OpenMediaVault Review and Preview

Years ago I built an OpenMediaVault network attached storage appliance from an Asrock J4125 celeron motherboard with 8gb of RAM. I loaded OMV version 5 on a 140gb Intel SSD, loaded up a few 3tb drives and installed Jellyfin as a container. It has run amazingly well and provided excellent service for my small family.

However, this year I decided I wanted a better way to manage things, so I purchased another Asrock J4125, loaded it up with 8gb of RAM and loaded Ubuntu 2204 server on a Kingston 120gb SSD, set up two 12tb HGST CMR drives in a mirror raid, then loaded both Cockpit and CasaOS as web interfaces for controlling the server. CasaOS is very nice, visually appealing in a “pointy clicky” way, and Cockpit is very powerful. However CasaOS is a Chinese product, and doesn’t recognize MDADM (multiple disk administration” at least how I remember it in my head) which is how the Linux kernel handles software RAID. So I looked for another option, and found out that OpenMediaVault is up to version 7.

Maybe I’m just being paranoid with the Chinese source for CasaOS, but since it doesn’t perfectly fit my needs right now I’m going back to OMV, and so I loaded OMV 7.1 up, installed OMVextras, and began spun up a Jellyfin container. I transferred my entire digital library from the 3 terabyte mirror raid (2.73tb after formatting) on the OMV5 box to the 12tb mirror raid on the OMV7 box. After watching over 1.1 terrabytes of data (with about a nother 500 gb to go) transfer across my network, I’m upgrading my network core to a 2.5gb switch. Yes I know that OpenMediaVault is not an American product, but I trust Europeans from NATO allies a lot more than I trust the Chinese (for what it’s worth, I found out about the origins of OMV when I sent a tip via paypal and the denomination was in Euros way back when I first installed OMV5). You don’t have to pay for OMV, but considering how polished OMV is now, I tossed another ten Euros in the tip jar, as it is really good work.

I also have another pair of 12 tb hard drives inbound (at 90 bucks a pop they are a great bargain in terms of cost per terrabyte). Once my upgrades arrive I will power off the OMV5 box, pull out the old 2, 3, and 4 TB drives, and install just the pair of 12 tb drives. I will then remove one 4 port SATA controller and 4drive hot swap bay for transfer to the OMV7 box, and then upgrade the OMV5 box to OMV7, giving it back its current IP address, and re-installing OMVextras, Jellyfin, etc. At least that’s “Plan A” at this time. Plan B is throwing all four 12 tb drives into a Raid 5 configuration for 36 tb (RAW) or 30tb (formatted) amount of network storage. Given that three years of storage push by my family is only at about 15% of the 12tb mirror raid, going to 30tb doesn’t seem necessary at this point, and having two identical systems (save for the cases they are in) makes having a “hot backup” really easy from a software point.

Things I’ve learned:
Since starting this journey, I’ve had two drive failures. Both Seagate. I only run Seagate (they were either cheap, or shucked external drives I had on hand) or HSGT now, but I’m not buying any more Seagate drives for NAS use. This isn’t enough data for a trend, but it’s enough for me as an individual. If an HSGT drive fails, I may change my mind but up until now none of them have.

A cheap quad core Celeron board is more than enough for a NAS with multiple containers running. Unfortunately the Asrock J4125 doesn’t come available much anymore, but it offers two on board SATA slots, and three useable PCIE slots. I even have the current OMV7 NAS running on a Pico PSU, rated for 160 watts max, that’s sipping power on a CPU with a 10W TDP max. I wouldn’t necessarily balk at building on a low end 6th gen or newer Core i3 since Intel has been working very hard to keep power draw at idle to an absolute minimum, and I find Intel CPUs are more stable coming out of low power to work in Linux distros than AMD processors seem to be (my experience only, yours may be different). If you have an old soulless corporate drone box with room to slap in two drives, that’s probably your best bet as far as money spent to performance gained.

Cheap network bandwidth is growing, and legacy SATA III may be starting to think about needing to be replaced, at least with software RAID. a Gigabit connection has a theoretical max throughput of 125 MB/s. The SATA III standard of 6 gigabit per second or 600 MB/s, should be six times that, however in reality the best I’ve been able to achieve, with only a gigabit ethernet switch between two computers, is in the 90mb/s range. This is due to overhead. With 2.5 Gigabit network adapters and switches becoming more common, transfer speeds over wire of up to 312.5 MB/s. When 10 Gigabit drops down to cheap enough that home users can easily upgrade their network to that standard, home builders will likely have to reach to SAS controllers and drives to make the network the bottleneck and not the storage device. At the time of writing the max theoretical bandwidth for WiFi 6 is 9.6gb/s which would saturate a SATA III connection. Or possibly future NAS boxes will need an appropriately sized NVME “cache drive” to handle client writes and then transfer to the slower SATA drives when able (this would have been a great use for that Intel Optane tech).

Portainer, Yacht, and Cockpit are definitely not as polished as CasaOS is for a novice user, but they are handy enough that a novice user with the patience to watch a few Youtube videos can get around. At some point I’ll have to document all the usernames and passwords so that should I get his by a bus my wife or sons can take over server management duties.

Exploring the “There’s no such thing as Palestinians” line of thought.

Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, spoke these words in 1969: “There was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist.”

