For a while now I have used VSCodium- which is just Microsoft's VSCode, but with as much of the telemetry stripped out (or rather, not built-in in the first place) as possible- but I've found myself with a desire to move away from Electron-based apps for a number of reasons.

Primarily, I'm ideologically opposed to the trend in which everything is an Electron-based web app packaged as a "desktop application", but on a slightly more functional note, Electron seems to behave poorly in Wayland contexts, especially on Arm64 devices.

In terms of feature set, I'm not too interested in complexity. Something open-source, relatively clean / light-weight, capable of providing a project overview and a number of tabbed or vsplit / hsplit buffers. Something with comprehensive syntax highlighting and some form of language server interface. Something theme-able, and good to look at, with relatively intuitive or well-established keyboard shortcuts. I don't much care for integrated terminals, extensive debugging tooling, or any form of built-in AI assistant.

I have been trying out Micro, with a set of plugins which allow for a project overview, a language server, and a number of other QOL improvements, but it has a list of breaking issues that will likely not be solved for years given the speed at which pull-requests are addressed, if at all. Even so- it hits most of the marks that I find most important to me.

But I'm also interested in what other people use; what other programmers find matter to them. So what text editors, or IDEs do you swear by (and please don't suggest VIM- it's overwhelming ;])?

I've been trying to use Gimp to replace other options for years now, but it feels so abstruse and severely inefficient. I used to use Photoshop around 15 years ago but have stuck with Paint.NET since - my problem is that I now use Linux and paint.net isn't available natively. I was using Pinta, but it just is like temu paint.net, and I wanted something more/better (also it has a number of bugs that can easily frustrate me and often crash/hang when doing work on larger files or for longer times).

And for decades, people (both Windows and Linux users) have tried selling me on Gimp. I've tried over and over to get into it, but nothing made sense and it took way longer to do simple things than I thought it ought... but I'm trying for reals about 10 years since my last attempt.

Please does anyone have a page that explains how to do things without everything being convoluted? There seem to be no ways to turn commands into keybinds or icons I can just click, and all the keyboard shortcuts I find are in relation to nothing I want to do. Ultimately, I prefer keyboard shortcuts, but I can do icons as well.

Latest example: I want to draw a rectangle outline. Should be simple, but there is no tool to draw shapes (at least that I can find, and the tutorials online don't seem to imply the existence of one either). Okay... I have to select the rectangle select, then I have to go to the menu (Edit) and choose Stroke Selection... which pops up another menu with a ton of options. That's great and all, but in every other program I've ever used (even MS Paint!) you just click an icon and make the rectangle. If you want to alter the shape or something you right click or hold click, or maybe you can bring up a menu. But if I want to make a number of rectangles over and over? Even with keyboard shortcuts I have to make the rectangle (no issues there), then click Edit, "s" apparently takes me to the stroke menu, then enter. Bloated at best.

So, if anyone has a good tutorial or something similar that can help me out here, or an alternative Linux-based raster graphics editor that is free, I would greatly appreciate to know of it/them. I really want to like Gimp, and I'm hoping someone here can either help me get into it or direct me elsewhere. Thanks!

Edit: I realise I forgot to mention, I did use Krita for a bit. It felt like an in between Pinta and Paint.NET, but iirc, it crashed somewhat often or had enough bugs that I went back to Pinta.

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?

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?

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?

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 have traditionally used APC's UPS products for my NAS, router, media centre and desktop computer. Nothing fancy, just something to survive short power outages and to allow graceful shutdowns if such an outage lasts longer than a few minutes.

Unfortunately, I have had three of APC's devices malfunction in the past decade and while their customer support has always been excellent, I would prefer products that just work and don't cause me additional headaches. Do you know of any UPSs that you would recommend for home use and are reasonably priced? I'm located in the EU, if that makes a difference.

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 buying a WiFi router for a new house. What would we get from using a router that works with OpenWRT, versus just going with Wirecutter's top pick?

Since we upgraded to fiber, I'm pretty happy with the network speeds at our current house. We don't have WiFi 6. I'm fairly unlikely to mess with advanced networking features as long as the networking just works.

The new house will also have fiber. The previous owners left us some kind of mesh networking devices, which I need to go look at tomorrow.

