I’ve done previous analyses on the Brady scoring for various gun laws and how they relate to suicide rates in various States. To briefly recap previous articles, stronger gun laws overall don’t make much of a difference in whether a State has a lower suicide rate.
Now I’m going to take a look at violent crime and gun laws. Since a significant portion of vioelnt crime is committed with a firearm, having stronger gun laws should translate into lower violent crime rates. Or that is the assertion.
For the violent crime rates, I’m using the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2016, specifically Table 3. Since the Brady Campaign never scored Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, those are excluded from this analysis. The Brady score is along the X-axis, violent crime rate per 100,000 along the Y-axis. I used the raw scoring, not the “curve” scoring, to avoid any bias.
That looks pretty well all over the place.
And the regression score is -0.0184. Virtually no measurable correlation. Gun laws, or at least how the Brady Campaign has scored them, largely do not make a difference in the violent crime rates for the State.
But that isn’t the end of this analysis. The FBI Uniform Crime Report separates out the violent crime rates for metropolitan areas, cities outside the immediate metropolitan area, and non-metropolitan counties. Let’s start with the Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The one outlier in the upper left is Alaska. And this again looks all over the place. Virtually no correlation as well with a regression score of -0.0304. Take out Alaska and it’s super high crime rate, and the regression falls to -0.0153. In both cases, it’s clear that gun laws don’t make a difference with regard to violent crime in metropolitan areas.
Next are Cities Outside Metropolitan Areas. Delaware, New Jersey, Hawaii, and Rhode Island from this analysis due to non-reporting of necessary data.
And in this chart, the outlier all the way at the upper left is Arizona. And that really skews the regression, putting it at -0.0356. Still low enough to say confidently there is no correlation here to be had, though just the look if the chart shows this. Remove the outlier and it becomes -0.0277.
Last is Non-metropolitan Counties. Delaware, Rhode Island, and New Jersey are again excluded due to non-reporting. Non-metropolitan counties are going to include small towns and largely rural areas. Two ready examples are Clarke County, Iowa, and Nemaha County, Nebraska, two counties in which I’ve previously resided.
And again, no obvious correlation from the graph. And no significant outliers this time. Regression score is -0.0334. The strongest of the regressions when accounting for outliers in the previous categories, but still so small that we can basically say there is no correlation.
So the state of a State’s gun laws is not a predictor in whether a State has a low or high violent crime rate. The data do not support the claim that stronger gun laws will result in lower violent crime rates.
I think we’ve all heard the claim before that having a 24 or 48-hour waiting period on acquiring a pistol can curtail suicide. This is based on the idea that most suicides are incidents of passion. Basically a person who is prevented from all-but-immediately acquiring a firearm may have a change of heart.
To this end you’ve probably heard statements of how a firearm in the home is more likely to be used against its owner – either homicide or suicide – and so we need “stronger laws” or “commonsense gun laws” to prevent that.
Now I’ve already shown that States with what are considered “stronger” gun laws do not overall have lower suicide rates. In the wake of that, however, I’ve been looking at individual policies and the effect they have on suicide rates to see if we can tease out what policies might make a difference.
This time, I’m looking at waiting periods.
The Brady Campaign in 2013 released a State scorecard in which they scored a State’s waiting period laws as one of three scores:
6 – Require waiting period of 3 days or more for all firearms
3 – Require waiting period of 1 or 2 days, or only for certain firearms
0 – No waiting periods
The difficulty here lies in the number of States with waiting periods at all. Brady scored just three (3) States at 6 and seven (7) States at 3. Meaning 40 States do not have any kind of waiting period. In my opinion, for the claim to have merit, two things must be true:
only a handful of States without waiting periods have suicide rates similar to States with a waiting period (i.e. they’re outliers)
the overwhelming majority of States without a waiting period have suicide rates higher than States with a waiting period
On States without a waiting period, the median and average being about equal shows a very even distribution of suicide rates across the board – a range of 8.1 to 25.9. And 18 of the 40 States without a waiting period, nearly half of them, have suicide rates lower than the national average.
The States with a waiting period do show a tendency for a lower suicide rate, but a tendency is really all it is.
The fact that there is significant overlap between the States with a waiting period versus States without one shows there is not really any way to know whether having a waiting period actually makes a difference. Would instituting a waiting period help those States with suicide rates higher than the national average? That’s certainly possible.
But as there are just as many States without waiting periods with lower-than-average suicide rates as States with waiting periods, that alone makes it difficult to tease out whether waiting periods actually make any difference.
Do stronger background checks reduce the incidence of suicide?
This hypothesis is based on the idea that suicide is largely a incident of passion, and someone who is feeling suicidal that is delayed by a firearm background check or other induced waiting period may be far less likely to actually follow through – in other words, not find another method.
