The way one designs hardware in is to optimize for the most common usage scenario with enough capacity to account for the peak use scenario (and with some safety margin on top).

(In the case of silent power sources they would also include lower power leakage in the common usage scenario so as to reduce the need for fans, plus in the actual physical circuit design would also include things like airflow and having space for a large slower fan since those are more silent)

However specifically for power sources, if you want to handle more power you have to for example use larger capacitors and switching MOSFETs so that it can handle more current, and those have more leakage hence more baseline losses. Mind you, using more expensive components one can get higher power stuff with less leakage, but that’s not going to happen outside specialist power supplies which are specifically designed for high-peak use AND low baseline power consumption, and I’m not even sure if there’s a genuine use case for such a design that justifies paying the extra cost for high-power low-leakage components.

In summary, whilst theoretically one can design a high-power low-leakage power source, it’s going to cost a lot more because you need better components, and that’s not going to be a generic desktop PC power source.

That said, I since silent PC power sources are designed to produce less heat, which means have less leakage (as power leakage is literally the power turning to heat), even if the with the design having been targetted for the most common usage scenario of that power source (which is not going to be 15W) that would still probably mean better components hence lower baseline leakage, hence they should waste less power if that desktop is repurposed as a NAS. Still won’t beat a dedicated ARM SBC (not even close), but it might end up cheap enough to be worth it if you already have that PC with a silent power source.

When I had my setup with an ASUS EEE PC I had mobile external HDDs plugged to it via USB.

Since my use case was long-term storage and feeding video files to a Media TV Box, the bandwidth limit of USB 2.0 and using HDDs rather than SDDs was fine. Also back then I had 100Mbps ethernet so that too limited bandwidth.

Even in my current setup where I use a Mini-PC to do the same, I still have the storage be external mobile HDDs and now badwidth limits are 1Gbps ethernet and USB 3.0, which is still fine for my use case.

Because my use case now is long term storage, home file sharing and torrenting, my home network is using the same principles as distributed systems and modern microprocessor architectures: smaller faster data stores with often used data close to were its used (for example fast smaller SDDs with the OS and game executables inside my gaming machine, plus a torrent server inside that same Mini-PC using its internal SDD) and then layered outwards with decreasing speed and increasing size (that same desktop machine has an internal “storage” HDD filled with low use files, and one network hop from it there’s the Mini-PC NAS sharing its external HDDs containing longer term storage files).

The whole thing tries to balance storage costs and with usage needs.

I suppose I could improve performance a bit more by setting up some of the space in the internal SDD in the Mini-PC as a read/write cache for the external HDDs, but so far I haven’t had the patience to do it.

I used to design high performance distributed computing systems and funnilly enough my home setup follows the same design principles (which I had not noticed until thinking about it now as I wrote this).

Yeah, different hardware is designed for different use cases and generally won’t work as well for other use cases, which is also why desktops seldom make for great NAS servers (their fans will also fail from constant use, plus their design spec is for much higher power usage so they have a lot more power waste even if trottled down).

That said my ASUS EEE PC lasted a few years on top of a cabinet in my kitchen (which is were the Internet came into my house so the router was also there) with a couple of external HDDs plugged in, and that’s a bit of a hostile environment (because some of the particulates from cooking, including fat, don’t get pulled out and end up accumulating there).

At the moment I just have a Mini-PC on my living room with a couple of external HDDs plugged in that works as NAS, TV Media Box and home server (including wireguard VPN on top of a 1Gbps connection, which at peak is somewhat processor intensive). It’s an N100 and the whole thing has a TDP of 15W so the fan seldom activates. So far that seems to be the best long term solution, plus it’s multiple use unlike a proprietary NAS. It’s the some of the best €140 (not including the HDDs) I’ve ever spent.

Stuff designed for much higher peek usage tend to have a lot more waste.

For example, a 400W power source (which is what’s probably in the original PC of your example) will waste more power than a lower wattage on (unless it’s a very expensive one), so in that example of yours it should be replaced by something much smaller.