If we did go with OpenWRT, is there any particular recommended hardware?

This college term I was signed up to a class on Digital Electronics, and it kicked my butt on the very first week because the learning materials were extremely obtuse; I actually dropped the course because I could not see myself being able to keep up no matter what I did, especially because my university does not allow late work. I'm going to have to go back to it next term in order to get my degree, so I'm looking for any learning resources anyone can recommend me to give me a head start.

Just to be clear, I'm primarily looking for good resources that covers basics like boolean algebra (which I already understand but am terrible at) and logic gates. I know we'll be using VHDL later, so those will also be appreciated.

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?

Peruse this relevant meme. It depicts the magical transformation that occurs at the moment one taps the Android build number for the seventh and final time, as the arcane ritual transforms one from a chill dude in a business suit into that powerful, shadowy figure known only as "a developer".

It's a joke, obviously, but only half a joke. The "You are now a developer!" message that the developers at Google programmed your phone to display, when it grants you this set of powers that Google permitted them to program it to grant you, is doing something in the model of the world that its authors live in.

"Developer mode" isn't just for Android. The browser you are reading this in has a little panel you can open to inspect or adjust the content of the page. It's useful for things like composing humorous screenshots, deleting annoying ads, and downloading images and videos, but it's called the "Developer Tools", a set of tools defined not by what they do but by who they are intended or imagined to be doing it for. Discord has not only a "developer mode" that lets you get the permanent identifiers for messages, but also additional developer-exclusive functions that are activated by enabling the Electron developer tools and injecting code to set the isDeveloper flag. Windows has a Developer Mode. ChatGPT ~got one for some reason~ has a popular jailbreak based around convincing it that it has one. This notion that a special class of people called "developers" exist, and that they must or should be afforded extra power in our society's digital spaces, is woven into the structure of the digital environment.

Why is it like this? Big Tech doesn't give any power for free. Is it something their labor force of developers demands to be able to grant to their counterparts outside the company? Is it a Ballmer-Doctorow gambit of courting programmers as potential business customers by temporarily empowering them, before they start putting up the prices on the code signing certificates? Is it to distract and mollify hackers, to keep them from seizing similar powers in a more destabilizing way?

Is there any truth to the notion that "developers", independent of whether or not they are currently testing or programming something, are a class with different needs and rights from normal humans?

Following this guide (linuxtechi) and got Mint Cinnamon 22.2 (Zara) - yes the iso is verified, created bootable USB with Etcher, and after the screen where I input user details and password, well along the install process, got a fatal error (screenshot) :
Unable to install GRUB in /dev/sda
Executing 'grub-install/dev/sda' failed
This is a fatal error
Here is a screenshot of the GParted, fdisk, df, lsblk and what re-running the install now looks like.

Restarting (after pulling out USB) , instead of going to Windows 10, goes to a black screen that says

This is not a bootable disk. Please insert a bootable floppy and press any key to try again ...
Turn it off, back on with USB, at least I can still boot from there into USB-space mint for now.

I'm guessing this has something to do with some peculiar hardware/BIOS settings than the fault of Mint. Worth mentioning that this is a refurbished 2013 HP box (order excerpt) , with a windows 10 digital key license, and that upon every fresh boot up (first time ever to now) it shows a black-background screen that says

The preboot authentication application cannot be found.
Press any key to attempt boot without authenticating.
so it's very possible something is bork'd from the get go or else it has some very unorthodox settings to begin with.

Can confirm running Mint off the USB is fine. The screencaps are sent from Firefox within, and I'm super happy with how clean everything is. Just not sure what to do now. If it's complicated, I can try sending the box back for refund and try again with another brand new box. But now I'm shy about trying dual boot on my regular desktop.

Questions after looking around for help:

1. am I booting from UEFI or Legacy? I don't know -- how do I check ?
2. Fatal error installation hard stop: is there a way to access a log of what happened ?
3. How do I boot back into Windows 10 for now ? use GParted to delete all the "new" partitions and try booting again?

