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  • Showing only topics in ~tech with the tag "ask.advice". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. Best way to set up NAS?

      so I have a setup where I have a NUC that has docker on it, one of the containers is my nextcloud that I use for sharing my files across my computers. I also have a synology NAS which is connected...

      so I have a setup where I have a NUC that has docker on it, one of the containers is my nextcloud that I use for sharing my files across my computers.

      I also have a synology NAS which is connected to my NUC via NFS and the files themselves are stored on that NFS file via a docker volume mount.

      Hopefully that made sense.

      My problem: not often but it does happen where my router has an issue, today it just needed a restart. another time it was cause I deliberately disconnected it from the power not realizing it would mess up the connection between my NUC and my NAS.
      Why is this an issue? it causes my nextcloud to freeze up as the files it is supposed to share are no longer available. necessitates me restarting my NUC to get the connection going again.
      Thankfully hasn't happened often but still something that can be scary in the moment. My question is, is this just one of the pitfalls I have to accept of utilizing a NAS the way I am or is there a way to connect a Synology to a NUC and ensure router issues don't cause the nextcloud docker instance to freeze?

      12 votes
    2. What do you do to secure your Linux server when exposing ports to the internet?

      I've been self-hosting for a few years. However, now I have a single server hosting all of my things whereas, before, I had multiple old machines physically isolating services. I'm getting ready...

      I've been self-hosting for a few years. However, now I have a single server hosting all of my things whereas, before, I had multiple old machines physically isolating services. I'm getting ready to host a game server or few (at least one for Tilde) on this machine.

      While I'm not a neophyte to Linux, I'm not a guru and definitely not an infosec expert.

      Given that, what steps do you take to secure a Linux server, LXCs, and docker containers that are receiving port-forwarded internet traffic?

      FWIW, I expect I'll have an LXC running docker containers. I can instead run a VM doing same.

      Advice welcome!

      35 votes
    3. How do you organize images you've collected? (e.g. memes, art, inspiration, etc)

      I imagine most people don't save or just keep images together with the photos they've taken on their phones. But it would be nice to have a simple place to store and organize those images. I've...

      I imagine most people don't save or just keep images together with the photos they've taken on their phones. But it would be nice to have a simple place to store and organize those images.

      I've seen these recommendations: https://tildes.net/~tech/1l48/pinterest_alternatives , but I don't know if that's the best format. Maybe I'm just overthinking it. For now I only have a folder on iCloud with sub-folders. Quick and simple, syncs across devices, but not super organized.

      18 votes
    4. Seeking advice re learning the basics of data analytics

      I was contacted by a recruiter regarding a job in my field but they wanted someone with data analytics skills. I'm taking this as a sign that I should improve my skill set. Does anyone have advice...

      I was contacted by a recruiter regarding a job in my field but they wanted someone with data analytics skills. I'm taking this as a sign that I should improve my skill set. Does anyone have advice for where or how to start with a very small budget?

      Thanks for your help.

      13 votes
    5. Tips for increasing online privacy (without going insane)?

      I've been researching internet privacy and fell down the rabbit hole of...well, internet privacy. I started with deleting Facebook/Instagram and switching to fire fox + plugins. I would like to...

      I've been researching internet privacy and fell down the rabbit hole of...well, internet privacy. I started with deleting Facebook/Instagram and switching to fire fox + plugins. I would like to make more improvements but I really have no idea how, it started with deleting socials and next thing you know I'm looking at LineageOS and de-googling.

      If anyone has any suggestions on where to go next while staying realistic/not going crazy, i would love to hear them. I am not really sure where to set my expectations, basically I would like to have more control of my data. The other day Google photos gave me a memory recap which kind of creeped me out! I am suddenly not fond of whatever is going on under the surface of Google photos that's making collages and trying to sell my photo books. Also g-board giving me a pop up in the text prediction row asking me to rate the app??? Ew.

      I am a fan of self hosting and run a small NAS (open media vault) but this too quickly turns into the privacy spiral and leaves me thinking I should throw my phone into a river and live in the forest. Would love to hear your thoughts/advice/opinions!

      54 votes
    6. I just acquired a Samsung phone. Is there an operational benefit to registering it with Samsung?

      My previous phone was a pixel. My tech life generally is a weird mix of things that are bad for privacy that I accept for convenience but also in other ways I choose to sacrifice things to protect...

      My previous phone was a pixel. My tech life generally is a weird mix of things that are bad for privacy that I accept for convenience but also in other ways I choose to sacrifice things to protect privacy.

      Does not registering the phone with Samsung actually cost me any functionality as a user?

      11 votes
    7. Why is the iOS dialer so terrible?

      I'm open to hearing from folks who have used iOS longer than me. How is the iOS dialer so terrible when it's supposed to be the primary usage of a phone, calling people? Why can't I type the...

      I'm open to hearing from folks who have used iOS longer than me. How is the iOS dialer so terrible when it's supposed to be the primary usage of a phone, calling people?

      1. Why can't I type the letters of a name in my contacts list, eg "5-2-6" for "JAM" and have all the "James" show up? Android has had that since forever because it's not rocket science.
      2. Why can't I type to correct a digit in the middle of the number dialed? Or correct a number I've pasted in?
      3. Seriously, is there no way to replace the dialer with something better? And if there is and I just missed it, what are your recommendations?
      4. Same question for the god-awful contacts list. I use Google Contacts, have 3 google accounts in which the contacts are… and the syncing seems piss-poor.

      Ok, this turned out to be more of a rant than I anticipated. I've gotten to like iOS quite a bit, especially because the android ecosystem has become a very "worst of both worlds" option. But man the dialer's shit. Someone please tell me I'm missing something obvious.

      34 votes
    8. What kind of USB hub am I looking for?

      So I bought this caldigit hub along with this USB hub. I originally had the Aceele connect to my computer through the CalDigit Hub, but when I connected my keyboard to my Aceele, I noticed that...

      So I bought this caldigit hub along with this USB hub.

      I originally had the Aceele connect to my computer through the CalDigit Hub, but when I connected my keyboard to my Aceele, I noticed that when I hit F11, the boot menu doesn't get activated.

      I connected my keyboard to the caldigit hub directly though and was able to pull up the boot menu just fine.

      Then I connect my keyboard to the Aceele hub and then connected that directly to my computer and it still was not able to connect my keyboard to the computer pre-OS boot. So clearly Aceele waits till the OS is actually up before it can connect (I think?)

      However, I don't know what tech specs to look for in a hub that ensure that anything I connect to it will be detected pre OS-boot. I am looking for a hub that specifically plugs into a USB-C port, has 4 USB-A ports and is USB 3.2 gen with 10 gbps. Is that possible?

      8 votes
    9. Need a little help with Wyze bulbs and automation

      I've been doing some research to try and find a way to turn a Wyze bulb on and off with a button on the wall, or cheap switch, but I'm struggling. Situation: I have a Wyze bulb that I have been...

      I've been doing some research to try and find a way to turn a Wyze bulb on and off with a button on the wall, or cheap switch, but I'm struggling.

      Situation: I have a Wyze bulb that I have been turning on/off with voice for a couple years. It's not something I want to be on a schedule. I just want to turn it on with a switch/button. I have switched outlet in the room, but the lamp is on the other side of the room from the outlet. The switched outlet has a neutral wire but it's being used at the end of the run of the circuit (14/3 from panel going to outlet, and the from the outlet to the switch with 14/3). So essentially I cannot use a cheap Wyze switch or other smart switches to replace the current standard switch.

      I have heard of some smart switches that don't need a neutral but I have not found any. I also wanted to see if I could get a simple battery stick on button to just trigger an automation to turn the bulb on. However I have not found anything that seems to work with Wyze or the Google Home app. However I'm probably just missing something.

