hendrik

@hendrik@palaver.p3x.de

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Best practice for connecting lots of HDD to motherboards with few SATA ports?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you'll want to factor in the exact use case at that scale. Does speed matter? Is "a ton" really a ton? Last regular computer mainboard I bought has 6 SATA ports. If I look at current harddrives, best price per gigabyte should be somewhere around 14TB drives. So given a RAID5, that's 70TB of storage, or 80TB if you go for 16TB hdds.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a self-hosted project that does base64 url decoding in a privacy respecting fashion?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I know. Guess I mainly wanted to say your given solution isn't the entire story and the potential tool should decode the parameters as well, they might or might not be important. I'm often at the computer and I regularly do one-off tasks this way... But I'm aware it might not be an one-off task to you and you might not have a Linux terminal open 24/7 either 😉 Hope some of the other people have what you need. And btw... since I clicked on a few of the suggestions: I think URL encoding is a different thing, that's with all the percent signs and not base64 like here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a self-hosted project that does base64 url decoding in a privacy respecting fashion?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, the URL is a bit weird.

  echo "aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaG90ZG9nYmlsbHMuY29tL2hhbWJ1cmdlci1tb2xkcy9idXJnZXItZG9nLW1vbGRzCg" | base64 -d

  gives me your string. But there are a few characters off at the end. And then there are 176 characters left. I suppose the underscore is some delimiter. The rest is:

  echo "c2lkPTY4MTNkMTljYzM0ZWJjZTE4NDA1ZGVjYSZzcz1QJnN0X3JpZD1udWxsJnV0bV9zb3VyY2U9bmV3c2xldHRlciZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPWVtYWlsJnV0bV90ZXJtPWJyaWVmaW5nJnV0bV9jYW1wYWlnbj1zZmNfYml0ZWN1cmlvdXM" | base64 -d

  "sid=6813d19cc34ebce18405deca&ss=P&st_rid=null&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=briefing&utm_campaign=sfc_bitecurious"

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a self-hosted project that does base64 url decoding in a privacy respecting fashion?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  There's base64 -d on the command line.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Palantir Started By Spying on a City Now Sells AI for War⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes. Though I think predictive policing is directly ethically wrong. I mean first of all there is no such thing as a thought crime. So I think you can't make people suffer consequences before they did anything. And it comes with consequences. If you're living in a poor neighborhood or you're black or have some records in their databases, for whatever reason... Life will become difficult. And you might not be able to live up to your potential any more. Possibly lots of people won't. Also mistakes will happen and we have to find a way to minimize the amount of innocent people in jail.

  And I'm not sure if it's a slippery slope either. I mean we have China with a social score system. And several other countries with prevalent surveillance. And we know since Snowden that the US also keeps large databases about all of us. It's already there.

  I think it's more a salami swindle. In the early days, the internet was relatively free, then we had a corporate takeover. And more recently governments are actually cracking down and we don't have Pornhub in Texas anymore. The UK is also very eager to restrict freedom, porn and unwanted things. Several smaller forums hosted in the UK died last year. I had occasionally used sone of them. Then they want your Social media accounts at the borders these days and people are send back home. Also small things increased like someone wanting to pat me down and look inside my bag before I visit an evening show. Private companies do the same. I can barely use a messenger these days without revealing my phone number and letting them track me forever. Google gets embedded deeper in all our devices and lifes each day and of course they don't necessarily want a dystopia... But they definitely want to manipulate you. That's kind of the core of advertising.

  I definitely feel some of the consequences. And I don't think "Predictive policing is here whether we like it or not"... It's a choice. Just because technology exists, doesn't mean it's a good idea to use it. That's a fallacy as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Palantir Started By Spying on a City Now Sells AI for War⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think policing is a complex issue. And the US for example has almost ten times the homicide rate of the average European country. They have a lot of gang violence, school-schootings and everything is more extreme in the USA, for the better or the worse. I'd say it's likely a comprehensive approach. Police needs equipment and good training. They need to be staffed. They also need good guidelines and strict oversight. And lawmakers and courts need to facilitate an environment in which things go into the right direction. Everything from the local to the national level. Then society has to agree to pull in the same direction. And it's kind of an investment into all kinds of things. That will certainly pay off later, big time. But includes things like invest in healtcare for mentally ill people, invest in integration with immigrants. And invest in the proper solution for online crime. And then there's neoliberalism and our overall concept of a society we want to live in. Of course people are more likely to commit crimes if they're miserable or hungry or don't have anything to loose. So we need a society where everyone has some decent living conditions, also feels alright and is integrated into society in some form. And for me it also includes freedom.
  I'd say it's solvable. I mean not a 100% "perfect" world, but we can have a look at different countries and see how they do things and what it does to them. And there will always be crime, and always room for improvement.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨emergency remote access⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I've moved my instant messenger onto a VPS and that has a good uptime. And I'm somewhat okay if my Nextcloud and calendars don't sync. Most important data is synced anyway.

