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Cake day: August 20th, 2023

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  • A small computer, large capacity ssd and two WiFi interfaces (2x usb dongles, or dongle plus usb).

    Small computer could be anything: raspberry pi (or generic and), nuc mini pc or laptop. If you want to use it without a plug you’ll need to add a battery, usb c powered devices could be more convent to power from a battery.

    A ssd is better for this use case. Not because it’s faster, but they are more resilient to being knocked about and dropped. They are also much smaller, especially M.2, and aren’t fussy about how they are mounted.

    The two WiFi interfaces would allow you to create a WiFi bridge to access the internet through a WiFi network and access your media server. It would need some configuration, you may also need to have the computer act as a router if you want to use multiple devices without reconfiguring.

    It may be easier to have your device act as a WiFi hotspot and have the media centre automatically connect to it. This would make it difficult for multiple devices to use it simultaneously, and you could accidentally allow the media centre to do all its updating and downloading over your mobile connection.

    This type of thing is going to be expensive and troublesome to configure unless your already experienced with that sort of thing.

    I think a better solution, especially if you already have a media server. Is to set your media server for external access.

    To get media when you don’t have internet, buy a large capacity flash drive (or external ssd/hdd). When you have access to your media server download all the content you want on to the drive. I think iOS jellyfin can do this without much modification.

    Once out of range of your media server. Delete the content you’ve watched on your device (iPad) to free up space. Connect the external drive through the usb port on the iPad, copy over the next lot of content you want to watch. Disconnect and then watch the content.

    Jellyfin can download the content, but you may need another app to play it when you don’t have access to the media server.

    This approach lets multiple people access a much larger amount of media, effectively simultaneously. It doesn’t require a large amount of often expensive local device storage - you use cheap external storage. It much less expensive if it breaks or gets lost and has very little configuration -if you already have a media server running jellyfin.



  • Nixos is an os that’s defined by its config stored in .nix files. Everything is defined here all the software and configurations. Two people with the same script will have the exact same os.

    Any changes you make that aren’t in the scripts won’t be present when you reboot.

    You could maintain a very custom linux distribution (kinda) by just maintaining these config scripts.

    So a user wouldn’t need to install all required software and dependencies. They could get a nixos and the self-host config and adjust some settings and have a working system straight after install.


  • Most common maybe. I feel most windows users aren’t actively choosing to use windows. It’s just what they are left with.

    People usually choose to use Linux or Mac. As Linux is rarely preinstalled or like Mac more expensive (when it comes preinstalled) than the windows devices for sale. I’m not convinced given a fair shake, windows would have the market share it does.

    Servers have highly informed people making decisions about their operating systems. When weighing the options about uptime, security, etc they rarely choose windows. Cost isn’t really a factor relative to the price and operation of the server.









  • It won’t generate random numbers. It’ll generate random numbers from its training data.

    If it’s asked to generate passwords I wouldn’t be surprised if it generated lists of leaked passwords available online.

    These models are created from masses of data scraped from the internet. Most of which is unreviewed and unverified. They really don’t want to review and verify it because it’s expensive and much of their data is illegal.



  • A possible solution in a pinch is to get an already flat surface, ideally larger than your board. Cover it in something that will transfer (ink, paint, toner etc). Rub the face of the board you want to flatten across your flat surface**. The** transfer substance will pass onto the high spot in your board. Scrape, chissle or sand the high spots down slightly.

    Repeat this until most of your board is marked by the transfer substance. Your board will be mostly flat (or at least as flat as the reference surface).

    This technique is used in metal work, but it’s labour intensive. For woodwork to achieve sufficient flatness planes are quicker and produce a better surface finish. But if you don’t have any large ones, this method might work if your desperate and don’t want to buy new tools.

    For a less accurate flatness. Place the board on the flat surface and push in the board to fell the points in contact with the flat surface. Then take those parts down.


  • It’s probably the same amount as before. More phones and tablets haven’t had a big effect on the amount of general purpose computers. There’s devices today like raspberry pi and Arduino that fill the same niche as older general-purpose computers.

    Your assume things are different and must be worse. This is a take old as time. Socrates complained about the youth no longer taking the studies as serious as his generation did. The world would have fallen into complete chaos if it were ever true. It’s the conservative myth that things were better and can only get worse.

    These kids accessing websites that tell you that a general purpose computer is needed, would have to rely on textbooks and magazines to get the same information in the past. A much bigger barrier, even identifying which ones you need.



  • Software engineering does have standards and methods to developing software. These standards and methods are applied in Defence and Aerospace applications. Software engineering was developed or conceived by NATO to manage the increasing complexity of software development.

    The big problem is people often confuse software development or programming with software engineering. Calling anyone that programs a software engineer. This isn’t the case. It’s entirely possible to be a software engineer without knowing how to code (but impractical).