dan
@dan@upvote.au
Aussie living in the USA. https://d.sb/
- Comment on Microsoft gave FBI a set of BitLocker encryption keys to unlock suspects' laptops: Reports | TechCrunch 14 hours ago:
uploads a copy of the key to their Microsoft Account
Microsoft added that feature because people kept losing their encryption keys and thus losing all their files if they need to have their computer replaced. They get complaints either way - privacy advocates complain when the key is backed up, and sysadmins/users complain when the key isn’t backed up.
- Comment on Ring Cameras Join Flock and Amazon to Now Create Direct Data Access for ICE 2 days ago:
Doesn’t Hikvision support RTSP?
- Comment on Ring Cameras Join Flock and Amazon to Now Create Direct Data Access for ICE 2 days ago:
Though, on the other hand, having the video saved offsite is useful because then anyone with physical access to your home can’t get rid of the video showing they’re there.
I have Blue Iris configured to send all alert videos to one of my storage VPSes via SFTP. As soon as someone is detected outside, the video clip is sent offsite.
The server and the PoE switch that powers the cameras are also on a UPS, which helps if the intruder tries to shut off the power at the main breaker (which, here in California, always needs to be located outside).
- Comment on Ring Cameras Join Flock and Amazon to Now Create Direct Data Access for ICE 2 days ago:
Reolink
Any cameras that can operate entirely offline are good. Dahua and Hikvision are good too. Just follow best practices - keep them isolated on a separate VLAN with no internet access. If you want remote access to your NVR, use a VPN like Tailscale.
- Comment on Bungee jumping 2 days ago:
Ah, the ol’ switcheroo.
- Comment on Student Parking 2 days ago:
The way a lot of students solve this in Australia, at least in Melbourne where I’m from, is by taking the train (or a tram) to university. The university I went to was adjacent to a train station.
Students from low-income families and that are independent get money from the government which can be used for anything, including public transport passes.
- Comment on Anyone have a favorite NAS (for normies)? 4 days ago:
Ohh… I forgot about this. If they’re still doing that then I wouldn’t recommend them.
For less tech-savvy users, I usually recommend some off-the-shelf hardware, so they have someone else to go to in case of issues with either the hardware or the standard built-in software.
Synology used to be the best for that, but maybe not any more. A lot of brands have gotten into NAS hardware over the last year or two so I’m not sure what’s the best now!
- Comment on Anyone have a favorite NAS (for normies)? 5 days ago:
I’d probably just get a Synology and install Immich on it.
- Comment on Self-hosting Odoo ERP for small business - bad idea? 1 week ago:
I know this comment is a bit old, but do you have any recommendations on how to learn about building custom Odoo modules? I’m an experienced developer (with over 20 years experience) but am new to Odoo. I’ve learnt some things by looking at the code for OCA modules (I had to debug an issue with the Plaid bank statement integration) but am interested in any resources you found useful.
- Comment on Cheapest way to back up a *lot* of data? 1 week ago:
Definitely… I use Borgbackup for my backups, which encrypts the backups before sending them to the remote server. Not all use cases can do that though, for example some use cases where you mount the storage using iSCSI or NFS.
- Comment on Cheapest way to back up a *lot* of data? 1 week ago:
Oops, I didn’t know about the SX line. Thanks!! I’m not familiar with all of Hetzner’a products.
For pure file storage (ie you’re only using SFTP, Borgbackup, restic, NFS, Samba, etc) I still think the storage boxes are a good deal, as you don’t have to worry about server maintenance (since it’s a shared environment). I’m not sure if supports encryption though, which is probably where a dedicated server would be useful.
- Comment on Stop using MySQL in 2026, it is not true open source 1 week ago:
One of SQLite’s recommended use cases is as an alternate to proprietary binary formats: sqlite.org/appfileformat.html. Programs often store data in binary files for performance, but you get a lot of the same functionality included with SQLite (fast random access, concurrent usage, atomicity, updates that don’t need to rewrite the whole file, etc) without having to implement a file format yourself.
- Comment on Stop using MySQL in 2026, it is not true open source 1 week ago:
SQLite is underrated. If your system has a large number of readers and a small number of writers, it performs very well. It’s not as good for high-concurrency write-heavy use cases, but that’s not common (most apps read far more than they write).
- Comment on Stop using MySQL in 2026, it is not true open source 1 week ago:
MariaDB is not always a drop-in replacement. There’s several features that MySQL has that MariaDB doesn’t, especially related to the optimizer (for some types of queries, MySQL will give you a more optimized execution plan compared to MariaDB). It’s also missing some newer data types, like JSON (which indexes the individual fields in JSON objects to make filtering on them more efficient).
