The secret is to give yourself as Elitez Hacker objectives things like “least maintenance time required” or “maximum computing power lowest energy consumption” (or it’s companion “silent yet powerful”).
Maybe “I’m fed up with the constant need for tweaking and the jet-plane-like quality of my heater-that-does-computing-on-the-side” is the real mid-life crisis of techies.
Curiously, judging by my recent upgrade parts search, the peak of the capability-to-power-used curve on PCs (at least gaming ones) seems to have peaked about a decade ago.
Signed, a fellow Old Sea Dog Of Tech who has also gone through the same change over a decade ago
That’s not mid-life, that’s entire-life.
Years ago I concluded (wrongly or rightly) that most people are neutral, a small handfull are actually good people (willing to sacrifice their personal benefit for people they don’t know with no expectation of gaining from it, even in the form of social approval) and a small handful are assholes, but the assholes do such a disproportionate amount of damage that they end up having a massive impact on everybody else.
The stuff in computer games that makes NPCs move around the game world from point A to point B has been called AI for ages (and in this case specifically, is generally the A* pathing algorithm which isn’t even all that complex).
It’s only recently that marketing-types, salesmen and journalists with no actual technical expertise have started pushing AI as if the I in the acronym actually meant general intelligence rather than the “intelligence-alike” meaning that it has had for decades.
Salesmanship is the essence of management at those levels.
Which brings us back around to the original subject of this thread - tech bros - in my own experienced in Tech recently and back in the 90s boom, this generation of founders and “influencers” aren’t techies, they’re people from areas heavy on salesmanship, not actually on creating complex things that objectivelly work.
The complete total dominance of sales types in both domains id why LLMs are being pushed the way they are as if they’re some kind of emerging-AGI and lots of corporates believe it and are trying to hammer those square pegs into round holes even though the most basic of technical analises would tell them that it doesn’t work like that.
Ultimately since the current societal structures we have massively benefit that kind or personality, we’re going to keep on having these kinds of barely-useful-stuff-insanely-hyped-up cycles wasting tons of resources because salesmanship is hardly a synonym for efficiency or wisdom.
They’re running around looking for the thiefs.
Well, Money de facto ruling over massive domains in a country, including access to life essentials, is the very opposite of Democracy.
If government is actually the top power on the land with oversight over and the power to rule over everything, then the power of voters which choses the people who lead said government controls the top power on the land, which is what’s known as Democracy (even when imperfect).
However if government ties its own hands so that it doesn’t really oversee or rule over the domains were Money has the most power, then it’s not the top power on the land anymore - Money is - and the votes of people do not control the highest power on the land anymore, they only control a secondary power, so what you have in not Democracy anymore, it’s Oligarchy - Money is not democratic since doesn’t have any “one person one vote” rule and instead some have billions of times more power than others.
“Small government” is really just a slogan for a government which has had its hands tied by reducing its funding so that it’s unable to oversee, much less rule over, the areas where Money dominates, especially when it comes to facing the wealthiest people and companies. Mind you this only works if the other elements of Democracy are kept, so Money still wants a Judiciary and Law Enforcement independent of Government to uphold their ownership of things and stop the plebes from taking their shit, just a government weakenned in all other areas and unable to fight Money in the Courts.
Soon Twitter will complete its transition to Nazi Bar of Social Media.
Well, the US turning into a banana republic will at least solve the problem for bananas.
And for those on the other side of the Atlantic, there are several computer shops that will just put a computed together for you without an OS.
Here’s a random example “configure your own computer” from a computer shop in France. In this one the OS (Système d’exploitation) is not included and you have to pay extra for it.
In my experience with custom assemblies like this the OS is never included.
When I live in the UK at some point I’ve even used of these kind of stores there to get a custom notebook.
It’s basically an “assemble your own computer” for people who don’t know how to do it and aren’t confident enough to try (understandable given that the parts value of a whole desktop PC adds up to at least €1000 so there generally is some fear of fucking it up if you’ve never done it before).
Sometimes a point is well made even if I disagree with it, the conclusion in it or disagree with the path it suggests whilst agreeing with the objectives.
