Brickfrog

Wake on LAN is a LAN feature, not WAN, so you’d need to issue that over the local LAN there at the house. You’re going to have a hard time trying to get that working over the WAN (if that’s even possible).

The other comments mentioning a scheduled boot would be a much easier/simple solution if it works for you.

But I’ll throw this in, the super basic least tech solution to this is to open a port forward to the house’s network router. Yes, I know you don’t want to do that, but it’s probably the only network device at that house that’s actually on 24/7 right? And by all means lock it down however you like. My simple method is to open the router login to a non-standard port number, with a IP whitelist, add my own home IP address to that IP whitelist, and bam you now have access to that remote home’s router for just your IP address. Log in remotely, issue a wake on LAN via the router’s own web ui, done.

It’s perfectly reasonable to make this a bit more secure if you wanted but it gets slightly more complicated - open a non-standard port for SSH access to the remote router’s SSH port that only allows SSH login with key. Generate a SSH key and share that key with yourself, then you can log in remotely to that remote house via non-standard SSH port using the SSH key (no user/passwords). From there you’d have to see if you can issue Wake on LAN on the SSH command line, or set up a SSH tunnel from that remote LAN to yours so you can proxy into the router login page and do your Wake on LAN from there. … yes I realize this got complicated :/ But you’ve got a few things to explore given your patience for tinkering with this stuff :)

Of course much of this relies on that house’s router having any of these features to enable and configure. The main takeaway here is that Wake on LAN requires something on 24/7 at that remote LAN for you to enable remote access into and issue a Wake on LAN command within that LAN. How to actually accomplish that is the tricky bit.

Just curious was this a Tuta paid account, or a free one?

Tuta is very strict with the free accounts and flag them for all sorts of reasons. They take their time to “approve” free accounts just to be able to use them. And on top of that they might nuke your account anyway if they think it is being used for spam/illegal activity/whatever or they think it’s not being used.

But I thought those are just issues with their free accounts, presumably their paid accounts don’t get flagged for those things… or so I thought.

Also to echo the other comments - best to buy and own your own domain for your email, that way it doesn’t matter where the email is being hosted in case you need to switch email providers.

There is an Linux compatible open source player being developed called fooyin (https://fooyin.org/) heavily inspired by foobar2000. When I tried it out a few months back it was still a bit rough for day-to-day use but it could eventually become a good alternative for people that miss the foobar2000 style player.

Pretty sure Strawberry does everything you are looking for.

re: #1 I kind of had the same issue but with multiple music folders, most of the default music apps only let you use one folder. Strawberry lets you add as many music folders as you like, I’ve been happy with it.

On Windows I used to use foobar2000 which was great, and in theory I could get it running under Linux, but I’d rather just use something coded for Linux compatibility from the start.

Not quite what you’re asking but if you buy your music on Bandcamp (or just have a Bandcamp account) you can “Follow” artists there. That tells Bandcamp to send you email alerts every time that artist releases an track/album on Bandcamp.

It’s one of the main ways I find out that new music gets released and it sort of works since I was probably going to buy it at Bandcamp anyway.

One thing you may want to update - listing Tor’s logging policy as “No Logs” is a bit misleading, that’s really more of a voluntary recommendation for individual Tor exit relay operators.

Tor exit relay operators absolutely can store logs of outgoing connections if they choose to. And technically they could even snoop on non-secure traffic if they choose, there’s a reason you should be using HTTPS if you’re going to use Tor for clearnet browsing.

Of course most Tor exit relay operators aren’t going to do these things but it’s all voluntary, seems incorrect to claim all exit relay operators follow no log principles.

EDIT: Also AFAIK you can’t forward a port from the clearnet through a Tor exit relay’s public IP address back to your own Tor client, Tor doesn’t do port forwarding like that. It’s definitely not needed to run Tor Browser (and Tor VPN I think) but that isn’t needed for any of the other VPNs either, a bit confusing how you listed that one.

Agreed, if OP is going to add Tor in a “VPN” list then may as well add I2P. I2P + outproxies are pretty much the same thing as Tor + Tor Exit Relay. It’s not the best way to utilize I2P but the option does exist.

Then again neither Tor nor I2P should be in a “VPN” list, the whole thing seems more of a VPN provider topic.

Everything normal here. Granted I’m not on a network that blocks Tor so the Tor Browser’s normal startup/connecting routine has always worked fine.

My Sony Trinitron served me well back in the day - But no, I don’t miss the CRT era. Just too huge and heavy. And honestly I don’t remember the generic non-Trinitron CRTs being anything special, they were kind of shitty.

Anyways I thought the CRT thing is just collectors/old school gamers looking to display older media on a proper CRT? Obviously people with a lot of space, garages, basements, etc… people in tiny rooms and apartments need not apply LOL.

This whole article seems a bit off.

Thanks for the share! It’s not something I’d need to use but I’m all for people sharing their scripts with the community for this stuff :)

One suggestion, you may want to look at re-writing your script to move away from the VBScript (.vbs) dependency since Microsoft is moving towards disabling and eventually removing it from Windows 11 and onward. It’ll likely be disabled by default in 2027 so you have plenty of time.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/vbscript-deprecation-timelines-and-next-steps/4148301

OP’s example use case in the post was with the internet still being up. Building off of that yes, I’d log into the power switch remotely via the internet where I can then power cycle anything plugged into it - for me it was just to restart unresponsive desktops or whatever was plugged into it.

