Which brand is this? So I never have to go near it…

I have a Samsung TV from a few years ago, never connected it to the TV, so when I turn it on it just goes to the last used input (HDMI1 in my case). The bootup isn’t even that slow , maybe 5 seconds or so. Not great, but not terrible…

PSA about mini PCs: They might not come with adequate cooling for RAM, leading to potential data corruption.

(I’m in the middle of troubleshooting/fixing overheating RAM causing memory errors, will post on /c/selfhosted when I have more conclusions).

TLDR: Bought 3 Minisforum HM90 mini PCs (for Proxmox), equipped them with 64gb (2x32gb) RAM, with a different brand RAM in each PC. All 3 give sporadic errors in Memtest86. The RAM overheats due to the 2 SSDs mounted in the lid blocking natural airflow. With the lid off, or an extra fan installed, there are no errors. The errors were very sporadic: 1 PC gave errors after 1-2 passes, then almost 24hours. Second PC gave errors after more than 24 hours and some cases more than 48 hours between errors. The last PC gave hundreds of errors on the first pas. To be fair, memtest is a synthetic test and the RAM is unlikely to see 100% utilisation in real life, on the other hand the two adjacent SATA SSDs and the NVMe SSD are completely idle during memtest, and will generate extra heat during production use.

Sudden culture shock from a Norwegian:

Still open is the transition of heat and cars to electricity…

Almost all electricity used by Norwegian homes goes towards heating (including cooking and hot water), and charging cars. So counting heating separate from electricity suddenly makes the electric transition sound less impressive. (And the transition away from nuclear more baffling). It’s still impressive to see Germany really follow through on renewables though. 60% renewable electricity is still a lot

Is there a plan to transition away from burning fossil fuels for heating?

Instead of one super chunky battery, how about a laptop with replaceable batteries, in combination with a UPS?

UPS is so you can actually replace the laptop battery with a spare one , even during a power outage. Just run the laptop on AC from the UPS while changing batteries. Or see if you can find a UPS with a long lasting battery. Entry level ones only have like 15-30 minutes of battery life though, since they’re more intended for safe shutdowns or brownouts.

Probably more what MangoKangoroo and B0rax talked about, that enterprises can opt out of this telemetry, due to compliance or Intellectual Property protection.

So only the commoners get mandatory full-scale surveillance, Ehm I mean “ai enhancement”

Suddenly I feel very happy (and a little bit smug) about my 2 year old Sony Xperia which both a notification LED, headphone jack and micro SD card slot.

But a replacable battery is sorely lacking…

I think I’ll go with the latest Fairphone when my current needs replacement, but I’m a bit worried about it’s lack of water resistance

Maybe it’s a different culture, or matter of car and people density, but in my country (Norway) most people cycle on the sidewalk. Including kids of course, from the age of 10 they can cycle to school instead of having to walk.

Many footpaths here are also officially designated “cycling and walking paths”. Generally the only cyclists you see in the road are sports cyclists in racing bicycles and tight skin suits.

The thinking here is that cyclists and pedestrians are both “soft traffic participants” so they share a space, while “hard traffic participants” like cars, trucks and motorcycles are kept separate.

Pedestrians do have right of way over cyclists. As the heavier faster party, cyclists have the responsibility to avoid conflict, by giving right of way, and slowing down and/or chiming their bell to signal their presence before passing pedestrians.

Personally, if I was told that tomorrow I’m only allowed to cycle on the road, I would get rid of my bike. If I’m gonna be on the road full of lorries busses and SUVs going 60kph, I’d rather just be in my car. It’s just not worth the risk and constant peril. This is in a more suburban and industrial/commercial setting, where the sidewalks have gaps to buildings, and pedestrians are far apart.

I can however see how in a dense, crowded downtown area where the cars mostly drive slow and the sidewalks are dense with people, that cycling in the road makes more sense.

Thinking about it the only roads with 30kph limit and a sidewalk are in the very center of the city. All other places with 30kph are basically neighbourhoods etc where there are no sidewalks and everybody shares the road. Roads here with a dedicated sidewalk also have higher speed limits that what a casual cyclist can achieve

People often rode them on sidewalks posing a danger to people walking.

I’ve seen this sentiment around, but where else are you supposed to ride eScoooters and bicycles? Of course ideally they belong in the bike lane, but most places don’t have bike lines, so the alternatives are sidewalks or in the road with cars.

If we’re gonna get people out of cars, we need to recognize that walking+transit doesn’t work for everyone a lot of people and that a bicycle/ eScooter is the solution (look at Amsterdam/ Copenhagen how well bicycles work) , but bike lanes don’t get built overnight, especially when few people cycle, if their banished from the safe sidewalk and only allowed to cycle in the dangerous road.

(I’ve lumped bikes and eScooters together since they both solve the same problem of rapid personal transport, both having speeds of 20-30 kph which is significantly more than pedestrians but less than cars)

+2 for KDE Connect, the integration is amazing. I’ve used it on KDE and Gnome (gsconnect), all works very well

How much of this is Spotify’s fault and how much is the major record labels sitting between Spotify and the individual artists?

And is there a better place for us consumers to go and vote with our wallet? Ideally somewhere that isn’t one of the 5 major tech giants that control everything

I did this too :D I used to have 20 pairs of non-identical black socks, which made matching hard and it felt wrong to wear socks of slightly different type or size. Much easier now

I keep getting socks for Christmas though, which I never wear cause they’d mess up the simplicity

2nd for Kobo! It’s a good device, supports more standards, and doesn’t fund any of the Too Big Tech Giants

+1 for SSH and FileZilla (or WinSCP)

That’s very strange, which distro and GPU was this? So I don’t recommend that to anyone?

I’m assuming the GPU in question was Nvidia, since AMD and Intel make their driver opensource and baked in to the kernel. Sadly nVidias latest kernel (535) has been troublesome, so I’m still on the previous 525. nVidia is about to release 545, which looks to be very promising.

Luckily on Ubuntu changing driver is as easy as opening the Additional Drivers application, selecting the driver version, hit apply and reboot. PopOS, Bazzite, and a few others comes with Nvidia drivers preinstalled.

Best of luck if you try again in the future

Application Z requires another 3GB because it needs Gnome runtime version X+1, not version X. Although I do believe Flatpak does some kind of reduplication so actual used space is somewhat less.

It’s also less of a problem if you flatpak all the apps vs having just a handful. The more apps the better chance they’re actually sharing runtimes.

Flatpak updates are handled very smoothly by KDE Discover, I always assumed Gnome Software did the same, so no additional package manager required.

Despite the few downsides Flatpak is still wonderful. As a Kubuntu user it’s nice to say Farewell random PPAs whenever there’s a need for an actual newish version of an application

What’s the deal with the timezone?

Like maxmal said, FreeCAD has an Architecture (and BIM) workbench, which is heavily developed by one of the main FreeCAD Devs. Try it out and see if it works for you

Calling the architecture workbench a plugin is technically correct, but a bit misleading, as all core features are technically plugins(workbenches). The Architecture workbench is a built-in default feature

Sadly Obsidian is not open source or free as in free speech. For individuals it is free as in free beer though

Xchat with its sleek tab interface was the bomb