      Any advice would be appreciated!

      6 votes
    10. Should I stop using Kagi because they do business with Yandex?

      So perhaps I should have done more research , should have known, etc. But their recent news post took me by surprise: Your subscription money at work: Image search enhanced with Yandex They're...

      So perhaps I should have done more research , should have known, etc. But their recent news post took me by surprise:

      Your subscription money at work:

      Image search enhanced with Yandex

      They're just out there bragging about giving money to Yandex. This bothers me.

      As I said above, I should perhaps done more to research this before subbing, but that news post.

      Shame, as I quite liked the search, but it's back to DDG I guess.

      Am I over reacting here? What do others think?

      49 votes
    11. I just bought a 64GB iPad, anything I should know/do?

      I'm not a very heavy tablet user, but generally like to have a tablet around for stuff I won't do on my phone. I bought a Pixel Tablet last year when I did my big tech upgrade (new phone, new...

      I'm not a very heavy tablet user, but generally like to have a tablet around for stuff I won't do on my phone. I bought a Pixel Tablet last year when I did my big tech upgrade (new phone, new smart watch, new upgraded tablet), but found the experience a bit lacking with the more important stuff I use my tablet for, largely taking notes with OneNote, and very light mobile gaming (which I usually use my phone for, since it's right there).

      I'm curious if anybody's got any advice for a non-dedicated Apple user with an iPad. I'm already thinking about synergy with my multi-platform apps like Microsoft 365, Google Drive (free tier) and Mega (which I use as a backup repo for large data that isn't documents like games, music samples, etc).

      I'm thinking some music apps would be great to take advantage of the generally lower-latency audio capabilities of the iPad, but aside from that can't think of too much. Otherwise, due to the 64GB, it's going to be my cloud-oriented low-storage tablet.

      I saved $70 on a black friday deal on Amazon, so I bought a pen to go with it, which isn't the Apple Pencil and would be curious to know if I'm missing out on a ton doing that as well?

      Side question: I would be curious what the third-party app world is like as well, ideally something like iOS F-Droid.

      16 votes
    12. Tried switching to Fedora KDE Plasma, have issues with nvidia driver

      Solved I was idiotically installing a legacy driver instead of the current driver. I installed the current one and it is now working. Background on Tildes For background I posted about distro...

      Solved

      I was idiotically installing a legacy driver instead of the current driver. I installed the current one and it is now working.

      Background on Tildes

      For background I posted about distro recommendations a few weeks ago: https://tildes.net/~tech/1ji6/switching_to_linux_looking_for_distro_recommendations. I settled on Fedora KDE Plasma.

      Steps taken before the problem

      I installed Fedora onto an unallocated space on my SSD, alongside Windows 10. I have tested that Windows 10 is currently working, and that Fedora starts normally. I have also used the boot media to install onto my laptop with no issues. However, on my desktop before installing GPU drivers for my GTX 970, I found Fedora to be quite buggy. This would include the session freezing and needing to be restarted , or my screen would go black with text saying something along the lines "desktop session cannot be unlocked, press ctrl + alt + f3 and login and run a command (I cannot remember the command)" and then I could switch back to my previous session. Overall, it was a buggy mess. My thought process was that it may be a GPU driver issue, and so I started the process of installing RPM fusion and installing the driver from there. I have a GTX 970, so I followed the section titled "Legacy GeForce 8/9/200/300" on this page: https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryHowto%5Cb%29. The commands I ran after installing RPM were: sudo dnf update -y and sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-340xx akmod-nvidia-340xx and followed all the prompts provided as necessary. I would then leave my computer for about 30min, before returning and restarting (thinking that a restart may be necessary to be fully using the drivers).

      Current Situation

      After going through the process listed above, I turned my computer on and booted into Fedora. My screen would hang on a black screen with a flashing white underscore at the top left corner. The computer would not get past this point, no matter how long it was left. Hitting "ctrl + alt + f2" would give me a working terminal that I could interact with, showing the basic CLI of Linux working. I did not play around much with the commands, but I do know the basic shutdown now command was working.

      Troubleshooting Steps Tried

      I was thinking that it may be due to the driver being X11 and I am running Wayland. I searched online and results seemed to indicate that this would not cause an issue
      (I will add more steps here when people recommend them)

      9 votes
    13. How do I know if a USB-C PCIe card supports 4k video output?

      finally getting to be that time where I need a USB-C slot on my tower that I built back in 2017 so I started looking into expansion cards. One thing I can't tell is how to tell if a particular...

      finally getting to be that time where I need a USB-C slot on my tower that I built back in 2017 so I started looking into expansion cards.

      One thing I can't tell is how to tell if a particular expansion card supports the usb-c ports with DP-Alt mode for a 4k display if the need arises.

      for exmple, had my eye on this one and I can't tell much if it does have that kind of support

      9 votes
    14. I'm liking Webflow - is there a (free?) way to get the similar design experience on WordPress?

      Hiya, coming off as cheapskate since if I love Webflow so much why not just pay for it? Well a few reasons, but mostly because I'd rather like to be not tied to any single service that can just do...

      Hiya,

      coming off as cheapskate since if I love Webflow so much why not just pay for it? Well a few reasons, but mostly because I'd rather like to be not tied to any single service that can just do away with me with a snap of the fingers.

      I've been playing around locally with WordPress and the block editor actually gets me to the finish line. It's pretty easy to design what I want to design -- just everything's lacking that final little detail, I can't easily overlap text with images etc.

      So am I just incompetent and the WordPress' block editor is actually capable of these things? Most of the plugins (like Elementor) you need to pay for before you can actually do anything custom, which is kinda no-go for me. I'm also not opposed of trying something else, just that it needs to be free (as I want to be certain I know how to use it before I commit).

      (Sorry for the rushed post, I'll make corrections it if need be.)

      6 votes
    15. Very unusual behaviour trying to use Duck Duck Go. Any suggestions for what to do?

      Solution I added 20.43.161.105 duckduckgo.com to my hosts file and everything is working fine now. I also changed DNS servers away from my ISPs, thanks to all the recommendations in this thread....

      Solution

      I added 20.43.161.105 duckduckgo.com to my hosts file and everything is working fine now.
      I also changed DNS servers away from my ISPs, thanks to all the recommendations in this thread.

      cat /etc/resolve.conf
      nameserver 1.1.1.1
      nameserver 1.0.0.1
      

      That seems to be working

      > nslookup duckduckgo.com
      Server:		1.1.1.1
      Address:	1.1.1.1#53
      
      Non-authoritative answer:
      Name:	duckduckgo.com
      Address: 202.39.62.156
      Name:	duckduckgo.com
      Address: 2001:b000:1a0:3505:202:39:62:15d
      

      except (note that non-autoratative IP address which belongs to my ISP) ...

      > ping -4 duckduckgo.com 
      PING duckduckgo.com (202.39.62.156) 56(84) bytes of data.
      

      My ISPs address again. More...

      traceroute to duckduckgo.com (202.39.62.156), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
       1  * * *
       2  * * *
       3  * * *
      ...
      30 * * * *
      

      Why do ping and traceroute not use the new DNS server's I've configured (after re-booting too_)
      The only thing to work is to add

      20.43.161.105 duckduckgo.com
      

      to my hosts file and now everything seems to be working as expected, though I have doubts now that changing the DNS configuration has done any good.

      I know ISPs cache things like youtube to reduce costs so I'm wondering if 202.39.62.156 handled caching of duckduckgo, and they pointed their nameservers there and that box is broken.

      Thanks for everyone's input and patience (lol are you still reading???)


