[–] 3 points 3 days ago

You're right, I think most of the Western world politics is too dependent on the capital and that is dependent on the US markets. When the entire thing crashes, it's going to be bad. I'm pretty sure I'll be among those people affected, I'm in software, working (remotely) for an US firm. That was after recently losing my job due to failed investment. My wife's job just got "restructured" as well, and it's the second time in three years as well.

Not sure how we'll deal. I should be making plans on what to do when I lose the house and everything else. I kinda know it but I'm not sure what can I do.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Why collaborate with Britain? That's basically just going back to giving everything to us again, without getting much in return? Talking about that missile program in the article.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago

    Donating hardware that you already own is probably possible, but can be tricky and has security connotations, depending on the arrangement. Unless you're simply paying for hosting costs for that node and have no operational control at all.

    There are simpler and better days.

    If you want to donate, chip in to whatever server you're on (e.g. lemmy.zip) - send them a few dollars a month, or a one time donation. Or find an instance or a software project (e.g. Lemmy or Gotosocial or Mastodon) and give them those few bucks.

    Just making the effort is both not that hard, but it's also great. Even people who don't have money to spare can try it. I don't know, find something like a book or a cupboard you're not using, sell it for a small amount of money, and send it.

    Of course, lots of people can't afford to, and that's why other people are running open servers. That part is super hard not just because of money, but moderation. Running an instance means you commit your time, every day, all the time, to moderate the users, to monitor the software, to fight off DDoS attacks and a million other things. So you can also offer to donate some of your time. Be it moderation or e.g. issue triage or something, it's usually welcome. So you can look into it. But make sure you can commit - short term "I'll try it" help is often taking more time to train the volunteer then they're going to contribute back before giving up.

    Finally, as someone says, it's also easy to run your own server. Either buy hosting and operation - I know e.g. masto.host but I'm sure there are others - you pay and they monitor and maintain the software. You just moderate it l like an admin. Invite your buddy there.

    Some people have the time and skills and operate their own servers, without spending the time for moderation. I'm running a single user instance of Gotosocial. I have control, but I don't have to deal with moderation. That's also feasible.

    Anyway, for your buddy, educate them that it's not the same as Twitter Reddit or Instagram, but the core ideas are similar. Send them a meme post or an interesting thread from time to time. They'll want to engage eventually. Upvote or reply. They have to make the account. They'll then get bored, give up, but that's fine. Moderate yourself, don't spam them. If they like it they'll come back. Or they'll get frustrated by another ad Block busting scheme by Reddit and come back again. Or not. Which is also fine.

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  • Solo campaigns (programming.dev)
     

    How do you run solo campaigns? I've seen some videos, notably the youtube series of dungeon crawling, but I have some questions, and besides I'd like to hear more ideas.

    How do you prepare a world? How to split between player time and the GM time? How to make things unpredictable? What are some good practices to keep when starting out? How much time, and how often do you play?

    [–] 9 points 2 weeks ago

    I would hardly call this dropping a hammer, though. I mean, the article itself says that OpenAI was lobbying for stuff like this.

    For one, I don't think it's addressing any of the most troublesome problems. No mention of environmental impact. No mention of societal impact, or economic one. Nobody is addressing the horrible misuse of LLMs in, say education or biases that are built into the LLMs.

    For two, what are the consequences? Sam Altman can go around saying whatever the hell he wants, mislead the government, the public, even their own users. No consequences. They can use bait and switch, no problems. The worst thing they can get is a few million dollars of fines. That's for the long time been just the cost of doing business.

    It's a fig leaf law that doesn't look at any of the worst problems we have but the worst offenders can use it to say "no wait we're regulated".

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    Funny thing at work, I was handling some legacy users - we need to make sure that on the next login, if they have a weak password, they have to change it.

    So the whole day I'm typing "123" as a password, 123 123 123 123 all good. So finally I'm done and now I'm testing it, and accidentally I type 1234 instead of just 123. Doesn't really matter, either is "weak", so I just click "Login".

    Then goes Chrome, "1234 is known as a weak password, found in breaches, you should change it".

    So TIL 123 is still good.

    DIY NAS build in progress (programming.dev)
     

    I'm building a NAS for the first time on my own, so I wanted to share the story so far here.

    I'm not a stranger to custom builds, in fact I don't think I ever bought an assembled PC (not counting second hand 386 box a million years ago). But this is my first small, low power build, so it's not perfect, I already ran into a wall (more later).

    I base the build on an AsRock mini-ITX board, the CPU is included, it's passively cooled, low power consumption but still powerful for a NAS. I'm sticking it into a Node 304 Fractal Design case. Here's the full list of parts I got:

    • AsRock J4125-ITX board with a Celeron 4125 (4-core CPU)
    • 8GB DDR4 RAM (a Crucial kit)
    • a 500GB NVMe SSD (which I can't use)
    • a couple of Seagate IronWolf 4TB drives
    • 90W PicoPSU and some no-name power brick
    • Fractal Design Node 304 mini-ITX case.

    I planned to have an SSD for OS, these two disks for my photography and media, and then later on expand with more storage (preferably SSD, when I can afford it).

    As mentioned, I messed up: the M2 slot on the motherboard is a "Key E" slot. I never bothered with these keys before, so I didn't know that a Key E slot does not have a SATA protocol, it won't take my SSD.

    Another thing, the PicoPSU is a 20-pin power supply, and the board has a 24-pin slot. It should still be fine, the specs say that this is still okay, but I'll have to see. According to my back-of-the-napkin calculations, 90 Watts should be enough power for the mobo and CPU, the SSD and the two spinning disks.

    Anyway I'll get a regular SATA SSD tomorrow and see how it's shaping up. Let me know if you want me to post more on my progress/end result or if you have any questions.

     

    What would be a good investment now? I want no-frills Linux support, good CPU, lots of RAM, decent screen. If I'm actually working, I'm almost always docked, but when not, I would not mind a good battery as well. I want this primarily for personal use. I don't mind upgrading parts myself (if that's still possible), like getting a stronger SSD or something.

    I used to own a T420 (and some other ThinkPads as well, but this one was used). It was an incredible investment at the time, used laptop price, build quality and feature on par with laptops 6, 7, 8 years younger. I wonder if this is still something you can get away with.

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