This should be higher up for anyone considering DACs for homelab use. I had a lot of issues due to this when mixing Aruba switches with Intel nics in my rack. Ended up going to fiber and SFPs.

I'll bite. What's the downside of a flat tax for a category like datacenters? If Meta want's to negotiate a lower tax rate for datacenters that's great, just allow every datacenter to apply for that same rate then.

I find it bothersome because the system incentivizes giant megacorp monopolies. If you are small you'll have to pay taxes like everyone else, but once you hit some threshold of huge enough, we'll let taxes slide so you can get another leg up. A datacenter this size isn't going to provide more economic benefit than 50 datacenters 1/50 the size, but only one of them gets special treatment.

Combine that with the fact that large corporations constantly find ways to avoid paying taxes and its hard to be positive about this kind of thing.

If you get a quality tig welder aluminum isn't too bad. It's definitely more difficult than steel but I taught myself to weld AL without too much trouble. Practice on some scrap for sure before your bike - it'll be easy to blow a hole in thin bike tube.

The biggest challenge I've had in welding aluminum as a hobbyist is that I rarely know what aluminum alloy I'm working with. Most things don't say what type so we're left guessing what filler is appropriate. If you use the wrong filler it could be prone to cracking again in the future.

Also for thicker aluminum preheating is very important. The aluminum transfers heat away very quickly so you get cold lumpy welds if you don't have both parts pretty hot at the start.

I don't know Bolt touchscreen specifics, but a lot of electronics in newer cars are paired to the id in the cars BCM or security module and installing replacement parts requires activation/re-registering using proprietary dealership tools.

Is there an industry newsletter or source where one can read up on this? All I can find is a single article from Reuters.

>> You ever wonder why Indiana has such a huge number of drag racing cars in the Prostock and Superstock classes?

I can honestly say I've never wondered that. It's so oddly specific lol.

Having grown up in Indiana, and having watched a lot of drag racing, and even crewed for a friend drag racing motorcycles, I have not once wondered that, either. I, of course, just assumed it was that way everywhere. “What, your small nowhere town doesn’t have its own drag strip or dirt oval? How odd…”

(And when I say “nowhere”, I mean go look up Bunker Hill, IN as a go-to example. It’s a fine town as far as small towns go, but a long way from any major metro.)

Back when people still watched cable Street Outlaws was Discovery's biggest show for a while. It is an oddly specific thing, but a question I heard a lot about ten years ago. The two places where drag racing are biggest are Oklahoma and Indiana.

Your site is awesome. I too am tired of checking five different government auction websites every day, each with a terrible interface from 2005.

Thank you. I think the highlight so far has been one of my friends buying an industrial lathe that he found on the site!

That is quite the highlight, now you have access to a lathe :) I also bought a large lathe from a government surplus site, it's by far my favorite tool.

Or when you've been wanting to one up your neighbor's boat by buying a drug running speedboat with bullet holes.

One of the top reasons auction hunters hate gun control

The worst ones will try to add a few extra holes the night before the auction

You're probably kidding but I wouldn't put it past someone. Unscrupulous people bring antifreeze in gatorade bottles to the car auction and dump it under cars they want. Be careful out there.

Oh sheeesh!

By the way I had to spend at least a second trying to figure out whether that antifreeze was somehow going to offgas and damage the vehicle undercarriage :)

But it’s just straightforward dishonest fake leak. Scoundrels!

Or want to get absolutely ripped off by the non-government sellers that are somehow allowed on those platforms. The whole point of Govdeals et al is that the seller is a known-ish quantity. If I wanted to roll the dice on garbage with fresh paint I'd be on Ritchie bros.

Govdeals managed services (or whatever they call it now) is just as questionable as 3rd party sellers on any given big bog store's ecommerce "platform".

> Or want to get absolutely ripped off by the non-government sellers that are somehow allowed on those platforms

I didn't realize the government could become Amazon.

Not government, these are private auction sites that cater to the governments.

Modern farming is much closer to science and engineering than most realize. Rowcropping in particular is heavily reliant on gps, soil chemistry, and genetics to put the right seed, in the right soil, with the right nutrients to maximize output.

One big reason I got out of mushroom farming was a great big mushroom 'factory' was set up not too far from me. They produced literal tons more than we could have ever dreamed, at a much lower cost. They are a highly technical, industrial enterprise. For a while one of their selling points was: 'mushrooms never touched by human hands', to emphasize how automated their system was. I felt like John Henry against the steam shovel.