      Original Question

      I've used Duck Duck Go as my main search engine for many, many years.
      I have several search engines installed in Firefox including 2 for duck duck go. One for the /lite version and one for the full version.

      [See update at bottom]

      In recent days neither of these work. I would type my query into the search engine, press enter as I have done for years.

      All I see is a blank page.

      The latest development is that when I try and enter ANY search to either of those engines I get a GOOGLE 404 not found page.

          
          traceroute duckduckgo.com                                                                                                             ─╯
          traceroute to duckduckgo.com (216.239.38.120), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
           1  * * *
           2  * * *
           3  The usual internal routing of my ISP
           4  ""          ""            ""
           5  ""          ""            ""
           6  ""          ""            ""
           7  ""          ""            ""
           8  * * *
           9  any-in-2678.1e100.net (216.239.38.120)  4.089 ms  4.077 ms  4.181 ms
          
          ping duckduckgo.com                                                                                                                   ─╯
          PING duckduckgo.com (2001:4860:4802:32::78) 56 data bytes
          64 bytes from any-in-2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net (2001:4860:4802:32::78): icmp_seq=1 ttl=117 time=10.1 ms
          64 bytes from any-in-2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net (2001:4860:4802:32::78): icmp_seq=2 ttl=117 time=8.52 ms
          64 bytes from any-in-2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net (2001:4860:4802:32::78): icmp_seq=3 ttl=117 time=6.87 ms
          64 bytes from any-in-2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net (2001:4860:4802:32::78): icmp_seq=4 ttl=117 time=8.83 ms
          
          --- duckduckgo.com ping statistics ---
          4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3005ms
          rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 6.873/8.584/10.118/1.155 ms
      
      cat /etc/resolv.conf
      > MY ISPs name servers
      > MY ISPs name servers
      

      Sure enough I cannot find any pages on the site 2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net which is obviously belongs to google.

      This is very very strange.

      Could someone verify if they can use DDG or whether they see the same as me?
      Does anyone have any idea what's happening?


      UPDATE
      I can connect to and use DuckDuckGo using a browser VPN. This appears to be a mess made by my ISP.
      I'd still like suggestion to overcome the problem though.

      14 votes
    16. What the hell is a Typescript or: Creation ideas above my skill level

      I'm a graphic designer. I've been working in the field for nearly seven years now, two of which in an actual agency. One afternoon I started on a project that was born of more or less pure spite -...

      I'm a graphic designer. I've been working in the field for nearly seven years now, two of which in an actual agency. One afternoon I started on a project that was born of more or less pure spite - I love the annual art trading game Art Fight, but absolutely loathe how the game is run, how it comes completely crashing down every year due to people trying to access the site all at once and them not having any contingencies in place, and how the leadership there is apparently only concerned with donations and little community outreach. If you're unfamiliar, artists get sorted into one of two teams, upload their original characters with reference sheets and then draw characters belonging to the opposing team's members. It's great fun, and I tried volunteering for them, but the fact that I'd've to sign an NDA just to be a moderator is just a step too far. For those unaware, the Art Fight team was also caught embezzling donations in one of the last fights, 2022 if memory serves.

      So I did what I do best. I started drafting user stories, did UX research, sketched, drew and designed what I'd think would solve all the problems with Art Fight. The result I called PICTOCLASH, and while the process to make and prepare the design took me about four weeks from start to finish, I knew I couldn't actually make the thing work. Disregarding the fact that the Art Fight platform is anaemic and runs on outdated PHP, has no optimisations for image storage or user content and does not buffer or queue database interactions, it's still a massive lift. We don't have numbers on how large AF is, but suffice it to say that it's far larger than any hobbyist project can be without VC involvement.

      I was convinced, though, that if one just... approached the problem differently, maybe with modern technologies, the Next.JS I kept hearing about from my web design peers, maybe a shiny new database like Postgres, state management, all the things I know next to nothing about, this could work. My project could work. Yes, it's a lot of work, but it wouldn't be impossible. With a team of developers, all believing and contributing to the project in an open-source way, that's doable. Eminently realisable, even.

      So I started. I began reading documentation for TS, Next, React, Prisma, Postgres and all the other things I'd need to read up on. This was maybe half a year ago. But damn, programming got hands. Even the Me-ChatGPT-Dream-Team wasn't enough to have me wrap my head around so many concepts here. I'm a front-end guy, that's for sure. I got my ass handed to me, and in a month, I barely have a login system, and looking at GitHub I could have just went with any of the many pre-rolled solutions.

      Which just led me back to my original point. I have three hundred-odd lines of barely functional typescript that holds up an incredibly slow login system. I'm not cut out for this project, and I need to accept that. I'm a designer, I know PHP, I can write valid JavaScript, but... application development? That'll forever be a realm locked off to me.

      And of course, the easy way out would just be to look for developers. But I can't do that, at least not without significant risk of falling into the "I had an idea for an app, you wanna make it?" brand of parasite. I'd feel dirty doing that, even if I know that I could more or less to front-end and every visual component by myself. In fact, I have done that. It's just the app part that's missing, and that's unfortunately the major lift.

      How do you people cope with this? Because it's not been the first time this happened to me. I keep putting off learning 3D modelling out of exactly that reason, that I could just hit a wall no matter how hard I try. It's frustrating, and looking back how easily I picked up other disciplines in university it really makes me wonder if there are some things my brain just can't learn. I don't think I'm ready to accept that.

      Edit: For anyone interested, I uploaded the abridged design document to my website.

      20 votes
    17. MiniPCs, portable monitors?

      Hello, it’s midnight where I am and I fell into a rabbit hole of MiniPCs and portable monitors. I work from home with the occasional max once a month summon to office. I travel a lot and I ended...

      Hello, it’s midnight where I am and I fell into a rabbit hole of MiniPCs and portable monitors.

      I work from home with the occasional max once a month summon to office. I travel a lot and I ended up wondering if a MiniPC like Geekom would be for me.

      I currently have a ThinkPad but I have an external keyboard, mouse, monitor, speaker and webcam at home. I only ever use the actual laptop parts when I am on a train or traveling. Which is also a pity because the laptop is heavy for me.

      Anyway, does anyone travel with a MiniPC / monitor combo? I would love to hear your experiences and advice and maybe some obvious and not-so-obvious pros and cons that you can share.

      13 votes
    18. Stacking laptops

      I might have to have two running laptops for work. Desk space is at a premium. Right now I have my work laptop stacked on top of my personal PC on my desk ( tower, on its side, on a stand ). Would...

      I might have to have two running laptops for work.

      Desk space is at a premium. Right now I have my work laptop stacked on top of my personal PC on my desk ( tower, on its side, on a stand ).

      Would a rack like this one, with a lap top on each shelf be enough to keep the magnets on the lids of each laptop from interfering with each other? What about protecting each laptop from the heat of the other laptop?

      I already have a mechanical KVM. I will just need to buy one that accommodates more than 2 computers.

      Please, let me know if I have overlooked any considerations.

      Thank you.

      8 votes
    19. I'm getting a new Macbook Pro. What's your favorite apps and tips?

      Hi Tildes ! I was passively looking for an refresh of my current laptop (Thinkpad X1 carbon Gen 5; it's still working fine except some mysterious thermal profile1), and a friend of mine working in...

      Hi Tildes !

      I was passively looking for an refresh of my current laptop (Thinkpad X1 carbon Gen 5; it's still working fine except some mysterious thermal profile1), and a friend of mine working in retail told me he could sell me a Macbook Pro (the mid-range 14in one with the M3 Pro chip2 at a heavy discount (more than half the price; it's a display model but he tells me it wasn't mistreated). It's a too good of a deal to pass on, so I accepted.

