Hard to believe that I've had the same PC case since 2011, and my last serious upgrade was in 2015. I guess that's yet another sign that the PC is over, because PC upgrades have gotten really boring. It took 5 years for me to muster up the initiative to get my system fully upgraded! 🥱
I've been slogging away at this for quite some time now. My PC build blog entry series spans 13 glorious years:
Building a PC, Part VIII: Iterating (2015)
Building a PC, Part VII: Rebooting (2011)
Building a PC, Part VI: Rebuilding (2009)
Building a PC, Part V: Upgrading (2008)
Building a PC, Part IV: Now It's Your Turn (2007)
Building a PC, Part III: Overclocking (2007)
Building a PC, Part II: Burn in (2007)
Building a PC, Part I: Minimal boot (2007)
The future of PCs may not necessarily be more speed (though there is some of that, if you read on), but in smaller builds. For this iteration, my go-to cases are the Dan A4 SFX ...
And the Streacom DA2 ...
The attraction here is maximum power in minimum size. Note that each of these cases are just large enough to fit ...
a standard mini-ITX system
SFX power supply
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reasonable CPU cooler
... though the DA2 offers substantially more room for cooling the CPU and adding fans.
http://i.imgur.com/odoYjle.jpg
I'm not sure you can physically build a smaller standard mini-ITX system than the DAN A4 SFX, at least not without custom parts!
(For comparison with The Golden Age of x86 Gaming Consoles, a PS4 Pro occupies 5.3 liters and an Xbox One S 4.3 liters. About 50% more volume for considerably more than 2× the power isn't a bad deal!)
Samsung 970 PRO 1TB / Samsung 970 EVO 2TB / Samsung 860 QVO 4TB SATA
64GB DDR4-3000
Cryorig H7 cooler (exact fit)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti GPU
Compared to my old 2015-2017 system, a slightly overclocked i7-7700k, that at least gives me 2× the cores (and faster cores, both in clock rate and IPC), 2× the memory, and 2× the M.2 slots (two versus one).
The DA2 is a clever case though less perfect than the A4-SFX. What's neat about it is the hybrid open-air design (on the top and bottom) plus the versatile horizontal and vertical bracket system interior. Per the manual (pdf):
Note that you can (and really should) pop out the top and bottom acrylic pieces with the mesh dust net.
I had dramatically better temperatures after I did this, and it also made the build easier since the case can fully "breathe" through the top and bottom. You'll note that the front of the DA2 is totally solid, no air holes, so you do need that extra airflow.
The side panels are tool free, which is excellent, but the pressure fit makes them fairly difficult to remove. Feels like this could be tweaked?
(Don't even think about using a full sized ATX power supply. In theory it is supported, but the build becomes so much more difficult. Use a SFX power supply, which you'd expect to do for a mini-ITX build anyway.)
My primary complaint is that the 「穿梭Transocks-海外华人看剧追番听歌加速器」をApp Storeで:2021-6-8 · 「穿梭Transocks-海外华人看剧追番听歌加速器」のレビューをチェック、カスタマー評価を比較、スクリーンショットと詳細情報を確認することができます。「穿梭Transocks-海外华人看剧追番听歌加速器」をダウンロードしてiPhone、iPad、iPod touchでお楽しみください。. I had to remove it and re-attach it during my build. They should custom route the power cable upwards so it blocks less stuff.
Less of a criticism and more of an observation: if your build uses a powerful GPU and CPU, you'll need two case fans. There's mounting points for a 92mm fan in the rear, and the bracket system makes it easy to mount a 140mm fan blowing inward. You will definitely need both fans!
Here's the configuration I recommend, open on both the top and bottom for maximum airflow, with three fans total:
If you are a water cooling kind of person – I am definitely not, I experienced one too many traumatic cooling fluid leaks in the early 2000s – then you will use that 140mm space for the radiator.
I have definitely burn-in tested this machine, as I do all systems I build, and it passed with flying colors. But to be honest, if you expect to be under full CPU and GPU loads for extended periods of time you might need to switch to water cooling due to the space constraints. (Or pick slightly less powerful components.)
