Michael Lynch is someone who, when he has an idea or a problem, spares no effort to get to the bottom of it and develop a solution, usually with a combination of hardware and software. Recently he developed a project that allows him to remote control a server just by connecting a Raspberry Pi via USB and HDMI. The Pi runs a program with a web interface that forwards the keyboard input to the server via USB and sends the HDMI output back to the browser. This allows it to control the BIOS and even install a new operating system.
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restic is my tool of choice to do backups. I’m just eagerly waiting for this a(a)wsome PR to get merged and a new version released! I’m backing up my Nextcloud (currently ~50 GB), but I never pruned the backup and now the backup is taking up more than 160 GB. That’s still just peanuts with Backblaze B2 as online storage, but I like to have things clean and tidy and a prune is overdue.
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Tonight I spoke with my girlfriend on the phone and we talked for two hours about all kinds of topics. One topic was that I don’t think corona tracking apps, where the data is stored centrally, are a good idea because of privacy and stuff. My girlfriend, on the other hand, said why is privacy important at all? The argument that nobody needs to know what I do with whom, when, where and for how long was not convincing to her. She said that I track my runs via GPS anyway. And she asked who would be interested in your data if you are not famous or something?
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What a coincidence: I wanted to look in my mails when I registered the domain jlelse.blog and it was exactly one year ago today. So congratulations to myself for one year jlelse.blog! 🎉
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Annoying Technology is a site by Manuel Grabowski and Philipp Defner, where they share typical annoyances with technology. Situations that probably everyone knows: annoying software download pages, dark UI patterns while shopping at Amazon or design flaws.
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Since I use many different devices and want to access the same files from all of them, I run my “own cloud” at home with an Odroid-HC2 (a Raspberry 4 or similar device should work just as well). A 2 TB NAS hard disk (Seagate Ironwolf) is connected to the HC2, where all files are stored. Using Docker I have installed Nextcloud for files (documents, photos, etc.) as well as Gitea (code repositories). Encrypted incremental backups are done daily at night using restic and uploaded to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage (they are quite cheap and now also have a European data center).
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The last few days I use my Spotify Premium subscription much more than before (I don’t usually listen to that much music). Especially if you spend most of your time indoors and only talk in videoconferences, on the phone or with bakery staff, it’s nice to break the silence with music. Sure, it is never quiet in my apartment in an apartment building with rather thin walls. Often I hear the music that the neighbours play (it’s always the same music), I hear the neighbours talking loudly to each other and I hear them watching TV.
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Mattias Geniar found a way to not have to display a cookie warning on his website and it’s surprisingly simple:
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It’s the first time I actually bought a brand new PC, or better say parts for a new PC. I had to assemble them myself. Until now I only had PCs or laptops with a maximum of 8 GB RAM and no fast CPU. All devices where also refurbished or second hand devices, because I didn’t want to spend so much money on new hardware. And I couldn’t upgrade them more because they were already maxed out.
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When I’m traveling with the train, I often see many people smoking at the train station. I find that very disgusting! Why are people wasting their health like this?
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