TLDR: In 2014, SSDs were unreliable but cool and new. They've become more reliable over the years, but going into 2024, they're showing a streak of unreliability again. I've had had an SSD fail, an enclosure fail, and an SSD+enclosure which seemed to break eachother.

The worst offenders are SanDisk, Western Digital, Samsung. Backblaze reports roughly confirm this. See their full stats page here.

I didn't even know Dell made SSDs, but BackBlaze reports Dell as the lowest failure rate.

I maintain an SSH bastion server for all my beloved VPSes. The server I host this blog on only accepts SSH connections from the IP of that bastion, and I keep that bastion hardened. It's a minimal Alpine install with nothing but an SSH server.

So I felt some dismay when I found the server got a score of F on sshaudit.com. I got an F! My bastion failed 2 of 5 host key tests, 4 of 9 key-exchange tests, and 7 of 10 MAC tests.

These are the steps I took. Although I'm on Alpine, I was able to cherry pick commands from the Debian-focused server guides hardening guides on sshaudit.com.

TLDR provided below the cut, with some script script to do the work for you.

TLDR: Here are things I like and can recommend.

• Pop! OS for a Linux distribution.
• Blender for 3D graphics.
• Python or Javascript (when my friends ask for a programming language they should learn).
• 1password for password managers.
• Signal for messaging.
• Obsidian for notetaking.
• Wirecutter and Rtings for product reviews (to replace Reddit.)
• OBS for screen recording and streaming.
• DaVinci Resolve for video editing.
• micro for an easy-to-use terminal editor... But also Helix.
• Fastmail + IWantMyName for personal email.

I've had friends ask me for recommendations for software. They ask me this because I am a hollow person who has spent too much of my life on the computer. I love when people ask me these questions, because my strong opinions on software are usually otherwise "offputting" and considered a "personality flaw".

All jokes aside, I wanted one place to chronicle recommendations I tend to make. In no particular order, here are some of my favorites.

I read and Consumed™️ a number of things the first half of 2023. Let me detail some of them:

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer helped me reconcile disillusionment and frustration I had with academic science, and to help me appreciate different philosophies of thought.
• The Magicians by Lev Grossman is a grounded examination of the fantasy genre within a well-fleshed fantasy world. If "Houlden Caulfield seeks Narnia but goes to Hogwarts" sounds interesting, then check this out.
• This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is a short story about star-crossed lovers from two advanced, warring, timeline-hopping scifi empires. I didn't like it that much, but it was 200 pages and fun to read.
• The Before Me podcast series is a well-constructed narrative built around interviews with the narrators mother, who arrived to America fleeing the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It's worth a listen.

TLDR: Set the following in your caddyfile for each site: header Permissions-Policy "interest-cohort=(),browsing-topics=()". This disable both the old FLoC and the new Topics.

Here is an abbreviated version of my Caddyfile, showing how I set the header directive in my Caddyfile for lynndotpy.dev:

lynndotpy.xyz {
  header {
    Permissions-Policy "interest-cohort=(),browsing-topics=()"
  }
}

To confirm the header is set, you can use a Firefox or Chrome's devtools, open the networking tab, and look for the Permissions-Policy response header. More context below the cut.