Edit: gave up . It's now a Mint box. Goodbye Windows you can kiss my dust

Background: I started daily driving Linux (specifically Mint) several months ago and for the most part it's been great. Some weird hiccups occasionally but nothing I can't handle/deal with. When doing my research to set the system up for the first time, I decided to go with 30GB for the / partition and ~220GB for the /home partition (the other half of the drive is for Windows 11 and the various essential tiny partitions). For a while this seemed to be fine, but lately I've been starting to get warnings when performing software updates via the Update Manager that the / partition is running out of space. I think it peaked at maybe 90-95% full a few weeks ago, at which point I started doing some research and cleaning up a bit (apt autoremove, deleting old logs and kernels, etc). I was able to claw back ~4GB and kick the can down the road, but now the warnings have returned and I'd like to handle this properly. I'm working from the assumption that I simply made the / partition too small and intend to double it by giving it some of the Windows space.

My question: How do I know if this is expected or if I've been doing something wrong? Is 30GB indeed too small on modern Mint, or should that have been enough? I know it partially depends on what all I actually do with the computer, but I really don't have very many applications installed (aside from defaults of course) and only four of them are Flatpaks, which I read tend to be larger. If it helps, the Disk Usage Analyzer reports that within /, /usr is taking up 13.2GB (55%), /var accounts for 9.1GB (38%), /opt is 1GB (4%), and everything else is <1% each.

Thanks in advance!

Pretty much what the title says - I'm building out a smallish compute cluster and hoping to set up some centralised storage that won't be a bottleneck, but I'm very much not a networking specialist. Most of the load will be random reads from compute nodes pulling in the bits of various datasets they need to work on.

Is it plausible to throw a 100GbE ConnectX-5 card and 256GB RAM into a consumer AM5 machine, format everything in ZFS, and set up a network share with KSMBD? My understanding is that I want to ensure everything's using mirroring rather than worrying about RAIDZ parity if I'm optimising for speed, which is fine, and I know that I'll only get full throughput as far as things can be cached in RAM - but is it reasonable to expect ZFS ARC to do that caching for me? Dare I hope that the SMB driver will just work if I drop it in there between the filesystem and the NIC? Or have I crossed the line into enterprisey-enough requirements that it's going to be an uphill battle to get this working anywhere near line speed?

How is Linux these days for everyday desktop use? I'm looking to reformat soon and I'm kind of sick of all the junk the comes alone with Windows.

I've used Linux briefly, back in the early 2000's but..not at all since really. I'm also learning web dev so I thought it could be fun to use to get used to it.

Do you use it for everyday use?

If your unfamiliar with Linux, how difficult is it to get things "done" on it?

Do most modern apps work these days?

As someone that's been using Windows for most of their life, do you think it's difficult to pick up and get running?

Do games work?

Edit I'm going to test out mint tonight on a thumb drive, thanks everyone!

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?

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Edit: I've made some progress if you want to read the edits at the end.

Last year I started slowly planning out a home server setup with help from Tildes. I've gotten a few things up and running, but have been bouncing off a variety of walls trying to get to the next step.

The first goal was-
"Ok i've got Cosmos up and running for local access using self signed certs. I'd like to get it up and running using lets encrypt and a domain so I can eventually start giving a few family and friends proper logins and external access". Of note, ideally,

This led to a second goal of-
"Gosh it sure would be nice if I didn't have to be sitting at the physical server to do testing and could instead be at another computer in my house. I should probably configure ssh locally (working) and get it to forward windows so I can work in other rooms (not working...)"

"The stack":

Server - MS01 running LTS Ubuntu with Cosmos Cloud installed (well it was, but is currently not)

Router - Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro (of note i've done some minimal guided config of this to try and harden it at a basic level so my cameras and IoT devices are better isolated. Not fully default, but the server is, for now, in the same network/vlan as the rest of my main computers so don't think this should matter.)

Clients - All local windows 10/11 machines for now, although in the off off chance it matters, i'm running nushell in the terminal

Domain Provider - Cloudflare

The SSH Problems:

I have a friend who's set SSH up for themselves with their home server, however they haven't had time to come over and troubleshoot. My rough understanding is "setup VcXsrv, change some configs, then it just works.". Windows these days has ssh built in, and I can SSH to the machine just fine with my key.

ssh -X...less so. I've read some docs, followed some guides, tried copilot, and it all leads to "yeah should work" and it just doesn't. I have configured a ssh config on both machines to allow X11 forwarding, i've started the XLaunch making sure I disable access control, made sure my unbuntu login isn't on wayland and so on. So far, no dice.

