Democrat platform

About voter ID laws

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Here’s a thought: rather than calling voter ID laws “voter suppression” and wasting money on a lawsuit against Georgia in the false hope the new law will be struck, the charities who are going around trying to get more people registered to vote should also be asking if they have a valid government-issued ID. And if not, busing them to the nearest government office to get one and absorbing the cost of that. Since the argument is that some people are too poor to get one.

And if that’s the case, if someone is literally too poor they cannot afford $15 for a government-issued ID every several years, why not lobby for a government program to offset that cost instead, paid with a penny sales tax or something like that? Or establish a charity that partners with the local government offices to pay those costs for those who cannot afford them.

I’m seriously baffled at the idea that people don’t have a valid government-issued ID but are registered to vote. You have to have a valid form of identification on you in order to accomplish… most anything. Including! buying. a. firearm. (And in some States, ammunition.) You need a government-issued ID to get a job. And so many other things in life require a valid ID.

The government has an obligation to protect the integrity of the election process. Requiring an ID is part of that. Doesn’t matter how widespread voter fraud allegedly is or is not. If people could buy a firearm without showing an ID – an exercise of our basic 2nd Amendment RIGHT, by the way – the left would be up in arms (pun unintended) over it, screaming about how kids are going to die left and right because of it. (The same argument thrown at people who argue against universal gun registration, as well.)

So rather than spending time and money on a lawsuit (including the inevitable appeals), the organizations doing that should pool the money that would otherwise be going to the lawyers and Courts and use it to pay the fees so people who don’t have one can get a valid government-issued ID.

But then, if they did that, I guess that’d be one less thing they can call “racist”.

Due process

Presume Andrew Cuomo is innocent

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York has a bit of a problem on his hands. Multiple “credible” allegations of sexual harassment or assault have been lobbed his direction. And numerous Democrats have called for his resignation.

Now I’m no friend to the Democrats. Being a libertarian, there are numerous policy ideas on which I have a lot of agreement with Democrats, but, again, I’m no friend to them. (Plenty would likely label me “far right” without missing a beat.) So with that out of the way, where do I stand on this?

The same place I stood with Brett Kavanaugh and Michael Avenatti. On the side of due process.

Like with Kavanaugh and Avenatti, one question must prevail above all others: are the allegations provable? If not, then we must give the Governor the benefit of doubt. If the allegations are provable but not proven, we must, again, give the Governor the benefit of doubt.

Only if the allegations can be shown by clear and convincing evidence to be true should we then act on them or demand the Governor’s resignation. Not before. Allegations are not evidence, and it’s far past time we stopped acting like they are.

Law/Photography

About that videographer and nonrefundable deposits

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Article: Wedding videographer refuses refund after bride’s death, harasses her family

I’m sure by now a lot of people have heard of this story. (Yeah I’m a bit late to this party.) But let’s set the scene.

Couple are getting married, and they hire a videographer, sign a contract, and pay the required up-front deposit to secure the date. Along the way, the bride-to-be tragically dies. Seeking to undo as much as possible and get as much money back as possible, the groom approaches the videographer to seek a refund of the deposit. Videographer refuses, stating it’s nonrefundable per the contract.

Not liking the outcome, the groom takes to the Internet. Brigading ensues, and the videographer starts taunting the groom.

So who’s in the wrong here? Well in the parlance of r/AITA, everything sucks here (ESH). But everywhere I’ve seen this story discussed, I also see the profound ignorance of contracts and the law on display. A lot of people stating things about contracts or the law that just is not true.

So let’s see if I can inject some reality back into this.

Contracts

In general contracts tend to specify that one party agrees to do something (or not do something) in exchange for some kind of consideration from a second party. I currently have several open contracts that give me access to people (as availability allows) for photography practice. The persons with whom I’m contracting agree to be a photo model in exchange for a pay rate. (There’s more in the contract than just that, such as copyrights and liability waivers, but let’s keep things simple.)

And you can agree to most anything in a contract. The only limitation is someone cannot agree in a contract to do something that violates the law – e.g. murder for hire, prostitution (in most States), slavery. Nor can they agree to refrain from violating the law in exchange for any kind of consideration. The terms must not contradict the law, either. For example, if liability waivers are not allowed or not allowed in some circumstances (e.g. actual malice), then that nullifies or limits the effect of a liability waiver in the contract.

