Freeman

The ARR tools are basically a search engine website you host. The interact with a few other tools you have to have access to/pay for. Namely an indexing service and a (for some) a download service. They can use torrents, so you dont HAVE to pay for downloading, but using something like newsgroups is really nice and add reliability and security.

THe “ARR’s” basically then are just a fancy UI and scheduler and just search the indexing service, download the files you want, re-assemble them and copy them to the location you want (often a file share that your media player like Plex or Jellyfin will use).

You can set them to continually look for something too. So for Sonarr, it will auto-download new episodes as soon as they appear in the index. Or if you see a commercial for something upcoming, you can add it and monitor it and as soon as it starts showing up in the indexes it will download.

All the aarrrs. Saturates my isp bandwidth, have no issues with finding stuff, no takedown or piracy warnings…

I do similar. For laptops and docks, especially if they change setups it can be a pita (though you just need to copy files around).

Also the DE monitor config (ie that you use to login) is logically different to a users x config. So you gotta copy that over to make sure the primary monitor etc is right.

There are quality docks that work on displaylink. The dell D6000 is one example and we issue them out freely at work.

Most third party off brand docks will have higher failure rates. We see that with some anker docks that were usb-c+pd we use/had to source during the great supply chain snafu during covid. They worked in a pinch but aren’t reliable like a Lenovo or Dell dock. That’s less a displaylink thing and more a cheap dock thing.

DisplayLink compresses everything over usb. If you plan to do anything color sensitive (ie photo editing) or latency sensitivite (ie: games) it’s a bad idea sine it’s all cpu compression.

That said. They are great for multi monitor general usage (ie soreadhseets and shit) or for systems with graphic card limitations on multi display output (ie low end macs on m1/m2)

MS goes out of their way to make shit harder than it needs to be.

For example. The store, they have a store for business where you can simply whitelist known apps buts it’s a PITA to setup AND they have been threatening to decom it for ages

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-store/microsoft-store-for-business-overview

Want to add safety/security features like secuirty keys. Well if you do it on a non domain joined machine you can just sign into a m365 account to enable a passkey or yuibijey as a second factor.

Want to do that in a business environment. Congrats now you have to deploy a windows CA and issue user certificates to tie to this. Even if you are signing the machine into m365 with ADAL.

They go out of their way to add complexity and failure points.

Tthe problem is now if you have the store disabled basic shit, like the ability to open .heic files is broken or use stuff people want like sticky notes is broken.

We turn off most of what we can’t but having the store enabled causes all sorts of stuff.

Also windows 11 has ads baked in even with the store disabled. Plug in a Logitech mouse, get a pop up for their software. Open the picture viewer and get an ad to install some video editor that isn’t clear whether it’s a Ms product or not.

No to mention basic things like copy paste and edit are now weird icons because I guess they think most users are illiterate.

Most of the 11 UI changes are not for the better. Having to beta test it for work is frustrating and I run an IT shop.

Not as uncommon as you would think. What normally do then is use the 6 month releases until the next LTS

I have been using this hub. Works fine in Linux and windows.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0871ZHCKK?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

I also use this usb dongle for my Xbox controller. It works fine in Linux. I really should try playing a few games on Linux.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0785SFKYF?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

I would agree with most of what you said.

There are also a not-insignifigant number of people that struggle when at home 100%. Some people are rock stars and able to just get stuff done. But a lot of people are not, sadly, organized enough to handle such an unstructured environment and able to still be effective.

This isnt a new thing due to covid or the move, but a LOT of folks just do better with a hard separation of work/life and a lot of folks arent self aware enough to know they need it.

As someone that can and has worked remote, and chooses to come back, it can be frustrating working with people that struggle with these things, and I definitely see differences between home work and office work in some. I actually work in an office because its much easier to maintain balance. I tend to work too much from home and it causes burnout but I also have kids/family that come home early and dont really understand that just because im home doesnt mean i can sit down and talk at their convenience. What I mean is that work/life balanace is harder. So i choose to commute 99% of the time and can WFH when needed.

But i have one guy that had had this issue chronically for years where he often struggles to communicate, is easily distracted, often needed to be micro managed or have his tasks organized, prioritized and in some cases, even steps spelled out. He does well enough to mostly be of help (so hes not gonna get fired), but he complains about lack of upward mobility or lack of raises, but when the SHTF, hes always got excuses locked and loaded about why hes behind or cant complete a project/task.

Conversely I have a guy thats AMAZING from wherever. Never has issues and is always way ahead of the curve. Hes also full time remote but excels at it.

It just depends on the person in a lot of cases and frankly, in my very small use cases, many/most arent the type that are capable of the self discipline needed for the task. Now that said Im not at google or one of those places that hires rockstars in buckets, so they reasons they are RTO are likely different from my orgs.

