I have been running Debian 13 for a while now, but I still had one system on Debian 12. Last week I upgraded it to version 13
Upgrading Debian to version 13.
Leave a reply
Tag Archives: computers
An external disk
After Rebuilding an old ThinkPad I have been doing more system upgrades again. The world has changed recently. Because of the AI boom the prices of RAM and SSD storage have greatly increased. However, at Free Geek Twin Cities I found a 3Tb (really 2.7TB) mechanical hard drive for a little over $30. Not as fast as an SSD, but probably OK with the older systems I use. This was an internal drive, so I bought an Inland drive enclosure from Micro Center with a USB 3.0 connector for another $30 or so.
Rebuilding an old ThinkPad
It has been several months since I last made a significant change to my computer configurations. This past week I rebuilt my old Lenovo ThinkPad X240.This is an old machine with 8GB RAM. I removed Windows 10 from it back in October. It cannot cleanly run Windows 11, but has no problem with Linux.
The Politics of Future Tech
These are notes from a panel at Capricon 46. Any mistakes here are mine, not the panelists’. I have amplified my notes with web links for further clarification. Here is the blurb from the convention program:
As the means of production falls into fewer and fewer hands and new technologies like GenAI arrive on our phones with unseen agendas and impacts, the value of thinking about the political dimensions of future tech grows. What political ramifications should we consider in our near future? How has SF commented on the politics of its futuristic technologies? Our panelists explore these and other political questions about the future we’re building now (and the future still to come).
Removing Windows 10
Microsoft support for Window 10 ended on October 14, except for those who are willing to jump through some additional hoops, which I am not. I found relatively cheap Windows 11 systems to replace the Windows 10 boxes my wife and oldest son had been using. My own two Windows 10 systems also had Ubuntu and Debian Linux installed, so I deleted Windows 10 from them. They are perfectly useable with Linux. I am writing this on one of them now.
Cory Doctorow on Apple, Big Tech, and Smaller Tech
Following up on Cory Doctorow on Apple, Doctorow has written again about Apple in Plenty of room at the bottom (of the tech stack), the key point being:
Apple’s security model works well. To the extent that Apple is both benevolent and competent, it makes products that are safe and reliable. But this model fails horribly, because any time Apple decides to trade off its customers’ privacy, safety, or utility for its own priorities, those customers are rendered defenseless by Apple’s total control:
GPS, AI, and the human mind
A few years ago I ran across some discussions of GPS:
- This Is Your Brain on GPS Navigation: Parts of the brain that are used to navigate and plan routes aren’t active when directions are fed to us.
- Why You Should Stop Using GPS Navigation
Now there are similar concernes about AI:
Installing Debian 13
Following up on Replacing an old HP computer for $35: Debian 13 is now out, so I deleted the Debian 12 installation on that machine and replaced it with a fresh installation of the new version. The first thing I did was download debian-13.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso and put it on a USB stick with Rufus. Installing from this failed, with a message that some obscure file was corrupt. I don’t know if this was a file on the iso or one that had been downloaded in the installation process. A second attempt also failed.
Replacing an old HP computer for $35
My backup desktop system, an old HP SFF box, failed. It was running Windows 10, Ubuntu 24.04, and Debian 12. Somehow it stopped booting correctly. GRUB would not show all the systems. My boot repair drive failed to fix it. I replaced the SATA SDD drive, but that did not help. So I replaced it with another SFF desktop for a cost of $35.
A laptop with Secure Boot and BitLocker
I recycled an old HP Laptop and replaced it with a Dell Latitude 7310, purchased from Repowered. 16GB RAM (can be upgraded to 32GB), 512GB NVMe drive, Windows 11 Pro. I configured Windows to my needs. Next, install Linux (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS)
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 