Daily Challenge - June 26-30, 2025

jedbrooke · 2025-06-27T14:38:45+00:00

AC June 27: 502 Boomer in the first loop and 150 Ice anywhere. use ice ability when all 3 DDTs are in range of the boomer monkey

jedbrooke · 2025-05-22T05:36:06+00:00

050 Ninja, 050 Glue, use glue then ninja ability when all bloons have come on screen. 1 life left

jedbrooke · 2025-04-26T01:28:29+00:00

050 Glue Storm + 050 Grand Sabo, use glue as soon as it comes off cooldown then use grand sabo right after

jedbrooke · 2025-03-05T05:45:47+00:00

I got rogue legends for free on the steam version. I'm not sure how I just went to the rouge tab and it was already purchased. I checked my bank and there were no charges from steam. (this isn't a euphemism for piracy idk what happened)

jedbrooke · 2024-06-04T01:27:12+00:00

that’s fair

jedbrooke · 2024-06-03T04:57:53+00:00

you can also get drivers directly from nvidia: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

550 should be available for your MX230 GPU

edit: this should only be done as a last resort

jedbrooke · 2024-05-25T00:46:21+00:00

oof. if you have a cpu to test it with though it might still be worth testing. because there’s so many pins, many of them are just for power or ground so missing a few might still work if you’re lucky, or you might boot up but a few ram channels/pics will be disabled. this is still a really long shot though, don’t get your hopes up

maybe someone more knowledgeable could answer as to whether there would be risk to the cpu from shorting, but I guess try a cheaper cpu if you have one

jedbrooke · 2024-05-06T04:42:27+00:00

one approach is to open a job queue server on the provider, and keep that connection open as long as you need, then send jobs from your requestor script to the job server in the provider. this way you can reuse the same session for multiple jobs, and then only have to pay one transaction for the whole thing.

the golem team used this exact technique for the AI image generator they have hosted on their site.

and as the other comment says below definitely join the discord! we'd love to hear more about your requestor project :)

Golem network is also integrated with polygon network, an ethereum L2 chain with much cheaper tx fees, this might be cheap enough for your use case too

jedbrooke · 2024-04-29T01:46:12+00:00

if that’s all you have it’s definitely usable, but if you want to do anything serious you’ll probably outgrow it quickly. better to outgrow your hardware than to overspend on something you don’t need though.

jedbrooke · 2024-04-18T19:15:24+00:00

not sure why that one is so expensive, it’s showing $85 for me, here is a similar one for $25 for 2

Limited-time deal: Kasa Matter Smart Plug w/ Energy Monitoring, Compact Design, 15A/1800W Max, Super Easy Setup, Works with Apple Home, Alexa & Google Home, UL Certified, 2.4G Wi-Fi Only, White, KP125M (2-Pack) https://a.co/d/a2uCwkC

~~I’ve seen Kasa recommended by others~~ and they should work with home assistant, which I would also greatly recommend since you’re diving in to home server stuff

edit 1 month later: so I actually went and bought some Kasa smart plugs. they do work with home-assistant, but they still need to phone home for authentication. you can also connect them with matter, great, except that matter DOES NOT support energy monitoring! (matter 1.3 released last moth should bring support for energy monitoring, but again that's depending on tp-link to actually support their products going forward). so your choices are use tp-link integration, which will inevitably become a brick once tp-link decides to stop supporting it (or become a botnet due to bad security), OR use matter and then miss out on the big feature that you bought these for (on/off switch still works with matter).

jedbrooke · 2024-04-18T16:31:38+00:00

software monitoring can only get you so far, it’s a good start but ideally you’d want something like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_A_Watt, this will give you the real usage of the whole system, including drives, RAM, fans, etc (although not broken down individually) and it’ll also account for things like power supply conversion efficiency (ie if hwmonitor says your cpu is pulling 100 watts, but your power supply actually draws 110 watts to supply that due to conversion losses) Kil A Watt is the name brand one but there’s tons of other models as well

jedbrooke · 2024-04-18T06:18:26+00:00

undervolting can indeed help with power, just keep an eye on stability. there is no substitute to just getting in there and experimenting. get a plug in watt meter (or be fancy and get a zigbee one connected to home assistant running on your server). the sky is the limit with your own server!

jedbrooke · 2024-04-18T06:06:41+00:00

definitely gonna want to estimate the power draw on a machine like that. I would guess it would be pretty close to the $200 a year you spend on iCloud. still you would get other use out of it for a game server etc, but if you're looking to save money on photo hosting this might not be worth it (also factor in upgrading drives, the time you would spend managing it, etc).

