I was thinking the same thing, that this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. I'm curious how far it will go.. if we'll get invite-only mesh networks with self-contained mini-internets and the like.
>My hairdresser knew all about it and had ordered a Mac mini.
Your hairdresser can't be a technical person because they're a hairdresser ?? I know a surgeon who writes FOSS software as a hobby. What does profession have to do with being technical or not? Most technical people are self taught anyway.
I know them very well, and they are not a coder, or a 'technical person' by a broad HN definition.
What I'm saying is that we are at the point where technology is so pervasive in our society, and the lure of AI so seductive, that many more people are excited to try things out than I might have expected.
I suppose it has similarities to the early to mid 1980s and the home computing revolution. Where many people thought they should have a computer at home, even if they were not sure what they'd do with it.
One reason to repurpose desktops is that you get a full ATX Motherboard with SATA ports!
If you are doing a DIY NAS with HDDs then you want real SATA ports. Or a well supported PCI card with SATA Ports, which you cant sensibly connect to a Laptop or micro PC. Sure, you might be able to use Thunderbolt to reliably hook up an external PCI chassis, but then you might as well buy a NAS at that point or use a full tower case with an ATX mobo!
Using an older Gaming PC you already have is actually a very good option for TrueNAS or OMV.
I took an older 10th Gen Intel Gaming PC we had, sold the core i9 CPU, and replaced it with an i7-10700T I found used on eBay.
I'm finding this setup to be better for my needs than various ex-lease Dell Micro PCs I've used in the past, mainly because of the reliability of the SATA ports.
I've found quality external Samsung T5 SSDs to be very reliable over USB with TrueNAS. But HDDs are a nightmare over USB for a NAS, in my experience.
I was hoping this might be the year that I can finally get rid of the spinning rust. But looks like AI data centres had other ideas! :-)
However, I will say that if you just want to run some virtualized Linux servers or similar, then ex-lease micro PCs are a fantastic deal and can be fun to setup and learn Proxmox and Truenas etc..
You can definitely get PCIe on some micro PCs. I have a Lenovo m920q that I use with a Mellanox NIC as my router.
You could certainly install a SAS or SATA controller, the issue would be having somewhere to mount the drives, and a way to power them. External SAS enclosures are not cheap.
As a solo dev, using LLMs for coding has made me a better programmer for sure!
I can ask an LLM for specific help with my codebase and it can explain things in context and provide actual concrete relevant examples that make sense to me.
Then I can ask again for explanations about idiomatic code patterns that aren't familiar for me.
Working on my own, I don't get that feedback and code review loop.
Working with new languages and techniques, or diving into someone else's legacy code base is no longer as daunting with an LLM to ask for help!
My work monitor is a 4K 27" from LG in 2015. I run it at 2x density, so everything's a bit larger than it would be on an Apple, but it's not as bad as this article's graphs would lead to to believe. I'd certainly rather have it than a less dense display.
The first sentence doesn’t: “ Since writing about Mac external displays in 2016, not much has changed.”
Quite a few Mac-oriented 5K and 6K displays have been released in the last few years. LG, Asus, Dell, Samsung, Benq, Viewsonic. Maybe some others as well.
Or maybe ask about local weather conditions and so on.
This to me is what a human adult with experience would do. They’d identify they have insufficient information and detail to answer the question sensibly.
Wired headphones and earbuds seem to be having a moment as well.
reply