Blocky artifacts are the result of poor bitrates. In streaming services it’s due to over compressing the stream, which is why you see it when part of a scene is still or during dark scenes. It’s due to the service cheaping out and sending UHD video at 720p bitrates.

I’ve done that click and drag many times. Nothing worse than accidentally dragging a folder designated with pseudo random numbers into another pseudo random numbered folder, and not knowing if you actually dragged it into a folder, or missed and did nothing

I try keep my data drives and boot drives separate on my servers, I make sure I can rebuild the server relatively easily so no matter what happens I can get back up and running. In my research on LVMs I wasn’t seeing anything saying you could just move the drives to a new setup, that you had to export and import first. In the case of a suddenly dead boot drive, I wouldn’t be able to do that. I did see some steps for backing up an LVMs metadata and recovering from that, so I might be sure I do that at some point, but another user said that modern distros should be able to scan for LVMs without issue, which is not what I found in my quick test in my setup. So I’ll be checking that out in a more modern setup to double check.

From what I was reading, recovering from corrupted metadata is not something I want to do. I’d rather not use LVM if that’s what’s required if I can’t just move the drives to a new server, as nice as it would be to resize filesystems on a whim.

I did not find just moving the drives to work. There were some other issues that I came across that might have a part to play in it, I made the lvm and filesystem on an RPI5 running OMV and moved it to a rock3c running OMV from an armbian install. Turns out there’s a pagefile size mismatch between the two that prevented mounting the btrfs filesystem. But I still wasn’t able to get the rock3c to recognize the VG or that there were new PVs attached without exporting first. So perhaps the armbian install isn’t modern enough to automatically recognize it.

I didn’t expect learning new things about btrfs to be the outcome of this little experiment, but I guess that’s just how things work.

That’s kind of what I figured, my biggest concern at this point would be how difficult it is to move the lvm volume to a different device. It seems pretty straightforward if you have a working setup, but from what I’m seeing in my research is silence if your device (server, etc.) dies and you need to move those volumes to another. I’m finding guides on either recovering from corruption or lost metadata, or transferring from one working device to another. Nothing I can find about importing a fully functional lvm to a new device if it hasn’t been exported.

I’ll be able to do that later today, so I guess I’ll see what happens if I do. Better to try it out now when it isn’t critical.

I try to keep lossless on my server for the fact that new algorithms come out all the time. I don’t want to be stuck with a 160k mp3 when a better algorithm comes out or if I need to stream just a little lower than that. I’d rather have lossless quality that can be converted at any time to whatever I need, even though I mostly have it set to 160k for listening if I’m streaming away from home. My work internet and cell service can get really terrible, and being able to buffer 10 songs when I get a few minutes of service is a godsend while not getting stuck with low quality, several times converted files, or keeping multiple bitrate versions of the same song.

Framework was and is certainly high on my list, but I’d rather go in a used direction and I do have concerns about them sponsoring hyprland and omarchy, and I haven’t seen anything about them backing down on their statements.

If I were to categorize what I consider most important as far as upgradability goes, it would be the following:

1. Storage - Drives fail, full stop. It needs to be replaceable. Storage can also be a backup to ram, so if that isn’t replaceable something needs to be. My experience with a 32gb nonreplaceable storage laptop has soured my entirely on non-replaceable storage.

2. Ram - Ram can fail and as technology proceeds, ram tends to be the most expendable resource as technology progresses. So as time goes on, what you started with just won’t cut it in the future. I don’t see this changing anytime soon, so it either needs to be upgradable or way overboard in capacity and to a lesser degree speed.

3. Secondary components (wifi, bluetooth, etc.) - I honestly don’t mind replacing these components with a usb dongle, but it sure would be nice to replace the internal components and leave USB ports free.

4. Graphics - I’m not a laptop gamer, I don’t see it as the place for it. While there are some processes that would benefit from a better GPU, I feel like mobile CPUs cover that aspect very well.

5. CPU/motherboard - A replaceable cpu is a rarity to find in a laptop, and processing power/watt doesn’t seem to have a huge difference within generations which is probably my most important factor in a laptop. Sockets change so often and chipsets aren’t often compatible with newer chips that I don’t much see the point if the motherboard isn’t replaceable. It would be cool to have a replaceable motherboard, but considering how fine I am with older technology, I think even those would still be outdated by the time I start considering that anyway.

Unrelated, but I just took apart my old IBM thinkpad from 2003/2004 to clean it up and get all nice and pretty for it’s last few years of updates. I also did my newer-ish HP laptop from 2016 at the same time.