By this logic, there are no Canadians. You can change Golda Meir’s to focus on Canada and they easily become: “Was there ever a Canadian people before a Canadian state? It was either British or French before the war of conquest. It was not as though there was a Canada where Canadians considered themselves Canadians before it was split off from the British Empire. They did not exist.”

This rhetoric tool exposes the logical flaw, there were in fact the people who became “Canadians” in Canada before there was a Canada. And there were “Palestinians” in Palestine, otherwise who are the Israeli’s throwing out when Golda Meir referred to “and when we came and threw them out and took their country from them.”?

By this exact same logic, there are no Americans. There was no historic America, ever. There was no unified people with the American language. There is no ancient origin of an American state. Golda Meir’s assertion that “there are no Palestinians” utterly fails to explain why there are Canadians and Americans today.

By this same logic, there are no trans people. After all, everyone is born either a boy or a girl, right? There are no gun owners. No one is born owning a firearm, right? This rhetorical “argument ad absurdum” is pointing out that identities can, and do change.

It seems perfectly reasonable to say that before Americans were American they were British, Dutch, Spanish, or German, and that before Canadians were Canadians they were British or French. So why is it not equally valid that a Palestinian was once a Jordanian, or Syrian in the same way that Canadians were once French or Americans were once British.

Well, it’s the language of political power. If you can convince the world that the person who was born on the land that their family has worked going back hundreds and hundreds of years doesn’t deserve to be on that land, because the political entity that person identifies with didn’t exist millennia ago, well then it must be perfectly all right to take their land. Or as Golda Meir put it, “push them off and take their land.”

If the Palestinians are in fact “Jordanians” then Israel is obligated to turn over the West Bank to Jordan, as per the UN Charter of 1945 ““All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” However Jordan legally transferred their claim to the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority in 1988, despite some voices advocating for Jordan to re-annex the West Bank.

In 1970 Golda Meir refined her position somewhat: “I don’t say there are no Palestinians, but I say there is no such thing as a distinct Palestinian people.” By this logic, there are no Texans or New Yorkers, as every American is just an American, right? Every Quebecois is the same as a Newfoundlander or British Columbian.

Of course the breakup of “India” into Pakistan, and then the break up of Pakistan into Bengladesh, should illustrate that just because there were no Pakistanis or Bengladeshis, doesn’t mean that there never will be.

This is definitely a bit more nuanced, but her position further refined to this in 1972: “I said there never was a Palestinian nation”

And with that, we reach a point of truth and agreement. There was Syria, and there was Jordan. Before that there was the Ottoman Turkish Empire. There was the Roman empire. Nations rise and fall. But there never was a Slovenia, and now there is. There never was a North Macedonia, and now there is.

Today there may not be a Palestinian State, the two state solution peace process has been deliberately sabotaged by extremists of both Muslim and Jewish faiths. But there could be. Because at one point, there were no Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, Slovenians, or even Israelis. That’s right, there is no “ancient Israel” there was however, a Judea.

The Israeli’s cannot force a “one state solution” and annex the West Bank and Gaza, as the millions of Palestinian Arabs would then outnumber the Jewish citizens of Israel. Currently Israel enjoys a significant Arab Muslim minority, but would rather quickly cease to be a Jewish state if Muslims gained the political majority, hence the reason why Israel cannot simply annex the West Bank as the people come with it. Unless Israel decides to set up an “apartheid” system where Arab Muslims can live in Israel, but not vote in Israel, in that case annexation and a “one state solution” become viable.

Jordan has drawn their border firmly at the Jordan river. The thought of making 3 million new Jordanians who don’t have a common heritage with the “East Bankers” makes Jordan shudder, as this is not like the Berlin Wall falling and re-unifying East and West Germany. As easy as it is for a comfortable westerner like myself to say, “Well, they were Jordanians, let them be Jordanians again” that’s unfortunately not the reality for the West Bank Arabs.

But lets finally agree with Golda Meir, there are Palestinians, and despite not having a nation state called Palestine, that isn’t justification to “throw them off their land” as she put it. However that is exactly the policy of the Netanyahu administration, as one of the first acts of office was to immediately “legalize” 10% of the “illegal settlements” in the West Bank.

So this leaves us where we are today. If the Palestinian Arabs do nothing, illegal Israeli settlers push them off their land. If they fight back, the Israeli Defense Force protects the settlers, and the Israeli government “legalizes” the settlement. This leaves the Palestinians with two choices, cry to God and the international community to intercede, and so far neither God nor the international community have been able to impact Israeli policy, or fight back as they can. Quite simply, the world would be quite happy if, “there were no such thing as a Palestinian.”

Except, there are. And here we are. A “Two State Solution” may never come to be, as that would limit Israel’s ability to illegally occupy, then “legalize” the action after the fact. And most Palestinian Arabs will never accept a nation that has a requirement to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Ethernet over Powerline, sometimes a better option than mesh

My wife and I live in our “for right now house” rather than in a “forever home.” It’s a quirky design, but has enough room for our two teenage boys and is convenient for my commute to and from work. But it was not designed with computer networking in mind, thick brick walls and two different eras of additions make some hard to remedy “dead spots” in WiFi coverage.

