Consider whether you want just Chinese numerals, or also Arabic (normal) numerals in the corner.

Consider which style of mahjong it will be used for. Depending on the style, there are different numbers of total tiles included in the set.

The feel of the tiles might matter to you, but unfortunately that may be difficult to judge when buying online.

I just hope federal services (like applying for a passport) don’t become Twitter-only after Trump appoints Elon as Secretary of Enshittification.

In my system, the raid arrays seem to do periodic data scrubbing automatically. Maybe it’s something that’s part of Debian, or maybe it’s just a default kernel setting. I don’t think it helps much with data integrity – I think it helps more just by ensuring the continued functionality of the drives.

When it’s running, you can type cat /proc/mdstat to see the progress.

That command will also show you if there is a failing drive, so that you can replace it.

Just about anything. IRC, XMPP, Discord, whatever you call the chat built into Steam. AIM is discontinued now, but it used to be better than Teams is today.

Epigenetics is black magic to me. The starvation thing is true, but it mostly happens in the liver and pancreas and stuff. The testicles and ovaries don’t express the genes relating to starvation, even when starved. So how does the reproductive DNA pass on epigenetic data to the child and grandchild?

Sure. First you set up a RAID5/6 array in mdadm. This is a purely software thing, which is built into the Linux kernel. It doesn’t require any hardware RAID system. If you have 3-4 drives, RAID5 is probably best, and if you have 5+ drives RAID6 is probably best.

If your 3 blank drives are sdb1, sdc1, and sdd1, run this:

mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=5 -n 3 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1

This will create a block device called /dev/md0 that you can use as if it were a single large hard drive.

mkfs.btrfs /dev/md0

That will make the filesystem on the block device.

mkdir /mnt/bigraid
mount /dev/md0 /mnt/bigraid

This creates a mount point and mounts the filesystem.

To get it to mount every time you boot, add an entry for this filesystem in /etc/fstab

The man page at https://btrfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/mkfs.btrfs.html says:

RAID5/6 has known problems and should not be used in production.

So those profiles have unknown, unspecified problems.

But btrfs is safe on top of md-based raid1/5/6. It also has the advantage that you only need to encrypt one volume.

Just the things currently on my shopping list. A CPU fan, a network card, some exterior lights for my house… There are no items that I buy online repeatedly.

I think it counts as satire, even if the headline is a completely true statement.

Pretty fucked, but not as fucked as Ukraine, Palestine, Lebanon, or Taiwan.

NATO will be fucked for a while if the US withdraws, but other NATO countries may ramp up military spending over time.

This situation is a worldwide danger. The US is/was a world power, it has/had the largest national economy in the world, it has the largest military in the world.

Previously, we could be concerned that democratic countries (including the US) weren’t putting enough pressure on authoritarian countries (like Russia, China, and North Korea) to improve. Now we have to worry that the US will actually become a fully authoritarian country, like Russia or China.

Any regular hex nut works just fine as a jam nut. Basically, a jam nut is when you jam two nuts together. (It is gay, because the nuts do touch.)

And note that those nylon inserts kinda only work once. The bolt carves a thread into the insert when you insert it, so it will be weaker the second time you insert it.

Honorable mention: cage nuts. A square nut, permanently attached to a fastener that can snap into a special square hole in a 19 inch server rack. When you tighten the bolt against the nut, it tightens against the fastener, so that the nut, bolt, and fastener are secure against the square hole.

Plays the Menards “Save Big Money” Jingle

I’ll just go get my flamethrower.

English has its flaws, but I don’t agree that that is one of them.

Some yes, some no. I’ve had a lot of short relationships, and only one long one.

If you’re in a relationship with an abusive person, a person who is barely interested in you, or a person who always takes and rarely gives, then you have to break up. Unfortunately, many people will go through such relationships in their life.

Don’t throw away your own life to find love. If you are playing the game while desperate, you may get taken advantage of. It may be better not to play. It’s ok to be single.

Salt is any ionic compound. Usually only compounds that are solid at room temperature, but most ionic compounds already are.

Bleach is anything that chemically destroys pigments to make things whiter. Normal bleach is sodium hypochlorite. Non-chlorine bleach could be anything.

I don’t know much about client certificates, because nobody ever used them. All I know is that they are decades older than passkeys, and “certificate” implies there is a public-private keypair, just like in a passkey.

What are the benefits of a passkey over a client certificate?

I eagerly await your writeup on whichever calendar you think I need to know more about.

Unfortunately this won’t happen until October 31st 2600. Starting on March 1st in the year 2600, the Julian calendar (popular in centuries past, and still used in a few places) will differ by 18 days from the Gregorian calendar (the current worldwide standard calendar).

It happens that October 31st in the year 2600 lands on a Friday, and so the Julian October 13th, which lands on that same day, is also a Friday.

There may be a sooner Friday the 13th that lands on Halloween, if you know of other obscure calendars like the Hebrew, Islamic, or Chinese calendars. I don’t know enough about those to check.

The easiest way to disable unnecessary services is to uninstall them with aptitude, or whichever package manager you like. Try terminating services one by one, and see if anything bad happens. If nothing bad happens, you can probably uninstall it. On the other hand, if the system does get wonky a reboot should fix it. Or, you can research the services by name and decide whether to uninstall them. (avahi-daemon for example is a good idea to uninstall.)

To make the GUI not run, uninstall your display manager (gdm, xdm, nodm, or whatever) and uninstall your xorg server or wayland server. There may be GUI programs remaining after that, but they will only be consuming disk space, not RAM or CPU.

If the battery is old and holds little charge, you may save a few watts by removing it and throwing it away, instead of letting the system keep it topped off.

Get a power meter, such as a Kill-a-watt device. Then, experiment with different settings. If it’s consuming less than 30 watts, you’re probably fine. If you live in the US, one watt-year is about one US dollar (or a little more), so for every watt it consumes, that’s about how much you will pay per year for its electricity.