Very admirable work, but I can’t help but feel like they are late to the game.

I work on those handhelds, and they’re all slowly dying. The onboard flash memory is starting to fail more often in older units, and even newer ones are prone to developing significant screen issues. Parts are mostly still available - but some, like the power boards, are getting harder to find.

It’s not as easy to swap the primary PCB as a Game Boy. And the chips are not off-the-shelf, so donor consoles are the only source of replacement chips.

This project looks fantastic, and I hope it succeeds. But the consoles themselves may be too old for this to have much impact.

Fair.

It does what I need, I’m satisfied with it, and I’m fine because it’s still an open source notepad and e-reader.

But if that’s a deal breaker for you, it’s totally valid.

I went with a Supernote.

It’s supposed to get Linux support at some point, and it has replaceable batteries. Plus, it works great as a e-ink notebook right now.

I know enough about electrics that I might be able to help, but I’m not a security system expert.

A lot of these old wired systems are basically continuity detectors. If someone breaks a window or opens a door, continuity breaks, and therefore an alarm sounds. It’s like flipping a switch from on to off. And the IR stuff is just ordinary motion detection, the technology is still really common today.

You might be able to do a variety of stuff with that, depending on exactly what’s installed and how technically adept you are.

If you can find the service or installation manual for your old panel, you can find out how it was wired up. Sometimes the patch panels are pretty basic, and you might be able to wire the connections into any number of things. Maybe a new alarm panel - or maybe a Raspberry Pi you can program to do different things when windows and doors open or close. For example, when continuity breaks on your front door, you can tell the system to turn on your indoor lights.

So yes, there’s a lot you can potentially do with it all. It all depends on how much work you want to put into it, and whether you can figure out how it’s all connected.

I have one Brilliant Schemer and one Beautiful Idiot, and I wouldn’t trade either of them ♥️

*turmeric

One thing to keep in mind about the terminal:

In Linux, many GUI tools are simply pretty interfaces for the terminal. That’s why folks tell you that you’ll need the terminal occasionally, no matter what: you might need to type in commands that don’t already have a friendly GUI.

The terminal isn’t that scary, though! Every big distro has a support community. And if you need to do something in the terminal? Someone else has definitely needed to do the same thing, so you won’t need to figure it out on your own.

I mostly use Bazzite in front of a big TV. When I first set up the computer, I needed to use the terminal to configure a couple of things related to network shares. Later, I used it to help specific devices wake up the computer from sleep. It’s been months since then, and I’m not sure I’ve needed the terminal for anything else.

Use it as an opportunity to learn how your computer works. It’s really satisfying to understand how things happen.

Final Fantasy

Eats where the locals eat, doesn’t ride the tuk-tuk

Oh, everything.

Got a $20m yacht? Sell it. Oh, youcre forced to sell it for $50k because nobody will give you more? That’s just the free market, clearly it’s only worth $50k.

Paid $75m to build your house? Well someone is offering you $175k and you’d better take it.

And you own a company worth $100m? No you don’t, it was already taken from you and turned into a worker-owned co-op.

After all the sales and seizures, you’ve got $23.1m in cash, and just 1m more in the bank? OK, dude, we cool.

I’d give all the billionaires the same choice:

(a) Give away everything except, say, 25 million.

(b) Guillotine.

Check thrift shops.

I’ve seen plenty of Chromebooks and older Windows laptops for $10-25.

MX is my preferred distro to put on them, though there are plenty of good, small distros.

Does it have to be on the Play Store?

I recently started using the Fossify Music Player. It’s on F-Droid.

Fark

As opposed to the kind made of actual hands?

There’s always Creality.

I don’t know that they’re good. But so far I haven’t seen anything about them being evil? I’m open to being wrong, though.

And now you see why they want to crash the economy.

TIL that my FDM printer should now be called FFF - because Stratasys owns the trademark of the term “FDM,” and has been known to abuse folks who try to use that term.

Coincidentally, Stratasys is also Israeli.

Let people have fun.

Ethics.