I think it’s still good to go with the HDD instead. You can always later get M.2 SSD with a USB enclosure if you run “busier” databases that will benefit from faster speeds. They’re small enough to dangle from USB ports.

When you go refurbished it’s always luck when it comes to any type of storage. My server’s root fs runs on an SSD that’s like 10 years old, yet I bought second hand hard drives that are 4 years old and they were broken beyond repair.

Make sure to backup your stuff regardless.

Welcome to the club!

The build sounds good, and yes a little bit overkill. I host way more on much older gear, comfortably. For “homelab” stuff I wouldn’t buy a Xeon like the other commenter said lmao, you’re not going to like your bills. That’s way too overkill as you’re mostly likely going to be memory-bound, not CPU-bound.

Just for reference, I have ~65 containers running and using ~8 GB RAM. I started with 8 GB and added another 8 GB to have a bigger buffer, and to try out new stuff from time to time.

In general, don’t worry about hardware too much, get what is within your budget to build up knowledge and skills. You will figure out what you need later down the line.

Also, I prefer Adguard Home over Pi Hole, and check out Vaultwarden, the community Rust version of Bitwarden as well.

I had a few shower thoughts today regarding this and remembered your thread. Might as well leave it here.

Teleology ascribes a purpose or and end to things, maybe to all things, but more often than not it is ascribed to some deity. The first is what my thoughts were about. As for the second, others have effort posted already so I won’t go into it. The second one also addresses elements of spirituality, which I think deserves a place in an imperfect world, and I don’t mean imperfect in a capitalist destruction kind of way, just in terms of mortality, disease, love and desires.

Anyhow, I think I’d consider teology ultimately harmful, especially when it comes organic things. SJ Gould and R Lewontin’s “Spandrels” is a good paper that challenges the crude or overly keen adaptationist’s stance towards ascribing functions and reason to body parts (but not the organism as a whole, whatever that may mean). They call them “just-so stories”, but is in fact random, or have no clear cut “reason” as to why such features emerged.

It’s inherently undialectical to stop at the seemingly most “whole” unit, and then over analyze so that everything beneath this level have assigned roles and functions to merely sustain this unit.

Of course, when it comes to cases where it’s a group consisting of smaller “organisms”, each good at doing specific tasks, then are they parts now, or organisms? What is their purpose? To die for their queen and hive? That sounds like just-so stories to me. They are coventions. Not teological ends.

If the organism as a self-contained concept breaks down, we can substitute worker ants and bees with somatic cells and other “sub”-something organisms. Their serving us seems like mutuality rather than because they have assigned purposes. If there are any purposes to be prescribed, as in physiology, it belongs as a dialectical moment, as a concrete object, but not as a permanent and static one.

This can be used for medicine, science, etc. However, to reify its very existence as serving a purpose would mean medicine and biology will one day be “completed” once all of the functions are filled in. To me that is very undialectical.

Relatedly, such an approach is also transphobic (?), as it priorities the goals and purposes of our body parts and amplifies their mechanisms that fulfill such goals. This is because they are reified in our textbooks and in our education, but our feelings and experiences are not factored in with the same priority (well, this is true in western healthcare at least, where treatment of illness is treatment of diseases, not of persons, which is very alienating). Due to our phenomenology being dumbed down for our physiology, healthcare that treats persons are nonexistent, only the dysfunction of said parts.

As for our own teleology, well, if what I’ve said checks out, then I don’t think we have a purpose or end.

I was going to suggest put.icu (seems like max 4GB) but their max expiry is 1 day. I found a list of privatebin instances here (it’s a pastebin but you can also attach files). From the table, you can select ones with file upload, but some of them have quite low file size limit. I was able to upload a 10 MB file over at https://privatebin.at.

While these institutions can be progressive and may seem to foster that “unlimited freeze peach”, they also function as businesses who want to attract as many intellectuals as possible with the hope of boosting their reputation.

As a whole, they form the intellegentsia that shape and steer our culture. I wouldn’t say they’re the sole dominating force of the cultural hegemon, but I think they play a very important role in manufacturing consent, under the guise of the scientific method ™. I don’t doubt the ability to find purity in any research program, but more often than not those that are directly applicable to society (so maybe not the string theory department) can be weaponized to influence public opinion. See how institutions influence the meat/factory farm industry, as an example.