If someone has an end to end guide they trust to link, i'll gladly read and start from scratch. I've been cobbling together so many sources at this point i'm very lost. Lots of things jump quickly to "well just use WSL", which yeah ok i probably should test that next, but I was hoping I wouldn't need to (and am unclear if that'll even help).

The HTTPS/Domain Problems:

So..cosmos cloud.

I like the theory behind this software in that it helps enforce best practices so you don't blow your own head off when you screw something up. Maybe it's not the absolute best starting place, but getting it running without a domain was trivial, and more importantly, shockingly well documented. Not perfect, but for what I understand is mostly a one man show it's better than a lot of professional grade stuff i've dealt with.

And so I figured it'd be easy to just do the setup from scratch but choose https and point to my domain. There's been two attempts here, no DNS challenge and DNS challenge

No DNS Challenge Method

Per their docs it seemed easy enough. I'd never touched a DNS screen before but I configured an A record pointing at my WAN IP (eventually...) and disabled the cloudflare proxy.

Well going to that domain took me to my router login. Hmm. After screwing around with port forwarding and router DNS records I never got it to work and felt like I was playing with fire, so undid everything I'd done and decided I'd try the DNS challenge. Of note I could still access the cosmos cloud page from http directly to the IP, where it confirmed it failed to get the TLS cert, but https to the domain wasn't having it.

DNS Challenge Method

This seemed like I was close, and then nothing. I have no idea if i need to do internal routing on the router for this, it just sorta says "Do the DNS challenge, here's a form, you don't need to fill out all of it" which uh...ok.

I filled out what I think I needed to after setting up a token(not an API key) in cloudflare. I'm pretty certain I got that correct as I saw text files with keys created on cloudflare's DNS page and had I screwed that I'm guessing it couldn't have.

However from what I can tell, that's as far as it got. The files nuked themselves 2 minutes later when the TTL expired, and going to the domain locally gave me the cloudflare "our shit's fine, the server is timing out" page. From what I could tell diving into logs, cosmos had the same error, and I couldn't hit cosmos at all, even using the IP and http.

I do however wonder if maybe it did work BUT since I undid the router DNS record before trying this maybe that killed it? dunno.

Any ideas?

That's basically my situation. Figured i'd throw it here and see if anyone has some guidance or troubleshooting they'd recommend. Aforementioned friend who's done some of this before should be free one of these weekends and can probably help, and I haven't tried again since the second attempt. I've thrown some of the questions i've had on the discord and gotten minimal response(although I'm kinda using the thread as a rubber ducking spot as well). Next attempt is probably just DNS challenge again after more research on it and seeing if that works if I put back on the router DNS record, but i feel like logically that shouldn't work.

Oh also if anyone has some general recommended reading so that I can really understand what the hell it is I'm doing I'd love that. There's a ton of networking books/articles/etc, and in general I'd like to learn more about the subject, but I'm curious if there's a go to for people who are techy and trying to dip their toe in all of it the same way I am and setting up a proper home network and server.

Edit:
So after lots of testing, doc reading, and help from the cosmos discord I:

1. Got the DNS challenge to work according to the cosmos logs.
2. narrowed down that the main issue was my UDM pro router policies. Needed a firewall rule and a port forward, and had only done one of those at a time in my various attempts and not realized they were really different.

Now once that was all working and I could hit the site i was getting "likely a false cert" errors, but since i've got all the pieces I'm probably going to try another clean install later and see what we get. Hurrah for troubleshooting, good docs, rubber ducking, and helpful humans.

Edit 2:

Eventually required:

1. Port forward rule in UDM pro
2. Firewall rule in UDM pro
3. Static IP and DNS entry in UDM pro.

One I’d done those things started working. Killed it after that as now I need to think about architecture

The year is 2025. The C programming language is something like 50 years old now - a dinosaur within the fast-moving environment of software development. Dozens of new languages have cropped up through the years, with languages like Rust and Go as prime contenders for systems-level programming. Bootstrapping a project in C these days will often raise eyebrows or encourage people to dismiss you out of hand. Personally, I've barely touched the language since I graduated.