To analyze this claim, I’m using the scoring by the Brady Campaign’s state scorecard for 2013 to determine the States with strong background check laws, to compare against States without them and the suicide rates thereof. Brady scored States using one of only four values in their scorecard: 0, 3, 6, and 11. The majority of States are scored at 0. Three States are scored at 3, four are scored at 6, and six States are scored at 11.
11 – Requires background check for all unlicensed gun sales (“universal” background checks
6 – Requires background checks for unlicensed firearms sales for select firearms only, or only at gun shows
3 – Requires a permit to purchase a firearm that is valid for 30 days or less
And 0 means not meeting any of these criteria. For example if a State has a permit requirement for purchase, but the permit is valid for longer than 30 days, they will score a 0. But if they do not have a permit requirement for purchase but do require “universal” background checks, they may score an 11.
Now for the numbers. The suicide rate numbers come from the National Center for Health Statistics for the year 2016. The suicide rates represent overall suicide rates, not just suicide by firearm.
5 of the 6 States scored with an 11 do have low overall suicide rates. Colorado is the outlier, having also been scored an 11, but having a suicide rate of 20.5 in 2016.
But the suicide rates for States that scored an 11 are not significantly lower than States scored at 3. So “universal” backround checks (11) don’t make any more difference than merely having a permit requirement for purchase (3).
This is backed up by the R² value: -0.1805. Weak, but not so insignificant as to be easily ignored.
And that regression value shows a stronger correlation when you take out the outliers. Two States in particular: Colorado (11) and New Jersey (0). New Jersey had a suicide rate 5 percentage points lower than the next nearest State scored at 0, and Colorado had a suicide rate 9 percentage points higher than the next nearest State scored at 11.
That brings the correlation to -0.31. Still considered a weak correlation, but again not insignificant. The averages support the hypothesis as well. Average suicide rates to scoring:
Scored at 0: 17.05 [7.2 to 25.9] (includes NJ)
Scored at 3: 11.4 [8.8 to 13.3]
Scored at 6: 13.15 [9.4 to 17.8]
Scored at 11, with CO: 11.98 [8.1 to 20.5]
Scored at 11, without CO: 10.28 [8.1 to 11.5]
I included the average of States scored at 11 without Colorado to show how much of an outlier that State is, and the influence it has over that average. Removing New Jersey does not raise the average all that much due to the number of States scored at 0.
So the data do support the hypothesis that stronger background check laws do correlate with lower suicide rates, though the correlation is not strong. And while “universal” background checks do provide for the lowest overall suicide rates, they are not significantly lower than merely requiring a purchase permit.
This also doesn’t tell the whole story. For one, look at the number of States that Brady scored at 0 merely for not meeting the criteria to be scored higher. What kind of background check laws do they have in excess of the Federal minimum requirement for an NICS check, and what effect have those laws had on suicide rates?
And that States scored at 6 have an overall higher average than States scored at 3 and 11 shows there is something more going on that cannot be teased out from this data. The fact that Colorado and New Jersey are outliers in their respective scorings, with New Jersey having the lowest overall suicide rate, also shows this.
This result actually caught me a little off guard, given my previous analysis of Brady’s overall States scoring and overall suicide rates. That analysis showed almost no correlation between suicide rates and gun laws overall. Looking at the specific hypothesis of background checks and suicide rates, we find that, while the correlation is weak, it is not insignificant.
This was a rather frustrating development. I have two computers dedicated to mining Ethereum, and I also mine it on Mira. All three machines had Windows 10 and were using Claymore’s mining software v10.0. Recently, however, I discovered that Windows Defender had “found” the mining software to be infected with a Trojan. Redownloading it didn’t change that.
So if Windows isn’t going to play nice, I don’t have to either.
Overclocking was the only reason they were on Windows 10. I was under the presumption it’s easier to overclock on Windows. And for NVIDIA cards, it is. Did you know overclocking an AMD card on Linux requires modifying just one or two files?
So upon learning that, I went to the RX 580 machine first, cleaning Windows 10 off and installing Fedora 27 Server using the net install. Minimal installation with Standard add-ons. Same thing I always do when setting up a Linux box. Then I downloaded and installed the latest AMDGPU driver for Linux (version for RHEL 7.4) and installed it with these options: “–opencl=legacy –headless”.
Then came the overclock. This is where things get a little tricky, as the overclock isn’t a specific value, but a percentage offset. I knew I could overclock the memory to 2050MHz without a problem, but typically kept it at 2000 MHz. Base frequency is 1750MHz – it’s a 4GB card, not an 8GB card. A 15% memory overclock puts it at 2012.5MHz. This alone gave me the >25MH/s I could get on Windows.
