Skip Navigation
InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)TH
theroff @aussie.zone

Website: https://roffey.au

Posts 0
Comments 31
2.6M Piracy Reports Against French Users Resulted in 234 Financial Penalties * TorrentFreak
  • The biggest issue I've had with I2P so far has been lack of content.

    postman.i2p only permits torrents which includes its tracker in the torrent file, which means popular torrents from 1337x, TPB et al can't be uploaded there (at least not without changing the infohash). Torrent clients like qBittorrent and BiglyBT can cross-seed on I2P and clearnet networks which is a recent development since libtorrent 2.0 came out (software packages take a while to bump to.the latest library), but from what I've tested nearly all of the infohashes I put into my client from "clearnet" torrent sites have stalled, probably because I2P is a little too bespoke at the moment.

    The potential is definitely there IMO, but unless you're just watching mainstream movies and TV it's not a replacement for clearnet/VPN.

    If I'm missing something I'd like to know :)

  • How to fix circular light bulb?
  • Otherwise, wattage/lumens, colour and size are the main considerations. There are two sizes of the circular bulbs from memory? They generally come in cool white as well.

    Your ballast might also have a max watt rating which would be written on there, but if you get an identical tube it shouldn't matter.

    Depending on your situation you could consider an LED equivalent like this one. I recently changed mine after the ballast casing fell apart (it was really old) but I had to get a sparky out to rewire it. The upsides are slightly lower power consumption, LEDs last longer, instant on instead of flickering, and no need for a fluoro starter.

  • Queensland Government promises to build yet another (probably tolled) fucking car tunnel.
  • It will use tons of public sector resources and attention regardless if it's PPP or a state asset.

    Just look at the recent Logan/Gateway Motorway upgrade (Logan Enhancement Project) which Transurban financed for $512M. There was least $30M of government spending directly afterwards on an adjacent road, and likely more than $100M to come.

    No doubt a $7b tunnel will similarly result in $100Ms or even billions in adjacent road spending.

  • Why do so few people cycle for transport in Australia? 6 ideas on how to reap all the benefits of bikes
  • There are different types of cycling. I would always wear a helmet to work because I live 6km away and it's a decent ride. There are hills and I often get to a reasonable speed.

    Compare that to someone living in South Brisbane commuting to the CBD, or someone going for a leisurely bike stroll on the riverwalk - they may not go fast at all. We don't wear helmets whilst walking or jogging, but why is it mandatory for a slow ride?

    The big reason helmets can be offputting is because they can mess up your hair. If the city wants to encourage people who live relatively close to their jobs to ride in, more flexibility on helmets could be a good thing.

    FWIW I do think helmet safety should always be encouraged. Riding down a hill? Going more than a leisurely stroll? Wear a helmet. Makes sense. But it's really not that necessary for people who are riding slow.

  • Why do so few people cycle for transport in Australia? 6 ideas on how to reap all the benefits of bikes
  • You can definitely work in an office job, bring your clothes in your bag and get changed at work.

    If that's not your thing, catch PT. Nobody's saying you have to do the cycling thing. But plenty of people ride into offices for work and wear their smart clothes just fine.

  • Why do so few people cycle for transport in Australia? 6 ideas on how to reap all the benefits of bikes
  • I ride all year round in Brissie. I find my comfort level depends on when I ride, distance, speed and my bike setup.

    First, I ride to and from work in the morning and arvo when it's cooler, not in the middle of the day.

    I ride 6km each direction which is manageable. In winter I barely break a sweat. In summer I have a shower on each side. I can and sometimes do get away without showering by riding slowly. Or I just catch PT if I'm going somewhere else after work.

    The other thing I noticed is that not wearing a bag helps a lot with reducing sweat on my back. I have a basket on the back of my bike and just throw my bag in. A lot of other people use pannier bags.

  • What are the differences between the 'base' of various Linux distributions?
  • Something that often gets missed is the difference between packaging conventions between distros.