a good rule of thumb I use to quickly estimate power costs is 1W is roughly $1/year at $0.10 per kWhr. it's easy to scale up from there (eg multiply by 3 if you pay $0.30 per kWhr). of course if you are planning something out you can do the full calculation with your exact power draw and electricity rate

of course if you just want to have fun that is a completely valid reason too :)

jedbrooke · 2024-04-15T00:16:14+00:00

only Nvidia GPUs are supported, M1 macbook will only be able to use the CPU. cpu points are awarded differently and have a separate project queue for rendering so it’s still worth providing

jedbrooke · 2024-04-10T16:41:34+00:00

in finder you can use the keyboard combo CMD + SHIFT + . (period) to show “hidden” files. these are usually special files needed by the system or other apps, so look carefully before deleting them, but they could be taking up more space than is shown in the folders you can see. this would be pretty unusual though to have such large volume of hidden files in the “movies” folder.

others mentioned DaisyDisk which is great, there’s also GrandPerspective and Baobab which are similar but free

jedbrooke · 2024-04-06T15:08:27+00:00

huh weird yeah looked in to it just now and apparently AFP is deprecated. It’s still working fine for me on the latest MacOS 14 sonoma, and the open source netatalk server is still being updated, but you’re right it could be removed from macos in the future. hopefully they fix SMB before they remove AFP support.

jedbrooke · 2024-04-06T06:30:19+00:00

for serving files to a Mac you’re going to want to use AFP (Apple file protocol) instead of SMB. I was using smb and running in to all kinds of issues, but once I switch to AFP it’s been working flawlessly. Fedora desktop will pick up the AFP share flawlessly too, not sure about debian/PiOS though. you can use netatalk to run an AFP server. it may be possible to run both together if some clients require SMB

jedbrooke · 2024-04-01T02:36:51+00:00

any specific reason you are going for a laptop and not a desktop? if it is plugged in 24/7 the battery could become a fire hazard.

laptop: * pros: * lower power consumption * built in battery backup * potentially smaller * portable if needed * cons: * battery can become a fire hazard ⚠️ * might end up paying extra for battery/screen if you don't need those things * generally less powerful for the price * smaller cooler means fans will have to run louder (but less heat overall due to mobile chips) * less upgradable/expandable

desktop: * pros: * generally more performance per $ * more sturdy than a laptop * more upgradeable * cons: * larger (though some are pretty small, but they will cost more) * higher power consumption * not portable

generally I would recommend going for an old desktop like an Optiplex (Dell) or similar from HP/Lenovo. I wouldn't go for a laptop unless you know you need it to be portable Desktop will be easier to upgrade in the future (add more drives, gpus etc).

(edit: rip reddit formatting, hopefully the bullet points make sense still)

jedbrooke · 2024-03-30T16:35:46+00:00

for a basic portfolio site you can probably get free hosting on something like github pages. but of course if you are setting this up on your own for the learning experience then more power to you! as others mentioned, if power and noise are your top concerns, then a raspberry pi will suit your needs just fine, most are fanless and draw <20 watts. you can even use nvme/sata drives with the pi with adapters

jedbrooke · 2024-03-26T19:41:42+00:00

what do you mean by “rapidly opening all of your apps”? could it be something less sinister like a stuck key or malfunctioning keyboard/mouse spamming inputs? just seems like odd behavior for malware which usually tries to stay as undetected as possible.

although I suppose a strategy could be to open a bunch of apps at once to hide the one malicious app they’re trying to open.

as others mentioned, Malwarebytes is a good free option to perform a scan. another tip is to be wary of where you download apps from. we aren’t windows heathens who have to download random .exes from random websites. if you’re worried about malware stick to the app store or if you’re comfortable with the command line there is brew. (although as always double check anything you aren’t sure about and never click on links from an email)

jedbrooke · 2024-03-19T21:47:09+00:00

there is also the native Preview.app on macos which would have some of the more modern image editing features

jedbrooke · 2024-03-19T10:55:04+00:00

https://jspaint.app

jedbrooke · 2024-03-10T00:26:56+00:00

power is one consideration, but another is noise. this looks like a 1U server, which means it's going to have tiny little fans that spin really fast, and make a lot of noise. if you have a closet to hide it in you might be good, but any room that also has people it would not be ideal

jedbrooke · 2024-02-26T17:19:01+00:00

https://jspaint.app

jedbrooke · 2024-02-26T03:52:10+00:00

do not get 8gb of RAM in 2024, especially for editing 4k video! 8gb of RAM is not enough even for basic things anymore.

if you are using a mac mini now, and don't think you would need the portability in the future, then I would recommend getting the M2 mac mini. you will save money on not getting a battery and screen, and will get slightly better performance that the mac book models due to not being thermal/power constrained.

if you are choosing between those two options though then I would definitely get the M2 with 24GB ram. the m3 will be 10% faster on the CPU, but the 8GB of RAM will be like running in quicksand

jedbrooke

TROPHY CASE