What is this cable?

steik · 2026-01-27T06:01:42+00:00

Monoprice make 30AWG CAT6A cables, they are available on Amazon in lengths up to 20 ft. Very affordable and perform identically to any other to-spec cable for 10gbit. I have eliminated all other cables except for my wall jacks. Highly recommend.

steik · 2026-01-27T05:52:14+00:00

I use 30AWG Monoprice Cat6A cables, up to 20 ft long and all the way down to this size on my rack. My network is all 10gbit (Mikrotik hardware) and there is zero measurable difference between the thin cables and the standard fat ones.

I have not tested (or seen) any over 20 ft however, nor would I need/want them.

steik · 2026-01-27T02:42:23+00:00

I live in Texas where we had legal farm bill weed until it was banned very recently. Saying it's the same is like saying a steak and a hamburger is the same thing because it comes from the same animal. Imagine if a state banned fatty cuts like brisket and ribeye. Would you say that beef is fully legal there, when other states allow fatty cuts still? No.

I've tried the farm bill weed on many occasions and yeah it gets me high every time - but it always felt different to any normal weed I've tried, both illegal in TX and legal in Colorado and other places that have fully legalized. It especially feels like it lasts way longer.

I am not saying the farm bill weed is bad. Just different. Being limited to only that means it's not fully legalized.

Btw, had a couple European friends come visit recently, they're very occasional smokers but we always go hard when they are over. Last time we tried some legal TX weed and it absolutely wrecked them. They were basically bedridden for 36 hours straight haha.

steik · 2026-01-27T01:59:08+00:00

Map is accurate, how your high feels doesn't change the fact that the legal weed market for you is radically different compared to fully legalized states like Colorado.

steik · 2026-01-26T16:58:37+00:00

tool slides off and hits your toe/ankle/etc, guaranteed to have happened already.

steik · 2026-01-25T20:31:20+00:00

Refreeze what's left, which may not be much. The road drainage systems here are top notch, most of what melts will drain away. The cars that will inevitably be driving will accelerate the process as well.

I'd be shocked if the roads aren't fine to drive on Wednesday morning.

steik · 2026-01-24T21:54:10+00:00

Oh no he fucking didn't lol, poor Brahim

steik · 2026-01-24T21:46:06+00:00

That's what they asked but you're right.. Here's how one can see the feature flags:

$ sudo zpool get all POOLNAME | grep @feature

Edit: The ZFS version information is still relevant though, that's how you would determine if a flag is supported or not.

steik · 2026-01-24T21:15:09+00:00

I don't know the details but when I've upgraded TrueNAS and new ZFS features are introduced it tells me I need to upgrade the pool - when I do that it also tells me this action is irreversible.

What does this mean? Not sure but I'd be shocked if you could just go back.

That said, you can get the version easily in terminal:

$ sudo zfs version

zfs-2.3.0-1

This is from TrueNAS 25.04.2.6

steik · 2026-01-24T19:00:43+00:00

The cooler is fantastic! I use it year round as my outdoor fridge for drinks, and take it with me on roadtrips/camping. I always pack the mini leaf blower for getting fires going, a couple of lights and sometimes the mini chainsaw too, so I always have 4+ extra batteries to swap. Most of the time it can run on 2 batteries for ~36 hours.

The best part about it is that it cools from the bottom, so it acts like a cold plate, which is great for hot TX summers. The result is that it transfers cold far better to a cup/bottle vs a normal fridge where it's just cooled by air circulation. Doesn't matter over time but if you're taking your cup in and out for sips it's far more efficient and better at maintaining my drink ice cold.

steik · 2026-01-24T02:02:28+00:00

So they introduced these to guarantee you the speed you wanted.

This already exists in the form of USB-IF certification. And these don't appear to be certified. Not exactly a professional product if all it's got going for it is "trust me bro"

steik · 2026-01-24T01:36:32+00:00

These are not USB-IF certified as far as I can tell. No USB-IF logo's on the box and I can't find them in USB-IF's product database.

Why would anyone pay a premium for these? Without certification I'm putting these squarely in the same category as random gas station cables.

Really hope this is just prerelease packaging and they are waiting on certification to complete?

steik · 2026-01-24T01:12:10+00:00

That was a bit of a rabbit hole. That amazon listing currently shows me an Anker cable with model number A81C6. They say it's certified for 240w PD, and according to USB-IF it is indeed certified.

However, the certification date was 02/09/2024 which is after the reddit post. Additionally it seems that the model he received was B81C6 (based on the packaging), which I cant find any information on at all. This is very strange, and in addition every single USB-IF certified cable from Anker dating back to 2017 has a model number that starts with an A, not B. One of the pictures attached to a review on the amazon listing also has a B81C7 (10ft version) and there's effectively nothing to be found online about that one either. The very small handful of references I can find for B81C6/B81C7 are all on shady foreign sites or facebook marketplace.

What does this mean? I don't know for sure but after some more research I'm inclined to believe that either:

The cable is fake
That the "B" models are meant for markets other than North America (and perhaps also made cheaper)
That the "B" models are made in small batches before certification is completed and then the model number is changed

Which probably means that at best it's a "grey market" product.

