NaibofTabr

choco upgrade all

Not a built-in, of course, but chocolatey gets you Linux-like package manager behavior on Windows. With it you can run headless software installs and automatically update software. It’s great for remote/VM management.

Hmm, OK could be interesting…

O… K…

Um…

Yeah… that makes sense…

That’s intended behavior, right? Let me guess, you used the project to vibe code the web page?

Good show mate, off to a brilliant start.

No, we’re talking about companies scraping hundreds of millions if not billions of labor hours of output to train their models for the sake of developing software products which they then sell for profit.

Every model that was trained on legally acquired free public data and open source code should be freely publicly available and open source.

Every model that was trained on not legally acquired public data (e.g. Meta’s models) should be taken out of production until all of the lawsuits are concluded, and hopefully the parties responsible are put out of business.

I’m not talking about future, potential labor that AI might replace. I’m talking about the labor which was stolen to produce these models in the first place.

But, please use AI.

Please identify the issues with the LLM generated code.

Why would the issues be obvious and easy to point out? Most issues with code aren’t. If they were, we wouldn’t have Patch Tuesday, a direct code review would prevent issues from shipping in the first place.

Throwing this out as if it means LLM code is acceptable and ends the argument is ridiculous. Do you have any grasp of how software vulnerabilities are discovered at all?

There are serious and skilled people out there who use LLMs responsibly.

There is no “responsible use” for a platform built on the largest form of labor theft ever devised.

If you are interested in maintaining your OS as an ongoing and constant project, go with Arch. You will learn a lot about Linux, and about system administration in general. You will also have entire days where you are unable to do anything productive with your computer because the last update broke userspace again and you can either spend a lot of time troubleshooting your specific problem, or spend a lot of time reinstalling and reconfiguring your system.

If your computer is more than just a hobby platform and you need to use it regularly for any kind of productivity, go with Debian. Set it and forget it.

Either way, off-system file backups are recommended.

Bird Song

Heh, so ALSA has kind of been the audio architecture for Linux distros since forever.

Pulse Audio was supposed to modernize audio for Linux and ultimately replace ALSA.

But last time I installed Linux on my desktop, I couldn’t get audio output from my motherboard’s TOSLINK S/PDIF port no matter which settings I changed in the GUI, uninstalled/reinstalled drivers and codecs and whatnot, etc.

Nothing made any difference until I eventually found some forum post which suggested using ALSAmixer to check the settings for various audio channels. ALSAmixer is not typically installed by default and not commonly used anymore, but it was the only tool that could unmute the digital audio output channel that served the TOSLINK port - that functionality was not present anywhere else in any of the configuration options. Pulse appeared to be in control of the system audio hardware, but in reality it was just sitting on top of and still relying on ALSA to handle the back end. Also, whoever set ALSA to mute some audio channels by default on a clean install… wtf dude, that shit just makes people think their hardware isn’t properly supported and they have a driver issue.

The point being, ALSA was supposed to be deprecated years ago and all of the old audio issues resolved and modernized with a new architecture, but… I’ll believe it when I see it, when whatever the new thing is actually proves itself to be an all-singing, all-dancing audio architecture. I’ve seen this rodeo before, and last time I checked it was still a clownshow.

So… what do you use for audio output on a desktop? Because I feed my monitor with the DisplayPort output from my graphics card, and I’m definitely not running a separate HDMI just for the audio signal. Even with 5.1 channel outputs, the 3.5mm audio on the motherboard is not up to the quality of the optical audio output, and besides that’s 5 copper cables to run instead of one fiber. My soundbar has an optical input. The optical output is the only thing that makes sense.

Uh huh uh huh uh huh… call me when ALSAmixer is no longer needed to unmute the TOSLINK output on a new install because who the fuck knows why it’s muted by default in ALSA and that setting is not surfaced anywhere in the UI.

First and most important:

In the context of long-term data storage
ALL DRIVES ARE CONSUMABLES

I can’t emphasize this enough. If you only skim the rest of my post, re-read the above line and accept it as fundamental truth. “Long-term” means 1+ years, by the way.

It does not matter what type of drive you buy, how much you spend on it, who manufactured it, etc. The drive will fail at some point, probably when you’re least prepared for it. You need to plan around that. You need to plan for the drive being completely useless and the data on it unrecoverable post-failure. Wasting time and money to acquire the fanciest most bulletproof drives on the market is a pointless resource pit, and has more to do with dick-measuring contests between data-hoarders.