If you haven't built a PC system recently, it's easier than it has ever been. Heck by the time you install the M.2 drives, memory, CPU, and cooler on the motherboard you're almost done, these days!
There are a lot of interesting compact mini-itx builds out there. Perhaps that's the primary innovation in PC building for 2023 and beyond – packing all that power into less than 20 liters of space!
Discussion
极光加速器官
In an electric car, the (enormous) battery is 网页加速器. If electric car prices are decreasing, battery costs must be decreasing, because it's not like the cost of fabricating rubber, aluminum, glass, and steel into car shapes can decline that much, right?
On an electric scooter, though, the effect of battery price has to be even more dramatic because scooters are such 「穿梭Transocks-海外华人看剧追番听歌加速器」をApp Storeで:2021-6-8 · 「穿梭Transocks-海外华人看剧追番听歌加速器」のレビューをチェック、カスタマー評価を比較、スクリーンショットと詳細情報を確認することができます。「穿梭Transocks-海外华人看剧追番听歌加速器」をダウンロードしてiPhone、iPad、iPod touchでお楽しみください。. They aren't much more than a battery and an electric motor to begin with. Remember the 旋风加速器APP from twenty years ago?
What killed the electric scooter back then is the same thing that killed the electric car of year 2000: terrible lead-acid battery technology. It's too heavy, it lacks power, it doesn't have enough range, it takes too long to charge. These are all different ways of saying the same thing: the battery sucks. It wasn't until Lithium Ion batteries matured that both the electric car and the electric scooter — and pretty much electric 土豆加速器app, if you think about it — became viable.
Thus, one way to see if Lithium Ion battery prices are indeed generally dropping independent of all other manufacturing concerns is to examine the cost of electric scooters over the last few years. Let's consider one of the most popular models, the Xiaomi Mi M365:
This graph only shows roughly two years, from January 2018 to now; it looks like the original price for the Xiaomi M365 when it hit the US market in early 2017 was around $800. So the price of a popular, common electric scooter has halved in three years. Very good news indeed for electric vehicles of all types!
This dramatic drop in electric scooter price from 2016 to 2023 may not be surprising versus the parallel rise of the quasi-legal electric scooter smartphone app rental industry over roughly the same time period, in the form of Bird, Lime, Skip, Spin, Scoot, etc.
Early versions of Bird scooters were actual Xiaomi M365s, slightly modified for rental. Only by late 2018 had they migrated to custom built, ruggedized scooters optimized for the rental market. The rental industries have their own challenges, and ironically have started to pivot to monthly rentals rather than the classic 15 cents per minute.
Bird has experimented with its business model in recent months. In early March, the company altered its repair program in Los Angeles, which had relied on gig workers to fix broken scooters. It moved repairs in-house (though scooters are still charged each night by an army of gig workers). Later that month, the company introduced scooters with locks in some markets, in a bid to prevent theft and vandalism.
In April, it announced the launch of a more traditional rental program in San Francisco and Barcelona, in which users could pay $25 per month to rent a Xiaomi m365 from the company rather than paying per ride.
But this isn't meant to be a blog entry about the viability of scooter rental company business models.
I want to tackle a more fundamental question: are electric scooters the future of transportation?
Even Uber, as screwed up of a company as they still are, knows cars are overkill for a lot of basic transportation needs:
Uber believes their current micro fleet of ebikes and scooters can displace trips under 3 miles.
46% of Uber's rides are under 3 miles 👀 pic.twitter.com/OFmb8arZ3j
— Micromobility Industries (@MicromobilityCo) April 12, 2023
We have plenty of scooters here at my house, and the family and I enjoy them greatly, but I have never actually ridden or owned an electric scooter. So I bought one. It is of course the popular, inexpensive, and well reviewed Xiaomi Mi M365.
Here's a picture of my electric scooter inside my electric car. (I apologize that I didn't have an electric bicycle to park next to it for maximum smugness, but you can bet your sweet electrons I'll work on that next!)
The short version of my review is this electric scooter is incredibly fun, works great, and if you can get it for a price around $300, practically a no-brainer. I love it, my kids love it, and as long as you're conceptually OK with the look, unlike Elon Musk 🛴💨 then you'll probably love it too.
