Jul

I don’t like the idea of a third party doing MitM type intercepts. I want control over anything that sees my unencrypted data whether it’s web services or chat services, etc. So for me the VPS is worth it. But I do also use my VPS for some other services that use apps or other APIs that don’t allow for presenting the Pangolin/SSO login step, and aren’t too risky to have a bit exposed rather than the responsiveness and battery cost of the separate VPN connection. One day I need to find a better way to handle those but for now it’s fine.

Definitely second date material. That person missed out. Lol

I use VPS’s for things that need to be more internet facing as well as Pangolin for then connecting to a few of my home based services securely. IMHO, it’s not as good for things that require storing lots of data like video, though, since storage costs have exploded. And any private data I prefer to only have on servers I own, not a VPS. Only encrypted backups of critical data go to online storage.

I use netcup for most things though I still have one server on Hetzner that I haven’t migrated. Hetzner’s prices went up and server responsiveness went down, so I started moving away, though I also still have the storage box server there for backups as well as the one VPS.

Yeah, exactly…large. Bigger than the phone, definitely not going to fit inside the phone.

It’s not just the spike, but the battery is supplying more power than the adapter for sometime extended periods of time. It would take an expensive, or very large, capacitor bank to hold enough power to accomplish that for very power intensive apps. Capacitors are good at charging and discharging quickly and lasting many more cycles than a battery, but no where near the capacity.

What you really need to know is exactly how much power the battery can provide and adjust the power supply to be able to supply that on demand and just enough capacitor capacity to smooth out the initial spike until the power supply gets the power up. I haven’t done the research to know the exact amounts, but I have a lot of experience with electrical and electronics in general, both professionally and amateur. So I could probably build it if o knew the exact specs.

That or adjust the phone firmware to limit the processor and GPU speeds, but that’s only possible on some phones that have code available and a way to root it without some hardware switch killing the phone permanently.

This is why I’m so glad the real estate is too expensive where I live so my company didn’t lease new property for the “return to work” nonsense which they did in a lot of areas they have offices. Working from home allows me to be so much more productive and so much less frustrated by constant interruption.

That sucks. It was one of the few GUIs that did a good job with most aspects of Docker Swarm. I knew it was heading in a shitty direction, but I was hoping something else would come along to fill the gap in the mean time.

I’m not familiar enough with TPMS specifically, but with the general technology as I have some experience with older security card technologies that use the same techniques. There are a few issues with trying to do this at long range (even a few yards).

First you’d need extremely sensitive transceivers that would be difficult to protect from interference.

Second, it would require enough power to get the transmitter to send the signal far enough to be read. This has multiple problems. One is that, depending on the frequencies involved, you may end up creating a noticeable amount of heat or causing cancer if exposed to it for a significant amount of time. This might be more problematic for pedestrians and animals who stand between the transceiver and the cars for too long.

Next is time, again not too familiar with the specifics of TPMS, but in similar tech, it would require power to be supplied by the transceiver for sometimes as much as a half a second or so. A moving car might not be in the target zone long enough to power up the TPMS, especially on faster moving roads and highways.

What they might be able to do to mitigate this is to convince cities to embed the transceivers in the road itself or in curbs or something closer to the car. And if done at stop signs and traffic lights it would mitigate any time based issues. Though they might need to keep then far enough from any of the coils they install for traffic monitoring and triggering traffic lights. Not sure how much interference those would cause for this approach.

Again, I could be totally off and TPMS might not have these issues. But if we’re talking cars from the 80s, then I wouldn’t be surprised if they had some of these issues.

Inconsistency of meds is definitely an issue with me. I used to do that, especially with the unending national shortage in the US, and insurance requirement to use a single pharmacy so I can’t shop around for stock making it hard to get it consistently.

But I changed tactics. I got a scale that can measure milligrams (not that accurately, but well enough) and got a weekly pill case to help me remember or at least know when I skipped. I take 3/4 doses consistently rather than taking full doses and then rationing and eventually cutting off between prescriptions. I also had some surgery and was off for a couple of months, so I stopped taking it then. I got absolutely nothing done like I wanted to during that time, but it gave me a small stockpile to help with this plan to stay consistent. I wish I could take a full dose and be as productive and lower anxiety as I am at that proper dosage.

