This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

I am asking as I have just created one. I won't advertise it here, as it feels not in good faith and I don't think Tildes is the right audience (I imagine most of the techies here are probably fairly seasoned).

I want to offer some kind of programming tuition to people at a good rate (read: affordable to those that might be on a low income but wish to learn). I am doing this to raise money for my local cardiology ward, who have just been told there isn't enough in the budget to cover their Christmas party this year. Morale is low there, and I'd like to help cover the deficit.

How would you structure something like this?

Initially, I have written that I have no set fee and am happy to offer services on case-by-case basis (words to that effect). But in a discussion with a friend, they suggested I should do something like:

• Small donation (£1 - £25): Access to a chatroom (Discord?) where someone can ask questions, and I'll strive to answer and help them as fast as possible)
• Medium donation (£25 - £50): I will arrange a group session where I cover some basic programming concepts and host a Q&A at the end to help bridge any gaps in understanding.
• Large donation (£50+): I will arrange a one-to-one session (via call, video or instant messaging) where I will help go more in-depth on a topic or help debug a specific problem.

If anyone has any experience with this type of thing, I'd appreciate any advice. I have only been a professional software developer for three years, so I am reasonably experienced, but not exactly an industry veteran. I want to set realistic expectations for this service.

I'm happy to share a link to the open collective via private message if anyone wants to have a look over it and offer any advice.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

I'm looking to get a new laptop for when I want to go work at a coffee shop or something.

I have seen the Framework laptops and like the idea of a modular computer you can upgrade or repair.

I'm a little hesitant though. The last laptop I tried was to buy a Pinebook a year or two ago. I got it, turned it on once and it worked fine, but then after that it would just get a black screen when I powered it on. Some posts online indicated that it might be because the memory card wasn't seated properly and it might fix the problem to reseat it. But the tiny screws on the bottom were really tight and I ended up stripping one of them while trying to open it up, so now I just have a laptop I've used once collecting dust.

I want to make sure I have an easier experience with my next computer. Can anyone attest to the reliability of the Framework 13?

General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

Here is my schema:

```sql
CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
  article_id   INTEGER
, warehouse_id INTEGER
)
;
```

How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?

I'm a technical writer. My company sells DevOps software mostly operated on the command line. I'm responsible for explaining this software via HTML5 documentation on our website.

One of our largest customers employs at least one software developer who is "totally blind" and requires a screen reader to work. I assume others exist, but they have not contacted us. Unfortunately, our website is not 100% ADA-compliant. It's far from the worst I've seen, but it could be a lot better.

I'm familiar with high-level web accessibility paradigms and am currently doing an informal audit of our website to determine what we need to improve to make it fully ADA-compliant. I've prioritized discovery for accessibility concerns in our next sprint. Eventually, I'd like to look into hiring a consultant to do a more robust analysis, but only if necessary because I'd need to request funding. Unfortunately, I have limited control over the text that displays in our product, just the documentation. Long-term, I'd like to collaborate with the product team to ensure our CLI is fully ADA-compliant.

I've begun reading web accessibility materials from the government. In the meantime, I wanted to ask: are any of you blind or low-vision, or have you used screen readers in the past? Or do you know any blind/low-vision devs? Either way, can you provide any personal insight into any of the things I can do as a technical writer to improve the usability of software documentation for the purpose of enabling you to do your job? My goal is to make the documentation experience great for screen reader users, not just OK.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

I'm seeing a lot of news in my feed about Qualcomm chips approaching laptop performance, such as

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-looks-like-the-windows-worlds-answer-to-apple-silicon/

https://www.anandtech.com/show/21105/qualcomm-previews-snapdragon-x-elite-soc-oryon-cpu-starts-in-laptops-

https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/24/qualcomm_x_elite/

Will this turn out any better than the last few times Microsoft tried to break away from Intel? Would you want such a laptop? Will it wake Intel out of its complacency?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Hey everyone! Just wanted to share that Immersive Labs has rolled out their "Haunted Halloween" challenges for 2023. For those unfamiliar, Immersive Labs offers a platform for interactive, gamified learning in the realm of cybersecurity. They've been known to host challenges that test and enhance cyber skills.

