Full disclosure: I provide financial support to Singularity Computers through their Patreon.
Singularity Computers is pushing a new case to market called Spectre. Linus Media Group received a custom version of it, and JayzTwoCents is using another custom version in a special build for rapper Post Malone.
All-purpose assistant Sven Meyer said Singularity Computers’ YouTube channels had attracted more than 1 million followers and led American chart topper Post Malone to track the team down.
“He had some issues in one of his videos, all his followers pointed him in our direction because we had the solution,” Mr Meyer said.
“He dropped us an email, telling us every second comment, out of 10,000 comments were telling him we could help him.
“It is a huge opportunity for us and the exposure is great. Post Malone, even though he has no clue about computers, it is a very important deal.”
Sven wasn’t talking about Post Malone. He was actually talking about JayzTwoCents. The mention of Post Malone at the end of the passage certainly provides the allusion, however, that Singularity Computers is trying to seize credit for the Post Malone project.
And the reaction to this has been far beyond reasonable.
Here’s what people are missing: Singularity Computers has never tried to take credit for the build. They have only ever taken credit for the custom Spectre chassis for the build. Given the exposure the project has received on YouTube and elsewhere, there is no way Singularity could even try to take credit for the entire build.
The response they are receiving when the allusion of such was given by a local newspaper is probably a few magnitudes lighter than what they would’ve actually received had they actually tried to take credit for it. Which means the allusion of them seizing credit falls on the journalist who wrote the article. Who obviously didn’t do her due diligence, as I can readily demonstrate.
Back on December 13, 2017, JayzTwoCents published a video showcasing the start of a new personal build:
At the end of the video, he’s trying to think of a good way to mount the pump and reservoir to the front radiator. In the comments to this video, a lot of people recommended Singularity Computers. About two weeks later, JayzTwoCents posted a video continuing the build, and basically saying he got the hint:
Or to again quote Sven from the article: “He [JayzTwoCents] had some issues in one of his videos, and his followers pointed him in our direction because we had the solution.”
But I highly doubt that Sven said the Singularity Computers channel had attracted 1 million followers. He may have been, again, referring to JayzTwoCents, and the statement was taken out of context.
So how did the confusion occur?
This is speculation, but I feel it’s a combination of a need to trim the article without proper diligence to make sure everything was still accurate. And this is apparent given the picture of the article that Daniel shared on his website and linked across social media (though all social media links have since been removed):
If you’ve ever worked for a newspaper, whether as a student journalist or professional, you likely are acutely aware of the need to keep an article within a certain publication space. And if you run long, your editor will require that you trim the article down. But the key is to trim in such a way that it is still accurate.
Clearly Alicia Nally didn’t maintain accuracy, provided the article was accurate to begin with. Her trimming resulted in an article that made it sound like Post Malone sought out Singularity Computers after being directed to them by a lot of comments. And it was actually JayzTwoCents who sought them out. And her failure to maintain accuracy is leading to the implication Singularity Computers is seizing more credit than due for the Post Malone project, when they likely were reserved in what they said.
As of when this article went live, there has yet to be any comment, clarification, correction or retraction published by either Singularity Computers or the Cairns Post, or the article’s author, Alicia Nally. Hopefully such is forthcoming by all parties.
And it’s running FreeNAS. Which is currently booting off a 16GB SanDisk Fit USB2.0 drive. Despite some articles I’ve read saying there isn’t a problem doing this, along with the FreeNAS installation saying it’s preferred, I can’t really recommend it. I’ve had intermittent complete lockups as a result. And I mean hard lockups where I have to pull the USB drive and reinsert it for the system to boot from it again.
Given SanDisk’s reputation regarding storage, this isn’t a case of using a bad USB drive or one from a lesser-reputable brand. And I used that specific USB drive on recommendation of someone else.
So I want to have the NAS boot from an SSD.
Now I could just put an SSD in one of the free trays in the hot-swap bay and call it a day – I have 8 bays, but only 6 HDDs. But I’m also filling out the last two trays. So connecting the HDDs to a controller card would be better, opening up the onboard connections.
And I have a controller card. But not one you’d want to use with a NAS. Plus it wouldn’t reduce the cable bulk either. So what did I go far? IBM M1015, of course, which I found on eBay for a little under 60 USD. Since that’s what everyone seems to use unless they’re using an LSI-branded card. But there’s a… complication.
