Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.
— Richard P. Feynman
I think the same is true for a lot of folks and self hosting. Sure, having data in our own hands is great, and yes avoiding vendor lock-in is nice. But at the end of the day, it’s nice to have computers seem “fun” again.
At least, that’s my perspective.
Whatever you decide for your laptop, I’m a proponent of a barebones off-site setup if you’re trying for 3-2-1 backup or similar.
I use a raspberry pi 3 with a single HD (ZFS) retaining some number of daily/weekly/monthly snapshots. Daily rsync, everything over WireGuard+VPS (TailScale would work too).
From our experience in the US, the birth is nothing compared to the financial drain of the other expenses. And at this age, childcare dwarfs all the other child-related expenses.
We have great insurance and don’t rely on family for childcare though, so the math is very very different for someone with “free” familial childcare and no/lousy insurance…
Others mentioned virtualization — I have had issues with COW filesystems (btrfs), as COW does not always play nicely with VM drives (extreme fragmentation and very poor performance).
Not the “trickle down” that we were promised, but at least this trickle down is real?
Maybe there’s some interplay between amd64 and x64 architectures.
AMD64 and x64 are the same thing. Do you mean AMD64 and x86? There is definitely interplay there, as AMD64 implements the x86-32 instruction set.
Same — rsync to a pi 3 with a (single) ZFS drive at family’s house. Retain some daily/weekly/monthly snapshots.
I have a (free) VPS with static IPv4 which is how I connect everything.
Both the VPS and the remote site have limited network speed (I think 50Mbps for VPS), so the initial sync was done sneakernet (well…“airplane net”). Nightly rsync is no problem bandwidth-wise, and is mostly just any new videos I’ve uploaded to my local Immich instance.
When they talk about being the party of Lincoln this isn’t what I had in mind…
Scully and Mulder would not put up with this shit.
To each their own though? I can’t imagine why anyone would want something other than i3 (or similar), because almost by definition the DE is not the program I fired up my computer to interact with, and i3 “gets out of the way better” than most others in my experience.
But…that’s just my use case. It’s a horrible UX for most people, just happens to work well for me.
I feel old…when I was learning how to run Linux I started with an old 386 (maybe 486?) my dad wasn’t using. I think it had 32MB RAM, which was fancy for those machines.
We had dial up at the time, so only one machine could be on the Internet. So, I set up a modem on the x86, plugged into an Ethernet hub (switch?), and learned enough ipchains (this was before iptables) to share a connection. It also ran Samba, an AFP server, and probably FTP and HTTP (just for local access) — but it worked for filesharing.
It could also run MP3 streaming software which amused me because the machine itself was too slow to decode MP3 (but that’s not necessary to stream).
I just wish we’d have neither inflation nor deflation.
Some tech has followed this pattern. For example: entry level Mac laptop in ~2000 was the iBook, priced at $1599 ($3k+ in today’s dollars). The current entry level Mac laptop (M4 Air) starts at $999 — cheaper in absolute dollars, and way cheaper in relative dollars.
(Macs are just an example since Apple doesn’t have a very extensive product list, so there’s only one “entry level” laptop to choose from. And yes it’s fair to ask if the relative specs have just gotten worse, but I think this is also the opposite — the iBook was iirc criticized as being underpowered, whereas the M4 Air is afaik well regarded.)
My comment from another thread: https://startrek.website/comment/16491624
tl;dr: tiny production, would be astonished if they got $6k out of it, and that’s not counting time, props, transportation, etc.
Compensation for engineers in the Bay area will average much higher than $200k, and that’s not counting benefits (medical, etc.). So cost to the company will be way higher than 200k/employee.
For a project that has hardware, there will be large expenses associated with that — custom silicon has huge setup costs, for example.
You mentioned ham radio — definitely fun! It’s a process to get into it though, as you need to study/pass an exam, and then you need a radio. Radios range from cheap ($25 or so) in the VHF/UHF (“walkie talkie”-style) to more expensive for an HF rig ($1000 range for 100W HF). If you want to get into low power (“QRP”) it can be much cheaper. You also need a fair amount of space for a good antenna setup…
There are tons of different communication modes, some without a computer and, like you mentioned, some that use computers. wsjtx and fldigi are popular programs.
Good luck!
D’oh, I’m a doofus — it’s search that I was thinking of (apt-cache search, not apt-get search).
Can apt-get refresh package list?
Edit: yes…yes it can. I was confused.
They specified 1 significant figure — at that level it’s the same.
This is the same argument used for blaming the cost of college on government loans for education, for $$$ housing prices in cities that offer low income subsidies, for food prices due to food stamps…
This type of thing is the nominal purpose of credit scores, I believe. (Whether they’re implemented effectively is another story…)