CMR performs better under all workload types.

Shingled Magnetic Recording overlays the tracks on top of each other like roof shingles. This means you can fit more tracks on the same platter which means you can fit more data. Unfortunately this also means whenever writing data you have to rewrite tracks adjacent to the track you’re rewriting which leads to a lot of reshuffling of data which leads to very slow writes when this is taking place (say you edit a file or replace it, delete some and copy over others).

SMR allows more storage for less money but it takes a serious performance hit (right now about the largest CMR disks you can get as an example are about 28TB in size, by contrast you can get 40TB SMR disks so it can significantly amplify storage). It shouldn’t be used for many scenarios. For archival backup it’s fine. For disks that are having data changed on them anywhere near regularly it’s not great.

I want to underline that for USB powered portable 5200RPM disks they’re already slower disks when CMR, so as SMR they get a lot slower in write performance (one I had would drop down to sustained low 20MB/s write speeds when over 60% full). A 7200RPM SMR disk with proper 12V power from a PSU rail or an AC adapter would likely be double that at worst by contrast.

So SMR has its uses, it has its place. It’s just a lot of people who don’t know might use it in places where CMR is more appropriate and would give them a better experience. So by all means if you’re using SMR in back-up disks to your primary ones to create back-up snapshots that are updated infrequently continue to do so, they’re fine for that especially if the tasks are done on machines that can be left running for days while the data is slowly written.

Yeah if anyone is hoping for cheaper RAM from China flooding western markets. It may happen but it’s not happening this decade. Hope you’re ready to wait until 2030s because that’s how long it’s going to be short of the whole AI thing violently imploding.

Maybe, but they’re also aware of that now.

It would cost the CIA couch change to bet 300-400k every weekend that Trump is going to attack just to get the Iranians in a panicked frenzy only for it to not happen. If it prevents even a single US fighter from being shot down by wearing them down with false alarms it would be worth it to place and lose bets like that every weekend for a year on end.

So maybe, but also the US could rig that for nothing, they wouldn’t notice it or need to pass a bill to afford it.

That would mean likely the US nuking Iran in a fit of rage while the TV propaganda plays images of the sinking ship and wails and gnashes its teeth and demands action then applauds or falls solemnly silent when it happens. The media will simply say “well maybe it wasn’t right BUT they did sink our carrier, they shouldn’t have done that and we wouldn’t have done this, you know how we are”. And that will be that.

Russia is as someone else noted tied up in Ukraine and doesn’t want to escalate with the guy (Trump) who can force Ukraine to sign a treaty or agreement with them. Getting into a hot war with the US would be a nightmarish strain on their military and bring them and US very close to nuclear war. Russia will resent losing its Iranian partners to the US but it won’t end the world or Russia in order to attempt to stop it. China is uninterested in getting drawn into a war at all, much less that far from its shores where they don’t have the advantage in logistics compared to the US and would be at an awful disadvantage. China’s navy is not a deep blue water fleet like the US, their navy is structured around coastal defense in the South China Sea and it and their air force lack the range to engage in anything protracted with the US.

This is a problematic framing. While Trump personally may want to distract from the Epstein files, the media itself is doing a great job burying them without him by frothing at the mouth about that news anchor lady’s mother getting kidnapped and doing wall to wall breathless coverage on that while talking zero about the Epstein files.

Also Lindsey Graham and other neo-cons including John Bolton have wanted to regime change Iran since at least the beginning of the George W. Bush administration and constantly inveighed for it. Rubio is very much of that faction and the US interests are broadly served by seizing control of global oil supply. They already took out the head of Venezuela and subordinated control of their oil to the US. They need only take out Iran and having already gotten Europe to not use Russian oil they’ll control oil flows globally in a way that lets them inflict pain on China (even with Russia stepping in to supply China some oil it’s not enough for its needs).

This is part of a grand geo-political strategy of maintaining hegemony that has little to do with Trump. Nancy Pelosi, has applauded applying pain to the Iranian people to try and get them to overthrow their government. It is in the interests of the US and the zionist entity known as “israel” to destroy Iran’s current government even without the oil due to their presence as a regional power not on the US/“israel” side (the oil just makes it more appealing and serves even more objectives).

Use the IMDB ID for search in that instance.

The ID is the part of the URL that starts with “tt”. Lots of sites support that and for instances like that it’s the best bet. Do include the double t when searching.

Note: this works via API with jackett. It will probably work otherwise but worth trying the searcher plugins in qBittorrent using this method even without jackett.