  Other than that I've called my ISP a bunch of times to give me a new router, they refused, I canceled the subscription and made a new one and got a new router. And that one is better. And in doubt I'll call a family member.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the current state of Matrix?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think judging something really depends on the requirements. No one said using technology was going to be simple and easy. We should make it as easy as we can do, but no more than that. There's still a lot of room for improvement. But in the end the commercial services are geared towards convenience. And they'll always outpace us. We have to set up servers and jump through a few hoops so it's us in control of the network. There is no other feasible way to do it.

  Though I really wish we had some messenger that makes encryption foolproof. And rock solid, and with a resource footprint of IRC when concerned with text messages, but not limited to that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the current state of Matrix?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  We've had the discussion a while back here in selfhosted. You can find it here: https://awful.systems/post/5029223

  Main points: Continued drama around people, and tuwunel is programmed by a single, (paid) developer and I figure once there's anything wrong with that, tuwunel might die instantly. While continuwuity is a community effort and maybe that's a bit more sustainable. Though I don't own any crystal ball and I don't know how things will turn out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the current state of Matrix?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, I believe that is supposed to be uWu or maybe some kind of puppy talk. It's certainly originally started by June, who turned conduit (which is a sane name) into conduwuit.

  I figured I've lost all shame anyway, back when we discussed nerd topics in the school bus or the 5 'o clock train, like Linux lore, anime, Star Trek concepts and technobabble. I mean people were staring and I'm aware of that, but I've really lost all F*'s to give. And that turns me into the person who I am today, and I'll happily write sentences like the one above. Or still talk about Star Trek in a crowded train. And these days it's the mycelial network and that really makes people question my sanity. 🫠

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the current state of Matrix?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If you want a conduwuit sucessor, I'd choose the continuwuity project over tuwunel. The legitimacy as the sucessor is mainly self-proclaimed, and continuwuity is a community effort. The entire thing is kind of a shitshow, though. If you want to do it like 99% of people, make friends with Synapse.

  I think what you describe still holds true. You need a few correct DNS entries and an open port. Once you want VoIP, some more ports and a TURN server will become necessary. I didn't find it too hard. And I run continuwuity these days because Synapse wastes too much resources for what I do and their other efforts went nowhere. But I'm not sure about the future of those smaller Matrix server projects.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can we please stop arguing about whether Bluesky is decentralized?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, thanks. And are those people then connected to the same network and can follow each other, or are those entirely seperate? Pardon my lack of knowledge aboit Bluesky and ATProto

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google's plan to restrict sideloading on Android has a potential escape hatch for users⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  So a lot of speculation and we don't know much except 2 paragraphs in the FAQ... I'd like to mention though, they've recently stripped the Pixel devices if their status as developer devices and now push for their emulator for development. Once they follow that kind of logic, there isn't really a reason to keep ADB working as is on real devices.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Activity Pub: Can I join a PeerTube or Mastodon server using a Lemmy account?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you can follow Peertube channels and write comments but not post videos. And you can't access Mastodon nor Pixelfed.

  Lemmy is centered on the concept of ActivityPub groups. While Mastodon etc are about individuals, they don't use that concept and since following accounts isn't implemented in Lemmy, there is no way to properly interact.

  Though there are other software projects. MBin combines both. And Piefed wants to get there, eventually. They already hook into a few more things, but Mastodon or Pixelfed accounts currently aren't a thing either.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can we please stop arguing about whether Bluesky is decentralized?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Since we have Mississippi as an example... Why not just look how it turned out for the people there? Do or don't they have a communications platform now that connects them to a network of other people? I feels that's way more helpful than discussing what should be discussed, or talking about theoretical details.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Palantir Started By Spying on a City Now Sells AI for War⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, I'm not a fan of oversimplifications and ACAB is one. I think the people pushing for a repressive surveillance state are politicians and lobbyists. The police force is merely executing that. Though I bet they like expensive playthings and power and control. Because that's kind of their job.

  It depends a bit on where you live. Here in Germany I think we have quite some well-trained cops who do their job well. And do what they're supposed to and help citizens with all kinds of things. Of course we also have bad cops, corrupt ones and people with blood on their hands, but I certainly hope they're far and in between. In America I'm not so sure. I'd surely never help an agency like ICE. That's proper fascist stuff and not ethical. Though I bet there are some cops who do good all day and rescue kittens from trees, idk. I don't think there's an issue with helping those if you like law and order.

  I think the issue with surveillance and weird oppressive abuse is bigger than those people. Sure they're involved and that's bad, but they're somewhere at the bottom when they do things like in the article above. Or randomly arrest people in NYC because they have $6 billion to waste on weird tech and some AI tells them to do something. I think the real issue are the people who give them the $6b, the people who decide what dystopian shit to buy with it, the people who passed the laws to instruct them to do it. And last but not least companies like Palantir who make a fortune off of people's misery.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨1U mini PC for AI?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for the info. Some day I'll try the shiny modern domain specific distros and learn the little peculiarities. I use a weird mix of Debian, NixOS and LMDE and it's relatively straightforward to add firewall rules to those, both dynamically to nftables and to the config... And I believe Debian doesn't even come with firewalling out of the box...