Knife geeks buy $500+ patterned steel chef’s knives with ebony handles and finely ground edges and bla bla bla. Professional kitchens buy the basic Victorinox with the plastic handle. Why? Because they actually use it, not mount it on a wall to look pretty.

The knife is a consumable, not an heirloom. So are your storage drives. We call them “spinning rust” for a reason.

The solution to drive failure is redundancy. Period.

Unfortunately, this reality runs counter to the desire to maximize available storage. Do not follow the path of desire, that way lies data loss and outer darkness. Fault-tolerant is your watchword. Component failure is unpredictable, no matter how much money you spend. A random manufacturing defect will ruin your day when you least expect it.

A minimum safe layout is to have 2 live copies of data (one active, one mirror), hot standby for 1 copy (immediate swap-in when the active or mirror fails), and cold standby on the shelf to replace the hot standby when it enters service.

Note that this does not describe a specific number of disks, but copies of data. The minimum to implement this is 4 disks of identical storage capacity (2 live, 1 hot standby, 1 on the shelf) and a server with slots for 3 disks. If your storage needs expand beyond the capacity of 1 disk, then you need to scale up by the same ratio. A disk is indivisible - having two copies of the same data on a disk does not give you any redundancy value. (I won’t get into striping and mucking about with weird RAID choices in this post because it’s too long already, but basically it’s not worth it - the KISS principle applies, especially in small configurations)

This means you only get to use 25% of the storage capacity that you buy. Them’s the breaks. Anything less and you’re not taking your data longevity seriously, you might as well just get a consumer-grade external drive and call it a day.

Buy 4 disks, it doesn’t matter what they are or how much they cost (though if you’re buying used make sure you get a SMART report from the seller and you understand what it means) but keep in mind that your storage capacity is just 1 of the disks. And buy a server that can keep 3 of them online and automatically swap in the standby when one of the disks fails. Spend more money on the server than the disks, it will last longer.

Remember, long-term is a question of when, not if.

Or pipe GUI output into another GUI function.

Or >> log.txt

Remember, RAID (or RAID-adjacent) is not a backup.

This. So much this. OP please listen to and understand this.

Even with full mirroring in RAID 1, it’s not a backup. Using the second drive as an independent backup would be so much better than RAID.

You SHOULD NOT do software RAID with hard drives in separate external USB enclosures.

There will be absolutely no practical benefit to this setup, and it will just create risk of transcription errors between the mirrored drives due to any kind of problems with the USB connections, plus traffic overhead as the drives constantly update their mirroring. You will kill your USB controller, and/or the IO boards in the enclosures. It will be needlessly slow and not very fault-tolerant.

If this hardware setup is really your best option, what you should do is use 1 of the drives as the active primary for the server, and push backups to the other drive (with a properly configured backup application, not RAID mirroring). That way each drive is fully independent from the other, and the backup drive is not dependent on anything else. This will give you the best possible redundancy with this hardware.

The Alt key is Alt. Why would it need another label?

I want the Centrino Nano Duo

Whatever you do, and whoever you end up working with, document document document. Take notes.

And I mean on paper, in a notebook, something that can’t crash or get accidentally deleted and doesn’t require electricity to operate.

You’re doing this for yourself, not for a boss, which means you can take the time to keep track of the details. This will be especially important for ongoing maintenance.

Write down a list of things you imagine having on your network, then classify them as essential vs. desired (needs and wants), then prioritize them.

As you buy hardware, write down the name, model and serial number and the price (so that you can list it on your renter’s/homeowner’s insurance). As you set up the devices, also add the MAC and assigned IP address(es) to each device description, and also list the specific services that are running on that device. If you buy something new that comes with a support contract, write down the information for that.

Draw a network diagram (it doesn’t have to be complicated or super professional, but visualizing the layout and connections between things is very helpful)

When you set up a service, write down what it’s for and what clients will have access to it. Write down the reference(s) you used. And then write down the login details. I don’t care what advice you’ve heard about writing down passwords, just do it in the notebook so that you can get back into the services you’ve set up. Six months from now when you need to log in to that background service to update the software you will have forgotten the password. If a person you don’t trust has physical access to your home network notebook, you have a much more serious problem than worrying about your router password.

Because they want step-by-step guidance and support, and design help, and long-term support, not just a few questions answered.

This is a job. The kind of work that IT consultants get paid for. A fair rate would be US$100/hr, minimum, for an independent contractor.