The thinkpad was just beautifully laid out, with thought put into the placement of vents, heat sinks, heat generating components, alternative air pathways if the entire bottom was blocked, easy maintenance of components, etc.

The HP was …not. The weakest ass heat sink I’ve ever seen, miles away from the processor (no wonder it sounded like a wind tunnel when playing a youtube video). One intake vent where your thigh would be if in your lap and the exhaust right where your knee would be. Extra bonus was the placement of the CPU (running usually 80c+) is right above your junk, the vent being offset from the processor a smidge.

Granted I’m comparing enterprise vs consumer laptop in the days when there was a massive difference in quality between the two, but damn, this experience has me decided (again) that internal layout and design is just as important as specs, even more so if you need more powerful components.

Vscodium isn’t in the repos for opensuse, but yes, this user should have found a way to install it on bare metal in the first place.

I just had an issue with the vscodium flatpak, been using it for two months with no issue in an online course, got to learning GUIs, import module, doesn’t exist. I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t there, installed three different python versions of it three different ways, still nothing. Couldn’t even get vscodium to point to a different interpreter that I knew was there (yet it doesn’t say it’s not there, just that some things won’t work). Still nothing. Three hours later, after trying everything I could think of, I realized that it was because I installed the flatpak version when it clicked that it worked in Geany and I didn’t have python 3.13 in my repos, yet that was the only one I could see in vscodium.

…Dad?

“Here’s a recorder.”

-My step kid’s music teacher on the last day of school

My neighbor is named Karen. She’s absolutely a Karen, but she’s my Karen.

She’s actually pretty nice and takes care of her neighbors, but she is all up in the neighborhood’s business sometimes.

Our work tried to push thin clients. It didn’t go well because they did not invest in the back end and infrastructure to do it. Constantly unable to reach the server, often bogged down because three people were running heavy applications where they should have had a dedicated machine, the storage server was sometimes a microwave link away that would nearly die if it was raining.

I’m usually at three different workstations throughout the day, sometimes there’s even three others that I might end up at, and it was so nice to just connect to my instance and continue, nothing’s worse than opening up an excel you worked on for two hours at a workstation five minutes from your current one and it’s “locked by another user” and you don’t remember what all you might have changed from your last save.

I do not do any resource intensive work that isn’t on a dedicated machine, so I would be perfect for thin client use. But there were so many little things they didn’t or couldn’t do that built up to it being a useless endeavor.

I’m mostly bottlenecked by IO performance and network speeds. So in order to happily take advantage of a blazing fast machine I’d need to do some upgrades everywhere else. As long as I don’t get one, I won’t feel the need to update. I got real close the other day transferring 1.5 TB of data to a backup drive over 1Gb after doing some file server to file server shenanigans over 2.4ghz wifi with a 32GB filesystem image.

FYI, decompressing an image on a fileserver back onto the server through a laptop, then writing the decompressed image on that server to a disk connected to said laptop, all over 2.4ghz WiFi, is a monumentally stupid way to do things. Many circumstances were involved, the biggest of which in this escapade was me unwilling to walk across the house because of… I don’t know, reasons. The second biggest being I had already pressed enter, so screw restarting the process in a way that would be 4x or more faster, I was already 10% done.

I had my partner put in the addresses of my *arr stack into their phone and showed them how to add things they wanted. They never close any tabs so all I need to say is what weird-ass unrelated name handles whatever media they want and I’m done.

All of my old phones work fine as the last time they were updated. My 10 year old Sony xperia z3c would be fine except for security updates and it’s only 3g, and the storage on it is quite measly. I still use it everyday for playing music, though.

Most of the speed issues are google bloat. Play services are absolute hogs, and anything that needs them will not work on this phone, but everything that doesn’t is perfectly fine. So I’m basically stuck with f-droid apps. Which is fine, because it’s a glorified iPod at this point

Same, I bought something years ago that amounted to something like $15.05, I had a $20 and some change so I tossed in an extra dime so I wouldn’t have to fill my wallet with singles and have a bunch of change in my pocket. Nope, cashier looked at me like I was stupid and handed me back my worst nightmare because they had to make up being short a quarter in dimes and nickels.

I’m not going to say how long I used linux before learning this. It isn’t “this many days old”, but it may as well be.

I have 7 headless linux boxes running.

Nursing in the early 2000s, CS in 2010s. I’m guessing whatever University of Phoenix is pushing, stay the fuck away from.