I found a neat video covering the "one year later" experience of owning the scooter, and what you might eventually run into or want to tweak.
(The main thing to take away from this video is that flats ios加速器 on tires this small, so be warned. I put Slime in my Mi's tires out of an abundance of caution, but you could also go with solid tubeless tires – at the cost of some ride comfort – if you're really worried.)
That's not to say that the electric scooter experience is perfect. There are some challenges with electric scooters, starting with the biggest one: your local government has no idea how to regulate the darn things.
Is this regulated like a bicycle? If not, why not?
Are they allowed on the sidewalk?
Do you have to ride them in the road, with cars … uh, depending on the speed limit?
Do you need a driver's license?
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Are you even allowed to legally ride them in public at all outside of private property?
The answers also vary wildly depending on where you live, and with no consistency or apparent logic. Here are the current electric scooter laws in California, for what it's worth, which require the rider to have a valid driver's license (unlike electric bicycles) and also disallow them from sidewalks, both of which I feel are onerous and unnecessary restrictions.
One aspect of those laws I definitely agree with, however, is the 15 mile per hour speed restriction. That's a plenty brisk top speed for a standing adult with no special safety equipment. Anything faster starts to get decidedly … uncomfortable. Consider this monster of a 1165KWh electric scooter, with dual motors and dual suspension that goes up to forty freakin' miles per hour.
That … is … terrifying. Even the reviewer, in full motorcycle safety gear, wasn't willing to push it all the way to 40 MPH. And I don't blame him! But now that I've shown you the undisputed Honda Civic everyman budget model of electric scooter in the M365, hopefully this gives you a taste of the wider emerging diversity in these kinds of minimalistic electric vehicles. If you want a luxury electric scooter, an ultralight electric scooter, a rugged offroad electric scooter … all things are possible, for a price.
Another reason the M365 is available for so cheap is that is successor, the Xiaomi M365 Pro, was recently released, although it is not quite possible to obtain in the US at the moment.
Having ridden my M365 a fair bit, I can confirm all the Pro improvements are welcome, if incremental: bigger battery and disc brake, more power, better display, improved latch mechanism, etc.
None of those Pro improvements, however, are worth a 2× increase in price so I'd recommend sticking with the M365 for now because its value proposition is off the charts. Did I mention there's a bluetooth connection, and an app, and it is possible to hack the M365 firmware? Pretty cool how electric vehicles are inherently digital, isn't it?
CNCN2加速器 - 看国内视频 听国内音乐 回国加速器 【官方 ...:CNCN2加速器帮助海外华人解除IP地域限制；出国留学旅游使用国内IP上网；支持腾讯视频、乐视视频、搜狐视频、爱奇艺、PP视频、哔哩哔哩(B站)、优酷视频、土豆视频、芒果TV、华数TV、QQ音乐、伋鹅FM、全民K歌、网易云音乐、虾米音乐、豆瓣FM ... Most of the sidewalks around here are not busy at all, but the pedestrians I encountered on the electric scooter were definitely more freaked out than I’ve seen before when using regular kick scooters (or skateboards) on the sidewalk, which did surprise me. An electric scooter has more heft to it, both physically at 26 pounds, and in the 15 mile per hour speed it can reach – but also mentally in terms of how it looks and how people approach it. I recommend slowing down to just above walking speed when encountering pedestrians, and if there is a bike lane available, I'd definitely recommend using that.
旋风加速器APP The kryptonite of traditional kick scooters is hills, and I'm pleased to report that even with a cough sizable adult such as myself riding, I was able to sustain a respectable above-walking speed on most 安卓加速器 hills. Where I looked at a hill and thought "this probably should work", it did. That's impressive, considering this isn't the upgraded Pro model with bigger battery and more powerful motor. On flats and downhills the performance is superb, as you'd expect. That said, if you are a really big or tall adult, or live in a particularly hilly area, wait for the Pro model or an equivalent.