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Time for a purge⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ahem, no. This isn't about cancelling or silencing people. The real issue is a full-blown humanitarian crisis and a war. Muting random regular people might seem like an idea, but it's going to do nothing for those people and the issue at hand. It's not great that we have all opinions, but you got to deal with it. Block them, that's why the programmers gave you that tool. And/or switch instances. And report content you deem inappropriate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨1U mini PC for AI?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, I always advocate for using the stuff you have. I don't think a Discord bot needs four new RasPi 5. That's likely to run on a single RasPi3. And as long as they're sitting idle, it doesn't really matter which model number they have... So go ahead and put something on your hardware, and buy new one once you've maxed out your current setup.

  I'm not educated on Bazzite. Maybe tools like Distrobox or other container solutions can help running AI workloads on the gaming rig. It's likely easier to run a dedicated AI server, but I started learning about quantization, tested some models on my main computer with the help of ollama, KoboldCPP and some random Docker/Podman containers. I'm not saying this is the preferrable solution. But definitely enough to get started with AI. And you can always connect the computers within your local network, write some server applications and have them hook into ollama's API and it doesn't really matter whether that runs on your gaming pc or a server (as long as the computer in question is turned on...)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Self hosting Signal server⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I had a quick look and seems there have been some projects packaging the Signal server for Docker... But the projects Google returns as results on the first page all seem to be abandoned. Seems this is a bit niche. Unfortunaltely I don't have any good advice here. I run a Matrix server, so I don't have experience with this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Self hosting Signal server⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Signal is not a federated protocol, though. I guess you can run that server code. But it won't connect you to your friends on the regular Signal network.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LLMs aren’t world models⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh well, LLMs are notoriously bad at chess. Other tasks as well. Maths, especially counting... But I'd say this is because they're not very intelligent. And not trained to be a chess computer. So a clever middle-school kid will outperform them at chess. Or a kindergarden kid at counting letters in words. But that doesn't directly lead to the conclusion they're not world models. That'd conclusion needs some qualifying, quantification and a mathematical proof. This is just opinion.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨`continuwuity` vs `tuwunel`: where to go from `conduwuit`?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Thank you very much for the info. I did the switch today, along with the overdue update to 25.05 and everything went smoothly ☺️

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think they have push notifications in XMPP these days. At least Prosody has modules like mod_unified_push and mod_cloud_notify](https://modules.prosody.im/mod_cloud_notify) and that seems to be supported for example by Conversations.im

  To be honest, I didn't have lots of battery drain, back when I used XMPP. And other old-school protocols like e-mail and sip voip don't seem to be very bad either with whatever mechanisms they use. Or my phone isn't reporting battery drain correctly.... And with Matrix I also had to set up push notifications manually, or it'd just receive messages with a long delay per default.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Upgrading Paperless-ngx several revisions behind⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  In these cases I'll do the same thing other people here seem to do as well. Do a backup (or snapshot) and then I'll try to just do it. Obviously read the documentation on updates and major version upgrades first. I think that's fine in the case of paperless-ngx.

  Either it works or it doesn't. In that case I'll gather error logs and information for debugging and roll back to the backup. After a successful major upgrade, I often go through the settings and config and check about all the things that have been added or changed in the meantime and make sure they're set to my liking.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shared storage between virtual instances⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Just be warned that those two are relatively complicated pieces of tech. And they're meant to set up a distributed storage network including things like replication and load-balancing. Clusters with failover to a different datacenter and such. If you just want access to the same storage on one server from different instances, that's likely way to complicated for you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shared storage between virtual instances⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There are a bunch of options available. I think the exact layout depends on the exact use-case. From GlusterFS, Ceph, to (S3 compatible) block storage, to straightforward NFS, to database replication, that's all for different use-cases like VM failover to decoupling storage from a service, to something like a Jellyfin sharing the media library with another service, to horizontal scaling of services... I don't think there is a single answer to all of that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨`continuwuity` vs `tuwunel`: where to go from `conduwuit`?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  No worries, I pressed PieFed's notification bell, so you pinged me by adding the top-level comment about the update 😊 I happen to be using NixOS as well. So it's going to be the same. Now lets hope this project turns out good.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨`continuwuity` vs `tuwunel`: where to go from `conduwuit`?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for your update here. Decision seems pretty easy then. I'll see if I can find some time next week, do a database snapshot and move to continuwuity as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨`continuwuity` vs `tuwunel`: where to go from `conduwuit`?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  What do the few people here who stop using Matrix altogether, replace it with? XMPP? Or do you just use Signal or the commercial messengers eveeyone uses?