chkno

It's worth watching.

Say more?

NixOS supports headless LUKS, which was an improvement for me in my last distro-hop. The NixOS wiki even has an example of running a TOR Onion service from initrd to accept a LUKS unlock credential.

Link: Spectrum

Nice.

Here's another worked example of a less adventurous pi pico (W) project I did recently. It's C, built with Nix, and doesn't require setting up all the hardware-debugger stuff (it uses the much simpler hold-bootsel-while-plugging-in and copy-the-.uf2-file mechanism to load code). The 5th commit is the simple blink example from the SDK with all the build mechanisms figured out.

Bumping package versions usually isn't hard. Here, I'll do this one out loud here, & maybe you can do it next time you need to:

1. Search https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pulls to see if someone else already has a PR open for a version bump for this package.
2. Clone the nixpkgs repo if you haven't already: git clone https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs.git ~/devel/nixpkgs (or git pull if you have).
3. Create a branch for this bump: git checkout -b stremio
4. Find stremio: find pkgs -name stremio
5. Edit it: $EDITOR pkgs/applications/video/stremio/default.nix Looks like nixpkgs has version 4.4.142. If I go to https://www.stremio.com/ (link in meta.homepage in this file) and click 'Download', it all says 4.4, which is not helpful. The 'source code' link goes to github, and the 'tags' link there lists version v4.4.164, which is what we're looking for.
6. In my editor, I change the version: 4.4.142 → 4.4.164.
7. In my editor, I mess up both the hashes: I just add a block of zeros somewhere in the middle: sha256-OyuTFmEIC8PH4PDzTMn8ibLUAzJoPA/fTILee0xpgQI= → sha256-OyuTFmEIC80000000000000000000A/fTILee0xpgQI=.
8. Leaving my editor, I build the updated package: nix-build . -A stremio
9. It fails, because the hashes are wrong, obviously. But it tells me what hash it got, which I copy/paste back in, in the spirit of collective TOFU. I do this twice, once for each hash.
10. It builds successfully. I test the result: ./result/bin/stremio. Looks like it works enough to prompt me to log in, at least. I don't know what stremio is or have an account, but it's probably fine.
11. I commit my change: git commit -a -m 'stremio: 4.4.142 -> 4.4.164'
12. I push my commit: git push github (If this is your first time, create a fork of nixpkgs in the github web UI & git remote add a remote for it first)
13. I create PR in the github web UI: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/263387

Download over TOR / run your podcatcher from Tails.

I use Nix (not yet NixOS) on a Librem 5. Debian stable is so old, so it's nice to have Nix as an alternative.

Yea, rain cape / poncho / "boncho" is the way to go! Combine with fenders & giant mudflaps. So fast to get on & off, & the only way to keep dry and cool at the same time.

Thanks for the lead!

It looks like the Buddy Read feature does in fact start with a specific book and organize a group around it, but it invites me to specify all the people that will ever be in the group right away, at group creation time. I get three ways to invite people:

• "Machine-learning powered reading buddy recommendations" - Unspecified voodoo. Three users are shown.
• "Community members who have this book on their radar" - Probably folks that have this on their public 'to read' list. Three users are shown.
• Specifying users directly by username

This doesn't quite fit the "I'm up for this, let me know when it starts" mechanic.

I could create a new group & invite all three of the users with this book in their public 'to read' list, but I think folks treat the the 'to read' list very, very casually -- not at the "I'm ready to commit to a reading group" level. These three users have 723, 2749, and 3771 books on their 'to read' lists respectively. I see that I somehow have have 46 books on mine, & haven't been thinking of it as a 'ready to commit to reading group' list.

Thank you for sharing updates about your progress. Good luck rummaging around in found.000. :(

X11 for xdotool. ydotool doesn't support (& can't really support with it's current architecture) retrieving information like the current mouse location, current window, window dimensions & titles. Also, normal (unprivileged) user ydotool use requires udev rules or session scripts and/or running a ydotool daemon & many distros don't yet ship with this Just Working.

X11 for Alt-F2 r to restart Gnome Shell without ending the whole session. This is a useful workaround for a variety of Gnome bugs.

There are so many ways do handle backups, so many tools, etc. You'll find something that works for you.

In the spirit of sharing a neat tool that works well for me, addressing many of the concerns you raised, in case it might work for you too: Maybe check out git annex. Especially if you already know git, and maybe even if you don't yet.

I have one huge git repository that in spirit holds all my stuff. All my storage devices have a check-out of this git repo. So all my storage devices know about all my files, but only contain some of them (files not present show up as dangling symlinks). git annex tracks which drives have which data and enforces policies like "all data must live on at least two drives" and "this more-important data must live on at least three drives" by refusing to delete copies unless it can verify that enough other copies exist elsewhere.

• I can always see everything I'm tracking -- the filenames and directory structure for everything are on every drive.
• I don't have to keep track of where things live. When I want to find something, I can just ask which drives it's on.
  • (I also have one machine with a bunch of drives in it which I union-mount together, then NFS mount from other machines, as a way to care even less where individual files live)
• Running git annex fsck on a drive will verify that
  • All the content that's supposed to live on that drive is in fact present and has the correct sha256 checksum, and
  • All policies are satisfied -- all files have enough copies.