Some WD red drives (particularly under 16TB) are SMR. There was a whole scandal with this and you can look up a list. WD Red Pro are always CMR and I think the plus typically are too but you can easily search up a list of SMR models.

SMR in those. Also typically 5200RPM vs 7200RPM speed.

From experience I can say you can’t reliably play back high bitrate content from those. Read and write speeds get bad after you’ve used 1/3-1/2 the drive. Oh 8-14MB/s should be fine. But forget playing a 4K encode at 20MB/s with a 2MB/s audio track.

As backup drives they’re acceptable as long as you can accept much longer write times to refresh data.

Bigger drives with power supplies generally are 7200RPM. Many of the lower capacity ones (under 14TB) are still SMR but you should be able to play back higher bitrate content and get a bit better read/write performance.

As to Russia, Azerbaijan is firmly in zionist pockets and helped them stage an attack on Iran last time, Armenia has fallen out of favor with Russia as well thanks to US efforts.

The bigger problem with Russia is they’re at capacity dealing with Ukraine. If they had more weapons to spare they would have been using them to pound Ukrainian forces and advance their own lines and positions for negotiations. They can’t spare much without dipping into stockpiles they’re likely keeping in reserve in case of the emergency of the EU maniacs going to war with them. They can maybe give Iran raw materials but can’t help if the US were to bomb those locations.

Putin is also being played by Trump to not react to these things beyond words because Putin wants Trump to help with a ceasefire, a negotiated exit, otherwise Ukraine can keep building drones and doing terror attacks into Russia for the next 10 years no problem and Russia has no appetite to entirely occupy Ukraine so they must have a negotiated end. That and perhaps he thinks he can get sanctions relief. For all the talk of a turn towards the east being permanent, Russia’s bourgeoisie still keep glancing at the west and you know they hunger for the EU markets and to be a Eur-Asian power.

As to China, the B&R is a single rail link though several countries that are in bed with the US and the US could kill that by leaning on them. Even just slowing up shipments with bureaucratic paperwork would buy the US weeks to work. Nor has China shown a great appetite for crossing the US on matters such as these when it’s going in for the kill. They’ll sell to Iran but they won’t solve the Iranian logistical problems for them if the US leans on countries in-between to stop the shipments and likely won’t put their air force planes in danger to fly in deliveries under a US air campaign.

But the more important thing here is Iran has no resolve or desire to fight the US. Their liberal leadership, their domestic bourgeoisie desperately want reintegration with the west. If the US punches them they’ll look to land a symbolic blow back that might not even be on the US itself and then to go to the negotiating table and take some sort of deal. After China refuses to directly intervene on their behalf they’ll probably think it acceptable to agree to screw them at the US behest if the US offers even minor sanctions relief.

They have no appetite for a long confrontation with the US and no ability without suffering the crushing the living conditions of their people. Decapitate and remove some of the religious hardliners and more liberal types who favor reintegration with the west could very well take their places and choose an off-ramp as they have the past few confrontations with the US and “israel”. They’ve swallowed poison pills before in their own words. But as religious conservatives and liberals there is nothing they can do to fix their country’s economy and the increasing anger and misery of their people under western sanctions. So they either take a deal now and maybe the power structures and people in place survive and thrive under a loosening of the noose or they stand proud and collapse under sanctions in 5 years. Democrats have signaled they’re behind it, Nancy Pelosi called for pain for the Iranian people so they know a Dem president that follows Trump won’t save them. So why not make a deal?

Well there is the scenario where they decapitate the government and sue for peace with whoever replaces it and that person gives it to them. A Venezuela type scenario where they agree to decouple from China, give US a veto of where Iranian oil is shipped and give US some tribute money and US in turn removes sanctions, doesn’t bomb them any more and so on. Of course Iran is significantly more a power than Venezuela so it seems less likely this happens but Iran also doesn’t really win from a prolonged fight with the US so it still seems a strong possibility. Trump would have to give them economic relief in the form of removing some sanctions but I think they might go for it unfortunately.

There are various bluetooth remotes that can be paired with computers, as well as air mice with remote-like features. There are also IR receiver USB dongles you can buy which allow you to use an IR remote with them with some 3rd party software installation and configuring. (FLIRC for one makes one of those).

If most of your content is self-provided (through whatever means) then a mini-PC may offer a decent experience (subject to certain limitations even there compared to hosting on one PC and streaming to a dedicated streaming device of decent quality which together cost significantly more).

