Good point. I think it’s super important to make this decision early on. Whether you want to invest time and do self hosting, or not and you’ll want to use managed services or regular non-free platforms. Doing things by yourself certainly teaches a lot. I do it. And I gain knowledge, independence and I think it’s important to understand the tools I use on a regular basis and not let Apple/Google take care of my life. And since I do a lot of things with computers, I can make good use of the gained knowledge. However I can also feel how someone wouldn’t want to do that. They might have other hobbies, a stressful job or a family and it’s quite some time that I spend digging through configuration files, reading documentation and maintaining stuff. It has to be worth it in some way, or it becomes a liability. And I think that’s not super obvious when starting the journey. I’m glad we have managed services which give independence without spending too much time. But I also prefer going all the way and learning lots of stuff.

Hmmh, I lately use mistral-nemo which is 12B parameters. Since I’m more a programmer than a gamer, I didn’t put a graphics card into my PC, and I believe it’s too old to accomodate any recent one. (older PCIe generation, only x8 ports) I’d have to replace everything. And then I might as well go for a Radeon RX 7900 XTS or something. That’s $1.000(?) but has 24GB of VRAM. I don’t think buying an entire PC and then going for an old GPU will make me happy. And thanks to llama.cpp I get about 2 tokens per second just on the CPU. It’d have to be a considerable step up to be worth it. And last time I checked even a P40 was like $300+ and it’s super old and unclear if it’ll continue to be supported in the major frameworks. I’m not sure. I still lean towards paying for cloud GPU compute.

Thanks for the numbers on your setup. That certainly helps weighing my options. Maybe some of my friends have some upgrades planned and want to give me their older 8GB NVidia cards…

Sure. I usually do the same thing. The laptop on which I’m typing right now is a refurbished Dell one and I really prefer a bit older enterprise hardware to new consumer hardware. Nice build quality, no nonsense and Linux runs great on that device. And it cost me a fraction of a new machine. However… with the intended use-case of a media center I’m not sure. Intel always adds hardware acceleration in their iGPUs and the modern codecs are quite demanding. I wouldn’t buy an older generation that doesn’t really support AV1. I’m not sure if hardware from 2 years ago can do that. And if someone buys a new TV set which supports HDR or something and then the recently bought, refurbished media center is out of date again… that also doesn’t help. Maybe I’d buy a new one in this case and just use it for the next 10 years. That’s also sustainable. But yeah, you have to pay attention to the details if you’re buying off-brand. But that also applies to most computer hardware, regardless. It’s a bit more of a lottery with cheap and off-brand devices.

Add some googly eyes if it “lives” in the living room. They fit right above the switch which would then become the nose.

Yeah back when I needed storage (quite some years ago) the mini pcs were less capable and more pricey, so I ended up building a NAS myself. It’s a regular, yet very power efficient PC. But due to size, it doesn’t fit next to the TV. If I’d do the same thing today, I’d certainly consider a machine like this. And $200 doesn’t sound much for a 2-bay NAS.

Uuhh, that’s a cute little trash can. Now fit that with the maximum of RAM it supports and two 12TB harddrives… And it’ll do more media center and NAS than the average person needs.

Someone linked a list of Mini-PCs here: https://lemmy.world/post/19837516

I think the N100 sounds good. But I can’t comment on buying a cheap chinesium one versus a refurbished Fujitsu/Lenovo or an Intel NUC.

Aside from Lemmy and getting random news via social media… I have a set of news sites and computer magazines I like. I think we have several good ones. I visit them manually when I’m in the mood.

It comes with a load of different perspectives and emotions. I agree with the person pointing out it has a lot to do with victimhood and blaming other people, if used as a self-description. I wouldn’t use it that way. And using it on another person I think it’s derogatory. So I also wouldn’t use it unless I wanted to hurt someone.

Sure. I’d say the price is alright if they manage everything for you. There is some labor involved in designing such a platform, packaging the applications, maintaining the infrastructure, preparing updates etc and offering support of an application level. If they do that, it’s probably worth the additional bucks. I maintain some services myself and get away way cheaper. But there is a substancial investment in time to learn webhosting and maintaining stuff.

Not sure. The website looks alright. I always have a look at the contact details and see if it’s a proper company. It says K&T is a brand name of “Operation Enterprise” which doesn’t give any results when googling it. So I’d be wary. But check for yourself.

