digdilem

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digdilem ,

Heretic! MS-DOS 6.22 is where it's really at!

digdilem ,

"Boys will be boys" by Stella Donnelly. Best listened to blind, imo, so won't give context.

Hero of War by Rise Against. An American soldier's view of war.

Raoui by Souad Moussi (I can't understand arabic so she might be singing a shopping list, but the pain in her voice gives me shivers every time)

No Bravery by James Blunt. A British soldier's view of war.

I have a long playlist of stuff like this called "Managed Melancholy" - it's part of my mental health self care to immerse myself in sad sometimes and really feel. (I'm fine btw, and this is part of giving me an outlet)

digdilem ,

Hero of War also a strong fave of mine. Bleak as fuck. No Bravery by James Blunt is on similar lines.

Is this WD MyBook 6tb drive still good?

The drive has been only been powered on and used for read over the last 3+ years. CrystalDiskInfo reports it's bad but CrystalDiskMark shows decent read/write speeds. Only wrote to it in the very beginning when I dumped a lot of archives into it. Otherwise, very few actual write cycles which is making me think it's still ok to ...

digdilem ,

This is true. I get insane write speeds when storing data in /dev/null

digdilem ,

Any chance there's an ip conflict?

digdilem ,

Some of us gamers have been training for that our whole lives.

digdilem ,

Please, don't expose VNC to the internet, ever. It's a horrendously insecure protocol that uses plaintext passwords of no more than 8 characters and everything that passes over the connection is unencrypted and visible to anyone sniffing the traffic.

Once it was the only option, but there are dozens of better things out there now which should be used, even on a lan or vpn.

EU leaders to clash over ‘Buy European’ push at Belgium summit ( www.theguardian.com )

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, told European newspapers this week that European preference should be focused on certain strategic sectors, such as clean technologies, chemicals, steel, automotive and defence “otherwise Europeans will be swept aside”. ...

digdilem ,

Perhaps the view is changing that free trade doesn't come without hidden costs?

If the cost of trade agreements means political interference or military threats, it's not really free.

digdilem ,

Nah, Greebo's a cat

digdilem ,

Why add age checks?

I've read this from several sources now and not found anywhere that explains why they're doing this. Are they being threatened with legal action?

digdilem ,

Agree. Although Mariadb has drifted significantly (and with very good reason) in terms code, features and SQL - I still mentally parse "Mysql" as "MariaDb". It's one of the best forks I've ever encountered in all my time using foss. I currently maintain around 80 MariaDb servers and have remarkably few problems.

Much as I like to see variety in software, I do kind of wish more recognition of MariaDb was given, and more support.

In appreciation of Linux on Thinkpads

I just wanted to make a post in appreciation of the beautiful experience of running Linux on a Thinkpad as a main system. I picked up my X1 Extreme 2nd gen (now known as the P1) in 2019 and never even booted its Windows OS. Pop!_OS went into it immediately and it has only let me down once (grub screw up that was relatively ...

digdilem ,

Just installed debian on a S440 tonight to replace a HP Pavilion that had just ejected its charge port. Doubt the thinkpad will have the same problem, the HPs flex so much I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.

The thinkpad install was flawless, even had the wifi drivers in the installer without needing non-free.

digdilem ,

Imagine having only two parties. Wild.

digdilem ,

That happened ™

It happens every day. Hundreds if not thousands of times.

Daemon that kills processes using too much CPU

Is there a daemon that will kill any processes using above a specified % of CPU? I'm having issues where a system is sometimes grinding to a halt due to high CPU usage. I'm not sure what process is doing it (can't htop as system is frozen); ideally I'd like a daemon that automatically kills processes using more than a given % of ...

digdilem ,

Never heard of something like that, and I suspect anyone who started creating it soon filed it under "Really bad ideas" alongside "Whoops, why did my kernel just stop?"

sar is the traditional way to watch for high load processes, but do the basics first as that's not exactly trivial to get going. Things like running htop. Not only will that give you a simple breakdown of memory usage (others have already pointed out swap load which is very likely), but also sorting by cpu usage. htop is more than just a linux taskmgr, it's a first step triage for stuff like this.

digdilem OP ,

/Colour/ Photocopiers cost about the same as a new car back then, so whilst they existed, they weren't exactly within access to schoolkids.

digdilem ,

Google Tasks isn't listed here.

This was something I relied upon heavily. When I de-googled, I didn't want to just move it to another cloud platform, and as a selfhoster I tried quite a few self hosted solutions. Some were very good, but also quite complicated and filled with features I didn't want.

So I wrote my own - Taskpony - and made it FOSS. It evolved into something that's not a Google tasks copy, but suits my own needs better. Simple, easy, useful. I've really enjoyed the process of writing and sharing this.

digdilem ,

Not a Lemmy resource, but if you do want reasonably unbiased news that gets suppressed - especially in certain countries, Wikipedia does cover some of it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

digdilem ,

Not that I particularly want this to sound anti-American, but if there's just less overwhelmingly US-centric news I'd be very interested.

