Mister_Snuggles

I've got this setup to deal with cat litter dust. It works very well for that purpose and the filters are cheap (I get the cheapest one that's not see-through, <$10CAD I think).

That said, it's very loud even at the lowest setting. It's not something you want to share a room with. I use my home automation stuff to only run it when required, based on a motion detector at the litter boxes.

This sounds a lot like the idea behind Dispatch[0] (aka, Grand Central Dispatch) on Apple systems.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/DISPATCH

For some reason, I couldn't figure this out the last time I had to do it. This seems perfectly reasonable though.

Honestly, I like and use FreeBSD.

FreeBSD definitely has things to offer compared to other operating systems, but I'd also argue that the reverse is true in many cases.

Linux, generally speaking, has a much nicer upgrade story. FreeBSD's works, but having to reboot and run freebsd-update multiple times during a major upgrade is annoying.

FreeBSD's init system works and is generally fine, but I much prefer the simplicity of systemd unit files over FreeBSD's rc scripts. The common use-case of "Run $X as user $Y, capture it's output, restart it if it dies, and track it's PID" is incredibly easy to do in a systemd unit file. FreeBSD could learn a lot here[0].

Related to the upgrade story, packaging is interesting in FreeBSD. The base system is just "there" and managed by freebsd-update, but 3rd party software is installed via packages (ports build a package then install it). The separation of base (/, /usr, etc) vs 3rd party (/usr/local) is good, but it would be nice if all of the software was managed the same way. FreeBSD has started work on this[1], but I have no idea if it's actually going anywhere.

[0] https://papers.freebsd.org/2018/bsdcan/rice-the_tragedy_of_s...

[1] https://wiki.freebsd.org/PkgBase

I'm really surprised by this oversight as other things (magnetic boots) from The Expanse were explicitly mentioned.

In The Expanse, this is exactly how ships are set up. The "floor" is towards the engine and the continuous 1g acceleration provides "gravity". When a ship starts decelerating there is a "flip and burn" where everyone straps in while the ship literally turns around and starts accelerating at 1g in the opposite direction (meaning it's slowing down relative to its destination).

A number of people in the Home Assistant community use cheap and/or older tablets as wall-mounted control panels. Android tablets are well-represented, including many Amazon Fire tablets, but there are iPads in the mix too.

I was just about to say that the Air 2 isn't all that old. According to Wikipedia, it's almost 8 years old.

There are two of these in my house. Both are still perfectly usable, the batteries are fine, and it still receives software updates.

In the FreeBSD world, we have libxo[0] which allows utilities to produce structured output.

To use your example, taking the output of ps and finding the process using the most RAM, you could do something like this:

  $ ps aux --libxo json|jq '."process-information"."process" | sort_by((.rss)|tonumber) | .[-1]'
  {
    "user": "root",
    "pid": "2372",
    "percent-cpu": "0.0",
    "percent-memory": "11.4",
    "virtual-size": "2149236",
    "rss": "1906584",
    "terminal-name": "- ",
    "state": "SC",
    "start-time": "21May22",
    "cpu-time": "1307:09.11",
    "command": "bhyve: postgresql (bhyve)"
  }

It's not pretty, but it does let you get structured data out of most of the base system utilities to make the slicing and dicing easier.

[0] https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=libxo&sektion=3

This kind of thing could be done in Unix as well.

In FreeBSD, libxo[0] is integrated into a lot of it's utilities, allowing this same type of power.

For example:

  ps aux --libxo json

Or:

  ps aux --libxo xml

At this point you still have plain text, but it now has a well-defined structure that can be interpreted by other utilities. With JSON output you can use a tool like `jq` to slice and dice the data. With XML output you could run it through an XSLT to transform it into whatever you want - this definitely moves outside the realm of simple though.

This is definitely not on the same level as what PowerShell does, but it shows how something similar could exist in the Unix world.

[0] https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=libxo&sektion=3

There's a local company that, at least back when this article[0] was written, made insulation out of recycled paper. So some people are at least trying to do something recycle paper. Of course, in this case the collection system is so flawed that it's worthless as an input material.

This is a four year old article and Edmonton hasn't changed the recycling system at all. It's still blue bags that get tossed into a truck, compacted, and presumably nothing useful happens.

On the garbage side, we now have bins that can be emptied by an arm on a truck and we separate garbage from organics. The organic material apparently gets composted, but I'm not sure what happens after that.

[0] https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/its-not-worth-it...