Then I set up the fan to always run at 60% to keep the core temp under 70°C.
Now for the equivalent of “apply overclock at startup”. I created a script with the necessary commands to apply it, then set it to be run at reboot into the crontab for root.
Again this applies a 15% overclock to the memory – not worrying about core speed (pp_sclk_od file). And the “160” value for the fan speed is about 60% between 0 and 255, keeping the core temperature down near 60°C. Look at the pwm1_min (should be 0) and pwm1_max files to see the range of allowable values for your card, then set pwm1 to a value within that range. Just keep bumping up the value until you hit the desired percentage.
If only overclocking NVIDIA cards on Linux was just as easy. Instead they only allow it if you’re running a desktop system, not a headless server. I migrated the GTX 1060 box over to Fedora 27 Server as well, but left that running at stock speeds with no overclocking enabled. Pretty sure the BIOS on the faster card got modded, hence why its “stock” speed is higher despite them being the exact same model.
But, hang on a sec, how are those cards running at under 60°C and maintaining that hashrate? I dropped the power limit on both cards down to 65W. Neither card was hitting 100W according to nvidia-smi, combined wattage was about 180W, so nowhere near their peak power draw. But dropping the power limit did allow the card to drop in temperature, down by over 15°C on each card, while drawing a combined short of 130W. Your mileage may vary.
Basically just steadily reduce the power limit until you start noticing a dip in in the reported hashrate for the card, taking it as low as possible to drop the temperatures while maintaining performance.
nvidia-smi -i [device_index] -pl [power_limit]
where [device_index] is is the device (0 to …) and [power_limit] is the value to try. Again, I was able to take the GTX 1060s down to 65W, and the temperatures dropped with it. So it’s a simple way to control heat and power on the cards.
No more mining…
But I also decided to move away from mining, now that the time to payout on the pool is getting longer and longer, and I’m getting so few shares anymore as to not really make it all that worthwhile. It’s been a good run over the last few months. But time to put all this processing power to better use.
Imagine if all the GPU power that currently goes to mining, or even just a significant percentage of it, went toward distributed computing projects like Folding@Home, how much good that could do in the world.
Shane Killian showed in an online video an evaluation of a correlation of gun laws to gun homicide rates, using the Brady Campaign’s scoring of gun laws. He found there is virtually no correlation between gun laws and gun homicides:
But from what I’ve seen, he didn’t do a similar evaluation on gun laws and suicide. I’m here to fill in that gap. And if he actually did do one, this is merely a check on his work.
The hypothesis being tested is quite simple: stronger gun laws correlate with lower suicide rates. Gun control proponents argue that stronger gun laws, thereby making it more difficult to obtain a firearm, will mean a reduction in suicide rates. Basically rejecting the idea that someone who is suicidal will seek out another method if their first method of choice is a firearm and they cannot get one.
So using Brady’s scoring of State gun laws against suicide rates, how do the numbers stack up?
The scatter plot places the Brady score along the X-axis, suicide rate along the Y-axis. Looking at the concentration of plots close to the 0 line, there are a lot of States with what the Brady Campaign considers to be “weak” gun laws with suicide rates across the spectrum.
So the plot alone shows no noticeable correlation. And the R² regression value confirms this: -0.0522 (Excel for some reason is not showing the correlation is actually negative). That’s very, very weak. I re-ran the regression as well with suicide rates for 2014, since the suicide rates were lower and it’s the year immediately following Brady’s scoring, and the correlation was also very, very weak: -0.0328.
For those not familiar, a correlation with an absolute value of 1 is a perfect correlation. Anything over 0.7 is considered a strong correlation, while anything under 0.3 is generally considered a weak correlation. Meaning a correlation of less than 0.1 is considered very weak.
To even begin to imply causation, you need a strong correlation. Meaning this correlation cannot even be used to imply that stronger gun laws mean lower suicide rates, yet that is the ready assertion.
Stronger gun laws, as scored by the Brady Campaign, do not mean fewer suicides. The correlation heavily implies what many have said about using gun control to lower suicide rates: those who want to die will find another way.
Stricter gun laws may reduce the rate of suicide by firearm, but they do not, in general, reduce the overall incidence of suicide.
The simplest solutions will often present themselves, provided you’re willing to open your mind to them.
If anything would be the theme to the transition of Absinthe to Amethyst, that would have to be it. Building the loop for Amethyst was initially challenging, simply because I kept thinking, anticipating the overall layout would be much more complicated. But the less I thought about it, the simpler the solution became.