I probably could find an unethical psychiatrist who didn’t care and would prescribe me higher doses so I could cut them and still have enough daily. But my intense Autism-driven ethical values hasn’t let me do that yet. Plus it’s really hard to find psychiatrists with openings that take insurance these days, so the ADHD keeps me from looking. LOL

I also get the desire to protect the cardiovascular system. I’m getting to that age where it’s becoming even more of a concern. But, and this is just for me of course, I think if my choice is a few years less life but also with less anxiety, that’s worth it. Maybe some day a better treatment will be available. Like Adderall is slightly better and slightly less harmful than Ritalin. But I think that won’t be in my lifetime with the way drug companies work now. They only make long term treatment drugs and only for life threatening things so people will pay exorbitant amounts until they die. They don’t research things that people can live with or try to cure anything anymore. Not that ADHD needs a cure, just a crutch to survive in culture that’s hostile to neurodivergence, but that’s also not a priority as it’s not emergent enough for people to spend their life savings on, and not wide spread enough, like obesity, for enough people not spending their life savings on to make a profit.

Well they did lay off a ton of developers in exchange for LLMs. I bet the LLMs are capable of writing secure code anyway. So it’s not even on my radar. But now knowing they also cut implementation of MTE means it’s even less secure. So either they are refusing to admit their mistakes, or they are bowing to the governments wanting a more hackable device, or both.

Google was being hostile towards open source anyway. So probably good that GrapheneOS skips this one. Maybe even more to a different line of devices that’s is not moving in such a proprietary direction. The last few Pixels aren’t even much of an upgrade and progressively keep falling behind on a lot of hardware, but the price keeps going up. They just aren’t what they used to be, a tech showcase for other companies to be inspired by. So, I’d actually be happy if GrapheneOS moved to another line, though I don’t know which would be ideal that actually allows unlocking and locking the boot loader without voiding warranty or actively killing the hardware out of spite but still has high end hardware.

The only way to do a truly full backup of apps and their data is to have root access. Unfortunately, many phones these days have “security” features that void the warranty and/or break apps like banking, Google Wallet tap-to-pay, etc. Or even some apps like games that rely on that for anticheat will break. And some security features make that last even if you relock the phone. So be careful to read what your phone has and what you’ll be permanently giving up.

I have a Pixel 10 and installed GrapheneOS which has some backup capabilities built in, but I can’t use Google Pay, some banking features, a bunch of games, the official UPS app, etc. But if I gave in and went back to Google Android it would all work. Samsung and other manufacturers are often not as generous.

Yeah, but you can also use file level technology like par files for rar compressed files or file system level or hardware level tech that allows for repairing some level of corruption. This often uses a little more space depending on how much corruption you want it to be tolerant of, but again, unless you have a ton of data, even using 1.25x the space needed for the data itself might still be cost effective for most home users.

If the tape drive attaches with SATA like a regular DVD drive or HDD then just get an adapter that connects USB to SATA. USB is unlikely to be a bottleneck with how slow tape is anyway, so having it internal isn’t that important.

But tape drives are only worth it if you need a heck of a lot of cartridges or absolutely need 30 year storage rather than maybe 10 years for an offline physical hard drive (assuming they’re both stored properly). Though I have drives decades old that still have readable data. But even if you copy out the data every 5-10 years to a new HDD, you’re likely to spend less than just the tape drive itself. And drives get larger over time so you’ll need fewer of them whereas the tape drive will have a set maximum storage space. And what if the tape drive dies and the company is out of business? You may end up not being able to read your tapes. SATA on HHDs has continued backward compatibility for decades.

Anwyay, for a home user with a few hundred TB to store, I’d be surprised if the cost would be better for tape. It’s really useful for places that store a few hundred TB per day, though. That’s where tape can be a boon. The primary advantages are it takes up a lot less physical space per TB and lasts longer. And once you do get past the cost of the drives, it does eventually start to be cheaper.

Also, remember it’s way slower than a physical HDD much less an SSD. Even an HDD connected via USB.

Should specify, I need it exposed to the internet as well so I can sync it to those multiple devices when I’m at my partner’s place or traveling and so my partner can use it from her place.

And I’d prefer something that allows some type of SSO or external authentication mechanism so it can handle multiple logins with different calendars and I can put some layers of security in front of it. Radicale requires addon applications to do that and most aren’t maintained.

Supposedly Radicale can do it with a WSGI server, but I never found one I got working.

Only one that came close was Baikal, but it had some issues and development has been really slow on it. It’s been quite a few years though, maybe I will try that one again.

Definitely easy, but not really a relevant response given the community we’re in. Plus there’s a lot of use in having your calendar synced to multiple places, not just your phone.

I never found an easy solution to set up for caldav and carddav yet personally. Most are either very complex to set up or they are no longer maintained which is bad for security vulnerabilities. So, I’m still stuck with Google because I need my reminders everywhere I go…ADHD.

But laundry doesn’t get moldy…at least not as quickly… Lol. Mold kicks my ass.

It’s their safety, not ours. Safety of their wallet and their unpopular ideals. Privacy is the antithesis of control since revolutions require privacy to organize whether those are social revolutions like women getting the right to show their hair in public or to vote or more aggressive revolutions.