My first attempt to fix the problem was with a TP-Link “One Mesh” using mesh network extenders. This was “better” but not “great.” I’ve been seriously contemplating cutting holes in the wall and running Cat5E to run an ethernet drop to every room, and going straight wired but I held off because I hate crawling around in attic crawl spaces if I can avoid it, and while my supply of Cat5e cabling is sufficient to wire up my whole house, I hate cutting into dry wall and running fish lines.

I’ve been putting off any network changes or upgrades, but recently my kids heavily screened network went to really bad bandwidth for them, and my wife re-arranged her crafting area and put a bunch of metal shelving units between her computer and the nearest mesh point….So I got complaints from everyone.

So I did what professionals do, I talked about it with a guy at work, and he mentioned that he solved his problem using Ethernet over Powerline adapters, and setting up access points to them. I figured, “what the heck, I’ll get some refurbed off of Amazon and give it a shot.” So I did, with a sixty dollar pair of TP-Link AV2000 standard adapters, the more expensive kind that let you still use the outlet plug.

Looking through the literature these things work best if they are on the same circuit leg, but others have gotten useable bandwidth even on separate circuits that are only connected at the breaker box. I figured if the two outlets nearest where I wanted to make a logical connection didn’t work, I’d try a different configuration, but I got lucky.

How does it work? Well you plug the units into the outlets, and then press the “synch” button and wait for the two units to establish communications with each other. Then plug your wireless access point (I used a TP-Link Archer 55 in access point mode) into the remote side adapter, and your main router into the other adapter. Everything syncs up and boom, full WiFi access point right where you need it to eliminate the dead spot and slow downs.

What I’ve learned in this project.

1. Ethernet over Powerline is a useful technology. It isn’t for every situation, but makes good sense for older houses with thicker walls.
2. The Ethernet over Powerline isn’t exactly a strict industry standard. Like the pirate code it’s “more like guidelines” so if you want more than a point to point connection, make sure you buy all of the same brand and model.
3. There is a security risk here that no one talks about. I’ve not seen any encryption standards applied to the AVXXXX series of standards, so I assume the point to multipoint ethernet over powerline is transmitted in the clear. And unless you have some sort of electrical waveform conditioner on your input from the grid, you are sending all of that information back out to your connection to the grid, where it will likely stop at the first transformer. This is a low risk factor for nearly everyone, but it is a possible entry point into your network. I know this and accepted the risk since I can see the transformer from my bathroom, and my WiFi signals probably travel beyond the transformer anyway.
4. Distance is still a factor. If you have power running to an outbuilding this technology can get network access pushed there, but bandwidth will suffer.

Please note that my use of TP-Link hardware here isn’t an endorsement of them as a brand. I’ve used all sorts of gear over the years, but since TP-Link was the cheapest entry into mesh wifi technology that is what I purchased last (I do not recommend going mesh the way I did), and it was a coincidence that the ethernet over powerline adapters were the same brand.

Did Israel commit a war crime by killing World Central Kitchen aid workers?

Whether or not Israel is guilty of war crimes is a debate for the courts. But the incident is troubling for many reasons.

What we know for sure. Israel has publicly admitted that they did in fact launch three missiles from a drone that resulted in the death of 7 aid workers and their driver. Israel dismissed two officers, and reprimanded three more.

What we don’t know is more troubling.

1. If Israeli forces are this quick to send three missiles on three vehicles based on someone thinking they saw a man with a gun, how many times have they done this before?
2. Do Israeli forces investigate misconduct only when westerners are killed by their strikes?
3. What is the standard for “Positive Identification” of a target by IDF personnel?
4. Knowing the Gaza strip is in famine conditions, was this a part of an ongoing operation to deny food deliveries in order to set conditions for mass migration of Gazan residents to Egypt?
5. Was this an American drone, or an American missile? Is this the consequence of having so many years of uncritical support for Israel? The death of Americans at Israeli hands?

These unknowns are going to be hotly debated in the international community for a while to come. However this is not the first time Israel has been “fast and loose” with sending missiles at targets it has not properly identified. In 1967, the USS Liberty came under sustained Israeli attack, resulting in the death of 35 Americans. In the case of the USS Liberty, Israel did admit fault and pay several million dollars in remittance for the lives lost and damage to the Liberty.

In this case Israel has two choices. The first is to continue with the “grave mistake, series of errors” explanation that leaves open the possibility that it was very intentional and standard operating procedure for the IDF and they just got caught hitting the wrong target this time. The second is to allow the prosecution of the former IDF Officers of war crimes in the International Criminal Court.

This is not a “new development” either, the UN (almost always hostile to Israel) made the claim by 30 October 2023 that evidence of war crimes in Gaza, by both Hamas and the IDF, had occurred. The war crimes by Hamas were put on display, the deliberate targeting of civilians on 7 October 2023, including still holding hostages.

So far, the running total is 196 aid workers have perished attempting to deliver aid in Gaza, this gives “circumstantial evidence” to support the idea that Israel is attempting a deliberate starvation campaign against Gaza. The international community sat by quietly when it wasn’t their citizen being killed by the IDF, and the “use of starvation as a weapon of war” is a war crime.

And this leaves Israel in a no win situation, if they ease up on the food blockade now the international community will likely come to the conclusion that Israel did this only to soften the political impacts stemming from killing 7 westerners. If they double down on the food blockade that becomes additional evidence that Israel is deliberately committing war crimes using starvation as a weapon against civilians.