Of my team, i would say at least a cool 60% are just much less…themselves from home and easily distracted. Either because they segment their life (which is fine and awesome, i do that too), or because they dont have a good setup at home, or because they are just too easily distracted at home.

Are you hosting it on personal hardware?

Not currently, though I am considering it. Right now I host mine on a VPS in linode. Though i need to downgrade it, I built it with the expectationg of allowing joins, but recently decided just to keep it private.

Can you just choose any free name for the domain if it’s on your own hardware or do you need to rent one regardless?

This wouldnt work. You not only need to have a routable/real domain name, but the server likely needs access to the internet to allow fro federation, specifically ingress traffic, to work.

Do you keep it active all the time or turn it off for the night/other periods of time where you know you won’t use it?

Mine runs 24/7. Even if i hosted it at home it would be 24/7. Only issue is

1. I already use port 80/443 at home. So i would need to reconfigure NGINX to use a proxy, which could also break federation. I could do that, in fact I am pretty sure the ansible config uses NGINX proxy commands, just that I would have to customize it and Im lazy. I already have stuff on VPS systems in linode (blog, teamspeak etc) so its no biggy to have another one.

2. My internet at home can be flaky. For example I currently dont have power at home and while I normally run on UPS for a time, and can cut to generator when I am home, my network just went into auto-shutdown.

Excatly why I never opened my instance. With it just being me, i can control what is on it and what is synced. There was too much risk with CP/CSAM type stuff. Heck I didnt even want to risk my linode account (aka they shut my other VPS systems down) due to TOS from shenanigans.

That said, I can still contribute just fine with my own instance and dont have to be involved in these drama defederation actions.

I would encourage anyone that is willing to criticize an instance maintainer for their decisions on risk to just roll out the lemmy-ansible setup and go your own way. If you troll or act in bad faith, you will get defederated. If you act like a reasonable person, no one will even notice. And that way you are in control of uptime, patch cadence, backups etc.

It’s fine but a lot of forms and sites won’t work with it. Like legit will say someone@something.email is not a valid address.

So I would suggest a “normal” .com, .net., or ccTLD like .us. Those I haven’t seen that issue for.

Also some gTLDs will get automatic spam scores and stuff. .zip is probably gonna be on a ton of blocklists etc.

It’s good to know where you are spending money, what your monthlies are. Where you can cut down and nickel and dime. Helps with things at the macro level with patterns. Especially with the new found subscription service culture.

I use quickens auto budget, kinda, but if I go over it’s whatever. We live well below our means overall. We pay our CCs off in full each month etc.

It also helps with taxes for things like write offs (though the standard deduction is almost always still the best deal for me) and helps when deciding on bigger spend projects etc (ie: house fixes, cars etc). Like if I have had to put a ton of money into a car and it gets close to the point of the value, is it better to get a new car? Well with quicken I can very quickly go look and see exactly how much I have spent on my truck in the last year.

It’s been a while since I tried it, along with gnucash and some other web based self hosted budget project that was abandoned.

I les s want the budgeting aspect but more the itemizing and ledger/balancing features. I use the budget to predict and track certain spending but often it’s more just tracking purchases and consolidating transaction spending. Even quicken kinda sucks at auto categorization, but does well enough.

It’s a general term used to denote that two companies of the same/very similar sectors are in bed with each other with an arrangement that is exclusive and specifically designed to keep outsiders out

I work in IT. Redundancy and high availability are not just IT terms to me.

Companies like Intuit aka Quicken pay large sums of money to not only access banking API’s but also lobby heavily to keep them closed source. They also make sure that other access to the same API’s come at a higher rate so that competitiors will pay more for access or support when things break. Its why theres very few alternatives and of what alternatives there is either generally requires you to setup your own export/import system for transactions or is backed by huge sums of VC (ie: Mint, which is also now owned by intuit).

Similar to how companies like TaxAct or TurboTax (another Intuit brand) lobby heavily to make tax filing overcomplicated and confusing AF so they can sell tax filing services. Even getting to the free file is purposefully designed to push to you pay some company 350 bucks to tell the government what you made (which they already know and tell you in your tax filing).

Basically banks and merchants (or more accurately their processing systems used by banks and made by companies like Jack Henry, FIS etc) are in co-hoots to avoid progress and keep their walled guarden closed.

Quicken,

I really wish there was a FOSS alternative that supported the autodownload of transactions across my plethora of banks/accounts (some I even chose specifically for better integration) but its sooo incestuous that theres really not much and what alternatives are available are usually cloud based where you cant guarantee the security of all your financial data.

I can see arch or others being great for learning the inner workings of a distro or even more advanced inner workings or something great for tinkererers. But for those that see the OS as a tool to do things, yeah, I don’t see a value in it. But not everyone has the same priorities.