Faraz Kaleem Malik

Personal website for a Computer Science student at UofT

Update on last 2 posts | Faraz Kaleem Malik

Update on last 2 posts

November 07, 2024

A small update on the ongoing nature of my previous two posts

Update to the homelab

Fun fact: old gear breaks! Especially when you open it to do upgrades! This is what happened to my Netgear NAS as soon as I opened it to replace the probably decades-old fan with a silent Noctua. Disassembly required many different parts to be disconnected and unscrewed, so its anyone’s guess where the issue lies. I did remove the socketed RAM extraneously because I was interested about the specs, but at this point buying new RAM just to see if that’s the issue would be falling victim to the sunken-cost fallacy.

Instead, I went to this nice computer refurbisher on Jane street and bought an old Elitedesk to operate as both my storage and server (sorry Sesame Snaps server, you will be remembered in all your sweetness). It’s been going stable for over 6 months, a very capable machine indeed. This is my second machine I have bought from this shop, the first being the desktop I am writing this article on.

For further updates, I’ve LAN-ed up most of my network to get proper gigabit connections between all my machines, though the WAN is still restricted by my 100/10M Linksys router. I guess I know what part of my network I need to upgrade next.

Update to LineageOS

That project is basically dead. I used whatever flashing setup I had to just flash a stock Android ROM I got off the internet for my specific device. I’ve decided to stop fighting against my phone manufacturer for control over my phone and decided to just choose my hardware a bit more carefully next time. For all of its flaws, the Pinephone actually seems like a decent option right now, given that it can do exactly what I need it to and nothing more. And the keyboard case? Chef’s kiss.

The concept of a cyberdeck is really growing on me, and this seems like the cheapest method to achieve a pocketable version that also supports portable connection methods like LTE and cellular calling. Its been thrust into the public zeitgeist again thanks to a Youtube trend just how insanely easy it is for phone networks to triangulate your location just by your phone being on, so I’m happy there is at least one device that allows your to physically disable your modem via a dip switch should you want to.