      1 it's constantly at 70C; I already changed the thermal paste and the battery.
      2 does that mean it's Macbook Pro Pro ?
      3 and I guess the Thinkpad's going to be recycled as a home server. I half hope that running Linux on it will solve the thermal problem

      My use case would be (in no particular order):

      • photo/video processing: I know what I need and I already have a CaptureOne license. Davinci Resolve is enough (and plenty) for me
      • programming (web dev, arduino; VScode's probably gonna be the second thing I'm going to install)(I'm kinda interested running a LLM locally, but have no experience with that)
      • light CAD for 3d printing,
      • gaming? My old gaming tower runs Elden Ring fine but struggle a bit with Baldur's Gate 3 (it's really the loading time, and loading textures), and it seems this MBP can run it fine.
      • regular day-to-day browsing / office and adulting work

      I would qualify myself as a power-user.

      Background: I'm not entirely new to the Apple ecosystem. Back in uni I had the first unibody MBP sporting Leopard and then Snow Leopard. I then went with a X220t and then a my current X1.

      Some questions:

      • I see that BetterTouchTools is still a thing (back then I mapped three fingers swipe up to new tab, three finger swipe down to close tab, and twist to change tabs). I half remember one that was just a staging area living on a sidebar when moving file from one part of the finder to another (the name eludes me). Is there any other handy utilities I should be aware of ? That's also your prompt to plug in your favorite apps :)
      • How's the dongle life (and what's the recommended one) ? While most of my stuff can be USB-C, I still have important stuff that requires USB-A (my photo printers, several portables hard-drive)
      • Any interesting (gasp!) Android integration ? I'm not currently using any with my Windows machine (having Whatsapp/Telegram/Discord is sufficient), but I'm curious anyway.
      33 votes
    20. [SOLVED] Looking for help linking to a specific comment on Reddit

      Hi, Thanks for looking at this. There is a specific comment in a reddit conversation that I want to share in a few different places. It's important to me. I tried this a few years ago when I...

      Hi,

      Thanks for looking at this. There is a specific comment in a reddit conversation that I want to share in a few different places. It's important to me.

      I tried this a few years ago when I wanted to participate in r/bestof and I could not make sense of the instructions that they provided.

      I am not a technologically skilled person but I have learned a few tricks using markdown while participating here on tildes.

      Can someone please give advice and possibly help me troubleshoot ? I will be returning to my computer and hopefully trying out suggestions about four hours from the time stamp on this post.

      8 votes
    21. Paperless NGX vs ???

      I'm stuck in a bit of a rut for work and trying to help out a department. We're going through a massive cash flow problem that we will see the other side of. There is zero budget for this, but I...

      I'm stuck in a bit of a rut for work and trying to help out a department. We're going through a massive cash flow problem that we will see the other side of. There is zero budget for this, but I have spare kit.

      The problem is that Legal have pulled all paper archives for all of the projects for the past 20 years of operating and need them digitally stored. Right now, we have a company runner scanning in a document to email, who then saves it off to a folder structure and renames it. The structure is on SharePoint, but the scan is image, not even OCR'd.

      I have discovered Paperless NGX and wonder if this would be a better option for fast ingest. I can host on prem easy enough, either on a bare metal or VM. It looks like it can SSOd via many different options.

      Any input would be great before I just go ahead and do this. I'm after pros and cons, alternatives, etc.

      Thanks.

      11 votes
    22. Tips for managing a low-storage laptop?

      I bought an M2 Macbook Air at the start of this year for uni. I only planned to use it for uni work as I have another 'more powerful' laptop that I use for everything else, but I kinda love the M2...

      I bought an M2 Macbook Air at the start of this year for uni. I only planned to use it for uni work as I have another 'more powerful' laptop that I use for everything else, but I kinda love the M2 and want to make it my daily driver laptop. Battery lasts for ages, screen is great, it's thin and light, etc. The problem is - as you might guess - I only got the 512GB model and if there's one thing Apple hates, it's people having control over their hardware, so no expandable storage. I can't afford to upgrade the entire laptop, so I need to work with what I have. Here's what I want to use it for:

      • Graphic design: Adobe software, high-res images, typefaces, etc.
      • Music production: Ableton Live 11 Suite, sample packs, plug-ins, project folders, etc.
      • Music library: uncompressed .m4a files because iTunes hates Vorbis 😢, ~80% of my library (I don't have everything downloaded yet) is 25GB.
      • Web-browsing: Firefox... this one isn't really relevant but I feel like I should include it for completeness.

      Does anyone have any tips to stretch this 512GB as faaaaaar as it can go? I have a 2TB external SSD, but I'm wary of keeping anything important on it because it's small and I don't want to accidentally lose a bunch of stuff. I can spend a bit of money (maybe 30usd) if anyone has a good idea that requires buying something, but I can't spend any ludicrous amounts, I already did that to get the laptop!

      15 votes
    23. Simulating an ISP's access to your traffic

      Hey all, We're working on a press-freedom / anti-censorship project and we're testing a variety of scenarios in which a journalist's internet traffic is being monitored by a hostile state. We'd...

      Hey all,

      We're working on a press-freedom / anti-censorship project and we're testing a variety of scenarios in which a journalist's internet traffic is being monitored by a hostile state. We'd like to simulate an ISP's access to the journalist's traffic so we can run some packet collection and other tests to see what it looks like.

      What's the best way to do this? Put a few routers in series and collect on the last one?

      19 votes
    24. [SOLVED] Need help troubleshooting computer

      Solution It was probably my motherboard. I got a new CPU and motherboard and it worked. I also upgraded from DDR3 to DDR4 ram in the upgrade process Background So my computer is not posting, and I...

      Solution

      It was probably my motherboard. I got a new CPU and motherboard and it worked. I also upgraded from DDR3 to DDR4 ram in the upgrade process

      Background

      So my computer is not posting, and I am unsure the cause. I am not getting an error code, so that complicates things. I do not know if this motherboard will provide post codes, it does not have a seven segment display for providing post codes.

      How it started

      It just randomly stopped displaying any pictures, unsure if it happened while in use or when the computer was asleep. I was doing stuff at my desk and had music playing on my computer. The music ended and I did not put on more music and the monitors went to sleep. Later when I went to use my computer It did not appear to wake up, I tried fully shutting down and turning on my computer, and that is when this problem occurred.

      Symptoms:

      • When I power on, computer appears to start normally, with all fans spinning so power delivery appears to be working. Even GPU fans are spinning.
      • Holding down the power button turns the computer off as normal.
      • Nothing is displayed on the screen, my monitors do not even detect an input.
      • USB devices do not appear to be powering on.
      • Every minute or two, the GPU fans ramp up briefly, and then ramp down. It may be all fans are ramping up, kind of hard to tell exactly which fans are ramping up.
      • With the AMD GPU, the LEDs for power turn on. However, I vaguely recall the GPU itself having some RGB when the system was running that was not on. How my computer was setup I did not see inside my case that often, so the RGB on the GPU is a vague memory from a few years ago and I would not put much weight in there being some RGB.

      Hardware:

      • MOBO: Gigabyte 9900FXA-UD3
      • CPU: AMD FX-8350
      • GPU: ASUS Radeon HD7870 or EVGA GTX 970
      • PSU: Cooler Master Elite V2 550W

      Troubleshooting Attempted:

      I initially assumed it was GPU related as the computer appears to turn on normally, but then nothing is displayed. So another user shipped me his old GPU (the GTX 970), and I swapped it out with my old one, and the problem persists.