    For example, Debian has Apache httpd packaged as "apache2" and has wrapper scripts for enabling sites. Fedora/RHEL has "httpd" and includes conf.d from the main conf. Arch also has "httpd" but doesn't have a conf.d out of the box. Of course you can pretty much configue Apache to your heart's content and have an identical setup between all three distros.

    From what I've read, Debian tends to patch and change software to fit more into their overall system whereas Fedora and Arch tend to be more upstream.

    RPM and Arch both have group packages and metapackages. Debian just has metapackages AFAIK. Debian also has "recommended" and "suggested" levels of soft dependencies, the former which is enabled by default. RPM has the capability for weak dependencies but AFAIK most RPM distros don't use it. Arch doesn't have soft/weak dependencies AFAIK.

    When you install a new system daemon on Debian, it's generally enabled and started by default, whereas RPM-based and Arch don't do that.

    When I think of the base of the system I tend to think of some of those more subtle idiosyncrasies that tend to spread around the ecosystems, like Ubuntu and Debian behave quite similarly for instance.

  • Don't see many mentions to Waterfox?
  • I much prefer Librewolf. They are a little more transparent about it is, an independent, open source repackaging of Firefox with Arkenfox(ish) patches applied to it, rather than an entity which signs up for deals with other businesses.

  • Ditching car parks for bike lanes could help struggling high street shops
  • Meanwhile I've been arguing with council about getting bike racks at a new-ish shopping centre (a few years old) that is legally required to have one.

    (Technically they do have a bike rack, but it's on B2 of the carpark hidden behind a car wash and completely unsigned)

  • Is ansible worth learning to automate setting up servers?
  • Bash scripts will only get you so far and I can wholly recommend Ansible for automation.

    Basically the main advantage of Ansible is that its builtin tasks are "idempotent" which means you can re-run them and end up with the same result. Of course it is possible to do the same with bash scripts, but you may require more checks in place.

    The other advantage of Ansible is that there are hundreds of modules for configuring a lot of different things on your system(s) and most are clear and easy to understand.

  • Managing servers in multiple locations
  • You could use HAProxy on the client side to load balance apps in multiple locations, but it really depends on the application.

    I like to manage my software with Ansible but Docker stack files might make it simple enough for you.

  • What're some of the dumbest things you've done to yourself in Linux?
  • Yeah, sorry it was a long time ago (like 10+ years) but I checked and it would've been the --overwrite arg.

    The manpage for the older ntfsclone command has it:

    Clone NTFS on /dev/hda1 to /dev/hdc1: ntfsclone --overwrite /dev/hdc1 /dev/hda1

    Moral of the story was to RTFM 😂

  • What're some of the dumbest things you've done to yourself in Linux?
  • ntfsclone /dev/sdc /dev/sdb

    /dev/sdb was a blank filesystem and /dev/sdc was my Windows filesystem.

    ntfsclone man page

    It ran for less than a second and didn't take me long to figure out what happened. That's the story of how I stopped using Windows.

  • what will be my next server operating system (Fedora Server, Fedora CoreOS, NixOS), your experience and opinion
  • I use Debian at home on my homeserver and a mix of Debian and Arch for my workstations. Most of my stuff is managed with Ansible to make rebuilding easier and most workloads in podman containers.

    Personally I don't overthink the distro thing. I recently started using Arch and quite like it. I've noticed packages that are available in Debian but not Arch and vice-versa. Debian Stable is nice because it's just, well, stable.

    Fedora has an annoying release cadence IMO. I have experienced desktop bugs in the early GA releases before which put me off. If I wanted instability I would sooner go with Arch (and I am yet to have many issues with Arch yet).

    If I were to go with a BSD for a home server it would probably be OpenBSD or FreeBSD. OpenBSD has vmm and a bunch of tooling around it, and FreeBSD has bhyve and jails. I haven't taken the plunge because Linux works and it's what I know.

    These days I hear about people using proxmox on their homeserver with LXC containers and/or VMs.