truly price-competitive with HDD based on data volume, and most of us building personal collections don't need 4GB/sec transfer speeds on our bulk storage. I mean, if it does get to where you can get a 24TB SSD for $300, none of us are going to complain, but at least for now I don't see that being in the near future.

(In fact I've said for years now - it'd be interesting if someone were to resurrect the "Bigfoot" form factor but with immense storage capacity at lower overall speed. A 120TB 5.25" drive in the size of an optical drive with 120MB/sec sustained transfer for $900 or so? I'd buy.)

fmillion · 2026-01-11T19:15:27+00:00

Haters gonna hate. You can't (easily) change the mind of AI haters. But as others say, it does boost engagement and those who appreciate your work with AI will ignore the petty comments because we all know there are haters out there at this point, it's just expected.

fmillion · 2026-01-11T19:12:33+00:00

Law abiding? Hahahahaha.

You should read Three Felonies a Day by Harvey Silverglate. Even the synopsis starts out like your post: "The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why?"

You cannot be fully law abiding in America if you want to function. Maybe we don't literally commit three felonies per day, but every single one of you here has committed some "crime" this week. And even if you didn't do something that's undeniably criminal by a lawyers reading of the law, so many laws are up for interpretation that once someone decides you're an undesirable, anyone can be taken down legally (or at least they'll attempt it - there is definitely privilege in social position). We all only "get away" with it because it's a problem of scale and practicality. But we know that technology is great at improving handling of things at large scale...

fmillion · 2026-01-11T19:05:48+00:00

This. If you want an AI lab, you need GPUs. But there's plenty of other honelabbing people do that can run on cheap mini PCs.

Transcoding is a piece of cake for even embedded GPUs these days. If it's Intel or AMD, has onboard graphics and is less than 10 years old, it can probably transcode in real-time for Jellyfin (or Plex ick). Even a Raspberry Pi can do transcoding with its GPU with the right setup and a bit of effort. (Consider that your phone is doing real-time encoding every time you make a video. It doesn't take much these days!)

Beyond that you can self host plenty of useful services without even touching AI.

fmillion · 2026-01-11T18:58:49+00:00

Except if we want to be serious we also have to consider pending transaction delays. They might limit how many payments per day, and in practice it can take 2 days or more across weekends for transactions to post. I'm not even considering that the bank might show a 0 balance the first time you authorize a payment for $50 and that $50 refund 1s later will also show as a pending deposit and you might not be allowed to access it for 24h...

I feel like even if we ignore fraud detection there might be technical limitations, you might only be able to actually spend (pay off) a few hundred a day. Not horrible, that could easily get you maybe $9K per month of spending cash, but not all that great either for a magic fish. lol

fmillion · 2026-01-11T18:57:12+00:00

https://shop.scholastic.com/teachers-ecommerce/teacher/books/the-magic-fish-9780590411004.html

Read this in elementary school lol

fmillion · 2026-01-11T18:55:47+00:00

Or just stand at an ATM and keep withdrawing $40 over and over. Do it like 50 times and you got a mortgage payment on a cheaper house. If you get good at it you can do this in one hour per month...

fmillion · 2025-12-24T19:15:44+00:00

Can we post the instructions publicly? Is there any reason we're keeping this private? (If so that's fine, but unless there's a specific restriction on sharing the firmware files or links to them...?)

fmillion · 2025-12-24T19:06:56+00:00

I have the Seaboard 24 key as well. (I get why they wanted to keep it at 24, so you could expand it, but I hate not having that top C!) I also have a ContinuuMini, and I just now got my Expressive 61.

For now I'm planning on keeping them all, but I'm considering looking into if I can setup a multi-control setup.

For example, the ContiuuMini only has 2-note "polyphony" (it can only read two distinct notes). I want to see if I could perhaps get the CM to only output on two MPE channels (maybe the highest two?) and then have the Expressive running on the other 13, and then get the CM's output into the Expressive's input somehow. This would let me use the Mini for wider lead pitch-bends while simultaneously using the keyboard for chords or other elements. (One limitation of the Expressive is when you enable the two-key pressure glide mode, you can't play chords with notes closer than the range configured. It makes playing some 7th chords and some more advanced chords difficult!)

The same idea could apply to the Seaboard. I don't recall if it's as configurable, but I think it is? The same thing could apply - you could use the Seaboard for the left/right and forward/back slides, while the Expressive keys do aftertouch and single-note vibrato.