Most everything else goes, so long as the contract isn’t unconscionable.

I’ve seen numerous people try to say that contracts aren’t “bulletproof”. Saying such generally implies that a contract is easy to nullify. Umm… no. They’re damned hard to get nullified by a Court unless you can show there is a genuine legal issue with the contract, an actual conflict of law. And even then, the Court will likely only limit or nullify just the parts that are problematic over nullifying the entire contract, even if the contract does not have a severability clause.

Canceling a contract

Generally there are not a lot ways you can rescind an agreement after it’s been signed. And the contract itself may specifically nullify your ability to rescind after it’s been signed, meaning the only way you can escape such agreements is if there is a legal problem with the contract, the other party is in breach, or it becomes impossible for one party to the contract to fulfill their end of the bargain.

Unless the contract has a termination clause, the only way to cancel a contract is if both parties agree to back out of the agreement. Termination clauses are commonplace in contracts. It’s safe to say that most won’t sign contracts that don’t have one.

I’ll use one of my contracts as an example. I signed a contract with a couple for family photographs. Due to weather-related health issues with the children, we had difficulty actually pinning down a date, time, and location that would work. The contract allowed rescheduling so long as the photo shoot occurred within 45 days of the contract going into effect (i.e. all parties signed it) or the contract would die automatically. It also allowed either me or the family to back out of the contract at any time so long as the shoot never occurred.

If the family decided after the shoot to cancel, they wouldn’t have been able to, as the contract didn’t allow for that and I absolutely would not have agreed to such.

Ultimately the contract expired as I made a couple suggestions for location and never heard back from the couple. And I never demanded an up-front deposit, so the contract expiring was as if it never existed to begin with.

Non-refundable deposits

If you’ve bought a house, you should be familiar with “earnest money”. For those not in the know, it’s a cash deposit (mine was $500) that shows that you are serious about buying the house. It is credited toward your closing costs, but is non-refundable if you back out of the purchase with some exceptions (e.g. you discover something substantial about the home not on the seller’s disclosure form).

So for services booked months or longer in advance, the non-refundable deposit is similar to “earnest money”. It shows you’re serious about their services, secures them for the date in question, and is non-refundable should you back out.

Making anything similar to this idea incorrect: “Services were never rendered, so the videographer has no right to keep the money.”

And the contract will stipulate the deposit is not refundable under any circumstances (except where law requires), or will give only some circumstances in which the deposit may be refundable in whole or part. This doesn’t mean the money is absolutely gone. But getting it back requires getting the contract nullified in Court (good luck there!) or the other party (photographer, etc.) must have backed out for some reason or failed to show.

That doesn’t mean the service provider cannot refund the deposit under any circumstances. Only that they won’t be obligated to do so under the contract for circumstances not expressed in the contract. The refund will, instead, be entirely at their pleasure.

You’re free to request it, but they won’t be under any obligation to give it.

“But the bride was killed!”

If one party to the contract is an individual, and that individual dies, the contract may be voidable. And whether it is voidable is determined by the nature of the agreement itself and whether there has already been any substantial performance.

As a simple example where this plausibly could happen, let’s say a homeowner contracted to have his/her house repainted. And just to really extend out time, we’ll say they’re doing the entirety of the inside and outside. And not all at once.

But the homeowner suffers a heart attack and dies before all the rooms could be repainted, and the outside hasn’t been touched yet. Likely the homeowner has already paid a significant portion of an estimate (likely half) up front as a deposit. The big question here is whether the homeowner’s death prevents the painters from finishing the job.

Probably the only circumstance in which that would be the case is if the homeowner had not yet picked out colors for the remaining rooms. But where colors had been picked out, work could still continue. And if the estate executor tried to claim the contract was void, the painting company could push back and seek an injunction to enforce as much of the agreement as was still possible, citing any prior performance under the agreement.

With the scenario discussed herein, one party to the contract isn’t an individual, but a couple. The couple is a joint party to the contract (unless the contract states otherwise, which is unusual).

In the above scenario, if the homeowner was married, both would likely be signing the contract for painting the house, which I’d expect so both can have a say in the selected colors. This would make them a joint party to the contract. So if one of the couple dies, the contract continues as if that death had not occurred.

The death of one does not void the contract. Absent a clause to the contrary, it’ll continue in full force and effect unless continued execution becomes impossible. I don’t even think the house burning to the ground would kill that contract since the painters could still paint the rooms as part of rebuilding the house. (And getting reimbursement from the homeowner’s insurance for any repainting.)