I mean this in the nicest way, but you guys over there are fucking mental at the moment and it's exhausting just hearing about it.

digdilem ,

Even if you do know code, nobody reads all the source code when trying something out.

We still rely largely on trust, and herd protection. Lots of stars on github? Been around for a while? Keeps showing up in "Top lists" and on those posts on social media where people list the foss software they use? Issues get solved reasonably quickly and there's no ancient and ignored posts on there? It hasn't changed hands recently to somebody with a new account and no history? It's probably a good project.

It is still a risk, but a managed one.

YSK a US passport card costs $30 and is definitive proof of citizenship. It fits in your wallet like a credit card.

For fellow Americans living in cities where ICE is active, many people, especially those of Hispanic descent, are already carrying around passports on their persons at all times because they're rightfully afraid of being forcibly disappeared or deported to some random South American country. ...

digdilem ,

Or wear a star on your jacket for everyone to see.

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    •
    digdilem ,

    I've been playing with computers and writing code since 1981, so have seen a few things change, and the past couple of years have been alarming from a world new stage, but that's not so much about tech as global unrest.

    It started with the cookie banners... "We value your privacy" == "Of course, it's worth money to us" The internet has shifted a lot over the past couple of years particularly, and it was inevitable. Just as inevitable is the loss of the small internet (I speak as someone who runs several small websites that get scraped and stolen from constantly), and the attempts of governments to control it. That was all going to happen, and just as inevitable is the impossibility of complete control - it'll just make life harder for the honest person.

    We've seen some shitty changes to software too through global business. With hindsight, that was inevitable too - it took a long time for someone to realise just how locked in the likes of vmware's customers were. How cloud and then AI additions were reasons to charge more for features we don't like. There's a lot of fear about global instability for obvious reasons, and that's hard to shake.

    But also... People haven't changed. For every big name enshittification, there's people sprouting two more things without such controls. Where we are now - founded largely because of shenanighans at Reddit. You mention Linux - again, most of it free and accessible and those are baked into it. (We'll skip over Redhat here, I think, perhaps the exception that proves the rule). There's a lot of free software projects that are born out of love for the free and open community. A place where respect is more common than rudeness.

    So I'm certain there's a balance. Yes, crappy things. But also good things. I'm constantly amazed at new inventions and how tech is genuinely improving life for many people. I grew up in England in the 70s and the quality of life today is better despite what we might think, but it's also far more complicated, and makes us feel helpless and small. Back then, our world was small, we knew people. A disaster on the other side of the world took days to arrive on our newspapers, and we weren't made to feel like we should do something about it.

    Perception may be playing a big part in your view here, and you sound both burnt out and depressed. Not uncommon with the bombardment of badness in the news that we can do nothing about. Understanding that, and stepping outside of the doom cycle, definitely helps.

    Ultimately, you've got to do what's right for you. If tech is a hobby to you, then it's the same as any other hobby. When it stops being fun, it's time to find something else that you enjoy instead of, or as well as. Hope you find a better balance.

    digdilem ,

    End of NSA dependence

    Former allies are being unpredictable, and reliance on existing intelligence sharing arrangements are falling apart. It's not so surprising that countries want to continue using the access they already have, even if one door is closed to them.

    I doubt it's just Germany drawing up contingencies after the past year.

    digdilem ,

    Holding in the farts.

    digdilem OP ,

    Indeed, but I love writing in Perl and it still works great. It's a shame it's not more widely used.

    digdilem OP ,

    Great that you're using it!

    And yes - sadly koyeb's demo went down as I posted this link. I've quickly thrown up another demo here; https://taskpony.onrender.com/

    digdilem OP ,

    Thanks for the feedback, always interesting to hear how people might use a tool like this.

    I do have email notifications in the roadmap, but to be honest, I've struggled to visualise how that might work for two reasons:

    1. One of Taskpony's goals is that it's as easy to install and run as it could be. Configuring email settings takes a lot of detail (especially when running in docker where you can't rely on a local smtp). I've thought about other tools like ntfy.sh, which I love, but the whole ecosystem of dozens of systems and tools for DM style notifications is too wide to support.

    2. I wouldn't use it like that, I'd use a calendar for distant events, and there's no plans to support "Task must be done by" style timers, as again, I think the interface would get too complex. I keep Taskpony in a tabbed browser, and also as one of my daily bookmark folders, so it shows up regularly enough to show me.

    Out of interest, how would you use notifications, or see how they'd work? Are you thinking of browser notifications? And if so, on what logic might they trigger?

    digdilem OP ,

    It doesn't need the Dockerfile to run.

    digdilem ,

    Horror

    Certainly traumatised me as a child.

    digdilem ,

    You can't trust an inherantly untrustworthy industry.

    The problem is that to make a good AI, you need a lot of input and we know from leaks and reports that many/most of the major players deliberately ignored copyright to train their models. If it was reachable, they used it. Are using it. Will use it. Like Johnny 5, there's no limit to the data they want, or that their handlers want to feed them with. They're the Cookie Monster at a biscuit factory.