You can just pay for a month and see what happens? But I’d add: $11.25 USD isn’t very cheap for a VPS with that specifications. For that price you could also pick lots of other hosting providers. You’d just have to set up Lemmy yourself.

I don’t have any personal experience. But finding other people who you can talk to is a good idea. Maybe the internet can connect you. A quick google yielded the following result: https://www.lupus.org/resources/find-support-near-you
And maybe a local support group can offer something of value. And it seems to be one of the diseases with symptoms that vary widely in how severe they are.

Maybe some early pranks. Most of what they do seems legit, fighting oppression and calling out bigots and disgusting people.

Does anyone happen to know if there is a N100 model that supports HDMI-CEC so I can make my old TV set smart with a recent Kodi and maybe some retro-games? But I’d rather not let it consume 9W or whatever such a machine needs all day long. So it’d need to start and shut down on its own. Preferably without manual additional steps involved, hence the CEC…

Sure. I’m not against people buying it. Including for novelty or be an early adopter. I’ve had a look at all the foldable phones in the store and I didn’t really like them. I mean it’s a nice idea, and I can see how I’d get some good use out of that large screen. But at least the Samsung one had a pretty noticable fold in the middle. And I can get a rusty used car for that kind of money. Or a mid-range gaming PC new. Maybe I’m just not the target audience. I never got why people buy expensive phones. My $350 one can do pretty much the same tasks in everyday life and also the camera and everything is decent enough. And I spent the extra money that’d get me to $2.000 on a laptop and other things. Yeah, but I know different people make different decisions and that’s fine. I’d be in for something like a Nokia N950 if we want to change the form factor (and operating system for more diversity). But that’s not happening. Or just a regular uninspiring Pixel with the price point of the 4a, just with the current (extended) update timeframe. That’s something they don’t do very often. Probably because of the smaller profit margin. But I also consider it an achievement and challenge to design and sell a device close to high-end specs, just for a fraction of the price.

It’s too darn expensive for what it does. I’ll stick with my $350 phone and a laptop or tablet for now.

I think that’s why I wrote about stalking, doxing and and the job of journalists. I think it’s generally not well aligned to the job of a private investigator. I think you could do it as a journalist. Have some idea that someone feels fishy and see if you can dig something up and write an article about it. There might be some overlap with the two jobs in the methods. And OP’s question came from a story idea. Maybe there are unprofessional investigators without morale? I think some professional with an interest to keep their job will certainly not cross the lines, do illegal methods and then also document it… They’ll probably just refuse to do that job.

I think we have some more pressing issues with email. We need a new protocol that effectively fights spam, phishing and adds encryption and signatures. And that protocol needs close to 100% adoption around the world. I don’t mind if we also go ahead and make it more efficient and add features like automatic deletion etc. But that’s just the cherry on top.

Then I misunderstood what the question is about. With your definition and the original question in mind, it’d boil down to doing journalism. Of course that isn’t illegal. But it also has some severe restrictions when it comes to individual people and their private life. You can’t just doxx someone and publish everything invading their privacy. And here also different rules apply to the person investigating and the person publishing the information. But the rules for private investigators still apply.

And I still think a good part of what a private investigator does is things like finding out if someone cheated on their spouse. And that includes following people. And they better not tell how much they exactly followed someone, but instead only take a picture when they actually caught their suspect doing something wrong. Which they can’t do with the premise of this story… Without a clear goal, they’d have to become more like a paparazzi. Which might be closer to illegal and the movie PI than their usual job.

And sure, other parts of their job is probably digging through social media, paper trails when it comes to money, investigating if someone embezzles money or is in breach of a contract. But I don’t think it applies fully in this situation.

However, if you find a politician embezzles money, or poses for the working class and secretly owns 5 mansions in Miami, and you call them out… That’s regular journalism. You just need to make sure to obtain that information legally. Or claim you got that from a mysterious source. And adhere to the standards of journalism. You can’t publish when they fetch their kids from school and then someone goes ahead and uses that information to harass their 12yo daughter.

I seriously doubt that. I didn’t read the law but I’d be surprised if it contains an exception for PIs. And I think I read about some private investigators and paparazzi getting into trouble with the law. I mean downvote me all you want, but I’m pretty sure it’s a delicate matter not to cross any lines in such a job. And probably more so if you lack a legitimate reason and do surveillance on some person’s private life.

Google says stalking is a crime in 50 US states.