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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 2nd, 2023

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  • I enjoyed the depth of this answer. That being said…

    4 copies seems like a level of paranoia that is not practical for the average consumer.

    3 is what I use, and I consider that an already more advanced use case.

    2 is probably most practical for the average person.

    Why do I say this? The cost of the backup solution needs to be less than the value of the data itself x the effort to recover the incrementally missing data x the value of your time x the chance of failure.

    In my experience, very few people have data that is so valuable that they need such a very thorough backup solution. Honestly, a 2$ thumb drive can contain most of the data the average user would actually miss and can’t easily find again scouring online.





  • Yes, but also no. Older hardware is less power efficient, which is a cost in its own right, but also decreases backup runtime during power failure, and generates more noise and heat. It also lacks modern accelerated computing, like ai cores or hardware video encoders or decoders, if you are running those appd. Not to mention lack of nvme support, or a good NIC.

    For me a good compromise is to recycle hardware upgrades every 4-5 years. A 19 year old computer? I would not bother.








  • You deftly evaded the leading attack vector: social engineering. Root access means any app installed could potentially access sensitive banking. People really are sheep and need to be protected from themselves, in information security just like in anywhere else.

    You don’t get a “accept the risk” button because people don’t actually take responsibility, or will click on those things without understanding the risk. Dunning Kruger at play.

    Why is this prevalent on Android but not desktop Linux? Most likely a combination of 1) Google made it trivially easy to turn on, and 2) the market share of Android is significantly large enough to make it a problem warranting a solution.

    The fact that you know how to circumvent it is inconsequential to the math above. Spoiler: you never were nor ever will be the demographic for these products, in their design, testing, and feature prioritisation.


  • Anyone can build a bridge. Only an engineer can build a bridge that barely stands.

    In the same way, the fact that one built a large online platform, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was built with minimal ressources and without taking past or future risk.

    Engineering is, as a profession, specifically the application of scientific principles to solve problems the right way, the first time, that is to say efficiently, and with minimal risk.

    The fact that one codes, or wields a wrench, or operates a C&C machine does not mean one is applying science to solve problems efficiently and managing risk. These are entirely different skills and professions.





  • Software dev is full of obscure keywords that describe otherwise pretty simple or basic concepts you stumble upon in practice naturally and that you probably already understand.

    • singleton: a class/object that is designed to be single use, i.e. only ever instantiated with a single instance. Typically used when you use class/objects more for flow control or to represent the state of the program itself, rather than using it to represent data
    • immutable: read-only, i.e. unchangeable
    • dependency injection: basically when you pass a function or object into another function object, thereby extending their effective functionality, typically for modular code and to separate concerns.

    Here’s one more of my favourite examples of such a keyword: memoization



  • This a 1/1000 likely outcome. Bankrupted companies will typically sell assets including IP and software to other companies to pay creditors (which excludes open sourcing them). And well before bankruptcy, any financial issues will cause Plex to be modified to support shitty monetization to the point that you won’t want the source code amyway.

    Sorry for the bad outlook, better that you be ready than to hope for a unicorn.