The mainboard has 6 expansion slots, three of which are hidden under the power supply – it’s a 3U chassis, not a 4U. The exposed slots are two full-length slots (one x16, one x4), and a x1 slot. The full-length slots are currently occupied by the 10GbE card and graphics card (Zotac GT620).
The SAS card is x8. So the only way I can get the SAS controller and the 10GbE card is to use a x1 graphics card. Yes, those exist. YouTube channel RandomGaminginHD recently covered one called the Asus Neon:
And I considered the Zotac GT710 x1 card to get something recent and passively cooled, but didn’t really want to spend $40 on a video card for a server (eBay prices used and new were similar to Amazon’s price new).
Searching eBay a little more, I found an ATI FireMV 2250 with a x1 interface sporting a mind-blowing 256MB DDR2. Released in 2007, it was never made for gaming. It was advertised as a 2D card, making it a good fit for the NAS and other servers where you’re using 10GbE cards or SAS controllers in the higher-lane slots.
The card has a DPS-59 connector, not a standard DVI or VGA connector. But a DPS-59 to dual-VGA splitter was only 8 USD on Amazon, so only a minor setback.
I set up the hardware in a test system to make sure the cards work. And also to flash the SAS card from a RAID card to an HBA card. Which seemed way more involved than it needed to be. In large part because I needed to create a UEFI bootable device. These steps got it running on a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 mainboard: How-to: Flash LSI 9211-8i using EFI shell. Only change to the steps: the board would not boot the UEFI shell unless it was named “bootx64.efi” on the drive, instead of “shellx64.efi” as the instructions state. And at the end, you also need to reassign the SAS address to the card:
sas2flash.efi -o -sasadd [address from green sticker (no spaces)]
This may or may not be absolutely necessary, but it keeps you from getting the “SAS Address not programmed on controller” message during boot. So along with the mini-SAS to SATA splitters and 32GB SSD, I took Nasira offline for maintenance (oh God, the dust!!!) and the hardware swaps. Didn’t bother trying to get ALL of the dust out of the system since next year I’ll likely be moving it all into a 4U chassis. More on that later.
Things are a little crowded around the available expansion slots. But with an 80mm fan blowing on them, they’re not going to have too much of an issue keeping cool. LSI cards are known to run hot, and this one is no different. I attempted to remove the heatsink, but I think it’s attached with thermal adhesive, not thermal compound.
I do intend to replace the 80mm fan with a higher-performance fan when I get the chance. Or figure out how to stand up a 120mm fan in its place to have the airflow without the noise. Which is the better option, now that I think about it.
And as predicted, the cables are much, much cleaner compared to before. A hell of a lot cleaner compared to having a bundle of eight (8) SATA cables going between SATA ports. Sure there’s still the nest between the drive bays, but at least it isn’t complicated by SATA cables.
I also took this as a chance to replace the 10GbE card as well. From a Chelsio S320 to a Mellanox Connect-X2. The Chelsio is a PCI-E 1.0 card, while the Mellanox is a 2.0 card. So this allowed me to move the 10GbE card to the x4 slot and put the SAS card in the x16 slot nearest the CPU. FreeNAS 9.x did not support Mellanox chipsets, whereas FreeNAS 11 does.
I reinstalled FreeNAS to the boot SSD – 11.1-U5 is the latest as of when I write this. My previous installation was an 11.1 in-place upgrade over a 9.x installation. While it worked well and I never experienced any issues, I’ve typically frowned against doing in-place upgrades on operating systems. I always recommend against it with Windows. It can work well with some Linux distros – one of the reasons I’ve gravitated toward Fedora – and be problematic with others.
Importing the exported FreeNAS configuration, though, did not work. Likely because it was applying a configuration for the now non-existent Chelsio card. But I was able to look at the exported SQLite database to figure out what I had and reproduce it – shares and users were my only concern. Thankfully the database layout is relatively straightforward.
Added storage
Now here is where things got a little tricky.
I mentioned previously that I had six (6) HDDs in three pairs: two 4TB pairs and one 6TB pair. And I said the 6TB pair was a WD Red at 5400RPM and a Seagate IronWolf at 7200RPM. Had I realized the RPM difference when I ordered them, I likely would’ve gone with an HGST NAS drive instead. So now is the opportunity to correct that deficiency.
