• 9 Posts
  • 751 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: December 17th, 2023

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  • I think I misunderstood what you meant by user tag. I interpreted it as a method for me to assign tags to people that only I would be able to see.

    For example, if I were to tag you as “A hoopy frood”, I would see that next time we happened to interact out of the blue, so I’d get a rough outline of who you are to me. Not sure how such a mechanism would be implemented.



  • I live under singlepayer health care. I like it, but it does have its downsides. For example, let’s say you have something really severe going on, and you’d like to try a hail Mary. Well, you can’t, as the only treatments that are available to you are whatever treatments have been deemed effective and reasonably safe by the regulatory agency. Experimentation, in lack of a better word, is a no-go.

    I never experienced this as a problem myself, but I can easily imagine that someone could.

    So I think the best is to have single payer available to everyone, but with private for profit doctors available if you need or want something a little more unorthodox and you have the means to pay for it.

    EDIT: Seeing as I may have come off as a bit gloomy, I think I should list why I wouldn’t want it any other way.

    • My dad had cancer. Chemo and everything covered.
    • My kid broke his arm this spring. The only expense was me buying a sandwich while they inserted a titanium rod into his arm.
    • Same kid has ADHD. I can show up to any pharmacy in the country and fetch his meds (stock pending) without paying anything.
    • His brother also has ADHD and poor eyesight on one eye. Meds and glasses covered.
    • All of my kids were born in a hospital at no expense.
    • I didn’t learn until last year what the hell “copay” is, and the more I learn about it, the more thankful I am that it’s not something I have to think about.


  • The issue with guitar is that it takes a week or two for even the most extremely basic stuff starts sounding right. The reason is simple: Your fingertips are too soft.
    And that leads me to another common beginner problem; You’re probably gripping with the underside of the fingers (as in, the opposite side of where your nails are), because that’s the natural way to grip things. Don’t try to play any songs yet (sure, you can, but it probably won’t sound right). For now, rry focusing on the easiest chords, C, G, D, A, E (all of those are in Hey Joe, by the way), and make sure you use your actual fingertips.

    Don’t overdo it. When it starts to hurt, give it abrest for a few hours. Wait until the next day if you need to. After a while, you’ll notice that the sound gets cleaner with your fingertips getting harder. At the same time you can practice moving between the chords. Don’t worry if it sounds like shit - it always does for a beginner.

    If you stick to it, I’m willing to bet that you can play a few of the simpler songs in a few days, and they’ll start sounding good in a couple of weeks.

    Footnote tip: Learn the basic chords, because the others are mostly just variations of them. That list of chords above only needs minor adjustments for you to be that guy who plays Wonderwall at parties.



  • It’s a different way of routing audio through the system. For the average user it won’t make a whole lot of difference, but for some (you and I, obviously), it provides a bit more control over the flow and its performance. Very useful when doing things such as recording in a DAW.

    Unless this is something a user needs to care about, there will be no noticeable difference. Pavucontrol is still an excellent front end, even if the back end is handled by pipewire.





  • Depends on your approach, but only open the minimum amount of ports necessary. Fail2ban is a good idea.

    Consider a strict default deny iptables that also affects the output table - in case someone does get in, this will limit the damage one can do by making it part of a botnet.

    Personally I like to isolate any exposed servers on its own vlan, so in case of compromise, it won’t affect any of the other hardware I’m running.

    Also, most routers have less strict security if the connection is coming from the inside. Make sure any access methods to your router is secure.