      I tried swapping out the RAM

      I tried a brand new PSU and that also did not solve the issue

      Leading hypothesis

      Since I have changed everything out except CPU and MOBO, I am thinking it is probably my MOBO. I am currently researching my options for replacing my MOBO, or a friend offered me his CPU and RAM from his old rig with a broken MOBO that may be a better option than replacing mine.

      22 votes
    25. How do I sync my dotfiles between PC and laptop?

      I've been struggling with this for a long time. I want to keep my workflow consistent independent of my "workstation", and have identical dotfiles (like .bashrc, .vimrc etc.) on different devices....

      I've been struggling with this for a long time. I want to keep my workflow consistent independent of my "workstation", and have identical dotfiles (like .bashrc, .vimrc etc.) on different devices.

      So... How you personally deal with this issue, and what should I do?

      Thanks!

      12 votes
    26. Data security help - SOC2ish

      Hi Tilderinos, I head up a small startup and we're looking to get some support for our data security. Up until now we've worked with small mom and pops that didn't have any requirements, but a few...

      Hi Tilderinos,

      I head up a small startup and we're looking to get some support for our data security. Up until now we've worked with small mom and pops that didn't have any requirements, but a few of our new clients have full data security teams and our infrastructure and policies/protocols aren't up to snuff. We reached out to a few consulting firms and they quotes us between $80-100k to get things set up and run us through a full SOC2 review. As a small company we don't really have that type of budget, more like $40-50k. I stumbled upon Vanta and Drata as alternatives and had meetings with their sales folks last week. Both of their offerings from setting up our protocols to monitoring and getting us through a SOC2 were only $16k.

      Are platform based companies like Vanta or Drata enough to get us off the ground while we're still getting set up? Has anyone worked with them before and have any feelings one way or the other? Should we be signing on with a security consulting company - be it at a lower rate if we can negotiate it?
      This is all quite new to me and any insight folks here can provide would be incredible useful.

      12 votes
    27. Woocommerce: Apache or Nginx?

      Edit: Apache OR Nginx? Could someone fix my title - I posted without proofing. My wife is having half decent success with ecommerce. She's doing great on Etsy and eBay, and now her website is...

      Edit: Apache OR Nginx? Could someone fix my title - I posted without proofing.

      My wife is having half decent success with ecommerce. She's doing great on Etsy and eBay, and now her website is starting to pick up.

      It's currently hosted on 20i who pride themselves on being an excellent WordPress and Woocommerce provider, with a half decent CDN. In reality, I think it's pretty shit for what you pay for.

      I'm tempted to either grab a VPS or even go as far as a bare metal at a CoLo with public IP and run the full stack myself. If I do, shall I go Apache or Nginx? I've done both and I'm pretty agnostic. OS would be Debian.

      Before I go to this length though, does anyone know of a fair priced but good performing Woocommerce platform? She's got hundreds of hours already, the plugins and over 300 products listed, so I'm loathe to move to a different solution, however, I'm not ruling it out.

      The reason to not all in on Etsy or eBay is the 25% cut they take of everything. Using a personal site and Stripe payment platform means it's more 1% + 20p for processing.

      Ideas, thoughts and suggestions please?

      15 votes
    28. Self-hosting a podcast server

      I am wanting to setup a personal podcast server but I am not really sure how to go about that. I have my own server at home with docker and I am not sure if there are any well-known FOSS...

      I am wanting to setup a personal podcast server but I am not really sure how to go about that.

      I have my own server at home with docker and I am not sure if there are any well-known FOSS (preferable dockerized) podcast server applications that I can spin up and load some podcast episodes into so that I can create my own custom podcast feed that only I would subscribe to?

      and I want to be able to support video podcasts.

      17 votes
    29. Struggling with first dev job - seeking advice

      This is my cry for help. I'm a newer programmer who just got hired for my first actual programming job a few months ago. Before now the only things I really made were simple python scripts that...

      This is my cry for help.

      I'm a newer programmer who just got hired for my first actual programming job a few months ago. Before now the only things I really made were simple python scripts that handled database operations at my last job. I live in an area with no opportunities, and so this new job I got is my saving grace at this point. For the first time in my life I can have actual savings and can actually work on moving to an area with opportunities. However...

      Everything is falling apart. I have no idea how this place has survived this long. There is no senior dev for me to go to. There are no code reviews. There is no QA. There is a spiderweb of pipelines with zero error handling or data-checking. Bugs are frequent and go undetected. The database has no keys or constraints, and was designed by a madman (so it's definitely not normalized whatsoever). I already have made a bunch of little scripts handling data-parsing tasks that are used in prod, and I've had to learn proper logging and notifications on errors along the way, and have still yet to learn how to do real tests (I ordered a book on pytest that I plan on going through). I am so paranoid that at any moment something I made does something unexpected and destroys things (which... kinda actually happened already).

      We're in the long and arduous process of moving away from this terrible system to a newer, better-designed one but I'm already just so lost and... lonely? There's a few separate dev "teams" but one is outsourced and the other is infamously unapproachable and works on a completely different domain. There's no one there to catch me if/when I make mistakes except myself. The paranoia I have over my programs is really getting to me and already affecting my health.

      I guess I just want advice on what I should do in this situation. Is this a normal first experience? I care deeply about making sure the things I make are good and functional but I also don't have the experience to forsee potential issues that may come up due to how I'm designing things. And how can I cope with the paranoia I'm feeling?

      EDIT: It takes me a while to write responses, but I want everyone to know that I really appreciate all your advice and kind words. It does mean a lot to me! I'm doing my best to take in what everyone has said and am working on making the best of an atypical situation. I'm chronically hard on myself, but I'm gonna try to give myself a bit more grace here. Again, thanks so much for all the thoughtful replies from everyone. :)

      34 votes
    30. Reddit won't allow me to delete my comments

      I have, despite my better judgement, gone back on reddit in a limited way after exiting completely for a few months. I decided to anonymize myself as much as possible and was using Redact to cover...

      I have, despite my better judgement, gone back on reddit in a limited way after exiting completely for a few months. I decided to anonymize myself as much as possible and was using Redact to cover my history. It overwrites comments with random words plus a short message that the comment has been anonymized and deleted with Redact. It's been working great for quite a few months.

      Today I logged on for the first time in a few days and my comments have ALL been restored, right back to when I opened a new account a few months ago after closing my ten year old account. Everything is there again.

      Not sure reddit's point in restoring them, other than a stark reminder that comments and personal info mining is the point of reddit, not community engagement, just like all the other social media.

      Curious if anyone has any idea on how to permanently delete comment history?

      33 votes
    31. Are you a hiring manager/recruiter in tech? In this Circus Funhouse Mirror tech economy, how do candidates even get an interview?

      I've been a hiring manager before across a few jobs. But, then, I was receiving maybe 50 resumes to screen a week with my recruiter. Y'all are, what, at a few factors to an order of magnitude more...

      I've been a hiring manager before across a few jobs. But, then, I was receiving maybe 50 resumes to screen a week with my recruiter. Y'all are, what, at a few factors to an order of magnitude more than that?

      Are your recruiters now pre-filtering resumes before you see them? What is being used to determine whether a candidate gets an interview now?

      What I'm seeing:

      • Referrals almost never matter: I've gotten two interviews through my network after dozens of applications—and I'm fairly well networked.
      • Experience at other well-known Tech companies doesn't get an interview
      • Having the right skill set, based on the job description doesn't get an interview.

      From the outside, it seems like a coin flip.

      Meanwhile, I have LinkedIn's AI advisor routinely giving me flavors of "yes, you're definitely their kind of candidate" yet no responses after weeks followed by the occasional casual rejection email.

      So what's happening behind the scenes? How do resumes get on your radar? How do you work from the deluge to hiring a human?

