I’ve got a USB SSD that I can’t use, because I need to “unlock” it in a windows device first. I can’t even re-partition it in linux.

Is this Bitlocker FDE? Have you tried using Dislocker?

If that doesn’t work, I recommend building a gparted live USB. Once you’re up and the SSD is visible, create a new partition table

Complete this step with no other changes. This shouldn’t care if the partitions on the disk or encrypted, it will reset the partition table which will make the disk appear blank, as if it was never formatted. You should then be able to create any new partitions you want in the available space.

! THIS IS DESTRUCTIVE !

But if you couldn’t access the encrypted partition then the data was effectively destroyed already.

AI coding tools can do common, simple functions reasonably well, because there are lots of examples of those to steal from real programmers on the Internet. There is a large corpus of data to train with.

AI coding tools can’t do sophisticated, specific-case solutions very well, because there aren’t many examples of those for any given use case to steal from real programmers on the Internet. There is a small corpus of data to train with.

AI coding tools can’t solve new problems at all, because there are no examples of those to steal from real programmers on the Internet. There is no corpus of data to train with.

AI coding tools have already ingested all of the code available on the Internet to train with. There is no more new data to feed in. AI coding tools will not get substantially better than they are now. All of the theft that could be committed has been committed, which is why the AI development companies are attempting to feed generated training material into their models. Every review of this shows that it makes the output from generative models worse rather than better.

Programming is not about writing code. That is what a manager thinks.
Programming is about solving problems. Generative AI doesn’t think, so it cannot solve problems. All it can do is regurgitate material that it has previously ingested which is hopefully close-ish to the problem you’re trying to solve at the moment - material which was written by a real thinking human that solved that problem (or a similar one) at some point in the past.

If you patronize a generative AI system like Claude Code, you are paying into, participating in, and complicit in, the largest example of labor theft in history.

Everything old is new again.

birds of a feather

plug for somafm

Er, wouldn’t that also set the value of human life to $0?

I mean… do you know what community you’re in right now?

No no, the imperative “get six” overrides the previous “buy a gallon of milk” if the “they have eggs” condition is met.

“get six” implies x === 6 not x = x + 6, that would be “get six more”

The real problem is that “buy” was only specified in the first case. Because the conditional was met, he should get six gallons of milk but not buy them.

Surprising. Can’t imagine why.

Ugh, I don’t want to live in a tipping point in history.

Remember, RAID (or RAID-adjacent) is not a backup.

This. So much this. OP please listen to and understand this.

Even with full mirroring in RAID 1, it’s not a backup. Using the second drive as an independent backup would be so much better than RAID.

You SHOULD NOT do software RAID with hard drives in separate external USB enclosures.

There will be absolutely no practical benefit to this setup, and it will just create risk of transcription errors between the mirrored drives due to any kind of problems with the USB connections, plus traffic overhead as the drives constantly update their mirroring. You will kill your USB controller, and/or the IO boards in the enclosures. It will be needlessly slow and not very fault-tolerant.

If this hardware setup is really your best option, what you should do is use 1 of the drives as the active primary for the server, and push backups to the other drive (with a properly configured backup application, not RAID mirroring). That way each drive is fully independent from the other, and the backup drive is not dependent on anything else. This will give you the best possible redundancy with this hardware.

Which means it’s the US on one side an the rest of the world on the other

It won’t work out this way, no matter what happens.

1. Pacific Rim nations will probably stick with US interests over European interests, because the US is the only thing between them and China (at the moment). Europe doesn’t have the global presence or the interest to operate in the Pacific. This includes: Taiwan, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, etc. Even if the US is showing itself to be a less reliable partner, it is still not (yet) an active threat to their interests the way that China is.

2. Ukraine under Zelensky won’t just surrender to Russia and will probably tolerate a lot from the US in order to continue their defense efforts unless they are somehow offered EU membership/protection explicitly. I could see Ukraine breaking ties with the US if it meant joining the EU.

3. The above might give Trump the excuse to say openly that Ukraine “didn’t want peace” (via surrendering to Russia) and then declaring open support for Russia in the name of “peace”. Then it’s an out-and-out US-Russia partnership.

4. China will continue to pretend neutrality, continue to manipulate its rivals into destabilizing, continue using its neighbor countries to export its environmental disasters, and then invade Taiwan. If that doesn’t provoke direct conflict with the US, the rest of the Pacific Rim starts to look really vulnerable.

5. South America is… complicated. Obviously a lot of nations like The Dominican Republic and Colombia would side against the US with Venezuela. Argentina wouldn’t. Is Venezuela under direct US control/occupation at this point? Brazil is a founding member of BRICS, so they’re probably aligning with China and/or Russia, but they’ll probably stick to conflict avoidance as much as possible.

6. India might make some public statements of condemnation of imperialistic behavior to score political points, but that would be it. The only way they get involved in any conflict is if China is on the other side (or maybe Pakistan, but that’s more complicated).

7. Iran is in so much trouble right now with Tehran being completely out of water, and the internal economic strife. They’re still a power in the region, but not really in a position to influence things beyond their borders.

8. Canada won’t support US aggressive actions, but will also do almost anything to avoid direct conflict with the US. That’s a very difficult position which will produce confusing, noncommittal and seemingly self-contradictory actions and statements.

9. Africa…? No idea, really.

“I’m gonna make ya an offah ya can’t refuse”

the free market at work

Sure Jan.

Whatever you do, and whoever you end up working with, document document document. Take notes.

And I mean on paper, in a notebook, something that can’t crash or get accidentally deleted and doesn’t require electricity to operate.

You’re doing this for yourself, not for a boss, which means you can take the time to keep track of the details. This will be especially important for ongoing maintenance.

Write down a list of things you imagine having on your network, then classify them as essential vs. desired (needs and wants), then prioritize them.

As you buy hardware, write down the name, model and serial number and the price (so that you can list it on your renter’s/homeowner’s insurance). As you set up the devices, also add the MAC and assigned IP address(es) to each device description, and also list the specific services that are running on that device. If you buy something new that comes with a support contract, write down the information for that.

Draw a network diagram (it doesn’t have to be complicated or super professional, but visualizing the layout and connections between things is very helpful)

When you set up a service, write down what it’s for and what clients will have access to it. Write down the reference(s) you used. And then write down the login details. I don’t care what advice you’ve heard about writing down passwords, just do it in the notebook so that you can get back into the services you’ve set up. Six months from now when you need to log in to that background service to update the software you will have forgotten the password. If a person you don’t trust has physical access to your home network notebook, you have a much more serious problem than worrying about your router password.

Because they want step-by-step guidance and support, and design help, and long-term support, not just a few questions answered.

This is a job. The kind of work that IT consultants get paid for. A fair rate would be US$100/hr, minimum, for an independent contractor.

How is America relevant to OP?

obvious whataboutism is obvious