I switched to KISS launcher a while ago (years ago?)and I absolutely love it. It is search based but you can have tags for apps which allow you to have something akin to folders. If an app fits two tags then so be it, it will show up in all the tag folders, so organisation can be much cleaner. It is also blazingly fast and keeps things clean.

Laptop all the way.

The mini PC and UPS are separate systems with no integration. Trying to get them talking so that your mini PC can respond to lower going down by saving things and shutting down cleanly is a lot more work than doing the same with a laptop.

Also a laptop you already own costs you nothing to get started with. If you add some external storage to it and then one day add a server you can simply move that external storage over to a new server. So if you do end up doing self hosting or a home lab you will well on the way.

I will definitely put AudiobookShelf at the top of my most impactful self hosted app list. I listen to audio books all the time and I used to use Voice, a foss app, but switching to AudiobookShelf has improved the experience significantly. I spend a little time importing books and then they just look so neat and tidy, I love it.

I have tried Umbrella and CasaOS and they are really very similar. That said, learning to use portainer allows you to understand the underlying technology of docker much better and also allowd you to do cool things like making a stack of containers that work together and saving that stack in a single config file. The GUI of Umbrel and CasaOS are basically the same and they only differ a little in their internals, so I would say switching shouldn’t be too hard, but if you have found yourself struggling to get something working on CasaOS you will probably have the same issue on Umbrel.

The web interface with all the links to your services can be achieved with things like Homarr and you can manage storage on the back end with Open Media Vault or something similar to make things more accessible. If you can have your data files accessible on a single BTRFS or similar partition with folder level sharing then you can have files hard linked between your downloading application and your media serving application, say Deluge and Jellyfin. The files download in /share/Downloads and then on completion get linked into /share/Imports and Jellyfin can manage moving them into /share/Movies or /share/TV as needed, and the same would go for something like Subsonic or AudiobookShelf.

Personally I have a wonderful set up with AudiobookShelf which syncs to my phone ereader. I can have books for my ereader with all the metadata and it is accessible via WiFi so I can just pick a book and get the epub delivered directly, no Calibre or USB cable required. It also works nicely for the audiobook side by letting me tell a whole series to download to my phone so I can listen back to back without worrying and I can always make space if I need to by clearing things out. Oh, and I can set my default listen speed to 2.0x and that carries over on other devices, so I don’t have to constantly fuss with it.

Overall, super fun, I would recommend learning about Portainer if that appeals to you, maybe consider setting it up on an old laptop and playing with it there, and if it works out nicely then you can redo your server and get it all working nicely there.

Honestly I would not recommend doing it without any backup, but if you can directly connect your internet to any computer or use your phone for tethering then you aren’t really as vulnerable to a problem and should be OK.

The default set up should actually work fairly well but need you to set up the wireless security and so on. If you use the exact same details as your current WiFi then all your devices will just reconnect and save you a bunch of time. Also the performance of something like a basic TP-Link router is probably not enough to do a lot of extra fun stuff like a VPN or file sharing, so just focus on getting the basic things up first.

Also, take a backup of your current settings in the TP-Link router and get a copy of the firmware now, before you do anything else, so you can revert without having to get everything from another source. Good luck!

Yeah, we should definitely have horror movie sequels where the ones who managed to get away from the stabber/slicer/decapitator is now a person living nearby and interacting with the new kids coming for their scandalous swimming/camping/drinking party time and warning them off being killed. It would be a cool callback.

I think a reasonable argument for people to use is that they care about trans rights at this point in time because they are under threat, but what they actually care about is everybody’s human rights. Start from empathy, respect, and dignity, then look for what supports that.

People shouldn’t need to grovel for medical care, they should be able to access it. People shouldn’t have to jump through hoops for gender affirming care, cis men with erectile dysfunction should be able to access medical support. People shouldn’t have to prove their mental health is impacted to modify their body, women should be able to get whatever tattoos or piercings they like. It doesn’t matter who you are, you should be able to access reasonable levels of care and support from the society you are a part of.

Right now trans people are the most under threat, but at some point that will be a historical fact and a different group will the current target, at which point they become the focus of defence and support. Ideally being trans would be like getting tattoos, something that is your business, nobody else’s, and something people feel impolite for asking too much about.

Linux runs on a CPU which has an architecture, an internal set of rules and design guidelines. If you have a Linux kernel for an x86_64 processor it will work on any x86_64 processor, and the same goes for Arm. SteamOS can have two separate builds which target a different processor architecture but still have the same selection of tools and configuration to make a workable desktop experience. That is what they have done here.

Arm and x86_64 can both use WINE to run Windows applications on Linux, but on Arm systems we also need something similar to handle interpreting the x86_64 instructions to run correctly. That is something present in the Arm build that isn’t in the x86_64 build. Also if you want to run Android apps on the Arm build you would need fewer layers for compatibility as the underlying instruction set matches, so you just need the operating system level things to make the app run properly.