The other Seagate 4TB NAS drives are 5900RPM drives compared to the 5400RPM on the WD Reds. But that isn’t nearly as much a difference as 7200RPM to 5400RPM – under 10% higher compared to 1/3rd higher, respectively.
Replacing the disk was straightforward – didn’t capture any screenshots since this happened after 2am.
Take the Seagate IronWolf 6TB drive offline
Prep the new WD Red 6TB drive into a sled
Pull the Seagate drive from the hot swap bay and set it aside
Slide the WD Red drive into the same slot the Seagate drive previously occupied
“Replace” the Seagate drive with the WD Red drive in FreeNAS.
The resilver took a little over 5 hours. I’ve said before, both herein and elsewhere, that resilvering times are the reason to use mirrored pairs over RAID-Zx. And it’s the leading expert opinion from what I could find as well. And always remember that even this is not a replacement for a good backup plan.
The next morning, I connected the Seagate drive to my computer – Mira – using a SATA to USB3.0 adapter to I could wipe the partition table. And I prepped the second Seagate IronWolf drive into a sled. Slid both drives into the hot swap bays. And expanded the volume with a new 6TB mirrored pair.
40TB of HDDs split down into 20TB from mirrored pairs. Effective space is about 18.1TiB with overhead – 20TB = 20 Trillion bytes = 18.19TiB – with about 8.7TiB free space available.
Future plans
8TiB is a lot of space to fill. It took two years to get to this point with how my wife and I do things. Sure the extra available space means we’ll be tempted to fill it – a “windfall” of storage space, so to speak. And with how I store movies, television episodes, and music on the NAS, that space could fill faster than expected.
Plus it is often advised to not let the pool’s available space fill up to less than 20% free where possible to avoid performance degradation. Prior to the expansion, I was approaching this – under 4TiB free out of ~13TiB space. So I expanded the storage with another pair of 6TB drives to back away from that 20%. That and to pair the 7200RPM with another 7200RPM drive.
So at the new capacity, I have basically until I get to about 3TiB before I start experiencing any ZFS performance degradation. The equivalent of nearly doubling my current movie library.
So let’s say, hypothetically, I needed to add more storage space. What would be the best way to do that now that all eight of the drive bays are filled? There are a few ways to go about it.
Option #1 is to start replacing the 4TB drives. Buying a 6TB or 8TB drive pair, and doing a replace and resilver on the first 4TB pair. Except that would add only 2TB or 4TB of free space. Not exactly a significant gain given the total capacity of the current pool. While this being an option is a benefit of using mirrored pairs over RAID-Zx, it isn’t exactly a practical benefit.
Especially since the 4TB drives are likely to last a very long time before I have to worry about any failures – whether unrecoverable read errors or the drive just flat out giving up the ghost. The drives are under such low usage that I probably could’ve used WD Blues or similar desktop drives in the NAS and been fine (and saved a bit of money). The only reason to pull the 4TB drives entirely would be repurposing them.
So option #2. Mileage may vary on this one. The 990FX mainboard in the NAS has an eSATA port on the rear – disabled currently. If I need to buy another pair of HDDs — e.g. 8TB – then I could connect an eSATA external enclosure to the rear. Definitely not something I’d want to leave long-term, though.
So what’s the better long-term option?
I mentioned previously about moving Nasira into a 4U chassis sometime next year. Possibly before the end of the year depending on what my needs become. Three of the expansion slots on the mainboard are blocked: a second x4 and x16 slot, and a PCI slot. The 990FX chipset provides 42 PCI-E lanes.
Getting more storage on the same system requires a second SAS card. Getting a second SAS card and keeping the 10GbE requires exposing those other slots. Exposing those slots requires moving everything into a 4U chassis. Along with needing an open slot for an SFF-8088 to SFF-8087 converter board. Then use a rack SAS expander to hold all the new drives and any additional ones that get added along the way.
Or buy a large enough SAS expander to hold the drives I currently have plus room to expand, then move the base system into a 2U chassis with a low profile cooler and low-profile brackets on the cards.
Messenger Coffee’s espresso blend has been my go-to for at least the last year to 18 months. Messenger Coffee is in Lenexa, KS, and sold by several local coffee shoppes, including one within walking distance from my apartment. It has a very mellow, smooth taste when blended with milk. In my opinion it’s the perfect blend for lattes, at least of what I’ve tried so far.