Portability is good, but borderline. At ~26 pounds, the electric scooter is reasonably portable, but it's not something you a) could really get away with taking inside a restaurant / store with you to prevent theft or b) want to be carrying around on your person for any significant length of time. It's not nearly as nimble or portable as a kick scooter, but that's a high bar. You'll need to carry a bike lock and think about how to lock your scooter on bike racks, which turned out to be … more geometrically challenging than I anticipated due to the small tires, disc brakes, and the engine in the front wheel. They need more obvious locking points on the chassis.
To be honest with you I'm still bitter about the whole xf5.app加速器 debacle. There was so much hype back in the day. That ridiculous thing was supposed to change the world. Instead, we got … Paul Blart Mall Cop.
A Segway was $5,000 at launch in 2001, which is a whopping $7,248 in inflation adjusted dollars. Here in 2023, cheap $200 to $300 electric scooters are basically the transformational technology the Segway was supposed to be, aren't they? Are electric scooters the future of (most) transportation? I'm not sure, but I do like where we're headed, even if it took us twenty years to get there.
Discussion
极光加速器官
I've never thought of myself as a "car person". The last new car I bought (and in fact, now that I think about it, the first new car I ever bought) was the quirky 1998 Ford Contour SVT. Since then we bought a VW station wagon in 2011 and a Honda minivan in 2012 for family transportation duties. That's it. Not exactly the stuff The Stig's dreams are made of.
The station wagon made sense for a family of three, but became something of a disappointment because it was purchased before — surprise! — we had twins. As xf5.app加速器:
Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there ain't any real difference between triplets and an insurrection.
I'm here to tell you that a station wagon doesn't quite cut it as a permanent riot abatement tool. For that you need a full sized minivan.
I'm with Philip Greenspun. Like black socks and sandals, minivans are actually … 网页加速器 Don't believe all the SUV propaganda. Minivans are flat out superior vehicle command centers. Swagger wagons, really.
The A-Team drove a van, not a freakin' SUV. I rest my case.
After 7 years, the station wagon had to go. We initially looked at hybrids because, well, isn't that required in California at this point? But if you know me at all, you know I'm a boil the sea kinda guy at heart. I figure if you're going to flirt with partially electric cars, why not put aside these half measures and go all the way?
Do you remember that rapturous 2014 Oatmeal comic about the Tesla Model S? Even for a person who has basically zero interest in automobiles, it did sound really cool.
It's been 5 years, but from time to time I'd see some electric vehicle on the road and I'd think about that Intergalactic SpaceBoat of Light and Wonder. Maybe it's time for our family to jump on the electric car trend, too, and just late enough that we can avoid the bleeding edge and end up merely on the … leading edge?
That's why we're now the proud owners of a fully electric 2023 Kia Niro.
I've somehow gone from being a person who basically doesn't care about cars at all … to being one of those insufferable electric car people who won't shut up about them. I apologize in advance. If you suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to close this browser tab, I don't blame you.
I was expecting another car, like the three we bought before. What I got, instead, was a transformation:
Yes, yes, electric cars are clean, but it's a revelation how clean everything is in an electric. You take for granted how dirty and noisy gas based cars are in daily operation – the engine noise, the exhaust fumes, the brake dust on the rims, the oily residues and thin black film that descends on everything, the way you have to wash your hands every time you use the gas station pumps. You don't fully appreciate how oppressive those little dirty details were until they're gone.
Electric cars are (almost) completely silent. I guess technically in 2023 electric cars require artificial soundmakers at low speed for safety, and this car has one. But The Oatmeal was right. Electric cars feel like spacecraft because they move so effortlessly. There's virtually no delay from action to reaction, near immediate acceleration and deceleration … with almost no sound or vibration at all, like you're in freakin' space! It's so immensely satisfying!
Electric cars aren't just electric, they're utterly digital to their very core. Gas cars always felt like the classic 1950s Pixar Cars world of grease monkeys and machine shop guys, maybe with a few digital bobbins added here and there as an afterthought. This electric car, on the other hand, is squarely in the post-iPhone world of everyday digital gadgets. It feels more like a giant smartphone than a car. I am a programmer, I'm a digital guy, I love digital stuff. And electric cars are part of my world, rather than the other way around. It feels good.
