I'm in the process of converting and consolidating all my home infra into a mono-compose, for the simple reason I don't want to fiddle with shit, I just want to set-and-forget. The joy of technology was in communications and experiences, not having to dive through abstraction layers to figure out why something was being fiddly. Containers promised to remove the fiddliness (as every virtualization advancement inevitably promises), and now I'm forced to either fiddle with Docker and its root security issues, fiddle with Podman and reconfiguring the OS for lower security so containers don't stop (or worse, converting compose to systemd files to make them services), or fiddle with Kubernetes to make things work with a myriad of ancillary services and CRDs for enterprises, not homelabs.

For two years now, there's been a pretty consistent campaign of love-letters for the BSDs that keep tugging at what I love about technology: that the whole point was to enable you to spend more time living, rather than wrangling what a computer does and how it does it. The concept of jails where I can just run software again, no abstractions needed, and trust it to not misbehave? Amazing, I want to learn more.

So yeah, in lieu of setting up the second NUC as a Debian HA node for Docker/QEMU failover, I think I'm going to slap FreeBSD on it and try porting my workloads to it via Jails. Worst case scenario, I learn something new; best case scenario, I finally get what I want and can finally catch up on my books, movies, shows, and music instead of constantly fiddling with why Plex or Jellyfin or my RSS Aggregator stopped functioning, again.

As for wired listening? My XM4s sound okay wired in, and at home I’ve got critical-listening kit already. Adding a USB-C cable to the Max is not appealing given that 3.5mm already exists, USB-C cables are heavier than analog audio wires, and more corps block USB ports in general or mess with them in ways that corrupts the audio stack.

Give me wireless CD-quality audio and I’ll be a happy dinosaur. Until then, I have zero reason to upgrade what I currently have.

https://abx.digitalfeed.net/

Am I some golden-eared savant? Heck nah. I still listen to electronic mixes in shitty YouTube audio, because a lot of it isn't mastered in CD quality anyhow; I also enjoy leaning back with a good CD rip of classic rock or orchestral jams on my HD800s or my B&W 684s. I like the different experiences these setups offer, but my preference is always for lossless just as a matter of preservation regardless of whether I can hear it or not.

Let folks enjoy what they like, how they like it.

If you compare a CD on a proper system with an MP3 on an iPod, you're really comparing Apples to oranges. Also depending on with which encoded the MP3 was created. The iTunes encoder for example was infamous for rather bad quality.

The original test that got me into the scene way back in the 00s was toggling between a CD player and my iPod on the same Hi-Fi setup, with different kinds of material to cover my tastes at the time. First it was done blindly by the store owner (so I couldn't see which was which), and then he let me take over to see for myself for a while.

I get the skepticism, really, and I'm not making claims that I'm some golden-eared savant (because I have medical confirmation I'm very much not, at least when it comes to audible speech). I am saying that for me specifically, I find the differences in the files on my equipment to generally be noticeable enough to warrant the increase in stored quality.

Would I recommend the HD800s to folks? Hell no, I bought those because I wanted them, Colorware paint job and all. That's the secret to most audiophile kit in my experience: we're all just paying for stuff we think looks and sounds cool, and that comes with a premium over function alone.

Tired of accumulating scar tissue and burn marks in the name of shareholder value.

“Ultra-low latency audio and Lossless Audio listening requires a wired USB‑C connection and compatible content from supported apps and services.”

So it doesn’t appear that lossless wireless is supported at all, even with Vision Pro.

But that's only with the Vision Pro, no?

I.e. very short and more or less consistent distance between transmitter and receiver.

Subjectively. Objectively, there's no audible difference between lossy and lossless (at usual bitrates).

Which excludes 90% of the populace by default, and thus I never bought into the whole audiophile hype anyway. Let folks enjoy what they like, on the equipment they like. I ain't here to judge, just share.

Thing is, like others have pointed out, relying solely on GHA is just not a great idea. If you're doing your own self-hosted runners you can effectively debug, then sure, that's not a bad idea necessarily, but using the GitHub runners?