      Sincerely,
      A very experienced engineer and manager who is rather fed up with what seems like a collection of pseudo-random number generator contemporary hiring processes.

      EDIT: I should have also included recruiters in the title of my ask.

      56 votes
    32. Is it possible to sharpen this video with tools freely available on Linux?

      I really like this instructional video. I even downloaded a copy. The copy I downloaded is as blurry as the copy on YouTube. Is it possible to possible to sharpen my copy of that video? If it is...

      I really like this instructional video. I even downloaded a copy. The copy I downloaded is as blurry as the copy on YouTube.

      Is it possible to possible to sharpen my copy of that video?

      If it is possible, can it be done with freely available software on Linux?

      Thanks either way.

      11 votes
    33. Is this the right time to buy an AM5 desktop?

      I am planning to go back to a desktop after using laptops for years. I already have an 1080p IPS monitor. I want just the tower. There is the new Zen 5 coming out soon. I was thinking about buying...

      I am planning to go back to a desktop after using laptops for years.

      I already have an 1080p IPS monitor. I want just the tower.

      There is the new Zen 5 coming out soon.

      I was thinking about buying a Ryzen 7600 and maybe buy a GPU in the future if I want to play heavier games. The Ryzen 7600 has integrated graphics for basic things.

      My main use now is just some casual gaming (Afterimage, Hollow Knight, Fallout 4), movies, browsing the web and compiling some software (Gentoo Linux).

      I use exclusively Linux and I want to keep using AMD.

      Should I wait the Zen 5 to come out and see if the 7600 price drops or this probably won't happen?

      6 votes
    34. Help my wife decide about AJ & Smart

      My wife is thinking about signing up for the Master Workshopper program from AJ & Smart. It’s a relatively big financially decision so I thought I would pass along some of her initial thoughts and...

      My wife is thinking about signing up for the Master Workshopper program from AJ & Smart. It’s a relatively big financially decision so I thought I would pass along some of her initial thoughts and questions here in the hopes anyone had some experience with this program either personally or just anecdotally.

      Hey everyone,

      I'm thinking about signing up for the Master Workshopper program from AJ & Smart and would love to hear from anyone who's already gone through it. If you've done it, I'd really appreciate your thoughts!

      Here’s what I’m curious about:

      1	Quality of Content: Is the material solid and up-to-date?
      
      2	Instructors: How are the instructors? Do they make the content engaging and clear?
      
      3	Practical Application: Were you able to use what you learned right away in your work?
      
      4	Community and Networking: How’s the community aspect? Did you make any good connections?
      
      5	Value for Money: Do you think it was worth the investment? Why or why not?
      
      6	Career Impact: Has it made a difference in your career or skills?
      

      Any other thoughts or experiences you can share would be awesome too!

      Thanks a lot for your help!

      15 votes
    35. Question about Google's Find My Device network with the new trackers

      Hi everyone, Have a quick question if you have the time. I want to buy some of the new Android Find My Device trackers, have wanted to ever since destroying my Tiles when they were bought by that...

      Hi everyone,

      Have a quick question if you have the time. I want to buy some of the new Android Find My Device trackers, have wanted to ever since destroying my Tiles when they were bought by that scummy data-retailer.

      My question is: if I buy, for example, a Pebblebee device, does Pebblebee get my location data? Google already has that; that's the deal with the devil you have to decide whether or not you want to take. But I don't want to give this information to another third party.

      I've done some Googling on this but of course search is useless these days. I tried to read Pebblebee's privacy policy but gave up pretty quickly:

      ➜  ~ cat pebblebee | wc -w
      17391
      

      Does anyone have an authoritative answer on this? Would love to know.

      TIA and thanks for your time!

      ETA: I have seen where Pebblebee claims they don't sell user data; I'm not even questioning that with this post (although I do question every company's trustworthiness). This is more a question about the architecture of the Find My Device network itself.

      Edit 2: I'm already carrying around a personal spy that reports everything I do to Google, I don't think it matters whether they can get my location from the trackers lol. I just wondered if I was exposing that to Pebblebee (just as an example) as well.

      13 votes
    36. Experiences using a local voice assistant with LLM with HomeAssistant?

      Has anyone out there hooked HomeAssistant up to a local LLM? I'm very tempted: Alexa integrations fail often. HomeAssistant integrations tend to be rock solid. Alexa is rule/pattern matching...

      Has anyone out there hooked HomeAssistant up to a local LLM? I'm very tempted:

      • Alexa integrations fail often. HomeAssistant integrations tend to be rock solid.
      • Alexa is rule/pattern matching based. LLMs can understand natural language fairly well. The "magical incantations" required by Alexa are awkward.

      Other than the software, the device side seems challenging. There are $50 fully-baked POP devices. I'm less sure on the DIY front.

      Also, I desperately want my house to speak to me in the voice of the NCC-1701D computer. I've read enough now to know this should be achievable with a modicum of effort via OSS voice cloning tools or training a new model (same difference except "voice cloning" seems to often refer to doing this without training a whole new model?).

      Thoughts? Experiences?

      I've seen several pages that have led me to conclude this is tenable:

      https://github.com/myshell-ai/OpenVoice

      https://github.com/domesticatedviking/TextyMcSpeechy

      https://github.com/mezbaul-h/june

      https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/voice_remote_local_assistant/

      https://heywillow.io/hardware/#esp32-s3-box-lite

      14 votes
    37. Adobe TOS: I'm an artist. I have never used Adobe Cloud software. What happens if someone else uploads my content?

      Second edit: It has been pointed out that my collaborators don't necessarily need to upload my files in order to work on them, and that the bigger the project/organisation, the more likely they...

      Second edit: It has been pointed out that my collaborators don't necessarily need to upload my files in order to work on them, and that the bigger the project/organisation, the more likely they are using their own system for managing content rather than the Adobe Creative Cloud. I didn't realise that not using the CC is an option. In conclusion, I can still collaborate with Adobe's customers as long as I ask them to never upload my work to the Adobe CC.


      Edit: After sleeping on this, here's my biggest gripe with terms like these.

      Regardless of the contents of Adobe's TOS, I cannot be forced to accept them as long as I'm not their customer. Similarly, people who don't use an imaginary social media app called "Twitter" can't be subjected to Twitter's terms of service even if for some reason Twitter had access to these people's data. If Twitter wants to make an agreement with non-customers, they must get these people's explicit consent. Writing stuff in their TOS doesn't cut it because those are directed at customers. Corporations absolutely can't have the right to make me a customer without my informed consent.

      As it stands, given Adobe's market share, I would either have to accept their terms when it comes to my work that gets uploaded by third parties, or I can never get my work published again. This is completely unacceptable. Even if the terms were the most gracious and reasonable terms anyone has ever seen (which they aren't), I would still have the right to refuse them. This right cannot be taken away from me. Adobe has done nothing to show how they intend to separate non-customer content from customer content, which most likely means they have no plans to do so and certainly aren't doing it at the moment.

      Organisations that are Adobe customers and want to publish/edit content produced by non-customers will have an insurmountably tough task trying to draft a solid contract with these people. In order to protect themselves from future disputes, they will have to get explicit consent for everything that I quoted in this post, for all imaginable and unimaginable purposes. The rest of the TOS (the parts that I didn't quote) is legally too fuzzy to be put in a contract, and as far as I know, the term "generative AI" doesn't even have a legal definition yet. Essentially, Adobe is making their own customers do their dirty work for them. Good luck with that.


      Original post:
      Adobe receives an unrestricted license to use all uploaded content however they please, according to their TOS.