And that includes Black Rifle Coffee Co.
Specifically their AK-47 espresso blend. When I saw my local gun range carrying their coffee – ground, not whole bean – I decided to give it a try after looking them up online and discovering their espresso blend.
For reference, I have an ECM Technika IV Profi espresso machine with a Compak K-3 grinder – a $3,000 home espresso setup. I’ll say up front this coffee blend was not made with my setup in mind. It overall tasted like it was made for cheaper equipment – such as my De’Longhi EC-155 before I made the upgrades.
And that showed as I reached the end of the bag.
A 12oz bag of beans typically lasts me about 2 weeks. I store the beans in a large Airscape that works great for keeping beans fresh throughout that. And the freshness of the AK-47 blend degraded much faster than I’ve seen. To the point where the shots were coming out significantly faster – with no changes to the grinder – despite coming out a little slow than typical with the first shots I pulled.
With other espresso blends I’ve tried, from both Messenger Coffee and The Roasterie, I’ve never experienced that.
In all seriousness, the double-shot I pulled this morning looked like I’d used ground coffee that’d been sitting out in the portafilter overnight. It pulled fast with little crema. Coffee beans should not be degrading that fast.
But then espresso blends typically aren’t a mix of roast levels. That’s where AK-47 differs heavily. Despite being advertised on their website as a medium blend, AK-47 is actually a mix of both light and dark roasted beans. Yes, you read that right: light and dark roast. Hence why I said earlier this blend was not made for premium equipment. It’d probably work reasonably well with an entry-level machine and grinder, provided you keep your expectations low on coffee flavor or typically flavor your lattes.
Given my experience with different coffee blends over the… six years I’ve been a home barista, the combination of light and dark roasted beans is the only thing that sets AK-47 apart that explains the very fast degradation despite being kept as whole beans in an Airscape. Seriously, that degradation should not have happened. I’m almost tempted to buy another bag to try with vacuum bags to see if the same degradation occurs. There’s a reason most every espresso blend out there uses the same roast level – or they’ll mix medium with dark, not light with dark – and this is the reason.
In a latte, the coffee flavor stands out from the milk instead of being complemented by it. Meaning if I were to have had espresso shots with this blend, it likely would’ve had an overpowering flavor I’d try to rinse away later. But this blend isn’t unique in that particular quality. So on that aspect, AK-47 doesn’t stand out.
But how quickly the beans went stale, combined with the fact it’s not a great blend for lattes when fresh, or even as straight shots for that matter, this is a blend I’ll be avoiding in the future.
Final verdict: 1 out of 5. It doesn’t bring a unique or pleasant flavor to the table, and the beans went stale way too quickly despite being sealed and ground only on demand.
I’m not going to waste much space on this. “Bear arms”, or “to keep and bear arms” means exactly what it says, and means exactly what it did back in 1791 when the Amendment was ratified. It means to own, carry, and use.
That is it.
No additional qualifiers like The Economist article attempts to include. The right of the people to keep and bear arms means the right of the individuals who make up “the people” to own, carry, and use firearms for lawful, defensive purposes. And it is a right that shall not be infringed.
It isn’t complicated. So stop acting like it is.
What makes this all the more insidious and aggravating is no one would say “what did they mean by ‘speech’?” with regard to the First Amendment. Yet with almost every word in the Second, and the idea of the right itself, they play this game. It needs to stop.
Yep, I’m jumping on this bandwagon. Talking about Roseanne. Or rather what others have been saying in the wake of her recent firing that boils down to this: Roseanne had every right to tweet, but she isn’t immune to the consequences of that speech.
It’s a notion that is not unfamiliar to me. Several years ago I said just that with regard to Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson. And back at the tail-end of 2013 it was an easy sentiment to hold. Since it wasn’t my political ideology on the chopping block. It wasn’t my political ideology being targeted. And it’s rather interesting today how those who most scream about “consequences” are the ones least likely to, in today’s political climate, experience said “consequences”.
Who is more likely to lose their job and livelihood due to something said on Twitter, someone who leans left, or someone who leans right? Given some of the vile, racist garbage that’s come out of the left, I think the answer is clear. Indeed my article about Duck Dynasty shows this isn’t a recent development.
