I’m beautiful and tough like a diamond…or beef jerky in a ball gown.

  • 29 Posts
  • 203 Comments
Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2025

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  • How does that work? Does YT pay out to creators based on the subscriber count alone? I’ve only ever heard “like and subscribe to help fund this channel” mentioned when the videos are monetized (e.g ads or sponsors).

    Or does PBS monetize their videos and uBlock just shields me from that?

    Not that I don’t want this to be true since it’s an easy way to help fund them, but I am curious how (or if) this works.



  • Here’s a write-up I read not too long ago and answers many of your questions, though the author is mostly concerned with getting data access going. Short answer is yes, most will “just work” provided you use the correct modes and configs.

    https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/using-4g-lte-wireless-modems-on-raspberry-pi/

    do linux apps working as contact list/dialer/SMS receiver/sender exist?

    Those all fall under what’s called the IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and is often problematic implementing in open source. If I recall, Ubuntu Touch has a (mostly?) working IMS implementation but I don’t recall if it’s universally functional or limited to specific devices/carriers. Some WWAN cards will allow calls/texts, but those are usually in “3G” mode which is rapidly disappearing as carriers switch to VoLTE or VoNR/Vo5G (which are basically just fancy VoIP).

    If you’re willing to forego traditional carrier voice/messaging, you can use any number of messaging apps that work on Linux and/or combine that with a 3rd party VoIP provider for PSTN calling/phone number and SMS/MMS. Just don’t expect to get RCS messaging going; even on Android proper, you’re limited to Google Messages only.



  • 130GB for the entire thing? And the pi doesn’t choke on indexing / searching it?

    That was my thought. I knew it couldn’t hold it in RAM but thought it would be doing crazy IO and limited by being on SD, but it seems to not be a problem. Like I said, I don’t know how ZIM does it, but it does it well. Must have some kind of index that lets it fast travel to the correct blocks or something. I dunno lol.

    how capable is the search engine (I assume it has one?)

    Yep, it has search. It’s…okay but kind of primitive. It’s not slow, and if you’re searching for something that’s fairly unique (as far as keywords go), it does well. But if you’re searching something like an acronym where it shows up as a regular word in other entries, it’s a lot more hit or miss.


  • Yep, and I love it.

    I’ve got a little Banana Pi M4 Zero (PiZero form factor but much more powerful and with 4 GB RAM) loaded up with, among other useful tools, Kiwix and the full Wikipedia dump. I just refreshed it with the 2026-02 full dump, so I’m caught up for the year. I’ve also got a lot of other offline docs loaded up (React, Bun, and the devdocs for several libraries I use) and it’s nice to have local copies of those instead of googling every time.

    Surprisingly, the full ~130 GB Wikipedia dump works fine on a regular Pi Zero 2 with 512 MB RAM. I don’t know how ZIM works but it does work very very well.



  • I’m in the same boat. Got all the equipment in for my whole house solar installation and will be re-routing circuits to the new panel as soon as I have time.

    I’ve got an Anker power station that should run my stack for about 4-4.5 hours by itself and can run it indefinitely while the sun is out while hooked into the PV panels. Those are (currently) independent from the new installation I’m about to start.

    My UPS’s are also LiFePO4 models and can add an additional ~45 minutes of uptime.












  • I get that it isn’t the same but when all you have is a garbage version of a memory, I’m not sure or really matters whether the representation is the original garbage or something that makes you feel less regret over not having something better.

    In my experience, the worse the photograph the better my memory of it. Probably because my mind is already used to filling in the blanks in the garbage version, so it’s constantly refreshing the memory in my mind to keep it vivid. YMMV obviously. I’m also not much of a shutterbug and prefer to commit moments to memory than try to fight with my phone to snap a photo I’ll probably never look at.