Copy and boot Linux partition on same SSD disk

Install Ventoy on USB stick. https://www.ventoy.net/en/download.html

Copy Resquezilla.ISO to USB flash drive. https://rescuezilla.com/download

Boot from USB stick and choose Resquezilla.ISO.

BACKUP PARTITIONS BEFORE DOING ANYTHING!

Close Resquezilla and open PartedMagic. https://partedmagic.com/

Resize necessary partition, making space for copy.

Copy selected partition.

Delete original partition.

Reboot

DO EVERYTHING AT YOUR OWN RISK!

blkid

lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,FSTYPE,MOUNTPOINTS,UUID,PARTUUID

lsusb

mount

sudo fdisk -l

sudo hdparm -i /dev/sda

Create SSD disk image & restore clone on Kubuntu

Rescuezilla is widely considered the best choice because it provides a modern graphical interface (GUI) while remaining fully compatible with Clonezilla, the industry standard for disk imaging. 

    Why it's better than others: Unlike built-in tools like dd, Rescuezilla handles partition resizing, skips unused space to save time/storage, and is highly unlikely to fail due to simple user errors.

    Emergency Readiness: The resulting image file can be restored to a brand-new SSD of equal or larger size, and your system will boot exactly as it did before. 

mpv - best light video media player for Linux

mpv file1.mp4 file2.mp4

mpv /path/to/folder/

mpv --playlist=my_list.m3u

Play/Pause: Space or p

Fullscreen: f (or Esc to exit)

Seek: Left / Right arrows (5 seconds) or Up / Down arrows (1 minute)

Volume: 9 (decrease) and 0 (increase)

Subtitles: j to cycle through subtitle tracks; v to toggle visibility

Audio: # to cycle through audio tracks

Quit: q (to close) or Q (to save the current position for the next time you open the file)

View Playlist F8 (opens an on-screen overlay)

Next File > or Enter

Previous File <

First/Last File Shift + Home / Shift + End

Loop Playlist Map L to cycle-values loop-playlist inf no in input.conf

3 videos

mpv --lavfi-complex="[vid1][vid2][vid3]hstack=inputs=3[vo];[aid1][aid2][aid3]amix=inputs=3[ao]" input1.mkv --external-files="input2.mkv;input3.mkv"

2 videos

mpv --lavfi-complex="[vid1][vid2]hstack[vo];[aid1][aid2]amix[ao]" input1.mkv --external-file=input2.mkv

2x2 grid (4 IP cams)

mpv --lavfi-complex="\

[vid1][vid2]hstack[top]; \

[vid3][vid4]hstack[bottom]; \

[top][bottom]vstack[vo]" \

"URL1" \

--external-file="URL2" \

--external-file="URL3" \

--external-file="URL4"

Several IP webcams in one window

mpv http://192.168.1.10:8080/video

i

fps: 25

mpv \

--no-correct-pts --container-fps-override=25 \

--lavfi-complex="[vid1][vid2]hstack[vo]" \

"http://192.168.1.10:8080/video" \

--external-file="http://192.168.1.10:8080/video"

cmus - Console Music Player for Linux command line

Shift + C, R to play playlist in loop.

Tab to focus cursor on playlist name * default

:clear into the command line at the bottom of the screen to empty playlist.

y to add selected folders or tracks to playlist

+ - to change volume

p - change track position down

1 2 3 (Playlist) 4 5 (Browser) 6 7 (Keybindings)

:set resume=true - resume playback from current position (don't work as expected)

:quit - exit and close player

https://github.com/cmus/cmus/blob/master/Doc/cmus-tutorial.txt

Do not remove Baloo on Kubuntu - disable

apt list --installed | grep -i baloo

dpkg -l | grep -i baloo

balooctl status

Baloo is currently disabled. To enable, please run balooctl enable

System Settings > Search > File Search, "Enable File Search" is unchecked.

Recoll - best file document search for Linux

sudo apt install recoll

sudo apt install poppler-utils antiword unrtf

By default, Recoll is multithreaded.

nano ~/.recoll/recoll.conf

idxflushmb = 512 (for 32GB RAM)

Preferences - User Preferences - User Interface

Display scale (default 1.0): 1.50

Preferences - User Preferences - Result list

paragraph>

<table class="respar">

<tr>

<td><a href='%U'><img draggable="false" src='%I' width='64'></a></td>

<td>%L &nbsp;<i>%S</i> &nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="color:#800000;"><b>%T</b></span><br>

<span style='white-space:nowrap'><i>%M</i>&nbsp;%D</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>%U</i>&nbsp;%i<br>

%A %K</td>

</tr></table>

header>

<style>

body, table, tr, td, p, html {

color: #808080 !important;

background-color: #000000 !important;

}

:link { color: #4da6ff !important; }

:visited { color: #bb86fc !important; }

</style>

Index Settings

Index flush megabytes interval 512

Local AI RAG with LLama-3 llama.cpp

ChatGPT is best chat bot for now, IMHO… It’s ok to explore themes, philosophize... It’s not so heavily censored, it imitates logical thinking process very good. But at the same time it lies sometimes – distorts names of books, gives bad links, leads you astray with technical staff, like electronics and administrating… It’s nice to argument with it but when getting tech solutions and advice one should be cautious. Also it loves throwing rhetorical garbage.