MariaDB and MySQL are both fine. Even though MySQL doesn’t receive as much development any more, it doesn’t really need it. It works fine. If you want a better database system, switch to PostgreSQL, not MariaDB.
- Comment on Cheapest way to back up a *lot* of data? 1 week ago:
AWS Glacier would be about $200/mo, PLUS bandwidth transfer charges, which would be something like $500. R2 would be about $750/mo
50TB on a Hetzner storage box would be $116/month. It’d have to be split across three storage boxes though, since 20TB is the max per box. 10TB is $24/month and 20TB is $46/month.
- Comment on Need advice for buying first hardware 2 weeks ago:
Do you mean 12600K, or do you really mean 2600K? These days, I wouldn’t use anything older than 9th gen.
See if there’s any e-waste recyclers in your area. A lot of companies are throwing out systems that don’t officially run Windows 11, so you can sometimes find systems with 8th and 9th gen Intel Core processors for very cheap.
- Comment on Github Banned a Ton of Adult Game Developers and Won’t Explain Why 2 weeks ago:
I think sometimes people forget that one of the main features of Git is that it’s decentralized. You don’t need Github; just push your repo to a different remote.
The main issue is the auxiliary non-Git-powered features of Github, like issue tracking.
- Comment on Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app” 2 weeks ago:
They lose money from it (people that used to pay for an account to get private repos no longer need to) which is why Github didn’t do it when they were independent.
- Comment on Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app” 2 weeks ago:
Plenty of open-source projects that I use are happy with them though. I see far fewer projects using Travis CI and AppVeyor these days for example.
- Comment on Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app” 2 weeks ago:
Every new feature added to Github has made it more unpleasant to use
Free private repositories, Github Actions, and Github Packages are all pretty useful though. All of those were added under Microsoft’s ownership. Actions got a head start because it was built on top of Azure DevOps infra that Microsoft had already created.
- Comment on Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app” 2 weeks ago:
I get the Pro version for free since I’ve worked on a few popular open-source projects. I’m using it in VS Code and it’s helped me write code for systems I’m unfamiliar with. I’ve used it to summarize the architecture of open-source projects so I understand how to contribute new features. The autocompletion can be pretty good too. I also use it to review my code.
We use Claude Code with the Opus 4.5 model at work, and it’s quite a bit better, but I don’t want to pay that much for an AI model for personal projects since I use it so infrequently.
- Comment on Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app” 2 weeks ago:
Are you including Github Copilot in that count? Technically that’s a Microsoft product. It’s probably the only Copilot that’s actually useful.
- Comment on Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app” 2 weeks ago:
Unfortunately they no longer include elaborate Easter eggs like that, since they adopted a security policy around 20 years ago that forbids them. learn.microsoft.com/en-us/…/why-no-easter-eggs
- Comment on Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app” 2 weeks ago:
I don’t know many people that still call it “Microsoft Office”… They usually refer to the individual apps they use (Word, Excel) rather than the suite as a whole.
Some people just call it “Microsoft” (“please install Microsoft on my computer”), especially if they’re on MacOS where it’s the only Microsoft software they use.
Some people assume it’s part of Windows since they’ve only ever used computers that have had it preinstalled.
- Comment on Pizza styles 3 weeks ago:
THE CHEESE IS UNDER THE SAUCE
- Comment on The most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere 3 weeks ago:
Rewriting existing systems is one of the riskiest things a company can do. Those old COBOL codebases likely contain 50 years of bug fixes for every possible edge case. It’d take a long time to rewrite everything and ensure feature parity, and there’s usually not a significant business reason to rewrite it (after all, a successful end result is just that the system behaves exactly the same as the old one).
- Comment on Where are you running your wireguard endpoint? 3 weeks ago:
Both of those documents agree with me? RedHat are using the terms “client” and “server” to make it easier for people to understand, but they explicitly say that all hosts are “peers”.
Note that all hosts that participate in a WireGuard VPN are peers. This documentation uses the terms client to describe hosts that establish a connection and server to describe the host with the fixed hostname or IP address that the clients connect to and, optionally, route all traffic through this server.
- Comment on Where are you running your wireguard endpoint? 3 weeks ago:
There’s no such thing as a client or server with Wireguard. All systems with Wireguard installed are “nodes”.
- Comment on Mattermost restricted access to old messages after 10000 limit is reached 4 weeks ago:
I know of at least one FAANG company that uses a self-hosted, self-contained Mattermost instance, totally separate to all their infra, for communication in major outages when all their internal tools are down.
- Comment on Self-hosting with an old laptop 4 weeks ago:
You’ll need to use a VPN that supports port forwarding. You could use a cheap VPS instead.