• Back up your data now
• Reseat the cables for the drive
• Run a self test on the drive - smartctl -t long - if it doesn’t pass, then the drive is trash. If it does, then it might limp along a bit longer before catastrophically failing

Some (usually cheaper) indicating desiccants use cobalt-based dies which are fairly toxic, but unless you are using them to keep food dry it’s not a huge issue. Having them break into powder in the microwave probably isn’t great though, I’d avoid breathing any of it in

Yup, this - batteries are consumables. They have a service life of ~2-5 years depending on load. If the manual doesn’t tell you how to replace them then it’s basically ewaste already

Depends on what you need:

• As cheap as possible, but actually want a VM: OCI free tier will be way bigger than you will probably need
• Happy paying money but still want to learn about Linux things: I’ve had good experiences with Scaleway
• I just want something I can set up and not think about: don’t use a VPS. Architect your site as a pure-static site, stick it in an S3 bucket. You’ll probably be within the free tier unless you do absolutely bonkers traffic, and once it’s running you can leave it alone for literal years without worrying about patches or upgrades

Good thing there hasn’t been any remotely exploitable security bugs in any of the mail system components in the 6 years since Debian 7 went EoL

Looks like it’s an x86_64 kernel though? So this is a VM - it’s not running as a paravirtualised system, it’s having to emulate everything from the CPU up?

If a project is hosted on sourceforge then its a pretty good sign that the developer hasn’t progressed their craft since about 2005, which is a pretty big red flag for anything

lithium batteries

People in the office next to mine deal with prototype lithium cells and yeah, terrifying. They charge them in a special fire cabinet in case they go pop, and have buckets of sand everywhere (although the official advice is to not bother, gtfo). If you plot energy density on a line, there is an overlap between the highest density lithium cells and lowest density high explosives

Obligatory “read your schools’ computer use policy before you get yourself in trouble for evading the firewall”

Keycloak to provide OIDC, although in hindsight I should have gone with Authelia Authentik

Try the other suggestions, but something that has helped me is putting a thin layer of glue stick on my bed - stops the corners curling on larger prints

At the rates I’m paying for 4G data, there are very few places in the world where it wouldn’t be cheaper for me to get on a plane and sneakernet that much data

There are very few things more obnoxious than an asshole with unsolicited parenting advice

Don’t disagree with you, but yeah - good luck with that

As long as someone is willing and able to maintain it.

It’s open source. All the work is either done by volunteers or by corporate sponsors. If it’s worth it for you to keep a GPU from the 90s running on modern kernels and you can submit patches to keep up with API changes, then no reason to remove it. The problem isn’t that the hardware is old, it’s that people don’t have the time to do the maintenance

True, but silicone is 10-20x the price of TPU

Having tried similar things, I cannot stress enough how much you want to be printing molds like this in TPU unless you really really want your mold to be permanently embedded in the concrete

git-annex maybe?

Didn’t mean to put you off if it’s something you are interested in, just be aware with what you are dealing with going into it.

Small desktop CNCs are relatively affordable, but only cut in 2 dimensions. Laser cutters fill a similar niche, are a bit more limited in the types of materials they can cut and how thick the material can be, are a bit more forgiving than a CNC (no risk of breaking milling bits if you screw up), but have safety issues to be aware of. I’m not aware of any hobby-grade muli-axis CNC machines, but there might be ones out there

For minis and other things where you want lots of small details you want a resin/SLA printer.

• Keep in mind that as well as the printer itself, you also need equipment to wash and cure the resin after it comes out of the printer
• Resin is extremely toxic, accumulates in the body (ie, lots of small exposures over time is just as bad as one big exposure), and you can develop immune sensitivities to it where your body freaks out with even small amounts leading blisters, burns and breathing difficulties. Do not screw around with resin. Use proper PPE. Dispose of waste resin properly