It actually saved my life a few months back, I had a dying windows server I needed to resurrect and the tools on there were perfect for it.

https://www.hirensbootcd.org/

Hirens boot cd is a great tool if you’re working with windows. You are not always going to need it, but when you do need it it’s awfully nice to have it.

Having a pair of default gateways could be an issue. On Windows (which I know, isn’t the OS here), you have to be pretty careful because if you’re straddling two networks, you need to pick one network to be the dominant one, that’s the one whose default gateway will get packets heading onto outbound networks.

When I’m using linux, I do something similar, I just sync’d my home folder as my nextcloud directory and that similarly made all my files available.

The way I’ve got it set up is I have a Nextcloud\Desktop, Nextcloud\Downloads, Nextcloud\Documents, Nextcloud\Pictures, and Nextcloud\Videos folder, and on each machine I use I point each of those points in windows to use the folder in the nextcloud folder instead of my users folder, then I run the official client to sync the entire nextcloud folder. By doing that, whichever computer I’m on I’ve got the same stuff in my main folders and anything else I have I can keep in the nextcloud folder. I’ve also got it on my mobile device just to automatically upload new pictures to the InstantUploads folder, but the app is a bit limited.

I live equally on the road working as at home, and I’ve got completely different computers for home and travel, so in this way I’ve always got all my files available since once I start up the computer it automatically starts pulling the local files. If you don’t want a full copy of everything on both machines, I think you can tell it to just create links of the files and the client will download the files from the server as they’re required, but I prefer having a local copy of the files myself.

I use nextcloud for syncing between different computers, because I tend to have different machines that are far separated geographically, and it works well. I put all my home folders on each computer into the nextcloud directory so I have all the same files everywhere I go and if I don’t have one of my computers I can still log in and access those files.

I used to use nextcloud as my solution for everything, but a big problem with photos is it isn’t really very navigable, and a problem with nextcloud as a general platform is everything is a plugin so if the plugin doesn’t get updated you can be stuck on an older version of the software which carries its own risks. As well, given the interface, You have your media but you can’t really go back and look at it. What I did instead is I set up a library in jellyfin with all my photos sorted into directories, and you can scroll and navigate through them fairly intuitively. I pulled my data out of google and facebook before deleting the accounts and so had many many photos but no way to really enjoy them, but that solution worked really well for me and I’ve been able to look at my old photos easily.

I wonder if you’ve ever used a Chromecast based on this criticism.

For a standard Chromecast, you open the app on your phone, then press the cast button, then the device you want to cast to, and the the device begins to stream the media independently of your device. You can shut off the device you used to start casting and it doesn’t matter because Chromecast is pulling the data on its own.

On some websites such as YouTube on PC, you also have a cast button and you can press it, select the device and it’ll start playing. you can get this button to work on all kinds of sites, and a lot of open source software supports it to a degree such as VLC, Peertube (through a plugin), and Jellyfin.

Using google chrome you can cast your current webpage or your desktop, but that’s not the standard use of Chromecast.

It takes some finagling, but you can cast from Jellyfin to a standard Chromecast right from your phone.

The latest version out is Chromecast with Android TV, which is really nice (for now). It’s running a version of android and has the play store, so you can set up the Jellyfin android TV app, and stream from your home server without requiring a domain name or https like you do to stream properly on straight Chromecast.

The big issue with Chromecast in my view is that it’s a Google product which means 3 things:

1. it’s proprietary, which has many risks coming from that nature and a crappy largely hidden API
2. it can be shut down any moment if they desire (see google graveyard), and being an always-on device it’s possible they just brick it on the way out
3. it will suck up as much data as they can from you to try to sell you more crap

How so? It seems like chromecast does exactly what it says it does, even if it’s a suboptimal solution for not being FOSS.

Not sayin nothin, but you might want to look at Matrix Conduit. you won’t want to keep it open, but it’s much easier to set up and it uses a tiny amount of the resources. Synapse kills the server I’m running both conduit and lotide on just fine.

The most important risk you face is if somehow mains voltage ends up contacting somewhere you get electrocuted and die.

There are 2 purposes of an earth ground: First it can be used as a reference for certain signals, such as microphones. Second, it can be used to protect against turning yourself into a sparker.

There is a clear separation between mains voltage and system voltages so it’s typically not going to be a problem, but if a little wire ends up contacting the power supply case it can become energized and things start to get really bad.

Most of the electrical code where I live focuses on grounding as “Bonding”, which is purely safety related for giving dangerous voltages a safe place to go.

It’s subtle, but they changed a lot of minor things, I think maybe because it’s using a different UI framework. Scrolling is worse (the scroll bar acts nuts and the scroll wheel usually doesn’t work very well, I these days tend to use the keyboard to scroll the middle plane) and the frame on the right doesn’t reset between stories.

It’s little things, but it makes reading through the days news a bit tougher.

I live by nextcloud news, but I don’t like the new interface.

The other nice thing is it syncs with apps on every platform.

The most important thing for everyone to remember is that if you don’t fully own the thing such that you can install and run it without asking permission, or if it isn’t simply free and open source, then it can go away at any time.

Honestly, if you’re running public facing services, you should run the latest everything you can. There’s a risk that stuff breaks, but at least you’re not having to worry about patched exploits.

I’ve been using a number of different tools which I interface to my nextcloud.

My main nextcloud has a llm plugin which was really easy to install, you just install the plug-in, make sure that you are configured properly with python in your path, and then run an OCC command to download one of a few models.

https://localai.io/

I also hosted localAI, which was a little bit more involved, but the website did a decent enough job of explaining exactly all the things that you needed to do in order to get all the different types of AI model working. Besides LLMs, it also supports text to speech, speech to text, and image generation.