Electric cars are mechanically much simpler than gasoline cars, which means they are inherently more reliable and cheaper to maintain. An internal combustion engine has hundreds of moving parts, many of which require regular maintenance, fluids, filters, and tune ups. It also has a complex transmission to translate the narrow power band of a gas powered engine. None of this is necessary on an electric vehicle, whose electric motor is basically one moving part with simple 100% direct drive from the motor to the wheels. This newfound simplicity is deeply appealing to a guy who always saw cars as incredibly complicated (but computers, not so much).
Being able to charge at home overnight is perhaps the most radical transformation of all. Your house is now a "gas station". Our Kia Niro has a range of about 250 miles on a full battery. With any modern electric car, provided you drive less than 200 miles a day round trip (who even drives this much?), it's very unlikely you'll ever need to "fill the tank" anywhere but at home. Ever. It's so strange to think that in 50 years, gas stations may eventually be as odd to see in public as telephone booths now are. Our charger is, conveniently enough, right next to the driveway since that's where the power breaker box was. With the level 2 charger installed, it literally looks like a gas pump on the side of the house, except this one "pumps" … electrons.
This electric car is such a great experience. It's so much better than our gas powered station wagon that I swear, if there was a fully electric minivan (there isn't) I would literally sell our Honda minivan tomorrow and switch over. Without question. And believe me, I had no plans to sell that vehicle two months ago. The electric car is that much better.
I was expecting "yet another car", but what I got instead was a new, radical worldview. Driving a car powered by barely controlled liquid fuel detonations used to be normal. But in an world of more and more viable electric vehicles this status quo increasingly starts to feel … deeply unnatural. Electric is so much better of an overall experience that you begin to wonder: why did we ever do it that way?
Gas cars seem, for lack of a better word, 免费外网加速器app.
I was vaguely aware of the early electric cars. I even remember one coworker circa 2001 who owned a bright neon green Honda Insight. I ignored it all because, like I said, I'm not a car guy. I needed to do the research to understand the history, and I started with the often recommended documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?
This is mostly about the original highly experimental General Motors EV1 from 1996 to 1999. It's so early the first models had lead-acid batteries! 😱 There's a number of conspiracy theories floated in the video, but I think the simple answer to the implied question in the title is straight up price. The battery tech was nowhere near ready, and per the Wikipedia article the estimated actual cost of the car was somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000 though I suspect it was much closer to the latter. It is interesting to note how much the owners (well, leasers) loved their EV1s. Having gone through that same conversion myself, I empathize!
I then watched the sequel, Revenge of the Electric Car. This one is essential, because it covers the dawn of the modern electric car we have today.
This chronicles the creation of three very influential early electric cars — the Nissan Leaf, the Chevy Volt, and of course the Tesla Roadster from 2005 - 2008. The precise moment that Lithium-Ion batteries were in play – that's when electric cars started to become viable. Every one of these three electric cars was well conceived and made it to market in volume, though not without significant challenges, both internal and external. None of them were perfect electric vehicles by any means: the Roadster was $100k, the Leaf had limited range, and the Volt was still technically a hybrid, albeit only using the gasoline engine to charge the battery.
Ten years later, Tesla has the model 3 at $38,000 and we bought our Kia Niro for about the same price. After national and state tax incentives and rebates, that puts the price at around $30,000. It's not as cheap as it needs to be … yet. But it's getting there. And it's already competitive with gasoline vehicles in 2023.
It's still early, but the trend lines are clear. And I'm here to tell you that right now, today, I'd buy any modern electric car over a gasoline powered car.
If you too are intrigued by the idea of owning an electric car, you should be. It's freaking awesome! Bring your skepticism, as always; I highly recommend the above Matt Ferrell explainer video on electric vehicle myths.
As for me, I have seen the future, and it is absolutely, inexorably, and unavoidably … electric. ⚡
Discussion
极光加速器官
When I wrote about App-pocalypse Now in 2014, I implied the future still belonged to the web. And it does. But it's also true that the web has changed a lot in the last 10 years, much less the last 20 or 30.
Websites have gotten a lot … fatter.
