we do not know if rohit is already present here or not, for all i know, it could be you!

ideally do not send a hard drive, as shipping might corrupt data. if you do, please package it with good care - hard disk inside sponges inside softer thermocol insider harder thermocol inside cardboad. it is overkill, but hard drives really do not like to be shaken, and stuff in courier is often shook violently.

is it possible that he can use something like puppy linux like distros (essentially live usbs, where you can make a persistent partition and make changes)? that way you can prepare a usb, and maybe teach them how to plug the usb in, and change the boot order to include usb? it would be slow (for boot times, if you use some faster usb, that would help), but does not require any fancy operation requiring him to open his computer.

Or if opening the computer/laptop and installing ssd/hdd is within scope, then maybe you can prepare a ssd with complette install, and just ship that. give him additional video/text instructions on how to open a computer, and install it. (In case their system supports ssds, then I highly recommend ssds over hdd, as they do not require special packaging, would be much faster, and ssd installations are also easier(detachhing and reattaching sata ribbon is hard imo, where as with something like nvme ssd, it is very close to like plugging in usb, and then just screwing or something similar.)) If their system is old, and does not have nvme/u.2 connectors, i would still recommend ssd over hdd, then you would also have to procure (and ship) an extra enclosure (i think they are called caddys) to fit a ssd in a husk, which after closing looks like a harddisk and connects via sata. these steps are tad bit hard, but if it is within scope, then I do not think their is a better option.

on my laptop (specs wise - consider steam deck non oled, but worse graphics performance, 1080p screen (IPS)) - 5.3-6 Wh for 2x speed playback. for full hd playback 6-7 Wh. Idle power is much higher though 4.5 Wh, on my old laptop, video power consumption consumed similar power, but idle power was close to 2.5-3 Wh (in terms of specs, it had halve the number of cores, and a tn panel)

i would presume yes. you could run cinnamon wayland since early 2024 (iirc), but it was only experimental, so i would presume it might have become more stable since then.

yeah, they even worked on that this time (90+% of packages are now reproducible)

thank you. but i would prefer not to host stuff on google drive. but some other provider could work (as i said, i am willing to pay a reasonable amount).

So keep a backup. Torrents can be messy because they can be broken if there are no seeders.

If the content is static, then I’d recommend some older P2P filesharing like eD2K to keep one big zip/rar file backup shared among peers.

yes. content would be partially static. most files will not update, only new stuff will be added. and some files be updated.

i did not know syncting could have multiple masters. afaik, syncthing had a master-slave architecture, where a folder on a device is master, and another folder is slave (both can true simultaneously, a folder can be used both as source and sync). if there is another folder, it can be slave of prior 2, but not master, because then you can have conflicting results (which master to pick). do you possibly mean something like a pyramid/tree architecture, where a father nodes has 2 daughter node, and each daughter has 2 and so on. if so, that is even harder to setup (getting people to ask others if they will be their father/daughter cell. this also has problem if some node is out of sync (because of being offline or something), daughters and grand daughter will also not sync. A cyclic link list is also possible, but again chain can be broken. and this can not be a doubly linked list either (2 masters). or is there some other way?

cheating aside

that was just one case. I was stupid. Now I am not.

I did appreciate such archives and made use of them.

to share notes, PDFs, try old exams to prepare…

exactly why i never said no to anyone. it is the age old saying - we stand on shoulder of giants. I remember falling ill, not being able to attend classes, and missing stuff. but then some friend would lend their notes. drive imo is just for that.

some day you’ll graduate as well and life will move on for you.

I am graduating. That is why when i leave, i want to leave stuff in a functional state so they do not have to start a fresh. I did mention this in post, but i wrote a whole lot more than i should have, and i do not expect anyone to read all this.

ou’ll move far away, get a full-time job, maybe have new hobbies or a family and time will come and you’ll stop supporting it as well. I’ve seen that all the time and most privately run things vanish sooner than later.

absolutely. as i said, individuals work for selfish reasons, and once i leave, i would not have a selfish reason anymore.

And I’d say if you’re the main/sole contributor of content, it’s questionable if this even survives long term. Unless people upload recent exams and material, the content will become obsolete after a few years.

yes. it does get obsolete. but our department is still relatively new (5th or 6th year since establishment) and hence, most course have not been taught by 2 or more profs. hence, much of it will stay relevant as long as professors stay.

My juniors have started bugging me again to get drive working again (new sem has started).

So you kind of need some community anyways.

I would have to pull some shit to form a sub division of department society. then i can get budget to either buy some drive subscription, or set something local, but set it behind some proxy, so it would appear not to be hosted in college (reverse vpn if you will)

i do not think syncting would scale well with ~200 people during exam seasons. Also, that would require everyone to download syncthing (practically impossible task)(i think syncthing android app is depreceated or something, and only forks are alive, no idea about ioss clients). Also, that would actually download stuff, all from one server, that would be expensive (fetching 1 file or 1 course worth of file is relatively cheaper as compared to fetching all course files. At that point, i might as well implement a private torrent.

there is another resource run by dev club, but not many of our department folks are in dev club. Also, their solution imo is worse. they techinically do have a index with search, but not a good one. also - very slooooooooooooow. Ans this is when their solution is smaller than mine (and their solution gets contribution from other departments as well).

