Kubernetes is much more complicated and powerful than Docker, and Docker Compose is more similar to the way you work directly with Kubernetes than it is to Helm, which adds in a templating system. Basically, from a Docker perspective, Helm allows you to configure your compose file, but not just by substituting variables. Helm can make structural changes such as completely adding or removing sections based on the variables used when loading the chart. The output of Helm is YAML, sort of like a compose file.

Kubernetes has a much more complicated system for describing workloads and their resources than Docker Compose, and it is extensible. For example, if you are running on AWS you can have Kubernetes attach EBS volumes to your pods, or if you’re on bare metal you might use LVM, and it’s not limited to things that Kubernetes natively understands like storage volumes: Cert Manager is a common piece of software that is deployed into Kubernetes that takes care of issuing and renewing TLS certificates for other software in Kubernetes.

I used to run Kubernetes at home with ArgoCD, but I’ve moved on to NixOS instead. NixOS is less powerful because it doesn’t have dynamic workload scheduling, but I don’t actually need dynamic workload scheduling or all the configuration necessary to facilitate dynamic workload scheduling in my house, and Nix is much nicer to work with than Helm’s gotmpl templating. Unless you like this kind of stuff or want to get into Kubernetes, you probably want to avoid it for running a few things on one host.

Helm is what is used for real world software deployments. It has its problems but it’s better than Docker Compose.

Just be careful with SD cards if you’re using SBCs. Home Assistant does a lot of writing and if your SD card can’t handle repeated writes you may suddenly lose everything. Keep backups to another device and have a replacement SD card ready if extended downtime is going to be a problem for you.

What is RentAHuman’s cut? This is a very expensive service to operate. If an LLM posts a request for somebody to go pick up a package, what happens if the package never existed? What happens if the human just says that it never existed and takes the money or even the money and the package? Somebody in the middle needs to be arbitrating between AI agents that are notorious for making things up or getting details wrong and humans that just want to make quick money. Nobody is going to send requests if the humans are randomly stealing and nobody is going to fulfill requests if sometimes the request is unsatisfiable and you don’t get paid.

I think this is an important feature for religiously observant Jews. There’s a loophole where you’re not allowed to use appliances or something, but if the appliance just happens to operate itself on a prearranged schedule then apparently that’s okay. In the manual it may be called Shabbat or Sabbath mode. Without a battery backup it adds next to no per-unit hardware cost if the device already has a cooking timer or automatic safety shutoff feature so it’s probably standard on most ovens and microwaves in markets that have Jewish customers. You may also notice this behavior with elevators that automatically travel on a schedule.

I have 1 podman container on NixOS because some obscure software has a packaging problem with ffmpeg and the NixOS maintainers removed it. docker: command not found

Quarto and Docusaurus are for documentation. You may be looking for a more general static site generator like 11ty.

He’s CEO of a large American company. Whether the company succeeds or fails, he’ll be left with more money than most people see in their life. It’s not make-or-break for him.

Claude says he’s sincerely sorry that users feel software quality isn’t a priority, probably.

Soon to be “previously banned.”

It’s not real consent if you’re forced to agree to use the product or if the terms allow the company to alter the terms.

You can get “smart” devices that do not sell your data, but they are less common and they can be hard to find when shopping. You may not get a choice about “smart” meters, but you may be able to obfuscate your electrical usage with batteries. However, if the batteries have an internet connection they’ll probably sell your data.

I don’t know what the plugin does but script to append an audio file to all audio files is possible to do cleanly in just three lines. Being able to write three lines doesn’t make something good at programming, and taking many more lines would make it bad at programming.

Giving up a peace prize to end a war sounds eligability for a new peace prize.

Yes. The problem with Iraq was that during the invasion and occupation there wasn’t enough looting. Obviously, stealing from the country will bring the citizens over to the American side and stabilize the country to avoid a drawn out, unwinnable war.

Many senior level “software engineers” are just tenured programmers and they’re managed by business people who don’t know software engineering either. One of the major benefits of using off the shelf software libraries is that they generally work as expected and have been through much more testing than something you just wrote, and often these libraries even receive free or cheap maintenance updates. You don’t want your developers wasting time reimplementing things and then wasting more time maintaining those reimplementations.

Getting the AI to write it is like mitigating the initial reimplementation cost by going to Fiver.

Wireguard normally runs with higher than root privileges as part of the kernel, outside of any container namespaces. If you’re running some sort of Wireguard administration service you might be able to restrict its capabilities, but that isn’t Wireguard. Most of my devices are running Wireguard managed by tailscaled running as root, and some are running additional, fixed Wireguard tunnels without a persistent management service.

Check the README for piper. It moved to https://github.com/OHF-Voice/piper1-gpl

Google Search being replaced by Gemini makes it easy for Google to have big AI numbers. Bing never got over its reputation of having bad result quality, and it’s only the default search engine on Windows PCs that don’t have Chrome or Firefox installed. My friend uses Windows and iOS and always sends me links to Gemini results, which normally are only slightly worse than “I’m feeling lucky.”