I like to do my video transcoding on cold winter days. That keeps it nice and warm under my desk.

That hardware still has plenty of power for basic use. It should be good for another 10 years running Linux.

Keep the firewall on dedicated hardware. You don’t want your whole network going down because you have to do some work on the server.

Look up the FCC ID of any ham radio. You will find that they are listed as a “Scanning Receiver”. It’s up to the operator to make sure it complies with FCC part 97 requirements.

I had an upgrade fail and completely break the install a long time ago. I haven’t tried a distribution upgrade since then. I just format and install a new distro every couple of years. It cleans out all the crap I end up with from 3rd party repositories and stuff I’ve compiled from source. I’m sure upgrades probably work a lot better now though.

I did have Arch running on one of my laptops for quite a while, but I quit using it after it started falling apart.

You would have to store the data on a USB 3 SSD to get usable performance. Don’t use WiFi, it will be way too slow. Even with gigabit ethernet, it will be slow with 8 people using it.

I’ve got a 16MB MMC card that I use as an offline backup for my password manager database. It’s old enough that it uses SLC flash, so I don’t have to worry about data retention time.

I use it as a modifier key for all of the shortcuts I create since nothing uses it by default.

Just use a mini PC and pirate everything. The amazon fire interface sucks anyways. Every streaming service is in a different app and you have to remember which app to use for each show.

There is Tiny Core Linux if you want something small like the original DSL.

There’s nothing wrong with using leaded solder, you just need to wash your hands after soldering. Many of the components made before RoHS will contain lead too.

Old capacitors may be no good. Electrolytic capacitors go bad with age. You can measure the leakage and ESR to see if they are still good. Any paper capacitors are going to be very leaky by now. If there are any oil filled capacitors from the 1970’s or earlier, they may contain PCB oil, which is very toxic.

You can get the normal version for $10 when it’s on sale. The new version will most likely break compatibility with mods. The only reason I still play it is because of mods.

You can use the 3040 to build an AllStar node.

I can’t wait for the AI bubble to burst.

6 GHz will be much more useful for WiFi than for cell networks. There is already a massive amount of bandwidth allocated to cell networks, but only a few 80 MHz channels for WiFi.

The cell carriers just don’t want to make use of their mm wave bands because the equipment is more expensive. The mm wave bands are perfect for cell use in high density areas because the short range allows for very effective frequency reuse.

About the only thing I would consider using QLC for is games since write speed doesn’t matter and they can just be downloaded again if they get corrupted.

What kills the batteries is keeping them at 100% charge all the time, especially when the laptop is hot. Some laptops do have the ability to limit the maximum charge. Setting the maximum charge to 60-80% when the laptop is going to be plugged in for a while will extend the battery life. It is necessary to occasionally do a full charge to keep the capacity sensor calibrated though.

The AI companies don’t deserve one single cent of government funding. If they run out of money because their product is not profitable and probably never will be, then they deserve to go under.

It could be useful if you need to load documents on a large number of flash drives to hand out for some event. It could also be used with a bunch of SDR dongles for monitoring a lot of different radio signals.

I would assume they have multiple USB controllers, so there would be a lot more bandwidth available than just using USB hubs with a normal PC.

I would use point to point wireless links between the buildings. Then connect an access point to the link to provide WiFi to the building. Something like the Omada EAP211 should work well for the link.