Avid Amoeba

I used a mix of Elements and MyBook for years. Upon opening to heatsink, I didn’t see any significant differences between them. They use ASMedia or Jmicron, mostly ASMedia. The overheating issue depends on ambient temp and load. I’ve had one machine in a basement never experience them. Either way the solution is pretty straightforward and cheap. Once heatsinked, I haven’t had a problem.

The cables they come with are good.

Absolutely can and should use docker in a VM. ☺️

Predictable cadence, stable operation, timely updates, huge community and therefore documentation. You can get up to 5 years from an LTS release of Debian or Ubuntu. With Ubuntu LTS and Ubuntu Pro (free) you could theoretically run a machine without upgrading for 10 years. If you run workloads in containers, it doesn’t matter how old the host OS is. As long as it’s security patches, you can keep on trucking.

As briefly as possible:

• Host side
  • If you use Intel, all is well.
  • If you use AMD…
    • Prior to AM5
      • Use an ASMedia PCIe USB card (StatTech, Sonnet)
      • X570 is especially bad, though I’ve had some success with B350, when using the chipset ports. The CPU ports are all bad. Small form factor PCs often only expose CPU USB ports. They work with single disk per port but if you peg a port with a multi-disk box, they crap out regularly.
    • Post AM5
      • Have only tested USB4 on X870 and it’s solid.
• Client side
  • WD Elements / MyBook
    • If you get disconnects under load and you’re not on a shit AMD USB host, the USB-SATA controller is overheating. Open them and ahere a heatsink on it. Drill a hole in the case above it for better ventilation. Disconnections will stop. If you don’t want to deal with any of that buy the item below.
  • OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad
    • Well built, solid controllers, no issues over a year of testing. I have 2, hosting an 8-disk RAIDz2 and 2 hosting a 5-disk RAIDz2.
  • Terramaster
    • A friend bought a 6-bay and tore it down for me. It has the same controllers as the OWC in a similar topology. If it’s cheaper it might be OK. I can vouch for the OWC though.
  • Cables
    • Get name brand cables, ideally higher spec than what you’d need! They aren’t important for a single USB disk but running a 4-disk box can max out the port bandwidth. If the cable can’t handle it… errors.

If you want to program something, the closest you’re gonna get to programming is Ansible and Bash scripts.

You might want to get self hosting hardware like Synology or the like if you’re not ready to dig.

Otherwise here’s some things you need to know:

• Docker
  • Easy, consistent deployment of services in their own environments. Think a VM but with almost no overhead.
• Docker Compose
  • Run docker containers with consistent configuration in files.
  • Connect various containers to each other on the same or different networks.
  • Get multiple containers to start together and talk to each other.
• Systemd
  • Manage any service on Linux. If anything needs to start on boot, restart when crashed, start on timer, you want Systemd.
  • You can manage your docker compose containers lifecycle via Systemd.
• NGINX/Apache/Caddy
  • A web server for reverse proxy. You’d probably need one at some point, especially if you want HTTPS. Your services get hidden behind it.
• ZFS
  • Reliable redundant storage. You’ll need storage. Use ZFS with 2-disk redundancy.
  • Supports automatic snapshots for recovering from oopsies. E.g. deleted something or some software shat on your data.
  • Can use recertified disks from serverpartsdeals.
  • Can use USB disks or USB box with multiple disks. If you end up going the USB route, ask me for tested hardware.
• Backup system
  • Something to do backup. There are many options.
• Ansible
  • If you want to write code that describes your services and make them happen, you want Ansible. You write code (well YAML) and Ansible installs things, writes config files, sets up Systemd services, restarts things. It can be convenient especially if you have a lot of stuff and you want to be able to see all of your infrastructure in code in one place and be able to version it.
• Prometheus
  • Monitoring your stuff. Is my backup service running? If not send me an email.

Oh and use Debian or Ubuntu LTS.

Source: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00907

A shutdown would be preferable than a sale of the active app and userbase to Elon no?

What’s the intended use case for Pixelfed?

Is Pixelfed an appropriate place to upload an image to share on Lemmy / Mastodon?

Yes

Among other things:

• anti workers rights
• anti immigrant
  • with exceptions for his own businesses
• anti safety nets
• pro fascist
  • he’s began propping up Reform in UK and AfD in Germany
• pro corporate

Basically your bog-standard right-wing corporate fascist grab bag. He’s using his platforms (in all meaning of the word) to push that internationally.

Check the first comment on this turd nugget from last week: https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1877066245192794146

My first instinct was to poke fun but it’s actually important to keep breaking this overpaid influencer’s false image. He’s actively using it to push his harmful agenda.

The difference between for-profit and not-for-profit firms is not whether one makes money and the other one does not. It’s what’s done with that money. The difference is whether the net income is given to the firm’s major shareholders or kept within the firm.

Users often have no idea what they actually want.

This is really important and often underemphasized. People don’t reflect on why they feel they want X or Y. We don’t know if it’s some objective reason or a product of an arbitrary decision some other software maker taught us. Famous example for this is pinch-to-zoom. The first people who tried it on the iPhone found it seriously unintuitive and even difficult. Apple spent a lot of effort teaching people to pinch-to-zoom. Then you have the case where we don’t even know what we might like if we haven’t experienced it. The do-what-people-want mantra runs into these and other rrlated problems and projects that live by it often aren’t the best things out there. Good projects typically do a mix of both. Human-computer interaction / UX are legitimate research disciplines for a reason and they’ve yielded very useful heuristics to produce better software.

They don’t need the very best to make profit for a very long time, especially in a friendly regulatory regime. Check IBM for reference.

They own the social media market and have enough capital to acquire any plausible competitor, as have done in the past.

Losing top talent is only a significant price to pay if the firm or its competitors are still building new stuff that affects their bottom line. Meta is happy raking in the social media-ad profits. Google is happy raking in the search-ad profits. They’re all busy getting more money out of the markets they’ve monopolized, not competing.