So in reference to the couple and videographer, the death of the bride and groom is the only way the videographer may have had any legal obligation to refund the deposit. Unless the contract says otherwise, the death of one does not void the contract. Instead the groom became the sole party to the contract.

And since the wedding obviously cannot happen due to the death of the bride, the groom opted to cancel the contract. Under the law, that is treated as if both decided to back out jointly, meaning the cancellation terms still apply as written. And any deposit stipulated by the contract is not refundable, meaning the videographer was not under any obligation to refund it.

Responding to a virus

The surviving groom left a review on TheKnot.com about the videographer refusing to refund the deposit. Apparently some things were said that prompted the videographer to threaten a lawsuit, and the groom reached out to his local television media for assistance. (Not the first time a company threatens to sue over negative reviews.)

And, surprise surprise, the story went viral.

And the typical response anymore when a story about a company goes viral is brigading. Basically a ton of keyboard warriors who’ve never even previously heard of the company, let alone done business with them, decide to flood review sites with negative reviews. One ready example I give on this is an antique seller in Florida who made the news for having a KKK statuette on display for sale. Keyboard warriors flooded various review sites and the company’s Facebook page calling the owners racist and white supremacist for… reasons.

And in this instance, the company also saw a flood of negative reviews.

Now I absolutely do not condone how the videographer responded to the brigading. It was absolutely contemptible conduct, to say the least. But that’s overall and otherwise immaterial to whether the videographer had any obligation to refund the deposit.

Under the terms of the contract as discussed herein, they did not.

Debt

Infinity Consumer Services

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

In a previous article I wrote about American Debt Enders and their “Debt Dispute Program”. It seems since that article went live, the company has done a bit of a rebrand. Now instead of calling it “Debt Dispute”, they call it “Credit Restoration“. And they’ve removed some of the more problematic claims from the initial page, and removed access to the several blog posts about their program – though the links on my initial article do still work.

In looking back through those original articles, there was a small detail I overlooked:

Note:(this article is based on researching the debt dispute program as laid out by Infinity Consumer Services, which contains some unique elements.)

And when I looked at the website for Infinity Consumer Services (ICS), I found that American Debt Enders had basically copy/pasted from ICS’s “Debt Dispute” program. So at least I know one of the sources of the fanciful claims I responded to in my original article.

But ICS makes their own fanciful claims about their program.

The right to dispute the accuracy of an account is indispensable to ensure fair business practices. Infinity Consumer Services uses a private third-party fiduciary to dispute the accuracy of accounting on our customer’s behalf. A third-party is used to maintain a level of privacy that corporate entities, such as Infinity Consumer Services, may not be able to provide as a registered business.

This third-party is called an authorized representative. The authorized representative acts on our customer’s behalf to dispute the validity of accounting as well as request other disclosures the debt collector must verify through the lender.

Do you really need an “authorized representative” to help you dispute your debts? Not really. As I stated in my original article, it just takes understanding your rights, a little initiative, and keeping your expectations in check. Depending on the type of person you are, it may be helpful to have someone on your side, but it isn’t necessary. Especially since the first leg of debt validation is handled entirely by mail.

But let’s tackle the second part of that second paragraph: “dispute the validity of accounting as well as request other disclosures the debt collector must verify through the lender.” As I’ve pointed out on this blog several times, what a debt collector must provide to satisfy validation under the law is actually quite minimal:

No provision of the FDCPA has been found which would require a debt collector independently to investigate the merit of the debt, except to obtain verification, or to investigate the accounting principles of the creditor, or to keep detailed files.

Azar v. Hayter, 874 F.Supp. 1314 at 1317 (N.D. Florida, 1995)

[V]erification of a debt involves nothing more than the debt collector confirming in writing that the amount being demanded is what the creditor is claiming is owed; the debt collector is not required to keep detailed files of the alleged debt. Consistent with the legislative history, verification is only intended to “eliminate the … problem of debt collectors dunning the wrong person or attempting to collect debts which the consumer has already paid.” There is no concomitant obligation to forward copies of bills or other detailed evidence of the debt.

