IsoKiero

@IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Know your place⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Meaning that if you could travel at the speed of light (which is impossible), it would still take you 100,000 years to cross the galaxy from edge to edge.

  It’s just highly improbable to cross the galaxy in less than 100 000 years. You just need a device which generates infinite improbability and that’ll pass you trough every single point in the universe simultaneously and you can just stop where needed. Side effects may apply.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Have you tried self-hosting your own email recently?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I do it. Postfix+dovecot+spamassassin managed with ISPConfig running on a VPS. Works just fine, but my domains already have a long-ish good reputation so that may play a part on my experience. Biggest headache is to keep things running, which occasionally means jumping trough hoops microsoft(mostly) and others throw at you by flagging your server as spam for no apparent reason.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Have you tried self-hosting your own email recently?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s quite likely that any given IP, unless you get one from shady VPS provider or something, is “clean”. And if it’s not it’s usually not that big of a deal to get it cleared from major blacklists (spamhaus, google and microsoft covers quite a lot). You just need to dig up proper forms to tell them that you’re a new owner of said IP and promise to play nice.

  Same goes with domain names, but if you get a new one that’s a non-issue. Just set up SPF-records properly (and preferably DKIM/DMARC, but those aren’t strictly necessary and need a bit more than a single TXT-record) and you’re good to go.

  And then you of course need to stay away from those lists. If you configure your SMTP to act as a open proxy you’ll be on every shitlist on the planet pretty quickly. So, reasonable measures against compromised account (passwords, firewalls, rate limits…) and against other threats (misconfigured/unsafe web service used for spam and stuff like that). Any of those alone are not too difficult to accomplish, but there’s quite a few things you need to get right.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is testing full-screen Microsoft 365 ads in Windows 11 for expired subscriptions⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  If people are paying someone to “install” their printer, why would it be different with Linux.

  With printers spesifically I’d bet people don’t need to pay for support with Linux as much. Sure, there are models which just won’t work, but in general my experience is that printers are mostly plug’n’play with Linux.

  A few months ago I did a helpdesk gig on one local small business. They consume a lot of paper due to requirements on their business and they have some fancy KonicaMinolta photocopier. They guys who installed the printer had struggled for hours to get that thing to work on their Win10 machines. I did what was requested and they asked if I could print out notes I wrote for them for reference but immediately started to wonder if that’s feasible as the printer was so difficult to install. It took less than a minute for my mint-laptop to locate the printer and start using it. No idea if the printer company techs were just incompetent or if the software for it is bad, but apparently I’m now some kind of tech-deity in their office…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨First Time Self Hoster- Need help with Radicale⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe easier to get anything runnin quickly. But it obfuscates a lot of things and creates additional layer of stuff which you need to then manage. Like few days ago there was discussion about how docker, by default, creates rules which bypass the “normal” INPUT rules on many (most?) implementations. And backup scenario is different, it’s not as straightforward to change configuration than with traditional daemon and it’s even more likely to accidentally delete your data as a whole.

  As I already said, docker has its uses, but when you’re messing around and learning a new system you first need to learn how to manage the ropes with docker and only after that you can mess around with the actual thing you’re interested of. And also what I personally don’t really like is the mindset that you can just throw something on a docker and leave it running without any concern which is often promoted with ‘quickstart’-type documentation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨First Time Self Hoster- Need help with Radicale⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You absolutely can run services without containers and when learning and trying things out I’d say it’s even preferable. Docker is a whole another beast to manage and has a learning curve of it’s own.

  Containers can of course be useful but setting everything up, configuring networking, managing possible integrations with other components (for example authentication via LDAP) it’s often simpler just to run the thing “in traditional way”. With radicale you can just ‘apt install radicale’ (or whatever you’re using) and have a go with it without extra layer of stuff you need to learn before getting something out of the thing. And even on production setups it might be preferred approach to go with ‘bare metal’, but that depends on quite a few variables.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What I host myself⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  On residential connections it’s a bit pain in the rear, but if you get VPS (or something similar) it’s perfectly manageable. You just need to maintain stuff properly, like having proper DNS records, and occasionally clear false positives from spam lists. The bigger issue is to have proper backups and precautions, I’ve hosted my own emails for over 10 years and should I lose all the data and ability to receive new messages it would be a massive personal problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Big Surprise—Nobody Wants 8K TVs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  My TV is also 4K but my amplifier which eats all the inputs can only do 1080p. 4k quality on that 65" is better, but not by that much that I’d throw 500+€ for a new amp since the current one works just fine and it fulfils all my needs on a TV/media set.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Word documents will be saved to the cloud automatically on Windows going forward⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This actually is a really good idea.

  Yes, for the reasons you mention. And very, very much no. My corporate hat immediately thinks about a crapload of stuff our network drives have which is under various NDAs, restrictions to store outside EU/ETA, restrictions to store even outside our country and so on. At least our accounts have mandatory MFA and other standard safety features, but cloud storage has a different threat model than our local hardware which also makes it’s own little headaches.