While I think it's irrational to pine for the bad old days of HTML 1.0 websites, there are some legitimate concerns here. The best summary is Maciej Cegłowski's The Website Obesity Crisis.
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Of course you can! It’s not hard! We knew how to make small websites in 2002. It’s not like the secret has been lost to history, like Greek fire or Damascus steel.
But we face pressure to make these sites bloated.
I bet if you went to a client and presented a 200 kilobyte site template, you’d be fired. Even if it looked great and somehow included all the tracking and ads and social media crap they insisted on putting in. It’s just so far out of the realm of the imaginable at this point.
The whole article is essential; you should stop what you're doing and read it now if you haven't already. But if you don't have time, here's the key point:
This is a screenshot from an NPR article discussing the rising use of ad blockers. The page is 12 megabytes in size in a stock web browser. The same article with basic ad blocking turned on is 1 megabyte.
That's right, through the simple act of running an ad blocker, you've reduced that website's payload by twelve times. Twelve! That's like the most effective exercise program ever!
Even the traditional advice to keep websites lean and mean for mobile no longer applies because new mobile devices, at least on the Apple side, are faster than most existing desktops and laptops.
The iPhone XS is faster than an iMac Pro on the Speedometer 2.0 JavaScript benchmark. It's the fastest device I've ever tested. Insane 45% jump over the iPhone 8/X chip. How does Apple do it?! ✨ pic.twitter.com/5nCKZUCAYK
— DHH (@dhh) September 21, 2018
Despite claims to the contrary, the bad guy isn't web bloat, per se. The bad guy is advertising. Unlimited, unfettered ad "tech" has creeped into everything and subsumed the web.
Personally I don't even want to run ad blockers, and I didn't for a long time – but it's increasingly difficult to avoid running an ad blocker unless you want a clunky, substandard web experience. There's a reason the most popular browser plugins are inevitably ad blockers, isn't there? Just ask Google:
So it's all the more surprising to learn that Google is 追梦加速器安卓版APP下载地址_最新追梦加速器安卓版免费 ...:2021-10-10 · 追梦加速器，是一款致力于为海外华人提供访问国内网络加速服务的软件，可伍满足海外华人看国内视频、听音乐、玩游戏、刷直播等各类需求，一键加速回国，高速访问国内网络！帮助全球海外党高速网络回国的影音应用解锁加速工具。. Here's what the author of uBlock Origin, an ad blocking plugin for Chrome, 土豆加速器app about today's announcement:
The blocking ability of the webRequest API caused Google to yield control of content blocking to content blockers. Now that Google Chrome is the dominant browser, it is in a better position to shift the optimal point between the two goals which benefits Google's primary business.
The ad blockers themselves are arguably just as complicit. Eye/o GmbH owns AdBlock and uBlock, employs 150 people, and in 2016 they had 50 million euros in revenue, of which about 50% was profit. Google's paid "Acceptable Ads" program is a way to funnel money into adblockers to, uh, encourage them to display certain ads. With money. Lots … and lots … of money. 🤑
We simultaneously have a very real web obesity crisis, and a looming crackdown on ad blockers, seemingly the only viable weight loss program for websites. What's a poor web citizen to do? Well, there is one thing you can do to escape the need for browser-based adblockers, at least on your home network. Install and configure Pi-Hole.
I've talked about the amazing Raspberry Pi before in the context of classic game emulation, but this is another brilliant use for a Pi.
Here's why it's so cool. If you disable the DHCP server on your router, and let the Pi-Hole become your primary DHCP server, you get automatic DNS based blocking of ads for every single device on your network. It's kind of scary how powerful DNS can be, isn't it?
My Pi-Hole took me about 1 hour to set up, start to finish. All you need is
a Raspberry Pi 3b+ kit $59
a quality 32GB SD card $9
an ethernet cable
I do recommend the 3b+ because it has native gigabit ethernet and a bit more muscle. But literally any Raspberry Pi you can find laying around will work, though I'd strongly advise you to pick one with a wired ethernet port since it'll be your DNS server.