Additionally, the use of physical destruction of communications infrastructure and cyber attacks to stop communication in and out of Gaza has been noted by the international press. At this point there is really no independent body that has access to Gaza that can verify any of the IDF claims involving compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL). Israel has an obvious interest in keeping the lit on Gazan communications in order to “control the narrative” and keep any “appeals to emotion” by Gazans to the international community from swaying political opinions.

And lastly, there is the possibility that killing the World Central Kitchen workers was a deliberate act against the United States in retribution for abstaining from the recent UN Security Council Vote demanding an immediate ceasefire, and immediate hostage return. Netanyahu went so far as to pull out of visits to Washington, and continue to insist that the IDF will enter Rafah. It must be noted that the IDF worked very hard to convince Gazans that Rafah was a safe zone for them to gather while the IDF hit Gaza City hard.

If I were in charge of Israel I would sacrifice the two senior officers for prosecution by the international criminal court. That would allow me to continue the current military actions with the presumption that the deliberate, targeted killing of WCK aid workers was an “one off” and not “business as usual.” This would allow Israel to continue to use “opening additional aid routes” as a bargaining chip for the release of hostages, and continue military operations against Hamas largely unrestricted by international observation. This would preserve Israeli political maneuver space, but it would admit that the IDF committed war crimes.

Florida Measles and the Quarantine Believers

The current situation in Broward county is a cluster of 6 confirmed cases of measles, at least at the time of this writing. The community vaccination rate for measles is 89%, or “11% unvaccinated” for those who want to measure it from the other end.

The only reason that this is making news is that Florida Surgeon General Ladapo has allowed parents and the local schools to determine quarantine requirements.

Shocking, I know. How dare a government official tell people, “use your best judgement!” doesn’t Dr. Lapado know that 89% vaccinated is under the 95% vaccination rate needed for “herd immunity?”

I hope you read the above paragraph with a satire tone, as it was written in a way to mock those who are attacking Florida right now. I suspect they are attacking Florida mainly due to 2024 being an election year, and no other reason. I’ve seen comments along the lines of outright demanding Dr. Ladapo’s medical license be rescinded and all evil Republicans want children to die…. The headlines read, “Florida Surgeon General Defies Science” The Washington Post, and “Florida’s Experiment with Measles” The Atlantic.

A rational person will ask, what is the risk difference between 95% herd immunization and 89% herd immunization? From a purely mathematical perspective, that’s 6%, right? Sort of. In a purely random distribution, a 95% vaccination rate means that only 1 in slightly less than 20 people (since the vaccine is expected to be 98% effective) is susceptible to infection. .95 times .98 = 0.931, or 93% protection. In Broward, 0.89 times 0.98 = 0.8722. And we are left with the same 6% difference, or six more people per hundred susceptible to the disease.

And measles is highly transmissible, with an infection rate around 90%. That means if an infected person comes in contact with a susceptible person (13 out of 100) then that person has a 90% chance of contracting the disease. But remember, there was a “cluster” of six cases, and the opposite of transmissibility is that 87% chance it WON’T be transmitted. This is an important way to think about herd immunity.

Think of your social interactions every day. Your friends, family, and coworkers. If you drew a line between yourself and each of those individuals, with the thickness of the line representing the amount of time/contact you spend with that individual, and repeated that for all the people in your geographic area, what you would see is that there isn’t a truly random distribution of interaction. You would see the “routine loops” as people go about their lives. Neighbors two houses away could only be in a loop four people deep because they use the same grocery store, and only get the same clerk one day a week. The thicker the line, the more likely an infectious disease can jump between people. That clerk you see at the grocery store once a week is way less likely to get you sick than your toddler who picked up the crud of the week from daycare, because hopefully you spend more time with the toddler.

So from the perspective that every interaction, there’s an 87% chance of no disease transmissibility, and the initial cluster hasn’t spread to twelve cases, then it’s highly likely that the cluster is confined to one “loop” of interactions. And it is highly likely that the loop is children 5 to 7 years old who missed their MMR shots during the great COVID over-reaction where the government told everyone to stay home.

Disease epidemiology and pandemic spread modeling are not exact sciences (the math is really stoichastic rather than deterministic) but the shape of outbreaks generally stays the same. Even if the exact curves aren’t followed with mathematical precision, the beginning of an outbreak is always a curve that resembles “exponential growth.” This scares the heck out of people, but exponential growth never lasts forever, as time passes and more and more susceptible people are put into the “immune” category.

So what do I think? I think Florida made the right call. Those parents who choose not to vaccinate and choose to let their children attend public school are every bit the voting citizen as the parents who choose to vaccinate and homeschool. By letting the quarantine decision be made a level lower than the State is always going to be unpopular with Statists who want centralized control over everything, but frankly if the loop really has been closed, the actual risk really is minimal. But we won’t know if the loop really has been closed for another few days without new cases popping up along that “exponential growth curve.”

Now, would a mandatory quarantine for 21 days be the safest option? Maybe, if you only look at the cost of health issues with respect to measles. But maybe not if you look at the overall health of the children. Suicides, both attempted and successful spike through the roof during the COVID lockdowns. I’m not saying 21 days at home will automatically result in dead children, but I am saying that dictating a quarantine isn’t a cost free decision.