  I don’t play on the contract/legal field on corporate at all, but I do know that some of those NDAs have numbers big enough to bring the whole circus down and other clauses which can even throw someone in jail if things really go wrong. I just hope I’m not the scapegoat at that point.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s plenty DIY projects around the net with various raspberry models. You just need some knowledge, preferably access to a 3D printer, an soldering iron, some tools and other bits and bobs. It’s definetly doable, but I can understand if someone prefers to throw some money on the table and get one pre-built.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stop children using VPNs to watch porn, ministers told⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  VPN, Tor (and similar, like I2P), every imaginable P2P network, proxies, all non-http protocols (smtp, ftp, nntp, xmpp and other instant messengers and so on) can all transfer any kind of data, porn included. And a ton of other things. Heck, I’m quite sure there’s a minecraft mod where you can assemble JPG-images out of the blocks and view them that way. And then you can use stuff like uuendoce where you can use anything that can move plain text to transfer binary data.

  There’s no way to block all of that unless you shut the whole internet down. And even then you can still trade good old playboy-magazines with your friends. VPN in itself has very little to do with the actual problem, beyond that someone apparently noticed that their current “save-the-children” iteration had pretty large holes in it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stop children using VPNs to watch porn, ministers told⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If they were really after kids watching porn (or even porn in general) it would be technically somewhat simple to force ISPs to provide filters on their end as a subscription service. I’m pretty sure I’ve even heard that kind of services in the past. Make it even opt-out if you really want to.

  That way ISPs would just ban everything from pornhub and others unless you spesifically want it allowed or even provide a portal where you could block reddit, twitter, tumblr or whatever you wish on your account. That kind of technology already exists and it’s used on many corporate setups.

  There’s obviously ways around that, but there’s no technical way to block every possible way to move bits between computers. Even if they would shut down the whole internet there’s still ways to build mesh-networks or even buy USB-drives from a shady alley.

  But as we all know, it’s not about porn and not about children.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Americans’ junk-filled garages are hurting EV adoption, study says⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not in the US, but here where we have snow and all the fun that comes with it using garage can be actually harmful to your car (and your garage) unless you spend a ton of energy to melt and dry all the snow every night. If there’s some snow or ice on somewhere it doesn’t really do anything but bring it in a lukewarm garage and then you have water (and likely road salt) all over the thing. So your car corrodes faster and there’s a ton of moisture in the garage for mold, rot and everything else prospering inside.

  I’m driving old, cheap cars. Keeping them dry them every day during winter in the garage would easily cost me as much as the cars themselves in a year. So cars stay outside and garage stores my tools and other valuables in a good condition so that I can fix those old shitboxes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Digg’s new app is basic, but a great start⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d bet they get some investor funding due to already known brand, struggle to exist without massive userspace for few years and silently die again in next 3-5 years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No. Switching from 140 to 160 hp isn’t something you’d really even notice on everyday commuting. More is more of course, but unless your driving style is very aggressive that doesn’t really make any difference on the driving experience. What it might do is improve your range slightly, but that depends heavily on multiple different things and if your driving style and conditions on most common routes aren’t suitable it might even reduce the range you’ll get out of the thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI will not disclose GPT-5’s energy use. It could be higher than past models⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s experimental storages where heat is pumped to underground pools or sand, but as far as I know there’s heat exchangers and radiators to outside, so majority of excess heat is just wasted to outside. But absolute majority of them are closed loop systems since you need something else than plain water anyways to prevent freezing in the winter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI will not disclose GPT-5’s energy use. It could be higher than past models⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Or you could build the centers in colder climate areas. Here in Finland it’s common (maybe even mandatory, I’m not sure) for new datacenters to pull the heat from their systems and use that for district heating. No wasted water and at least you get something useful out of LLMs. Obviously using them as a massive electric boiler is pretty inefficient but energy for heating is needed anyways so at least we can stay warm and get 90s action series fanfic on top of that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that despite being outside of US jurisdiction, Lego has dropped diversity and inclusion terminology from its annual report⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  it’s really hard to prove that a candidate was rejected because of their ethnicity

  Same in Finland at least to some extent. Statistics and published tests show that you’re less likely to get even an interview if you have a foregin sounding name but of course the official reason is always something ‘acceptable’. And when hiring people the reason can be whatever, “not good fit for our team”, “other applicants had better suited skill set”, “not enough experience in X” and so on. All perfectly good reasons to pick someone else in theory and in practise it’s impossible to prove any racism on selection.