Even beyond that, everything in there - another example, the motherboard - will have a lot more power leakage than something designed for a low power system (say, an ARM SBC).

Unless it’s a notebook, that old PC will always consume more power than, say, an N100 Mini-PC, much less an ARM based one.

True for notebooks. (For years my home NAS was an old Asus EEE PC)

Desktops, on the other hand, tend to consume a lot more power (how bad it is, depends on the generation) - they’re simply not designed to be a quiet device sitting on a corner continuously running a low CPU power demanding task: stuff designed for a lot more demanding tasks will have things like much bigger power sources which are less efficient at low power demand (when something is design to put out 400W, wasting 5 or 10W is no big deal, when it’s designed to put out 15W, wasting 5 or 10W would make it horribly inefficient).

Meanwhile the typical NAS out there is running an ARM processor (which are known for their low power consumption) or at worse a low powered Intel processor such as the N100.

Mind you, the idea of running you own NAS software is great (one can do way more with that than with a proprietary NAS, since its far more flexible) as long as you put it in the right hardware for the job.

Fair enough - I don’t really know what are the numbers of Jewish People who already lived in the territory of Palestine that was became Israel at the time of the formation of that country.

This info is all I found some time ago because I was curious.

I knew that a lot of people from Russia had emigrated to Israel but the actual number was very surprising when I found out.

But yeah, either way we both agree on the core point which is that a large majority of Israelis are not descendants from people affected by the Holocaust.

Source (at the Jewish Virtual Library)

Maybe you should tell them they’re “factually wrong”.

because nearly 100 years ago someone else did it to their people and now they’re saying “it’s our turn.”

Not even close.

Most Israelis by a large margin are descendants of people who came from Russia, not Western Europe.

Most Israelis by a large margin are either descendants of people who came from Russia, or already lived in the territory of Palestine when Israel was formed, not descendants of people from Western Europe.

Only a small fraction of Israelis are descendants of people affected by the Holocaust, much less of Holocaust survivors.

There is no such thing as a “Jewish Hive Mind” and the only thing these Jews share with the Jews who were victims of the Holocaust is having the same religion, nothing else - not principles, not ethics, not morals, not empathy with victims of extreme racism, not even most of their culture: just because somebody also uses a kippah doesn’t mean the think like you.

The Holocaust in Israel is nothing more than a tool used by the present day Nazi-like ideology that runs that place to induce collective fear amongst Jews because it’s much more easy to spread extreme racist hate amongst people who live in fear because of their ethnicity.

This explains why, rather than learning from the Holocaust to empathise with the victims of such things (which would be a natural thing for the descendants of the victims of the Holocaust to learn from the experiences of their parents and grandparents), most people in Israel have instead learned extreme racist hate for those who don’t look like them and who stand in the way of what they are told “is necessary make Jews safe”.

The way the memory of the Holocaust is used in Israel is a complete total shit show of Racism and Propaganda that has massivelly distorted the real thing to serve the objectives of the Nazi-like ideology which is Zionism.

Theoretically the sites would have to block all IP addresses of all cloud providers, including massive ones such as Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, because people in Wisconsin can just run VPN Server software - which is side of the VPN were the network connections exit the encrypted tunnel and enter the Internet - in a container or virtual machine inside one those to have their own personal (or shared with whomever they want) VPN.

Similarly they would have to block all exit IPs of most companies because somebody in Winsconsin might be using the VPN of the company remotelly go to their company network and via that network access those sites and which point the connection will probably appear as originating from one of the company’s routers because of NAT.

The way the VPN technology works, theoretically every single IP address on the internet might be an exit point of a VPN which is being used by somebody in Winsconsin to access one of those sites, since one can even run VPN Server software on a mobile phone or Raspberry Pi.

Theoreticaly those sites have to block every single IP address which might directly or indirectly be used that way.

This law is completelly insane.

