Neither of those options is particularly appealing to me. I’d look at building a more respectable file server, with 4 or more SATA ports. I’d have a relatively tiny SSD to host the OS, and any number of HDDs in some variety of RAID array

SSDs are fast; HDDs are slow. I would not want my operating system hosted on an HDD if there is any way to avoid it. An external USB drive would have slow file operations to and from that drive; an internal HDD would slow the entire system.

There is an IOS app for hot air balloon pilots called “Hot Air”. There is a similar app for Android that… Leaves much to be desired.

There’s several functions that are needed. First, we need a map. We need to be able to enter waypoints and/or polygons charting landing zones, prohibited zones, targets, etc. we need an easy way to select targets, and our bearing and distance to those targets.

For planning purposes, we need a bearing line that we can place and move on that map. We need to be able to easily drag and drop each end of the line, and get the bearing and distance between the endpoints.

Next, we need track recording. It should record a ground track during flight, preferably with altitude information, and notes about the flight.

Next, a wind map. The wind speed and direction varies considerably by altitude. It needs to record direction and speed as we climb and descend, telling us what altitude has winds favorable for our current target.

Bonus points if we can prepopulate that wind map with data from a “pibal” (pilot balloon; a simple latex party balloon released and tracked with compass and stopwatch before a flight)

Next, coordination with other pilots and ground crews. 3D location sharing between participants; wind map data shared between pilots.

I’m not a fan of this approach. I think the idea that users should never touch a command line is an inherently proprietary philosophy. Without the command line, at any given moment, the user is fundamentally limited to whatever options the developer elected to offer.

I think a good GUI will assist a user in learning text configuration and command line functions.

“Hey, developer, your software is just about perfect for my use case, I just need to make this one small change. Can I go ahead and do that?”

"Sure, you can make that change, just as soon as you pay us $X. Oh, and we are planning on including that feature in the next release, so you can go ahead and buy that from us.

VPN server and any NAS or other network file share.

I got an email from the devs asking for style advice.

I remember when system memory was measured in KB…

Fuck, I’m old.

I haven’t found a program that gives me problems when I run it in a VM, but I haven’t run Photoshop in it, and I only spool up my Windows VM a couple times a year.

Last time was to run some janky-ass software to program an oddball Chinese UHF radio that was unsupported by Chirp.

Setup a Windows virtual machine inside your Linux environment. Now you’re not leaving Linux to get into your Windows environment.

Just for shits and grind, how about neutral to ground? They should be bonded together in the breaker box (and nowhere else), but if there is a fault, you might see some significant potential across them.

You’ve tried different outlets?

and it gets nowhere near those thresholds, the voltage fluctuates in the 224-234 range.

I’m assuming you measured hot to neutral, and didn’t find any transients.

Did you put your oscilloscope on hot to ground as well? A faulty ground could cause what you are seeing.

Do you have any CFL bulbs anywhere in your house? I once had a dead CFL bulb in a fixture in my basement. Anytime I turned on my basement light, every LED lamp in the house would strobe.

Exactly. Piracy extends the commercial ecosystem. Every software pirate is a potential user and contributor of FOSS projects who is instead spending their time and talents working on/with commercial offerings.

To a distributor of commercial software, a pirate user is preferable to a user of a competing product. The competing user is already locked into the competition’s product line; the pirate is expanding your own product line’s market share.

Below the competing user is the FOSS user: it is much easier to monetize a pirate user who likes the system enough to steal it, or a competing user who has demonstrated they are willing to throw money at their problems. FOSS users aren’t willing to tolerate all the artificial limitations imposed on the product to increase profitability.

I have no moral or ethical qualms with piracy as a general concept, but software piracy inherently promotes commercial alternatives at the expense of FOSS products. The only software I have pirated in decades has been rare, niche software for very specific uses.

Without the VPN, your ISP knows you are making a DNS request, but they can’t see what domain you are resolving. A moment later, they see the IP that request resolved to, when you request that site. They can see how much encrypted traffic is going back and forth. When they see that the IP address hosts a porn site, and traffic analysis shows you’re starting and stopping video streams, they know you’re jerking off, but can’t figure out your specific fetish.

With a VPN, your ISP only ever sees the VPN’s IP address. They know when you are sending and receiving traffic to/from that IP, but they don’t know the original source. With traffic analysis, they can probably figure out that you’re watching videos, but they probably can’t distinguish between YouTube and YouPorn.

What the hell are you even talking about?

A post in a publicly accessible forum is a billboard on the highway. You put it up and anyone can read it. You have zero expectation of privacy after having done that.

Changing the speed limit on the highway (“Rate Limiting”) in no way affects the fact that you put up the billboard on the first place. People may be driving by a little slower, but they’re only reading what you chose to present for them to read.

Scraping does not infringe on privacy. The privacy infringement is that you made the post in the first place. Under normal circumstances, you are the only person at all capable of infringing on your privacy. Exceptions would be someone spoofing your credentials to create the post without your authorization, but someone who does that victimizes both you and the forum hosting your post.

What you’re talking about is more closely related to intellectual property protections like copyright. A musician can play their song over the radio without surrendering copyright protection. Nobody else can make (commercial) use of that song just because it has appeared in a public space.

Wishful thinking. They’ve deluded themselves into thinking data can be externally controlled. The fact that the Pirate Bay is still in operation should have given them a hint.

I think you have a pretty weird understanding of “privacy” if you think that you have it when posting a comment in a publicly-accessible forum.

If you post it in a place I can find it, I can scrape it, store it, use it for my own putposes, in perpetuity. You might be able to convince a government to tell me to stop, but there is no guarantee I haven’t stored it somewhere you and they don’t know about.

That’s simply the nature of information. You don’t get to control my memory. Once you’ve put an idea in my head, you don’t get to take it back. That idea you put in my head is now my idea. It’s my thought.

You can’t unring the bell. You can keep a thought private, or you can post it. But once you’ve posted it, you can’t make it truly private again.