Bob Smith

That’s a solid piece of advice. Before I automate any rsync jobs, I’m going to familiarize myself with mountpoint so I can check on the front end of the job.

I lived this. It was a great way for me and several of my closest friends to learn about the variable latency among devices between pushing the play/unpause button and when a cd track actually starts to play.

I do something like that with rsync. The syntax is a bit tricky to figure out at first, but the idea is that you take a known-good copy of your data and run rsync to copy it to the removable drive. After the first sync, you can run the command to check for any changes and push the changes from your main data to the copy on the drive.

You’ll want to research the command and the options, but you can theoretically run something like: rsync -avP --delete /mnt/Data_Drive/Data/ /run/media/user/Backup/Data/ where a is archive mode which helps to do things like preserve file attributes, v is verbose so you can see more details when you run the command, and P gives a progress line and keeps any partial files on the receiving end if the transfer is interrupted for some reason. --delete removes any files on the receiving end that have been deleted from your main data folder since the last time you’ve run rsync. The mnt folder path can be replaced with wherever your main data backup lives and the /run folder is a hypothetical destination folder on a removable drive.

An additional trick is to run the command with -n at the end of it before you run it without -n at the end. -n performs a ‘dry run’ where it will output what the changes are going to be when you actually run the sync operation. This can help you spot issues like mistyping the file path in your command. If you’re only syncing one or two changes and the dry run indicates that it is going to basically re-transfer your entire data folder, then you probably got something wrong.

Another fun thing about rsync is that if you’ve got ssh server set up on your home computers, you can run rsync to sync files from one computer to another one on your network.

I agree with you entirely. Anybody who is comfortable with calibre and with managing their own library of epubs won’t have a problem with a device like this.

I have one of these and I enjoy using it. If you have a lot of drm-free ebooks and you want a tiny device with good physical buttons, then it might be worth getting one of these.

It only supports drm-free books that you load on to the sd card, so you’re hosed if you buy all of your books through the kindle store. No libby app or other workarounds. Edit: I just got access to the article. Apparently the newest version of Crosspoint has Libby support. On the plus side there’s a nice 3rd party firmware scene. I use Crosspoint, which makes the interface more straightforward. It is also easy to sideload new lockscreen images and my preferred fonts for ebook reading.

I only use it for basic epub ebooks.The processor/screen combo makes comics and pdfs a bad experience. Due to this Crosspoint doesn’t officially support pdfs or comic book files.

From a hardware perspective, I REALLY like it. It takes up minimal pocket space and I can fit it into the bonus pocket on my jeans. The physical buttons on the front and side are very nice and responsive. Screen is small but more than adequate. Battery life is fine.

Just throw the veggies in some water. They love drinking that crap.

Debian is sooo Dorothy.

I’m running the standard version of syncthing through termux at the moment. It lacks some of the power management options, but otherwise I’ve experienced no issues.

I second Aegis. You can drag icons and rename tokens. You can also sort by a to z, last used, usage count, etc. Aegis supports automatic backups and can export plaintext or encrypted backup files, after which you can transfer them to other devices however you transfer other files from your phone.

The backup files work with Aegis and with several independent desktop apps depending on your OS of choice. While I haven’t looked into it, that suggests that the encryption method isn’t something homebrew.

As far as #6 goes Aegis doesn’t try to save my passwords, encourage me to use passkeys, or suggest AI solutions. Magic bullshit is a vague qualifier, but I think Aegis is thaumaturgically inert. The ‘icons’ are just the first letter of the name of the token issuer by default.

The more-than-one-year lifetime is a problem with anything, including plenty of Google projects. There are over 60 contributors on github, so that’s something.

This is the biggest problem that I have with the Windows ‘Just download the program from the internet’ mentality. All that it takes is one brief moment when you let your guard down and everything falls apart. On top of that, modern search engines seem to be very happy to show bogus results as prominently as possible. Package managers aren’t perfect, but they’re a big step in the right direction. When I have to use Windows outside of a corporate or managed setting, I use something like Chocolatey.

It sounds like you want something that doesn’t lend itself to troubleshooting or useability. It can be done, though: pull your hard drive and run everything from a live USB with no persistent storage. Or just don’t use computers.

Something like 4 out of 10 important for me, but 10 out of 10 if I share a computer. I keep xfce4 on my computers because I like some of the utilities that come with it by default and I’m not the only person in my home who logs in. The default setup is close to what my people expect and it can be modified easily enough.

That being typed, I use a window manager after spending years adding custom shortcuts to an increasingly modified xfce setup to match my day-to-day use patterns. I got tired of dealing with stacking windows and wanted to try a setup that tiles the windows instead. It made sense at that time to try out a window manager that came closer to what I was looking for. I still use xfce4 if I want to run an x-11 type of environment for some reason, but I’m using sway for my personal day-to-day environment. I’m willing to use KDE or GNOME if that’s what is installed by default, but I’m working against muscle memory when I do so.

I’m not sure that there is a consensus at this time. After reading some conflicting information, I opted to install syncthing via the F-Droid version of Termux until things settle down. When I run it in a terminal the default browser opens the web interface and I’m good to go from there. Power management is not great, but it works and runs the current version of syncthing.

For me, Trebuchet goes straight to my brain. There are plenty of fonts that look nicer to me, but that’s the one that I settled on after trying out dozens. I read it faster, I don’t lose my place, it works equally well for me at several font sizes and on both traditional ebook readers and tablet screens.

Teleporno and a quiet room?

Gotcha. This is replacing one nonsense black box with a different one, then. That makes a depressing kind of sense. No evidence needed, either!

All of that being typed, I’m aware that the ‘If’ in my initial response is doing the same amount of heavy lifting as the ‘Some might argue’ in the article. Barring the revelation of some truly extraordinary evidence, I don’t accept the premise.

Wow. If a black box analysis of arbitrary facial characteristics is more meritocratic than the status quo, that speaks volumes about the nightmare hellscape shitshow of policy, procedure and discretion that resides behind the current set of ‘metrics’ being used.

I tell a lie: the specific computer that I mention in the above post has a cleaned-up version of coreboot on it, not libreboot.

I had a much smaller chromebook with libreboot on in a few years ago. Booting was fine, the rest of the hardware was too weak for my daily use. It was an Asus C201. I vaguely remember having to disconnect the battery and bridge some board contacts to get it switched over.

I have libreboot on an old chromebook that I converted a year or two ago. I followed a guide. Minor disassembly but nothing weird.

The computer boots just fine with one issue that is hardly worth mentioning. I accidentally left some cruft around when I switched from one distro to another, so it fails to boot to the old system before successfully booting the current one. That’s a ‘me being lazy’ problem, not a ‘libreboot’ problem.