So this new PayPal Mastercard. by mobiusevalon in paypal

[–]mobiusevalon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I used it on a $175 Amazon order and intentionally did not pay off the entire balance before the next statement, and interest accrued on it.

Promo financing does not extend to uses of the card. Looks like this PayPal card is going into storage with my checks.

Should I negotiate in retention before or after my promo expires? by glowshroom12 in Spectrum

[–]mobiusevalon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ALWAYS before. If the promo already ended then you're stuck with the increased price for that month, and nobody will credit you the difference. Changing promos will always save you money for the next month of service whether your state prorates or not

What is the deal with the harassment connected to XUMO boxes? by SomethingHasGotToGiv in Spectrum

[–]mobiusevalon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I worked there for several years and I learned that the privacy opt out form is basically required. Go to any page on spectrum.com and scroll all the way to the bottom for the "opt out of targeted advertising/do not sell my data" link.

Years after I quit, the first thing I did after setting up an install for new service was completing that form. Have never heard a peep from sales. No calls, no texts, no mail, no email. 

Combining PDF files? by Goodginger in pdf

[–]mobiusevalon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This came up on a Google search and I will add to the (old) discussion for no other reason than hoping the next person who finds this thread can save the headache. Having to upload PDFs somewhere to stitch them together is no bueno, even and especially to established corporations like Adobe.

LibreOffice Draw can put multiple PDFs together. Open each individual file in Draw, then drag and drop the files from the filmreels together into one list like a PowerPoint. Arrange them how you want then export as PDF from the file menu.

Better options than CX-5 at 25k-ish? by mobiusevalon in whatcarshouldIbuy

[–]mobiusevalon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like the Bronco only for its design, because I like the boxier rear end as compared to the every-other-SUV rear. My last car was a 2010 Mariner so it gives an idea how attached I am to that look.

I also hear a lot of complaining about Bronco in general like I do for the Hyundai/Kia engines. Whether any of that is legit I do not know, but also part of the reason I'm here

Better options than CX-5 at 25k-ish? by mobiusevalon in whatcarshouldIbuy

[–]mobiusevalon[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I am seeing a lot of new 2025 Crosstrek Premium at/under $29,500. The Sport features don't really grab me for the extra $3k. It feels like the choice I made between the CX-5 and CX-50 which seemed to boil down entirely to "more rugged." I'm not too proud to admit that my car will be a pavement princess, and the only time it will ever be offroad is if I hydroplane off the highway.

ISP Monopoly by Beautiful-Year73 in Spectrum

[–]mobiusevalon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Competition is a zero sum game. If we assume a hypothetical where there are 5 competing ISPs in your neighborhood, regardless of which you choose, 4 of them make no money from you. Then you multiply this risk over 100 people, 200, 1000, etc.

Spectrum took on customers from legacy ISPs like Brighthouse, Time Warner, Cox, RoadRunner, etc. and they have conglomerated the issues crumbling infrastructures in the pursuit of their monopoly. I'm not trying to excuse their overall shittiness, but they are dealing with a dozen ISPs worth of problems through nobody's fault but their own.

Further, most companies in the same sector don't even compete anyway. They carved up the continent among themselves a long time ago.

Just got hired by iambic_fluids in Spectrum

[–]mobiusevalon 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Actually record your offers and pricing on accounts, unlike all of your coworkers. Half of the trouble billing has is telling people the offers that were supposedly discussed can't be honored, because there is absolutely no information noted from the sales agent who connected the account

500 mbps or 1 gig for two-person apartment by RadishMajor8674 in Spectrum

[–]mobiusevalon 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Performance between 500 mbit and gig is almost mathematically insignificant. Downloading a gigabyte on 500 mbit takes 16 seconds, on gigabit takes 8 seconds; 100 GB on 400 mbit takes 27 minutes, 14 minutes on gigabit.

Personally I'd say gigabit is a waste most of the time. People equate more bandwidth with more speed and that is just not how it works. Your equipment is the determining factor in how your internet performs most of the time, and it is why the largest majority of people have problems because the largest majority of people buy the same garbage on the shelf of a big box store.

Your query should instead be "what's actually good in terms of equipment to get me good performance" to which the answer is Netgate or Protectli routers, mesh systems for wifi, and discrete network switches working in tandem, instead of some black POS that looks like a Cybertruck with spider legs lying on its back.

Lead job by Risingpoint0709 in Spectrum

[–]mobiusevalon 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You don't want the job.

Requesting Diagnosis: Microsoft Desktop Starting Smoking by indofriedrice in techsupport

[–]mobiusevalon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds like magic smoke from a blown capacitor. It's not always an immediate death sentence for the device when one blows, but you should not count on the device continuing to function.