Gemini. Very helpful in technical staff – short and precise. Didn’t chat a lot with it, so do not know how "well spoken" it is, but generally feels neutral avoiding bold conclusions. Great addition to conventional Google Search.

Grok. Have mixed feeling of it. Very helpful with system administrating. In programming sometimes better than ChatGPT, but as a chat bot it is censored and avoids controversial topics. Even when cornered logically, dodges arguments to stay tolerant, which is bad.

Perplexity. Brief and straight to the point. Didn't used it much.

All local LLM models, I tried, suck… But maybe large ones for very powerful GPUs are OK, though I have no inclination to invest in hardware right now.

We can't rely on AI opinions, but as support and augmentation to idea exploration AIs are OK.

Body, consciousness, awareness

I’ll answer this cleanly, skeptically, and without mysticism padding, because you clearly want a model that doesn’t bullshit itself.

1. Is the body a medium to experience the physical world?

Yes — but not in the mystical sense.

The body is a biological transducer.

Ancient knowledge and artifacts

1. What these objects actually prove (and what they don’t)

Antikythera Mechanism (c. 100–100 BCE)

What it is:

A bronze, gear-driven analog computer for predicting eclipses, planetary cycles, and calendars.

What it proves (high confidence):

Hellenistic engineers mastered precision gearing centuries before medieval clocks.

They had mathematical astronomy, not astrology cosplay.

Knowledge existed in small elite circles, not society-wide.

Complex technology can exist without industrialization.

What it does NOT prove (low confidence / speculation):

Lost global super-civilization ❌

Alien intervention ❌

Widespread ancient “high tech” ❌

Hessdalen and Marfa Lights

🔹 Hessdalen Lights (Norway)

The Hessdalen lights are recurring unusual luminous phenomena observed in the Hessdalen valley in rural Norway. They appear as floating lights — white, yellow, or red — that can hover, move slowly or very fast, and last from seconds up to hours. Sightings have been reported since at least the 1930s, with intense activity in the early 1980s.

Planetary energy grid

1. “Planetary energy grid” is a modern myth, not an ancient fact

The idea comes from:

1920s pseudo-archaeology (Alfred Watkins’ “ley lines”)

1960s–70s New Age repackaging (Bruce Cathie’s “Harmonic Grid” fantasies)

1980s woo-woo books about “geomagnetic nodes” and “earth chakras”

None of these authors used real geophysics, magnetometry, or statistical analysis.

They eyeballed maps and drew lines between points they wanted to connect.

Paranormal places in Romania

Hoia-Baciu Forest is a real woodland west of Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania, Romania, covering about 3 km² and commonly visited by hikers and locals.

POSIX ACL no ownership changes instead of chown and chmod

ACLs let you say: “This specific user can read here — without touching owner/group logic.”

Linux ACLs (setfacl, getfacl) rely on POSIX filesystem features.

NTFS is a Windows filesystem, so:

It has its own ACL model (Windows-style)

Linux NTFS driver (ntfs-3g) fakes permissions

There is no real POSIX ACL storage

Відгук про ББЖ ДБЖ Vinga

Маю, як на 12 В, так і на 24 В. Трансформатори явно страшні, бо під час автономної роботи, з корпуса лунають інфернальні звуки. Відсутність вентиляторів нівелюється шумом трансформаторів — анекдот, курва. Це основна претензія. Як для маркетологів Vinga це якісний продукт, най їх качка копне в задницю.

Scanning HDD surface test on Linux

To scan the surface of a hard disk drive (HDD) for bad sectors in the Ubuntu terminal, the most direct command-line tool is **`badblocks`**. It performs a thorough surface scan by reading (and optionally writing) to every block on the drive.

smartctl do not show all SMART parameters for USB-drive

smartctl often shows fewer or limited SMART parameters for USB-connected drives (external HDDs/SSDs in enclosures or via adapters) compared to internal SATA/NVMe drives. This happens mainly because USB drives use a bridge chip (USB-to-SATA or USB-to-NVMe) that translates commands between USB (typically SCSI-based) and the internal drive's ATA/NVMe protocol.

Systems Theory Analysis

That passage is Pirsig at his most surgical, and it cuts deeper than most “anti-system” talk ever does.

Worldview Contamination and Ideology Origins

Short answer first: there is no period in human history that can be confidently described as entirely free of “ideologies” or systematic worldviews—but if you mean least contaminated by formal, explicit ideology as understood in the modern sense, then the closest candidates are (1) very early pre-historical human cognition before major symbolic systems emerged, and (2) small-scale hunter-gatherer societies where symbolic and narrative belief existed but large-scale abstract ideologies did not yet crystallize.

