The AMD BC-250 was built to act as a crypto-mining device, but as that scam is winding down there are a bunch on the market for reasonable prices. As crypto miners often have similar performance needs to gaming PCs, gamers & devs are collaborating on a simple path to make the BC-250 into a relatively simple DIY mini gaming PC. I love stuff like this -- it's basically e-waste at this point, and giving it a second life as a reasonably capable linux PC is a great move.

I believe that if you have a security camera setup in your home, even with some precautions in place, you are opening yourself up to potential surveillance from the companies providing the service, the government, and hackers/scammers.

Good article with a list of alternatives to 'standard' home camera solutions. I only have a single camera at home, a simple Reolink that is set via homeassistant to turn on whenever I'm not home. It's Reolink, which means it can be completely cut off from the internet (which I have done) and still talk to my homeassistant, so it does all I need. Good to see it's getting a rec here.

Switched backend from isso to comentario, now using the same server I use to power comments on my blog. The code is very simple, and should be pretty much plug-n-play, so I've uploaded it to github. Enjoy!

China’s BYD made plenty of headlines when it debuted its second-generation Blade Battery and latest-generation Flash chargers. When combined, the two can make EV charging basically as fast as getting gas, with up to 1,500 kilowatts going from the DC fast charger to the lithium iron phosphate (LFP) pack.

Things are happening... in China.

There is a quiet competence that comes from this. You stop asking "Is the internet down?" and start asking "Is my links up?" You stop waiting for a technician and start checking the logs. This is a form of strength. To understand the system that carries your words is to be free from the mystery that keeps you dependent.

I am very interested in this project, as a noted fan of meshtastic, a similar but much less security-focused approach to meshnet communication over LoRa. I am specifically linking this page though (the "Zen of Reticulum" page) because I find it a fascinating peek into the anarcho-libertarian ethos at the heart of so much modern computing projects, even those that I think are generally good projects (like this one, to be clear).

The overwhelmingly centralized nature of the modern internet leaves it incredibly vulnerable to attack, from a million different vectors. One could theoretically cut all the wires carrying internet across the Atlantic and cause massive disruptions to the global internet. Not unfixable problems, to be sure, but massive disruptions nonetheless.

Various mesh projects have sprung up meant to combat this threat, or other similar threats caused by centralization. Federated tools, like Mastodon, are an attempt at this, as are even more trojan horse options like Bluesky. The threats that they are reacting to are real, to be sure -- but the solve being proposed is a greater reliance not on shared resources controlled by the public but increasingly privatized backbones of social communication.

This is, I think, an odd quirk of the modern technological landscape. The modern digital individual is constant predated upon by capitalist entities, so a rational response is to make oneself untraceable, untrackable, as much as reasonably possible.

Because your identity is portable, your connectivity can be fluid. You can be sitting at a desk connected to a fiber backbone one moment, and walking through a field connected only to a long-range LoRa mesh the next. To the rest of the network, nothing has changed. Your friends do not need to update your contact info. The messages they send do not bounce back. The network senses the shift in the medium and reroutes the flow of data automatically.

You are no longer a stationary node in a fixed grid. You are a wanderer in a fluid medium.

The goal sounds a lot like leaving the social fabric entirely, which relies on stability and fixed nodes. If I am a constant wanderer, I have no home. If I have no home, I have no neighbors. If I have no neighbors, I have no community.

I think anarchist solutions have a real purpose. I think this one is cool as hell and I will probably look into it as a fun option to have, for either serious or fun reasons. But I often glance twice when these ideologies are picked apart by their creators, because I think the takeaways are often driven by not a desire for community but a sense of fear.

A curated collection of open source and privacy-focused alternatives to Google's products. Replace Gmail, Google Drive, Maps, Android, and more with tools that respect your data and give you greater control over your digital life.

Now that I'm a de-googling guy I think this'll be quite useful.

This is a virtual museum of operating systems (and standalone applications) running under emulation, implemented as a Linux VM for QEMU, VirtualBox, or UTM.

Incredibly cool resource. I will probably download this later.

Perhaps Android was a great idea back in the old days, but since Google transformed it into a spyware platform, Google Android devices are effectively working against their owners. That's why I started to look for alternatives, and perhaps you have the same reason for reading this article now.

I have been thinking about alternative phone OSes for a while now, and I found this piece very enlightening as to the actual working experience of a couple of these options. I understand why the author didn't try out GrapheneOS (it is... understandable but annoying that it only works on Pixel phones) but given their critical eye I wish there was more of it. That said, still a great piece overall.

Also damn, what a website. Now that's a Webbed Site

Back in March, I wrote about Bitwarden doubling their Premium price — and specifically how they did it. Buried in a feature announcement. Priced in fake...

I'm happy with 1Pass and have been for a long time, but this is a concerning development if you're a *Warden user.

Private equity vultures are disgusting. Yowch.

This linkserver is now running on Shaarli. It's a good piece of software, I can shout it out.

Enabling workers to fight back against AI and automation at work.

Bank details, sex and naked people who seem unaware they are being recorded. Behind Meta’s new smart glasses lies a hidden workforce, uneasy about peering into the most intimate parts of other people’s lives.