Getting measles is no picnic, it’s a miserable illness with a 1 in 500 to 1000 chance of being lethal. That’s more deadly than influenza, but treating measles at home is essentially the same, provide comfort, liquids, and NSAIDs to keep the fever down while the patient fights off the disease, you know, just like COVID….. So by now I think it is a reasonable assumption that school staff and parents can make the correct choices for their children without being told what to do by a State Surgeon General.

Thoughts?

BJJ Tournament After Action Review

Hats off to the 62 year old blue belt who stepped on to the mats with me for Gi and No-Gi matches. Even 18 years his junior I am humbled by an older warrior getting after it. At our age, winning or losing the match is largely irrelevant to what you can take from it in terms of improving your skills going forward.

Two years ago my first match, as a white belt, resulted in a popped rib. At the time I regretted not fighting through the pain, but once the rib popped the outcome of the match would be my loss by either points or submission. I lack the ability to just ignore pain, at least at the level needed to deal with a popped rib. So I didn’t compete again until today. In two years I was awarded a blue belt, and I learned a lot about relaxing into a roll.

So what I did well today, I didn’t rely very much on strength. I didn’t have too much of a game plan other than, “get grips, get to the ground, find a submission.” In No-Gi, that submission came in the form of a wrist lock in guard, the dirtiest nastiest technique that blue belts are allowed (seriously, not proud of that). My academy doesn’t actually teach wrist locks, but I used to train Tomiki Aikido and Japanese Jiu Jitsu where wrist locks are central to the art. Talking with my coach, he was happy with how I was setting up attacks, and working one arm into a position where I would get the wrist lock, or get set up for a triangle. I was just glad I stayed calm and more fluid/relaxed than I used to be.

In Gi….my takedown didn’t work. My opponent had a background in Judo and turned my Tomonage attempt into a guard pull. As my opponent tried to pass my guard, I managed an inversion from bottom position to top position, and landed in Kesa Gatame (scarf hold position). Now scarf hold isn’t really a hard position to get out of, but I fished for double under hooks and tried to set it up where I could step over his head with my lead leg to end in a Kimura lock. That didn’t happen, as I was trying to get his far side arm set up correctly, he relaxed his near side arm just enough that I could shove it between my legs, wrap my legs and flex my hips for an arm lock. This is also not a technique really taught at my gym, but one that came with me from Aikido/Japanese Jiu Jitsu previously.

One of my friends, a brown belt, saw the look on my face and asked me how my matches went, and I told him. He was surprised because he thought I’d lost instead of won, but I was really going over areas for improvement, cataloging my mistakes and inefficiencies. It is very rare that we get the opportunity to really go full resistance with another person to test our skills and strategies.

Good, or at least visible improvement: patience, staying fluid, energy management, and using technique instead of strength.

Needs Improvement: takedowns, grip fighting, mobility in guard (I tried for a long time in no-gi to get to a better position, but couldn’t), and timing.

So I walked away with a lot of information in my head, a veritable laundry list of areas to work, and gratitude that another human being had the strength of character to step on the mats to test his skills. Skills that are never tested cannot be trusted.

AMD Radeon RX 580, RX 5500XT, and 6500XT in February 2024

The Radeon RX 580 remains the most popular graphics card for AMD on the Steam Hardware Survey at the time of this writing. This is expected to start declining fairly rapidly as AMD has officially dropped driver update and optimization support for both for Graphics Core Next (GCN) 4.0 (Polaris) and 5.x (Vega) architectures. Whether users will migrate to Nvidia or Intel GPUs instead of AMD is an unknown. There is the possibility that RX 580 users will just keep using their RX 580s until their next major system upgrade, as the current official drivers seem to perform fairly well and unofficial driver support is available (more on that at the end).

To state the obvious, AMD is under no obligation to support seven year old graphics cards, but I am still disappointed since abandoning the most popular GPU on the Steam hardware Survey for your company is against the “longevity” and “aging like fine wine” reputation AMD has carefully built with it’s graphics cards and CPU support (people are STILL buying AM4 socket motherboards and CPUs). But these three graphics cards represent very similar performance categories.

So lets look at what solid 1080P video cards look like.

RX580 (GCN 4.0), 2304 stream processors, 8 GB 256bit GDDR5 VRAM, PCIE 3.0×16, 185W
RX5500XT (RDNA 1.0), 1408 stream processors, 8 GB 128bit GDDR6 VRAM, PCIE 4.0×8, 130W
RX6500XT, (RDNA 2.0) 1024 stream processors, 8 GB 64bit GDDR6 VRAM, PCIE 3.0×4, 107W

When I say, “very similar” I really mean, “indistinguishable by humans” level of performance. There are 4GB VRAM versions of these cards, but no one should be buying a 4GB video card in 2024 unless they are building a Linux retro-gaming machine and they come across a 4GB version for really cheap, or just need a discreet video card for a media PC or workstation. And by “cheap” I mean cheaper than an Intel Arc A310 or A380 GPU that has built in AV1 coding and decoding (a feature none of the AMD cards listed here happen to have).

RX 580 MSRP at Launch (2017): $219.00: Not bad for a “top tier card”
RX 5500XT MSRP at Launch (2019): $169.00: Not bad for the entry level card.
RX 6500XT MSRP at Launch (2022): $199.00: There is no justification for this price point.