Chaudhry v. Gallerizzo, 174 F. 3d 394 at 406 (4th Cir., 1999) (internal citations removed)

So the Federal Courts have already said that what ICS would be attempting to get from the debt collector is not information the debt collector would be required to turn over. Instead they’re required to provide evidence that

  • the debt is valid
  • the amount claimed is accurate (itemized details are not required to fulfill this)
  • they have the authority to collect it, and
  • the name and address of the originating creditor if you request it

That’s it!

If a lender and/or debt collector cannot verify pertinent information regarding an account, they may be in violation of consumer protection laws. During and after a dispute, collection efforts by debt collectors sometimes cease until they can provide such disclosures.

Given how little a debt collector must provide during validation, it’s easy for them to provide this information in most circumstances. Yes collection efforts must cease until they do, but expect them to actually do it.

Often, we see collection efforts come to a standstill until the statute of limitations for debt collection runs out.

I highly doubt it is “often” that ICS sees “collection efforts come to a standstill” long enough for the statute of limitations to run out. I’d be surprised if that has actually happened, to be honest. I’ve been through debt collections. Almost every time I sent a §1692g validation request to a debt collector, they’ve typically responded within 45 days of me posting the dispute letter.

Do not lead your readers and prospects into thinking that sending a dispute letter under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act will result in never hearing from the debt collector again. It never happens on debts that are newly fallen into collections.

For debts that have been sold off to other debt buyers, that’s a possibility. And it has happened to me. But that was also for an account with a balance of only a few hundred dollars. All the other accounts I had that fell into collections? Each collector returned validation.

The statute of limitations for collection on unsecured credit accounts varies from state to state. After the statute of limitations runs out in say 5 years for example, a consumer may have a right to challenge any collection efforts as outside the statute of limitations. In short, a creditor/debt collector may have missed their window of opportunity to collect on the account.

The statute of limitations does not, itself, stop a debt collector from attempting to collect a debt. It only stops them from going through the Court to enforce the debt.

After the statute of limitations runs out, you can tell a debt collector to stop contacting you. Only if they sue can you then assert the statute of limitations since it’s an affirmative defense to a lawsuit. And if you fail to raise it to squash the lawsuit, you can’t raise it on appeal.

Lighting

Calibrating an LED driver board

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

I’ve recently been getting into projects using LEDs. And one project is building a light using the YujiLED 100W COB. (Only available in pairs, it seems.)

100W LED COB

And while you could just wire this up into a voltage step-up converter – which is a good way to at least make sure it isn’t DOA – that isn’t a good idea for long-term use. For that, you need to use a voltage regulator board that also has current limiting to prevent the LED from drawing too much current. Which could happen as the LED gets warmer.

But the instructions for calibrating these boards tend to be… lackluster at best. So here’s the steps to actually do this right.

Warning: Before you begin this, mount the board to some kind of heatsink and fan. It will get very hot otherwise. Same with your LED.

  1. Turn the voltage trimmer pot all the way clockwise. You’ll hear a “click” with each full turn when you get to that point. This sets the lower limit on voltage.
  2. Turn the current trimmer pot all the way counter-clockwise. The “click” is a little less pronounced on this trimmer compared to the voltage trimmer pot. This sets the current limit well above what you’ll need for the LED.
  1. Connect the board to the power source. Make sure to use a power source with an output voltage lower than the LED’s voltage range.
  2. Connect the board’s output to your LED through your multimeter with it set up to monitor current, or use an ammeter that can measure DC current (such as this one from Home Depot, which also has temperature probes, useful for measuring the temperatures to ensure you have adequate cooling).
  3. Turn on the power source. Depending on your power source, the LED should either be dimly lit or not lit at all.
  4. Turn the knob on the voltage trimmer pot counter-clockwise. This will bring the voltage up. If the light was off previously, it’ll eventually come on and start drawing current. But once the light starts drawing current, the current will start moving up fast, so take it slow at that point. Keep turning until the maximum rated current for the LED is reached – e.g. 3A in my instance.
  5. Turn the knob on the current trimmer pot clockwise until the current starts going down and the LED begins to dim. Then back off until you’re just a little under the rated current. I went to about 2.90A, which provides a little wiggle room for any fluctuations.

Using another multimeter or some other kind of voltage display (that supports the given range), check the voltage at the output of the LED driver board. It should be just inside the upper voltage limit for the LED according to its data sheet. In my instance, it settled at about 30.5V (31V is the upper limit), so pulling about 90W.

