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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: February 10th, 2025

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  • Honestly, if someone is just looking to get started cheap and easy, buying a pi and installing pi hole is a great first project that has immediate positive returns. Adding more services can be easy (if you used containers) and expanding to add more services is cheap.

    Then, when you decide to spring for a server box, those Pis can still be useful as home automation devices. For example, they can control a decent amount of programmable LED strip lighting. Attached to a sensor shield, a solar panel and battery it can do atmospheric monitoring outside (while also controlling your driveway lighting) while being easy to integrate into HomeAssistant.

    If you need to retire it, you can throw some emulators on it (retropi), load it up with a few thousand ROMs and donate it to a place that buys kids toys for holidays/their birthday.






  • Yeah, very few actually contribute. Hopefully if this catches on the EU can do something to encourge this.

    EU has shown a willingness to enact legislation to force tech companies to behave, for example by forcing USB-C standard ports for charging in order to reduce e-waste, the GDPR which protects privacy and and right to repair law so manufacturers don’t use shady tactics to ensure that they’re the only source of repair and replacement for their hardware.


  • The Linux kernel development structure works really well for industry. A lot of companies which depend on Linux hire people specifically to contribute to kernel development. The companies benefit in getting their specific needs met and we all benefit from the improvements they’ve made to the kernel.

    Look at how much better the WINE ecosystem is now that Valve has developers working on Proton. It went from a neat piece of software that had a lot of rough edges and required someone with a bit of technical knowledge to ‘Check the compatibility box’ in about 2 years.

    This kind of FOSS interaction is a much more sustainable and scalable structure than the entire world paying one company who then hires all of the developers and charges everyone a premium.