Now, with all that said: I still consider learning and understanding C to be key for having an integrated, in-depth understanding of how computers and programming really works. When I am getting a project up and running, I frequently end up running commands like "sudo apt install libopenssl-dev" without really giving it much thought about what's going on there. I know that it pulls some libraries onto my computer so that another program can use them, but without the requisite experience of building and compiliing a library then it's kind of difficult to understand what it's all about. I know that other languages will introduce this concept, but realistically everything is built to bind to C libraries.

System libraries are only one instance of my argument though. To take a more general view, I would say that learning C helps you better understand computers and programming. It might be a pain to consider stuff like memory allocation and pointers on a regular basis, but I also think that not understanding these subjects can open up avenues for a poorly formed understanding about how computers work. Adding new layers of abstraction does not make the foundation less relevant, and I think that learning C is the best avenue toward an in-depth understanding of how computers actually work. This sort of baseline understanding, even if the language isn't used on a regular basis, goes a long way to improving one's skills as a developer. It also gives people the skills to apply their skills in a wide variety of contexts.

I'm no expert, though: most of the programming I do is very high-level and abstracted from the machine (Python, Haskell, BASH). I'm sure there are plenty of folks here who are better qualified to chime in, so what do you think?

I've never actually put in more fans than what a case comes with, but I have an unraid server that is running hot so I got a pack of 5 fans to put in it.

From what I understand, you want them set up so that there is a solid airflow throughout the case; ie I'm planning to set it up so that the front and bottom fans are intake and the top and back fans are exhaust, so that cool air enters from the front/bottom and exits out the back/top.

However, one of the fans will be going on the side door. I'm assuming this wants to be intake as well (so that the airflow goes through the entire case, as I assume it would disrupt the airflow as exhaust). Or would it be better to not have one on the side and just have an extra fan laying about?

This is how I plan to set it up (shout out to MS Paint): https://ibb.co/KcXx5cgW

Note: The X's are because the installed chassis block being able to put fans there; the bottom one is especially disappointing as it's the HDDs that are mostly getting hot

Just wanted to confirm that that set up looks good and that intake for the side one (where the ? is) is the proper choice

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?

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?

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?

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?

So I am attempting to swap phones, but because I am trying to use a pixel 9 xl and it was not previously on my network, I have to wait 40 days to unlock it so I can install GrapheneOS.
I saw on Monday that suddenly there were a lot of photos dated from last Sunday on the phone's default "Photo" app. I have been keeping things to a minimum: I haven't logged into anything Google, and I've only installed F-Droid apps. Also, I had some issues with my desktop and did a clean reinstall 2 weeks ago.

But still disturbingly, my ENTIRE ~/Picture directory (and subdirectories) from my PC were loaded onto my phone.

Now, I'd like to clarify, I do have a few Google accounts, but I have them logged into my desktop with containers on Firefox (particularly, I use one for a current hobby type situation that I have to use, and the other is a 20+ account that I've moved away from, but I still want to monitor).

I want to find out why anything from my PC ended up on this somewhat secluded phone. I have not attached it via USB, and while I have been attempting to limit my connections, I do need to access some of my rl/PC stuff on the phone. But I haven't logged into a google account on it, yet, all my photos showed up on it. I have not plugged it into the computer since I tried putting GrapheneOS on it, which failed due to it not being unlocked (PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG HERE, BECAUSE I STILL HAVE TO WAIT 2 WEEKS!), yet all these pictures that I would have never expected ended up on this phone.

And I just was looking around my ~/ directory, and I saw a directory titled .nuget... I checked pacman (I'm on Arch, so that's my package manager), and it's not installed, but I deleted it because it had a lot of sketch files that ... okay, so I deleted the directory and honestly I don't have it anymore to state what exactly was in it. But I'm really tired and it triggered issues, and I looked and I see that nuget is not installed... so okay, I'm just gonna end this here because I do need to go to bed.

But, would anyone be able to provide any assistance/advice/suggestions on how the heck my phone magically obtained my Linux desktop Picture files?

