communism

Is there a daemon that will kill any processes using above a specified % of CPU? I'm having issues where a system is sometimes grinding to a halt due to high CPU usage. I'm not sure what process is doing it (can't htop as system is frozen); ideally I'd like a daemon that automatically kills processes using more than a given % of CPU, and then logs what process it was for me to look back on later. Alternatively something that just logs processes that use a given % of CPU so that I may look back on it after restarting the system.

The system is being used as a server so it's unattended a lot of the time; it's not a situation where I did something on the computer and then CPU usage went up.

Edit: Thanks to the comments pointing out it might be a memory leak instead of CPU usage that's the issue. I've set up earlyoom which seems to have diagnosed the problem as a clamd memory leak. I've been running clamd on the server for ages without problems so might be the result of an update; I've disabled it for now, and will keep monitoring the situation to see if earlyoom catches anything else, or if the problem keeps occurring I'll try some of the other tools people have suggested.

I'm going to be delivering an online intro to programming session to a non-technical crowd who will be "following along at home". Because it's online, I can't provide them with machines that are already set up with an appropriate development environment.

I'm familiar with Linuxes and BSDs but honestly have no idea how to get set up with programming stuff on Windows or macOS which presumably most of these people will use, so I need something I can easily instruct them on how to install, and has good cross-platform support so that a basic programming lesson will work on whatever OS the attendees are running. Remember they are non-technical so may need more guidance on installation, so it should be something that is easy to explain.

My ideas:

• C: surely every OS comes with a C compiler pre-installed? I know C code is more platform-specific, but for basic "intro to programming" programs it should be pretty much the same. I think it's a better language for teaching as you can teach them more about how the computer actually works, and can introduce them to concepts about memory and types that can be obscured by more high-level languages.

• Python: popular for teaching programming, for the reasons above I'd prefer not to use Python because using e.g. C allows me to teach them more about how the computer works. You could code in Python and never mention types for instance. Rmemeber this is only an intro session so we're not doing a full course. But Python is probably easy to install on a lot of OSes? And of course easy to program in too.

• Java: good cross-platform support, allows for teaching about types. Maybe a good compromise between the benefits outlined above for C and Python?

Any opinions?

Hey comrades. So I have started keeping a private journal to track and articulate my disjointed thoughts about the organising and groups I'm involved with. It's a directory of encrypted text files (currently just using vimcrypt but I could easily switch to something else) on a LUKS drive.

Obviously, it would be quite bad—both for my safety and the integrity of the groups the notes may concern—for the notes to get breached right now. However, I do think it would be valuable for revolutionaries in the future to be able to read the thoughts of someone who was involved in struggles potentially long past—it'd become a part of history, and perhaps could be used to help future communists improve upon the organising of the past.

I would want these notes to only be released after my death, so that there is no risk of incriminating me, and also only after they become irrelevant in the sense of the groups/events they concern are long past. The typical way to do this is a dead man's switch where you keep pressing some button every e.g. week, and if it doesn't get pressed for a week, your server publishes your secret documents.

The first problem with that setup is that relies on either the data being unencrypted, or I store the decryption keys on the server being used to store the encrypted data, which seems to defeat the purpose of the data being encrypted imo. I guess I could store the decryption keys separately and that also be subject to a dead man's switch but I'm just wary about the security implications of storing it at all, given the fact that I would have to use someone else's servers if I want it to be released a long time after my death rather than e.g. a week afterwards, when my own VPS may still be running.

The second problem is that digital dead man's switches assume that the individual in question isn't going to go to prison lol. It's almost certain I'll go to prison again at some point before I die (have already been locked up a few times in my short life), and it would be quite bad to have a bunch of potentially incriminating secret notes be released when I go to prison! I'm a lot more likely to be imprisoned alive than I am to die. I've thought of some ways to get around this—I could let a trusted person know about the switch and have them press it for me if I go to prison. Or, upon triggering the dead man's switch, instead of publishing things, it privately sends things to a trusted person, and that person is instructed to publish it if I'm dead and to discard it if I'm not. The prior problem about encryption still stands though.

As previously hinted at, I would want a significant delay between my death and the publishing of my notes, to minimise the risk to any groups or comrades implicated by the notes. So I think I would also have to store this on some big company or, maybe, a big non-profit organisation, that is reliable and unlikely to go down in X years, where X is however long I want to wait before things get released. So that brings further concerns about security if I have to entrust anything with a big tech company (and why would they host content by a dead person? They'd probably want to delete it to reclaim storage space; not like I'm paying them any money if I'm dead).

Given the first and third problems especially, I'm starting to think this isn't possible to do?

It's not the end of the world if I can't figure out a way to publish my notes. I don't mean to overblow my own importance in the struggle—I don't think these notes will be decisive or anything. But I think it would be nice to make them available—it would be nice if they could contribute something to the world, I guess, instead of just being me trying to sort my own thoughts about things I'm doing or experiencing. But obviously protecting the movement and my comrades comes first, and if I can't set something up that doesn't put them at risk, I won't bother.

Would appreciate people's thoughts. And perhaps if we figure something out, this might inspire other people to do similarly.

Edit: There's nothing in this post of use to my domestic police that they don't already know lol, chill. And I explicitly said that I don't intend to do anything unless I figure out a way to do it without endangering any of my comrades.

I have a server with a bunch of services just as Docker containers. I see that Proxmox is popular among the self-hosting community. I was wondering why?

I understand that running things in a VM provides better security than running them in a container. But is the difference so important given the relatively low risk that an exploit happens inside a container that leads to doing damage to the host machine?

