Episode 3 gets a little speculative, but the first two are rock solid.

There's nothing wrong with speculation on what could be, but I just wanted to manage expectations there.

It's hard to see how the average person could do much to push the topic forward. It's largely in the hands of the people with first hand knowledge. And it's not like we can actually protect them in any real way.

For anyone interested in government transarency on the topic of UFOs, here's a fact-based series about government leaks which is presented in an entertaining way: https://tubitv.com/tv-shows/200044921/s01-e01-the-breakthrough

Well, the last easy idea I had has now failed.

I've ordered a new M.2 drive that will be here by the 25th. I'm going to do a fresh install to the new drive, which should set up all the EFI vars.

Then I'm going to swap my current drive back in and see if it'll boot that way.

If not, I'll switch back to the new drive, restore from the latest proper backup and then manually go through the files that may have changed between the proper backup and the copying files around that I did today.

Now I just have to wait for the M.2 drive to arrive. If this works, it'll validate me not liking the design of UEFI (hiding variables in the BIOS instead of putting everything on the bootable media).

I had a fairly recent proper backup, and I've copied some files to an external drives. So a full reinstall won't be too terrible if it comes to that. I shouldn't lose more than a week's worth of work at the most.

I have one more trick up my sleeve that might work, and then a last ditch effort that will require borrowing or buying some hardware. It'll probably be until early next week before I am back up and running.

New motherboard arrived and I have confirmed that was the problem.

Wouldn't boot into the existing M.2 drive, after many attempts at rescuing it (grub2-install, copying over .mod files, etc.), I got it almost restored.

If I manually load the grub2 config file, enter the FDE password, it gets right up to when X would normally load and then it resets. I'm not sure if it's some driver causing a fault or what.

Thanks, it's now in the queue of updates to make to that page.

It's public on GitLab. https://gitlab.com/adam949/guerrilla-radio

So far the focus has been extending a wired network, but I have a branch that I was trying to make it completely standalone.

I haven't worked on it in a while, but if there is interest, I could probably make time for it. I could at least make time to answer questions and review merge requests.

Are they... wall decorations?

Yeah, without electricity a lot of a lot of things are very difficult.

I have solar panels, but they are primarially used for the fridge and freezer when the power is down.

As for mesh networks, I have a project that quickly sets up a mesh network from hardware that geeks have lying around the house (old laptops, raspberry pi boxes, etc.). It's very experimental, but it does work. With more contributions, it could work much better.

I'd like to combine the mesh with a lightning node and see how far I can get! I feel like if I can transfer money around, even if it is just in my local community, without the internet, that would be amazing.

"police in Canada posed as tea vendors to massively collect DNA from the Kurdish community at a cultural event. They identified a relative of the person they were looking for which led them to make an arrest."

Via https://kolektiva.social/@cedar/111767532746573971 (see thread for more details & other known examples)

The author's takeaways:

"it is almost impossible to know what lessons to take from a situation like this one. But here are some starting points:

1. Undercover operations are far more common in Canada than we might suspect

2. DNA analysis is increasingly routine

3. Collecting DNA is in a legal grey area (may not require a warrant) and police will go to great lengths to do so"

My 2 sats on the topic: I don't think this is limited to Canada, although I can't cite specific incidents to back that up.

Thank you. Literally every bit helps, and I sold one Signet so all the boosting seems to have had a tangible impact!

#SelfHosted #NextCloud server and markdown files. Works on multiple devices with different software and if I ever went to switch to something else, my data is all nice and accessible.

A quick update:

1. Thank you to all who shared, zapped, offered suggestions or offered help in other ways. The community response was large, wonderful and unexpected. 🫶

2. A new CPU didn't fix it. I was skeptical, but it was too easy of a fix to not try it. On the bright side, it might be cheaper than I was expecting.

3. I ordered a new motherboard from newegg (they take bitcoin) and it'll arrive by Friday. The #Qubes hardware compatibility list tells me it'll work. I really hope it'll work without having to reinstall the O/S. 🤞

I'm going to try to stop stressin' and relax for the rest of the night. Next week, I plan on #building.

nostr:nevent1qqsqkvncp3mgn8kym5xvzfnu6w7fxh5dalm5uac3nkfuxnu8lrth6wgpzemhxue69uhkummnw3ezumn0dahx2uewvdhk6q3q6v82nr4xt62nlydtj0mtxr49r6enc5r0sl2f7cq2zwdw7q92j5gsxpqqqqqqzcg97p3

If you have any questions about any of this, just hit me up. I'm happy to help.

I cannot recommend borgmatic highly enough for this. Automatic backups, compressed, encrypted, deduplicated, the ability to go back in time to get the copy of that config file from last Tuesday... it has it all.

Just set up one container/VM with a good amount of disk space and send all your bsckups there.

Next level is setting up your servers with Ansible, which rolls out config files, decrypts secrets and stuffs them into your configs, and gets you a nice fresh install as quickly as possible. It's easy to test, and is an excellent tool for testing changes and keeping track of change management.

I've bookmarked your store. Right now I just need to get my desktop back up and running, but I could imagine getting gear from you in the future! I have a Grocy VM running on my Proxmox server and a little computer (maybe a NUC?) is planned to be the kitchen computer someday.

When I'm ready, I'll check to see if you have one first.

Oh the irony! My desktop blew up and I go to buy a replacement motherboard from NewEgg, but the option to pay in #bitcoin only appears when you are using a desktop!

It still doesn't show up in desktop mode on mobile browsers either.

It's fine, I can use a housemate's computer to place the order, but good grief!

❤️🙏

Donation page is here: https://hax0rbana.org/signet/store.html?pubkey=028fe8dff97df9480d37bd7fbdd300c7aab1e77e3f77647f41ae27fa69d401da26&relays=%5B%22wss://relay.damus.io%22,%22wss://nostr-pub.wellorder.net%22,%22wss://nostr.bolt.fun%22%5D

Or just send 'em to bc1qgjme0dww9e72clcdlhqgegdxfec2ujfz3z9hum

Someone suggested I make the "buy" and "donate" links more prominent on the Signet landing page and I plan on doing that so soon as I have a working desktop again.

Thanks for the recommendations. I'll work on the site as soon as my computer is back up and running (I don't have access from my phone).

Thanks. It's an AMD system and it's apparently the motherboard, not the CPU. 😓 So now I am shopping around for a motherboard that is compatible with #QubesOS (network, sound card, etc.).

It's less money than replacing the CPU, so that's good, but more time.