Thank you for these podcasts!

(18-04-2018, 11:22 AM)venam Wrote: I guess the best way, first way I can think of, to have nothing as a
burden would be to have no machine to begin with. To be not tied with a
machine at all. Let's say to boot from a USB or live distribution. You're
completely untied in that case. Or what about using a thin client.

Thin client and then a server which gives all the environment (SSH, X11
forwarding, drawterm... :P). Then you need a good connection, but that
is a great deal of device-independence!

Oops, but what about ties with the server which powers it? Then the
question comes again...

(18-04-2018, 11:22 AM)venam Wrote: But the real disadvantage now is that usually a lot of binaries are
architecture dependent (x86 x96_64 powerpc, etc..).

There could be a /arch/amd64 /arch/i386 /arch/armhf... and then an
export PATH=$PATH:/arch/$(uname -m)

(18-04-2018, 11:22 AM)venam Wrote: backups

No "backups". More like duplication, mirroring... Git is good at this, and
I keep my e-mail safe like that.

Git only store incremental changes, and in case you mess up a repository,
you can `git init` a new one, move the index/pack/objects files. After all,
with the maildir format, every mail is a text files, so git works very well.

(18-04-2018, 11:22 AM)venam Wrote: What to backup, how to backup, and how to deploy it.

Every time I use a new machine, I git clone everything on it. That acts as
a backup. Even if I wanted to delete my own data forever (password on
dotfiles...), I'd have a hard time doing so. Even with a hammer. :P
Text files are not very big, so that is possible.

(18-04-2018, 11:22 AM)venam Wrote: By second memory I mean an extension of your thoughts, thinking, and
physical brain memory. (resident memory but for human)

Interesting.

Let’s list all the places where I keep my memories as a personal example:

I'm thinking about making a wiki or notetaking system. Then I can forget
something, it would be easily available.

It seems that I mostly remember the path to access to things in internet than
making real bookmarks. But then if the path changes, I'm screwed.

Another approach is instead of storing links to documents, storing the actual
document. For whatever .ps, .pdf, .txt, it's easy. Then you can probably do
a full text search on your own machine. :P

(18-04-2018, 11:22 AM)venam Wrote: No, there’s nothing wrong with having your machine helping you remember
things. No, it doesn't make you machine dependent, on the opposite,
it helps considerably. My bet is that you’re already doing all that
I mentioned unconsciously.

Books have had this role before hard drives. Oh, so this is my grand parents
like their bookshelf this much? And the mere fact of saying "I want to
remember this so I put it in a safe place" make me remember that thing more
than any other with no effort. Maybe it acts as a signal to my brain to: "Store
this in a safe place" wherease "I'll remember it later" makes my memory filter
it out...

(18-04-2018, 11:22 AM)venam Wrote: list of whatever you have installed

My take on this is having a tiny (stupid) portable package manager that I can
use on all distros (besides Windows and *maybe* plan9) and have a build recipe
for all package I really care about (mail client, text editor, git, rsync, libressl...).
They get installed in ~/.local/{bin,lib,share/man}. Pretty weird? But hey, it works
and I can have packages for things that are rarely packaged (suckless tools).

(18-04-2018, 11:22 AM)venam Wrote: So that means having everything in your home, having a transportable home.

That might be taking things a little bit too far, as then you have configurations in
/etc, /usr/local/etc, /var, /home/username, /home/git, /root... But I do this, hehe.

(18-04-2018, 11:22 AM)venam Wrote: The script that sets everything up.

AKA poor man's puppet. :P