Currently, 2 servers and 2 3d printers, I’m running just over 200w at idle. Depending on what my printers and servers are doing at any given moment, it could go up to 2000w, total, but I haven’t seen that high a power draw since I stopped contributing to Boinc projects about a year ago. I remember finding it mildly amusing that my graphics cards had a higher power draw then my printers.

Like others said, I would avoid Bambu like the plague. It’s asking for trouble in the future.

I would also avoid Creality printers as I have had reliability issues with them in the past. I had an Ender 5 that went through mainboards like filament.

I’m currently running a pair of Flashforge Creator 5, one Pro, one not. Both have proven solid and have been running nonstop since I got them in late July.

Of the two I like the Pro a bit better due to it being enclosed. Prints have been more stable with the wide temperature shifts we have right now. Damned easy to use and while setup wasn’t quite “plug and print” it wasn’t far off. Flashforge as a company isn’t really Linux friendly (Statically, probably not an issue for your sister but worth mentioning), but the printers are solid and work with OrcaSlicer without much trouble.

Other than that, Prusa has a solid reputation (except for the INDX varients right now. It has been a rough release. ) and so does Snapmaker.

Cool, but I don’t post on Reddit anymore.

Other than needing more RAM, I think it will last a while. The 16GB I got was as much as I could afford.

I bought a new T series Thinkpad last year. As long as you’re not using it as a hammer or a jack stand, it will hold up pretty well. Supports Linux well. Good build quality.

If you do need that level of build quality I would look at the Panasonic Toughbooks. Just don’t drop one one the floor. It may break. The floor, not the laptop. The laptop will be fine.

How much free time do you people have? At that point I’d just use AI

Free time? What’s that? /s, kinda

Most of that time is spent uploading the tag info up to MusicBrainz. If the band/artist or album isn’t already there, It can indeed take that long. Their web interface is a confusing mess, at least for me. I don’t usually have more than 1 album at a time to deal with manually though, and that not very often.

As for using an LLM (I refuse to call them AI. They ain’t there yet.), if it works, cool! More than likely though, they would try pulling from MusicBrainz, fail to find a match and give up, same as Picard has for OP. An LLM agent harness might be able to more quickly upload album tags where the artist or album doesn’t yet exist in the database though. Hadn’t thought of that before and may give it a try next time the issue crops up. Thanks!

I have Lidarr setup to track album and singles releases from a handful of artists and bands that I am really, really into so I don’t miss something. Mostly, though, I acquire new music the same way I always have, something catches my ear somewhere and I go looking for it.

Discovery is kinda all over the place, but lately Youtube has been pretty good at suggesting new artists and tracks to listen to, though, it is occasionally hard to actually acquire said track or album. Other places have movie and tv show soundtracks, ListenBrainz recommendations and occasionally an actual radio station…

For the most part, I’ve moved away from pirating music and audiobooks as it’s generally pretty easy to find an above-board source that is either DRM free or can be cracked easily. When I do pirate something for whatever reason, I’ll usually go back later and purchase a copy. I would rather support the artists since I usually have the means at present and most of the artists I’m into aren’t really all that big. I really wish that ebooks, tv shows and movies would get the damned hint and do the same…

My routine for that is about what you would expect, Coffee, listen to the track, Research it, Manually fill out as much of the tag as I can, upload to MusicBrainz, Repeat.

Each album takes an hour or two. Faster if I can find a page somewhere with the whole album listing, preferably including the names of everyone involved with the album.

There isn’t an easier way that I’ve found.

Every few days I’ll have Picard rescan the collection in the unlikely event someone else has also worked on some of the tracks I’m working on. It does happen, not very often, but it does happen.

Picard can help you sort through most of it. It can identify most things even without tags. Just be careful and check everything it wants to do before letting it do its thing.

It’s more an organization thing.

The desktops themselves persist however I have it set to reset to empty desktops on boot. There is an option in KDE settings to automatically restore previously open applications when you boot up, but my workflow is never the same from project to project.

I’m not sure anymore which is the default behavior. I think I remember having to change the setting at some point and that’s how I know it exists.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a clean install, but I think the only thing I do to KDE is install Yakuake and set up 4 virtual desktops. Very handy when I’m working on my more involved projects.

For the average home desktop/laptop user, you probably don’t need it. It won’t hurt, but unless you’re really downloading and executing random files off the internet, it won’t do much.

If you run a server that is publicly available on the internet that allows folks to upload files to it, then you will almost certainly want it.

Streaming is awesome, but I’ve stopped paying for streaming in most cases. Everything has gotten too expensive. When I run out of storage, I’ll start culling.

I haven’t backed up or collected movies or tv shows in a long while. Not much they’ve put out in the last ten years has been interesting to me. Music on the other hand… Lot good music has been put out recently and I’ll either buy the CD or if I have to, purchase a download. Either way, it’s going to be streaming from my server.

Degradation of privacy and security are not on or off switches, but rather a sliding scale dependent on your actions and choices.

What are you trying to protect and from whom?

What are the probable attack vectors?

What conveniences are you will to give up?

To prevent online services ( like google and facebook) from knowing who you are you have to completely disconnect from them and their networks.

Tails when used in combination with a VPN is secure, but only until the service you are trying to protect your privacy from put together that you are using them (usually by you logging into an account with them ).

When I was younger, privacy was something we were less concerned about. We were more concerned with preventing our systems from being hacked. Folks liked to say that the only secure computer was one that was locked in a solid concrete bunker on the dark side of the moon, with no data connection to the rest of the universe, and even then there would be some fool out there with a space suit and a jack hammer trying to get into it.

The only formal training I had was 20 years ago in high school when I took a pair of A+ and Networking certification electives. At the time I wanted to get into Systems Administration as a career, but no one was hiring when I graduated. Went into trucking instead.

20 years on though, I don’t really consider selfhosting a hobby, but rather the most cost effective way to achieve whatever I’m trying to accomplish for my family or myself. SAAS and subscriptions have kinda gotten out of hand, so I’ve “voted with my wallet” and just done them myself.

Mostly. I pay for email. That was a pain in the ass.

Do I still enjoy it, sure. But that’s has become secondary as my objectives have shifted over the years.

Essentially, it’s bittorrent under the hood. IP addresses are public to others watching the stream at the same time.

Depending on where you are, I would turn on your VPN before clicking that link.

There are quite a few in the US. Two off the top of my head are Slant3d and PCBWay. With all of them though, you may have to do some final post processing depending on what you are printing. 3d printing services just print the item, they don’t do much beyond that.

Pretty much, but I keep getting burned by “free” and sometimes non-free online services. It’s a large part of why I self host the things I do.

And alot of folks are still bitter about Google Reader being shut down.

Before my last printer died 5 years ago, I was getting good results with Hatchbox filament. Not sure about their current state, but they were the most reliable I had found at that time. Looks like they currently have one I would call navy blue.

My new printer is supposed to arrive today, so I’ll be going through the filament evaluation grind again soon.

I’m using NameCheap. I don’t recall them ever asking me to provide ID. They do have an api (didn’t know that till now) though I’m tired enough at the moment that I can’t make much sense of their documentation.

https://www.namecheap.com/support/api/methods/domains-dns/set-hosts/