Let’s start with Absinthe and the system specifications:
System specifications:
CPU: Intel i7-5820k
RAM: 16GB DDR4-2800
Mainboard: ASUS X99-A/USB3.1
Graphics: EVGA GTX 1080 SC
SSD: Samsung 950 PRO NVME
Power: Corsair RM1000
Chassis: Corsair 750D
Water cooling specifications:
Radiators:
Top: AlphaCool XT45 360mm
Bottom: AlphaCool ST30 240mm
Front: AlphaCool XT45 240mm
Radiator fans:
Top: Nanoxia Deep Silence 120mm 1300 RPM
Bottom: Bitfenix Spectre Pro 120mm
Front: Nanoxia Deep Silence 140mm
Pump: AlphaCool D5 with HF D5 acrylic mod top
Reservoir: Bitspower 100mm with Z-Cap I and II clear
CPU block: Watercool Heatkiller IV
GPU block: Aquacomputer kryographics with clear window
Tubing: 3/8″x1/2″ PETG
Coolant: Mayhem’s X1 Clear
* * * * *
Final specifications
None of the main system specifications changed. Only the specifications for the water cooling loop.
Radiators:
Top: AlphaCool XT45 360mm
Bottom: AlphaCool ST30 240mm
Radiator fans:
Top 360mm: Cougar CF-D12HB-W
Bottom 240mm: Bitfenix Spectre Pro 120mm
Pump: AlphaCool D5 with HF D5 acrylic mod top
Reservoir: Bitspower 200mm with Z-Cap I and II clear
CPU block: Watercool Heatkiller IV
GPU block: Aquacomputer kryographics with clear window
Tubing: 3/8″x1/2″ and 1/2″x5/8″ PETG
Coolant: PrimoChill Liquid Utopia
Specifically there are now only two radiators where there were three, and the fans on the top radiator have also changed.
* * * * *
New parts
So no system parts upgrades this time around. There is no new generation to the GTX 10xx series, as of when I write this, and there’s no need to upgrade her to the GTX 1080Ti (and desire given current pricing). And I’m not planning on a platform upgrade for the next several years.
I removed the front 240mm radiator to make room for hard drive bays. My wife has this uncanny ability to fill up a 500GB solid-state drive, so a bank of four (4) 1TB HDDs should provide some storage longevity.
This won’t affect temperatures to any significant degree. I probably could’ve taken her system down to just the 360mm radiator and been mostly fine. It’ll also make for a simpler loop that will be easier to fill and drain.
And while I love the Nanoxia fans for being very quiet, they’re green. This worked well for Absinthe. Not so much for Amethyst. It was not easy finding similarly quiet fans that would not clash with the system theme – Noctua was NOT an option here.
I turned to the Cougar CFD series, specifically the white LED model. These are comparatively rated to the CF-V12H fans I use in Mira (ratings are for 12V operation):
Air flow: 64 cfm (109.2 cmh) at 1200RPM
Static pressure: 1.74 mmH2O static pressure
Noise pressure: 16.6dB/A noise pressure
Three of these went to the top radiator, and a 140mm version is the rear exhaust fan. These provide white lighting in the upper area of the mainboard. The rest of the fans are not being changed, including leaving the front Nanoxia fans since those… aren’t all that important to the internal look of the system.
* * * * *
New color, new coolant
In the lead-up article to this, I mentioned wanting to use purple coolant, similar to what I saw in a system called Chimaera. Primarily to take advantage of the clear tubing and clear-top water blocks, clear reservoir, clear pump housing… I think you get the drift.
I also wanted to flood the system with bright white light. For that I bought a spool of pure-white LEDs, but never actually did anything with them. My wife, however, wanted to flood the system with purple light, similar to how Absinthe was flooded with green light.
Since I mentioned the white LED fans above, you can kind of guess how that turned out. No I didn’t win. Instead we compromised.
I still wanted the purple coolant, but I managed to bring my wife on-board, and get her off the idea of using purple light, by recommending UV coolant. Initially looking to the PrimoChill Vue UV Violet.
Except unbeknownst at the time I bought it – and I don’t think this provision was added until after I bought it – you can’t run the Vue coolant in a system for more than 8 hours at a time or it will break down in a matter of weeks. And the sediment additive that gives the coolant its pronounced effect will start clogging blocks and such.
But even at 8 hours per day, the coolant should be flushed and changed in 4 to 6 months.
So no thanks.
But having sold my wife on the UV Purple, I needed a new option. Initially I looked at UV Purple transparent coolants, for which there seemed to be only two options: Koolance (hopefully the color for the bulk option is more accurate) or PrimoChill. But to better control the final color – again trying for Siberian amethyst – I opted for clear coolant and dye.
And from what I could find, only one company sells a UV Purple dye: PrimoChill. Thankfully my local MicroCenter had it in stock so I was able to buy it locally. And for clear coolant, I opted for PrimoChill’s Liquid Utopia, which is a concentrated additive you mix with a gallon of distilled water. And it is also included with PrimoChill’s LRT Tubing retail packaging, which is where I got mine.