Every generation AMD has managed to decrease the stream processor count and halve the memory bandwidth, and still make a fairly decent 1080P gaming GPU. However putting out a “fairly decent gaming GPU” in 2022 which is price point on par with the bigger RX6600XT doesn’t make sense, at least for the 8GB VRAM versions which are the only viable gaming option for 1080P performance. Currently on Amazon a 6500XT and 6600XT are priced very competitively against each other, and they are vastly different levels of performance as the 6600XT has twice the stream processors, and twice the memory bandwidth.

Now the RX 580 is only available on the used market, I picked one up yesterday off of Facebook marketplace for 60 US dollars (your mileage may vary). But prices on 580s are essentially dirt cheap due to the crypto crunch as Etherium mining finished, and because AMD abandoned driver update support. However, if you are running Linux, an RX 580 will serve you well for years and years to come. Unfortunately for the Windows crowd, the RX 580 is really on its last legs, with limited use as something like a media server GPU compared to the alternatives. However if you have one laying around, might as well use it.

The RX5500XT is starting to come up on the used market, but performance wise there is no advantage over the RX 580, except for Windows users who will still get driver updates and optimizations from AMD. I do not recommend buying a new RX5500XT, as it is 75% of the cost of an RX6600XT and less than half the value. I do not recommend the RX6500XT at all, even the 8GB version, as it is 80-90% the cost of a 6600XT, and is literally “half the performance potential” from a GPU core and VRAM bandwidth perspective.

Final thoughts, if you can get a 5500XT 8GB for under 100 dollars, it’s a solid option for a “sidegrade” from the RX 580. If you can save a little bit more the RX6600XT is really the best value option for Windows gamers, at least from AMD’s currently supported lineup. If you are ok with using third party drivers, NimeZ drivers will continue to be updated until whenever they aren’t: https://www.amernimezone.com/#home

Mammoth Sniper Challenge 2024 after action review

The 2024 Mammoth Sniper Challenge has been over for two days now, and my body still hurts. My partner and I earned the finisher patch, but were not in any danger of being on the top of the list.

Things that worked well for us:

Rucksacks: My partner used a USMC rucksack, I used an Alps Outdoors elk hunting pack, and both did fine carrying our rifles and gear. A lot of teams used smaller packs by Osprey or Eberlestock, but because we weren’t carrying super compact ultra-lightweight hiking gear we kinda needed the extra room. We both strapped our rifles to the outside of the pack in a vertical position, muzzle up.

Optics: I used an Athlon Talos BTR 4-14×44 with mil/mil reticle and adjustments, partner used a Vortex Diamondback 4-16×44 with moa/moa adjustments. Honestly using different angular measurements didn’t hurt us at all as we communicated pretty well when one spotted a target on the range, we generally talked the other on. Between the two the Vortex had a much better eye box for some of the weird head positions you end up in at events like Mammoth. The Talos has a better reticle for getting on target at distance, but if I had to do it again I’d take my Vortex Diamondback 4-16×44 in mil/mil as the better eye box would have helped me more than anything else this year.

Rifles: We both used 20″ heavy barrel AR-15 rifles. Hits out to 800 happened, but I couldn’t land a hit at 1100 yards. Partner’s was a Palmetto State Armory commercial rifle, mine was home built. No real issues with accuracy from either.

Ammunition: We both used 77gr SMK bullets, I used 23.8gr of Ramshot TAC for a muzzle velocity of 2,700 fps as measured by a magnetospeed, he used 22.3gr of IMR 4064 for a muzzle velocity of 2,650 fps as measured by magnetospeed. At one point I shot one of his rounds, got a first round hit with it from my rifle.

US Army surplus Gortex bivy covers. These work, they were the only thing keeping us alive when the sky opened up Saturday morning and dropped down buckets of rain our our dumb asses. We were sleeping half under a tarp, but everything still got soaked.

Boots: We both used Garmont combat boots. Partner developed blisters on the bottom of his feet and back of his heal, I developed blisters on the ends of my “index toe” on each foot. Still, this level of performance was much better than the Army issue boots I used for Mammoth 2023.

Winter coats: I use a 32Degree Heat down puffy jacket I bought for 30 bucks on end of season clearance, partner used a Sitka lightweight hunting puffy jacket (no idea what he paid). A couple other competitors were using the same Sitka jacket, and a lot of other competitors used various commercial puffy jackets. They ball up real tight inside of a dry bag, so are a great piece of kit.

Titanium cook sets. Both partner and I used a 14 gram iso-butane burner, and I used two titanium cups with lids. Partner used a stainless steel Stanley camping set. Partner agreed titanium is the way to go for him next year. The weight savings is only ounces, but the space savings of having my entire cookset fit inside the bigger cup was an added benefit I had.

Hot Hands hand warmers. If you have to camp in the cold, get the stick on kind and stick them to the bottom of your feet right before you get into your sleep system. The ounces they weigh in the pack are paid for in extra hours of restful sleep (or as restful sleep you can get outdoors). We also used the pocket warmer size to put in our boots at the end of each day, then plugged the top of the boot with a sock to help dry the boots out overnight. Didn’t always guarantee perfectly dry boots in the morning, but they were always drier than the night before.

Pre-Workout: I’d never had “Pre-Workout” before in my life, but evidently it has nitrous oxide based vaso-dilators which helped my lungs open up, and on Sunday when Partner gave me half a packet to drink before our first 5 mile ruck, I had no idea what it was going to do to me. We went from being the last team in, to the third team in. On the final ruck Sunday Partner gave me another half of a pre-workout, and we came back first, two minutes ahead of any other team left in our squad. I’m not saying you’ll have the same results, but it might be worth checking out.

