I believe cycling and constantly discharging and charging a battery might be even worse than letting the built-in charge controller do its job and keep the charge. I’m not an expert on battery chemistry, though. All I can say, I’ve seen desktop replacements plugged in all the time and the battery at 100% and they go bad. Thinkpads and other laptops have configurable thresholds for quite some time now. And despite me using that for my last 2 laptops, the batteries still go bad eventually. It’s supposed to help, and batteries got better, but it’s a thing to factor in.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Or just the average sense of impending doom?

Yes, but there’s 2 sides to that story. It’s a free UPS and that’s really nice. But then I’ve seen old batteries degrade and swell. People call it the spicy pillow syndrome. And with two of my older devices, batteries got recalled by the manufacturer. So I’d advise against running these things 24/7 unattended. Either know what you’re doing or rip it out before it burns down the building. As a minimum that includes a location made of concrete or bricks and mortar and no burnable stuff in the vicinity. And regular checks on the state of the battery, maybe both visual inspections and whatever the mainboard reports.

I personally would advise against gsuite and office356 as well as it’s currently debated whether they can be used in accordance to the GDPR. That’s not stopping institutions and organizations… Both are very popular products, but I’d be cautious and not put any sensitive stuff or personal stuff or pictures there. And not hand out logins to other people, especially not minors.

I don’t think the BSA compare to the major German scouting associations. Different organization structure and substantially different ideology and activities. Also none of the big controversies surrounding the BSA. But I suppose idiots are everywhere, at least that’s my general life experience 😅 It is very unfortunate once they start to ruin things.

Idk. Really depends on what you put there. And Nextcloud does file sync. Even if the server becomes unavailable, you’d still have your directories and calendar on your devices. Just collaborating and uploading stuff won’t work.

And creativity and problem-solving are core scout skills, so I guess bulding that thing for no money would be an interesting exercise in that. Though you’re right. At some point you’ll have to think about maintainability and reliability. I guess that wouldn’t stop me from starting the project, but everyone has to decide for themselves.

(And yes, a proper VPS would be a preferrable solution for a multitude of reasons.)

Asking for a discount is a great idea. Some companies do this. And in rare occurences the boss is an old boy scout themselves and they’ll give you a 100% discount on some smaller things…

Good luck, though. I believe first-hand experience with living a self-determined life - including online services - aligns nicely with scout ideals. And trying to convey the media-literacy that allows people to make informed choices.

And I can see some benefits with having documents available to everyone, templates, and collaborate on the paperwork…

Glad to hear other groups in the area have success with Nextcloud… Another idea would be to somehow unite and share the hosting bill for a slightly bigger Nextcloud… But I still think the old laptop idea might be promising to get started… depending on the network situation in the building and whether you can configure port forwards and all the things that need to be done. Just make sure to have some kind of backup strategy if you put documents there. Can’t be too hard, as Nextcloud is made for syncing data… And I wouldn’t put personal information about kids there unless the admin knows what they’re doing. But there’s plenty other stuff to put there.

Given someone already pays for electricity and internet at the location, I’d say the cheapest option would be to ask all the members if someone has an old laptop to donate, maybe even with a broken display or whatever, main thing is it still somehow runs. Rip out the battery, Install Linux, Nextcloud (maybe Yunohost), and put it somewhere without public access. That’d be entirely for free, minus the work to set it up and maintain it.

My smaller VPS costs somewhere around 70€ a year, guess that could be worth it as well as long as it contributes something meaningful.

And be prepared to be disappointed, 99% of my scout group never used the selfhosted services I tried. I guess that’s somehow okay. They were focused on the real life activities and no one had any interest to do office work or remember logins… Was always the same 2 people who did paperwork and they didn’t need a cloud, so I scrapped it. Your story could be different, I’m not saying it needs to turn out that way.

I’d question the $100. Everytime I read a computer magazine and they tested super cheap projectors, they come with fake HD, abysmal color reproduction and I don’t think they have lasers in them. Better not buy a random one to watch movies.

How do other people handle different requirements? Do you have multiple TVs and projectors and a home cinema, or do you just watch the 8 'o clock news and the evening program while cooking dinner on 120" as well?