* * * * *
Bigger is better
Or at least longer is better. At least when you’re talking about reservoirs. (Try to keep your mind in the PG zone…) The previous reservoir was only a 100mm. Because of where it was initially placed when Absinthe was initially built:
And when moving that reservoir forward when rebuilding her loop for 3 radiators, I didn’t replace it with a longer tube. Instead keeping the short tube since it still allowed for a direct return from the CPU block. And going with a clear coolant, there really wasn’t a need to go with a longer reservoir tube.
But since we opted to swap for colored, UV-reactive coolant, I opted to go with a longer reservoir tube as well to show it off. Namely the 200mm Bitspower reservoir tube.
* * * * *
Showing off the graphics card
Colored coolant with a clear-top GPU block means wanting to show it off. But there aren’t many options for doing this in a chassis not already built for it. In the previous blog post, I showed one possible option:
This is the Cooler Master vertical graphics card holder. Unlike other options – such as this one from MNPCTech – it is intended to replace the expansion card slots in your chassis. And it works well if you’re using a chassis with more than the standard slots – such as the 750D – or have only one graphics card and no other expansion cards, which is likely most gaming system builders.
It’s intended for Cooler Master’s chassis as well, and using it in the 750D required… some modifications.
Metal sheers took care of those without much difficulty. I didn’t make it completely clean, but only clean enough.
The only complaint I have about the mount is actually with the riser cable that is included: it doesn’t clip onto the tail for 16x cards, allowing for some cable sag as you’ll see in later pictures. So if anyone from Cooler Master happens upon this article, please correct that.
* * * * *
Building the loop
Not having the front radiator simplified things in some ways. Same with the vertical GPU.
Let’s start with the lower radiator, to which the pump is also attached. I had some 5/8″ (16mm) OD tubing sitting around from when I was initially looking at using Nanoxia lighted fittings. And I also had a few EK 16mm fittings for some reason. So for the initial connection coming out of the pump and going to the bottom radiator, I opted for this.
This I felt looked a lot better than using the thinner 1/2″ OD tubing and bulkier PrimoChill Revolver fittings. The rest of the fitting assembly is…. interesting. As to get it lined up, I used a Swiftech 90° fitting, to an 8mm EK extension fitting, Swiftech dual-45° rotary fitting, and an AlphaCool 4-way fitting, with a 10mm Koolance male-to-male fitting connecting that to the radiator.
Sometimes you just need to improvise. And that wasn’t the only place. Despite having to acquire additional fittings, I’m glad I had a lot already on hand.
From the lower radiator, I needed to figure out how to get the flow running to the graphics card. Because of the jet plate, the inlet to the graphics card has to go through the specified port. So I initially tried this:
As you can see, that was complicated. The idea was to keep the coolant flow out of the way of the GPU block so you could see the entire face of it. But I quickly realized this wasn’t going to work. Again, it’s complicated, and all the 90° fittings make it restrictive as well. I needed a better solution.
This takes the coolant flow in front of the block, but also puts it directly in front of the jet plate, helping to partially obscure it. But it’s also a lot less restrictive, and a lot less complicated. What you can’t see well is the string of fittings needed to get to this. Several extension fittings coming up from the radiator, eventually to a 45° fitting, another 15mm extension, then finally to a 90° fitting to meet the tubing.
As the above picture shows, I initially planned to take the GPU outlet to the top radiator like in the previous loop, but instead opted to have it go to the CPU using this.
From there, getting to the top radiator was a matter of using a long extension fitting coming out of the CPU (easily could’ve used clear tubing, not sure why I didn’t), to a 90° fitting. The vertical piece meets with a pair of 90-degree fittings screwed into each other. Basically a 90° fitting on the radiator into which I have another 90° fitting, giving an offset that goes to about the middle of the radiator, which comes straight down to meet up with the tubing coming from the CPU.
Then with the longer reservoir tube, getting back to the reservoir was straightforward. Literally.
That’s a black Swiftech 15mm extension fitting to an EK black-nickel dual-45° fitting coming off the radiator. An EK 90° fitting on the top of the reservoir.
* * * * *
Cleaning and preparing the loop
Again back to PrimoChill – I swear they did NOT sponsor this build (though if any PrimoChill representative is reading this, I’m open to discussions). But for cleaning out the blocks and radiators, there were really two options: Mayhem’s Blitz, or PrimoChill’s System Reboot. Since I didn’t feel like dealing with harsh chemicals, I opted for the latter.
