How is it possible that it draws 100W at idle? What is it even doing?

After using Proton for a couple years I’ve come around to the POV that private email is a dead end. There was not a single occasion where the sender or recipient of any email was also using encryption. If I want encrypted comms I use Signal. Instead of Pass I went back to using Bitwarden.

The combination of AI, crypto wallet and CEO’s pro-MAGA comments (all within six months or so!) are why I quit Proton. They’ve completely lost the plot. I just want a reliable email service and file storage.

https://proton.me/blog/proton-scribe-writing-assistant

Pretty rich coming from Proton, who shoved a LLM into their mail client mere months ago.

I use Arch derivatives for all my computers but my media server runs Ubuntu Server because it’s low maintenance. For storage I use a USB 2x HDD docking station (one of those where you just stick the HDD upright in it).

Whoa. If anyone else s wondering like I was how the hell this works, it’s basically a ZIP file that appears as HTML: https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/Polyglot-HTML-ZIP-PNG

Do you use anything other than gmail?

I set my Gmail to forward to Proton when I switched, and gradually replaced the address in all my accounts and told friends and family to no longer use it. It took about a year but now everything goes to my custom domain. You don’t need Proton to do any of that, though. If you want to still reply from your Gmail and don’t care about encryption, Fastmail may be a better fit (although IMO it’s less of a good value compared to all the extras you get with Proton Unlimited)

Either way, I really can’t recommend a custom domain enough. I actually used Fastmail for a year before switching to Proton and it was completely painless thanks to the domain.

You can receive but can’t reply from those addresses in Proton because of the way encryption works. Don’t use Proton if you want to keep sending from any other email address.

Edit: frankly, I wouldn’t bother switching unless you plan on using a custom domain for all your email needs. I’m a firm believer in using your own domain, because that way you can switch providers without needing to change your email address — you always own it, because you own the domain.

Yeah, well… turns out the USB wasn’t bootable (grub said it couldn’t load the kernel) so I redid it with Balena and it worked fine.

Funny, I’m flashing a new PC as we speak and using dd instead of ventoy for this very reason. I’ve also used Balena Etcher in the past.

What’s the value-add over just buying a SFF PC?

This happened to me years ago (the .com of my full name). I kept checking in at expiry date for 3 years and they eventually let it expire, so I bought it back for normal price.

I’d be happy if the Affinity suite worked on Linux :(

It’s open source Figma

So it’s a computer that lets you remotely control another computer? Is the advantage over SSH or remote desktop etc that you can interact with stuff outside the OS, like in BIOS?

I’ve never heard of this particular “Longhorn” and was very confused as to why Windows Vista was coming up in conversation.

Passages like:

I firmly refuse to install non-free software or tolerate its installed presence on my computer or on computers set up for me. However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don’t refuse to touch them. I will use them briefly for tasks such as browsing. This limited usage doesn’t give my assent to the software’s license, or make me responsible its being present in the computer, or make me the possessor of a copy of it, so I don’t see an ethical obligation to refrain from this. Of course, I explain to the local people why they should migrate the machines to free software, but I don’t push them hard, because annoying them is not the way to convince them.

read like a religious text.

I can chime in here as I was an early alpha tester. I like the idea of the app but it’s very “tag-centric” in that you have to tag content in order to create maps. This makes it hard to resurface content organically as in Obsidian or Logseq. I much prefer Obsidian; although it isn’t open source, my files are still portable.