I learned so much at school, hacking crappy computers because I was bored. Boot disks in my backpack, hex editing the typing lesson saves, packing emulators and ROMs in one floppy at time and merging them back together (I even wrote a BASIC program for this because I didn’t know that tools existed to compress and chunk large files). And just exploratory hacking for fun, writing scripts and tools and stuff just to see if I could.

Chromebooks are the opposite of that, we bought our daughter a Chromebook and on realizing that it was only a tablet with a keyboard it went back to the store. She has my old Linux desktop now and knows a lot more than her friends

This is a pretty good idea, my wife dual boots and I’ll suggest it to her as Windows keeps trashing the EFI partition.

This would work but assumes the primary use of the machine is Windows and derates your performance under Linux significantly due to USB speeds. Even if you’re storing your data on the Windows HDD, NTFS drivers are dog slow compared to EXT4 and other *nix filesystems.

Also some BIOSes are a pain to get to boot off removable drives reliably so it really depends on what your machine is.

I’ve used Linux as a primary dev system for well over a decade now, and with the current state of Windows I’d really recommend just taking the leap, keep your Windows box if you need Windows software and build a dedicated Linux workstation.

You’re missing one:

• dedicated, air-gapped Windows box used for legacy industrial software

Aside from “lightweight apps in VM” this is the only solution I use now. (Unless you count Proton, but having Steam games Just Work barely feels like a “solution” as it requires zero effort on my part)

I don’t even trust Windows to dual boot off a separate disk without trying to break something anymore.

Great to hear this story of success. That plus

$266.99 per probe for the original proprietary one

Reminds me of Schneider’s stupid proprietary dongle for programming their PLCs. It’s just a CH341 in a funny shaped case that fits into the funny shaped slot on the PLC, where it plugs onto an ordinary 0.1" pin header to talk logic level serial.

Plus it has a custom USB ID of course. Probably costs $2 to manufacture, sells for almost $300 as well.

He just said “hairy ass”, well after hearing that I hope it’s “he” anyways for his own sake

Oops my apologies, lol I checked and I must have installed the upstream NewPipe repo so long ago that I forgot that I even had it in my sources list. Literally my only repo other than Fdroid main.

No reason not to use it, though, it’s the official NewPipe repo:

https://archive.newpipe.net/fdroid/repo?fingerprint=e2402c78f9b97c6c89e97db914a2751fda1d02fe2039cc0897a462bdb57e7501

Refresh your repos, I literally just downloaded and installed it

Out on Fdroid now and working

Even with external volumes, I don’t think there should be any mechanism where a container can escape a bind mount to affect the rest of the host fs? I use bind mounts all the time, far more than docker volumes.

99% of audience dozing off, 1% fascinated by the mystical art of antennas and radio waves. I know the science behind it, but I still don’t know how you guys came up with some of those designs.

These microplastics are digestible by your immune system, though, which makes them ultimately harmless. PLA is used for drug delivery for this reason.

Being concerned about incomplete PLA degradation is like being concerned about a piece of wood breaking down into micro-woods. Yet even if you get a dangerous shard of micro-wood embedded in your skin, your body can deal with this cellose polymer just fine.

Ultimately it will break down completely someday and in the meantime, nothing will be harmed.

True survivalist/libertarian types have always loved solar power.

I don’t know how solar lost its space age coolness, though, aside from active lobbying from the fossil fuel industry to try to kill it. For awhile solar was undoubtedly the power source of the future, the same thing that was on our space probes and satellites.

I have old oil-crisis era books and magazines on my shelf which absolutely loved solar power and billed it as the cheap energy solution for the common man. Somewhere we went wrong, and I think it was Reagan (in many ways…)

Diverting attention from other nerdy/niche groups who don’t seem weird at all in comparison?

Even just for reporting issues, anyone who is capable of identifying a bug is likely to have a GitHub account. Not so for Gitlab or others.

Then you’ve got seamless integration with Vscode as a bonus, it’s more like why would you not use GitHub unless you have a specific problem with them.

QCad still sucks compared to AutoCAD, but it is only around $50 for a license where AutoCAD is pretty much subscription only at this point I believe.

We actually use it at work, because our 2d drafting use cases are very limited, but we still need something DWG compatible.

I wouldn’t try parametric models in freecad

I would clarify that you’re talking about a specific usage case, that OpenSCAD does indeed do better at. However for most CAD tasks I find OpenSCAD is overkill and less intuitive.

“Parametric design” usually refers to the workflow used in the Part Design workbench, as well as SolidWorks etc. where geometry is defined by constraints.

The Part Design workbench does work well and despite the topological naming issue is sufficient for most hobbyist and many light industrial tasks. If I need to draw up an arbitrary bracket or bushing or similar, I don’t even bother using a workflow that guards against the issue, I just use it casually like I would SolidWorks. Only if the part is complex or if I know it will need to be tweaked do I bother doing everything on datum planes etc. because it’s a lot slower and more hassle.

That’s very good news that the topological naming issue is being solved, though. #1 issue with FreeCAD IMO and the one that holds it back from serious industry use.

Neat. That’s something I never even thought of. When typing in Arabic, does the cursor proceed from right to left, then?

Is this somehow handled with locales, are custom operating systems required, or is it really only handled by specific editors like word processors?

I’m trying to imagine how this would work at, say, a console bash prompt.

Really annoying is when recent devices don’t respect the DNS you’re advertising or allow configuration (Android…)

My site is behind CGNAT on IPv4 with recently added fully routed IPv6. There are legacy control devices all over it that don’t speak IPv6, with local DNS records that allow them to be readily accessed while walking around with a mobile device… Allowed them to be accessed that is, until IPv6.

The Android IPv6 stack ignores the RA for my local DNS and also resolves via v6 by default, forwarding local queries upstream and returning no results. Then it doesn’t bother to fall back to v4. Unrooted Android has no exposed configuration for IPv6 of any sort to modify its behaviour, no hosts file to override or any way I can see to fix this. I can’t even disable IPv6 on my phone.

So to access my local devices from Android I need to use their full IPv4 address or VPN back into my own network… Oh wait, the stack is so broken that despite setting DNS in Wireguard, it still tries to resolve through upstream v6 first!

Apparently recent smart TVs are doing similar even on IPv4, hard-coded to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 to dodge ad blocking, which is plain malicious and ignores all standards…

So anyways this is why DNS is dragon #3

That’s not just a German thing, here in Canada or the USA it’s strongly frowned on to bring your own food or drink to a restaurant or bar. And “no public toilet” snuck in to a lot of places at Covid time and never left.

Fast food is different and definitely not enforced but it’s still poor etiquette to eat anything other than small snacks or water there unless you’re part of a group. Like a bunch of guys stop at McDonald’s but one guy is like nah, I packed a sandwich, I’m gonna eat that.

Still it’s kind of expected that guy would buy a coffee or something. This is what I would do in OP’s situation, have a coffee or a diet Coke if you’re hanging out there for awhile. I wouldn’t complain about “pricy consumables”, it’s like $2.