I understand it would be better be done by a entity instead of a person, but problem is, entities would have to abide by institute rules. and then whole lot of problems from “why not possible” point 2 applies.

I could get some of my juniors to form a small group within department, but i do not think many of them do anything unless they are given a motive for it. and there is no real motive to maintain a good database other than helping others. entities can do “good things” but individuals often do it for selfish reasons. that was partially the case with me. I used to make notes, and then tons of messages from classmates to share notes, and got fed of sending stuff individually. then i started sending stuff in group chat, but not having a good way to search chat history meant people would not find it, and ask me again. so i made a drive. a course happens where people have to install software, but actual instructions are very hard - i get messages - i make scripts to install, or compile the end product and just ship it. You might think these are good deeds, but they are still selfish acts. I used to maintain a good directory structure anyway, might as well upload it.

it is meant to be editted by others. I do not think many others will be able to use cryptomator (afaik you would have to download the whole cryptomator folder, and then update). Still, thanks!

I would seriously consider this, and try to implement this weekend.

Like this your stuff is compliant and you allow folks to access a google drive for example that you or someone else can manage.

people would not differentiate (in future, i would not be the one to upload stuff, but newer gens would), so i would set everything to be uploaded to google. I would still try to maintain 2 offline backups in case google gets angry.

I use it to share with family that is not tech literate.

that is definitely reinforcing.

I would still try to find if i can host directly in campus, and not google or any 3rd party at all.

thanks for the suggesion, but syncing is not the problem currently. I can use stuff like rsync, or rclone for drive providers. problem is where to sync to.

I could try these, but the problem is, I am graduating. I could set it up once, and maybe even give someone else (or myself) remote access to the hosting infra, but I would likely be less available to manage stuff.

Good dsolutions though. I could possibly try to make the latter solution work (managing nexcloud is relatively harder imo, and i have no idea how would i mount a encrypted google drive to it). It still feels like something only i would have to maintain, but if I can get it in a setup and forget stage (or like a annual maintainence), then I could consider it.

the only problem now is money. I would have to use vps for this kinda stuff. the sbc + ssd idea was something i had proposed to a junior. but hosting anything in college premises with college internet would have to “techinically comply with copyright rules”. if it was a git like solution or torrent like, even administrators would not be able to access the stuff (comparable in tech literacy)(i am not talking about people who manage or internet infra, but copyright stuff, like our library department). With a drive like setup, they would be able to use it too.

Can i setup a password to access the stuff, like a simple password, common for all? then only student who have password be able to use it. maybe i can setup http authentication. but then again i would fall back to - it is getting too tough for them to use it.

I’m not aware of a solid centralized place to find high quality, multi-app color schemes like these.

maybe, we should make a lemmy community, with all color themes, and something like 1 post for 1 color theme. in the comments, we can add various places (or ways) you can use/install them, and maybe a weekly/monthly post, to rank the best themes of the months (rnaking all existing posts by activity in last x amount of time).

i have access through university. no fancy stuff. my uni subscribes to must research publications (most unis do)

I am sending it to you in a dm (or to anyone else too if you ask)

He seems overly dramatic about it. and some of the things are factually incorrect. for example, he says we functionally do the same things, but we do not, we essentially now run much more complex software in browsers. the best way that i can put it, is, browsers are practically virtual machines, which run softwate like word processors and meetings. I am not encouraging anything here, I myself am the kind of guy who refuses to use web applications, but I understand why people use them. in the broll, there was some example of a few tabs open, and only 2 gigs of memory usage. not sure exactly how old that clip is, but things have changed, many for better. for example, your browsers ususally limit memory usage to half of total available (be it 4 gig, or 8 gig or 16 gig (tthere are now some better/finer things related to exact limit, but lets not go there)), and if you have larger amount of ram available, your browser caches more (save future cpu/gpu cycles). Also, we now have better sandboxing and better isolation of tabs, which results in duplication of assets, but better security. you can still do some manual tweaking (i do, for example, disable js by default, or instead of per tab isolation, i have per site instace, which is less secure, but more efficient, plenty more), nobody stops you from doing that.

I do get the hatred for cloud shift. I dislike it too, and maintain offline stuff. but that has nothing to do with hardware performance decreasing. if anything, it would lead to less memory/storage required, as most of compute will be done in server. you would have lighter machines, with just display and inputs. and this was the exact model of computing 40yrs ago, servers/mainframes and weaker terminals.

if you want to complain about stuff, you can complain about excess use of js, or writing desktop stuff in js (this while is worse than using some compiled languages, it is not that bad), or about the amount of things that now want your attention. you can rant about bad tech practices, but not, about comparing a modern web + video editing, as opposed to older static sites