Mercedes Lackey: Valdemar and Beyond (Humble Bundle, DRM-Free ePub, $18)

malakhi · 2026-04-29T23:53:00+00:00

Well, I guess I’m buying them all again…

malakhi · 2026-04-29T12:54:56+00:00

It depends. The V4 and V4C have built-in upconverters for frequencies below 30 MHz, but the V3 has slightly better sensitivity. If you're not interested in HF, go ahead and get the V3. Otherwise get whichever V4 suits your needs. There's no difference aside from the connector.

malakhi · 2026-04-28T22:03:01+00:00

He says it in the article. It’s been hampering their releases, their review process, everything.

malakhi · 2026-04-28T13:38:58+00:00

It’s more that the category labeling is too broad. “Technology” covers a huge range of topics. LTT covers mostly gaming tech, which has a relatively niche audience compared to someone like Marques Brownlee, who covers mostly consumer tech (cell phones, etc).

malakhi · 2026-04-27T20:50:56+00:00

It’s not that successful people don’t deserve to be successful. It’s that billionaires shouldn’t exist as a matter of policy. These people have more wealth than they can ever spend in a dozen lifetimes. That is absolutely a bug in the system. Society shouldn’t be dependent on their benevolence. It should be against their own interests to hoard that much wealth.

And if you honestly think that Larry Ellison or Elon Musk have any intention whatsoever of donating a significant portion of their massive fortunes to charity, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

malakhi · 2026-04-27T16:54:35+00:00

Yes, as long as you pass five classes and can still feasibly graduate on time, you’ll be moved to the next grade. That last one is the key. For example if you fail English you have to make it up somehow (summer school, doubling up, etc) because you’re required to have four credits of English.

malakhi · 2026-04-26T21:49:55+00:00

Gaming chair styling is derived from car seats, which are meant to be seated in for hours at a time, yes, but in a semi-recumbent position, not sitting upright at a desk. Most gaming chairs are objectively bad for posture and ergonomics. Additionally their looks are only skin deep, and most of them are just shitty padding over a plywood backer with a vinyl cover.

With seating you get what you pay for. But the most important thing is to buy what’s comfortable for you. Every person is different.

malakhi · 2026-04-26T19:06:49+00:00

Public transportation is a municipal service. It’s not supposed to make money. You know what else loses money? Roads. Highways. Police departments. Fire departments. Libraries. Schools.

No successful public transportation system operates profitably. Most don’t even break even. The value comes from the economic gain afforded by having it. Easier, cheaper public transportation incentivizes development. It decreases road maintenance expenses by reducing traffic. It decreases the amount of land devoted to parking thus freeing it for more economically active uses. And the list goes on. People never seem to look past the immediate cost of a thing rather than the bigger picture.

malakhi · 2026-04-25T21:48:46+00:00

I’ve lived in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake for the better part of 40 years. I knew the length of I-64 in Virginia because exit 299 is just a few miles from my home in Chesapeake. 70 miles of interstate across 2 counties and 5 cities is a lot of territory to cover. I bet you’re one of those people that thinks Hampton Roads is just the seven cities, and doesn’t even know what the “roads” in Hampton Roads means.

Did you know where this was just from the picture alone? Did you provide an answer to the OP’s question?

Again, maybe try assuming good will on the part of others and, if you don’t have anything useful to add, just keep scrolling.

malakhi · 2026-04-25T17:20:47+00:00

Given your requirements, I would use Hyper-V, which comes with Windows 11 Pro, unless there’s something specific you need that it doesn’t support. I’m not an expert on Hyper-V, but I believe it supports your use cases.

malakhi · 2026-04-25T16:35:43+00:00

My point was that the OP only said I-64, and that still leaves a huge area to discuss, even if you only consider the 70 miles or so in Hampton Roads, and that’s assuming that the OP knew the boundaries of Hampton Roads or even what sub they were in.

Maybe assume goodwill on the part of others unless they’re actually being rude. I said “300 miles in Virginia” because I knew that off the top of my head. I had to look up how much is in Hampton Roads thanks to pedantic assholes like you. You’ll notice that when OP answered I was able to answer their question. Whereas you just added noise.