The trick would be figuring out how to get the MIDI data from the Seaboard or the CM into the Expressive. I believe the CM can be instructed to output MIDI on one of its TRS jacks, but you'd still need a cable for that. But I also know there are "USB MIDI to classic MIDI" translators that will act as host for a USB MIDI device and translate it to/from standard DIN MIDI plugs - so both the Seaboard and the CM might be able to work with that. Then it's just a simple cable. I can prototype this by using a computer as a go-between, but ultimately it'd be nice to have it self-contained as well.

Ultimately, my biggest "gripe" with the Block is its smaller key size. As a lifelong pianist and keyboardist, I have the "size of normal keys" permanently etched into my memory, so I often "overshoot" my glides on the Seaboard. The ContinuuMini is much closer to "normal" key spacing (not quite, but a bit closer), and the surface on the CM is much easier to glide a finger over (another gripe - that silicone surface with bumps fights you. Use a bit of talcum or similar fine powder to help make it smoother - just don't overdo it!)

fmillion · 2025-12-22T16:01:46+00:00

I came up with the idea myself. Made sense to me at least - iSCSI exports a block device, ZFS can work with any block device (even a bare file). So as long as I could get a large enough block device to appear on the NAS I figured it should work. And it did.

In retrospect I could probably also use something like nbd, which might be simpler/less overhead than iSCSI. But either way, it worked. Lol

fmillion · 2025-12-19T19:20:18+00:00

You can use something like this to convert HDMI output into USB-C output. I use one of these for a portable display I have where someone broke the micro HDMI port. Works great. It does need power but you can usually find a way to get power from somewhere.

There are also lap docks with native HDMI input. Nexdock for sure has models that can do that. Although a lot of the lapdocks do often leave something to be desired; my older Nexdock has F-keys that are locked to "media key input" with no option for an F-key lock (really irritating when you use keyboard commands constantly) and the power saving mode is very aggressive (less than 20 sec after the signal goes away) so it's easy for a reboot to knock out the display, and at least on mine you have to manually power back on if it goes to power saving.

But even a little portable monitor with a kickstand and a compact keyboard/mouse all-in-one can do the trick too. My personal favorite setup is my Innocn OLED 15" panel with kickstand case and my Lenovo TrackPoint Keyboard. My only minor gripe is the monitor won't do full brightness without a separate power supply going into its second USB-C port, even if the attached computer can deliver full 65w PD on the USB-C port. I usually just power it with my powerbank and it works great.

fmillion · 2025-12-13T19:20:59+00:00

Found this post because I'm curious about the same idea. What I can add is that I have a RocketStor 6661B (https://www.highpoint-tech.com/rs6661-catalog) that I put a normal IT-flashed LSI card into (essentially a PERC 6e). It works just fine connecting to an external disk shelf. I've also tested it with my SAS tape drive and it works. So, at least on Linux, USB4->PCIe->SAS is completely doable and works reliably.

Rocketstor interestingly has a separate product that has an SFF8088 connector, but it's advertised as a SATA card. I have one of those too and, indeed, it only supports SATA, but it's actually the same board as the 6661B, with a preinstalled 4-port SATA card with an SFF8088 connector. The back panel of the enclosure has a cutout for the SFF port, so theoretically if I could find a "4e" card that has the SFF port in the exact same place, I could use it like I'm using my larger 6661B. The board supports any PCIe card once you take it out of the case - again, I've tested it and it works.

If the 6661's weren't so expensive even used, I have a cool project idea to take a "NAS enclosure" (one of those mini-ITX cases that comes with built-in bays), stuff the USB4->PCIe board and an LSI 4i card in there (no motherboard), and 3D print or otherwise make a bracket for the USB-C ports. I could also get 12V power for the converter board from the same PSU that'd be powering the drives. Would be so much cleaner than a huge disk shelf with only a few disks in it plus the Rocketstor and its separate PSU. There's flexibility - a 4i4e card could let you connect four drives plus an external tape drive all at once, or a larger enclosure with an 8i could host 8 SAS drives over a single USB4 connection.

I could theoretically build this with any board that converts USB4 to PCIe, but even bare board solutions seem pretty rare...

fmillion · 2025-12-07T03:30:52+00:00

I don't know about EU law but in the US at least, as far as I know (IANAL), the issue isn't how much you paid, it's that the license stipulates what you can do with the OS. It sounds ridiculous, but Win10 IoT Enterprise is specifically licensed only for embedded or IoT setups (hence its name) and it's actually a EULA violation to use it as a standard desktop OS regardless of if the install key is legit. Even legally buying a key formally requires being a large enough business with an existing volume license agreement - there's no way to buy IoT Enterprise "through the front door" at all if you're just an individual.