Most commercial streaming services due to DRM will not work with a min-PC, at least not above 720p resolution and only through a browser interface which is not the greatest to try and navigate with a remote control. So if a significant amount of content is watched via streaming services I could not recommend a mini-PC by itself as a solution.

IMO with the info you’ve given I say get a decent streaming box. Some you can replace the Android default launcher on to remove ads or otherwise root (though beware these methods have been patched more and more so someone saying they did so successfully in 2024 does not mean you’ll succeed with the 2025/26 model). There’s also options like Apple TV, not $60 (twice that) but it comes with no ads by default and is pretty overpowered with a smooth experience if you already have an iPhone (you can use the phone as a remote). If you don’t have an iPhone or other apple devices it’s a toss up, ATV 4K is still a very nice device but you might want to go with the Android side of things.

You have to give them your phone number to sign up.

That phone number is tied to a real person by government records. Sure if you’re in say Russia it makes it a lot harder for the FBI to identify you because Russian phone companies won’t necessarily respect a US legal request. But if you’re anywhere within the west (US, Canada, EU, Australia, NZ) they can ID you unless you go to the trouble of getting an anonymous phone number that works with the SMS verification services they use and maintaining that number for when they lock your account and demand to verify you again all while accessing it over a VPN. That plus no encryption by default makes it not very secure at all.

But fundamentally you could do the same thing securely with any service, you could do that with Facebook, with Twitter, and the list goes on if you can get good reliable anonymous phone numbers. Telegram isn’t special in that way.

All that would happen absolute worst case scenario if MS breaks this is your users would get a whining complaint about not being activated. Get a small “Activate Windows” logo stuck in the lower right hand of their screen and would lose the ability to change wallpapers, customize windows colors, etc.

To be clear it wouldn’t break the install and it would leave it in a state in which you could use an updated version of MAS (reminder MAS supports multiple activation options) to fix it remotely.

Is your liberalism no longer making sense? Lofty promises of justice for all, equality and all that turning out to be a big farce with those at the top openly doing the most horrendous crimes and just getting away with them in a way that leaves you seething and wondering ‘what about justice’?

Try old time original Marxism (fortified with Leninism for clarity and taste) today!

Turns out that stuff they were talking about a hundred years ago is still true today and the old brand promise still holds true!

Not ready to check out just yet? Still nervous about Marxism? That’s alright. As economic conditions worsen, your buying power lessens, and you’re given the shaft in the work-place and an empty wallet at the grocery and/or electronics store you can always remember this fine product and revisit when you’re ready!

When all other solutions have failed, when liberal and social democrat reform turns out to be a dud, remember there’s original strength Marxism (fortified with Leninism). We’ll be waiting for you.

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=376035

This is in the hardware section of the Kodi forums. Massive thread near the top. Some technical discussion on pages 225-250 about this matter.

Devices include Vero V, Ugoos, Homatics. (Apple TV is indeed an option as well)

Check the spreadsheet linked on the first page.

I will mention DV is a premium experience and you’re not going to pay less than Apple TV prices for a box that can do it. $150 really isn’t much.

There is DV -> tone-mapped to HDR output stuff but it’s not true DV. That you can do on a Linux mini-pc and so on.

If you’re going intel you can check the ark.intel pages for the processors in the devices you’re looking at. Intel does pretty good documentation so it’ll show you what integrated graphics they have and all that.

Ideally you want a chip that can do hardware decoding (and if possible encoding if you’re serving media to others and intend for it to transcode and not direct-play) of common codecs so you’re not eating a massive power bill or generating tons of heat or getting bogged down in resource utilization.

AV1 support is the only tricky part when it comes to hardware decode support. Maybe you don’t use it yourself but typically only the newer chips support hardware decode of AV1 files. Something to consider if that’s likely to be an issue for you if you have or plan to have lots of AV1 encoded files. (Though there is software decode of course)

The Intel N150 can do a 4K desktop, you won’t be doing 4k gaming on it at all but it can do the desktop and video playback and is a low power consumption chipset. Should be able to support at least 2-3 4k transcodes as well. A lot of enthusiasts use it for just this purpose in fact and it’s fairly snappy for uses like these.

Anything more powerful than an N150 will be fine as well for 4K video viewing, transcoding, 4k desktop, etc. So if you want to spend more and get a more powerful Intel chip you can. Just avoid 13/14th generation i series (i5/i7/i9) especially used because of the hardware damage bad design did to those and there are a lot of messed up ones floating around from people trying to offload.

