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Money going online really changed the mood.

So true. Money spoils everything.

Lack of knowledge was the big problem before the internet. Late 80s, early 90s.

Take Phreaking.

Dialup BBSs (1200/75, 2400 or 9600 baud) were the primary source of dodgy files that I knew of. Some would have a secret area with various texts about hacking and quasi-illegal behaviour, including pornography of all flavours and of course the anarchists’ handbook. There were a few hacking and phreaking related stuff (getting free phone calls was huge then, given the cost of online activities - blackboxing, blueboxing, etc) and often required researching the types of PBX being used until you knew more than the people employed to run the things. To get access to this you’d need to suck up to the BBS owner, or prove your worth and “I’m not a law enforcement officer, honest” credits. Vouchsafing friends and others was another way, and there was cross-checking of you by sysops talking to each other.

The security on phone systems was laughable by modern standards, but at the time it was something very strongly guarded and if you found something, you made sure it stayed private. The phone companies helped by constantly denying anything was happening, but stakes were high. Legal consequences were high, but so were the rewards if you could get free calls.

Myself, I never did, but I always wanted to. Not having my monthly phone bills of hundreds of pounds would have been really nice…

When ADSL and always-on connections became available, phreaking stopped overnight.

try changing the SATA cable.

This is actually a good point. I had this exact issue quite recently and overlooked it at first, even throwing away a drive and replacing it for the exact same error to re-appear with a second one.

Quick and easy to do, good suggestion.

Thats because you dont have savings.

I’m sorry, why did you assume that?

I guess you never considered that someone older might like a safe and boring job because they’ve finally worked out how to compartmentalise work and life, or maybe it lets them work from home or is conveniently close, or that they have friends there and are accepted as who they are, or that they believe in the work they’re doing, or their health isn’t so great and they don’t want upheaval, or they’ve already had an exciting job and it demanded too much of them, or any one of a lot of other possible reasons.

Maybe they even have enough to retire today, but that they like that boring job you’re so dismissive of and don’t fancy facing the void that retirement can bring, having seen friends retire and just… stop, because they had nothing else to fill their days with, dying soon after.

Maybe, just maybe, your bleak experience of a working life isn’t the same for everyone.

I hope you figure things out a little better as you get older and not jump to conclusions.

I can understand that view, but I’ve personally experienced things where it absolutely can be this and I respectfully disagree with you. I think what OP describes is more likely to be hardware than the OS.

Firstly - different drive for linux. A dying drive can freeze and take down its host, regardless of OS.

Secondly, linux uses memory very differently to windows, especially in relation to caching the filesystem. Linux might be accessing memory that Windows doesn’t get to.

We also don’t know what loads OP puts on his computer when running windows and linux. Maybe he has windows to game with, or may he uses linux for LLM/compute work and runs it full tilt. Each may do very different things and tax different aspects of the hardware.

It’s simply not safe to assume anything when diagnosing intermittent problems with hardware. The only reliable method is methodical testing and isolation.

Others have already given some good advice, but rather than let it sit and wait to error, use the program “stress”

It’ll work specific components hard which can help locate whether it’s a CPU/Heat problem, or Memory, or disk.

And if it still fails on random things, take a long hard look at your PSU and measure voltages if you can. But if everything else checks out, motherboard could be it. Tiny cracks/dry joints, even inside the pcb layers, can lead to occasional problems that come and go with heat or vibration and are impossible to accurately diagnose beyond swapping it out.

If I was in my 20s, I’d be off like a shot.

At 30, I’d think for about 5 minutes before doing it.

At 40 I’d try to have a backup plan in place.

Now I’m in my 50s, I’d cling onto that safe and boring job like a limpet.

Yeah, that worked great when the UK and others tried it with thepiratebay

We did experiment with local models. They were okay, if a little slow with the resources we allocated for testing. Ultimately though, we paid for copilot. I’m still a little sceptical that it won’t leak data, despite the assurances, so I do clean anything sensitive before pasting.

As for best models - generally gpt4 or 5 is my go-to, but the others have their uses. I tend to stick with one until it annoys me, then move on. Claude’s pretty good for code help, imo, but there’s not really a huge difference between them.

What’s your experiences?

Sysadmin here, this is my usual flow for various distros

1. as /u/FigMcLargeHuge mentions, recent logfiles in /var/log. Notably /var/log/messages (EL) and syslog (Debian) but anything that’s recent.

2. journalctl - More and more things are moving to binary logging. If you know the process, then journalctl -u processname restricts to just that. also add a -f for tailing it for ongoing logs.

3. dmesg -T - especially at system level, this captures any hardware/low level logs. (-T reports actual times, not just seconds since boot)

4. Once you have some logs that you think are related, but don’t know WTF they actually mean, you have two options. The first is to google likely strings. This is… ineffective much of the time - accidental misinformation and outdated advice is increasingly common. The answer might be there, but it takes time and can be frustrating to weed out the cruft.

The better way, (IMO, and people downvote me for saying this) is to use AI. Get a few lines of logs with the errors, check them for confidential information, and simply paste the suspect lines into chatgpt, gemini, claude, co-pilot, whatever. No need for context, it’ll figure that out. The LLM will, 4 times out of 5, identify the problem very quickly.

Now, once it’s identified that, it will offer to fix it for you. This is where you’ve got to be on your toes as LLMs are really really quick to give bad advice at this level. But that first triage is nearly always worth doing and helps shape your own mind as to what’s going on. AI is still useful for fixing it, but do understand what it’s telling you to do.

Your mom.

Now tuck your shirt in and stop slouching.

Is offline file editing an issue with all file syncing tools?

I’ve been using Syncthing for a year or so and not noticed that it’s any worse or better at this than GDrive or Dropbox

Seconded. Great bit of software.

It’s technology like this that I think will become more and more important as governments seek to restrict access to large parts of the internet. UK and Australia are forging ahead in censorship, and the EU is well on their way. The US already does some censorship, as do large parts of Asia and Russia.

No matter the reason given, it’s always about control. So less easily censored technologies will be very useful for anyone that wants the ability to research truth, or at least, alternate points of view.

Anyone throughout time?

Disraeli?

Abraham Lincoln again?

Muhatma Ghandi?

Arnold Schwarzenegger. He would be already if he was allowed.

But honestly, at this point, anyone who wasn’t entirely evil.

Frigate is great, but it needs a lot of cpu/gpu or a corel TPU. OP has old hardware, so I’m guessing a slow CPU.

Zoneminder is a non-AI cctv system. Also free. Not as fun to play with as Frigate but solid.

I understand having a dislike for a medium that encourages shallow, gimmicky, reactive content

That’s all social media.

And Reddit has a huge amount of reposting/karmafarming bots as well as a lot of political/troll botfarms targetting it, and a lot of human trolls. And if you don’t have an adblocker, a sometimes miserable user experience. But Reddit also has the biggest userbase by a huge factor, a lot of really interesting subs with some really good content and people.

You can find positives and negatives about any platform or, really, anything anywhere. At least with social media platforms we have a choice as to whether we engage or not. That’s how you avoid the trash if you think the pool is full of shit - don’t swim in it.

Honestly, if someone genuinely believes “everything is shit” then maybe the problem is with them.

That’s like saying “I read a book once that I didn’t like, so all books are shit”

Tiktok is like all other streams - there’s a huge variety of content and it includes a lot of good and innovative creators. Yes, there’s a lot of utter shite, just lke reddit, facebook and even Lemmy.

But there’s also people who spend time making something good, sharing interesting things about their day and teaching what they know.