Lol. I suppose it’s a promising way to learn how someone thinks and reacts, see if they’re focused on solving issues or focused on drama… And how deep they are into Linux lore. And whether they understand it or parrot someone else’s talking points.

Idk. I rarely have long nerd discussions, but once I’m done with the latest Star Trek show, I occasionally ask people about their stance on SystemD, some instant messenger or whether we should stick to C99. And either we skip that, or maybe I’ll hear some interesting, unique perspective shaped by what they do.

And Linux has quite some pragmatic people as well, first of all Linus Torvalds himself, who has kind of a down-to-earth approach towards ideology.

I’ve not yet talked to a SystemD hater in real life, that seems to be more predominant between random people on the internet. And I myself prefer writing SystemD unit files over what I had to do before that was a thing.

Yeah, people stare if I hop on the commuter train with the the large one that fits camping gear and supplies for 2 weeks. And I don’t own anything in between.

People who carry it around and don’t just use it as a desktop replacement… With an open lid it doesn’t quite fit into my bag pack.

At least the Arch Wiki is always there for us…

And I think what people really want to avoid is the pre-installed operating system. That has all kinds of stuff in it and no one except the manufacturer knows what’s inside. And Google’s Play services are deeply embedded into the system and will leak lots of personal data and metadata or outright copy them to Google’s servers. For the regular user that means Google has all your pictures, 24/7 location data, your contacts… None of that is E2EE either. We don’t know what happens wit the data from all your contactless payments… It’s really a privacy nightmare. And I’d say security isn’t great either if 2 parties already have pretty much complete access to the device out of the box. They can wipe it, remote install or remove apps… Everything. They do offer secure boot, though…

Well, we’d be back to the 80s and I’d ask my parents about life back then. Online banking would cease to exist and I have to go to the bank teller’s window to get or transfer money, also shops probably fall back to cash only. I’d need to open and start my car with a key unless that kind of cryptography is still okay and it’s just phones… I’d plug my laptop and smartphone in with a network cable becase I’d be afraid the neighbours commit crimes with my Wifi… My employer might want to resort to paper instead of computers because there isn’t any authentication for the company’s data… I could cancel my Netflix and Spotify subscriptions because they’d either cease to exist, or I could just watch them without paying. I’d talk to my wife in the evening instead of arrange stuff via an instant messenger… I guess all of that is doable. People did it that way a while ago. It just needs restructuring of the entire economy, society and our lifes would lack most of the modern convenience. (And if it’s just phones and every other cryptography is fine, I’d just get rid of the thing and use my laptop or whatever is still allowed for everything.)

And since the question was about the gameplan… First thing, I’d invest all my money into copper and fibre optic companies immediately, because people will need to install A LOT of additional, direct cables between things.

Sure, I agree with this. In theory absolute privacy would be nice. But then there’s reality and the exceptions are there for a reason. But they’re also the cause for the issue here. No one could call for surveillance if it was absolute. The exceptions are the gateway. Politicians say we need to tackle crime and balance that, so we need mass surveillance to keep people under control. And that’s the point where things get complicated… Of course granting unlimited rights to commit crimes isn’t an option either, that impedes with my rights.

• Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. […]”

It’s not an absolute right, but cryptography and maths are well within. We have cryptography readily available here in Europe and I don’t think it’s an issue at all. And mind even in the 90s it was mostly fine to exchange the maths for cryptography here in Europe. We had PGP in the Linux repositories. That was US export law contradicting the Constitution. And hence the USA needed that court case and many European countries didn’t.

Lol. For once, contrary to the claim, this doesn’t sound like stepper music at all. And I guess all the programming is utterly unnecessary. At that point you could rip out the wires, throw away the driver you’re programming and just connect two wires from the motor to an amplifier. It’d do pretty much the same.
And is it just me or is that cheap AI narration in the video? I mean I don’t want to be negative. But I think this has exactly zero artistic value, doesn’t sound interesting (like a stepper motor or electric toothbrush does), and it’s a useless programming exercise when it could be done way easier and better without any of the limitations with samplerate and simultaneous sounds.