The swiftness by which Roseanne was “scrubbed” from current entertainment options shows this. Lightning-quick virtue signalling. And not just from ABC either. Because ABC, and the parent company Disney, and everyone connected to the show likely would’ve faced swift backlash from leftists if they didn’t swiftly remove her show and denounce her. Not what she tweeted. But her personally.
And they didn’t just remove her new season, both from the air and their website – the link to the Roseanne show now redirects to the ABC Go homepage. They went so far as to pull reruns of the original series. Hulu did the same. So far, as of this article, Amazon hasn’t capitulated, but they likely will as well – Season 10 is not available through Prime video streaming, but the original seasons are. And YouTube also still has the reboot as of this writing.
RIGHTS limit how the government interacts with the People, PRINCIPLES limit how you interact with everyone else. That is why I’ve spent much of the last several years continually defending PRINCIPLES over rights.
Without the underlying principles of free speech and the presumption of innocence, for example, there is no foundation for the RIGHTS derived from those principles. Yet more and more I see those principles continually violated by people who claim to stand up for the rights derived from those principles.
That is largely the lesson I’ve learned over the last few years as I’ve seen people continuously disparaging the concept and principle of free speech. On the question of consequences, we must always ask ourselves what consequences are fair and legitimate.
And this consequence against Roseanne is hardly fair given the totality of the circumstance. Just as the temporary suspension Phil Robertson suffered in 2013 was also not fair to him, contrary to whatever statements I may have said at the time.
And I would say the same about any leftists who suffer similar fates due to their statements. Except at this point leftists largely know they are immune to those consequences. They don’t have to worry about losing their jobs and careers – those that have them, at least – for saying some rather vile shit. Which is why they have no problem screaming about consequences. Since they’ll likely never suffer them personally.
And yet they call me and people like me “privileged”.
A little over two months ago, I joined the NRA. Not long after joining, I mentioned it on Twitter, tagging the NRA and “March for Lives”. One person replied – hidden tweet, but I still saw the notification – that my opinion had been “bought and paid for” by the NRA.
And David Hogg said on Twitter last week, “Anyone who supports an NRA sellout is an NRA sellout”. Huh…
Someone who never receives money from the NRA is, by definition, not a “sellout” to the NRA. And it’s evidence of a major problem having to explain what a sellout actually is.
A sellout is someone who expresses a different opinion or takes a different action than they otherwise would in exchange for some form of consideration, typically money. A quick example would be if I were to suddenly become a staunch gun control advocate after receiving money from Michael Bloomberg.
Again, someone who does not receive money from the NRA, by definition, is not an “NRA sellout”. Nor can that person’s opinion be said to have been “bought and paid for” by the NRA. Because that person received no consideration in exchange for their opinion.
Same if a person already supports gun rights ahead of receiving any consideration from the NRA or any gun rights group. Because “selling out” means a change of action or opinion after receiving consideration. As a clear example, we can turn to the Simpsons and Season 9, episode 15 – “The Last Temptation of Krust”:
Contrary to Hogg, donating money to a person who supports gun rights doesn’t make you an “NRA sellout”. Donating money to or joining the NRA or another gun rights organization doesn’t make you an “NRA sellout”. Since the only way someone could be an “NRA sellout” is if they previously didn’t support gun rights and only started supporting gun rights after receiving money from the NRA.
And this isn’t just about the misuse of “sellout”, but also the belief among many on the left that the NRA owns and controls the opinions of gun rights advocates. And they don’t.
You were tried and convicted in an arms selling operation. Selling arms to Iran during the Iran-Iraq War in which we were supposed to be supporting Iraq, and then using the proceeds to fund Nicaraguan contras. While the selling arms part wasn’t your idea, you wrote a completely new plan that essentially made the entire thing from that point onward your responsibility. Selling arms to Iran directly, and diverting funds to Nicaragua in violation of the 1983 Boland Amendment.
And then you later tried to cover it up by destroying documents, getting your secretary to help you.
These are facts not in dispute.
Yes your convictions were later overturned due to the immunity Congress gave you for your testimony, which is why you weren’t sitting in prison. Unlike others involved who sat in jail until pardoned, a Christmas gift from George HW Bush in 1992.
The Iran-Contra Affair overshadows your decorations. Most who know anything about you know you only as the one who spearheaded what became, arguably, the largest international political scandal of the 20th Century. As a result the left and the media have been having a field day with this.