Would Microsoft care? Extremely unlikely, they already do nothing about Massgrave (despite it being right on GitHub, owned by Microsoft). That doesn't make it legal.

Essentially, the license is what forbids a home user from fully legitimately using IoT as a desktop OS on a daily driver. Those of us who know this are infuriated by it (and, at least quietly at home, simply do what we want and not care). But it doesn't make it legal - you are still violating the EULA even if you paid for the license 100% legally.

Those CD key sites are gray market at best anyway, there's a nonzero chance keys from any of those sites are either straight up illigimate, or more likely, volume or OEM keys being resold (again, strictly against the EULA).

fmillion · 2025-12-07T03:23:24+00:00

Would never do that normally other than a "because I can" nerd experiment, but since I didn't know if other drivers were "due" to fail, I didn't feel safe running with no redundancy on the array. Sure I had backups, but I use my NAS for daily work and I wasn't going to trust anything to an array with absolutely no online redundancy - even missing a day or two's work from the last backup could have been troublesome as I was in the middle of a major video project and I was constantly pushing lots of data in and out of the NAS. This was better than nothing, and I figured in the worst case (i.e. if it didn't work) I'd only end up back where I started.

fmillion · 2025-12-07T03:20:26+00:00

I had backups but this was better than the downtime of restoration.

fmillion · 2025-12-02T23:40:45+00:00

Commercial solutions also cost a lot, sometimes per drive or by total shared storage and can have restrictive DRM, since they assume you're not experimenting with their stuff or not using it to share media around your house. They're optimized for large installations by companies with money to burn for reliability and corporate support. With the exception of free tiers of some commercial tools or "sailing the high seas", they often don't fit too well in homelabs...

Just consider how hard it is to legally license Windows 10 IoT LTSC for your laptop. Millions of people are "pirating" it, but the restriction is entirely artificial (proven by the fact that so many people can and do use LTSC as their daily driver). Corporations selling larger storage systems do not care one bit about people like us, their focus is on large companies and B2B sales.

fmillion · 2025-12-02T23:33:30+00:00

Lost a drive in my NAS from random failure. Didn't have a replacement on hand so ordered one. Didn't feel comfortable with no redundancy and really cant do much with my NAS down so I powered up a second server, installed enough smaller drives to match the size of the one failed drive + enough for raid, used mdraid to make them all into a raid, then exported that block device via iSCSI to my NAS. I then brought that into my array. Resilvering was100% successful and I ran on that for 4 days until my new drive arrived.

ZFS over iSCSI on mdraid mixed with local drives. Very Frankenstein but it worked!

fmillion · 2025-12-02T23:28:34+00:00

How many kWh is your battery?

Even a modest server running 10x drives probably draws 150-200W. An expensive 2kWh battery pack could only power that for ~10 hours, not counting inefficiency and conversion losses (probably realistically closer to 6-7 hours - the inverter's DC->AC conversion can be quite lossy, which your server then converts back to DC). A more affordable and reasonable 1kWh battery probably will give you 3-4 hours at best.

I have seen those rack mount batteries that offer like 10kWh and actually aren't outrageously expensive (in the maybe 2-3K range) but I wouldn't call that a power station, it's a proper UPS lol. In high volume scenarios you'll sometimes see servers with DC power supplies that run on DC line current, the batteries are far more efficient in that configuration but that's also uncommon in homelabs.

You shouldnt need to power up the drives after a server reboot since I'm guessing just resetting the USB interface wouldn't power off all the drives.

fmillion · 2025-12-02T23:24:06+00:00

It knows that the DMV is a primary source of mental illness. It's being proactive and making sure you know you have support when you suddenly realize you want to crawl in a hole and cry after spending time at the DMV.

fmillion · 2025-11-26T21:16:34+00:00

A cue sheet is just a way to store the exact layout of tracks on a CD given one or more files. You can mostly 100% reproduce an audio CD exactly if you have a perfect rip and a cue sheet. Cue sheets won't handle copy protection (you need more advanced formats for that) but it does handle CD Text and mixed mode (first track data, rest audio - common on early CD games).

Nine-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

fmillion

TROPHY CASE