So I bought my SP3 in '17 as an old-ass student attempting to graduate. It was amazing as I was able to disable most cloudy things (nothing like today with 365 and the general cloud storage), but still use it as a laptop, and finish up my degree. Since then, I've swapped to Linux and wanted to do it too (did it briefly with Ubuntu, but it was still pretty rudimentary back around '19... no touch screen, not even bloaty, was a bit too small of a UI -- can't remember which DM I used, though I know it wasn't xfce which I prefer when I use a DM, though I use i3 on my desktop).
That being said, it seems like there are great options for the Surfaces now, but for newer options. So I wanted to ping y'all and see... have you used Linux on any Surface, and preferably, would like to know for the older version.

I hear Manjaro has gotten a decent option, as I know they have the PinePhone (which I own one but... I haven't had time to mess around with, sadly). I'm not really looking for the touch screen but as it seems the blutooth is dying on the Surface (possibly unrelated or due to the latest Windows update that has borked so much - I have a firewall that prevents/shuts down a lot of Windows "protections" so I may be the culprit but I prefer to think that if I can't do what I want with what I own, the software is the problem), whatever will make it rejuvenate would be appreciated.

Honestly, it's had an awesome battery life (it can be in standby for a week and lose about 1/3 of the battery), and overall, I feel it's the last best thing Windows ever did. That being said... does anyone have a Surface and would you have recommendations (for any Surface)? If so, why, what distro, and what might you want to share?

Thanks in advance!

I'm thinking stacking running laptops on top of each other ( two ).

Would a rubber pad between them protect the laptops from each other's heat?

How thick would the pad have to be?

Would other materials work too?

I'm guessing this is something I can have cut to size in a hardware store.

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 have a 14 chapter text book to go through.

So far my plan is to read 1 chapter per weekend ( okay maybe two weekends ) and take solid notes on it.

Weeknights I am usually used up from work and got life to live. My thinking is review what I have already covered then.

My question is how to schedule the reviewing of old stuff so I don't lose it.

Example: If I just finished chapter 10, when would I review chapters 2,3,4...etc?

Anyone have experience with preparing for such a big exam?

I keep getting messages in my email inbox or LinkedIn like:

> Hi, 
> I’m seeking a genuine partnership where only a USA software engineer can truly collaborate with me. 
> I value transparency and real results. 
> Things to do are very simple and I guarantee 3K~10K/month income for you.
> I’m ready to prove my credibility and discuss a win-win business. 
> Thank you!

Hello $their_name,

Why do you need a USA engineer and what do I need to do?

- $my_name

> Thanks for reaching me out.
> 
> I run a software development team with five talented developers who specialize in frontend, backend, full stack, AI/ML and blockchain technologies. Although we have a strong team, we are struggling to find enough jobs right now. As you may know, the economy in Europe is tough and low salary as well, so we are trying to find more opportunities in the US and Canada. However, this is challenging for us because of time zone differences, language barriers, and many US clients preferring to hire local people like you.
> 
> To solve these issues, I'm actively looking for someone who can help us in getting more jobs in the US. Since you are a US citizen, you can create accounts on job platforms like Indeed, Dice, Upwork and Wellfound. I think you may have already heard about Upwork. It's a world famous freelancing platform. After setting up your accounts, if you allow me to use them, I will apply for jobs by myself. When I receive interview requests from clients, I will notify you so you can attend the meetings. During the interviews, I will support you by quickly sending you the right answers to any technical questions that come up.
> 
> Once we secure a job, our team will handle all the development work, including any test projects. We will share the profits from the work we do, with a split of 30% for you and 70% for our team.
> In short, your role would be to connect with clients and help us secure jobs, while our team takes care of the technical work. This is a great opportunity for collaboration and growth.
> 
> And there is one thing I need to tell you about using your account. Several platforms have very strict policies with ip addresses. If i use your account on my own machine, your account will be risky because ip addresses are different. And also they detect VPN, VPS, and some cloud services as well. To address this, we need to use your spare laptop. I will use your account on your spare one using a remote desktop application like Anydesk. Anydesk is a secure and safe remote desktop application.

