A lot, depending on your interests and the hardware itself. I’m running a NAS (TrueNAS) on an old machine that also runs a bittorrent client and immich as TrueNAS “apps.” I’m running an *arr stack and jellyfin on another old machine. I’ve got another old machine running an i2p router, hyphanet node, and a few other services. In the past, I’ve used old machines as routers (pfsense), openhab/home assistant machines, game servers, ZoneMinder server, etc.

I think California recently passed the Digital Age Assurance Act, which was backed by Google,Meta, and OpenAI. I think it goes into effect in 2027.

I find it detrimental to my productivity when integrated into an editor/IDE. I’ve found the “autocomplete” causes subtle bugs that I end up overlooking because I’m trying to go fast and putting too much trust in the generated lines/snippets. Tracing down these bugs becomes a huge time-sink. I do use chatbots in the browser for various things; mostly as a kind of “search” for alternative ways of doing things, frameworks, libraries, and algorithms. Agentic vibe-coding is ok for small one-off tools/scripts you wouldn’t need to maintain, IMO.

Well, this is a meme. But I personally am anti-surveillance. With the way things are going, these will almost certainly be “upgraded” to ALPR/“AI” systems for 24/7 surveillance and tracking; I’m guessing some probably already are.

Indeed, and I give them credit. China is unironically leading the world in scientific progress. I wouldn’t recommend using their services though, for privacy reasons (same with the US).

If you’re not paying, you’re the product. Even on Chinese services. Alibaba does train my favorite local models though (Qwen).

I’ve been going down this rabbit hole myself. Already set up a solar Meshtastic node and MeshCore repeater. Kinda cool, very low bandwidth and pretty unreliable though.

It’s my understanding that encryption is illegal on amateur radio bands. I’m thinking about getting a license anyways; looks fun.

HaLow, BATMAN, Reticulum and stuff like that also look cool, but I haven’t messed around with those yet.

I think radio will always have bandwidth/congestion problems. It’s like everyone within range is using the same “wire.”

I also like overlay networks like Tor and I2P, but it’s possible those will eventually be blocked or made illegal in many countries, if governments keep heading in the direction they seem to be heading.

OpenAI just bought the raw wafers? WTF.

I think the RAM manufacturers were found to be guilty of colluding/price-fixing in that case (maybe this case too).

"We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat” Freeman [an advisor to Reagan] said. “That’s dynamite! We nave to be selective on who we allow to go through (higher education). If not, we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people. That’s what happened in Germany. I saw it happen.’

Not really. TSMC has a near monopoly on the advanced fabrication, and ASML has a near monopoly on the lithographic machines TSMC uses. Nvidia is a fab-less designer. Google has its TPUs, and Amazon has some kind of custom chip too.

The weasel humping a ball logo (IceWeasel).

I’m not sure I’m following. The owners of the code can re-license anytime they want, and even dual-license or license on a case-by-case basis. Would require a contributor license agreement to be practical though, and it looks like ffmpeg may not have one.

I think Rust applications requires lower developer effort than C. C is a simpler language, but that means more work for developers to build their applications on it. The “rewrite everything in Rust” thing does seem weird though. I personally like the more elegant languages like Haskell, but I guess those aren’t really systems programming languages.

You can boot Pis off an USB HDD or SSD. I think there are specific hats for that as well. But yeah, backups, at least of configs, are nice.

Yeah, I think they have ways to block payments. Could use crypto though. Would make them much less profitable, since less people would want to go through those hoops. I guess countries like China does pretty intense DPI, and starts throttling and blocking connections that just exhibit suspicious-looking patterns, not to mention blocking every known VPN, Tor bridge, etc.

They could pass laws that made VPNs nearly useless (mandatory logging and law enforcement access), or could pass laws that made it nearly impossible to make money from running a VPN service (make VPNs liable for any “damages” they “facilitated”).

I was thinking about this earlier. The password manager browser plugin I use (Proton Pass) defaults to staying unlocked for the entire browser session. If someone physically gained access to my PC while my password manager was unlocked, they’d be able to access absolutely every password I have. I changed the behavior to auto-lock and ask for a 6-digit PIN, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t take an impractical amount of time to brute-force a 6-digit PIN.

Before I started use a password manager, I’d use maybe 3-4 passwords for different “risks,” (bank, email, shopping, stupid shit that made me sign up, etc). Not really sure if a password manager is better (guess it depends on the “threat” you’re worried about).

Edit: Also on my phone, it just unlocks with a fingerprint, and I think law enforcement are allowed to force you to biometrically unlock stuff (or can unlock with fingerprints they have on file).

IDK. Tech companies are bringing in more revenue than ever. The trend seems to be companies reporting great revenue growth, then laying off shortly after, to which the investors seem to reward. In the past, layoffs would usually bring stock prices down, since they have less human capital to generate profit from.

Interesting, didn’t know that’s how modern browsers worked. Guess my understanding was outdated from the HTTP/1 standard.