Food: Partner and I aimed for 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day. We did this with a mix of freeze dried camping meals, nutrition bars, Lenny and Larry Complete Cookies, oatmeal, fruits, nuts, and rehydration mixes (Propel, Drip Drop, Liquid IV, Gatorade). My food load started at 8.4 lbs in three different gallon ziplock bags, and I had food (snacks) left over at the end.

Gear that we plan to improve on as we can.

Sleeping bags. I used an Ozark Trail 30 degree mummy bag, same as last year. Partner used an Army surplus modular sleep system winter bag. We were both very happy with the warmth, but the weight and bulk left a bit to be desired. We’d both like to find some down bags we can put inside our gortex bivy covers, since down bags are lighter, and can get compressed down much smaller to save space.

Laser range finders: Partner took his handheld 1500 yard LRF, it worked fine when we used it. A lot of teams were rocking scope mounted Vortex LRFs which are really a whole ballistic computer as well. For 2,000 dollars (or more) that would be a real “splurge” for either of us, but we do need to get something different that works better for us.

Buttstocks: We both used M4 style carbine stocks, as they are very light. We should both have spent the money to get Magpul PRS Lite stocks, just for a more consistent cheek weld.

Triggers: We both used 2 stage, 4.5 lb triggers. They work fine, and are a requirement for Service Rifle competition. However I’d like to try to get a 3 to 3.5 lb single stage and see if that can’t help, especially in the cold morning when my trigger finger was numb. Having the rifle go off earlier might have turned some near misses into hits as I shivered on the frosty ground…

Freeze Dried Meals: I used mostly “Good-To-Go” brand freeze dried meals and they gave me pretty awful gas. I don’t normally consume a bunch of grains, so my gut wasn’t happy. Partner used mostly Mountain Home, and had a much better experience. So I recommend trying out a few different brands to see what works for you. The one “Readywise” brand meal I used tasted better than the “Good-To-Go” brand and had more calories.

Final Thoughts:

This Mammoth was a straight kick in the junk. The weather was awful on Saturday, and we saw more teams drop that day than ever before. Only the three “S’s” of spite, stupidity, and stubbornness kept partner and I in the competition to the end.

If Partner and I get better sleeping bags, that would likely allow us both to use smaller, lighter rucksacks in the future. Stepping off on Friday morning we both had 59.5 lbs on our backs, and even shaving an additional 5 lbs would have been a great advantage. Over the course of 30 miles, that 5 lbs difference saves over 100 calories of effort. Secondly, we didn’t take a tent, and that didn’t stop us from finishing. We should have taken a tent for a bit of comfort, but we didn’t. So even if we get better, smaller, lighter gear, we may end up offsetting with a tent (we both have 4 lb lightweight two man tent systems).

Ramshot TAC and Hodgdon Varget: Temperature Variation Considerations

There’s a good baseline of data here:
https://ultimatereloader.com/2022/04/01/extreme-powder-temperature-testing-varget-vs-tac/
However I want to run the numbers in a slightly different manner.

Over a 205 degree temperature swing, TAC had 169 feet per second variation, and Varget had 50 feet per second variation. That means TAC had a 0.82 foot per second per degree variation, and Varget had a 0.24 fps per degree variation.

Lets break that down from -65 to 70 degrees. TAC had 85 fps over 105 degrees, for a 0.8 fps/degree shift. Varget had 21 fps shift over 105 degrees, for a 0.2 fps/degree shift. What does this mean for you? Well if you hunt big game in the fall and winter when it’s cold, a 20 degree shift in temperature would shift your velocity 16 fps with TAC, and 4 fps with Varget. At any reasonable hunting range this is meaningless. However if you are a high volume shooter, and your barrel starts to get hot, TAC would exhibit vertical stringing on the target sooner than Varget. If you hunt really small varmints at long distances for fun, TAC wouldn’t be my recommendation.

However, there is also the 70 degrees to 140 data, TAC had 84 fps and Varget had 29, changing TAC to 1.2 fps per degree, and Varget to 0.41 fps per degree. What does this tell us? In hot weather, at normal hunting ranges, a 20 degree shift is still meaningless unless you are hunting rodents at long distance.

First, cold weather performance. For decades we’ve known that ball powders are harder to light off in freezing temperatures than extruded powders. If you want to mitigate this a bit, simply crimp your ammunition so that the bullet stays put a small bit longer, allowing the ball powder to get up to a temperature and pressure more conducive to consistent accuracy. This trick with ball powder goes against the “never crimp match ammo!” wisdom, but a lot of tactical and hunting ammunition is crimped for performance reasons and does just fine.

Second, the hot weather performance issue. In a bolt rifle I wouldn’t worry about running TAC in hot weather, but in a gas gun I might if I hadn’t tested the load in that condition. Not that it would blow up an AR, but I’d expect obvious pressure signs to start cropping up if the load was near or beyond max book charge.

For what it’s worth, other’s have experimented with temperature sensitivity and come up with different numbers for Varget: https://www.wlcastleman.com/equip/shoot/varget/index.htm But this is with different bullets in a different barrel. However, I would always expect Varget to win in a “least temperature sensitivity test” when pitted against TAC. I would honestly expect nearly any suitable burn rate single base extruded powder to win against TAC.