      Let's say I am a professional photographer, but I don't use Adobe software to edit my work because I don't want to grant Adobe a license to do whatever they want with it. Now, let's say that High End Art Magazine wants to publish some of my photos in their Hot New Photo Artists section. Most likely they are using Adobe software. To create the magazine layout, they are going to have to upload my photos. I haven't used Adobe since they put everything in the cloud, so I wouldn't know how the process actually works, but I doubt that Adobe asks about the ownership of each uploaded file. Do they? The magazine editor does not have the right to grant Adobe any sort of license to my work. It's not their content, they are merely presenting it. The end result: Adobe has content on their servers that they do not have a license to use however they wish, no matter what they put in their TOS, and they most likely have no way to tell this content apart from the rest.

      The above example is simplified. I am actually not a photographer, but an artist in another field. Publishing my work involves images that are put together by a team of people, each of whom must be able to deny using the resulting photo without their explicit consent. How can cases like these be handled? If I care about how and where my and my team's work is used, will I have to stop collaborating with anyone who uses Adobe products? Even that won't necessarily protect us. Uninformed people can still grab an image form somewhere and use it for a school project or something. This used to be okay as long as you didn't publish the result, let alone try to profit from it financially. But now, if you use Adobe software to edit your project, ethically you can only use unlicensed content as your source material and everything else is off limits.

      From the Adobe TOS:

      ...you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to do the following with your Cloud Content:

      reproduce
      distribute 

      create derivative works 

      publicly display 

      publicly perform and
      sublicense the foregoing rights to third parties acting on our behalf

      And:

      “Content” means any text, information, communication, or material, such as audio files, video files, electronic documents, or images, that you upload, import into, embed for use by, or create using the Services and Software.

      To be clear, I get that the TOS is meant to enable Adobe to run their services in the cloud. At least for now. But there are no guarantees that this will remain the sole purpose of that license. I prefer to simply not grant them any sort of license to use my work. Obviously, I must have a right to deny corporations such a license for whatever reason, at all times.

      For comparison, when I started using Reddit, I read through their TOS and decided that it looked predatory. I have always refrained from posting things that I wouldn't want them to use for extracting financial gain. I was happy about that decision last year.

      Does anyone know if the Adobe TOS are different for organisations that routinely handle large amounts of content that they do not own the rights to?

      42 votes
    38. BenQ W1110 3D DLP

      Hi people, I have the chance to pick up an unused BenQ W1110 (BenQ HT2050 in the U.S). I don't have any interest in 4k nor 3d, I only need it for 1080p blu ray. It's listed at 200 EUR. Do you...

      Hi people,

      I have the chance to pick up an unused BenQ W1110 (BenQ HT2050 in the U.S). I don't have any interest in 4k nor 3d, I only need it for 1080p blu ray. It's listed at 200 EUR. Do you think it's a fair price for what I need? Bulb life is only 2,500 hours, but replacements are 100 EUR or so, so not so steep. Anyone out there recommend I hold off? Know of other options? I'd be happy to spend around 600-700 EUR for the right unit. The only primary considerations are that it can produce 1080p, and is quiet (important).

      4 votes
    39. How are you dealing with AI generated results in your searches?

      I'm finding it more and more frustrating having to parse the things I'm actually looking for from what feels like a deluge of rubbish. Are there any strategies, extensions, add-ons, etc that...

      I'm finding it more and more frustrating having to parse the things I'm actually looking for from what feels like a deluge of rubbish. Are there any strategies, extensions, add-ons, etc that people are using to filter results?

      46 votes
    40. Privacy woes and autonomy, where do I go now?

      I'm very sorry, but this is going to be rant. One that may seem to come up almost daily, but I still feel the need to vent. Every day I feel like I'm jumping through hoops to keep a little bit of...

      I'm very sorry, but this is going to be rant. One that may seem to come up almost daily, but I still feel the need to vent.

      Every day I feel like I'm jumping through hoops to keep a little bit of privacy and autonomy, without ever winning. DuckDuckGo is my search engine, use a paid mail provider, I try to stay away from anything Google and Meta, use only Signal, ad blocking everywhere, hosting most services locally, etc. It seems, however, to make no difference in the long run. The user-profile-building just seems to enter the home faster than I can mitigate it. Kids install some new app or new hardware ends up listening in, privacy infringement is there.

      The reason I'm starting this post now is because I switched ISP and TV provider recently, but it has been on my mind for a long time. Finding one that isn't owned by one of huge 3 parent companies, is almost impossible here. After a year of deciding, I finally figured it was time to throw in the towel and just pick the least bad option. Yesterday was the day of switching and it has been such a frustrating process.

      The provided router doesn't allow me to turn off its WLAN. I live in a city, so the airwaves are already crowded enough as it is. No need to keep that antenna on, but screw me, that's not possible. Opened up the device to just remove the card, but everything is soldered on the board and disconnecting the antennas didn't do shit.
      It's possible to buy a modem/router myself, but it'll need to follow their requirements and will set me back $200. It would be okay if the rest of the service was great, but here comes the TV part!

      The device they use for TV is apparently Android TV. I assumed it would be IPTV with this subscription, but Android TV isn't that. Booting the device makes it immediately clear they are here to harvest data. It makes me so unhappy that a service I'm paying for, is also making money on the side by collecting data. To get a quick idea of what's being done, I routed the box through wireshark to sniff DNS traffic. It's riddled with domains used for data collection and ads. That combined with the features this box wants me to agree to (location, using the mic, access local network, sign into PlayStore, make a profile including real life information) does not make me trust this device. So I've decided to not play and will be sending it back.

      People around me are pretty conscious about what they do online, but compared to them I'm highly paranoid. Wherever I look, there are privacy issues. It seems impossible to escape from. How are other people dealing with this?

      UPDATE: I don't know if anybody is really interested, but I thought I would update anyway. I decided to listen to my gut and I cancelled the subscription. It feels like the best decision I've made in a long time. It's nice to feel like I'm still a little bit in charge, even though I know that's also just a false sense of autonomy. Suck it, Google! You're not the boss of me :-)

      33 votes
    41. Is Nebula worth it?

      Is anyone here using https://nebula.tv? Multiple creators I watch are on there, and I'm considering getting a subscription, but I'm just not sure if it's really worth it. Most channels on there...

      Is anyone here using https://nebula.tv? Multiple creators I watch are on there, and I'm considering getting a subscription, but I'm just not sure if it's really worth it. Most channels on there don't seem to upload any exclusive content, so I'll basically just get the same videos but for $5/month instead of for free. I've also heard that the app and UX isn't that great.

      People who use the service, what makes it worth it for you? Is it just a way to support the creators more?

      61 votes
    42. Can old, poorly wired electrical outlets cause a PC to freeze?

      Fellow PC builders, here's a fun one for you. I took some "old" and no-longer-used PC parts and built my sister-in-law a gaming PC for her and her stepdaughter to use. It was a Christmas gift so...

      Fellow PC builders, here's a fun one for you.

      I took some "old" and no-longer-used PC parts and built my sister-in-law a gaming PC for her and her stepdaughter to use. It was a Christmas gift so the stepdaughter could play the Sims.

      She has called me three times to tell me it's completely frozen - like hard locked, dead freeze, screen is displaying the last frame it was on but you can't interact with the PC in any way until you reset it with the power button.

      She let it sit for an hour before she gave up. Two times this happened while stepdaughter was playing the Sims 4 and once it happened while my brother-in-law was watching YouTube videos.

      Obviously, I went through the usual things you'd think in this situation and I had her bring the PC over so I could do some digging. Fully expecting to find a hardware issue, I tried the following:

      1. I ran the Sims while also watching multiple YouTube videos in the background. Couldn't replicate the issue after about two hours.

      2. I obviously checked the temperatures while gaming and YouTubing, checked the usual performance metrics and everything was great.