Considering these elements, it isn’t suprising that academics who are dissenters against the status quo will likely have their career terminated (at least in the west). Take a look at David Miller in the UK.

Alongside the prestige and allure of many scientific journals, academics also talk of the “publish or perish” mentality. Now, I don’t know if this is still a strong sociological phenomena, but everyone I know with a PhD or doing one who want to pursue academia really submit to that belief.

There has also been frequent news of academic fraud, or exposé of academic journals being extremely careless with what they publish.

With all of this in mind (I’m sure I can think of more), the “image” I had of academia has also been shattered. I’ve always known it is imperfect, but it is not the safe haven it paints itself to be. With that being said, I know many academics who mainly teach and seldom publish and who are great people. Many modern Marxists whose works I enjoy reading on MR also have a position in academia. So it’s not all that bad I think.

Ah you caught me out on that one, I was recalling from memory. Everything still holds, but it’s actually US helping to detoxify the consequences of Agent Orange, support its victims, clearing out bombs, mines, etc. AND also recover and identify Vietnamese soldiers’ remains. They never paid reparations for the damage so I guess this is it.

What’s driving this involvement with the US?

International relations stuff is not just A is bad B is now friend. For Vietnam to get as much resources as it can while staying friendly and peaceful towards those that offer to help, it cannot always stir the history soup and make a big deal out of its painful past. Vietnam is more than just whatever came out of the US-Vietnam war.

I’m not sure I agree with the take that Vietnam favors US relations because China did bad things. It paints Vietnam as antagonizing US and China relations. While US-China relations are in fact poor, the reality is Vietnam is a much smaller country that seeks cooperation and as much help as it needs, and has no chance to point out this antagonism publicly.

Vietnamese being very warm and welcoming to visitors may skew their sentiment towards USians coming from the Wild West. The fact that y’all come at all is pretty cool, shows that the food is good and the landscape nice.

Vietnam also receives Chinese visitors, all the time and all day of the year. They show the same appreciation, but it is quite normalized. Both China and Vietnam relations also go a long way back, so there is less of an element of novelty, therefore less need to be humble and polite. China, after all, is like a (much) bigger brother.

“US better” is definitely not the sentiment when I ask Vietnamese this question. They admit China’s support is more appreciated and frankly, useful, but wishes to be less coupled to China. The US involvement is annoying to some, and appreciated by others. I don’t know if there is much heft to it other than friendly words on paper and in the press.

When Biden visited, Vietnam agreed to receive a lot of help and support in technological, scientific, and energy domain from the US, as well as help to (continue) undoing the mass destruction the US has caused in return for the bodies of US soldiers. I don’t think Vietnam has forgotten at all. The agreement is not because US is better. Sino-Vietnamese trade stands strong.

Here’s another element to the story. China borders Vietnam and thus it (under various names and governments) has history with Vietnam (also under various names and governments) that spans way back to before either were communist.

In Vietnam, it is taught in history classes at a primary level about conflicts and wars with China that last a total of a thousand years. Was this communist China? No, neither was it communist Vietnam. But is it still significant to the extent that it is historical knowledge that is taught in the main curriculum. Otherwise if we solely teach (joint North-South) communist Vietnam history you’d run out of content pretty quick as the country is so recently established.

I don’t know what or if at all communist Chinese history is taught in the curriculum. But yeah Chinese warlords did engage in a lot of wars and invasions with the warlords down south in Vietnam.

Now the Sino-Vietnamese war did happen. The sentiment was perhaps a feeling of betrayal and shock. Many understand why China might have invaded, including the involvement of Pol Pot.

But things have changed. I always say this: historical events are real events that happened but they don’t act as static backdrop to reduce present phenomenon to simple yes no causality. They are for personal remembrance and for future lessons. Both China and Vietnam have made strict plans to normalize relations in the early 90s. Here is a translated excerpt from a recent article on 45 years after the Sino-Vietnamese war:

With the spirit of “Putting the past aside, looking forward to the future”, we have built a bridge across the painful pit of war, working together to build an increasingly sustainable relationship between Vietnam and China!

