ecliptik

More bandwidth is always good, but this also has universal cabling support for 240W charging [1].

My M1 MacBook Pro can use a single Thunderbolt 4 cable to an external monitor supporting 100w now. But if the battery is charging, occasionally the external screen blanks until the battery is fully charged or connected to external power.

1. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/thunderbolt-5-debuts-120-g...

This is exactly what happened when I tried to run some of my old Loki [1] games a few years ago on a modern Linux distro. Tried a few tricks to get them working, but every problem solved opened up 2 more.

1. https://lokigames.com/

They were a lot more popular in the 90s and early aughts when Linux was still new and people were looking for community. I usually would find out about them through local Linux User Groups (LUGs) at the time [1].

I remember a Linuxfest in 2002 in Southern Ohio (not OLF) and John "Maddog" Hall was also a keynote speaker. Looking at his speaking schedule is probably a good way to find similar events. My most distinct memory of it was someone had a table of NeXT computers setup to use.

Along with OLF, SCaLE (Southern California Linux Expo) [2] is another large Linuxfest type event. Much more of a technical and casual vibe, and satisfies personally instead if professionally. I did a GPG key signing party at it once and it was a nerdy and fun as it sounds.

1. https://wiki.ohiolinux.org/index.php/History

2. https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/21x

While not a blog post, I created a Privacy Frontends with Tailscale repo on Github with this this setup using Tailscale MagicDNS and Caddy.

https://github.com/ecliptik/tailscale-privacy-frontends

I've tested it out on a new Tailnet on a t3.medium EC2 instance and it works relatively well. Adding new services should be relatively easy.

I'm planning to write up a post about the more technical details on the stack still.

I have an artisanal handcrafted docker-compose stack for them, so everything is containerized. It's on my todo to write a blog post about the setup.

There's an nginx reverse-proxy container in the stack that routes traffic to the individual service containers via the servername; eg nitter.tail.net goes to the nitter container, teddit.tail.net goes to the teddit container, etc.

The nginx proxy only listens on the Tailnet interface and only accepts connections from the Tailnet CIDR, therefore any device I have on my tailnet can access them. Letsencrypt is also setup so everything is over https.

This allows me to access them from my phone, laptop, whatever when connected using Tailscale.

Tailscale essentially let me completely remove any need for port forwarding on my router and still have global access. It's truly amazing.

Not the internal services. I have Letsencrypt setup for services on my tailnet using the Cloudflare DNS plugin for certbot so they're all over https.

Combined with only allowing connections to hosts from the Tailnet and https, forgoing passwords makes them easier to manage and use.

Granted most these personal services are things like Audiobookshelf, Nitter, Plex, and Newsblur. While important to me, they're not exactly high value targets.

My internal Gitea is locked down more and has MFA enabled since I always see git as something to secure.

I don't use Tailscale Funnel as much, mostly on an adhoc basis since tailscale serve is relatively lightweight if a host is already connected to a Tailnet.

WARP is primarily used for long running services I have, like GotoSocial or Lemmy that need public ingress over https for federation.

Fond memories of using DDNS on old Netgear routers at home in the aughts and port forwarding services with some rudimentary firewall rules and tcpwrappers to try and lock down access.

Now I use a combination of Tailscale[1] for private services only to me and Tailscale Funnels[2], and Cloudflare Tunnels[3] for public service exposure.

This accomplishes the same thing I was doing with DDNS and my ISP IP, but in a much more secure and stable manner.

1. https://tailscale.com/

2. https://tailscale.com/kb/1223/tailscale-funnel/

3. https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections...

It isn't horrible. I have it running in a docker-compose stack and after initial setup I haven't really thought about it other than checking the Raindrop script I have is still populating it.

I don't really use it interactively, it's more to have a "backup" of websites I find useful after finding some I used to reference for years disappeared and were never added to archive.org or occasionally sending the Readability/PDF versions to my Kindle.

I also setup YaCY[1] at one point with the idea of having my own local personal search engine for the archived sites, but I ended up never using it.

1. https://github.com/yacy

I've used Raindrop[1] for the last few years and it works well - cross device support, archived pages, and tags/folders.

Going to check out Linkwarden since I really like the idea of being able to self-host something similar since Raindrop could one day disappear (#googlereaderneverforget).

A feature Raindrop has is it can export bookmarks to a standard xml file, which I then have a script that automatically adds them to Archivebox[2] for a local copy and to add them to archive.org[3].

Does Linkwarden, have a feature to automatically submit a bookmark to archive.org along with the local copy? That would greatly reduce this setup and have it all in one tool.

1. https://raindrop.io/

2. https://archivebox.io/

3. https://ecliptik.com/bookmarking-with-raindrop/

NIS is a good one. I have UUCP as a skill on my resume as an easter egg but no one ever asks about it.

For DNS, my favorite interview question goes like this,

How would you verify DNS is resolving from within a pod on Kubernetes?

After listening to the answer, add some constraints:

1. Common networking utilities like ping, nslookup, dig, etc are not available

2. Container user is unpriviledged

3. su/sudo do not work

This can lead to some elaborate k8s troubleshooting or the simple, and correct, answer of getent hosts.

While I'm glad this is finally addressed, this limits the usefulness of one of my favorite interview questions.