You can sign up for free using code HAUNTEDHOLLOW to try it out hubs.ly/Q026LTZV0.

Now, I'm not posting this solely out of altruism. I could use some help on the 'Mirrored Mayhem' task.

Would appreciate any pointers or hints from anyone who's tackled this challenge. Thanks in advance!

Hello,

I have quite some technical question and my DuckDuckGo-fu seems very weak on this one. I hope it is ok to post questions on Tildes, as it is not really discussion material... but someone can still learn and use whatever come from this.

I have Live Aid concert that I ripped from my DVDs and I wanted to merge the individual video files (there are four) into one long video. I'm on Linux and I'm used to ffmpeg in command line, though I do not know it that much. Each of the input videos has its own chapters and I would like to transfer those chapters into the final video as well. Preferably adding a chapter in between every input video.

I was unable to find if ffmpeg allows for something like that in a single inline command. I may have to export chapters from each input video and add them into one "chapter" file and redo times by hand on them and then use this file as "chapter" input when merging the videos, but all this is just a theory on my part.

Is there some FFmpeg expert here who has done something like that?

Hey all, I'm interested in going down the rabbit hole with Ubiquiti equipment or other manufacturers, more specifically with access points, routers, and a switch. I want to ween off my ISP-supplied all-in-one equipment as their newer hardware limits basic features such as port forwarding, and I'm interested in re-enabling my self-hosted software. Wi-Fi standards have been moving pretty quickly, as have hardware. What setups do you have established in your homes?

I don't really have a budget in mind, and have a 2.5GbE port I'd like to utilize for media consumption over LAN.

General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

Here is my schema:

```sql
CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
  article_id   INTEGER
, warehouse_id INTEGER
)
;
```

How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Between "enshittification" and my general admiration for hobbyist websites, I have felt more and more pressed to learn how to make the websites I want to see and offer it at low cost. At the same time, people usually have to maintain their day jobs and development expenses. I am curious how easy or difficult it is for people to do. (Also, I guess please share your small website if you'd like)

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Does anyone else in here use powershell as a sysadmin? If you do, do you also feel the agitation and drive to want to throw yourself down a stair case face first through frustration?

I hit a wall a couple of weeks ago due to the deprecation of msonline and with this believed it would be good to move to PS7. What I didn't realise is how much of an absolute jar of jam and mustard mix Powershell is. Core, Desktop, modules and clashing assemblies. Trying to combine ps7 core with AD, AzureAD and having to use Graph for license management - urgh!

I just spent two days writing up an amazing script with functions and arrays to load modules, connect to Entra, get licensing info with nice math, turn that in to a menu, create local AD user and sync, license in EntraID, mailbox enable and sync location, the works.

Then, something changed in a module update. Locally in the OneDrive I had 2.6.1 of graph users and Auth, that was playing well with AzureAD in core, but OS had 2.7.0 of graph. I cleared out my modules and it's broken everything, even on reinstallation.

How in the bloody Hell is Powershell ever supposed to be used and stable when module inconsistencies exist everywhere? I pulled down AzureAD again to find it no longer connects in PowerShell 7 core due to assembly version issues. I use the switch to use Windows Powershell for the AzureAD connection to then have that break the licensing math that was working in a function.

Sigh.

I'm coming from Bash on Linux where shit just works. It works for YEARS! Very few times in my almost 30 year career have I had Bash just decide it doesn't want to work and when it does, it's documented. Powershell does not seem to make sense or be documented well.

Anyway. Rant over. Back to working out what module I need fixed at an EXACT version to make it all work again and to hope MS don't randomly deprecate it again.

