There’s an infamous usenet-thread with Torvalds and Tanenbaum arguing over monolithic vs microkernel design. I microkernel is cleaner from a separation standpoint, but that also introduces hurdles and overhead.

Linux is popular because the hardware support is pretty great. There’s few laptop/BSD combinations that work well with sleep/suspend/wifi, while just about any laptop will have everything working with a recent Linux kernel.

Yeah, I mean apocalypse scenario is not my main goal. But it’s nice to have a contingency plan if shit would hit the fan.

This is my second season with the caravan, I had an apocalypse sailboat before that. I put 2x100W on it for the first season, added another 2x100W this season while going from 160Ah lead-acid to 300Ah Lithium. It’s a night and day difference there already.

I’m plugged in most of the time, either for air conditioning or heating - the Mrs wants her comfort. There’s a three-way absorption fridge (220V, 12V or gas) that draws like 110W. I can still be unplugged for three nights or so with that running; which makes long distances or overnight ferries possible without ruining food.

And if we want to stay somewhere without shore power we can flip the absorption fridge to gas and be cooking with gas as well. The compressor fridge chest that sips 30W usually sits in under the awning in front anyway.

You’re right.

Well, still enough juice to pump all the water we need and heat our meals.

We’ll just have to limit hot showers to once a fortnight. Needs about 800Wh to heat the hot water tank.

I think it’s spot on. Even if you use power tools you need to know what kind of screw goes where. But it sure goes a whole lot faster to use power tools.

Sounds to me from the article that this is a seasoned engineer who just doesn’t want to use the tools she’s being handed.

Remember back in the day when you’d see these little badges on websites saying Best viewed with Internet Explorer? And some sites just wouldn’t work right on other browsers?

Soon you went be using any of those shitty sites, either

No, I’d hire the one using power tools and PEX pipes. Not the one stuck in the 19th century.

I don’t power all of it at once, and not direcly off of solar. I could maybe fit another 200W worth of panel on that roof, but for 4000W I’d need seven caravan roofs. That battery is the buffer and it’s a beast. At 300Ah I have 4kWh to pull at 1C.

The fridge sips a nice 30W. Panels put in ~2kWh on a sunny day. So thats a 1.7kWh surplus for running heavy loads - enough to max out that inverter for an hour a day. That’s plenty for microwaving or pumping water.

If power is down for good, then getting water is the main priority. If the pumpa don’t run the water tower is losing pressure fast. I have 40 litres jugged up in the basement at all times for the first few days.

When that dries out my neighbour has a well that we’ve hooked up to five properties. Mostly for gardening, but it is potable. The pump needs power, though, so I’d pull an extension cord over to my caravan.

My caravan has 400W of solar, 300Ah LiFePO4 and a 1.5kW inverter. Also a meshtastic node with an antenna on the roof. That’ll keep the food cold, and laptops charged. It can run a microwave or hotplate, too. I’ve got 20kg of propane if I need to conserve power.

If I was hiring for my hypothetical construction company I’d have a real easy time picking between an employee who gets the job done and one who refuses to use power tools.

Forgive and move on like a good Mormon.

I have a similar one on my computer. But 2038.

Linux has extended quite a few system calls. Not really a problem as they mostly support the POSIX ways.

But there are a few corner cases around threading and file locks that do break on mainline Linux.

Not too big to overcome, as there are exceptions like EulerOS that are both compliant and certified.

Pros:

• I have the source. I don’t have to wait for fixes or features. I just do it myself and send a patch or PR upstream.
• I can run it on just about anything, and well.
• Sane defaults and handling of user permissions - by design
• Modern filesystems that don’t silently rot your data
• Full control
• No forced updates
• No telemetry

Cons:

• Not a priority for pro applications
• Not fully POSIX compliant

I haven’t used windows in almost 30 years, but… I probably missed some games at first that DOSBox couldn’t run well (yet). Not a problem any more.

I’ve written a couple.

My job requires a lot of troubleshooting, almost to the point of reverse engineering. I’ve spent many hours reading and getting through logs.

Now I have an agent who can one-shot stuff half of the time, and n-shot the 4/5 other times. And it learns from experience.

I enjoyed experimenting with it, and now it’s a timesaver for my team.

I got my first car 24 years ago. A hand-me-down that my grandpa bought with 87kkm on it, that my brother crashed. It took a lot of welding to get that car to pass inspection.

Four cars later I still have never owned a new car. I aim to buy 10yo without a loan. My current one no longer gets updated maps for its built-in infotainment system.

If I buy a 10yo EV it’ll definitely need a new battery pack. That changes the economy completely. I guess it’s cheaper to drive so I’d shell out for 10yo of driving in advance.

I’ve had a few. I mostly use it to tell time, overview the weather and get notified about calls. I have a toddler that sleeps with me. I am also on-call for work half the time, so if I get called in the middle of the night it wakes me up so that I can sneak off to work a bit without waking the kid.

My pebble time had a great Google maps app for navigating. It was great. Nothing screams tourist like walking around with your phone to navigate.

I aim similarly. I have a CMF phone 1 by nothing.

I just want a phone that a) has minimal bloat b) long security updates 3) cheap enough that I can afford to lose it

Android One used to be a good deal while that program was running.

How about not rounding up hundreds of highly intelligent beings and their families to murder them for no reason.

If they’re so intelligent, why do they let themselves be rounded up to be murdered year after year?

I bought a Prusa MK1 kit back in 2014. It was the right choice at the time. 3D-printing was finickier and you had to know your machine inside out. It’s since been upgraded to mk2.5.

It’s starting to be worn out - bearing are giving up, belts are tied, cables are experiencing metal fatigue. I bought a flashforge ad5x for Christmas. It’s just a lot of printer for the money. The ceramic heater broke, but I got a new on warranty. It’s been quite reliable, and a lot faster than ye olde bedslinger.

Looks like flashforge might be pulling some shenanigans with the firmware, but there is opensource mods to save the day.

I enjoy unique story driven games. Two favourites are:

• Papers, please. <100MB
• Do not feed the monkeys. <1GB

Honorary mention to Not tonight. It’s very papers-inspired, but unique enough.