GrimSleeper

I like Chrome Remote Desktop for ease of use and for the ability to get to all of my machines no matter where I am. Great when using Chromebooks, too.

They're not the cheapest. But they support most of the TLDs that anybody could want, they have reasonable policies, and they are big enough that I don't need to worry about them disappearing overnight. Those are all important things that I'm willing to pay for

Sumac is a surprisingly divisive ingredient. I am of the opinion that you can't have too much sumac.

But there also are people who can't stand it at all.

It's best to adjust it to personal preference. I have seen restaurants serve it on the side for that reason

I've seen more and more ISPs switching to carrier-grade NAT. That makes it really difficult to reach your VPN from anywhere on the internet.

If you don't have that problem, then yes, a small Wireguard instance on a Raspberry Pi works beautifully

ESP32 or Raspberry Pico, if you want something easy to use, reasonably feature full, easy to interface, inexpensive, and medium form factor.

ATTiny, if you are strapped for physical space and don't have anything super complicated to interface with. Also, really inexpensive. I like it for basic electronics projects where even a Pico would be overkill.

On the other extreme, if you need more complex software, then a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 is a great option. Fortunately, the supply situation for Raspberry Pi has been improving a bit, at last. Sometimes, it's nice to be able to use all sorts of high-level software libraries, and then you hit a limit with the ESP32s and Picos of this world.

You can also mix and match. A PiZero talking to a Pico is a great combo. A ESP32 and an ATTiny can also sometimes turn out to be the more pragmatic choice.

Oh, and if you need even more oomph, then I really like the Raspberry CM4. Lots of nice carrier boards to choose from. But that's really not a microcontroller, so might not fit OP's question.

There are plenty of other boards out there. But they frequently have poor support, or are released only for the vendor to immediately abandon them. Maybe fine for one-off projects, but I generally prefer to stick with designs that last for a couple of years. Much easier to support, if I need to revisit my project down the line.

If I don't need all the fancy modern features (snapshot, replication, ...) that modern file systems advertise, then XFS is my filesystem of choice. It's a very performant and reliable filesystem. If you already have a RAID controller that addresses your needs for replication, then this would be a great option.

But if you need those fun modern features, then you have to choose between BTRFS, ZFS or BcacheFS. I really wished that the author of that website had reached out to the BcacheFS developer(s) and asked for assistance. That's what we need to do if we want it to mature enough for general usage. And the failure sounds surprising considering the generally good reputation that it appears to have among early adopters.

I am really rooting for it here. But I also agree that I wouldn't (quite) use it in production just yet. My personal choice would likely be ZFS. But it's really hard to decide. All of the possible options have their pros and cons. ZFS can have performance issues in some situations, and it doesn't deal great with changing RAID configurations (e.g. adding/removing devices).

What percentage of flour did you use in your Tangzhong. Many recipes only use less than 5%. That's on the low end of what you would want. That's also the reason why you might have to go with a Yudane instead. It's basically the same thing, but Yudane is kept at lower hydration, allowing you to convert more of your flour.

You can go up to about 30%, but that might make the dough hard to handle. Somewhere around 15% to at most 20% is probably the sweet spot, if you want to use scalded flour as a form of natural dough conditioner. Look up "NovitaListyani" on YouTube. I don't necessarily agree with everything she says, but she certainly puts a lot of effort in backing up her recommendations with scientific research.

As for commercial conditioners, no I haven't used them myself. I have done some reading, and they seem to be a mixed bag and not universally useful for home bakers.

I was in Germany. That country can be infuriating with how, on the one hand, they are leading the world in all sorts of engineering and scientific endeavors -- and on the other hand, they are mind-bogglingly luddite. And it doesn't even make sense.

There is a deeply ingrained fear of anything Google, but everybody I know loves Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, despite that company having a lot more issues with sticking to EU data protection laws than Google has ever had.

Everybody keeps talking about digitization, but it's been the buzzword for 20+ years now, and instead of rolling out new technologies, everybody hires consultants for hundreds of millions of Euros in fees to recommend how to do old-school business processes using computers. That's how we end up with printed versions of PDF documents that have to be processed by data-entry employees.

The entire Western world had long since switched to FTTH or at least to digital cable, when Germany was still arguing whether they should prioritize VDSL. Fortunately, at least that issue has been put to rest since the pandemic. But it took way to long to get there.

Search engines are infuriatingly crippled. Instead of giving you search results, they have to link to other search engines first, if those exist. And where Google in the US can summarize the results in a box in the sidebar, the EU says this is anti-competitive. Users have to click through all the different results to collect the same information -- slowly. But at least they create clicks for the businesses.

I have previously had to wait three or four days for the OTA to show up on T-Mobile, when it was already available for download from the site.

Airy, fluffy dough always dries out quickly. There is only so much you can do about that.

Having said that, a Tangzhong/Yudane helps a lot with slowing down the retrogradation of starch.

There also are all sorts of commercial dough enhancers that purport to address retrogradation, but they are frequently not available to home bakers and they tend to have other effects on the dough which might be undesirable.

Another option would be to heat up the rolls right before eating them. You can even spray them with water first before doing so. Heat can temporarily alleviate retrogradation, but that's only a short-term fix and you can usually only do so once. Storing the rolls in the freezer is another option to delay the staling process. It doesn't extend the usable life indefinitely, but it can certainly get you a few weeks.

I believe both all of the video conferencing services (Zoom, Teams, Google, ...) are currently incompatible with German law, as far as allowing kids to use them. I don't remember the exact details, but I recall that it was actual some EU wide regulation that triggered this issue, but national laws don't always fully implement all EU laws. So, some countries might have been more relaxed. Also, some schools in Germany were initially more pragmatic and allowed the use of video conferencing.

But most of these programs got shut down by the authorities after making national news.

I didn't even expect that much. Video conferencing would have been awesome. But I was perfectly prepared to settle for email. Turns out, even that wasn't allowed in our school district

I tried to get insurance in Germany. I had to visit an agent in person. They downloaded a PDF file, printed it out, and filled it out by hand. He would then FAX it to the insurance company. Three days later, I get a four page letter from the insurance telling me to expect mail from them.

And another week or two later, they actually process the application. I whined to my friends just how stupid this process is, and they all told me that this is pretty typical and I really couldn't expect to just apply online and have a decision the same day