It is more often discussed how terrible the Pol Pot government was during that time (they also killed and tortured many Vietnamese) and how necessary Vietnamese involvement was. There is also Cambodian-Vietnamese relations to sort out in this equation. While these wars are coupled in a way, modern treatments isolate them in order to rectify the relations individually with its neighbors.

Vietnam has also decided to move on with the US in a similar vein to how it did with China. But the sentiment is not the same. To contrast, here’s an excerpt from 2020 on 45 years after the US-Vietnam war:

The victory of Ho Chi Minh’s campaign marked a major turning point in the nation’s history, fully completing the goal of “Fighting the Americans out, fighting the puppets” as set out by President Ho Chi Minh; liberate all of South Vietnam, ending 21 years of national division, leading to the unity, independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Vietnam on land, airspace and sea; bringing our nation into a new era, the era of national independence and socialism throughout the entire Vietnamese Fatherland.

Conflicts in the South China Sea is a tricky one, but it’s not swept under the rug. China and Vietnam have sought to sort out naval and armed conflicts in the area. While it is somewhat of a stale issue by now, I think we just have to wait to see how they decide to settle/regulate it.

It’s not open source though.

I’m going to use local names since idk the translation for these things. You can copy paste into search engine and machine translate blogs for food places.

General tip: don’t bother too much about Michelin stars in Hanoi, especially in phố cổ, as all the restaurants in there all taste more or less the same. Otherwise you have to queue very long with other tourists. As always, eat where the locals eat.

Hanoi

(make sure to keep masks with you for walking along roads)

Electric buses available here.

Go see uncle Ho, I missed him last time I went to Hanoi. The mausoleum closes early (like 10:30) so you have to get up relatively early for that.

Go around the back of the mausoleum to see chùa một cột.

There are several national museums dotted around the centre, if you have time. Monday is a bad day for museums as most of them will close.

Massive government buildings/military areas in the centre as well. Lots of hammer and sickles everywhere.

Go to Lenin park to see a cool Lenin statue.

On Trúc Bạch lake, there is a cool war monument of John McCain being shot down and kept as POW. His plane landed there. Some USians actually pay respect at the monument even if it’s anti US lol.

Go to phố cổ, hồ gươm, văn miếu quốc tử giám.

Eat bún chả, phở hà nội, cơm rang, chè, bún gan, bánh cốm, xôi cốm, bún riêu, bánh cuốn. Honestly there’s so much food in Hanoi, explore around.

Ho Chi Minh

You will notice the difference from Hanoi. More lights, more people out, busier and more urban.

Museum by dinh độc lập.

Many parks in general where young people hang out, dance, play sports. If you skate, phố đi bộ is a good spot, even when busy.

There’s a big zoo, with a lot of greenery. Zoos are not my thing in general but if you’re bored and want to see cool birds and reptiles (they’ve got a lot of them funny birds at the moment to get them out of critical endangered status).

Several smaller museums by the zoo. You might spot a few US planes that were shot down on display.

There’s a city hall and opera house, they look very fr*nch and the latter looks bourgeoise as fuck.

I like walking around phố đi bộ and the city centre area to see what people are up to. Bùi viện is like a party street for tourists and I hate it.

There’s Saigon waterbus that takes you around the city via the river. It’s really nice.

Outside of the centre, there’s chợ lớn, which is a ‘chinatown’. Lots of pagodas and chinese cuisine.

There is so much food in general, both local and asian in general, you’d be overwhelmed. Worth trying: cơm tấm, bánh xèo, hủ tiếu nam vang, chả cá lã vọng, bánh canh, bún bò huế, gỏi cuốn, bánh pía.

In both places: If you drink coffee, please try out the cà phê phin there. It’s good black, with milk, hot, or cold. There are hundreds of cafes and most stay opened til late. Sit by a balcony and watch the streets and the people. The culture is very relaxed and laid back.

In both places, you can get around one area to the other via motorbike, and if you can’t ride one, there are many cheap uber-like taxi services for both types of vehicles. You gotta get the apps for that, a bit of a pain, but everyone switches between them to get good deals. Cycling might be an option but just be careful.

I’m still sad Agalloch disbanded.

I also like Dawn Ray’d, Wiegedood, Der Weg Einer Freiheit, Ulver.