  Obviously not everyone does this and any of those can be a real reason to pick someone else even without any racism (intended or not), but it’s still common enough to be statistically meaningful.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AOL will end dial-up internet service in September, 34 years after it's debut — AOL Shield Browser and AOL Dialer software will be shuttered on the same day⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Just over the weekend I browsed trough my old blog (yes, those were a thing too) to check which year I did some remodeling on our house and stumbled on a note where I complained about slow 3G connection about 10 years ago. Compared to traditional dial-up that’s still orders of magnitude faster(~10/1Mbps back then on our location) but on a snowy day (with severe packet loss) it apparently took 10 minutes to get Skype and XMPP to even log in and over a minute to get SSH session open.

  I suppose you can just barely get email trough today and even then you better not be in a hurry.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can I build a fully decentralised website?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, depends on what OP is looking for. For example running multiple web servers on different locations with same content and load-balancing them is absolutely doable. But impossible to say what they’re actually after.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Checkmate.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  gold foil

  Aluminium foil hastily coloured with a golden marker.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI in Wyoming may soon use more electricity than state’s human residents⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  effectively limitless

  And it’s generated anyways, no matter if we pull some minuscle amount of it out or not. 47 terawatts all the time (according to wikipedia), or all the power we currently consume per year in about 150 days (assuming my quick math is even close). Of course we can’t (and probably shouldn’t) capture 100% of it, but there’s plenty of energy to at least shut down few coal ovens.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI in Wyoming may soon use more electricity than state’s human residents⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  image

  XKCD 605

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Duckstation(one of the most popular PS1 Emulators) dev plans on eventually dropping Linux support due to Linux users, especially Arch Linux users.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  actively going out of your way to remove the existing support is petty and just an asshole move

  Sure, but the dev doesn’t owe anything to anyone. He of course could ask community for help with this, sugar coat every answer, spend his (I assume already very valuable and sparse) free time to deal with assholes while trying to organize wider developer base to manage the issue and so on.

  But he/she is still not obligated to do so and most definetly not obligated to deal with assholes all day every day instead of working with the passion project. Anyone around here thinking this is a wrong call can step up and volunteer to manage the thing, you don’t even need to know how to code, just filter trough the crap and create meaningful tickets and find people from community who’re willing to spend their time on fixing it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Welcome to the new world of risk: Microsoft cuts off services to energy company without notice⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Also, at least in here, lease costs (like all as-a-service things) are considered to be flexible while own hardware and specially workforce are static costs. And no one wants to increase static costs, even if it’s clear as daylight that flexible cost only flexes upward over time unless the company suddenly shrinks by quite a lot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Assistant Is Basically on Life Support and Things Just Got Worse⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re absolutely correct. I have few smart switches around the house and automations for yard lights and stuff like that are pretty nice to have but I still have the physical switch where the dumb switch was to interact with if the automations are down or I just want to override them. The ones I use even accept the same faceplate than traditional ones so there’s no change on anything unless you want to automate things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Users Rally Behind Anti-Censorship Petition⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d bet that there are more mastercard users who haven’t even heard about Steam or Valve than there’s users on Steam. And MC with others are using their massive leverage right now, what you’re going to switch to?

  Also 3 times bigger is definetly something. It’s like asking what’s the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars (answer is about billion dollars). Not quite, but effectively the same. And payment processors have the power to practically stop all money transfers to Valve (which they are threatening with already). Microsoft or Apple might have cash to fight that, Valve most definetly could not sustain legal fight with them if absolute majority of their income is cut off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘If I switch it off, my girlfriend might think I’m cheating’: inside the rise of couples location sharing⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Society has apparently forgotten the good old ‘call me when you get there’-thing. My wife travels by car with our kids now and then for 300-400km at a time and it’s nice to get messages/calls like “we’re at X, stopped for coffee” or “we got here”. That’s all I need and it’s also a part of relationship and communication. There’s no value on following a dot on the map. They even had a small accident one time and I heard about it soon enough. Even if I had their live location it would mean absolutely nothing as they were over an hour away, it was way more important to get proper help there before notifying me instead of getting distracted by my calls/messages at that time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Users Rally Behind Anti-Censorship Petition⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Valve is basically a small business one bad Monday from going bankrupt compares to payment processors.

  Few quick searches around the internet says that (measured by revenue) Mastercard alone is roughly 3 times bigger than Valve. So even if Valve is pretty big player it’s not even close on major payment processors. And they’re not playing on the same rules either, any payment processor can vanish payments for anyone with just ‘fuck you, that’s why’ -reasoning buried in their contracts. There’s almost no one who could afford to fight with them even in theory and much less in practise.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨datacenter liquid cooling solution⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If you are willing to deal with potential galvanic corrosion, condensation, leaks, replacing fluid every now and then and so on I suppose you could use red or yellow radiator coolant from your local car service shop. It has all the properties you’ll want from a coolant liquid, but as others have already mentioned, it’s not really worth the hassle. Atleast if you’re not running something really power hungry, like GPU farm. And even with liquid you have the very same problems than air, you need the heat to go somewhere. So either have very long pipes (and pumps to match them) so you can have the radiator on a different room/outside or big fans to move the hot air away from radiator.