Termux and associated addons, especially x11. Because fuck the direction the entire Android ecosystem is going in. I'd rather have a Linux phone, but Termux:x11 is as close as I'm realistically going to get at the moment.
Turns out when you give the worst possible userbase access to an "Edit with AI" button on every image, they will indeed edit every image with AI in the worst possible way.
Old laptop as a server is viable and not unheard of. They're generally low power consumption, and have a built-in KVM and UPS.
Depends on your VPN provider and use case. I'd recommend against Tor-only if you want normal people to ever see anything you blog. You'll need static IP and/or dynamic DNS if you want it to be reachable with any kind of reliability. Doing it over VPN requires your provider to support port forwarding, which not all do.
Again, depends on your use case. It's generally a good idea to disable unused services. Worst case it goes down while you're on holidays or something and you can't get it back up for a while. Can you live with that? It might also be a good idea to leave SSH on but access restricted to LAN only. That way you don't have to get up from your main rig to tweak stuff on it, and can follow tutorials in a browser while SSH'ed in to the server.
Nothing that clever or complicated. But I have a feeling it'll never get finished. I think it's a grift, just a money laundering scheme where federal funds go to private companies and then back into our big wet boy's big wet bank account. And it'll possibly end up getting used as a bargaining chip whereby companies get deals to consult on the construction in exchange for favours.
The vibe has been really weird around here. I've been out shopping for incidentals and expected to have to deal with the usual consumer spending orgy but it kinda just .. hasn't happened. Maybe a little bit busier than normal, but nothing excessive. Even the decorations in the shopping centres are kinda half-assed this year, and I don't think I've heard Mariah Carey even once.
Prusa and Cura are available on flathub and work fine. AFAIK Orca isn't in the main repo but the flatpak is on their github and works fine for me too.