But I also know how much easier it is to reload with a ball powder than extruded stick powder. And inside of 300 yards, a 20 to 30 fps shift isn’t the difference between a hit or a miss, it’s at most the difference between an X and a 10 as long as you do your part aiming the rifle properly. If I were reloading for a team of junior High Power shooters, you bet I’d be using TAC, or PowerPro-2000MR, or ARComp, or Staball65, on a progressive press. If I were just reloading for myself, and price were no object, and I really, really wanted to win, I’d use Varget, or IMR4064, or H4895. I’d also turn necks and wet tumble my brass, but only because it would make me feel better. But I’m sure I’d be on the line with shooters cleaning their targets with Reloader 15, a notoriously temperature sensitive powder, but one that is incredibly predictable with good data. Once you know how a load performs in your rifle at a given temperature, pressure, and humidity level, it’s on you to send it.

Keep the US out of Gaza

A policy wonk with no actual military or foreign service experience in any biography blurb that I can find wrote a “disaster is looming unless we DO SOMETHING!” which was published two days ago: https://breakingdefense.com/2023/12/the-case-for-an-immediate-us-led-stabilization-mission-in-gaza/

If you want to read the whole thing you are more than welcome, but Jonathon Lord seems to be wrong on every assertion made in his advocacy for “boots on the ground.”

The first reality is that, Palestinian Arabs, and quite frankly Arabs in general, absolutely hate America, Americans, Freedom, Democracy, and all the rest that goes into the secular western culture. Without straight up explaining this problem from the very beginning, the thought of placing US servicemembers into another country where they are outnumbered by millions of people who hate them and actively want to kill them, is a poor start to an argument for intervention. If you don’t believe me, just do a Google search for “Palestinians burn American flag” and see the pictures, watch the videos.

So accepting the fact that “they hate us” makes the option of “putting soldiers in their territory” a bit of a hard sell as they say in the advertising business.

The second problem is that even if the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza were neutral to a US led coalition of the willing occupying their territory, there’s absolutely no guarantee that Iran wouldn’t use that as yet another opportunity to ship thousands of explosively formed projectile (EFP) improvised explosive devices (IEDs) into the area to kill the Soldier’s of the “Great Satan.”

So accepting the fact that external actors, both state like Iran and Syria, and non-state like Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, etc, all get a vote on whether or not to kill Americans, do you really want to send the troops into that area? Especially when the Palestinian Arabs view the actions of Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, etc as morally just and valid?

And a somewhat relevant fact, I’ve managed to read quite a bit about stability operations. Throwing food, medicine, and blankets at a conflict zone doesn’t bring peace, it, in my opinion based on the study of how ineffective intervention seems to be, prolongs the conflict. KFOR is STILL in the Balkans, because KFOR’s presence simply hit the “pause button” on the ethnic cleansing and conflict, not created a condition for political peace.

A lasting peace can only be made by the belligerents. In WWII we used the threat of a nuclear bomb per week until Japan committed to unconditional surrender. The Israeli’s have currently set their “victory requirements” as the dismantling of Hamas. And I have no idea what Hamas has for their victory conditions other than the complete dismantling of Israel. This means there is no room for a negotiated peace with mutually exclusive requirements to end the conflict on each side.

And as a reminder, it’s not the job of the United States to control or end other nation’s wars. In fact, every place we supported in the “Arab Spring” ended up worse off for US support than had we minded our own business and just let them kill each other.

The biggest problem with “stability operations” always boils down to the fact that people who have authority to order a “stability op” don’t understand the “sources of instability” that need to be stabilized. A lack of food, water, energy, medicine, etc, is NOT a cause of instability, they are simply symptoms of instability. Without addressing the actual root cause, handing out humanitarian aid packets and food is like slapping a bandaid on cancer and hoping it goes away.

So our real options are this: 1, let Israel and Hamas fight it out until they are exhausted. Israel is burning through military material at an unsustainable rate. Eventually Israel will have to accept they either have a “forever war” in Gaza, or they have to accept something other than the complete eradication of Hamas. 2, Encourage someone viewed as neutral by the Palestinian Arabs and Iran, such as Switzerland or Ireland to handle the “stability operation” under a UN mandate. This option is slow, and doesn’t let the US play “world police” but allows US support to whatever mission the UN ultimately authorizes, hopefully with food and medicine rather than troops and transports. And option 3, escalate the conflict. The United States has a justification for hostage rescue of American citizens currently held by Hamas. By sending in combat power to bring the hostages home, it would let the “spoilers” (Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, etc) have their shot at killing American boys and girls, but at least these would be the type highly capable of killing right back. This option has a huge risk of bringing Iran and/or Russia into the fight, but it’s at least going to get closer to a real “end state condition” for each side.

Stability operations are hard. And the vast majority of the United States military doesn’t routinely train on conducting stability ops. “But, aren’t they fully equipped to do that mission?” a clueless person might ask…well yes, the military departments are equipped to do that mission. But every woman is equipped with what is necessary to be a prostitute. Or in simpler terms, owning a bolt action rifle with a scope on it doesn’t make you a sniper. And there aren’t enough Civil Affairs personnel to do the mission, it would absolutely require sending teenagers with guns and a lack of responsible adult supervision to go into Gaza to try to make things, “better.”