Overall it is really simple conceptually but more complex practically. I am glad they are doing it, Arm is a much more power efficient architecture and is quite performant, so I am keen to see the results from here.

Early on I wrote a script for my user account to run df and save the output to a file, then a second script to read that file and if the drive was full send me an email.

First, it failed because it couldn’t send the email because the email service failed under full disk conditions.

Second, it failed because it couldn’t write the file to disk because the disk was full.

Third, it failed because outbound SMTP was blocked by my ISP.

I learned a lot about how well you can fail if you really put your mind to it. Now I have Home Assistant grabbing the disk stats for my machines and flagging anything over 90%.

I agree. I have run a few models on my phone and server and they are interesting but on such weak hardware they are slow and less capable. That said, a project like KDE has a certain amount of funding which could be put to use in part finding bugs using AI tools. They could be run on reasonable hardware with all the ethical safeguards we could come up with and have it be the least awful version possible. Some would argue it would still be unethical and I can see their perspective. That said, for me this is the line we should not cross. Keep the development by humans and for humans, and if we are to use AI models then we should be doing so to find problems to work on, not to solve them.

Maybe I am the weird one but I have a split view on using AI tools. Using AI to find bugs and exploits makes sense. It can attack in ways humans will rarely think about and find bugs humans may not have considered. It can use used to fuzz large attack surfaces and find patterns which we can then fix.

Using AI to do the actual coding is far less reasonable in my view. Studies do show a decline in productivity, enjoyment, and quality of code when using AI tools.

So for finding problems to address AI seems great. It is one of many tools which can help us find problems worth addressing. But for solving those problems? No, it is not fit for that purpose. It does not produce good code with maintainability and legibility for the maintainers of the code.

I think this is the distinction of uses I canost get behind. If you find an attack using any tool, whether that be a CVE, a script kiddy, or an LLM, then you can go on to understand how the vulnerability works and patch it. This leaves the understanding part to the programmer, but not the arduous task of trying to find problems. If you use vibecoding to do the actual fixing you never have the understanding of how the code works and therefore what the changes will actually do.

LLMs can be useful in a lot of ways, but they should never replace thinking and understanding. Just like you do need to memorise some things but not others, there are cognitive tasks you don’t have to do all the time but others you really have to in order to actually be a good programmer. If you outsource thinking you stop doing it and get weaker at it. If you outsource meaningless tasks or use systems to reduce the need for them that is actually useful for freeing up your mind for tasks which cannot be automated.

So in my view using these tools to find bugs in code can be useful. Knowing that if a bug is found it may not be disclosed to you by the tool because the provider of the tool wants to keep some bugs hidden is something people should consider, I mean that is exactly what the NSA has been going for decades with zero day exploits in various operating systems and platforms, why would they not do so now?

This is the central problem with digital ownership. It isn’t real. You don’t own anything.

If you have a file which contains the book and has no Digital Restrictions Management on it then you own the book in the same way as if you have the physical book.

If you borrow a book from the library you could make a copy by scanning all the pages and then give the original back. Alternatively you could refuse to return it and pay the replacement cost. In either case you actually had the book with full access.

If you “borrow” the book in apps like this you are not getting the whole thing unencumbered, you are getting something more similar to a webcam view of a page turning robot. Yes you can read the text, but you can’t make any changes, mark a spot, read it offline, take a photocopy, and so on. Many of these apps block screenshots, and many also block copy and paste.

It is crazy to me that in order to have reasonable access to a book you have no legal option in many cases. I recently bought Azalea Ellis’ books and they are all in a plain eBook format or in a plain audio book format. No DRM, no limits. That means I can use the audio book as I want, which in my case means adding it to my AudioBookShelf server. I can cache it to my phone one book at a time or even the whole series in one go. I can play it at whatever speed I like, 2x is my normal, and nobody can stop me. I can listen to it as many times as I like.

If nobody will sell me the book without DRM I don’t consider it buying. They are leasing the book, renting access to it, but I never fool myself into thinking I own it. I don’t actually own anything on a PS5, nor on Steam. While Steam has not turned evil yet it is always a possibility, so I treat those licences as access rentals and assume they are temporary.

From a moral perspective if you van have it taken away you don’t own it, and if you buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t theft. Any claims that someone stole from a publisher when the publisher was claiming they were selling the game are bunk. If they actually sold the game, as GOG does, then it would be theft. But if they only sell a licence for access then it isn’t selling the game, and it is therefore not theft.

Thanks for that, someone else already informed me of the handy libredirect extension and posted the link as you did, but yes, helpful, I appreciate it.

Thanks for that, it works very well, have a good one!

The pace with which you are knocking out issues is fantastic! Well done, makes me want a Fairphone 6.

Wow, thanks for that, I’ve not actually used xcancel before, very handy.

Disappointed to only see this on X, not on the fediverse. I have blockers which completely break X and Meta so I simply can’t see these things, though I would love to. Is there an alternative place for these updates?