And while many say “we shouldn’t care what the left thinks”, bear in mind that nearly 19 out of every 20 gun owners are NOT NRA members, and your election as NRA president will keep that number very high. Because a significant portion of gun owners and Second Amendment supporters are libertarian or left-leaning, even “leftist”. The fact there are 100+ million gun owners in the United States should make that obvious. And there are only about… being generous… 5.5 million NRA members.
If you want to help the NRA, Mr North, resign. Your resignation as NRA president is really the only good thing you can do for the NRA right now. You should never have been chosen. Step down as NRA president and let the organization choose someone who doesn’t have your kind of history, your kind of infamy.
Let’s be realistic: optics matter, regardless of how much many might say they should not. And given the current situation in the wake of several high-profile shootings in the United States, there is much the NRA can do to improve how they are perceived. Which makes your election as NRA president all the more… surprising. It really makes me wonder if those with the voting authority at the NRA are not concerned or never considered the optics of this.
Upon learning of your election, I’ve actually considered canceling my only… 2-month old membership. And you being at the head of the organization is likely not going to bring many new people in, regardless of how fervently they support the Second Amendment. And many members may use your election as a reason to not renew or cancel. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the membership numbers in the coming months.
So respectfully, Mr North, please do what is best for the National Rifle Association and its members and tender your resignation.
Let’s flashback about three years to when I wrote a review on the Alien Gear Cloak Tuck 2.0. At the time, I said it was the best value holster available and the most comfortable of the ones I’ve personally tried. Otherwise, though, I said it wasn’t all that unique among the other hybrid IWB holsters available: it was a plastic, molded shell bolted to a backing. Price was really the only thing that set the Cloak Tuck apart, coming in well below the better-recognized brands.
And the holster wasn’t without its drawbacks. First was the exposed hardware on the back, but Alien Gear fixed that with the Cloak Tuck 3.0. But I also mentioned the hardware coming loose, something that was a continual battle because I… kept forgetting to put Loctite on the screws.
One of the features of the ShapeShift 4.0 holster, that is also on the Cloak Tuck 3.5, are belt clips that don’t attach with screws. So they shouldn’t come loose. So seeing as my wife needed a holster for her Taurus PT111 G2 (that we bought brand new at Cabela’s for only $200), I bought one for my Glock 19 as well.
As of this writing, I’ve been using the holster for about 3 months. Let’s start with what’s unique about this. From the product page:
To improve on the award-winning Cloak Tuck 3.0, the ShapeShift IWB Holster is designed with a single mounting point, allowing the holster base to flex and conform to your side.
The typical hybrid holster – the Cloak Tuck included – is a plastic shell molded to a specific firearm bolted to a backing, either held on with screws or riveted to it. The stretch around your body combined with the pressure of your belt gives the retention on the firearm – basically a friction fit. But it also causes the shell to collapse a little when the firearm is not in your holster – e.g. when at a legally-mandated gun-free zone like a US Post Office.
This can make holstering your firearm a little tricky if you’re not in such a position the plastic shell is at its loosest. Such as trying to holster your firearm while sitting in the driver’s seat of your vehicle. It’s the one thing I’ve never enjoyed about using similar hybrid IWB holsters. Or at least ones with a wide profile. I don’t recall having that issue with my MTAC holster, which has a much slimmer profile than the more popular IWB hoslters.
But this is where the ShapeShift stands out. It gives you an IWB holster that behaves like an OWB holster. Whether sitting in the driver’s seat or standing up at home, I’m able to holster and draw my firearm effortlessly. I don’t even really need to shift much to get the firearm back into the holster while sitting in the driver’s seat of my SUV.
The shell is half of what can be an OWB holster, part of the larger ShapeShift “system”, meaning it also completely covers the firearm like the MTAC holster. And Alien Gear gives you that other half as well with the IWB holster, so you can remove the shell from the backing and turn it into an OWB – some other accessories required, though the Starter Kit comes with everything to easily make it an OWB holster.
As described above from the product page, and shown above, the shell is attached to the backing only at the front side. This is a stark contrast from other IWB holsters, including the Cloak Tuck, which have bolts or screws around the entirety of the shell. This allows the shell to float free of the backing, meaning the shell isn’t deformed by being pulled around your body with the rest of the holster.