Now your voltage step-up board should be properly calibrated to your LED. With the upper current limit set, it should never draw more than a few milliamps above where it’s set. And attempting to turn the voltage trimmer pot higher will have no effect. Turning the voltage down, however, will dim the LED.

If you intend to have any kind of dimming, it’s best to use a PWM dimmer. Find one with a pulse rate of at least 10KHz to avoid interference with photography and videography. And make sure it’s rated for a high enough current and power for your LED and the requisite voltage.

And as noted above, in whatever final build you do with the LED and converter board, make sure you are adequately cooling the converter board along with the LED.

Product and service reviews

Beyond Bright’s rather significant flaw

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

In a bid to cut our energy consumption, I looked at all the various lighting around my house. Most of the bulbs were already CFLs or LEDs, so there wasn’t much in gains to be made there. But then I looked at my garage.

Fluorescent tubes. 32W each. 16 of them for about 650 sq.ft. Which does a good job at lighting the garage, but drawing over 500W of power when they’re on. Yikes! Something that really stood out on my last power bill, as I’d been out in the garage more than typical recently.

So I decided to replace the fluorescent fixtures with standard light sockets and LED bulbs. The Beyond Bright caught my attention, since I could find it readily at my local Home Depot. And then bought two of the Beyond Bright Ultras. 6000 lumen each, according to the maker, while drawing only 60W.

And while I think the lumen rating by the manufacturer is vastly overstated, they do put out a lot of light. Enough that two replace most of the fluorescent lights in my garage. I do have a workbench over which I’ll eventually install LED light bars. So these won’t replace all of the lighting. Once all of them are replaced, though, it should go from over 500W to around 150W to 200W at most. Less once I redo how they’re connected into the wall switches so I’m not turning all of them on at once.

I’ve been making other lighting projects recently. (Article coming on one of them: a portable LED tube light I built for night photography.) So being curious, I wanted to find a part number on the three LED panels to look up details. Or at least get measurements on the individual emitters and guesstimate. And it was in getting one of the panels out that I discovered a significant issue.

Each panel is made up of 48 LEDs in an 8×6 grid. Likely SMD 2835s, meaning they’re surface mount and 2.8×3.5mm with a square emitter. The exact specs would depend on who made them.

Along with putting out a lot of light for their size, SMD and chip-on-board (COB) LEDs generate a lot of heat. And that heat needs to be dissipated. Heat kills LEDs. They will dim over time from age, but inadequate heat dissipation will kill them faster.

The LED panels are set into aluminum flaps. And they’re designed so convection dissipates the heat. But without an adequate amount of thermal compound, i.e. a lot more than just a small drop, the LEDs cannot adequately dump their heat into the aluminum to reach anywhere near its advertised 30yr lifespan.

Especially since most thermal compounds don’t last that long. I don’t know of one that does.

Given that some reviews of the Beyond Bright (not the Ultra) say the lights died after only a few months, this is a likely culprit.

So before putting these lights into service, I decided to rectify this. By going all-out and using Arctic MX-4. It’s what I had as I was working with high-power (e.g. 100W) LEDs recently, plus I use it on any computer builds. It’s also advertised as having an 8-year lifespan in service.

Any decent-quality thermal compound will work because you’re dissipating only 20W of heat at most per panel – going off the advertised 60W power draw. Better compound will last longer – again, Arctic MX-4 is rated for 8 years – and perform better but, again, we’re talking only about 20W of heat into a decently-sized piece of aluminum.

The amount of thermal compound is more important. It needs to cover the entire underside of the LEDs with a thin layer.

Ideally these panels would’ve been glued in with a decent thermal epoxy, a thin layer under the entirety of the LED panel. That would all-but guarantee the 30 year advertised lifespan. But replacing the thermal compound should at least allow me to get decent life out of these lights.

Technology

It’s about the adapters

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Last year, I felt it was time to join the 4K bandwagon. Not for 4K gaming. But photo editing. And the desktop real estate.

Why photo editing? Two reasons: 4K (3840×2160) is much closer to the original resolution of my digital camera (6000×4000) than 1080p (1920×1080). 8K is larger than my camera’s resolution.

4x the resolution also means twice the pixel density at similar screen sizes. The pixel density of the 32″ 1080p is shy of 69ppi, giving a deceiving lack of sharpness when trying to edit photos. The 4K televisions are 43″ diagonal, so larger, but the 4x resolution means a still much larger pixel density at over 102ppi, which is slightly higher than what’s typically considered the minimum pixel density for printing a photo.