There are two ways to use it, depending on how concentrated you want to go: either add it into a 1-gallon jug of distilled water, or fill your loop with distilled water and add the entire bottle into your loop. If you’re trying to clean out from using dyed or pastel coolant, I’d highly recommend the latter. Either way, let the cleaner circulate for at least 24 hours and up to 48 hours. And if you’re cleaning out from using dyed or pastel coolant, let it run for the full 48 hours. You may also need to repeat.
I added to the gallon distilled water and let it run for close to 36 hours. Then I used the rest of the cleaner to rinse out what was in there, and then followed with distilled water.
After that, I pulled everything apart to rinse everything individually with distilled water before piecing it all back together to add the coolant and dye.
* * * * *
Lighting
Initially I intended to use Darkside UV LEDs for the lighting, but decided ultimately it was too overpowering. They’d probably work well with opaque coolant, but not transparent. Any UV reaction was overpowered by its bright violet light. Note: this was taken with my cell phone, not my DSLR, with not the greatest white-balance settings. But it clearly shows the reservoir and pump housing are violet, and there’s virtually no UV reaction from anything else, rather than the UV glow I was going for.
So I opted for cold cathodes, which do not have nearly the overpowering violet light the Darkside LEDs had, meaning they also aren’t nearly as bright. Instead it provides a gentle violet hue while allowing the UV effect to shine through. So much so that, with an 11″ cathode behind the reservoir and the white light above and near by, it looks like a chunk of glowing amethyst. Unfortunately it isn’t something I’m currently able to properly capture on camera, so I’ll have to play around with camera settings later to see if I can properly capture it.
But one thing’s for sure: the cold cathodes give the loop a nice glow without any overpowering violet color. And the white LEDs from the fans aren’t overpowering it either. Specifically the system has an 11″ cold cathode behind the reservoir, and two 4″ cold cathodes to shine on the pump housing and GPU block. Unfortunately the acrylic on the GPU block is preventing any UV glow from coming through.
* * * * *
Update 2018-02-26: In one of the earlier pictures you can see a bank of four hard drives off to the front of the chassis. And in the immediate above picture, you can see a pink line beneath the reservoir. The HDDs were connected to the mainboard using SATA cables with a UV-reactive coating, hence the glow, that did not have latches. They were the only cables I could immediately grab that I knew were SATA III.
Well tonight, that created an issue that was resolved when I disabled the SATA ports on the mainboard – primary storage is an NVMe SSD. So a quick trip to Micro Center and 16 USD later for SATA III cables with latching connectors, and that issue was resolved. As noted when the system came up quickly and the desktop loaded nearly instantly upon login.
So let that be a lesson: don’t use SATA cables that do not have latches on them. Especially when you’re using them to connect an HDD RAID array. The latches basically all but guarantee the connectors are seated, giving you a trouble-free, fast connection.
After the recent tragedy in Florida, one question I’ve seen raised numerous times can be boiled down to this: why did the FBI and local police not act on any of the tips they’d received about the shooter?
The former allows a police officer to temporarily detain someone, and they must have a specific, articulate, demonstrable reason.
A common example is fitting the description of a suspect. Also if the police see you come out of an area known to be a drug hot-spot, they may detain you to ask you why you were through the area, as they have reason to suspect you were there to buy or sell drugs.
Probable cause is a higher standard. Basically it means the officer has evidence that you have broken some law. A traffic stop is an example of an officer having probable cause. But that is probable cause only to detain you.
To search your person or vehicle, the officer needs to be able to articulate 1. what he/she expects to find, 2. why he/she expects to find it, and, most importantly, 3. what evidence that gives the officer reason to believe they will find such.
These are your basic liberties against police intrusion in a heartbeat. All of us have them. Including those who would later become mass shooters.
Given this, it should be quite obvious why the police never acted on any prior tips regarding the Florida high school shooter: they likely could not even establish reasonable suspicion.
Any action of the officer must be demonstrable to the Court for it to stand up. If an officer said to a detained person they matched the description of a suspect, the officer needs to be able to articulate which suspect they resemble.
Reasonable suspicion isn’t “I heard so-and-so talk about wanting to shoot up the school”. That actually isn’t specific enough. It might be enough that the police may decide to question the individual, but without anything more, they cannot detain the person and most certainly cannot arrest them.
Tips have to be actionable, and if a tip doesn’t provide enough information to establish reasonable suspicion, the police won’t act on it beyond maybe asking questions. And without anything more specific, and without any actual, demonstrable evidence the person in question is up to no good, the police cannot do anything more.
To do anything more would be to violate the rights of the person they are investigating, which will sink any chance of any evidence seeing the light of day in Court. Even if that person is actually planning a mass homicide incident like what occurred in Florida.