    So when the question of trust comes up, you'd have to be pretty forgiving to overlook that they're built on foundations of theft, and pretty naive to assume these companies have suddenly grown ethics and won't use your data and input to train with, even when you're using commercial systems that promise they won't.

    Even in the event that there is an ethical provider that does their utmost to ensure your data doesn't migrate (these do exist, at least in intention), this is an incredibly fast moving, ultra-competitive market where huge amounts of data are shifted around constantly and guardrails being notoriously hard to accurately define, let alone enforce. It's inevitable stuff will leak.

    digdilem ,

    Venezuela doesn't have nuclear weapons that could reach all of Europe and much of the US.

    digdilem ,

    GPSLogger, the GOAT.

    Not only recording GPX daily and uploading them to the cloud for me to record walks, rides and all movements, but also sending location data to a selfhosted Traccar server. Disappeared off Google Play due to problems keeping it listed there, but still available on Fdroid.

    digdilem ,

    You're 4.5 times more likely to be seriously injured or killed if you're armed when attacked. Even if the attacker isn't armed, they often end up using your weapon against you.

    Beware your ego making you think you're better than the statistics.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090930121512.htm

    digdilem ,

    Good example.

    But don't many join these days because of some personal calamity where they've already lost much? The church takes them in, gives them purpose and a roof over their heads.

    (I say "these days" as historically, under primogeniture, the second son of a wealthy lord would often be given to the church to give them purpose/keep them out of the way of the firstborn. Daughters were similarly steered into a nunnery to avoid the parents having to pay a substantial dowry)

    digdilem ,

    Well, I'm absolutely certain people have taken lifelong orders for less than your example, but I'm thinking more about situations where someone is left alone, homeless and without any other options. Government aid is often slow to arrive, especially if you're a single man, and homeless charities are always overstretched. Even today, it's not such a stretch to imagine someone turning to God in their hour of need.

    (I'm athiest btw, I'm not arguing that it's a good option, only that some people may see it as their only option and honestly, there are worse)

    ‘Their first instinct was to loot’: how Trump’s acolytes are plundering the Kennedy Center ( www.theguardian.com )

    “That’s the tactic they use,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island senator, pondering whether Donald Trump might attach his name to the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. “You float stuff and you float stuff and you float stuff until people get inured to what a stupid or outrageous thing it is that has ...

    digdilem ,

    Blind devotion to a party is how y'all ended up in this mess.

    Things I learned migrating from Win10 to Mint ( ThisShouldNotBeArequiredField.FoffPiefed )

    ;tldr Beginning to use a new OS, even using a distro as friendly as Mint, is harder than the overall community says it is. The second there is a problem expect hours of consuming, likely outdated, information. That said I’m happy I switched. ...

    digdilem ,

    Guides helping you to navigate this jumbled mess are possibly outdated

    That's true, but have you ever tried to read Microsoft's documentation?

    YSK that FOSDEM 2026, one of the world's largest computer science meeting will happen next month in Brussels 🇧🇪 . This edition features 949 speakers and 908 events. ( fosdem.org )

    The vast majority of events (talks, hacking sessions, open discussions) are held inside "developer rooms" ("devrooms"), which are mini-conferences organized and managed by open source projects themselves. ...

    digdilem ,

    Geographical beard density will be high.

    Making a smarter diffuser

    I felt my diffuser's timer was too basic - needing to be manually turned on, then manually turned off by repeatedly pressing a button. So I connected an ESP8266 to the momentary switch, added some very simple ESPHome code, and now I have a diffuser that can operate for a few minutes at a time, or from any automation in Home ...

    digdilem OP ,

    Sorry - looks like I forgot to include the link to the step by step I wrote about the thing, daft of me.

    Anyway, soldering onto the back of the momentary switch PCB - here's the guide with pics too https://digdilem.org/home-automation/smarter-diffuser/

    digdilem OP ,

    It's just using the ESP to close a NO (normally open) circuit to closed, effectively shorting those two in the same way the momentary switch would. The code causes the ESP to create that short between its GND and the GPIO D5, thus closing the switch.

    If this was using any significant amount of current, you'd add a relay in there as the ESP can only handle a tiny amount in this configuration - but for small PCB loads like this, it's normally fine.

    One of the images showing the PCB wasn’t working for me.

    Oops - looks like I missed a file extension off. Fixed now, thanks.

    digdilem ,

    A cheap second hand android camera? There's some with good lenses around now for not a lot of money, and if it does get damaged there's no big loss.

    Doesn't need a sim card to upload via wifi (and you can hotspot or bluetooth-tether from another phone to provide it with internet access if needed), and would be better registered to a second Google account so if it's stolen there's no chance of them getting access to the primary account. Or do put a PAYG sim card in and it's also available as a spare in case the primary phone gets lost of broken.

    I use an old phone as a GPS on my motorbike and keep my primary safely in my pocket.

    digdilem ,

    Perspective?

    • I'm promoting something.
    • You're advertising at me.
    digdilem ,

    They force a sense of urgency and have well rehearsed routines to skirt around these type of questions.

    Ultimately, if the mark is too sceptical, they'll realise they're wasting their time and move on. Plenty of others, it's not worth trying that hard.