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Chewie

@ Chewie @slrpnk.net

Posts
10
Comments
54
Joined
2 yr. ago

I run a Mastodon (mammut.gogreenit.net) and PeerTube (pt.gogreenit.net) instances for myself and friends.

I am interested in IT, Electronic Music, Winter Sports, Renewable Energy, Off-Grid living, Sustainability, The Right to Repair, Veganism and Animal Rights

  • Why Some Birds Seem to Be Developing a Cigarette Habit | Research from Poland adds to evidence from Latin American countries that compounds in used cigarette butts ward off parasites in bird nests.

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  • Using bellows to smoke the cigarettes mechanically “was the most challenging part of the experiment,” said Michal Gladalski, an evolutionary ecologist who led the study. He is not a smoker and wanted to avoid hurting his lungs or anyone else’s.

    Surely there's enough he could collect just from wandering around and looking at the floor?

  • How would you answer the "ecological" question on self hosting and federated networks ?

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  • He may have a point, but as someone else pointed out, a lot of these self-hosted services are running on out of date equipment that wouldn't be used for anything else.

    I run all my Fediverse stuff on an old Dell R620 that a friend gave me. Mine is totally specialised for hosting.... Yes, it is overkill for my ~10 users, but hopefully more friends will join. Also, it's not the most efficient way of doing it - the device is probably 10 years old and uses ~130w 24/7. A newer NUC or equivalent would probably only use 40-50w. However, who else is going to use this machine? No company would touch it, "everything" is going cloudy, so it would either be stripped for parts and the rest dumped either in landfill or sent to some 3rd world country.

    You can claim it's a waste of electricity to use it, but a lot of energy and materials were used to create the server in the first place, and most of that will be lost, even with recycling.

    People run Fediverse (and other services) on a Raspberry PI - fine for a couple of users, but too restrictive for my use. These things only use 5-20w, which is amazing.

    My electricity supply is from a "green" supplier, and I have a local SolarPV system that powers the system when there is enough sun. Last summer I managed to run it for over a month using my local system only. There's no reason that we can't build more renewable sources of electricity. Here in the UK there's a proposed 140 DCs in in the planning phases, which is ridiculous, all for AI BS.

    Self-hosting isn't for everyone of course - not every household should do this, but there's no reason why groups of friends, families or "activity" groups couldn't do this effectively.

    It's absolutely optimized for the long term - how many Google services have been discontinued when there are still users, just not enough to be profitable? Self-hosted services can run as long people are interested. A mail server created 20 years ago is still compatible and useable today because it uses ratified, slow-moving standards.

  • BirdNET - SE Ontario, Canada - March 10th

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  • BirdNET - SE Ontario, Canada - March 10th

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  • Nice! That graph looks way better than the standard Birdnet one!

    I am running the standard version, and I am using the standard Mastodon python module to upload the daily stats here: @BirdNet@mammut.gogreenit.net

  • Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them

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  • It seems to include a battery, which would not be necessary if you just want to save money rather than it being useful in a blackout (although their website says you can't using in a blackout). Removing the battery element would decrease the cost a lot.

  • Cashless society, forced banking 💳, and the War on Cash 💰 @slrpnk.net
    Chewie @slrpnk.net

    Recent Swiss referendum included question about cash

    www.theregister.com /2026/03/11/swiss_evote_usb_snafu/

  • LTJ Bukem & Ruthless MC - Dekmantel Festival 2025

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  • Wicked mix, shame about the MC as usual 😛

  • Elon Musk’s $1 Trillion Grift

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  • Filipino woman worships green statue for 4 years, finds out it is animated character Shrek

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  • Immediate ban on boiling crabs and lobsters alive is called for after disturbing study

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  • "This is awful, but what can we do?"

    er, I can think of a simple thing to do about it....

  • UK Government ‘not in favour’ of controversial efforts to dim the sun

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  • They could have been a bit more forceful in their response to a stupid idea....

  • Green Energy @slrpnk.net
    Chewie @slrpnk.net

    Creating microbial fuel cells using bacteria in your garden

    branch.climateaction.tech /issues/issue-9/the-gardening-electricity-handbook/

  • Smart Home Device Maker Renders Devices Dumb Unless A New Subscription Is Paid For

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  • As you’d expect, some people are attempting to figure out how to make Futurehome products work without the subscription. Perhaps as a result of that, Futurehome shut down its own user forum in June.

    Bastards!

  • Self-hosting @slrpnk.net
    Chewie @slrpnk.net

    I bet we could have used some of them for selfhosting ;(

  • Modern messaging: Running your own XMPP server

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  • I run OpenFire (https://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/) as my server. Upgrades are easy, and I like the 2000-era interface as it doesn't take up much room, but if I was starting from scratch again, maybe I would try a different server, as the way it deals with Lets Encrypt certs is a bit annoying when it's time to renew - this could be user error, but it's not obvious.

    ejabberd having it's built-in "certbot" equivalent sounds great!

