If it wasn’t for Linux, these old computers would be useless. We need to remind them of that and not buy them for high prices. Beat them fucking prices down into a pulp. Your prices are too high you need to cut it. And not with baking soda but Common Sense. Don’t be a thot… Get these prices to drop
Have you looked at the price of these old dusty ass laptops online? Like, they want a fortune for them. I’m just gonna wait until they’re buried in Old Tech and then they eventually start selling them for cheap because I ain’t buying that. Orange pis are way too expensive and raspberry pis are just irresponsible. Peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys. All this capitalist innovation, but yet we can’t afford it. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
True dat! If you’re around Seattle check out RePC.
The magic words for ebay:
off lease thin client lot
love you!
If you only need a basic server, laptops are AMAZING.
- Full x86 software support
- On the rare occurrence you need to directly interface with it (as opposed to through a webgui on another machine) you have a built-in keyboard and monitor.
- They have a god-damned built-in UPS
Note that the battery will generally stop working after a long enough time turned on and powered via AC, but otherwise yeah.
I have a decade old lenovo yoga that still lasts like 40 minutes unplugged. Idunno how much a UPS that can supply a desktop for that long would cost, nor if that’s an embarrassingly short time, but it works well enough for me
UPS systems are generally configured for 90 minutes of operation, depending on the criticality of the system they’re connected to. The best ones are programable and will actually send graceful shutdown signals (when configured to do so) to your server cluster to prevent data loss that occurs during system blackouts. You can emulate this behavior on your laptop with a script that checks battery% every 10-15 minutes, sending a shutdown signal if it falls below a treshhold you set.
True. The best laptops are the ones that let you set a charge limit in the BIOS.
That depends on the age and quality of the laptop. It’s been a while since some started directly running off the cable when the battery is full.
Huh? If it can be used while it is charging - which is all laptops since forever - then it will run off the adapter while plugged in. Regardless of the battery state. You cannot charge a battery and discharge it at the same time - if it is charging then power must be coming from anything other then the battery. Epically with LiPo batteries which you cannot continue charging after they are full - doing so will cause them to burst into flames. So all LiPo charging circuits will cut off power to the cells once they reach a desired voltage - weather that is considered 100% (aka once it reaches 4.2V) or at a configurable lower amount.
Their comment was indicating that laptop batteries will be damaged if left plugged in constantly. Which is a thing that can happen with some laptops, and most old ones.
My comment was about how some modern laptops when left plugged in, will charge the battery and then start running directly from the wall-power once the battery is full. They bypass the charging once it is indicated to have a “full charge”.
will charge the battery and then start running directly from the wall-power once the battery is full. They bypass the charging once it is indicated to have a “full charge”.
That does not make sense. Batteries cannot be charged and discharged at the same time - they are either charging or discharging or neither. When a device is in use while it is plugged in the device is being run directly from wall power - and anything left if sent to charge the battery. The only devices that don’t do that is ones that power off while the charger is plugged in - which does not include any laptop that I have ever seen, generally just smaller devices.
Modern laptops have smarter controllers that can turn off charging before the battery is full or when other conditions are met. But none are able to draw power from the battery while the battery is being charged - that just does not make any sense.
Laptops run on “burst” computing profiles in a lot of engineering situations, occasionally this applies to both the thermal design (runaway heatsoak if used at full tilt) but also battery design. I’ve seen several machines that will dip into their battery in addition to the charger to boost performance and dump wattage into the chips beyond what would be available from the adapter alone. I don’t necessarily think it’s good design, but modern battery chems don’t really give a shit about up/down momentary charge cycles. Also the Chem they’re using is not LiPo based as that chemistry while allowing for significant amperage to be drawn, is not stable enough for a laptop that is generally expected not to ignite.
It’s too much power draw for me.
This. Even a cheap alibaba n100 would be way better on Power than pretty much any laptop.