> Greeting,
> 
> I hope this message finds you well. My name is Cuong, and I came across your information on your website ( WE need it ). I am excited to share that I have a potential long-term collaboration opportunity that I believe could be mutually beneficial.
> 
> We’re a fast-growing IT consulting company based in Malaysia, with a talented team experienced in web2, web3, mobile development, and AI. As we expand into the U.S. market, we’re actively seeking a reliable business partner—someone like you—to grow together.
> 
> Here’s how we can support you:
> - Proactively apply and schedule interviews on job platforms on your behalf
> - Optimize and refine your resume and LinkedIn profile to stand out
> - Provide technical guidance to help you succeed in interviews
> - Take care of the actual development work once new projects are secured
> 
> If this sounds interesting to you, feel free to reach out. We’d love to hear your thoughts and explore how we can collaborate!
> 
> Looking forward to connecting with you.
> 
> Best Regards
> Cuong

Some of these messages are even from people who are well-connected to former bosses and managers and other talented people that I personally know. They aren't coming out of my spam folder.

I know I'm not special in this. I'm not the only one. They are throwing spaghetti on the wall until the meatballs stick, etc.

But I thought... what if I could use this to my advantage? I would still need to do the interviews but they could do the legwork applying for jobs and reaching out to companies, connections that they already have, and then when they deliver the job contract I cut off contact with these nebulous associates? And I join the company like normal.

Thoughts?

I am looking for a new mouse, and I am overwhelmed by the choices.

I would be grateful for recommendations.

First, will a USB 2 mouse work in a USB 3 port?

What I would like in a mouse:

1. wired
2. reasonably immune to dirt buildup causing false clicks

Thanks for any input.

Edit: Thanks for all of the replies. I read everyone. I decided to go with something cheap and basic since people told me my current mouse that does unwanted clicks is likely just worn out.

My (older, now) computer has started having issues with the WiFi cutting out.

I looked at the connection strength and saw it was sometimes dropping to 0, so I picked up a WiFi extender, and now it’s signal strength is usually around 70% (Windows only shows a percentage). However, even while monitoring the strength via a PowerShell script to watch the connection strength, it still drops out while the connection strength is > 70%. When it “drops out” I’ll run a speed test and see that it is basically uploading/downloading with kbps speeds instead of Mbps.

My other devices in the same room don’t seem to have any issues, so I’m wondering if my antenna or WiFi card (built in to the motherboard) are just failing.

I know PCIe WiFi cards are better, but unfortunately, as it’s an older computer (can’t even support Windows 11), the motherboard only has one PCIe slot that is in-use by the GPU.

So, any suggestions for a USB WiFi card that actually works? (Or additional ways of troubleshooting a failing wifi connection…)

And as long as I'm asking ... nginx or Apache (or Caddy or whatever else you think is best).

I'm hosting a few web sites and services, but currently, everything is "out there" on VPSes. I want to bring it all in-house, go back to the old days of actually hosting websites out of my living room.

Towards that end, I am gradually upgrading and overhauling all the sites and services, fixing long-standing issues and inefficiencies in the config files, merging servers, etc.

I have never learned Docker. I've started to several times, worked with it a bit on a job once, used it a bit here and there; so I'm not clueless, but it would be a learning curve.

Also, I'm running one main service (Nextcloud) that officially, only supports Apache -- there absolutely are nginx setup guidelines and tutorials and such, but that's all unofficial, experimental setups.

And I'm running another major service (Synapse), on nginx.

And I want to merge the servers, and choose one web server to host both of them, and I don't know which way to go there.

Thanks for any feedback.

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?

Any clever ways to connect to the Internet safely to update drivers, security, etc? I'd only want to connect to Intel, AMD, Microsoft, etc, and then would physically disconnect the lan card. I know, dangerous, but I'm trying a piecemeal approach with a flash drive and getting mixed results. I tried to update to Service Pack 2, and it bricked the computer on restart, back to flashing Vista.

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?

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?

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've been thinking perhaps I'll need to get one of the desktop LLM UI. I've been out of touch with the state of the art of end user LLM as I've been exclusively using it via API, but tech-y people (who are not developers) mostly talk about the end-user products that I lack the knowledge of.

Ethical problems aside, the problem with non-API usage is, even if you pay, I can't find one that have better privacy policy than API. And the problem with API version is that it is not as good as the completed apps unless you want to reinvent the wheel. The apps also may include ads in the future, while API technically cannot as it would affect some downstream usecases.

