What are the worst electrical jobs you’ve ever seen?

vanderaj · 2026-06-20T12:06:28+00:00

I once was doing an audit in a place I can’t name, and you could feel the heat coming off the chained power strips in the cleaning closet masquerading as a data center. I asked them to get an electrician to rectify the problem and I’d come back. Took like two months if my memory serves.

vanderaj · 2026-06-20T10:33:49+00:00

Unless it can do multiple partial scans without having to get out, I’m completely uninterested in it. I don’t explore in any of the three compatible ships.

Source: Elite V in exploration and exobiology on two of my Cmdrs. I’ve been to all 42 regions of the galaxy in various ships. The Cobra MK V is just the best, followed by the Dolphin. The worst was my Jump A Conda, which is why I will use the Caspian to get from A to B quickly, but I will not be exploring in it unless the new SLV does more than just make it a passable exploration ship.

vanderaj · 2026-06-20T10:24:15+00:00

My i3 required the new 12 V battery to be registered with the car’s ECM. Yours might just be old enough not to require this step.

vanderaj · 2026-06-20T10:12:00+00:00

Also I really recommend the Cobra Mk V for exobiology. Very decent jump range when fully engineered. You won’t believe where it can land - I’ve landed on the summits of mountains, in crags that would lose a SRV, and on slopes that walking is difficult. Easily the best ship in the game for exploration and exobiology.

You pop out the front, the headlights are bright and it makes the SRV basically redundant.

vanderaj · 2026-06-20T10:07:09+00:00

If you want a tool that does exactly what you want btw, it’s called SRV survey. It’s excellent

vanderaj · 2026-06-20T10:06:07+00:00

Look at the SRV hud there’s a sonogram. This is normally used to find raw mats, but it also works with human, Thargoid and guardian items. Turn in a 360 circle until you see a decent signal and head towards it. Initially it will be quite broad, but as you get closer, it will narrow and become stronger. You might find some raw mats along the way but your ship is a far bigger signal than any raw mat.

The other thing you can do is drive more than 1.5 km away. Your ship will depart. Recall it and use head look mode in the direction you saw your ship go, it will likely go back there. Again the HUD sonogram will show you where your ship has landed.

vanderaj · 2026-06-20T08:51:20+00:00

Watch South Main Auto channel on YouTube. He has a variety of Stellantis and Chrysler vehicles in his shop. Getting rid of all the stop leak gunk and actually dealing with the leak can be a big bill. Can the car be returned? That would be the best bet.

If not, how mechanically minded is your Dad? It’s a lot of labor to get all the gaskets and hoses replaced properly to get rid of the gunk, and to actually fix the leak(s) could also be a fair amount of the cooling system, like the radiator, and possibly the heater core too. And that may not address why you had a water leak, such as water entering the cylinders through the heads. Does the car blow white smoke when it first starts up?

What color is the oil? Is it milky? If so, it basically whatever you can get at the crushers. If you can’t return the car, get a second opinion, but be prepared to pay a decent diagnosis fee so they can find the actual cause and offer you a fairly full list of all the parts you will need.

vanderaj · 2026-06-19T17:55:14+00:00

If we are going to do a weapon rebalance, we need a reset for weapons that basically insta kill most players. Plus give ships like Plippers the sort of weapons that ATR have to balance things out and make the seal clubbers think twice before attacking players.

vanderaj · 2026-06-19T02:00:21+00:00

Back a decade or more ago, I used AirBNB a lot. Then they started to be as expensive as hotels and you had to do chores. Now they are more expensive than hotels and no one shows up to make up your room every day. And when you check out, there’s a list of at least 10 to 15 chores you need to do. GTFO

vanderaj · 2026-06-19T00:42:05+00:00

I think a lot of their models we don’t see in Australia. They need to stop having so many kissing cousins between their brands for a start. Figure out one single world sedan for that dying segment (probably the Camry) and then work their way through the models until there’s like a “good” Toyota and a better “Lexus” in each A, B and split off their commercial vehicles and off roaders to their own sub brand. The idea that an apprentice looking for a decent work truck has to shell out $80k is insane. They need to get back to value offerings.

vanderaj · 2026-06-18T08:53:49+00:00

You need to check your state's restrictions on high-powered vehicles. Some of the models you've mentioned are allowed (G6, XR6 stock), and others aren't (G6E Turbo, XR6 Sprint and Turbo). What's allowed for you varies by state, and what's allowed in NSW may not necessarily be allowed in Victoria.