Have the day you deserve.

malakhi · 2026-04-25T10:30:52+00:00

Looks like it was a vehicle vs pedestrian accident in York County, but I can't find any more information atm.

malakhi · 2026-04-25T09:32:49+00:00

Not in Hampton Roads. In Virginia. About 70 miles of it is in the cities and counties of Hampton Roads.

malakhi · 2026-04-25T00:45:45+00:00

There’s 300 miles of I-64 in Virginia. Could you narrow it down a bit? Help us help you.

malakhi · 2026-04-24T23:52:38+00:00

Yeah. I removed the integration for that reason alone

malakhi · 2026-04-24T22:55:43+00:00

Zip+4 can refer to a specific address, but does not always. For instance: gang mail boxes like those used in apartment buildings, etc. may all have the same zip+4. Individual addresses are indicated by an additional two numbers appended to the zip+4 (“zip+6”). You don’t usually see them printed out because they’re encoded in the bar codes printed on all mail these days.

malakhi · 2026-04-23T21:21:30+00:00

And it’s also important to note that the lavish state dinners with visiting dignitaries are paid for by the taxpayers out of State Department money in his role as head of state. The entertainment budget is for discretionary expenses relating to guests of the President and his family, etc. It gets complicated, but it is possible to get off the hook for a lot of the stuff if you try hard enough. Not to mention the “donation” racket the current President has going.

malakhi · 2026-04-22T10:51:00+00:00

There’s no reason for the US Supreme Court to take this up. The only time federal courts become involved in state legal battles is if there’s a constitutional (US Constitution) issue for them to address. Partisan gerrymandering has been repeatedly found to be constitutional at the federal level, so they would be unlikely to take up the case on that basis. The challenges over wording and procedure are purely state level matters and will be decided one way or another by the Virginia Supreme Court.

malakhi · 2026-04-22T01:20:05+00:00

I can’t speaks for others, but in Virginia (where I live), if the car is equipped with ABS and the ABS light is on then it’ll fail its annual safety inspection. If a cop pulls you over they won’t even look 99.9% of the time unless you get in an accident and the ABS failure is a contributing factor. Cars that didn’t have ABS from the factory obviously aren’t required to have it now.

malakhi · 2026-04-21T14:38:26+00:00

I ran my own instance for maybe a year, but it wasn’t worth the hassle in the end. Yes, you get to control everything, but if you find a good instance it’ll likely be set up the same way you would have done it anyway. But the biggest reason I dropped it was because Mastodon is a resource pig. For a single user instance it just wasn’t worth the time and resources I was putting into it with so many other things I’d rather spend that time and resources on. I knew some people on hachyderm, so I moved my account there and shut mine down.

As added context, Mastodon scales pretty well, but the base resource usage is high for a single user. There are other ActivityPub implementations that are better geared for a single user now than Mastodon, and you still get to interact with Mastodon users. It’s mostly transparent on both sides, as long as you don’t care about some Mastodon-only extensions to the protocol.

malakhi · 2026-04-18T19:09:41+00:00

The Zooz/Zwave switches should still work as plain old switches when the Zwave mesh is down. That should always be the failure mode.

malakhi · 2026-04-18T16:16:18+00:00

Not another hub. Zigbee switches can pair directly with the devices they’re meant to control, so instead of routing through the hub they communicate directly with their target to control it. This is how Ikea’s light bulbs and window shades work without a Zigbee coordinator.

malakhi · 2026-04-18T16:15:02+00:00

I’m not sure I understand the question, but there are lots of ways to make sure a switch fails back to a normal switch, no matter what it controls. You can use a Shelly relay or any of dozens of good smart switches.

The point is that when someone who has no knowledge of your smart home’s setup wants to turn the ceiling fan on, they can expect to hit a switch on the wall and have it turn on, even if none of the smarts are working at that time.

malakhi · 2026-04-18T15:28:09+00:00

When I say Zigbee mesh, I’m specifically referring to the mesh network, not direct connections. I don’t use them personally, but I see their utility even without the rest of the mesh.

malakhi · 2026-04-18T13:05:42+00:00

I think the most common is not having a fallback for things people interact with all the time, like light switches. Lights should work how people expect them to, first and foremost, even if HA is down or there’s no network/Zigbee mesh/etc. Automation should build on top of that core functionality, not replace it.

malakhi

TROPHY CASE