It’s like how in Politics in better times (or less adversarial countries) one might respect a political oponent whilst disagreeing with them.
There’s also a trait in some cultures were people tend to try and poke holes on other people’s ideas and point out the bits they find incorrect, not because they’re against it, in disagreement with it or to put down that other person, but to try and help improve that idea even further - in other words, genuine constructive criticism. A downvote isn’t constructive, and sometimes people deserve an upvote for trying or for how far they got, even if the end result could be better.
Maybe they’re premium ads because the advertisers pay extra for access to a pool of self-selected suckers.
I don’t think the sensors really matter for a server but the rest makes some sense.
Still, 80 bucks will buy you quite literally a Mini-PC (a really crummy one, granted) which can run more server tasks because it has as much or more memory and storage and isn’t hindered by there being an Android OS layer there doing nothing useful, and which is absolutelly and 100% under your control because it boots into your OS of choice.
Half than that will buy you a crummy SBC which probably de facto has as much capability to run server tasks as that Oneplus (it’s weaker but doesn’t have Android there eating up resources) though in my experience those things tend to be a bit finicky.
I don’t think it’s actually worth it to spend $80 on an used phone to use as a server (unless you do need UPS-like features or built-in mobile nertwork access) since you quite literally have better options brand new for that money, but if you have one around it can make sense even if it’s a bit more work getting it going and is not fully under your control (unless we’re talking about something jailbroken where you can install Oxygen or Lineage on, so a Pixel would probably be a better choice).
That said, there is a certain technical elegance in the whole notion of repurposing an Android Phone to be a home server.
I think you’re seriously overestimating the technical prowess of the average law enforcement officer…
Except the price, which is much lower for the SBC, way much lower if one uses one of the lower end Orange Pi or Banana Pi SBCs.
Also you can put Linux on the SBCs (which always come unlocked) hence do way more with them as servers than if one has to use Android as the OS.
I mean, I can get it if people with the technical chops, love for technical challenges and an old and pretty much worthless Android phone, configure it as a server if only because “why not?!”, but it’s not exactly a great option considering that a 40 bucks SBC can do the same, only better, more easily and with far more possibilities (given that it will be running Linux rather than Android).
PS: Actually somebody below mention mobile network connection, which, thinking about it, would be a good reason to use an old Android phone as a server since it has built-in support for 3G (unless it’s quite old) whilst the SBC needs it add to it which might be a problem for the cheaper SBCs (just wondering about how I would get around to do it, I think you need to connect a USB dongle to it and it has to be something compatible with Armbian Linux)
I’m truly, totally, completely shocked … that Windows is still being used on the server side.
I would get two of the local small (about 50g each) cured cheeses made out of goat and sheep milk a week and eat them, and was having trouble cutting down on blood sugar until I stopped doing it and that one change with all else being roughly the same consistently reduced the blood sugar level increases - since I have Type II Diabetes - between my “running days” (I run 10km twice a week, which by itself has a huge positive impact on it).
Around here there’s also what we call “fresh cheese” (basically cheese that hasn’t been cured) and I usually get a couple of those made of goat cheese and they don’t seem to be a problem.
Of course, this is all a bit so-so and anecdotcal since its pretty hard to control all other variables plus blood sugar seems to also be affected what you consumed days before (I’ve seen blood sugar go up long after the last meal and during a fasting period - so supposedly not because of sugar intake or digestion - which I suspect is due to the sugar stored in the liver or maybe yet another unexpected methabolic pathway).
In my experience of trying to control blood sugar levels with food and exercise, it is exactly as you said: metabolism is crazy, crazy complicated :/
Well, that’s the second part of my theory but I didn’t went into it to avoid muddling the point I was making:
So in present “Greed is good” (very much a Sociopath slogan) times with mainstream media and a large section of the Culture production and distribution (in the form of TV, but also TV Show and Movie making) in the hands of extremelly wealthy people and when those we are told we should look up to are people like Musk (well, him specifically maybe not anymore) and Bezos, the “neutral” majority has shifted significantly towards the asshole side of things.
The World would be a lot different if our “heroes” were Scientists and Environmentalists.