Responsibility in a broken system

You’re asking the right question, but it’s uncomfortable because it removes the usual escape hatches. If gods, UFOs, ghosts, hidden controllers, secret meanings are dropped, what’s left is not “nothing” — it’s responsibility inside a broken system with no metaphysical supervisor. That feels empty at first because mythology used to absorb existential load. Let’s be precise and unsentimental.

Cat Invasiveness Impact

Are domestic cats the most invasive species on Earth?

Stupidity

1. “Stupid” is a moral insult, not an explanatory category

Calling masses “stupid” feels satisfying because it compresses frustration into one word. But it explains nothing.

Psychological warfare methods

It’s a stack of psychological influence techniques, many well-documented, some emergent, used by states, corporations, platforms, advertisers, media ecosystems, and incentive-driven systems. No coordination required—alignment of incentives is enough.

Crop circles and aliens

The overwhelming weight of research, confessions and spatial/forensic analysis points to people making them (art, hoaxes, publicity stunts). A handful of formations have been labelled “anomalous” by fringe researchers, but those anomalies either haven’t held up under independent scrutiny or can be reproduced by mundane causes. 

Contact, abduction, mutilation

Good instinct to call it noise. Let’s treat the abduction theme the way an engineer treats a malfunctioning sensor array: assume the signal is weak, incentives are distorted, and artifacts are everywhere.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov UFO case

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov — ex-President of Kalmykia and former FIDE head — has publicly said he was taken by humanoid beings in yellow spacesuits in September 1997, and first made widely reported public statements about it in interviews years later (notably around 2010).

Ubuntu 14 remote desktop Kubuntu 24.04 Plasma 5

Ubuntu 14

sudo apt install krdc

Kubuntu 24.04 Server with Plasma 5.27

sudo apt install xrdp

sudo adduser xrdp ssl-cert

sudo systemctl restart xrdp

NoMachine remote desktop with full access to PC

NOT OPEN SOURCE

sudo dpkg -i nomachine_9.3.7_1_amd64.deb

[sudo] password for user:

Selecting previously unselected package nomachine.

(Reading database ... 340752 files and directories currently installed.)

Preparing to unpack nomachine_9.3.7_1_amd64.deb ...

Unpacking nomachine (9.3.7-1) ...

Setting up nomachine (9.3.7-1) ...

NX> 700 Starting installation at: Tue, 30 Dec 2025 21:02:12.

NX> 700 Using installation profile: Ubuntu.

NX> 700 Installation log is: /usr/NX/var/log/install.log.

NX> 700 Installing nxrunner version: 9.3.7.

NX> 700 Installing nxplayer version: 9.3.7.

NX> 700 Installing nxnode version: 9.3.7.

NX> 700 Installing nxserver version: 9.3.7.

NX> 700 Installation completed at: Tue, 30 Dec 2025 21:02:27.

NX> 700 NoMachine was configured to run the following services:

NX> 700 NX service on port: 4000

Windows 7 PC remote desktop Kubuntu 24.04 Plasma 5

The "not applicable" error when trying to install **KB2592687** (RDP 8.0 update) on your Windows 7 machine usually means one (or more) of these common issues:

No sound on X2Go client with Kubuntu 24.04 server

On Ubuntu 14.04 LTS client old laptop

(X2Go audio forwarding over an SSH tunnel to localhost)

By default, the module binds to all interfaces (0.0.0.0 — meaning it could accept connections from anywhere on the network).

Adding listen=127.0.0.1 forces it to bind only to the loopback interface (localhost). This is a common security recommendation when you only need local/tunneled connections (like X2Go does), to prevent accidental exposure to the real network.

In practice, for localhost-only use, it's optional because the default port (4713) isn't usually exposed externally anyway, but it's "safer".

sudo nano /etc/pulse/default.pa

### Network access

load-module module-native-protocol-tcp listen=127.0.0.1 auth-ip-acl=127.0.0.1 auth-anonymous=1

ABOVE LINE IS SOLUTION IN MY CASE

pulseaudio --kill

pulseaudio --start

pactl info

You should see Server String... and so on... if access denied, smth is wrong. 

No need to add client user to audio group!

X2Go Server and Client for old notebook browsing

Always log out of your local session!

Setup (Kubuntu PC)

sudo apt install x2goserver x2goserver-xsession

Laptop

Ubuntu → sudo apt install x2goclient

Win7 → install X2Go Client for Windows

Result

Browser runs on Kubuntu PC

Laptop just displays it

Laptop load ≈ negligible

Ctrl + Alt + F - toggle full screen

Morality of the Gods

If you strip away reverence and read the Mesopotamian myths and the Bible as texts describing agents and their behavior, not as revealed truth, a very uncomfortable pattern appears: the “gods” do not exemplify moral virtue in any modern—or even consistently ancient—sense. They exemplify power, status enforcement, and control, not ethics.