Plus the 4K panels I chose, the Samsung RU7100, have much better sRGB coverage (about 97%) when calibrated compared to the 1080p televisions (about 83%) I used previously.

And I didn’t buy just one monitor. But two. This led me to discover an interesting caveat I didn’t fully realize until, unfortunately, rather recently.

4K television and DisplayPort

When trying to use a 4K television on a PC, you need to pay attention to your connections. It’s easy to make a lot of assumptions.

For example if you bought an HDMI 2.1 compliant television, but you don’t have an HDMI 2.1 compliant graphics card, you’re holding your TV back from its full potential. Provided your graphics card is powerful enough to take advantage of its full potential. If your graphics card has DisplayPort 1.4, though, you have options. More on that later.

In my instance, I bought two HDMI 2.0b televisions. But my graphics card, like every other graphics card out there, has only one HDMI port. (It is HDMI 2.0b compliant.) So to get the second television working at 4K, I needed a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter.

This is where things can get tricky and you can end up buying the wrong adapter. First, you need an active DP->HDMI adapter. Passive adapters and adapter cables won’t work here. But it isn’t enough for the adapter to say “supports 4K” or “supports 4K@60Hz”. Passive adapters and adapter cables will work fine for 1080p, maybe even for 1440p at 60Hz, but definitely will not work for any 4K resolution.

The adapter must say two things:

  • HDMI 2.0 (can be 2.0a or 2.0b as well), and
  • DisplayPort HBR2 – alternatively, “5.4Gbps per lane” if it doesn’t call out HBR2 specifically

Why is this important? Bandwidth.

RGB Full, 4K at 60Hz requires almost 12Gbps just for the video data. DisplayPort HBR is limited to 8.6Gbps for video data, which can give you 1440p at 60Hz if the TV supports it. HBR2 has twice the throughput of HBR for video data: a little north of 17Gbps. If it doesn’t say anything indicating it supports HBR2, it’s likely limited to HBR. Adapters that say they are fully compliant with DisplayPort 1.2 may work.

Club3D CAC-1080

Once I had the right type of adapter, I was able to set RGB Full as the output color format in the NVIDIA Control Panel, though with only 8bpc. If I wanted more bits per channel (my camera can record photos in 14bpc RAW), I’d have to drop the refresh rate to 30Hz or reduce the resolution. (1440p at 60Hz 12bpc = 8Gbps) Perhaps I’ll try that later.

If you have an HDMI 2.1 compliant TV, you will need an adapter that supports at least HBR3 (shy of 26Gbps for video data) and HDMI 2.1 (48Gbps). So far the Club3D CAC-1085 is the only one I’m aware of. That’s more than enough bandwidth to allow for 4K at 60Hz, RGB Full at 16bpc (shy of 24Gbps, twice the data of 8bpc). So perhaps I need to look at a 4K display that can actually do that as my next upgrade.

Settings

Both TVs have the source set to PC. Here are the rest of the settings:

General->External Device Manager:

  • Input Signal Plus: On (Required for 60Hz)
  • Game Mode: On
  • HDMI Black Level: Normal

General->Eco Solution:

  • Ambient Light Detection: Off (You can turn this on if you want, but leave it OFF when you’re calibrating your display using something like an i1Display Pro.)

Picture->Expert Settings:

  • Backlight: 30
  • Brightness: 0
  • Contrast: 50
  • Sharpness: 10
  • Color Tone: Warm 2
  • Gamma: 2.2

All other settings except White Balance are disabled. And White Balance should be adjusted only as part of color calibration. Leave it at default if you won’t be calibrating the displays.

Constitution/Supreme Court

Why Marbury has endured

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Article: The Surprising Reason We’re Fighting Over the Supreme Court — and How to Fix It

It’s safe to say that both the left and right hate Marbury v. Madison. It is the Supreme Court decision. The one through which the Supreme Court of the United States asserted the power of judicial review. Which is, I believe, one of the most misinterpreted powers of the Federal judiciary.

And those who badmouth Marbury or call it a “problem” seem to overlook the obvious: Congress had enacted a law in blatantly obvious contradiction to the Constitution of the United States.

And that the above-linked article makes zero mention of the law’s specifics is very telling.