There's also obviously the additional overhead of using Proxmox. It wouldn't be an issue for me as I should have enough resources to, say replace all my Docker containers with VMs. I'm more wondering if the security difference is so massive, or if there is another reason I'm missing why people use Proxmox.

Or am I misunderstanding how people use Proxmox? I was assuming people would use it like how you use Docker, i.e. different services get their own VM/container. If you have a different kind of setup I'd be interested in hearing it.

Edit: I would appreciate if people stop being pedantic and actually read the post. Obviously I am aware that you can run containers in VMs, or containers on bare metal alongside VMs. That's not what the question is and you know it.

President Trump dialed into “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning and revealed his newest and truest motivation for brokering an end to the war in Ukraine: He’s worried he might not get into heaven after he dies.

“I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” he explained. “I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”

lmao?

Title, I'm sick of online tech communities that clearly are casually of the opinion that women are stupider than men or stupid outright. Funny how the example of a tech incompetent person is always your grandma never your grandpa—have recently been seeing this archetypal person mutate into your mom now, not even your grandma. I know so many women my mom's generation who have been programming for decades... The assumption that anyone in online tech communities must be a guy because women are too stupid or uninterested in tech, etc.

The thing that annoys me the most is that these men don't think of themselves as anti-woke gamergaters or anything. They probably think of themselves as "progressive" #resist libs IME. It's sad that growing up I had to deal with the attitudes towards me being the only girl who chose to do IT classes at my school (and like, not to blow my own trumpet but clearly the most competent kid in the class by far too—I don't think that's too much of a brag considering I'm talking about a group of like 20 children) and nothing's changed when I'm in online communities of my own choosing as an adult years later.

It's so detached from reality when people think that misogyny is an oppression that's been "overcome" when clearly the majority of men still have as a base unchallenged assumption that women are stupider than men.

Your communities are only going to have fewer and fewer women over time because of these attitudes. And then the men in them will wonder why there's so few women in techy communities. Must be because our feeble female brains are too dumb to understand tech.

I had a bit of a look around and the food-related communities seem to either be a bit more specific or not just about recipe-sharing. Is there a community out there that's just for people to share recipes (whether ones they made themselves, or ones they found online and are recommending)?

The issue with Google's personalised search results is, imo:

1. Not only is it not opt-in, but you can't even opt out of it. Personalised search results should be opt-in and disabled by default.
2. The data kept on you is used to sell you ads
3. The data kept on you will be handed over to state entities fairly easily

Given those three problems, how feasible would it be to self-host a search engine that personalises your results to show you things that are more relevant to you? Avoiding issues 1 & 2 as you're self-hosting so presumably you have made the decisions around those two things. And issue 3 is improved as you can host it off-shore if you are concerned about your domestic state, and if you are legally compelled to hand over data, you can make the personal choice about whether or not to take the hit of the consequences of refusing, rather than with a big company who will obviously immediately comply and not attempt to fight it even on legal grounds.

A basic use-case example is, say you're a programmer and you look up ruby, you would want to get the first result as the programming language's website rather than the wikipedia page for the gemstone. You could just make the search query ruby programming language on any privacy-respecting search engine, but it's just a bit of QoL improvement to not have to think about the different ways an ambiguous search query like that could be interpreted.

Basically I have a lot of friends who self describe as bad at tech. It seems like a lot of learned helplessness and refusing to even listen to instructions because they've already told themselves they can't do it. But they would like to get better and do trust me. So I was trying to come up with some "tasks" to give them to help them gain confidence and to gain some basic skills as well.

I have zero qualifications in tech/computer stuff, and no professional background either, so I know that all this stuff can be self-taught.

I was thinking gaming-related stuff might be a good entry point: setting up a Minecraft server, installing mods for games, hacking your 3DS. These things boil down to following instructions so maybe it would help people learn that if you follow the documentation/guide you will get things done. It doesn't require much thinking or problem-solving, just following instructions.

Would like to hear what other people think and what "tasks" they suggest tech illiterate or tech-averse people try in order to build their confidence and gain some basic competence.

I've finally started having some free time lately and have been working through my Steam library, most of which is Windows games I'm playing with Proton.

I wanted to install some mods, and wanted a mod manager for this. Nexus Mods has Vortex, which is not available for Linux. In any case, running Windows games on Linux through Proton on Steam is fairly specific; the game files will be at certain locations on a Linux filesystem, not at the same locations as they would be on a Windows filesystem. So I think I would need software that has specifically been designed for this use-case (Windows games from Steam running on Proton).

Are there any such mod managers out there? What do other people do when playing games on Linux? I can't be the only person who wants to play video games with mods.

One example is bread. I was baking bread the other day, and obviously the cost of the ingredients I put in the loaf are less than the cost of buying a loaf at the supermarket, but that doesn't include the cost of putting the oven on.

Or dry beans vs canned beans; does the cost of boiling the beans actually bring the cost up to be equivalent to canned beans?

I know that everyone's energy costs are different so it's not possible for someone to do the calculations for you, but I've never bothered to do them for my own case because bills I get from the energy company just tell me how much I owe them for the month, not "you put the oven on for 30 minutes on the 17th of June and that cost you X". It sounds like a headache to try calculate how much I pay for energy per meal. But if someone else has done that calculation for themselves I'd be interested to read it and see how it works out. My intuition is that, in general, it's cheaper to make things yourself (e.g. bread or beans like above), but I couldn't say that for sure without calculating, which as I said seems like it would be a pain in the ass.