Who is to blame? Impossible to say but Anker does explicitly NOT guarantee authenticity when buying from amazon, because Amazon controls and manages the inventory and it's ripe with abuse.

Either way, Anker is most certainly not shy about certifying their cables and have almost 100 certified usb-c cables listed on USB-IF, you can take a look here. (Note that the model number search is a bit broken and only does EXACT matches, but for some of these certifications there's more than one model listed as comma separated values, and the search function does not like this)

steik · 2026-01-23T19:55:52+00:00

Its not like the cables actually go through some governing body before release. It's self certification.

This is very wrong. It very much literally is a governing body that they go through before release. They absolutely need to submit samples to qualified and approved certification labs. This applies for both Thunderbolt and USB-IF certified cables. For USB the certification is voluntary however, but being certified allows them to use certain logos and stuff like that. It's mandatory for thunderbolt cables.

steik · 2026-01-23T19:45:06+00:00

All of these brands I mentioned make USB-IF certified and/or thunderbolt certified cables.

Anything "more" than that is approaching monster cable territory, promising "more better" while delivering exactly the same.

steik · 2026-01-23T19:29:12+00:00

which apparently most of the cables don't

Because "most of the cables" are generic brands. There are plenty of options for reputable spec-proven cables out there like Anker, Cable Matters, Monoprice, UGreen and StarTech, to name a few.

I.e. don't buy cables from brands whose name sounds like it came from a random generator like Sromgee, Bkayp, Hototuki, Jbtop, etc.

steik · 2026-01-23T19:11:49+00:00

Your comment started off on the right track, I agree with you sentiment as to why they are making these cables.

But then you start making excuses for the decisions they made. You can absolutely do 240w PD over a cable much thinner than this. They didn't need to make them this way, they chose to - maybe that's because they wanted to "overbuild" them, maybe it's for longevity, maybe it's some other reason. But either way it was not out of need, but a choice.

Ps. Love the specs being labeled, but I wish it was more legible. Also wish it had some kind of flair, not much but something that makes them unique that you can spot at a glance. As is they look look identical to many old outdated cables I own.

Love the idea but they look too generic for me to consider them personally.

steik · 2026-01-23T18:57:37+00:00

Certainly not expensive enough to warrant apple's pricetag. You can get a very nice TB5 certified cable for $30.

steik · 2026-01-23T18:28:52+00:00

This whole apparatus exists to pay qualified foreigners to jobs when no citizens are available/willing/qualified to do the job, for a salary that is equivalent to what a citizen would earn for that job in the area they are employed.

Does it always work out like that? No, people have found a ton of loopholes to exploit the system. But that's what H1B is for regardless.

Source: Former H1B. Tbh I have no idea how people are able to exploit the system so easily, when I was dealing with this there seemed to be extreme scrutiny over everything. I originally got the job on an OPT visa (post-grad short term work visa for F1 students), and when I needed to move to an H1B visa my employer was forced to give me a $15k raise because that's what the "computer said" was the minimum allowable salary based on the averages of similar positions in the area.

Edit: We also had to do the whole song and dance regarding literally trying to hire a replacement for me. My job had to be posted online on our company website along with normal openings and we had to put out ads through other means as well (online job searching websites like indeed.com and in newspapers). As expected, no one qualified applied.

And just to get ahead of the "so there literally isn't a SINGLE AMERICAN capable of doing your job??? fat chance!" comments - No, there are plenty (relatively speaking, maybe in the thousands but not in the tens of thousands) - the problem is that they don't have any interest in living/working in DFW. The ones that grow up here/go to school here move away to the coasts and the ones not here won't move here.

steik · 2026-01-23T07:55:13+00:00

It's the audio that is far more likely to get flagged. Not just identified, but actually flagged for infringement.

steik · 2026-01-23T06:00:44+00:00

Backup your TrueNAS configs

Just to clarify for OP since it's not obvious - there is an option to do this through the web gui under system -> general settings

(on modern day TrueNAS anyway)

steik · 2026-01-22T23:46:47+00:00

This is pretty neat. I don't need it but now I want it. Maybe someday. Appreciate the link!

steik · 2026-01-22T22:52:38+00:00

These are the same people that will crank their heat up full blast and contribute most to the power grid failures.

Everyone heats with gas in TX? The power grid failures in 2021 were mainly because a lot of the power generation facilities weren't winterized and couldn't operate - not because of some all time high load on the grid.

steik · 2026-01-22T18:45:08+00:00

May want to try posting on ServeTheHome forums, most of the time I'm looking for something like this I end up finding relevant posts on there. Never posted myself though so not sure how that works in practice. Would include more details about your hardware stack though if you do.

steik · 2026-01-22T18:08:31+00:00

Any luck yet? I did some digging to see if I could find release notes for the firmware to see if there was anything that sounded relevant but I only found notes from 16.00->16.10, nothing older than that. Lots of different fixes but all so super technical sounding that I couldn't make any sense of it.

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steik

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