It also means friction force isn’t used to retain the firearm. Instead it relies on retention in the trigger guard, which can be tightened or loosened to make the draw as easy or difficult as you want.
And the floating shell is why I can holster my pistol effortlessly. As if I’m putting it into an OWB paddle holster on my belt. Regardless of whether I’m sitting in the front seat of my SUV or standing up and holstering my firearm before leaving for work. It’s as effortless in the former as in the latter. The shell’s shape is not determined by my position.
That is how IWBs should be. Why did no one think to do that before?
Now about the belt clips. Well there’s not really much to say. Again, from the product page:
Keeping this mantra in mind, the ShapeShift IWB Holster offers adjustable cant and ride height. Alien Gear Holsters made this possible with the invention of their unique, tool-less inside the waistband holster clips.
These clips remove the need for tools, eliminate the problem of loose screws and simplify the entire process of modifying cant and ride height.
To take them off, you rotate them so they are pointing completely down. This means they won’t come out when upright or nearly upright for attaching it to your belt. Which gives some peace of mind that you’re not going to take off the holster and find screws missing, or find one laying on the floor because it fell through your pant leg.
So… conclusions.
It’s currently going for 55.88 USD plus shipping. More expensive than the Cloak Tuck 3.0 and 3.5, but still less expensive than Crossbreed’s SuperTuck and White Hat’s offerings.
The value is definitely far greater than anything really anyone else offers. Alien Gear gives you the IWB holster as you’d expect, but also gives you the other side of the shell to make it into an OWB holster (again, additional accessories needed to use it).
Given my experience over the last few months with the Alien Gear, I don’t think I can praise it enough. The comfort is about the same as with the Cloak Tuck 2.0 I previously used without the frustration of the belt clip hardware just coming loose.
And it doesn’t collapse without your pistol, making holstering your pistol easy regardless of how you’re sitting or standing. Which looking back at the other holsters I’ve used, that is, again, how IWB holsters should be.
The Alien Gear ShapeShift 4.0 IWB holster just gets pretty much everything right. Again I’ve been using it for about three months, and I can’t think of… anything negative to say about it. A stark contrast from the negatives I could readily say about the Cloak Tuck 2.0 after only two weeks.
Note: Product images copyright Alien Gear Holsters, and used under the Fair Use provisions of 17 USC § 107 for the purposes of criticism and commentary.
It was only a matter of time before one of the popular YouTube content creators had a catastrophic failure similar to what my wife and I experienced about 4 years ago. To recap on that situation, a slight crack in the outlet thread on the CPU block allowed coolant to leak into the lid outside the O-ring, and eventually sprayed out onto the system components and catch fire.
Kyle from BitWit – previously AwesomeSauce Network – recently suffered a similar catastrophic failure in his system called “Hotline”:
Just from the thumbnail, you can tell the leak was far, far more extensive than what my wife’s system suffered. And the photos and B-roll footage in the video shows the coolant got everywhere – including onto the RAM.
Now there were several saving graces to this situation, as Kyle notes.
The mainboard is the ASUS Sabertooth X99 – the same mainboard in Mira. The “armor” on the mainboard is designed to pull heat off all the components while also better directing airflow across the power delivery around the CPU. It also sheltered those same power delivery components from spraying coolant.
Without that protection, the coolant could have created shorts between components on the mainboard. The fire risk cannot be understated, even with short-circuit protection in power supplies. The same with the GPUs. Speaking from personal experience on that one.
So how did this occur? And could it have been prevented?
Kyle said in his video that the leak came from the outlet on the graphics card bridge due to the tubing coming loose in the fitting and spraying coolant all over the place, even showing the cap on the hard tube compression fitting was also loose.
When using rigid tubing, the tubing must go into the fitting straight. 90° about dead on. And with PrimoChill’s Revolver fittings, that cap won’t go on easy unless the tubing in properly seated into the base at a near-90° angle. The cap should go on without any resistance and without any contact to the tubing while threading it down.
At the 3:02 mark on the video at the top of the article, you can see small cut marks in the tubing, where the cap for the Revolver fitting cut into the tubing as he tried to secure it. And you can more easily see as he pushes the tubing back into the fitting that the tubing was not sitting at a proper 90° in the fitting.
