Funny but that’s the entire point of a digital “life” if you want to use analogies : your backup is you.

Nothing needs an antivirus if you backup your data properly.

It’s not just for Linux but :

• there is an error message somewhere

It’s fundamental because instead of saying “It doesn’t work!” and get no useful help, people must think of it as an investigation (or whatever get them going) looking for clues. Until you get the right message and can provide the right context (e.g. what computer are you using, what OS version, etc) then you get generic help which is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Sure it’s not entirely impossible if you are both lucky and patient but you are doing yourself and others a huge disservice.

Before Linux maybe they were used to black boxes but here, nobody is intentionally trying to hide away anything from you!

PS: bonus, notes are basically free. Jolt down notes about anything and everything you are learning. Don’t just “use” a computer, LEARN how to use a computer.

If most of your passwords are actually for Websites, Firefox has Profile letting you manage passwords across devices.

simula on my steam deck

Ah, interesting. I did try it years ago on my desktop with my Valve Index but didn’t consider on the SteamDeck. How does it work without 6DoF and controllers?

You did. Well my point is that nobody needs this kind of equipment in the first place anyway because 99% of “useful” stuff done by an average officeworker isn’t actually LLM it’s usually STT. The rest, e.g. GenAI with videos is for shit&giggles, vibe coding doesn’t work except few super tiny narrow cases (e.g. transforming a file quickly without caring for 100% accuracy and when converters don’t already exist) and last but not least genAI on text itself is mostly used for spam, scan and cheating at school.

So… please don’t felt “left behind” if you can’t self host this kind of tools, it seems to me it’s nearly never justifiable!

Very interesting, thanks for sharing https://github.com/theaiautomators/insights-lm-local-package

Honestly though it might take 15min to configure, 1hr to let it run so that it get all images, dependencies, etc, 30min to debug GPU passthrough with the right driver version, 10min to try by getting the right endpoint… then 1min to realize that sure you can get give a PDF and “chat” with it but nothing particularly interesting or actually insightful will come out of this, especially if the paper itself if well written, namely has a proper introduction, structure, etc.

So… I’m leaving this comment here to maybe try one day, updated my list of local AI services but most likely I won’t bother anymore.

cultural and political will to prevent it

Well the EU and California are. Just yesterday I was reading https://www.lesnumeriques.com/informatique/une-premiere-victoire-polytechnique-claque-la-porte-a-microsoft-365-et-choisit-le-logiciel-libre-la-revolte-gagne-les-universites-n243905.html which is one example among many, here one of the most famous French engineering school switches away from Microsoft due to lack of GDPR clarity. Numerous administrations in the EU do the same. Yes it slow, yes it’s not enough BUT it’s something. I can’t say if the momentum will grow and transform to a mass exodus, or if it’s not a real trend and my bias highlights what I hope to see. Still it is happening.

Immich distributed compute for https://github.com/immich-app/immich/tree/main/machine-learning with a control panel to witness the “boost” (which tbh might be impossible to notice)

Ah… forgot about them for a while, checking : last update from April “#58 - Dev Kits, Compute Packs, & 2025 Timeline” so in theory now they are on board certification. Good occasion to also check https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula/commits/master/

Out of curiosity, did you try one?

I setup WireGuard only last week so maybe I’m the one who misunderstand something : on your LAN assuming you are NOT using your router (or switch, or a networking device) to be a peer of the VPN, don’t you need to add each machine as a peer to the VPN? Also doesn’t that leave the most granularity so that the (root) user of each machine can chose to be on/off and more, e.g. split tunneling?

Indeed but by doing so I can connect from the outside World too, e.g. if I’m at the dentist waiting for an appointment, I just connect to the VPN over my 5G connection, no login required.

Because it’s low end I’d put :

• headless Debian pre-configured with WiFi and sshd to then add
• CopyParty via its single .py file
• apt install minidlna to serve media files back to add devices on LAN, e.g. VLC on desktop and mobile devices
• mount a large microSD for data
• I’d add a WireGuard VPN configuration file and make both accessible outside the LAN but only on my devices

All that is relatively quick if you have done it before (maybe 30min total) and can run 24/7 for years requiring very little power.

