Not mandatory, but common. It’s at the core of all the Hyundai/Kia thefts. They do not have immobilizers, but nearly everything else does (since the 90s)

There are a few, but a dirty secret is because gym attendance is EXTREMELY cyclical. Jan/Feb are loaded with people signing up as part of their new year’s resolutions. If they are month-to-month, then they cancel before April. Locking them into annual contracts means they can’t cancel once they realize they aren’t going anymore.

There are a few that genuinely do monthly contracts from the beginning. Planet Fitness is the best known, and they use it as a selling point for people that know they probably won’t stick to it. It’s also cheap enough that they don’t feel any urgency to cancel, and can let it ride for a long time while promising themselves they’ll get back to it.

These “climate denying scientists” are so rare as to not even be included directly. They are usually mentioned as a vague “they” by far-right people pushing an agenda.

Even when they are included, and speaking on the subject, most don’t say conclusively that climate change isn’t happening. Instead, they say that the evidence presented thus far isn’t compelling enough to reach that conclusion.

Try to find one by name. It’s remarkably hard.

This suggests that someone ran a study, and had to run a bunch of tests to independently and objectively determine whether he is, in fact, an idiot.

I look forward to the headline, “New study shows that Charlie Kirk is an idiot”

Kind of. They will be multiples of 4. Let’s say you got a gigantic 8i8e card, albeit unlikely. That would (probably) have 2 internal and 2 external SAS connectors. Your standard breakout cables will split each one into 4 SATA cables (up to 16 SATA ports if you used all 4 SAS ports and breakout cables), each running at full (SAS) speed.

But what if you were running an enterprise file server with a hundred drives, as many of these once were? You can’t cram dozens of these cards into a server, there aren’t enough PCIe slots/lanes. Well, there are SAS expansion cards, which basically act as a splitter. They will share those 4 lanes, potentially creating a bottleneck. But this is where SAS and SATA speeds differ- these are SAS lanes, which are (probably) double what SATA can do. So with expanders, you could attach 8 SATA drives to every 4 SAS lanes and still run at full speed. And if you need capacity more than speed, expanders allow you to split those 4 lanes to 24 drives. These are typically built into the drive backplane/DAS.

As for the fan, just about anything will do. The chip/heatsink gets hot, but is limited to the ~75 watts provided by the PCIe bus. I just have an old 80 or 90mm fan pointing at it.

The one I had would frequently drop the drives, wreaking havoc on my (software) RAID5. I later found out that it was splitting 2 ports into 4 in a way that completely broke spec.

First, this approach is going to fail at some point. Depending on how far away it is, that could be a major issue. It also makes some very bold assumptions about connection speed and latency that are probably not true.

Second, IP doesn’t reliably show location. My cable ISP is typically geolocated to Chicago, despite it being 2 states away. Same for T Mobile connections.

Third, it’s incredibly unlikely that the employer is going to be looking at IP addresses to determine location. Even if they wanted to use tech for this purpose, they would use location services/GPS/etc. Which a VPN won’t conceal.

Fourth, changing the physical mailing address on file would be a bigger flag. But presumably he’ll list that family’s address, which could create other implications.

I don’t want to speak to your specific use case, as it’s outside of my wheelhouse. My main point was that SATA cards are a problem.

As for LSi SAS cards, there’s a lot of details that probably don’t (but could) matter to you. PCIe generation, connectors, lanes, etc. There are threads on various other homelab forums, truenas, unraid, etc. Some models (like the 9212-4i4e, meaning it has 4 internal and 4 external lanes) have native SATA ports that are convenient, but most will have a SAS connector or two. You’d need a matching (forward) breakout cable to connect to SATA. Note that there are several common connectors, with internal and external versions of each.

You can use the external connectors (e.g. SFF-8088) as long as you have a matching (e.g. SFF-8088 SAS-SATA) breakout cable, and are willing to route the cable accordingly. Internal connectors are simpler, but might be in lower supply.

If you just need a simple controller card to handle a few drives without major speed concerns, and it will not be the boot drive, here are the things you need to watch for:

• MUST be LSi, but it can be rebranded LSi. This includes certain cards from Dell and IBM, but not all.
• Must support Initiator Target (IT) mode. The alternative is Initiator RAID (IR) mode. This is nearly all, since most can be flashed to IT mode regardless
• Watch for counterfeits! There are a bunch of these out there. My best advice is to find IT recyclers on eBay. These cards are a dime a dozen in old, decommissioned servers. They’re eager to sell them to whomever wants them.

Also, make sure you can point a fan at it. They’re designed for rackmount server chassis, so desktop-style cases don’t usually have the airflow needed.

To anyone reading, do NOT get a PCIe SATA card. Everything on the market is absolute crap that will make your life miserable.

Instead, get a used PCIe SAS card, preferably based on LSi. These should run about $50, and you may (depending on the model) need a $20 cable to connect it to SATA devices.

37% in 6 months. It takes a long time for international travel plans to change. That’s a significant number who canceled a fully planned/booked trip, and even more that were tentative.

I’d really like to see the data graphed by month.

If capitalism has taught me anything, it’s that it won’t be used like this. There is only one way the producers of this butter would tie production to excess solar capacity, and that is if it’s the most profitable. That would require that the cost of solar + storage + transport is cheaper than using another source of energy, on demand. And that’s even assuming there’s enough excess solar to run the whole thing, and the logistics don’t get in the way of maintaining the supply chain.