144hz may be the really tricky part. Lots of these mini boxes are capped at 60hz so definitely double-check that. There’s always the option of displayport to HDMI cables too if it has a DP output that supports the necessary 4k framerate. N150 might struggle driving that to be honest.

Oh and be aware of thermal throttling. Lots of manufacturers stuff Ultra 9 series in things like laptops and minis with inadequate cooling and they thermal throttle like crazy so you pay $800 and get something with the same performance as a properly cooled Ultra 7 or 5 series.

To loop back around to whether you need a dedicated GPU. You have to ask yourself are you transcoding streams for others or is it mostly direct-play without transcode? Integrated GPU on the CPU die should be good enough unless you have an awful lot of streams going at once or some other pressing need.

You can run whatever distro you want. There are extremely specialized distros like OSMC (https://osmc.tv/) which is basically kind of like Kodi running on Debian but without a desktop environment (extremely media center focused).

If the drive previously wasn’t making this noise (as in it had been filled with data, been in use for days-weeks and wasn’t ever making this noise) and it doesn’t happen in response to data writes (even hours after the fact) then it might be a cause for concern that the drive could be dying.

In general it’s a good idea to have back-ups of any important data but I’d really ensure that’s the case here and assume it could imminently fail. In general the sound of hard drives changing (that is sounding different in either idle noises or active writing/reading noises) is a cause for concern for potential drive failure though it could be other things and as drives age they can sometimes change sound signatures as mechanical components age without necessarily failing (could go on working fine for years).

That said there are normal processes in drives that can make noise:

• Some sort of operation driven by your OS itself, I won’t begin to get into all of them but there could be something accessing things in the background, doing file table or journaling operations, writes, checks, etc on the file system itself, just low level maintenance stuff.

• SMR drives may continue to write and shuffle data for quite some time after being written to, especially if it was a large amount of data. Though this should still even in the case of multiple terabytes probably be resolved within 12 hours.

• Many drives, especially high capacity enterprise drives do make a -soft- clicking sound as a result of the arms sweeping the surface when idle but not off to if I recall correctly spread around lubricant or some sort of basic mechanical maintenance. It’s part of the normal drive operations. It’s possible it occurs more frequently in response to a massive amount of writes previously like filling a drive or may not be activated until a certain amount of data is written, I’m not really sure how that works as that would probably be proprietary information to the manufacturer.

Should I be worried about this? To my paranoid mind it feels like something is slowly reading my files with some exploit to bypass the indicator light to fly under the radar.

How would it do this? Is it installing hacked firmware to your enclosure too? I doubt you’re that valuable of a target.

If you’re worried about malware then back up your stuff, nuke the install and reinstall from scratch. I wouldn’t worry about it if this is the only thing you’re seeing and find it unlikely.

Star Trek.

Everything after Voyager gets axed completely. 100% retconned. Doesn’t exist. You can’t even joke about happenings in it in any new works.

Voyager and DS9 themselves get trimmed down. DS9 loses 75% of its episodes, Dominion war erased, mundane space station stuff instead, no religious weirdness validated. Voyager gets better ending but retains most of its episodes.

ToS gets turned into legendary chronicles rather than full canon with the more absurd less science bits cut out or reduced to the fantasies of the chronicler. Main stories and characters retained with >=80% of it surviving. Movies from both ToS and TNG era retain full canon status.

It is established that alternative dimensions are extremely limited in number, you cannot do Marvel universe #69 stuff with it, the main one is the nega-universe with evil everything and a few other isolated pocket universes that are short-lived and unstable (often as a result of warp core implosion weirdness and such).

All existing writers and producers currently associated or associated since the end of the Voyager era are summarily fired with prejudice. New ones are hired and quizzed by me to ensure at least the main producers are communists like Roddenberry and do not want to turn my hopeful FALGSC property into grim-dark in space IP number 3. Prominent transgender characters are MANDATORY in the new series and other steps will be taken to drive every last reactionary out of what’s left of the fan-base.

It becomes studio policy to viciously copyright strike anyone uploading video of retconned parts of the IP to any platform as well as to bully journalist insiders with access into adopting the new line by excluding anyone who disagrees with it from access or favor.

I would say there are not any worth recommending and that best practices are avoiding running random scripts you don’t understand, keeping software up to date with package managers, and using virtualization tools. Also look into Portmaster perhaps which is an interactive firewall.