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117
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • My setup is a bit extreme, but here are my guardrails:

    1. All users have the same UID's on every system. I'm 1000, wife is 1001, son is 1002, daughter is 1003. All these exist on all systems. Our primary group is "family" (gid 10000). Our files are all owned by user:family. This matters because we let them have access to the share of things like home movies and pictures, and I have a TrueNAS with an NFS mount that their user folders rsync to nightly for backup. If you wanna get crazy, you can put in a whole LDAP/freeIPA setup, but that's a lot (and I did all that as a learning experience).
    2. They don't have the account passwords. I have their password, and if they want to use it, the wife or I have to type the password. When we want them off, superkey+L to lock the computer, and if they reboot it comes to a login screen.
    3. If you really go this route, and go the whole LDAP thing, you can also tie that into apps like Jellyfin. I have a huge library of movies and shows, but there's a folder called "KidMedia" and I literally manually symlink things to that folder if I want them to have access. I set up the phones/tablet with their own jellyfin accounts, and when they log in they only see their media. I also NFS mount that share, so for the same reason, they can watch stuff on VLC from the computer with access control. We also do that with nextcloud, so we can use nextcloud talk to chat internally. The tablets/phones have built in android controls, so the idea is once they're on their device, they're free within the ecosystem I set up and they don't enter credentials other than device unlock.
  • I built my kids potato computers from the time they were 3-5, which was during covid. They need computer skills nowadays, and it put them at an advantage for covid school. We got them on java Minecraft which was huge for reading, typing, and some basic math skills (they figured out multiplication for crafting things like doors). I made a chart which had icons of things they want, with the word next to it, so they could search and type in creative.

    We used Ubuntu Mate. It's simple, stable, and familiar. They do NOT have sudo on these boxes. As we've advanced, they now have firefox (behind a pihole which upstreams to opendns' family protect), gimp (with a wacom tablet!), inkscape, calculators, tenacity, libre office, and they're starting to get into some cad to make things to 3d print. You have to come to terms with doing a LOT of patient hand holding, but it has paid off dividends.

  • Huge bummer that they're all 5+ years old. We've been moving to libreelec with Disney+, Jellycon, Netflix, Youtube, and amazon prime plugins. It's not the same, but it's workable. If Amazon keeps MatterCast open and open source implementations get made, that's where I'm focusing my attention. A raspberry pi with libreelec that can be a casting target feels, to me, like the holy grail:

    https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/9/24030324/amazon-matter-casting-echo-show-fire-tv-prime-video

  • No joke can you share those results? I'm holding out for matter cast

  • We tried to host it ourselves to save cost, and it's a beast but it mostly works. It certainly lags behind in features and uses a lot of resources, but when you compare with the cost it's certainly passable.

  • It's a lot for the homeland, but I love zabbix

  • This whole thing sucks because this kind of tech has the potential to be revolutionary. For people with paralysis, or those experiencing vision loss due to eye issues, the tech to interface nerves with sensors and inputs will be absolutely revolutionary. On the other hand, Musk has a terrible track record with safety and regulation, develops tech by abusing researchers and workers with unrealistic timelines and expectations, overpromises and under delivers, and responds with hostility to even the most measured criticism. Having his name tied to the version of this tech leading the news cycle will paint it in a dystopian light, raising the regulatory bar to "panic" levels with no nuance, and will likely result in pushing more realistic approaches to the tech back a significant amount of time, hurting those it would help most.

  • Fair, my home office is a monument to too much free time, a hoarding habit for ewaste, and a wife who works weekends and overnights.

  • That is a self-made soldering kit box I made when I was in college and had to haul it around a lot. I have actually been meeting to replace it with something more permanent now that I'm a grown up with my own house. I have an air flow soldering rig which doesn't really have a home, and I could have a much better use of space. I have my brocade ICX6610-24 next to that which I've been programming for way too long, and a whole bunch of 3D printer parts on top of that.

  • I've done some of that, recently I have an old putty knife and I will put it right against the crack and just hammer it which will unstick it enough that I can pull it off. Newer drives definitely have weaker magnets than some of my much older ones.

  • I started collecting in probably 2007, so manufactured before that for sure.

  • That's rad, and you did an amazing job keeping them whole. Recently I have been wrapping them in cloth, then the kids form clay around them for various fridge and office magnets.

  • For sure for sure. What is your preferred mechanisms for feature requests? Small things, like in the browser pane, could we get buttons to launch terminals directly in the connections tree on the left, so I can launch the terminal without having to open the file browser for that connection, or likewise, adding a link in the connections pane to jump straight into the file browser? I envision a workflow where I keep 1 view open and can launch into file browsing or terminal directly from that view.

  • Have you considered embedding a terminal editor in the actual program? I use mRemoteNG on windows, and the integrated rdp/ssh with a sidebar full of bookmarks is the dragon I've been chasing on linux.

    If this had remmina and vnc, and could embed terminals, it'd be a huge feature jump in my book (though it's already great as a better way to manage my ssh sessions)

  • For real though, I loved those. That wireless Logitech one with the volume dial lasted me a decade.

  • I think this is exactly what I want to see, news orgs (not just "mainstream" news, but let's say, professional orgs in an industry) hosting their own instances with closed signups for accounts with JUST relevant topics. I tried to find some journalists on journa.host to fill in tech and local news, and while I found the people, it was way too much personal/personality content and not as much news.

  • This legendary excerpt from his Wikipedia:

    Mitnick served five years in prison—four-and-a-half years' pre-trial and eight months in solitary confinement—because, according to Mitnick, law enforcement officials convinced a judge that he had the ability to "start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone", implying that law enforcement told the judge that he could somehow dial into the NORAD modem via a payphone from prison and communicate with the modem by whistling to launch nuclear missiles.