Where I live there is a community mailbox for the 60 units in the complex. At the mailbox is a recycling bin where we can put the junk mail. My neighbour takes care of the recycling bin and empties it every week. Based on the volume I get and the volume in the bin, I estimate that about half of the units dump the junk mail straight into the bin. I'm sure the rest eventually makes its way into recycling bags at each unit.

Personally, I'm convinced that the recycling system as a whole requires a certain base amount of input material to even function and that junk mail serves a useful purpose by providing a good portion of that base amount of input material.

I've found that CrossOver[0] does a really good job at getting Windows games to run on Mac. It might be a good stopgap.

[0] https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover

I've gone the TrueNAS route, but I'm running it on a QNAP TS-451. I'm running TrueNAS off of a USB stick hanging off the back, so I didn't have do to anything with the hardware and reverting back to QTS is just a matter of setting the boot order in the BIOS.

I really like seeing other people's builds, but I know that building my own computer isn't something I want to do. I was happy to see the comparison between the DIY model and the roughly-equivalent commercial units. I'll likely buy another QNAP (to run TrueNAS on) when the time comes, and the comparison tells me that I won't get screwed too badly by doing so.

One of my cats, who's since passed away, was asthmatic. Air purifiers throughout the house and a motion activated box fan plus furnace filter near the litterboxes resulted in an immediate and noticeable improvement in his quality of life. I've noticed a similar improvement in my own health.

I've since ended up with a variety of air cleaners:

* IKEA FÖRNUFTIG[0] is a small and relatively quiet unit. It can be wall-mounted, so it can take up virtually no space. The unit is reasonably priced. Filters are cheap.

* IKEA STARKVIND[1] is a much larger unit (also available in end table form[2] to save space), but also relatively quiet on the lower speeds. It's an interesting unit - integrates into Home Assistant (the unit speaks Zigbee), and has a PM2.5 air quality sensor. This unit is a lot more expensive than the FÖRNUFTIG, but the filters are reasonably priced.

* The box fan plus single furnace filter is incredibly noisy, but really good at dealing with cat litter dust. There is a huge range of price/quality when it comes to filters[, I just use the cheaper ones since I'm focusing on large dust particles.

* I have a couple of units that use Bionaire aer1 filters[3]. The units I have are quiet and reasonably sized, though they get louder as the filter fills up. The filters are expensive, and one of the units takes two of them which doesn't help matters. There is a variety of filters available.

There's a huge spectrum of tradeoffs between noise, size of the unit, filtration effectiveness, replacement filter cost, and extra features. I'm not convinced I've found the sweet spot yet.

[0] https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/foernuftig-air-purifier-white-5...

[1] https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/starkvind-air-purifier-black-40...

[2] https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/starkvind-table-with-air-purifi...

[3] https://www.bionairecanada.com/en_CA/service-and-support/aer...

A furnace fan will move a lot more air than a box fan would.

The reinforcement on the filters really depends on how much filtering they do. For example, this filter[0] has metal to help keep the filter media in place, but this one[1] has nothing.

The key difference is the MERV rating, the first one is a 13, the second is a 2. The higher the rating the more it filters, but the higher rating also makes it more difficult for the fan to pull air through and require better reinforcements to prevent the filter from getting sucked into the fan.

[0] https://www.homedepot.ca/product/filtrete-filters-healthy-li...

[1] https://www.homedepot.ca/product/hdx-20x20x1-fiberglass-air-...

I've been using a box fan with a furnace filter strapped to the back for years to deal with cat litter dust. My vet recommended using air cleaners to help an asthmatic cat, this setup made a significant and immediate improvement.

My fan is quite loud, so I've got a motion sensor to only turn it on after the cat has used the box.

Depending on your environment, this will make the fan last longer by preventing dust from getting to the motor.

The incident with my Linux laptop was definitely not Docker-related, but the description of the issue sounds like it could still apply.

We didn't use Docker at work, at least not on the VMs that I was affected by. This one was a gradual degradation over time - the maintenance process would run fine, but after a while it would start hanging the machine. It really felt like the fs was only good for some amount of writes before the maintenance process got overwhelmed and would hang the VM whenever it ran.

I'm happy to see that things are getting better, but the reputational damage will take a long time to repair.

All that being said, I still use btrfs on my Linux laptop, but I've also become more conscientious about backing it up.

Assuming that the bug doesn't get fixed and you decide to switch technologies, PostgreSQL+PostGIS[0] is worth considering. Switching will also open up other GIS tools for your use, like QGIS[1], which may be useful.