Nope. Sorry, just not something I can trust on the free tier.

That being said, I do like the core concept (deploying the essentials to a plain-jane Debian instance - bare metal or virtual - and just bootstrapping via compose files and some form of push), and I'd like to see it refined more for homelab users, especially if you can guarantee some degree of security best practices with it (e.g., SELinux compatibility and/or auto-deploy tools like Wazuh).

I'll poke at it since I gotta blow away my Debian install anyway (went down a rabbit hole on GPU acceleration and Podman that has left it butchered far more than I would've liked to support), just give folks more options than GHA and focus more on essential services.

It's not just about giving people money (though we absolutely should), it's also about ensuring wealth pumps can't just vacuum up that money into the hands of the already wealthy - like the stimulus checks did during COVID, like tax subsidies for healthcare do, like tax breaks for employer-provided benefits contribute to.

It's reforming housing from investment asset into human right. It's detaching healthcare from employment as much as it's about negotiating with pharmaceutical companies on pricing and creating more public healthcare rather than outsource to private firms. It's rent controls on older housing stock to incentivize growing revenue through volume (more housing) instead of scarcity like we have now. It's levying taxes on higher-priced rentals and luxury housing stock to force investing in more affordable supplies. It's penalizing for-profit employers whose staff disproportionately rely on government subsidies to make ends meet, and taxing the shareholders for supporting such bad governance.

It's taxing wealth and assets properly, rather than capping rate increases to keep people in homes (and thus drive up values). It's cities who reward businesses whose staff take public transit and taxing those who rely on private vehicles. Lifting property tax caps so that taxation rates float with the market, and accepting that this will mean some folks will see foreclosures and others will see valuations plummet as the market corrects itself. Incentivizing longer leases from landlords by tying property tax increases to lease renewals (yearly renewals mean yearly appraisals), to encourage more community and investing in buildings.

It's expanding SNAP to everyone by default on raw foods only, and expanding access to cooking and nutrition courses so every adult can eat healthy meals. It's shrinking the work week to create more jobs, capping overtime instead of merely 1.5xing it, and raising minimum wages. It's also taxing the absolute shit out of executive compensation, especially on equities and securities. It's barring share buybacks other than those amounts that would give the company 51% control over its outstanding shares (or more), and replacing Capital Gains with Income Taxes. It's closing loopholes and shrinking the tax codes.

It's so much more than "UBI and we're fine". There is no silver bullet. Nothing is an "easy fix", and no single fix will make a meaningful impact on the whole. It's nothing short of a coordinated rejection of the status quo in favor of a more equitable future that balances the need for innovation and growth with the needs of the masses for basic sustenance, shelter, healthcare, education, and safety. It's a cessation of promoting business over all, and a return to balancing business with community, with family, with individuality.

It's a lot of fucking work, and anyone lounging in here nitpicking UBI specifically without considering the whole of the problem shows they're simply not ready to deal with problems of this scale.

Blocking the whole escalator at rush hour? “ONE SIDE, ASSHOLE” while someone pushes them aside and moves up.

Shoving past exiting riders on the T rather than letting them off first? “LET US EXIT, ASSHOLE” as they’re shoulder-checked.

SUV or Monster Truck in the compact car spaces? “CAN’T YOU READ, ASSHOLE” as the tiny car beside them deliberately flings their door open into their bodywork.

I love it. Fastest I’ve ever adapted to a new city thanks to the glut of direct feedback. Haven’t been called an asshole in a decade.

—-

Humor aside, yeah hi I am one of those people who thrive on the sort of direct feedback Crocker’s Rules permit, because context switching sucks and the “wind up” of flowery communication ratchets my OCD into outright anxiety as it tries to pick out every possible level of nuance, tone, intent, and outcome.

If I fucked up, man, just tell me how and show me how I can do better next time. That’s all I need. I don’t need a weighted blanket and hot tea’s worth of communication coziness, I just need actionable feedback so I can apologize, fix it, and get back to work.

