bluGill

Systems that circulate ’ freon’ are fairly common in commercial buildings. They are complex to build and so don’t really make sense for houses.

Yes, but not as an out of the box solution. Tape drives use standard sizes, and standard interfaces (often serial attached SCSI). You can buy a tape drive and a USB encloser that lets you put your own drive in it and the tape drive will work. You need to make sure the USB encloser provides enough power, is big enough, and has the correct interface, but it will “just work” if you select the right parts and plug them in. Do make sure you read the spec - some cheaper enclosers may not support USB3 data rates which you tape drive may need to work well.

The USB designers made the decision back in the day that they would not design a protocol for CDrom (then important), tape, or other such things. Instead they designed a “here is how to transmit SCSI over USB”, which makes it cheap to design USB to SCSI adapters and that is what has been done.

Do you need tape? Do you really need that much data? Archival grade DVDs can store a few GB (an order of magnitude less than the TBs you asked for!), and probably easier to find/source.

Large companies still use tape for their large data sets. Tape has some useful advantages that make it worth it in very specific situations.

The first is when you have a lot of data - if you have several hundred of even thousands tapes (likely including duplicates!) then the quantity of data you have backed up is large enough the tapes are the cheapest.

The second - as hinted above - is duplicates. If you don’t want the data lost a tape is a good answer to have several copies. While a disk might be cheaper, they are fragile and computers are not designed to swap disks that often. Even USB which is designed for swapping isn’t that good: the connector will physically wear out a lot faster than you would expect making the costs much higher to manage this. Plus the labor to plug/unplug a lot of drives will get you.

Third, some tapes come in a write once form. If you have data that (often for legal reasons) you need to store such that it cannot be modified later then tape is often you best answer to ensure the data really wasn’t changed. (either by an executive hiding their tracks, or an attacker trying to put ransomware on you).

That said, for most reading this, a few disks in a NAS is better than about 98% of people have and if you have snapshots on the NAS probably good enough for everything (your only risk is fire or theft of the NAS - if you cannot live with this get a second NAS elsewhere, or a cloud backup), similar cost, and has enough other useful features that you want it anyway.

Since 2015 I have only upgraded my phone because the previous one broke, and I didn’t notice any difference. I had the first android, and it was slow enough that whatever I replaced it with (I don’t remember what) was better because of the speed. Getting waterproof (resistant, but proof for practical purposes) was a big win. Only other time an upgraded helped was when the camera lens was so scratched that pictures improved. Every phone upgrade has been because the last one broke and so had to be replaced. My current phone is 4 years old and still works fine.

Not what you are asking for, but maybe what you want: https://invidious.io/ is a youtube front end with some features that might or might not make it what you want.

Even hand coded projects need more than 6 months before I’ll replace anything in my stacks. Too many projects start with great intention but then the founder gets bored (life gets in the way?) and they go unmaintained. Really I’m looking for projects that enough developers have got involved in that I can be confident it won’t go stagnant. I could be one of those developers, but I don’t have enough time to contribute to all the different projects I use (I barely have time to contribute to the one project I maintain)

Here is a question you need to figure out: Switch is in the on position, and you use the remote to turn the light off, what happens when the switch is moved to off?

According to my wife the only satisfactory answer to this question is when the remote turns the light off the switch moves to off and so you cannot turn it off in this case! (she wants the same behavior from the old 3-way light switches that have been around for decades)

Basic hand tools can make a ak47. Skill is needed there though.

I’m not quite understanding your question.

3d printers have made guns. They are always bad guns because plastic isn’t great for the purpose. They work and prove the point enough to scare people who know nothing about guns and thus don’t realize why other methods are better and faster.

CNC lathes are very common these days.

Not that you are wrong, but that isn’t hard to teach somebody. Sure they will get a few failed parts, and likely break a few cutters. However all the instructions you need are there, there are plenty of how to machine parts videos on youtube (as always of various quality levels).

bullets are cheap

Not only can you cast bullets, many do cast their own. You can apply much better quality control in our small batch runs at home than a factory will, which will make for more accuracy. A factory could be better, but most people buying factory runs care about cheap and so they won’t be as consistent - most than good enough for hunting or war use (even snipers), but if you are trying to win sharp shooting competitions you need that little extra.

I wouldn’t be against my toilet monitoring my movements. But the data collected needs to be shared with my doctor only - since she could potentially do something useful with it.

No, I’m saying that the ships would like it. Also having used geosynchronous satellite internet I have first hand experience that the lag sucks. Better than nothing, but Starlink has less lag. Probably faster but I don’t know what the latest speeds are. Still geosynchronous covers a lot of area which means you are sharing with a lot of people.

Cruise ships pay a lot for internet because their customers want it. Crew on all ships want it for their breaks.

Starlink isn’t worth it for just the above, but add in rural people on land and it makes sense. Though I understand the astronomers hate it.

I also remember it was cautioned early on that they had limited bandwidth and so focused on rural areas and a backup for cell phones. For rural areas this is better than having to run fiber (rural areas typically didn’t have cable, though they were running fiber close enough to get DSL - better than nothing but very slow)

Fiber without cell towers are pointless. Ships and boats commonly have starlink internet now, because it is so much better than any alternative. Cell towers are needed for fiber to compete.

The pacific has some deep trenches, I don’t think fiber runs across them.

I’d like to see someone setup cell towers across the pacific ocean. I even started dreaming up what it would take/cost - but I soon realized it would never be worth it so I’m not asking for investors. (though probably I should have… Anyone know a VC with money to burn?)

You want it at home. The real value in your of gold is when society collapses it still is a nice metal and so has value. Iron would work to but your house isn’t big enough for your life savings in iron.

I don’t think society will collapse and lacking that scenario gold isn’t a better investment.