I'm using PostgresSQL+PostGIS with QGIS as the front-end for a personal project and it's been fantastic.

[0] https://postgis.net/

[1] https://qgis.org/en/site/

I've been burned enough times to avoid it.

My Linux laptop, running OpenSuse Tumbleweed, got its root fs into a state where it would hang when trying to mount RW. I was able to boot off of a rescue image, mount it RO, and copy my data to another machine. None of the repair suggestions were able to get the fs into a mountable state, I had to reinstall it and copy my data back.

Every VM at work that uses btrfs gets into a state where some maintenance process (rebalancing, I think - I'm not one of the Linux admins) will consume all CPU in the VM and prevent it from doing any work. The only thing that varies is how long it takes - it seems to be related to how much write activity there is on the fs, VMs with heavier write activity get into this state faster. This has led to outages and the Linux vendor was unable to resolve this issue. We've since removed all traces of btrfs from our data center.

FreeBSD has integrated libxo[0] into a lot of its base utilities, so you can use something like `netstat --libxo json` to get structured data that can be sliced and diced with other tools. Unfortunately, it hasn't been extended to all of the base system yet (ls, for example, doesn't support libxo output).

For example:

    $ w --libxo json|json_pp
    {
       "uptime-information" : {
          "days" : 46,
          "hours" : 22,
          "load-average-1" : 0.19,
          "load-average-15" : 0.13,
          "load-average-5" : 0.12,
          "minutes" : 11,
          "seconds" : 34,
    [...]

Obviously it's not as extensive as PowerShell, but it definitely gets rid of screen-scraping.

[0] https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=libxo&sektion=3&fo...

For me, RPN is a big one.

PCalc is my go-to, though most days I reach for the HP 48G that's sitting on my desk.

My main "user-facing" applications are:

* Blue Iris - for video surveillance

* Home Assistant

* Jellyfin

My main backend things are:

* Node-RED - for more complicated home automation than can be reasonably built in Home Assistant

* deCONZ - for my Zigbee lights and sensors

* PostgreSQL

* StrongSwan and Wireguard VPNs - I'm still evaluating Wireguard. I like the simplicity, but there are some things that I can do with StrongSwan that I can't do with WireGuard (specifically, split-DNS).

* Pi-hole

* Kubernetes - I'm just playing with this at the moment, but I'm running Pi-hole in it as it's not a critical service.

* Nginx - reverse proxy and TLS termination.

* TrueNAS Core on a QNAP NAS

I'm sure there's some I missed.

Monument Valley and Monument Valley 2[0].

They're games, and relatively short/easy, but it's beautiful and elegant.

[0] https://www.monumentvalleygame.com/mv2

I've been using Banktivity for years, but the recent change to a quasi-subscription model leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I understand why they're moving this way, but I'd much rather have $x for the software (with upgrade pricing for major versions) and $y/mo for the features that require their backend to work.

> If the office space is already paid-for, it's silly (from a business perspective) to not use it

This is known as the sunk-cost fallacy. Just because you have the space is not sufficient reason to use it.

I agree though, being in-person can be incredibly useful, but it very much depends on the team, the type of work, etc. It's also just nice to see people in a less structured manner - e.g., water cooler chats vs setting up a Teams call.

Yeah, I'd actually use the barrel charger on the road so that it can just live in my backpack and USB-C (provided by an appropriate dock that's connected to a keyboard, monitor, etc) at home.

Yes, I believe that's the one. Thanks!

I couldn't remember it, but with a generic name like Mailbox that's not a surprise.

I remember an iOS email client many years ago that required a Dropbox login for some reason. It made no sense that an email client would require me to log in to a cloud file storage/syncing service - in my mind these two things are completely unrelated. That email client ended up disappearing.

I expect that a terminal program which requires a login to a completely unrelated service will end up meeting the same fate as that email client did.

I've had calls from my bank's fraud prevention department and, for me, they go down like this:

* A call comes in from a number I don't recognize, it goes to voicemail.

* The voicemail message says "This is the fraud prevention department at $BANK, please call us back at $NUMBER"

* I pull out my physical card, call the number on the back (which does not match $NUMBER). I go through the menu tree to get the fraud department and ask if the call was legit.

Interestingly enough, at some point the bank modified the menu system so that when you enter your card and the fraud department has called you they'll bypass the menu completely and transfer the call right to that department. Clearly I'm not the only one that does this and they don't necessarily want to discourage this behaviour.