Linus Media Group, the media production agency behind giant YouTube tech channels like Linus Tech Tips and Techquickie, just launched the LTT Screwdriver, a $69.99 ratcheting screwdriver geared for building PCs and general use.

And Linus Sebastian, the man behind it all, didn't hold any punches. In the Screwdriver launch video, he said:

There are loads of perfectly good screwdrivers. But this one? This one is the best.

…

I use yt-dlp to download videos off YouTube quite frequently. I'll use the videos as reference, and I often use it to grab the VOD for one of my livestreams, since there's no simpler way (I'm not going to dig through the bowel's of YouTube's UI to try to download one of my own videos...).

But I also can't handle the default .webm videos in all my video editing tools natively, and transcoding is annoying. So I've settled on the following yt-dlp command to first try to pull a native MP4 version off YouTube, and failing that, transcode to MP4 immediately after downloading:

An ode to the homelabber:

As a software developer, I never was a true sysadmin. I never pulled a server to replace a failed drive at 3 a.m. I never got to roll my little maintenance cart through a cold aisle, with hearing protection to keep my fragile eardrums from rupturing amidst a sea of 100+ dB screaming server fans...

That is, until I built my homelab. Now I can act like a sysadmin as I make sure my kids never have a moment of downtime while they're streaming their favorite episode of Odd Squad.

2023 Update: Ansible now has the ansible.builtin.deb822_repository module, which can add keys and repositories in one task. It's a little more complex than the old way, and requires Ansible 2.15 or later. See some common deb822_repository examples here, for example, the Jenkins tasks below can be consolidated (though the structure of the templated vars would need reworking):

- name: Add Jenkins repo using key from URL.
  ansible.builtin.deb822_repository:
    name: jenkins
    types: [deb]
    uris: "https://pkg.jenkins.io/debian-stable"
    components: [binary]
    signed_by: https://pkg.jenkins.io/debian-stable/jenkins.io-2023.key
    state: present
    enabled: true

For many packages, like Elasticsearch, Docker, or Jenkins, you need to install a trusted GPG key on your system before you can install from the official package repository.

During my most recent hospitalization, besides making a video about the IV pump, I was messing around with a Raspberry Pi 4G LTE router project I could stash in my hospital go-bag (I am hospitalized about 2.5x per year, on average).

I was testing out a new 4G LTE modem, a Sierra Wireless AirPrime EM7565, which is rated at Cat 12 and theoretically gets hundreds of megabits down. A huge improvement over my previous modem of choice, the Quectel EC25-A.

A few months ago someone told me about a new Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 cluster board, the DeskPi Super6c.

You may have heard of another Pi CM4 cluster board, the Turing Pi 2, but that board is not yet shipping. It had a very successful Kickstarter campaign, but production has been delayed due to parts shortages.

The Turing Pi 2 offers some unique features, like Jetson Nano compatibility, remote management, a fully managed Ethernet switch (capable of VLAN support and link aggregation). But if you just want to slap a bunch of Raspberry Pis inside a tiny form factor, the Super6c is about as trim as you can get—and it's available today!