I'm not going to write a whole Pi-Hole installation guide, because there are 土豆加速器app out there already. It's not difficult, and there's a slick web GUI waiting for you once you complete initial setup. For your initial testing, pick any IP address you like on your network that won't conflict with anything active. Once you're happy with the basic setup and web interface:
Turn OFF your router's DHCP server – existing leases will continue to work, so nothing will be immediately broken.
Turn ON the pi-hole DHCP server, in the web GUI.
Once you do this, all your network devices will start to grab their DHCP leases from your Pi-Hole, which will also tell them to route all their DNS requests through the Pi-Hole, and that's when the ✨ magic ✨ happens!
All those DNS requests from all the devices on your network will be checked against the ad blacklists; anything matching is quickly and silently discarded before it ever reaches your browser.
(The Pi-Hole also acts as a caching DNS server, so repeated DNS requests will be serviced rapidly from your local network, too.)
If you're worried about stability or reliability, you can easily add a cheap battery backed USB plug, or even a second backup Pi-Hole as your secondary DNS provider if you prefer belt and suspenders protection. Switching back to plain boring old vanilla DNS is as easy as unplugging the Pi and flicking the DHCP server setting in your router back on.
At this point if you're interested (and you should be!), just give it a try. If you're looking for more information, the project has an excellent forum full of FAQs and roadmaps.
You can even vote for your favorite upcoming features!
I avoided the Pi-Hole project for a while because I didn't need it, and I'd honestly rather jump in later when things are more mature.
With the latest Chrome crackdown on ad blockers, now is the time, and I'm impressed how simple and easy Pi-Hole is to run. Just find a quiet place to plug it in, spend an hour configuring it, and promptly proceed to forget about it forever as you enjoy a lifetime subscription to a glorious web ad instant weight loss program across every single device on your network with (almost) zero effort!
Finally, an exercise program I can believe in.
Discussion
极光加速器官
When we started Discourse in 2013, our server requirements were high:
1GB RAM
modern, fast dual core CPU
speedy solid state drive with 20+ GB
I'm not talking about a cheapo shared cpanel server, either, I mean a dedicated virtual private server with those specifications.
We were OK with that, because we were building in Ruby for the next decade of the Internet. I predicted early on that the cost of renting a suitable VPS would drop to $5 per month, and courtesy of Digital Ocean that indeed happened in January 2018.
The cloud got cheaper, and faster. Not really a surprise, since the price of hardware trends to zero over time. But it's still the cloud, and that means it isn't exactly cheap. It is, after all, someone else's computer that you pay for the privilege of renting.
But wait … what if you could put your own computer "in the cloud"?
Wouldn't that be the best of both worlds? Reliable connectivity, plus a nice low monthly price for extremely fast hardware? If this sounds crazy, it shouldn't – Mac users have been doing this for years now.
I suppose it's understandable that Mac users would be on the cutting edge here since Apple barely makes server hardware, whereas the PC world has always been the literal de-facto standard for server hardware.
Given the prevalence and maturity of cloud providers, it's even a little controversial these days to colocate actual servers. We've also experimented with colocating mini-pcs in various hosting roles. I'm still curious why there isn't more of a cottage industry for colocating mini PCs. Because … I think there should be.
I originally wrote about the scooter computers we added to our Discourse infrastructure in 2016, plus my own colocation experiment that ran concurrently. Over the last three years of both experiments, I've concluded that these little boxes are plenty reliable, with one role specific caveat that I'll explain in the comments. I remain an unabashed fan of mini-PC colocation. I like it so much I put together a new 2023 iteration:
2017 — $670
2023 — $820
i7-7500u 2.7-3.5 Ghz, 2c / 4t
i7-8750h 2.2-4.1 Ghz, 6c / 12t
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32GB DDR4 RAM
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500GB NVMe SSD
This year's scooter computer offers 3× the cores, 2× the memory, and 3× faster drive. It is, as the kids say … an absolute unit. 😱
It also has a rather elegant dual-sided internal layout. There is a slot for an old-school 2.5" drive, plus built in wi-fi, but you won't see it in my pictures because I physically removed both.