      3. Ran OTTC stress tests - all of them. Under heavy loads, this thing was doing fine. Even at 100% utilization, the memory, graphics card, and cpu were fine. Did a power test too, fine. Did a "combined" stress test and all was fine.

      4. Ran mem86, no issues with the memory, no bad sectors or errors.

      5. Played Skyrim on ultra for several hours. This was a really fun way to troubleshoot.

      6. Checked the event log from the day she had freezes. I can see where the event happened because leading up to the unexpected "power off" event, there were a ton of events related to various processes timing out. Seems like it was unable to connect with services and run certain background processes while it was frozen? I didn't see anything that really stood out to me as being a possible cause except...

      7. in the event viewer, there were a few events related to Microsoft family safety. I set this up at the request of SIL so stepdaughter wouldn't get into anything she shouldn't. In the Event Viewer, it seems like maybe it wasn't verifying something correctly or didn't have permissions it needed? Upon Googling, I found some other folks with this error but I couldn't find anything about whether it caused freezing or not. Seems like one of the many events that just gives a warning but doesn't have any effect. One guy who had this issue had his computer freeze but disabling the family safety entirely did nothing. People in the comments thought it probably wasn't related. I also found another event that Google wasn't very helpful with. Might have been related to sound card but my sound card drivers are up to date and again, I have not been able to replicate the issue even when gaming and watching videos, so I don't know if it's related.

      8. I ran the Windows System Files Checker and found no issues related to my Windows install.

      I can't figure out why this would be happening only at her house. She says it froze after one hour of use every time. This brings me to the title of this post. My SIL moved into a really old house with sketchy wiring. My FIL told her the wiring is so bad that she needs to get it fixed immediately or risk a fire, so she's working on that. This house has a butler stairway, asbestos, and plaster/lathe walls if that tells you what we're dealing with here. This is the ONLY thing I can think of that would possibly be different between the two setups and maybe explain the freezing, but it just seems so unlikely to me that this is the cause.

      Help?

      21 votes
    43. Does something like a charity fund for FOSS exist? If not, do you think it could be a good idea?

      There are a lot of awesome open source projects that I'd love to donate to, however, I can't afford to donate to all of them. It would be great if there was something like a charity fund (eg....

      There are a lot of awesome open source projects that I'd love to donate to, however, I can't afford to donate to all of them.

      It would be great if there was something like a charity fund (eg. GiveWell), but for FOSS. So a lot of people donate to it, and it distributes all collected money between some curated projects (most influential/important/promising/underfunded/etc.).

      Do you know if something like this already exists? if not, could it potentially be a good idea to do? It seems like the idea of donating to open-source is currently more prominent in the community due to the xz backdoor thing.

      23 votes
    44. Confused about headphone impedance

      I have a guitar multi effects that has a headphone out with 47Ω I want a budget somewhat neutral headphone to use with it and I am getting confused with the answers I found so far. The AKG K240...

      I have a guitar multi effects that has a headphone out with 47Ω

      I want a budget somewhat neutral headphone to use with it and I am getting confused with the answers I found so far.

      The AKG K240 mk2 (55Ω) seems to be a popular choice with people who own another multi effects (HX Stomp) with a different impedance (I think it's 12Ω).

      This headphone is within my budget, but it seems too close to the 47 output of my multifx.

      Will I have a problem with this?

      I read somewhere that the headphone impedance should be much bigger than the output impedance, but another text I read somewhere explained that they should match closely.

      I'm really confused about this.

      5 votes
    45. I don't think I'm 'grokking' how the fediverse works. (Or at least, how following federated accounts works)

      I'm taking some time to set up a mastodon account, and am currently confused about how following other federated accounts is supposed to work. Let's use https://lemmy.world/c/comicstrips as an...

      I'm taking some time to set up a mastodon account, and am currently confused about how following other federated accounts is supposed to work.

      Let's use https://lemmy.world/c/comicstrips as an example. I go to that link and I see posts from other federated sites, as well as posts made directly on lemmy.world (I presume). I can also view all posts from that community in r.nf as well (https://r.nf/c/comicstrips@lemmy.world). I see all the same posts from the lemmy link.

      What I don't understand is why, when I follow @comicstrips@lemmy.world on mastodon I only ever am shown replies and boosts from the account. I don't see the original image post, which I was expecting.

      What am I missing? For what it's worth I'm using Phanpy to interact with mastodon, but am experiencing the same behavior on mastodon.social as well.

      17 votes
    46. I just switched to an iPhone, what should I do to make the most of this change?

      Basically the title. I've been an Android user since 2012, but have have an iPad and a Macbook that I really like, especially how well they work together. My pixel 5 was on its way out, so I...

      Basically the title. I've been an Android user since 2012, but have have an iPad and a Macbook that I really like, especially how well they work together. My pixel 5 was on its way out, so I finally took the plunge and bought an iPhone 15 Pro earlier this week. I'm still getting everything set up, and I'm particularly excited to play with the different focus modes and shortcuts. I'm curious what apps and features should I be using to make the most of this switch?

      38 votes
    47. Is a NAS for me?

      Hi, I keep reading about this thing called a "NAS" and I don't have in my social network a bunch of reasonable geeks to figure out if this is something for me or if it is overkill and I can get by...

      Hi, I keep reading about this thing called a "NAS" and I don't have in my social network a bunch of reasonable geeks to figure out if this is something for me or if it is overkill and I can get by with less -- trying to be frugal and all.

      The Situation

      At the moment, I have a Raspberry Pi 3 (that a colleague gifted me) which runs Jellyfin, mostly for music. I'd use it for watching series and movies, but given how slow it is at transferring files and the fact that it has a 1GB (maybe 2GB) RAM... I was afraid to break it. On top of that, its storage is a years-old external hard drive.

      I use Jellyfin mostly to have music on my iPhone. I can access it when I'm out and about on Tailscale. I hope to find a solution for my photos as well.

      I'd also occasionally use the pi to experiment with some self-hosted open-source apps.

      I constantly find myself wanting to upgrade because I want to also backup my important photos (with face recognition if possible) and documents "offline" (i.e. in my local network) to something more stable than an aging hard drive. They're all in the cloud, but a second backup option could be great.

      What I understand from reading about NAS's is that I basically have one, it's just not... reliable?

      The Question

      I understand there is definitely a buy-in cost for buying an actual NAS, I'd like to know how much... so that I can make an informed decision on if and when I would buy it. What is an entry-level NAS and how much will it cost? What could it NOT do that an RPi could, and vice-versa? Am I missing an in-between or even an alternative solution for my use case? Is it overkill and should I just upgrade the pi? What are my options?

      Thanks in advance for reading my post!

      20 votes
    48. Teaching coding to an eight year old with Scratch?

      I have a relative whose 8 year old has shown a keen interest in coding. He even takes books out of the library about coding even though he's never done it and I dont think he understands most of...

      I have a relative whose 8 year old has shown a keen interest in coding. He even takes books out of the library about coding even though he's never done it and I dont think he understands most of what he's reading. Seems like a little Bill Gates just dying to get started.

      I used to teach LOGO to kids back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth and I looked at some recent versions. Its good, and the logic is all there, but the end results are fairly mundane for a kid who's already experienced amazing video games. Then I stumbled across Scratch, a much more visual programming tool and it seems to fit what we need. Scratch allows kids to make animations, simple games, even do motion detection, music all with sprites that they can manipulate using drag and drop coding blocks. Lots of online video tutorials that he can follow himself too. https://scratch.mit.edu/

      Before I dive headlong into Scratch, just wondering if there are other even better tools for teaching coding to kids? Or what your experience might be with them?

      20 votes