Given that the only way for those websites to block VPN traffic is to block the IP addresses of all known VPN exit points, what you would see is first the commercial VPN providers regularly rotating those IP addresses of their VPN server exit points, and second people simply setting up their own VPN servers software in rented VPS machines in cloud providers anywhere in the World to run their own personal VPN.

You don’t really need a full blown remote session, just a VPN server in a machine (physical or virtual) with an IP address which isn’t yet blocked by such a site.

Now, the sites might try and block this by only allowing in connections from blocks of addresses which are known to belong to ISPs (which would theoretically only be direct connections from individuals, so not using a VPN), but that’s way less reliable than merelly lists of IP addresses of the VPN servers of big providers, plus it would block thing such as the entirety of Amazon AWS.

Ok, so basically when your computer uses a VPN it just connects to a VPN server over the Internet using an encrypted TCP/IP or UDP/IP connection. On your computer side all your connections to the Internet just get shoved into that encrypted tunel instead of going directly into the whole wide world from your own network connection - so nobody but that server sees those connections - whilst on the VPN server side they’re recieved from that encrypted tunel and then exit to the whole wide world from that VPN server as if they’re connections initiated by that server not by your own machine, so to the whole world they look like connections coming from the VPN server machine.

Nations with nation-wide firewalls can try and block VPN by blocking the actual encrypted network connections to VPN servers (there are ways to recognize those, but there also ways to disguise them), but for websites to block them (which is what this legislation demands) the websites have to block the actual VPN servers since the websites can only see connections to them which seem to originate in those servers, not traffic elsewhere on the Internet such as the encrypted connections from VPN customers to VPN servers.

Now, there are lists of the IP addresses of the exit points of VPN providers (generally the VPN server internet address), which are the IP addresses were the traffic of somebody using that VPN enters the Internet, so to try to comply with this legislation those sites would start by blocking all traffic from any of those IP addresses - remember those websites don’t know were the traffic coming from a VPN server to that website really comes from, so they can’t tell traffic from people in Wisconsin using that VPN server from traffic from people elsewhere using it, hence have to block everything from it to catch everybody from Winsonsin.

This would affect everybody anywhere in the World using those exit points of those VPN providers.

Then there’s the problem that the legislation applies to all VPNs, not just commercial VPN providers serving retail customers, meaning that the websites would also theoretically have to block VPN servers from business VPNs (and given how the networks of many large companies work, that might mean blocking the entire company) as well as things like schools using VPNs and, even more entertaining, VPNs set up by individuals by, for example, renting a Virtual Private Server or physical server and installing a Linux there running their own VPN server software or even installing the VPN server software on something like Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure, which means they might have to block every single IP address of any provider of servers space anywhere in the World (as any Wisconsian could, theoretically, over the Internet rent a cheap VPS in, say, Malasia, and install a Linux with running the VPN server software in it) as well as of all AWS and Azure servers since again any Wisconsian could theoretically run VPN server software hosted in one of those providers.

The whole things is insane as fuck and would have some trully fucked up implications for any website that tried to comply, as well as for anybody anywhere in the world using VPNs who might want to access such sites.

If I understood it correctly, per that legislation and given how the technology works, adult sites would have to block everybody coming to them from a known VPN exit point, not matter where the user actually is (because a site can’t really tell were a user actually is when they’re behind a VPN) to comply with it, meaning that it would impact everybody everywhere in the World using a VPN.

De facto Wisconcin’s legilslature is trying to imposed their will not only on those who live in Wisconsin, not only on those who live anywhere in the US but on those who live anywhere in World.

Read The Fucking FAQ.

1990s Usenet reference.

Talentless hack and way out of his depth grifter who knows the position he has reached and the money he makes in it is really just supported by cultivated connections and his bullshiting ability, rather than any superior strategical capabilities, when the business “strategy” he chose as CEO merelly because “everybody else is doing it” starts to be perceived as not just broken but a bit of a shit show, keeps on trying to push the impression that, actually, he’s just a misunderstood visionary and it’s others that don’t yet recognize how wonderful the direction he chose for the company is.