As a dual use technology, the table doesn't include the extra retention period if they detect an abuse. Additionally, if you click on thumbs up/down it may also be recorded for the provider's employee to review.

I don't think OpenWebUI, self hosted models, etc. would suffice if they are not built to the same quality as the first party products. I know I'm probably asking for something that doesn't exists here, but at least I hope it will bring to people's attention that even if you're paying for the product you might not get the same privacy protection as API users.

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?

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?

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've been considering going back to school and taking some courses that are available to me. With the associates that I already have, I was weighing the options that I have available to me. Computer Science is a classic and could probably get me very far with the "need a piece of paper" folks, but it's more software development than I have a passion for, compared to my troubleshooting, find a problem, solve a problem desires. Cybersecurity is probably going to be more dependent on certs than anything I can learn in a class, especially if it's ever evolving and a degree can be outmoded very quickly. Computer Information Systems sort of has my attention because it seems like an IT based degree with elements of a business setup and not as laser focused on coding. With the courses that I currently have under my belt, it would be more for CIS than it would be for CS, but more CLEP and ACE options so it about evens out.

Does Computer Information Systems hold any water in any of your opinions to what Computer Science has to offer? Or is it somewhat arbitrary anyway?

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?

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?

Part of my role at work is in security policy & implementation. I can't figure this out so maybe someone will have some advice.

With the advent of AI coding, people who don't know how to code now start to use the AI to automate their work. This isn't new - previously they might use already other low code tools like Excel, UIPath, n8n, etc. but it still require learning the tools to use it. Now, anyone can "vibe coding" and get an output, which is fine for engineers who understand how the output should work and can design how it should be tested (edge cases, etc.)

I had a team come up with me that they managed to automate their work, which is good, but they did it with ChatGPT and the code works as they expected, but they doesn't fully understand how the code works and of course they're deploying this "to production" which means they're setting up an environment that supposed to be for internal tools, but use real customer data fed in from the production systems.

If you're an engineer, usually this violates a lot of policies - you should get the code peer reviewed by people who know what it does (incl. business context), the QA should test the code and think about edge cases and the best ways to test it and sign it off, the code should be developed & tested in non-production environment with fake data.

I can't think of a way non-engineers can do this - they cannot read code (and it get worse if you need two people in the same team to review each other) and if you're outsourcing it to AI, the AI company doesn't accept liability, nor you can retrain the AI from postmortems. The only way is to include lessons learned into the prompt, and I guess at some point it will become one long holy bible everyone has to paste into the limited context window. They are not trained to work on non-production data (if you ever try, usually they'll claim that the data doesn't match production - which I think because they aren't trained to design and test for edge cases). The only way to solve this directly is asking engineers to review them, but engineers aren't cheap and they're best doing something more important.

So far I think the best way to approach this problem is to think of it like Excel - the formulas are always safe to use - they don't send data to the internet, they don't create malware, etc. The worst think they can do is probably destroy that file or hangs your PC. And people don't know how to write VBA so they never do it. Now you have people copy pasting VBA code that they don't understand. The new AI workspace has to be done by building technical guardrails that the AI are limited to. I think it has to be done in some low-code tools that people using AI has to use (like say n8n). For example, blocks that do computation can be used, blocks that send data to the intranet/internet or run arbitrary code requires approval before use. And engineers can build safe blocks that can be used, such as sending messages to Slack that can only be used to send to corporate workspace only.

Does your work has adjusted policies for this AI epidemic? or other ideas that you wanted to share?

It just so happens that I was asked to write a paper about goals I hadn't achieved and I just thought about how I haven't touched my video game engine project in any meaningful way for around two months or so. On reflection, the main thing that is preventing me from working on it is that when I try to get back into it, I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm unorganized and can't figure out what exactly to do next because it's so open-ended. I'm absolutely terrible about writing down plans for what I should do.

I know that I'm not the only person who is trying to work on big solo projects, so I thought I'd ask: what are you doing to keep your project organized? Are you using any tools to help you? What do you find is most helpful to help you anticipate steps you'll need to address when things aren't very clear?