EDIT and SOLVED!
I shouldn't even need to update this but after spending a lot of time debugging, it turns out that you cannot call microsoft.graph.users and microsoft.graph.users.actions as they will clash, even though they are part of the same package, you'll get assembly issues. The fix - install the whole MICROSOFT.GRAPH module, all 10k parts of it, but DO NOT IMPORT IT. Now you can import-module microsoft.graph.users and the parts from .actions will also be available without loading. I don't understand why, I'm actually past caring. I'm hoping someone else scouring the internet and hitting the same wall may stumble on this and it'll help them out. Hell, I may even blog about it. Thanks for listening to my misery.

Hi everyone,

So, I have a DS923+ with 4GB of RAM and while it is running fine most of the time with my Docker containers, I guess everything could be more fluid (e.g. scrolling on Jellyfin while it is loading info / images).

Since the Linux OS uses free RAM as cache, I was looking to buy an extra stick of RAM. I was thinking of buying a 8GB of RAM which in total my system would then have 12 GB. Not sure if overkill, but still, I run a few containers.

I’ve actually searched on the Synology subreddit, but everyone is basically buying 16GB of RAM or maxing out the GB allowed for the RAM on the DS923+. So, that is the reason why I’m asking here.

I know that Kingston has some 8GB RAM sticks which should work with DS923+ but it seems they are blacklisted by Synology, so it seems you will always have a warning on the notification list which I wanted to avoid. :/ But on that list (see here: Ram list), it seems the 8GB RAM that Synology uses is sourced from Innodisk or Adata, so you shouldn’t get any warning there. Sadly, I can’t find them anywhere for sale. Even when I contacted the companies directly.

In conclusion, has anyone bought a 8GB ECC RAM for the DS923+ which doesn’t give a DSM warning?

Thanks everyone in advance!

Cheers!

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

As I'm exploring the idea of hosting my data at home (with offsite backups), I would like to better understand how to test my home network for security vulnerabilities.

I have run basic Nmap scans and confirmed that there are no open ports. I've confirmed that users have access to what they need but nothing else, and that guests using the network for web access don't have any sort of access to data. All data is encrypted so someone stealing the physical hardware shouldn't have access to the contents, either. But that's about as far as I know what to do.

What else could and should I try? How do you pentest your home network?

I feel I'm ok with my understanding of how to set things up so that everything is relatively secure. But I have very little idea how to actually test the setup.

Edit: Added a sentence about encryption.

I am a pretty big fan of the PCMR Battle station posts where everyone shares their computers and desk setups. I have never seen one here so I figured I would start one!

Here is my desk, three 32" monitors (two facing the desk, one facing my living room on the back ). I primarily use my lower monitor and have background stuff on the upper (spotify, torrent client, youtube, podcasts, winamp, twitch, discord, etc etc). I have a bunch of old Xbox360 controllers and enjoy playing PC games on the couch on my rear monitor (as well as streaming obviously). The rear monitor also has a firestick and my only source of sound (other than my headset) is an Amazon Echo (which also controls my living room lights). The PC is a prebuilt from iBUYPOWER, it was my first time buying a prebuilt (I was hesitant to do so) and the only reason I did was because I was wanting to build a new rig right as crypto mining was driving up the cost of everything and I was able to get a great deal on this one. So far it has performed great. I still have two RAM slots open so I think that is the next thing I am gonna do.

I built my last computer in 2008 so I was way overdue for a new one and my S.O. has informed me I went a little overboard =)

9200 i7-8700K 6-Core 3.7 GHz | Liquid Cooled | Z370 Motherboard| GeForce GTX 1070 | 16GB DDR4| 1TB HDD | 240GB SSD |

Lets see what you guys have!

EDIT: sorry for the low picture quality, my cell phone is garbage.

EDIT2: forgot to include a screenshot

It's the same background on all three, but the taskbar is basic on the two secondary (and icons are only on the main). And if anyone was confused about the random monitor hanging off of the back of my desk this kinda shows it better.

General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

Here is my schema:

```sql
CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
  article_id   INTEGER
, warehouse_id INTEGER
)
;
```

How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?