I believe cycling and constantly discharging and charging a battery might be even worse than letting the built-in charge controller do its job and keep the charge. I’m not an expert on battery chemistry, though. All I can say, I’ve seen desktop replacements plugged in all the time and the battery at 100% and they go bad. Thinkpads and other laptops have configurable thresholds for quite some time now. And despite me using that for my last 2 laptops, the batteries still go bad eventually. It’s supposed to help, and batteries got better, but it’s a thing to factor in.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Or just the average sense of impending doom?

Yes, but there’s 2 sides to that story. It’s a free UPS and that’s really nice. But then I’ve seen old batteries degrade and swell. People call it the spicy pillow syndrome. And with two of my older devices, batteries got recalled by the manufacturer. So I’d advise against running these things 24/7 unattended. Either know what you’re doing or rip it out before it burns down the building. As a minimum that includes a location made of concrete or bricks and mortar and no burnable stuff in the vicinity. And regular checks on the state of the battery, maybe both visual inspections and whatever the mainboard reports.

I personally would advise against gsuite and office356 as well as it’s currently debated whether they can be used in accordance to the GDPR. That’s not stopping institutions and organizations… Both are very popular products, but I’d be cautious and not put any sensitive stuff or personal stuff or pictures there. And not hand out logins to other people, especially not minors.

I don’t think the BSA compare to the major German scouting associations. Different organization structure and substantially different ideology and activities. Also none of the big controversies surrounding the BSA. But I suppose idiots are everywhere, at least that’s my general life experience 😅 It is very unfortunate once they start to ruin things.

Idk. Really depends on what you put there. And Nextcloud does file sync. Even if the server becomes unavailable, you’d still have your directories and calendar on your devices. Just collaborating and uploading stuff won’t work.

And creativity and problem-solving are core scout skills, so I guess bulding that thing for no money would be an interesting exercise in that. Though you’re right. At some point you’ll have to think about maintainability and reliability. I guess that wouldn’t stop me from starting the project, but everyone has to decide for themselves.

(And yes, a proper VPS would be a preferrable solution for a multitude of reasons.)

Asking for a discount is a great idea. Some companies do this. And in rare occurences the boss is an old boy scout themselves and they’ll give you a 100% discount on some smaller things…

Good luck, though. I believe first-hand experience with living a self-determined life - including online services - aligns nicely with scout ideals. And trying to convey the media-literacy that allows people to make informed choices.

And I can see some benefits with having documents available to everyone, templates, and collaborate on the paperwork…

Glad to hear other groups in the area have success with Nextcloud… Another idea would be to somehow unite and share the hosting bill for a slightly bigger Nextcloud… But I still think the old laptop idea might be promising to get started… depending on the network situation in the building and whether you can configure port forwards and all the things that need to be done. Just make sure to have some kind of backup strategy if you put documents there. Can’t be too hard, as Nextcloud is made for syncing data… And I wouldn’t put personal information about kids there unless the admin knows what they’re doing. But there’s plenty other stuff to put there.

Given someone already pays for electricity and internet at the location, I’d say the cheapest option would be to ask all the members if someone has an old laptop to donate, maybe even with a broken display or whatever, main thing is it still somehow runs. Rip out the battery, Install Linux, Nextcloud (maybe Yunohost), and put it somewhere without public access. That’d be entirely for free, minus the work to set it up and maintain it.

My smaller VPS costs somewhere around 70€ a year, guess that could be worth it as well as long as it contributes something meaningful.

And be prepared to be disappointed, 99% of my scout group never used the selfhosted services I tried. I guess that’s somehow okay. They were focused on the real life activities and no one had any interest to do office work or remember logins… Was always the same 2 people who did paperwork and they didn’t need a cloud, so I scrapped it. Your story could be different, I’m not saying it needs to turn out that way.

Yes. Be honest with the people who are worthy. And put a facade up for the general public. Or be brutally honest and don’t give a F. That also works.

Lol. I suppose it’s a promising way to learn how someone thinks and reacts, see if they’re focused on solving issues or focused on drama… And how deep they are into Linux lore. And whether they understand it or parrot someone else’s talking points.

Idk. I rarely have long nerd discussions, but once I’m done with the latest Star Trek show, I occasionally ask people about their stance on SystemD, some instant messenger or whether we should stick to C99. And either we skip that, or maybe I’ll hear some interesting, unique perspective shaped by what they do.

And Linux has quite some pragmatic people as well, first of all Linus Torvalds himself, who has kind of a down-to-earth approach towards ideology.

I’ve not yet talked to a SystemD hater in real life, that seems to be more predominant between random people on the internet. And I myself prefer writing SystemD unit files over what I had to do before that was a thing.

Sure, I mean trees and humans are very different species and have different inner workings. Though I’m pretty sure it’s worthy of the name immune system. Plants have specific proteins to handle things, and I believe they can even send chemicals through the organism to respond. It’s a very different kind, though.
I mean the entire discussion is a bit far-fetched… Trees don’t have blood as we do either. Or hands to inject themselves with seawater…

Your body is one system. Your blood cells, lungs, bronchia all collaborate and work together to pull off the task. I’m not sure if “sucks” is the right word here. But you won’t survive without lungs nor will you survive without blood cells and that part of the immune system. They’re not seperate.

And concerning trees, they have an immune system as well: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05286 / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_disease_resistance#Immune_system

And you have a lung as a barrier. That’s supposed to exchange the oxygen and carbon dioxide, while keeping most of the rest out of the bloodstream. Nose, mucusa, bronchia also do their thing. So your blood specifically does NOT come into contact with billions of viruses. I mean you also not inject air into your blood vessels… But there’s really a lot happening to not let any virus from the air into your blood.

In the end you have organs for a reason. You can’t just do random things and think nothing is going to happen.

Yeah, people stare if I hop on the commuter train with the the large one that fits camping gear and supplies for 2 weeks. And I don’t own anything in between.

Maybe you should buy one of those kids microscopes and see how much small stuff floats in a single drop of water. I didn’t try seawater as a kid, but water from a pond has millions of moving, living things in it. Most of them probably harmless. But brackish water isn’t really supposed to be in the bloodstream.

People who carry it around and don’t just use it as a desktop replacement… With an open lid it doesn’t quite fit into my bag pack.

At least the Arch Wiki is always there for us…

I wonder if that’s illegal where I live (Germany). Toys with internet connected microphones have been confiscated before. Though that depends on if they have some sort of recording feature.