You could replace the systemd service with a systemd timer. Not sure how often you reboot, but maybe once a week would be sufficient?
You could then wrap it in a script that checks for packman's db.lock file. It would sleep as long as the lock file is present, which indicates that an update is active.
As someone who has owned enterprise servers for self-hosting, I agree with the previous comment that you should avoid owning one if you can. They might be cheap, but your longterm ownership costs are going to be higher. That's because as the server breaks down, you'll be competing with other people for a dwindling supply of compatible parts. Unlike consumer PCs, server hardware is incredibly vendor locked. Hell, my last Proliant would keep the fans ramped at 100% because I installed a HDD that the BIOS didn't like. This was after I spent weeks tracking down a disk that would at least be recognized, and the only drives I could find were already heavily used.
My latest server is built with consumer parts fit into a 2U rack case, and I sleep so much easier knowing I can replace any of the parts myself with brand new alternatives.
Plus as others have said, a 1U can be really loud. I don't care about the sound of my gaming computer, but that poweredge was so obnoxious that despite being in the basement, I had to smother it with blankets just so the fans didn't annoy me when I was watching TV upstairs. I still have a 1U Dell Poweredge, but I specifically sought out the generation that still let you hack the fan speeds in IPMI. From all my research, no such hack exists for the Proliant line.
The problem with chromebooks is that the base specs are pretty shit. A lot of them have 4 GiB of RAM and maybe 16GiB of disk if you're lucky.
They were designed to be thin clients to connect students to the internet, and little else. Maybe they could be hacked into something useful, but I don't think it'll ever make a good PC. They were always destined for the landfill.
Meanwhile, the best thinkpads were quality machines back when they came out. IMO, that's why they're still so versatile today. Free software can't fix bad fundamentals.
is it dishonorable to find loopholes in the rules of the honor culture
Dueling culture in 18th and 19th century Europe was commonly organized around concepts of "gentlemanly honor". Even back then, people recognized the need for loopholes.
Consider the case of two friends who got drunk at a tavern, each one declaring how much they loved the other. Eventually, one friend goes overboard "I love you more than you know!" to which the response is "But that cannot be, for my love of you is infinite!". Soon this becomes an argument over who loves the other more, and eventually they have to settle their friendship like gentlemen: With swords at dawn. If they're smart and sober up in time, their seconds will work out a solution before the fight, but there are cases recorded where the friends kill each other because honor trumps love.
There were also loopholes which worked to favor the person that society already deemed more "honorable" (wealthy, connected, liked, etc). It was generally accepted that a gentleman of certain standing could honorably refuse another's challenge to duel if their social stations were different. Think a "new money" banker's son challenging a minor nobleman over a loan that's due. It simply wouldn't look good to have some commoner slaying an aristocrat, even if said aristocrat was an asshole.
In the future, I highly recommend using Kimwipes to clean off your lenses day-to-day. They're little papers designed to wipe off lab equipment without leaving any scratches or residue, and you don't need to spray them with any cleaner either. Just a dry wipe until the lenses are clean. If I'm careful about how I use them, a wipe can be reused 2-3 more times before disposal.
Since I started using them, I've never had problems with the antiglare coating coming off.
I did this in my town. It was a local theater though, not a big chain
Went on a Wednesday night and rented access to a screening room for ~5h. We had to pay extra because they normally close earlier on a weeknight
Showed up early to meet the projectionist and get a technical rundown
Setup was a friend's laptop plugged into HDMI running up to the projector booth
Nobody complained when we brought out a disk full of torrented movies
The theater already had a license to sell alcohol, so we had that covered
We brought a small bit of outside food, and nobody complained
It was absolutely the best time I ever had at a cinema. When the evening wound down, the projectionist invited us into the back area for a tour of the projection equipment.
I think that because we were a private event the rules about screening copyrighted materials to public audiences did not apply.
Not sure what motherboard you have: Most consumer boards only support "FakeRAID", which requires a kernel driver to actually function. Good luck finding a vendor who wrote a driver for Linux.
I'd definitely recommend software RAID instead, as you'll have better support. I like btrfs, so I'd recommend you set up your new drives to use a btrfs RAID configuration. mdadm is another option, if you really like ext4.
On Linux, I run fwupdmgr to periodically check for firmware updates. Not every manufacturer supports it yet, but I've had good results with a few laptops. Not sure if it supports BIOS.
Also though, I generally try to leave my BIOS alone if everything is working fine. Unless I hear of a reason to update, I'd rather stay on a stable version.
Try org-roam. It's a similar system to obsidian, but fully open source. You have all the note taking techniques of org-mode, and all the scripting power of emacs.
I'd recommend BTRFS in RAID1 over hardware or mdadm raid. You get FS snapshotting as a feature, which would be nice before running a system update.
For disk drives, I'd recommend new if you can afford them. You should look into shucking: It's where you buy an external drive and then remove (shuck) the HDD from inside. You can get enterprise grade disks for cheaper than buying that same disk on its own. The website https://shucks.top tracks the price of various disk drives, letting you know when there are good deals.
I live in a progressive urban area far from the Southern US. I can think of at least 2 different stores near me that sell groceries and ammunition. From my experience, groceries + ammo is pretty common for many big-box stores in the suburbs.
What you're looking for is a revocation key. You can generate one in GPG at the same time that you generate your identity key. The method of securing it is up to you. In your example, a simple way would be to encrypt it with the 5 sequential keys. Or you could break the revocation key up into K parts with Shamir's secret sharing algorithm.
If it's just for movies, consider an Intel ARC A380.
Small, cheap, great transcoding performance, and its drivers should be shipped by default with most distros. It really can't do games though.