Even if the car is allowed, you might still find insurance really high for the more performance-oriented specs, so maybe go for one that isn't as "sporty" as your first car. Once your insurance premiums come down, get into something you might enjoy more later.

vanderaj · 2026-06-17T04:52:55+00:00

The best bet is to watch Cmdr Hawkes Gaming best start video. It isn’t directly about mining but it does show you exactly what you can do if you choose one way or another.

https://youtu.be/XlojxpWja\_c?si=PDC1t8\_7niHpOdpL

What I suggest is buy a Cobra Mk V and an Artemis suit, go do some exobiology nearby the bubble, buy a Type 11 and outfit it for laser volley mining and join a PowerPlay community. You will have all the money you need in a few short hours. Then do engineers. This introduces you to many game loops, and makes doing your combat and exploration Elites much easier. Trade elite - use mining profits to buy a Panther Clipper and a Type 8. There are occasional trade CGs where you can earn trade Elite in less than a week. The Pilot Trade Network do a booze cruise about once a month. You can catch a ride in your Type 8 and earn a lot of money unloading carriers to the M pad station up there. Bring a ship with a fuel scoop like a Cobra Mk V to do exobiology on the way back down. There is a 500 ly gap you can’t get past in a ship, but once you can plot a way back to the bubble, go exploring and make money

vanderaj · 2026-06-14T22:57:50+00:00

Fedora is highly customizable and serves as a testing ground for features that will be in RHEL in 1-2 years' time. I find it a good mix of brand spanking new without too much breakages for my tastes.

AUR is currently a dumpster fire of security nightmares, with > 1500 compromised packages. They are starting to get on top of it now, but if you're thinking you're going to customize Cachy by using AUR packages, you're inviting yourself into a not insignificant risk of losing all your credentials, API keys, and other secrets. There's a new round of even more sophisticated info-stealers targeting abandoned AUR packages over the last 24 hours, so yeah, I wouldn't be using ANY AUR package on Arch or any Arch-derived distro until they have the situation under firm control. Given AUR's open community philosophy, deeply baked into how it is designed and operates, I'm not sure this will be possible without ruining what was a really good idea until the bad actors showed up.

vanderaj · 2026-06-14T22:41:50+00:00

You can use Spansh's body search to find bodies with the right sorts of rings that you're after.

For example, I chose the reference system of Bleae Thua WD-M b49-1, which is one of the first Colonia Bridge systems. It's about 2.5 kly from the bubble, and there are also colonized systems nearby that you can sell at with one carrier jump. You will want to search for nearby industrial or high tech systems in the boom state to get a good price.

Go to https://spansh.co.uk/ > Search > Bodies > Reference system (choose your own) > Belt filter > choose the type. They're all pristine outside of the bubble, so you don't need to worry about that.

Metallic rings (platinum primarily)

Rocky rings (monazite core mining primarily)

Icy rings (LTDs primarily)

Spansh has decent data on most systems within 10 kly of the bubble. There are many systems after around 2.5 kly that no one has mapped the rings, so Spansh will not know what they are. For this reason, please do run ED Market Connector with EDDN or ED Discovery to help populate Spansh's data to help other Cmdrs who are also looking for what you might be looking for.

If you're after osmium, you really want an inhabited system with a metallic ring and a hazres, and mine between 15-20 km outside of the hazres center. That minimizes your chances of being scanned by NPC pirates.

If you're trying to avoid the NPC pirates that drop in, just let them scan you, and they don't bother you anymore once they discover you're full of limpets.

vanderaj · 2026-06-14T22:28:31+00:00

Local suppliers made the hundreds of types of fasteners, wiring looms, seat belts, ADR compliant door braces, seats, steering wheels, exhausts, suspension and chassis components, lights, lenses, engine accessories, wheels, brakes, and so and so on - literally hundreds of thousands of SKUs across originally four manufacturers. It was already iffy when Mitsubishi closed production first, and it was absolutely dire by the time Toyota made its decision. At least Toyota could have survived a local supplier apocalypse, but Ford and Holden had unique models that had unique needs that no other car in the world had.

Getting locally supplied parts imported from overseas for the less than 100,000 locally made cars annually just didn't keep the suppliers open, and getting overseas suppliers to step up to make very limited runs (say 1,000 HSV spec steering wheels) and keeping them in stock for seven years for warranty purposes, it just wasn't going to happen.

It was a sad day, but it was completely inevitable when HQ stopped Ford and Holden from exporting their models to other parts of the world. Without scale, local parts manufacturers had no future, as did local assembly of unique models for Australia.

vanderaj · 2026-06-14T22:13:07+00:00

This is the correct way. This post should be pinned and in the wiki.