The cops cannot be held accountable because the laws basically give them immunity. The politicians cannot be held accountable beyond being tossed out at the next election, because the laws otherwise give them immunity. The people operating the system cannot be held accountable, because the systems are marketed as authoritative despite being black boxes and lacking in transparency; they trusted the system just as they were told to, and thus cannot be held accountable.

And so when every human in the chain cannot be held accountable for these things, and the law prevents victims from receiving apologies, let alone recourse, then the tool and its maker is the only thing we can hold accountable. By deflecting blame away from the tools ("it wasn't AI, it was facial recognition"; "the human had to sign off on it"; "humans made the arrest, not machines"), you're protecting quite literally the only possible entity that could still potentially be held accountable: the dipshits making these stupid things and marketing them as superior and authoritative when compared to humans.

You want accountability? Start holding capital to account, and this shit falls away real fucking fast. Don't get lost in technical nuance over very real human issues.

If I am a cop in another jurisdiction and I see that in this case of error, the facial recognition company was held to account but not the police or municipality, I will be more likely to blindly trust the software assuming that they either patched it or will take responsibility.

We should demand accountability for both.

You forgot one: capital cannot be held accountable for making a tool used in a crime. It is a simple generalization of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), passed in 2005, which largely bars civil lawsuits against gun makers and sellers when their products are later used in crime.

The reason everyone rushes to defend the tool's use is because holding humans accountable would mean throwing these tools out entirely in most cases, due to internal human biases and a decline in basic critical and cognitive thinking skills. The marketing has been the same since the 80s: the tool is superior (until it isn't), the tool shall be trusted completely (until it fails), the tool cannot make mistakes (until it does).

If folks actually listened to the victims of this shit, companies like Flock and Palantir would be gutted and their founders barred from any sort of office of responsibility, at minimum. The fact so many deflect blame from the tool like the marketing manual demands shows they don't actually give a shit about the humans wrapped up in the harms, or the misuse and misappropriation of these tools by persons wholly unaccountable under the law, but only about defending a shiny thing they personally like.

The magical past where people had critical thinking skills never existed. We put a lot of trust in tools is because people are unfucking reliable. Hence why in most cases actual physical evidence does a far better job than witness testimony.

This said, people are lazy. It is one of our greatest and worst traits. When we are allowed to be lazy, especially with tools bad things happen.

For anyone who has been victimized by law enforcement or governments before, we’ve been warning about this shit for decades. About the lack of consequence for police brutality. The lack of consequence for LPR abuse. The lack of consequence for facial recognition failures and AI mismatches.

You need to understand that by using these systems correctly and holding yourself accountable, you are in the minority. Most people do not think that critically, and are all too happy to finger the computer when things go badly.

And until you accept that, and work to actually hold folks accountable instead of deflecting blame away from the tool, then this won’t actually change.

However, I hold to the opinion that if you are discussing actual reality, based on decades (if not the entire period post civil war, for near certainty) of historical examples and the current “majority” position of the US electorate: there is a nearly unqualified NO. We cannot, or will not, hold law enforcement accountable for even intentional, planned, and malicious conduct in a vast majority of cases. There is practically no accountability at all, and that’s just for thoroughly proven intentional conduct. Bad judgement, alleged mistakes, etc are even less able to result in any action.

The reality of the legislation and precedent ensure it. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Solid writeup. Definitely keeping in my personal notes.

Also though, we really need to destroy these things wholesale. If a local PD wants to run their own tech stack within their own boundaries using taxpayer money and operated by taxpayer citizens, then sure, I guess that's what the taxpayers want. This whole "private companies do the legwork of surveilling everybody and sell it piecemeal back to cops and private entities as a business" is flatly reprehensible and should be barred as a matter of law.

Fuck mass surveillance.

TLDR Hold your local government accountable, they work for you.

https://deflock.org/

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/list/?q=Flock

https://www.404media.co/tag/flock/

I hate these things and want them gone. They do not serve any practical purpose other than intimidation of minority groups and warrantless mass surveillance.

https://www.ryanohoro.com/post/spotting-flock-safety-s-falco...