The law overturned in Marbury expanded the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction. Whether they have proper (also called “competent”) jurisdiction is one thing every Court must consider before rendering a decision on a case, or even before allowing a case to proceed. And with the Supreme Court of the United States, the Constitution is quite specific:

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

Congress can only touch the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction. The Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction is set in stone. Amending the Constitution is the only way that can be modified. This also means Congress cannot grant original jurisdiction to a Federal District Court where the Constitution gives that jurisdiction to the Supreme Court – e.g. cases involving disputes between States.

In the case of William Marbury, the Supreme Court of the United States, under the Constitution of the United States, did not have competent jurisdiction and could not provide Marbury relief. That was Marshall’s ruling. It upheld two fundamental rules of the Constitution: Congress cannot make any Acts except where they are granted power to do so, and the Federal judiciary cannot enforce any Acts that are contrary to the Constitution.

And quietly, it also established a third principle applicable to just the Federal judiciary: a Federal Court cannot hear a case and grant relief except where the Constitution and Federal statute grant it jurisdiction, with the Constitution prevailing where the two conflict.

John Marshall did not create this power with Marbury, as many have asserted over the years. And still do today. He merely asserted it.

To assert that Marbury should be reversed or in any way limited is to assert that Congress should, in short, be able to do whatever it wants. And anyone pointing toward Marbury as any kind of problem with the Federal judiciary seems to want just that.

10Gb network upgrade

MikroTik CSS610

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment
Build Log:

Note: MikroTik recently introduced the CSS610-8P-2S+-IN, which has Power-Over-Ethernet (POE). This review is about the CSS610-8G-2S+-IN, which does not have POE.

About two years ago, I bought and put into service a MikroTik CRS317 10GbE router/switch. At the time I also bought several SFP modules to consolidate several Gigabit connections, since the switch supports that and I was consolidating only a few.

In that review, I wrote that consolidating Gigabit connections in that fashion is really only cost-effective if you’re consolidating a few. The cost of the modules would fast overtake the cost of a Gigabit switch beyond a handful. It’s similar to having Power-Over-Ethernet (PoE) injectors versus a switch. Though I’d argue needing more than one (1) PoE injector necessitates a switch simply due to cabling.

And it was installing PoE security cameras that necessitated a more divided setup to my home network infrastructure. I have an injector, allowing me to test cameras when I acquire them. But I bought a PoE switch before buying the second camera. Review on that might be coming later, though there isn’t much to really say on it.

A Gigabit switch with one or more 10GbE uplinks is the more ideal setup for consolidating Gigabit connections into a 10GbE backbone. This avoids taking up space on a 10GbE switch. And the uplink allows those Gigabit connections to talk to the rest of the network at full bandwidth.

Which brings me to this:

The MikroTik CSS610 is an 8-port Gigabit switch with two 10GbE SFP+ cages. This allowed me to consolidate all of my Gigabit connections without needing to buy a bunch more SFP modules. And move the existing Gigabit connections I had going to the 10GbE switch, reducing that switch’s power consumption and freeing up the SFP modules for later use, or just sell off.

It’s small. 200 x 167 x 46 mm, or 7-7/8″ wide, a little over 6-1/2″ deep, and slightly over 1U tall. I have mine sitting on a rack shelf next to the PoE switch, and two of these can easily fit on a rack shelf next to each other.

It’s passively cooled as well, having no fans inside, meaning it’s silent due to its very low power consumption. Perfect if it’s going to be sitting on a desktop instead of tucked away into a rack cabinet or networking closet.

And it just works. I didn’t bother doing any setup or configuration. I just pulled it out of the box, plugged it in to a 12V power source, and connected it to my 10GbE switch. It is a managed switch, using MikroTik’s SwOS, but I’m not using any of the managed features, and don’t have a need for them – though it’d probably at least be a good idea to update it to the latest firmware. I’ve had it since November 2020, and so far it’s just worked.

MSRP is just 99 USD, though I paid 78 USD plus shipping through EuroDK. Amazon lists it for about 115 USD as of this writing, which is about overall what I paid to ship it from EuroDK.

Why two SFP+ ports? There are several uses for it. One is chaining together several of these with a 10Gb trunk without resorting to a 10GbE switch while still not limiting bandwidth between them. Alternatively you could have one or two servers with 10GbE NICs connected to this. Or some combination thereto. It all depends on how you design your network layout to minimize contention.