But you wouldn’t need internet to power cycle the internet router itself by using scheduled tasks. e.g. the power switch can check that the internet router is responding to pings every x seconds/minutes and power cycle it if stops responding. (it has other checks/conditions it can use besides simple pings)

That said my own equipment rarely/never needs a reboot so in the case my network loses internet access it usually means the internet is actually down, nothing I can do about that aside from maintaining backup internet if I needed.

if the primary internet router goes offline but the internet isn’t out (ie a router reboot would fix the problem)

Maybe you just need to give it a simple power cycle remotely? There are devices that do that sort of thing, I have a Digital Loggers Web Power Switch Pro that I’ve used on-and-off over the years for this purpose.

https://www.digital-loggers.com/

At one point I had to relocate for half a year while needing to remote access a slightly unstable desktop that wouldn’t always reboot cleanly and get stuck at the BIOS, it sometimes needed a couple of power cycles to come back online. The Power Switch was perfect for that, I’d log into it remotely and power cycle anything that was plugged into it.

It should work for routers too e.g. it can automatically power cycle something plugged into it based on different conditions like maybe it stops responding to pings or whatever. Or I guess if you had multiple IPs / multiple internet connections the switch itself can stay online and accessed remotely without needing to schedule anything automatic.

Pretty sure there are more pro-level (and more expensive) types of devices to do this sort of thing if you look around

Nouveau seems to work pretty well on Debian 13 for me, at least for standard web browser / streaming / video playback with 2160p HDR tonemapping. Back when I was using Debian 12 Nouveau would lag badly during 2160p playback so I was force to use the Nvidia driver binary at the time. But so far it’s been alright, granted I’ve not tested any gaming and perhaps that’s where Nouveau won’t do as well.

I have a bit of a dilemma with my DIY NAS rig.

Does your setup have any way to do noise insulation? I suspect the answer is no but figured I’d throw it out there, surprisingly noise insulation helps more than you’d think. I have a bunch of drives inside a desktop case with insulation panels built in and the drives themselves are in there with rubber anti vibration screws/mounts. Barely ever hear anything from the drives (granted my WD Reds are probably quieter than your current Seagates).

Just something to think on whether it’s an option for your current NAS rig or a future configuration.

It’s been a thing, not specifically just Canada

https://www.wired.com/story/phone-searches-at-the-us-border-hit-a-record-high/

That said I don’t personally know any canadian citizens that have traveled in/out of the U.S recently. Not too sure if it relates to OP’s question, OP never mentioned canadian citizens only that they has a GF that goes to school in Canada.

Are they looking at the files on her MacBook or something?

If the apps are logged in yes, that’s what they do. The agents have a lot of discretion so it’s sort of up to them how much they want to search around on a phone/laptop/whatever but I assume they would look at every single social media app for starters. Essentially any app currently logged into an electronic device would be fair game for an agent to review. And since CPB can ask for your phone/whatever password (or ask you to unlock it for them) that will give them access to basically any logged in app on the device.

I don’t know if OP is referring to a U.S. citizen or something else so the specific rules that apply may be different but that’s the general idea.

Not sure if this answers your question, on my fresh install of Debian 13 it seems to default to using

/etc/apt/sources.list

For example, I had to go in there to enable non-free and it worked fine.

There is a newer/recommended format of sources files ending in .sources in the same folder. The newer format is supported as of Debian 13 but for whatever reason Debian 13 doesn’t actually default to installing the newer version on fresh installs. I’m a bit confused by that but Debian’s own docs do discuss it.

https://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList

On my fresh install the /etc/apt/sources.list.d still exists, it looks like other software still create their own sources .list files in there when adding their own repos. Debian 13 itself does not seem to generate any files there.

My suggestion is to install Ubuntu with whatever desktop environment works for her. Since you’re using Ubuntu too, and you’re essentially going to be her tech support, it’ll just be easier all around to stay on the same distro at least for now.

More importantly, how Windows-centric is she? Some people may prefer Gnome since using it is just a bit less complicated to use without needing to set a bunch of different settings. But if she’s expecting the Windows style start menus and such then maybe she’ll prefer KDE. Or there’s always installing Linux Mint’s Cinnamon on Ubuntu, Cinnamon would be easier than KDE for a ex-Windows user I suspect (https://ubuntucinnamon.org/ also exists apparently).

The WD sales are decent if you’re buying new so if you’re feeling like it’s time for a purchase this might be worth it for you.

I did the same earlier this year though in my case I tend to buy the current gen large capacity WD Reds & stick with them for a few years at least. When their 24 TB / 26 TB drives went on sale they actually were cheaper than what Newegg / Amazon had done with their own sales up to then so for me it was worth it.

The other thing to keep in mind, if you’re in the U.S., the whole tariff situation isn’t going to make this stuff any cheaper in the future.

Time to update https://endof10.org/ , LOL.

Annoying for the IT peeps that have to deal with this. Guess they’ll have to decide whether it’s worth continuing using the hardware with a replacement OS (Linux, ChromeOS, etc.) or more likely retire all the old hardware.

Anyone in the know on how many Windows 11 SE devices were actually in use? Seems most schools would have gone the more obvious route with something like ChromeOS for a “web first” experience unless M$ and vendors were pushing these things out at massive discounts in the first place.