    I use Monocles (Android) and Dino (Linux) clients, and it's pretty stable. Monocles also allows some server commands from the client, which is pretty cool. Sorting out TURN was a faff, but it doesn't help that my server is behind 1:1 NAT I guess :/

    Still, now that is sorted, it's great :) I just need to find out a way of enticing my friends to use this instead of WhatsApp etc

    <sigh>

  • How Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

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  • What makes an XMPP client better than others?

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  • Stability, good user interface. While I am technical and enjoy playing with bleeding edge stuff, it is a struggle to get "normies" to join yet another chat system if they aren't as easy to use or reliable as signal/whatsapp. audio/video calls are also critical for most people I expect, if you want people to use it as a proper alternative.

    My other half and I use monocles (used conversations originally, but had some slight annoyances). Both have a very nice interface, and are usually reliable. Now and again one of us doesn't receive the others' message, and I have no idea why, and it is it difficult to diagnose.

    I only recently got my XMPP server to work through NAT properly for A/V calls, which took me ages to sort out, and the errors in the monocles interface were not helpful in diagnosing the problem.

    Sometimes (rarely) monocles doesn't reconnect properly and one of us doesn't realise for a while, and then we get a flurry of messages once we reconnect. An easy way of telling when it's not connected would be good - the little icon monocles has isn't that obvious (esp now that android only allows white notification icons, which is really lame). Other chat systems seem to be more reliable in this regard.

    I'm not sure if any of this helps, but best wishes with your project!

  • What makes an XMPP client better than others?

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  • monocles will use stickers, and even (kinda) can import signal ones - I imported the mastodon ones recently, and they worked. Not tried any others.

  • Solarpunk

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  • yeah, welcome to the new order :(

  • Noam Chomsky | How Entertainment Became Neoliberalism's Greatest Weapon

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  • Are full stops not allowed in subtitles?

  • Podcasts @slrpnk.net
    Chewie @slrpnk.net

    Follow us to brighten up your favourite doomscrolling platform, and get involved.

    www.antidotelive.studio

  • [Recommendation request] Simple monitoring?

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  • ntfy is great!

  • Where to begin?

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  • Also i know some basics on raid but I’ve only ever messed with raid0 with usb drives on a pi. I have 8 bays but 2 are currently vacant. What is the process of just adding an extra drive to a raid, or replacing one that already exists?

    It depends on your RAID controller (or software RAID). I use hardware RAID (on Dell and HP servers) as it's easy and a known technology, although these days people seem to be anti-HW RAID a bit.

    When replacing a drive, you just eject the old drive, wait a few seconds put the new drive in, and most HW RAID controllers will start automatically rebuilding the array. Make sure your controller and drive bays support "hot swap" first! With HW RAID, replacing drives is great, because you can increase the capacity over time, because you can replace each drive with a bigger model, and once the last drive has been swapped over, you can expand the array and start using the extra capacity without having to move data around. With HW raid, most servers have an "Out-Of-Band" system (iLO, iDRAC, IPMI) which you can configure to alert you if a drive has died (or is about to die).

    I would recommend keeping at least 1 spare of the same model HD of whatever you use, just in case.

    I got burned by having a WD drive fail, and WD were being assholes about sending me a replacement (it was under warranty). Before I got the replacement, another drive started dying, and I couldn't afford to buy another drive. In the end I lost 12TB of data 😭

    And re the above - "RAID is not a backup" :) plan accordingly....

    For software RAID, most Linux OSes support it automatically. I only use it as it's easy to expand partitions (most of my Linux machines are VMs on a system with HW RAID).

    This might be a useful article https://www.howtogeek.com/40702/how-to-manage-and-use-lvm-logical-volume-management-in-ubuntu/ (with a link to a previous one which is an introduction), which explains a bit about SW RAID.

  • Offgrid living @slrpnk.net
    Chewie @slrpnk.net

    1500W though a fag lighter plug? Good luck with that

  • Offgrid living @slrpnk.net
    Chewie @slrpnk.net

    MorningStar SureSine Inverter Review

  • Homelab @selfhosted.forum
    Chewie @slrpnk.net

    Anyone in the UK want a Cisco 3750 (WS-C3750G-48PS) switch?

  • Green Energy @slrpnk.net
    Chewie @slrpnk.net

    Sol-Ark manufacturer reportedly disables all Deye inverters in the US

    solarboi.com /2024/11/17/sol-ark-oem-disables-all-deye-inverters-in-the-us/
  • Offgrid living @slrpnk.net
    Chewie @slrpnk.net

    Hardcore off-grid in a Manhattan apartment

    archive.md /K2Wj4
  • Green Energy @slrpnk.net
    Chewie @slrpnk.net

    Solar panels between railway tracks?

    www.euronews.com /green/2024/10/14/solar-panels-could-be-installed-in-the-spaces-between-railway-tracks-in-world-first