This alone means the tubing was at too steep an angle. And instead of the cap going easily and cleanly onto the fitting, it cut into the tubing. Kyle should have felt that resistance. But rather than taking it as a sign he needed to redo the tubing – likely because he didn’t want to – he instead forced the cap onto the fitting. Taking as a false sign that everything was fine when he finally was able to get the cap seated.
This is why I said in my article defending AlphaCool that you must double-check everything when making a custom water cooling loop. And when using rigid tubing and compression fittings, you need to look for those cut marks in the tubing. As those cut marks are an indication you didn’t do it right.
The resistance alone trying to secure the cap will also tell you the tubing is at too steep an angle. Again, that means you didn’t do something properly, and you need to redo it.
So what ultimately happened here, then?
In short, there was some springback with the other end of the tubing in the CPU block. Little by little, the tubing started to creep out of the fitting, with fluid pressure building inside the fitting the more it crept. The fluid pressure also enhanced any springback effect in the tubing. Eventually it came loose enough the fluid pressure could push it even more until it sprayed everywhere.
And in the end, not only did Kyle not properly bend the tubing, he also never took the system down for maintenance. He should have caught this by inspecting the loop, whether during a maintenance cycle a year ago or 6 months ago – or 5 minutes after he assembled everything and before adding the fluid. And if he did drain the loop for maintenance between now and the time he built it, he didn’t inspect anything – only drained, flushed, and put in new coolant.
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One other thing to note before finishing this out. Some in the comments section to Kyle’s video said that he should’ve used LocTite on the fitting caps, after noting the cap was loose. DO NOT DO THAT. If you cannot unseat the cap on the fitting without unseating the fitting, the cap is too tight.
And LocTite ThreadLocker will make it impossible for you to disassemble the loop at a later time as it won’t allow you to get the cap off the fitting. One measure I found online estimated about 50 ft-lbs of torque just to break the bond, well beyond the definition of “hand tight”.
Meaning disassembly would require literally pulling your loop apart, or cutting the tubing. It also means you cannot reuse the fittings without risking destroying them trying to get the caps off.
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To finish this out, I’ll reiterate what I said in a previous article…
To repeat, and repeat, and repeat, since it must always be said: custom water cooling has risks that you won’t find with AIOs and air cooling. And AIOs still have a risk you won’t find with air cooling. That’s just the nature of the beast. And if you decide to custom water cool your system, you must be open to accepting and accounting for that risk.
The very, very low risk involved provided you, again, take all proper precautions, starting with selecting quality parts.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) is having its 2018 convention soon. Many are under the mistaken belief that firearms are not permitted during this year’s convention. According to the NRA’s FAQ page:
During the 2018 NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits, lawfully carried firearms will be permitted in the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center and the Omni Dallas Hotel in accordance with Texas law. When carrying your firearm remember to follow all federal, state, and local laws.
This is pursuant to the convention center’s policies. While Texas law does not prohibit concealed firearms at convention centers (see Texas Penal Code §§ 46.03 and 46.035), the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center does have this on their attendee FAQ:
Licensed handguns (both concealed carry and open carry) are permitted on premise, as allowed by state law, unless the type of event being held at the KBHCCD falls under an exception that would prohibit a person with a license to carry a handgun at the event. Any exceptions will be determined on a case-by-case basis by the Director and will be in accordance with state law.
And the venue can direct that any event not allow concealed firearms on the premises, per the FAQ page. And where the NRA has not allowed concealed firearms in the past, it has been due to the law (city or State) or venue request.
This year, though, the request is coming from higher up still.
The Vice President of the United States will be a speaker at the convention. As such, the United States Secret Service has assumed jurisdiction over the venue pursuant to 31 CFR § 408.1 as authorized by 18 USC § 1752. So the carry of any concealed weapon – not just firearms – is a violation of Federal law while the Secret Service is in charge.
What exactly is so difficult to understand about this? And why are gun control advocates acting like obeying Federal authorities is hypocrisy? It’s basically a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. They’re called hypocrites for obeying the Secret Service, yet if they said to ignore the Secret Service, the anti-gun left would respond with, in short, “But I thought you were law-abiding gun owners!”
Since when is it hypocrisy to obey law enforcement, especially the Secret Service in their duty to protect the Vice President of the United States, even if that means not carrying a firearm? Egad!