As you can probably tell, this hasn’t been a huge priority for me, given how many months it’s been since the last update. I haven’t given up on this project, though. Just had a lot of other things going on in the mean time while also figuring out what to do with this.
First, I’ve abandoned the IKEA SEKTION cabinet. And the loose rack rails. Part of the concern came with trying to make a frame with the loose rack rails to which the SEKTION cabinet would be attached. Loose rails are good for lightweight equipment cabinets: small network switches (unmanaged, not managed), patch panels, light audio equipment, etc. The latter point especially since the company that distributes the rails — Reliable Hardware Co. — sells other equipment and parts for audio producers, along with other small parts for making audio racks.
And while I was able to… mostly create a cabinet from these in the past, they’re not really suitable for my current goals. I don’t have the experience, space, and tools to make the frame I’d need.
Pre-built rack frame
So to eliminate that headache, I ordered a 15U open frame cabinet, 600mm (~24″) deep. What was delivered, not intentionally, was the adjustable-depth 15U cabinet — AR6X15-8001. Overall this means a cabinet a little larger than intended with a completely different structure than initially considered. Mostly.
Since previously I was planning to build a frame that would be enclosed inside an IKEA SEKTION kitchen cabinet. The difference here is I’m no longer building a frame for loose rack rails. This is, arguably, what I should’ve done from the outset.
Here’s the design of the open rack:
Here are the actual dimensions based on measurements:
Width: 20.125″ (20-1/8″ or 511mm)
Depth: 9.5″ (241mm) plus set depth adjustment for rack
Height: 31.5″ (800mm)
The holes on the lower supports are 16″ apart, 8″ each direction off center. They’re 3/4″ diameter and 1-3/8″ from the leading edge. Intended for bolting the frame into concrete or a subfloor.
On the uprights you’ll also notice there are several sets of holes, though the drawing is misleading in how many are actually there. There are a pair of 5/8″ holes at the top, and a pair at the bottom, each 7/8″ in from the edge. And two 9/32″ holes down the middle. Useful for combining several frames together or building it into a table.
I have the frame assembled and have been using it to hold several servers along with my 10GbE switch. BUT… it won’t hold slide rails! The M6 threaded screw holes are the proper EIA-310 spacing, but there isn’t enough spacing between the corner posts to fit a standard-width server with standard slide rails. It has 17.5″ of clearance instead of the EIA-310 standard 17.75″ (450mm).
To hold the NAS and another server while finding a better option, I needed to use a rear-mounting kit.
This one uses cage nuts. While that isn’t necessarily a guarantee that it’ll have the proper spacing between the corner posts, you can see quite easily that it’ll have plenty of room. Since the square holes for cage nuts have a standard sizing.
While listed as 15U usable height, the rack I received is actually 16U usable height, and the corner posts are 18U tall (31.5″ or 800mm). The top and bottom rack units are taken by cross brackets, which extend a little above and below the corners for a total height of about 32″ (813mm).
The top brackets extend about 1-3/8″ (35mm) from the uprights, so about 2.75″ (70mm) added to the depth at the top. The bottom brackets extend 4-7/8″ (124mm) out, so adding about 9.75″ (248mm) to the total depth. The frame is 21.25″ (540mm) wide. So for a 24″ depth, the frame will have a a 33.75″ x 21.25″ footprint (857mm x 540mm). This frame also keeps the two large-diameter holes in the bottom bracket for bolting into a floor.
Along the side of the corner posts are additional screw holes, one for each rack unit, similar to the mount holes on the loose rails I was initially going to use. This is useful if you plan to join multiple frames together. The corner posts are shy of 4″ deep.
So the question then is how to enclose it.
Enclosing the frame
Ging back to the forum post that inspired this, I’m going to use something as about a 2″ spacer, into which I’ll also be screwing down plywood to enclose the cabinet on the sides. The back will also be enclosed with ventilation out the top, similar to this:
except likely using PC case fans — either 80mm or 120mm — instead of the single 6″ fan in the video.
There aren’t great mounting holes for the front or back, so I’ll need to extend the side panels out far enough for a door on the front and the ventilation system on the back. That just leaves figuring out the bottom and top.
Top and bottom
The top isn’t going to be too difficult, since the cabinet will have a thick top to it to support whatever I decide to put on it: a computer or two, a monitor, but nothing too heavy. Maybe 100lbs at most that’ll be resting on the top supported by the metal frame. So about 1-1/2″ plywood (likely as face-glued 3/4″ ply with a ton of screws) should do the trick.
Same with the bottom, as references I’ve consulted said it should be able to hold the weight of a fully-loaded frame without a problem. Though to properly fit 1/2″ lag screws I’ve sourced locally, I may need to triple-layer the plywood sheets.