Now what if you have more than 8 Gigabit connections? A couple options are available.

Unless you have more than 16 Gigabit connections, I’d say to just buy two CSS610 switches and connect both into your 10GbE switch. Which is what I’ll do if I need more Gigabit ports.

If you need to consolidate more than that, look at the MikroTik CSS326. (Amazon, EuroDK) The complication there is you may need to bond the 10GbE ports to combine their bandwidth if you expect traffic to that switch to ever exceed 10Gb.

Otherwise if you’re in the market for a switch that consolidates Gigabit connections to a 10GbE switch, I don’t think there is a better choice out there when it comes to price, even if you don’t use any of the management features. So check it out and see if it’ll fit your needs.

Server projects

Quasi-diskless Linux installation with iSCSI and no PXE

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

So let me set the scene.

On my rack I have Nasira, which is a FreeNAS server with about 30TB effective storage. It’s connected to a 10GbE connection, built on an AMD FX-8350 and 32GB ECC RAM.

I also have a few loose machines. One is a GPU compute box for BOINC, sporting three NVIDIA graphics cards. Another is another GPU compute box sporting two AMD graphics cards for Folding@Home. And the thought came to mind that I didn’t want to put an SSD in either. But I don’t have any spare SSDs at the moment and didn’t feel like buying any.

But I do have a few spare USB drives lying around. So I wondered if I could get a quasi-diskless server up and running without setting up a PXE server, with all the time and complication that comes with that.

And since you’re reading this, you can pretty readily assume that the answer is… Yes, right? Well, read on and find out.

iSCSI

Briefly, I’ll discuss iSCSI here. It’s basically remote storage across a network similar to a file share. The exception is where a NAS is visible to your computer as a filesystem, an iSCSI share is treated as if it’s a physical drive. Just through a network connection instead of a SATA port or USB plug.

It has numerous advantages to a regular network file share, including being usable as direct storage for installing an operating system.

Since setting up an iSCSI share varies based on the NAS software, I won’t go any further here. All I’ll say is to make sure to set up your iSCSI share so it points to a file instead of one of the physical drives attached to the NAS.

Making it work

So what’s the catch? Why the USB drive? Well something needs to hold the /boot partition and the bootloader. (And /boot/efi if you’re setting up using UEFI.) I used a 16GB USB drive, but I see no reason why this can’t work with smaller capacity drives, likely even as small as 1GB if not smaller.

But is there a catch? Well there is one big one: the Linux distro you select must be able to link to an iSCSI target during installation. (Unfortunately that means Ubuntu and Debian are both out.) How to set that up varies based on distribution. I’ve done this only with Fedora and CentOS, so I can only speak directly to those and will use only those for demonstration herein. (Note: With CentOS, make sure to enable the network connection before you try to select an iSCSI target or it’ll say your login credentials are bad.)

(Note: In the screenshots below, I’m using VirtualBox for demonstration, so where you see “VBOX HARDDISK”, that’s the USB drive.)

The main thing here is you cannot use any “automatic” partitioning. You instead need to use a custom partition layout. The /boot mount (and /boot/efi, if applicable) needs to reside on the USB drive. Everything else (swap and / at minimum) resides on the iSCSI target.

Note as well that, at least with CentOS (I don’t recall seeing this with Fedora), when you set your /boot mount (and /boot/efi, if applicable), it may try to assign that to both the iSCSI target and USB drive. So if you see “and 1 other” under “Device(s)”, click Modify and click just the USB drive, then Select to save it.

And the USB drive needs to be set as the boot device. Obviously.

Conclusions

So if you want to set up servers to boot from iSCSI, this is a way to do it without setting up PXE and all the complications that come with it. Just enable iSCSI in your NAS, set up the targets as you need for each server, install Linux as described above, and you’re golden.

Sure it’s not a true disk-less setup, but it’s enough for my needs. It’s quick to setup. And a lot easier to setup as well compared to creating a PXE server and getting that working. (Plus that server becomes an additional point of failure in your network along with another target for ongoing maintenance.) And if you don’t have spare hardware you can use to make a PXE server, it’ll likely be cheaper to just buy a few USB drives if you don’t already have a few lying around.

It’d be great if I could just enable iSCSI in the UEFI for each server, but that’s probably not coming to consumer motherboards any time soon, if ever.