Two things that are important: first, if you are server doesn’t have a pretty advanced video card then you’re going to be using the CPU exclusively for AI, and that’ll be pretty slow. Second, I found it very quickly that the amount of RAM you have is critical. My main server is a core i5 4th gen, and so I put AI software on another one of my servers which is a core i5 7th gen. You would think that the latter would work a lot better, but it had half the ram, and it basically wasn’t even able to get started.

Besides hosting ai, if you have a desktop computer or gaming laptop you can run local AI models. There’s a fantastic piece of software called Faraday that works pretty well on my laptop. You can get more and more sophisticated models depending on how much memory you have.

https://youtu.be/aLy_vVLUHZk

Krita has AI dal-e support for image generation available as a plug-in. I haven’t used it yet because I just got it started downloading last night before I went to bed, but the installation process has defined in the video seems accurate and was extremely easy and mostly automated.

https://youtu.be/AU8NDSBIS1U

Perhaps ironically, lemmy. I had the database catastrophically fail early on, and ever since then federation has been broken with most major instances. I kind of prefer lotide anyway, much more minimalistic, less of a focus on upvotes and downvotes, and the code base is simply enough that I’ve been able to hop into it and make changes.

If you do end up using postgresql, over time the database could end up getting fragmented and that can lead to increased latency, so routine pg_repacks imo are a worthwhile thing to schedule.

As for the story of the war and some of the characters stories… The age of heroes like Kirk in their prime is over, the federation is losing the war. Younger crews weren’t properly mentored and so lack the knowledge of the aging heroes and so are not doing well at all, and the older crews dont have the vigor to engage in total war. Meanwhile the Klingons seem to be doing just fine, being both vigorous and wise, hence why they decided to start a war sensing a weak federation. Kirk would slowly over the course of the movie learn that it’s not so bad mentoring top people. Bones would struggle after watching the young men come into the sickbay dead realizing in just a few years his final destination would be upon him, and he’d be making mistakes and cracking. Spock would share his struggles with his grandfather dying and would speak logically about death like nimoy did in “I am Spock” and it would help McCoy put death into perspective. Scott would learn he drank because he didn’t think he had anything better in his life until he saw the new batch of engineers trying really hard to keep the ship running but lacking know-how and one of the engineers would come to him with personal problems and he’d realize he had more to offer than just work. Spock would do some brilliant work as a seconded science officer and later would use his skills as a diplomat to help end the war with the Klingons once the Enterprise becomes the focal point of a passing of the torch where the old crews realize they need to build up the new ones which makes the Klingons realize their time has passed to attack (with a little prodding). Uhuras work as a communications officer ends up front and center as she is a second diplomat working with Spock near the end of the movie. Checkov would realize that while he isn’t happy with his past all he can do is move on to his future. Sulu would have a whole b-plot where he talks at desks about strategy and helps see several ambushes by the Klingons in advance which is part of what helps end the war.

Ok but that’s it…

I think the ending needs some work but I like the concept.

I don’t know if the boomers could write a story about getting old wisely, particularly not way back then. I like the idea of showing different characters managing getting older, both in positive and negative ways, and perhaps some characters having an arc.

Kirk would definitely be trying to keep living his glory days. He already looked like an idiot wrassling Klingons in Star Trek 3, by 6 he should be seeing the consequences of his insistence on playing hero, a washed up captain with a growing number of failed missions because he keeps trying to go down and fight the bad guy and kiss the lady and he just isn’t capable of it anymore. His arc would be learning to let go of the day to day battles, and leaning into his wisdom earned by a lifetime of work in the field to help raise the next generation of people who will be taking over after him. In the actual canon just as Kirk never faced the Kobayashi maru challenge head on, his character never actually faced aging head-on and died in a battle including 3 old men.

The idea that McCoy would stop being a doctor is dumb, many doctors practice until they die of old age. His arc would be about coming to grips with the reality that he has a limited amount of time left and what that means.

Spock would be an investigation of what it means to have more time since he’d be a young man in Vulcan terms, looking at aging from an alien perspective, but hey we introduced a new family member last movie how about we introduce sarek’s dad who is in the final stages of Vulcan decline and the consequences of having people be such reliable pillars for so long and then losing them.

Scotty’s story of becoming a drunk stays, it’s too interesting to not do something with.

Uhuras story should be a future reflection on a life for a woman that was much different than the life of a woman in the 60s when TOS first aired, an opportunity to show how different gene’s future was than the present of 40-60 years ago.

Contrasting to Kirk who was the captain in his prime winning all the fights and getting all the chicks, Checkovs (sorry Koenig) character would be a reflection of a life of regret, of opportunities not taken. His arc would be about making peace with his past self and taking steps to constructively manage his future.

Sulu could be shown taking an entirely different path, such as a strategic command, and his arc would be about using his wisdom and experience from the enterprise adventures to advise the fleet.

With all this, I think two huge threats are too much. Galactic war or youth worms, and I think Galactic war makes way more sense for the last hurrah.

You’d start off with a captains log and the on a routine mission to transport Spock in his role as a diplomat to mediate a dispute on a planet. Smash cut to a battle between Kirk and a klingon. The dialogue would suggest Kirk quickly sniffed him out with his experience, but while he puts up a good fight ultimately he loses the fight. He beams up and a space battle starts with a klingon ship. He issues competent commands and wins the battle but just a beat too late so the ship takes some hits and some people die. Later he’s admonished by Starfleet command and given an ultimatum that he either accepts a role as an admiral commanding fleets or he can retire, and he can make the decision when he gets back to earth but for now his first officer is in command of the ship. Just as they are about to set a course for earth they get a message that war has broken out with the Klingons and the Enterprise is needed immediately to participate in the war effort.

Anyway better stop here or I’ll write a whole script lol

One thing that might work is uPnP to open ports.