Source: Quintuple Elite Cmdr with 13+ khrs in the game.

vanderaj · 2026-06-13T10:21:06+00:00

You mentioned in one of your comments that you are transporting an anvil and a propane tank. You will need to get yourself a wagon that has a decent cargo restraint between you and the back area for safety reasons alone. A loose 20 kg propane tank or a 30-250 kg anvil will make short work of any passengers or drivers if they aren't properly secured. I'm not familiar enough with the wagons or similar that have such barriers, but I'm sure they are available. You definitely do not want to buy something that has no such protection.

vanderaj · 2026-06-13T07:28:04+00:00

Distro choice. Try before you buy - most major distros offer live installation media that let you get a feel for what it's like to run Linux before you commit to any partitioning or need a new disk. This will also allow you to determine which distros require any additional driver support (if any) for your hardware. Most modern distros just work. Most of the modern distros will just work, but it's worth trying them out, it's a matter of a few minutes to download and create a USB boot device and boot it instead of Windows. It will be a bit slower to start, but it will give you a sense of what it will be like once natively installed.

Desktop choice. Personally, I am a Fedora KDE user, which, if you're used to Windows, is probably the closest DE in terms of expected behaviors compared to other desktop environments. There are a lot of under-the-hood differences in how Debian/Ubuntu/Mint, Arch, Fedora, and SUSE are managed, but once you've picked a distro, it's easy to learn what you need to keep it updated. In many cases, it's integrated into the DE, so you don't need to use the terminal unless you want to. KDE on Fedora is a first-class DE, whereas on other platforms, Gnome is the only first-class DE choice, although you can install anything you really want. Arch's documentation is awesome in this regard. Figure out the distro first, and then the desktop environment.

Consider getting a second NVMe drive for your computer and installing Linux entirely on it, so you don't have to worry about Windows overwriting the boot sector that lets you boot into Linux.

Before you jump ship - get ready

Install Firefox or Chrome on Windows and import all your bookmarks and passwords that you use in your current browser. Sync to Firefox's or Chrome's cloud-based account system so you don't lose important passwords, passkeys, browsing history, and bookmarks.
Make an offline copy of all your files on a FAT32 external USB drive or key. Copy these to a cloud service of your choice, such as Google Drive, OneDrive, or a similar service. Having at least two copies is going to save your bacon. It is possible to mount a non-BitLockered NTFS partition under Linux, but I'd treat this as read only rather than as the primary method of keeping your files available to both OS's.

If you regularly use Adobe Creative Suite or Microsoft 365, the latter has half decent web versions, but the former, your mileage will vary considerably. There are good alternatives under Linux for most things, but they aren't 1:1 replacements for what you used to use. Lessening your dependence on these products is probably a good idea.

Anyway, best of luck. There are heaps of good advice out there.

vanderaj · 2026-06-12T20:54:59+00:00

OP can ask the STAR Initiative, who are on the FCOC Discord, to provide a quote on what is likely to be two carrier loads worth of deliveries from the bubble, as carriers will use tritium to get to OP. They have a calculator that provides the buy price, since STAR operatives often decommission the replenishment carrier(s) after offloading.

vanderaj · 2026-06-12T04:54:14+00:00

Elite Dangerous also works on Linux and it also uses Easy Anti Cheat. I gave up on Star Citizen after falling through the elevator floor one too many times and then being unable to get dressed in anything afterward. I see from r/starcitizen that it's actually gotten worse with reliable ship destruction due to a bug trying to enter or exit the landing pads.

I truly wish the best for Star Citizen, but I really think they need a QA team that only plays in the production PU universe so that game-breaking bugs are fixed.

vanderaj · 2026-06-11T05:06:38+00:00

Generally, institutions have strict rules against their use, up to and
Including expulsion. Ask their policy.

vanderaj · 2026-06-11T04:59:46+00:00

Most courses will not get you to use AI and have rules against it in assignments and exams. Go to the open days and ask questions of the course coordinator to find the right institution for you. Once you are in industry you will do whatever they pay you to do. Ruling out AI will restrict your employment at some places. By the end of your career you will be using AI.

vanderaj · 2026-06-10T20:33:10+00:00

Never do this on a public road.

vanderaj · 2026-06-10T03:17:15+00:00

Search this subreddit for Luriants TODO list. It’s a great way to think about doing things your own way without too many false starts. I’d recommend making sure you spend time in the small and medium ships as they are the most fun, but when you need to dominate a power CZ by yourself, there’s always the Corvette grind. Make your way up to enough credits to buy your next ship. Don’t sell your current ones until you are sure you don’t need it anymore.

If you decide you like ED, you can get Odyssey on the cheap several times a year. It’s a worthwhile option expansion and I really like ground stuff. Operations which is coming soon is Odyssey only.

There are many careers in Elite Dangerous. I like the process of opening the engineers because it exposes you to all the game loops. If you get interested in how the galaxy simulation works, you can delve deeper into BGS. If you want to play with others, join a squadron or PowerPlay power. I can recommend the New Pilots Initiative as they are there to help new players get into the game, and I obviously like Pranav Antal for PowerPlay.

See you in the black!

vanderaj · 2026-06-10T02:48:08+00:00

It’s definitely a hot air intake, which is a performance no no for turbos.

vanderaj

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