By using such arguments, maybe once again he’ll “fake it until you make it” his way into success (after all, that’s how he became MS’ CEO in the first place) or, at worst, it will extend how long he can keep on getting paid the big bucks for nothing more than being a lucky bullshitter with the right connections.

I’ve been in Tech on and off since the 90s, including in Tech Startups, and nowadays “leaders” in it are pretty much all grifters, not techies with a vision.

I’ve been reading the posts here and most people are coming from a “decent honest person trying to do his jobs as well as possible” point of view in their reading of the guy (probably because that’s the kind of person they are) and thus giving this guy the benefit of the doubt, whilst from what I’ve seen in that world this guy is almost certainly a talentless hack at anything other than grifting and who, lacking any above average strategical thinking abilities, went for the “everybody else is doing it” strategy which is now blowing up, so of course he’ll use typical grifter skills to try and dig his way out of that hole or, at least, stave off the innevitable end of getting big fat $$$ for holding a position he’s not actually competent at.

The guy is gaslighting because he’s a grifter not a strategist and the “it’s others, not me” line of argument is a common “defend & delay” tool in a grifter’s toolbox.

Innovation as an inherently good thing (rather than merelly new) has always been a mantra and a slogan of the post-2000 Crash generation of Tech “Leaders”, who unlike the ones in the 90s, are almost always grifters rather than techies.

A grifter, when his personal upside maximization (in the form of keeping his job and performance bonuses) is at stake, will say whatever it takes to try and push the impression that his strategical choices as head of a Tech company are “visionary” rather than “blind fad following” because at best he might succeed at “fake it until you make it” and at worst he’s delaying the moment when he stops getting the big bucks for what is mainly bullshitting abilities.

So maybe Mustafa Suleyman smokes the tech bollocks he sells and genuinelly thinks that this stuff is an improvement for customers, but personally and having been in Tech (and the Tech Startup world) on and off since the 90s, my bet is that his words are nothing more than a grifter grifting because that’s the kind of person that world has been rewarding the most since the 2000 Crash.

Using Wine directly is a bit of a pita.

Hence why there are things like Bottles.

“There’s this obscure function in Excel that I know somebody who knows somebody who used it that won’t work in LibreOffice Calc”

I bet that, like most Arch users, that one kept on thinking “So far, so good” all the way down.

On a serious note, having used Linux on and off since the 90s (aah, Slackware, how I miss installing you from floppies … not), Linux has, IMHO, actually been desktop ready for ages (though definitelly not in the days of Slackware when configuring X was seriously interesting for a geek and pretty much an impossible barrier for everybody else).

The problem have always been applications not having Linux builds, only Windows builds, not the actual desktop Linux distros being an inferior desktop experience than Windows (well, not once Gnome and KDE emerged and made things like configuring your machine possible via GUIs - the age of the RTFF and editing text files in the command line before that wasn’t exactly friendly for non-techies).

In other words, from maybe the late 00s onwards the problem were mainly the “networks effects” (in a business sense of "apps are made for Windows because that’s were users are, users go for Windows because that’s were the apps are) rather than the “desktop” experience.

The almost unassailable advantage of Windows thanks to pretty much just network effects, was something most of us Linux fans were aware since way back.

What happened in the meanwhile to make Linux more appealing “in the Desktop” was mainly on the app availabilty side - OpenOffice (later LibreOffice and derivatives) providing an Office-style suit in Linux, the movement from locally hosted apps to web-hosted apps meaning that a lot of PC usage was really just browser usage, Wine improving by leaps and bounds and making more and more Windows applications run in Linux (most notably and also thanks to DXVK, Games) and so on.

Personally I think Linux has been a superior experience on the server side since the late 90s and, aside for the lack of Linux versions of most commonly used non-OS applications, a superior experience in the desktop since the 00s.

That’s just the ones who don’t use Arch.