I vetted each box via my 土豆视频下载_土豆视频播放器官方下载 4.1.7 电脑版-PC下载网:2021-6-13 · 土豆视频播放器更新日志 1. iTudou支持弹幕； 2. 优化下载。 小编推荐： 土豆视频播放器,若是大家对这款软件的印象还停留在那个黄色的土豆，这就要好好了解这款软件了，现在这款软件已经有新气象了，欢迎想要了解的小伙伴前来我伊pc下载站下载使用，另外小编还推荐易视直播、随播、全聚合等 ... and they all passed with flying colors, though I did have to RMA one set of bodgy RAM sticks in the process. The benchmarks tell the story, as compared to the average Digital Ocean droplet:
Per-core performance sysbench cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run
DO Droplet
2,988
2017 Mini-PC
4,800
2023 Mini-PC
5,671
Multi-core performance sysbench cpu --cpu-max-prime=40000 --num-threads=8 run
Power consumption could be a concern, as the 2017 version had a much lower 15 watt TDP, compared to the 45 watts of this version. That 3× increase in core count ain't free! So I tested that, too, with a combination of i7z, stress, and my handy dandy watt meter.
(idle login)
800 Mhz
10w
stress --cpu 1
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30w
stress --cpu 2
4.1 GHz
42w
stress --cpu 3
4.0 GHz
53w
stress --cpu 4
3.9 GHz
65w
stress --cpu 5
3.7 GHz
65w
stress --cpu 6
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65w
stress --cpu 12
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65w
I'd expect around 10 - 20 watts doing typical low-load stuff that isn't super CPU intensive. Note that running current-ish versions of 鲸鱼加速器app jacks power consumption up to 75w 🔥 and the overall clock scales down to 3.1 Ghz … let me tell you, I've learned to be very, very afraid of AVX2 extensions.
(If you're worried about noise, don't be. This active cooling solution is clearly overkill for a 65w load, because it barely spun up at all even under full core load. It was extremely quiet.)
So we're happy that this machine is a slammin' deal for $820, it's super fast, and plenty reliable. But how about colocation costs? My colocation provider is EndOffice out of Boston, and they offer very competitive rates to colocate a Mini-PC: $29/month.
I personally colocate three Mini-PCs for redundancy and just-in-case; there are discounts for colocating more than one. Here they are racked up and in action. Of course I labelled the front and rear before shipping because that's how I roll.
Let's break this down and see what the actual costs of colocating a Mini-PC are versus the cloud. Given the plateauing of CPU speeds, I think five years of useful life for these boxes is realistic, but let's assume a conservative three year lifespan to be safe.
$880 mini-pc 32GB RAM, 6 CPUs, 500GB SSD
$120 taxes / shipping / misc
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That's $2,044 for three years of hosting. How can we do on Digital Ocean? Per their current pricing page:
32GB RAM, 8 vCPUs, 640GB SSD
$160/month
$160 × 12 × 3 = $5,760
This isn't quite apples to apples, as we are getting an extra 140GB of disk and 2 bonus CPUs, but those CPUs are both slower and partially consumed by multi-tenancy compared to our brand new dedicated, isolated CPUs. (I was curious about this, so I just spun up a new $160/month DO instance for a quick test. The sysbench results are 4086 and 11760 respectively, considerably below the 2023 Mini-PC results, above.) As you can see, you pay almost three times as much for a cloud server. 🤑
I'm not saying this is for everyone. If you just need to spin up a quick server or two for testing and experimentation, there's absolutely no way you need to go to the trouble and up-front cost of building and then racking colocated mini-pcs. There's no denying that spinning servers up in the cloud offers unparalleled flexibility and redundancy. But if you do have need for dedicated computing resources over a period of years, then building your own small personal cloud, with machines you actually own, is not only one third the cost but also … kinda cool?
If you'd also like to embark upon this project, you can get the same Partaker B18 box I did for $490 from Amazon, or $460 direct from China via AliExpress. Add memory and drive to taste, build it up, then check out endoffice.com who I can enthusiastically recommend for colocation, or the colocation provider of your choice.
Get something cool hosted out there; let's do our part to keep the internet fun and weird!
Discussion
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