Asking about Alpine in a production environment was always good way finding who has container experiences of watching C-Beams glitter in the dark to those who only just read a "10 Docker Container Tricks; #8 will blow your mind!" blog post from 2017.

Not quite sure if it addresses the same-ip bot issue, but I have my self-hosted instance setup for searxng to use a VPN. Then access it via Tailscale.

All click-throughs will the use whatever IP my web browser while the results are pulled in via the VPN IP.

After spending some time customizing my .Xresources I was amazed on how much functionality it has [1].

The learning curve is a bit steep, but after taking a few minutes to understand it, there's a lot it can do in a simpler manner than more modern configuration and tooling.

1. https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/doc/ixresources/xres....

I ended up using Moom [1] to work around some of the oddities of macOS window management. It's relatively low-feature, mostly for window arrangements and sizing. I use it on a vertical monitor to split window placement horizontally, since macOS can only natively do vertical splits.

It has other features too (like saving layouts and keyboard shortcuts), but I don't use them that much.

1. https://manytricks.com/moom/

Yattee + Tailscale + Piped greatly increased my consumption of Youtube videos.

Missing most of the features mentioned (recommendations, watch history, google account, shorts) are all pros instead of cons to me. Just an app for intentionally watching content in a no-frills private environment, it's refreshing.

I have nitter, teddit, and piped setup similarly and it's game changing having it all available through RSS.

Same here. Looking at the list of topics, it hits a lot of my interests and isn't 100% focused on tech. My contact details are on my website in my profile.

Can't wait to run GopherVR [1] on this.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GopherVR

I still use WindowMaker as my primary desktop GUI for Linux/BSD systems. It still holds up and is light on resources. The fact it really isn't updated anymore is a feature in itself.

It doesn't work with Wayland afaik, but I wouldn't consider that a bad thing.

Invidious is another[1].

I use Piped with Yattee[2] over Tailscale and it works great.

1. https://github.com/iv-org/invidious

2. https://github.com/yattee/yattee

Did you do anything to speed up Teddit page loads? I self-host too and Teddit is a bit sluggish since it seems to load everything on the page before rendering[1].

I tried Libreddit as an alternative, which is much faster, but I prefer the look/feel of Teddit.

1. https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit/issues/248

I worked with SGI workstations at UCSD around 2005-2007 where the School of Medicine had some Indigo2, Onyx, and Indys[1]. They ran a custom OpenGL software called Anatomic VisualizeR© that displayed full 3d models of a human body, scanned slice-by-slice [2].

My boss at the time offered me $2000 if I could port it from Irix to Linux, but my C skills weren't that great and I don't think they ever did.

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20060830114648/http://meded.ucsd...

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20060503041524/http://meded.ucsd...

Tailscale [1] can do this. I've always had a limit of how much networking I can grok, and Taiscale basically let's me run a 90s style LAN across clouds and my local network like they're all connected to the same switch and VLAN. No port forwarding, firewall rules, or subnet management.

It can be made even more secure with some relatively incompatible ACLs sprinkled in too.

1. https://tailscale.com/

Years ago at the house we were renting our cable Internet would have intermittently go down. It would only last a couple of minutes and only happened in the mornings when the sun was coming up.

I was convinced that somehow the line from our house to the pole in the alley was bad and when the sun was warming it up it caused the issues. The cable company refused to fix it since they never saw a problem on their end by the time I would reach customer support.

My solution was to upgrade to business cable Internet, which was about the same price we were already paying, just required signing a 1 year contract.

First day the new service was active, called business support and 2 days later they came out and replaced the line. No issues after that.

Debian packages, although they aren't signed but "use apt-secure (also known as secure apt) which is a tool that will allow a system administrator to test the integrity of the packages downloaded" [1].

1. https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-manual/de...

Any short story by J.G. Ballard.

His work is sci-fiction in the sense it explores inner-space and not outer-space, and was prophetic in many ways of current technology [1].

One story I frequently reflect on with the rise of LLMs is "Studio 5, The Stars" [2] from the Vermilion Sands collection [3]. Where automated poetry machines are used and people no longer have skill to write poetry, and trying to do so it met with skepticism and disgust.

1. "Why we are living in JG Ballard’s world" https://archive.is/pksxh

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_5,_The_Stars

3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermilion_Sands

There's a Game Maker's Toolkit video [1] that does a good job explaining how Nintendo focuses on play first.

"That's how we make games at Nintendo, though: we get the fundamentals solid first, then do as much with that core concept as our time and ambition will allow" - Shigeru Miyamoto

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u6HTG8LuXQ

It's not great but not absolutely horrible. Two-finger typing most of the time and the overall feel is stiff, but not too stiff.

I usually hold it with my hands and use my thumbs, like a Game Gear. Re-mapping the "d-pad" joystick and "yxba" buttons to arrow keys and hjkl [1] makes it easy to read and navigate text content on it (hence of gopher://), especially with the wide and high resolution screen.

1. https://forum.clockworkpi.com/t/mapping-devterm-r-01-gamepad...

I have a DevTerm R-01 and it is basically a beautiful $200 novelty cyberdeck that sits on my desk. The R01 version in particular is greatly under powered and is really only usable with twm and a Xterm.

I mostly use it to read gopher:// and the kids love printing things off using it's thermal printer.