Quick computation for Seattle, powering a typical laptop consuming 20W to run say an IoT server, 24/7 at 14 cents/kwh would cost about $25/year. A Pi 4 would be about 1/10th of that.
‼️
I once did some research & measurements about power consumption; my takeaway was that as soon as the screen is off any ol’ laptop (with the charger constantly attached) consumes pretty much the same amount of energy as a RasPi with identical storage attached.
I used a 2008 hp consumer laptop as a server between 2015 and 2021.
My napkin math is similar, although I do wonder about transcoding machines where the old one is using CPU vs newer solutions in the GPU.
Well Rpi is out of the question right away then right?
Lenovo thinkcentre tiny gang rise up!
I even use it as my daily driver (bumped RAM & storage), running Lemmy & Tenfingers plus all the usual jazz.
I will have to replace my old NAS one day because it’s super old, I’ll probably just chuck some drives into a think centre tower or something… I wonder how long time it will take before the electricity consumption would have made it cheaper to buy one of those increasingly expensive NASes…
Tenfingers needs to work on their SEO; I searched for exactly that and most of the first few results were 10fastfingers, which is exactly what came to my mind when I read your post! Even the first one that seemed to be what you’re referencing was about how to install it, rather than what I was trying to find: what it is.
Sounds like a nifty tool, I’ll have to investigate it. Thanks for introducing me to it.
For anyone who, like me, was unfamiliar but curious: https://www.tenfingers.org/introduction.html
Thank you, yes I (I’m the creator) have ironed out the last large potential known problem (a specific type of mitm attack) and have been a bit overwhelmed by ordinary life lately. I’m working on what you might hint at, a less technical introduction to tenfingers. Basically it works like a decentralised online file system where you give the reading rights (to anyone or a select few) how you see fit. FOSS, encrypted & so on, more info in the above link :-)
BTW don’t hesitate to hit me up if there are any questions!
Cheers
Hello! To be clear, first, this is all subjective. My opinion doesn’t mean much.
However, if you’re inclined to consider my opinion, the intro page was largely fine. Yes, it could be improved, but so could pretty much any intro/about page. I, an amateur, wouldn’t consider that my priority were I in your position.
The problem I had was that you didn’t show up when I searched for the exact name of your project. I have never done SEO so I can’t specifically suggest improvements in that regard … Except that your project name is fairly generic and not really related to the function of the software. Unless you get big, people are going to have trouble finding you. You should go for something more specific or at least unique.
Otherwise, as I said, at a glance your tool looks pretty cool. I wish you luck with it.
But your opinion does count! Thank you again.
This ten+ years project is coming to fruition, and I will have to switch gears away from dorky coding and, as you say, promoting the project. I’m a lousy promoter :-)
The name officially comes from the ten “fingers” holding your data (like when your PC is turned off, (*up to) ten others serve it), and unofficially from the reaction to five eyes (the spy thing Snowden uncovered). Finger in the eye sort of, as it circumvents the spying on people and data.
Time to promote I guess!
I personally hadn’t heard the ten fingers metaphor - it makes sense but I wasn’t familiar. I do know of the five eyes but likely wouldn’t have made the connection.
If you are taking my thoughts into consideration: no matter how meaningful your project name is, it doesn’t matter if it’s not unique. Now that I know what it means, I can appreciate it, but (until it gets big) I still need to look it up. If you called it something like “Avoid the Ten Fingers” or “Ten Fingers Privacy” it would be a lot easier to find (note that I don’t recommend either of those names, but you’re welcome to them if you find them palatable).
I’m thinking of “ungoogleable.” My best example of this used to be the band “The The” but I guess Google cottoned on to this because they’re the first result now.
Anyway, I’ve never done any promoting of any kind. Please do not take my advice as any kind of expertise. Good luck with your promoting!
When I think of Raspberry Pi, I think of physical computing and not a server for the use case, which can’t be replaced with a laptop.