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We need a system like a RockChip processor based single board computer, paired with a trusted protection module, and all fediverse services prepackaged for minimal user input required to self host any fediverse services. All updates should be safely installed over the air via the TPM chip based encryption just like with Graphene OS. All of the necessary connections should be preconfigured to punch a hole for the port into the internet. The hardware should be completely locked down with an immutable base system and SE Linux fully configured. There shouldn't be any accommodations for obscure edge cases outside of the base configuration. It should not require any further payment or services.

A RockChip RK3588 is fully documented with a 3k3 page long full datasheet. As I understand it, this chip is open hardware, though it still has the ARM proprietary blob (TrustZone), similar to the x86_64 Intel Management Engine, and AMD Platform Security Processor. I have not heard of a similar system present in RISC-V processors, but I also have not seen RISC-V SBCs that are more than alpha prototype dev kits. Unlike other single board computers, the RK series has the documentation required for community based Linux kernel support. No one could pull kernel support that they are the only ones providing using a proprietary datasheet.

There are many RK3588 single board computers available for around $100 already. As a back of the napkin quality idea using baseless imaginary statistics, I bet we could get around 3-5% of regular users to purchase hardware within a year if it was within a $250 price point. This should be set up for one click image and video hosting, threadiverse, mastodon, file sharing, git, blogging, etc.

This is way outside of the scope of a project I am qualified to manage; I am no real developer, just a sloppy hacker type. I'd volunteer to do a hardware design, or at least the bulk of the tedium for someone more experienced with production stuff to review. I would not mind playing the glue between those that have more limited time. If LW has 6k plus active daily users, and 3-5% of these purchased the hardware, the rough margins are nowhere near a viable business. Still, something in the back of my head says the only thing actually impeding internet freedom with the fediverse is the challenge of self hosting, and this is like the issue that Android addressed with mobile hardware. If people could one-time purchase the hardware, and only pay for their regular internet connection, I think they would buy straightforward honest open hardware they fully own.

I don't know if it is possible, or if the fediverse projects would participate in some kind of automatically updated end point. This was just a fantasy shower thought that I have been mulling over all day. It addresses all of my personal hesitations and insecurities about self hosting, and is simple enough I can imagine my techno illiterate family giving it a try. It is the kind of project I would like to be a part of.

I stopped using piefed a week ago when I got a message some random quack banned my account in some community I had never engaged with but I could not figure out who did it or where it happened. Any lack of modlog accountability for mods and admin with full transparency are an absolute no-go for me.

Maybe I am just dumb and not seeing where to find these. I only use the web browser front end.

Model knows its cars surprisingly well.

Call it something like greentext or confessions or something. Anyone posting is automatically set to Anonymous with no link whatsoever to the original account for admin or users to track or in the logs/activity pub etc. Like the person will not get replies, notifications on their account for the post, or the ability to reply as Anon. Simply streamline creation of a throw away account using the existing credentials of an existing account for post access and to give automod a chance to act. Maybe bar new accounts or below a certain threshold of engagement.

Or is there maybe a way to set the pager for all help related queries to some command? I'm using bat and would like to pipe all --help through | bat --language=help by default for the syntax highlighting and colored output... Or if you know a lower effort way to color the output of --help let me know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4a_kJkVUis

Big Clive's video description:

This is not a sponsored video.  I feel it's important that people should know about this evolving technology, and Naomi is working on making it affordable.

During the pandemic YouTuber Naomi Wu presented plans for traditional mercury vapour based UVC sterilising lights with a special housing, to sterilise air in a room without exposing the occupants to the 254nm UVC light.

With the evolution and availability of the new era 222nm excimer lamps, Naomi has gone on to design a full product designed to be easy and convenient to deploy in populated areas like medical practices, waiting rooms, retail environments, food preparation areas and live events.

The special feature of the 222nm wavelength is that it is long enough to deactivate viral and bacterial air contaminants, but short enough not to pass through the outer layer of dead skin or the tear-layer of humans.  That means that it is currently considered safe to use in occupied areas.

The filter on the front of the light seems to specifically pass 222nm.  Without it there is a very slight hump in the spectral output at around 237nm.  The filter attenuates that completely.

Excimer is an abbreviation of Excited-Dimer, where a dimer is the joining of two molecules.  In the case of the excimer lamps the molecules are encouraged to bond temporarily in a plasma discharge, and when they revert back to their non-excited state they emit a photon of light at a specific wavelength determined by the chemistry.  In this case it's molecules of Krypton and Chlorine that form brief molecules of Krypton-Chloride (KrCl), before reverting back and emitting 222nm photons in the process.

The process of creating the plasma is very similar to dielectric barrier ozone generators.  By coupling to the gasses capacitively the lamp also avoids contaminating the gasses with the electrode materials.

Note that the unit uses 500mA at 12V (6W) but has a generously rated 12W power supply that runs cool.

This technology looks like it may be valuable in medical, care, travel or social environments to limit the spread of pathogens.

Here's a link to Naomi's pleasingly-named online shop:- https://cybernightmarket.com/products

I've been watching some One Marc Fifty stuff on YouTube. I can follow him well, and I'm decent at much of the hardware stuff. At least I can compile OpenWRT or do a basic Gentoo install with a custom kernel. I dread staring at NFTables, but can hack around some. I don't fully understand networking from the abstract fundamentals. Are there any good sources that break down the subject like Ben Eater did with the 8 bit bread board computer, showing all the basic logic, buses, and registers surrounding the Arithmetic Logic Unit? I'm largely looking for a more fundamental perspective on what are the core components of the stack and what elements are limited to niche applications.

I just realized I want to use self signed client certificates between devices. It was one of those moments where I feel dumb for the limited scope of my knowledge about the scale of various problems and solutions.

I've made the effort to secure mine and am aware of how the trusted protection module works with keys, Fedora's Anaconda system, the shim, etc. I've seen where some here have mentioned they do not care or enable secure boot. Out of open minded curiosity for questioning my biases, I would like to know if there is anything I've overlooked or never heard of. Are you hashing and reflashing with a CH341/Rπ/etc, or is there some other strategy like super serious network isolation?

My old man has a bunch of .dox stuff saved. He has complicated large files saved that are not supported by any of the FOSS conversion tools. I've tried Libre office, Abi Word, and every command line tool and converter I can find. These are entire book sized files.

I have a W10 machine with Word. Is extracting the .exe and running it with wine feasible without making an epic mess or massive project of this?

This is something that perplexed me a few years ago with Flash Forth on a PIC18/PIC24/Arduino Uno. I was using the Python serial emulator S-Term because it is simple in the source code and worked. I really wanted a way to load more structured Words into the FF dictionary with bookmarks in a way that made sense structurally. That lead to a desire to execute code from the uC on the host system, but I never wrapped my head around how to do this in practice.

As a random simple example, let's say I set up an interrupt based on the internal temperature sensor of the PIC18. Once triggered the uC must call a Python script on the host system and this script defines a new FF word on the uC by defining the Word in the interpreter.

How do you connect these dots to make this work at the simplest 'hello world' level? I tried modifying S-Term at one point, but I didn't get anywhere useful with my efforts.