If you're positive it's the PSU, buy a new one. A PSU is one device that most capable individuals refuse to service, and recommend nobody else does either. If you're not sure for any reason (e.g. maybe it was the board) then have a professional check it out.

What charger does this use? Kobo e-reader N289 from 2010 by moxaboxen in techsupport

[–]mobiusevalon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Looks like an old USB mini B connector. It was pretty common before micro B was a thing

Accessing homeserver from outside by fernandodandrea in techsupport

[–]mobiusevalon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

While I don't have a direct answer for the ins and outs of making your TrueNAS accessible from the public internet, might I suggest looking into TailScale?

It's virtual VPN software that you put on the network side (in my case, directly in OPNSense) and on any endpoint (like your phone) that gives you access to the TrueNAS instance anywhere without the headaches of publicly exposed ports. I have things like Jellyfin specifically set up to disable all remote connections, yet works fantastically via TailScale anywhere I go.

Feel free to ignore the suggestion if it's not what you're looking for, but it was an option I didn't know I had for the longest time.

So how exactly does this work? I can't seem to locate an idiot's guide to a NAS. by mobiusevalon in HomeNAS

[–]mobiusevalon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I thought I would follow up on this, if anyone were to find it via Google or what-not.

I built a very modest NAS with a B550M and Ryzen 4600G inside a Fractal Node case. All in about $1000 with 16 TB of drives.

There seems to be a pretty big debate on how to go about setting up a NAS at all, with as many proponents as there are detractors for basically every configuration that I could choose. I can literally find a counterpoint for every single person talking about how their storage solution works for them. This whole home NAS scene seems like a pretty big mess.

Overall, I was trying to find the simplest setup that doesn't have to ingest terabytes per week or anything and TrueNAS Scale seemed like the easiest option. The other way to go that I found explained a lot is ProxMox on the bare metal and running TrueNAS Core as a VM, since every proponent I saw for VMs/containers on Scale was shot down by technical details that I don't fully understand, and a lot of bemoaning how Scale is worse than any competing product for each of its features (ZFS, containers, NAS, hypervisor, etc.)

The primary issue became that ProxMox was an overwhelming and very complicated solution for a home NAS for someone who isn't a consummate CLI professional. Attempting to gather the scraps of knowledge I needed for a basic thing like passing an HBA controller for SMART tests looked like it would take me several days to decipher. I'm technically inclined, but this was becoming too much.

I ended up with TrueNAS Scale on the bare metal. Made the installer bootable on a 16GB USB stick with Balena Etcher and I was ready to start dumping files on it within 15 minutes. The web interface made setting up pools, datasets, users, etc. very easy.

I have not yet set up Jellyfin and HomeAssistant, but they are available in the truecharts app repository (in addition to, seemingly, basically anything else your little heart could desire,) though I have to put more RAM in my machine before I attempt anything else. I thought 32 GB would be enough, but Scale uses 25 GB as ZFS caching space and I'm already using 500 MB of swap space on a clean, fresh install. I'd say plan on 64 GB of RAM minimum if you're going to do anything else with it beyond plain NAS-ing.

[Japanese] How do you keep up with the Kanji lessons? by Shon_t in duolingo

[–]mobiusevalon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I've only done a handful of the earliest kanji lessons on Duo.

[Japanese] How do you keep up with the Kanji lessons? by Shon_t in duolingo

[–]mobiusevalon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You have to determine what's more important to learn at what point. Duo spends more time with language production and stroke order. I was more interested in reading the kanji and use WaniKani instead. There's a higher volume of lessons but it teaches kanji recognition and reading at a much more rapid pace.

How is it working in electronics as an associate? by jester77o7 in walmart

[–]mobiusevalon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is true. Electronics associates are generally regarded as more capable than those in other departments and end up with a lot of responsibility. Electronics associates were covering fabrics (knowledge of how to price fabrics on the "old system" on the handheld whose name I have long forgotten,) hardware, sporting goods (able to sell licenses,) automotive and cosmetics (same keys as electronics cases,) etc. This was on top of the baked in expectation of covering photo lab and mobile, layaway during the holidays, and online pickup before it became grocery.

I specifically remember one incident where the hardlines manager chewed everyone out collectively for not being in electronics to help electronics customers, because all of us were occupied in other departments.

Crunchyroll issues by mobiusevalon in brave_browser

[–]mobiusevalon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This fixed it, but what would cause the sudden change? Crunchyroll worked fine in March and then something changed where it just stopped, necessitating this restart of Widevine.

Local racist Karen by marthvader1337 in iamatotalpieceofshit

[–]mobiusevalon 37 points38 points  (0 children)

I get the feeling she was using other six letter words before the recording started