Also FWIW if I wouldn’t get an answer within few hours and I knew for a fact that with a fresh install it worked, I’d re-install.

It’s perfectly fine to do the process again as it insures your files are safe (either working backup or separate disks, or ideally both) and you know what software is relevant for you, that your configuration files are well known, etc.

Installing a distribution should be a painless and quick process.

Typically my debugging process goes like this :

• error message? Search for it online with the most unique keyword that aren’t machine specific
  • solutions provided?
    • solution understood? try it then loop back, writing notes in own wiki
    • solution not understood? bookmark it then try understood solutions first, if not try and loop back
• no error message?
  • find where the error message is!
    • what actually produce the error from the top of the stack? end-user software? service? kernel? hardware? where do they put logs?
      • if logs exist and verbosity is not sufficient, increase verbosity and reproduce the problem
  • if no verbose enough error message can be obtained, repeat the situation in various conditions
    • does any condition make it work?
      • search on the difference between the working and non-working condition
    • backtrack one layer up the stack, e.g. if end-user software does not change, try service, etc
      • does this one provide logs?

So… it’s basically always the same, namely try the lazy way (error log search) and if that’s not enough, try further down the stack or more unknown BUT always get information out the try.

TL;DR: I have no idea but if another new machine (e.g. phone) can connect then DHCP works. FWIW NetworkManager logs are in journalctl -u NetworkManager and you can manually add/remove Ethernet connections. I’d physically unplug then plug back the cable with WiFi disabled.

Nobody gives a shit about NIST if they lose the 1 thing that make them useful : their credibility.

If some credible doubt is shed on them … then NIST is just an acronym with no power.

That being said IMHO a pragmatic heuristic is spotting “Do what I say, not what I do” and thus if NSA relies on PQ, or hybrid, or something well you can deduce from that they assume whatever solution they do NOT use if then not safe in a useful lifespan (which might be totally different from your threat model).

Edit : did tinker with https://openquantumsafe.org/about/ in particular https://github.com/open-quantum-safe so if you have an opinion on that I’d be curious.

Since you do not seem to list self-hosting options, e.g. WireGuard or OpenVPN, then IMHO it’d be good to at least have a line on each about what’s the actual backend, e.g. does service X runs on WireGuard, OpenVPN, something else, something proprietary that has been audited by 3rd party if so whom and when.

Edit: suggested self-hosting (but not at home) WireGuard in the previous thread https://lemmy.ml/post/37270537/21536054

As they say in Italian “If my Grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike”

Sure… that’s an “interesting” premise but we live in our World, where a lot of American companies are structured the way they are by design. US companies get money from venture capital. That capital is solely designed to dominate. VC money is NOT a loan you get from a bank where you provide a collateral. No VC money is targeting 1 thing : market dominance and 10x returns. Your mom&pop shop will never get VC money because they never say they’ll corner the croissant market, rather they say might sell some baked goods to some people in your limited neighborhood. VC money will NEVER accept such a deal because it might eventually get 2x, at best, and the tiny shop does not even need a lot of capital, just enough for the oven, few people, etc. Peanuts in terms of investment money.

So… American companies are not “evil” because they want to or because a lack of luck. No, rather they become so because of the very structure money is made in the US. The Silicon Valley isn’t special because of Stanford or Berkeley and so many smart grad students. No it’s special because it pulls people from the entire World who dream of dominating markets. It then either select them or transform then select… and in the end you get the same kind of companies with the same kind of strategy with the same kind of money doing the same thing : domination by lowering price, cornering a marketing, raising price, enshittifying. Why? Because it works. It’s a proven business model. Right now it works on ads, and thus privacy… but if another model comes, it’ll use that.

TL;DR: it’s not perfect but it sure beats most if not all of BigTech depending of course on your needs.

Nice, leaving Google is a lot of work but worth it, kudos!

Installed LMS (and got some of my former music streaming server to send me my listening data as .csv via GDPR request) and WireGuard this week.

Also took the occasion to clean up and simplify my nginx reverse proxy a bit, making the addition of a new service on my server easier.