Overall dimension, currently, is looking to be about 36″x24″ footprint. The top and bottom will be attached directly to the frame.
So for now that’s the plan. Just a matter of getting into the hardware store and buying the plywood or laminated boards to make this happen. In the interim, I’ve got a few other projects going on, so who knows when I’ll be able to get there.
With social justice warriors in the United States and much of the rest of the English-speaking world continually labeling words and phrases as being racist and what have you, a backlash is inevitable. As I feel we are not far from the tipping point, the social justice bubble bursting.
And that backlash, I predict, will come in a way that will just blindside everyone. What’ll likely end up happening is all the fed up non-SJWs will start bringing racial slurs and other terms-deemed-racist, sexist, etc., back into common parlance. And not just common parlance a la pre-1960s with those words used and intended as racial, sexist, etc., slurs. No, no.
I mean into such common usage they are used as readily as “apple” or “water”, “bottle” or “window”. Not intended as racial or sexist slurs, not used as racial or sexist slurs, but used merely because the general populace will have just gotten sick of continually being told what words and phrases to stop using because someone, typically someone in the leftist media, has decided, arbitrarily, such words and phrases are racist, etc.
And I can already see the response to such a backlash. It’s the same thing already being seen with the left labeling everyone who is:
white as racist
male as misogynistic
heteronormative as homophobic
cisgender as transphobic
and so on. “Wow, look at all this bigotry!” they already say, and likely would say if such a backlash happened. And they would be revealing themselves, much as they are now, for the brainwashed automatons they’ve become.
In June 2016 I wrote an article describing a viable compromise regarding the “terrorist watch list” that would give Democrats what they want — allowing the list to be used to block, albeit temporarily, the ability for someone to purchase a firearm — while still upholding due process. With regard to illegal immigration and some recent stories that are generating buzz online, I think a similar compromise could be possible.
In common and statutory law is a concept known as “squatter’s rights”. The actual legal term is the doctrine of adverse possession. The doctrine allows someone to obtain valid title to real property by openly and notoriously occupying the property for a period of years. As in typically 10 years or more. In that period of time, the adverse possessor must act as a normal property owner. Quoting Wikipedia:
Although the elements of an adverse possession action are different in every jurisdiction, a person claiming adverse possession is usually required to prove non-permissive use of the property that is actual, open and notorious, exclusive, adverse, and continuous for the statutory period.
This doctrine derives from a statute of limitations on the ability for property owners to enforce title to the land and eject anyone adversely possessing it.
The doctrine can also apply to personal property, but the claims are a little more difficult to prove in cases where there is not a government-issued title to the property or other paperwork showing ownership. As an example, let’s say you loan an expensive power tool to a neighbor and then forget about it. The neighbor continues to use it as if they own it, for a significant period of time. And you try to reclaim it and the neighbor refuses, so you sue. The neighbor may be able to claim adverse possession, or at the least abandonment of property.
I hope you can see where I’m going with this.
The stories of illegal immigrants being deported after being in the country for significant periods of time leave me in a little bit of a bind. In one sense, I can readily see the inequity of the issue. At the same time, the rule of law must be upheld. And the law says that those who are not in the United States legally cannot remain once they are discovered and put through the necessary due process to prove their immigration status — yes, the Fifth Amendment still applies even to this.
So can a compromise be reached on this by extending a form of the adverse possession doctrine to immigration?
Similar requirements can be extended to this. They must have been in the United States for at least… 15 years, continuously, whether they entered completely under the nose of immigration officials, or overstayed a visa. For minors the limitation would be the latter of 10 years or reaching the age of majority — a minor brought illegally into the United States at age 15 would need to reach age 25 to claim immunity, while a 2 year-old would need to only reach age 18.
In that time, they must also have clean records (no felony or violent misdemeanor convictions), be established in the community, and the like. A conditional statute of limitations on immigration enforcement.
After that period of time, provided the other conditions are met, the person would be able to apply to the State Department for legal resident status, setting the stage for citizenship if they want it. And if immigration officials discover the person after that period of time has passed, it could be an affirmative defense to deportation.
However the burden of proof in both instances, whether coming forward voluntarily or being discovered by immigration officials, will be on the immigrant to demonstrate their continuous presence in the United States. With clear and convincing evidence.
Not everyone will be able to meet that burden. Likely most won’t. And that’s the point.
Some would probably label this “amnesty”. Except this isn’t calling for blanket immunity, and keeps the burden on the immigrant to prove all needed facts. Meaning they shouldn’t go into it unless they can prove everything necessary. So if they know they’ve been in the country for 20 years, but can only demonstrate 10 years of continuous residence, then they’d be risking deportation… making themselves known.
And since this would be implemented via statute, the rule of law is preserved.
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