My 10 year old ITX NAS build with 4 HDDs used 40W at idle. Just upgraded to an Aoostart WTR Pro with the same 4 HDDs, uses 28W at idle. My power bill currently averages around US$0.13/kWh.

I don’t get the term ‘technical debt’. Most people seem to use it to say “We took shortcuts previously, so now we need to go back and do things properly”.

FIrst, it’s a bad metaphor. You take on debt to invest in long term things that will provide future benefits. Telling the bean counters that you need to stop working on useful features to ‘pay back technical debt’ is not making things clearer to them.

Second, you write software, what the heck are you talking about? Compare to civil engineering. If an area gets busier and the existing narrow wood bridge is no longer suitible, engineers don’t say “Wow what idiots built this road with no eye to future growth?” It was built with the needs and resources of the time. To improve it, the bridge needs to be closed, demolished, and rebuilt with planning, labour and materials.

Instead software is empherial. You don’t need to demolish what’s there. No need to build temporary alternative infrastructure. No need for new materials and disposal of the old. It’s just planning and labour to redo a piece of software. It always seems so whiny when people complain about technical debt, as if switching to a different build system is anywhere close to the difficulty of fixing real life; replacing lead pipes with copper for an entire city, or removing asbestos from buildings.

I’ve always just wiped my work laptop and installed Linux.

Oh boy you’re gonna love Seal https://github.com/JunkFood02/Seal

Another aspect is the social graph. It’s targeted for normies to easily switch to.

Very few people want to install a communication app, open the compose screen for the first time, and be met by an empty list of who they can communicate with.

https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/

By using phone numbers, you can message your friends without needing to have them all register usernames and tell them to you. It also means Signal doesn’t need to keep a copy of your contact list on their servers, everyone has their local contact list.

This means private messages for loads of people, their goal.

Hey, we know this account sent this message and you have to give us everything you have about this account

It’s a bit backwards, since your account is your phone number, the agency would be asking “give us everything you have from this number”. They’ve already IDed you at that point.

They should bring back the original https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPYbzfwIJRA

To me I’d consider Linux not standardized since anything outside the kernel can be swapped out. Want a GUI? There are competing standards, X vs Wayland, with multiple implementations with different feature sets. Want audio? There’s ALSA or OSS, then on top of those there is pulse audio, or jack, or pipewire. Multiple desktop environments, which don’t just change the look and feel but also how apps need to be written. Heck there are even multiple C/POSIX libraries that can be used.

It certainly can be a strength for flexibility, and distros attempt to create a stable and reliable setup of one set of systems.

I once had a coworker that used a mini PC instead of a laptop for work. Being lighter, and more powerful worked well for him.

My understanding is that each brand will contract out the design and manufacturing, with potentially totally different factories and people involved. So the same brand will have models that are built totally differently, in terms of quality and ethics. This happens from the cheapest no name products to big western brands. Make sure to check reviews for the specific model, and not blanket trust one brand to be ‘good’. Notebook check and robtech on youtube do mini PC reviews.

I feel you on the ethics side, and unfortunately it’s pretty difficult to ever avoid. You can try buying second hand, at least save something from landfill and get a bargain.

ZFS doesn’t have fsck because it already does the equivalent during import, reads and scrubs. Since it’s CoW and transaction based, it can rollback to a good state after power loss. So not only does it automatically check and fix things, it’s less likely to have a problem from power loss in the first place. I’ve used it on a home NAS for 10 years, survived many power outages without a UPS. Of course things can go terribly wrong and you end up with an unrecoverable dataset, and a UPS isn’t a bad idea for any computer if you want reliability.

Totally agree about mainline kernel inclusion, just makes everything easier and ZFS will always be a weird add-on in Linux.

I’m moving house this week and unearthed my galaxy invader 1000 handheld. Had to play a couple rounds on the spot! Apparently from 1980.

The only problem I run into is sites that use Bluetooth or USB APIs to talk to a local device. Both Firefox and Safari don’t implement them due to security concerns.

My partner worked for a local council. They reset your password every 90 days which prevented you from logging in via the VPN remotely. To fix it you’d call IT and they’ll demand you tell them your current password and new password so they can change it themselves on your behalf.

Even worse, requesting a work iphone meant filling out an IT support ticket. So that IT could set up your phone for you, the ticket demanded your work domain username and password, along with your personal apple account username and password.

Thank god we have crypto bros like Sigma G and Sina_21st to get the inside scoop on the Chinese rural bank loan crisis.

I used to do the same. But some clients nowadays have IPv6 only nodes that I need to connect to, so I’ve had to enable v6.

With AWS now charging for v4 addresses, the need to at least running dual stack might pick up.

IPv6 isn’t just larger addresses, it was meant to totally remove the need for layer 2 / MAC addresses, bus networks, DHCP, and broadcasts. Since the plan was to get rid of the 12 byte ethernet header, the 24 byte increase in IP addresses would only be a 12 byte increase in header at the end of the day. WiFi wouldn’t need three MAC addresses in every packet. IPv6 only achieves it’s true potential with a complete switch over.

I personally don’t think that can ever happen. The opportunity to switch everyone over is absolutely long gone. IPv6 isn’t an extension of v4 or a compatible replacement, like ASCII to UTF-8. It’s more like X to Wayland. The protocol authors went “This is a mess we gotta rethink this from scratch”. But there’s so much already relying on the old protocol, and replacing it with something that doesn’t perfectly match features is difficult for little reward for users.

The increase in IPv6 nodes has mostly been due to mobile networks. The tragedy is they actually still mostly use layer 2 and bridge networking. IPv4 nor v6 can handle maintaining connections while addresses change. So they set it up so that you keep the same IP address as you travel and move between different towers. This is done with massive virtual layer 2 LANs across towers, with the IP routing happening at a central datacentre. IPv6 is simply used for the larger addresses, and none of the network/protocol simplifications it promised can be used.

I’ve dabbled in a couple recently, xTTS v2 in Coqui sounds pretty good and is pretty quick. Especially if you use one of the built in voices. Has a weird “only for non commercial use” licence if that bothers you.

They can be a bit finicky. Make sure they are lined up then use a bit of pressure to click in. Careful they don’t move out of alignment when pressing down. People sometimes rip the sockets off when detaching, it’s quite a snug fit.

I found it easier to connect them on a flat table before screwing in the card.