Turns out my commands were not brief, but once you get the hang of it you can write down the commands you are using and repeat them.

I scripted the whole thing for work, so it is getting more and more rusty.

OK, to be clear, you can boot to raspbian or your distro of choice and use hdparm if you have a proper SATA controller and connection. This does not work on NVME drives.

#shred

If you have a spinning disk and either are forced to use a USB to SATA adapter or if the drive itself does not support secure erase, then you can use the shred command.

shred -fv /dev/sdb

will write random data to the sata device sdb. f is for force and v is for verbose. You can add z to add an extra zero pass and z to change the number of passes. That means that

shred -z -n 5 /dev/sdb

should do 5 passes and then zero on drive sdb

It will ALSO work for older parallel drives that identify as hd or that still appear as sd with a USB adapter. You had better check your devices with a lsblk before you run it. It will probably overwrite the OS of a running system.

Last word on shred is that it is ungodly slow. One pass of 1 tb takes 1.5 to 3 hours.

#hdparm

For SATA drives that support it, you can use hdparm. A deep explanation of what I’m doing is available here: https://grok.lsu.edu/article.aspx?articleid=16716. I could write out how to do it, but it goes into greater detail.

For forcing the system to sleep, you may need to

echo disk | sudo tee /sys/power/state

Also, be sure to set a password when prompted. If you omit the password, you may brick the drive. I have rarely been able to unbrick a drive.

This process may take several hours. The output of hdparm -I (that is an uppercase i) should tell you how long.

#NVME

Check processes here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Solid_state_drive/Memory_cell_clearing#NVMe_drive

I have followed them once upon a time, but i haven’t done it in years and cannot offer solid advice.

Yes! You can use SATA secure erase features. Give me a few and I’ll post a brief set of commands.

I’m about to go in a few

I don’t know what the man in the suit is doing, but all the rest is Musk’s Tesla Diner.

Look, if it only cost half as much to ship it, then it will only cost half as much to rewrite it, right?

Oh, it’s a corporate device? That makes it parts. I was under the impression it was for someone you knew.

Oh, if it is just the cable, you might be able to fix it for under $30.

I just found epoxy putty and it has changed my mindset on repairing plastics.

LCD is probably cracked in the corner. The replacement may not be worth it.

Yeah, since it was the discounted OEM edition they sold for $100 or so.

Whatever. I use it to activate my son’s desktop and my W11 VM.

since 11 was forced on us at work.

Windows 10 is coming to end of life and your org is basically being forced to upgrade themselves. Many people are sad to see it go.

Personally, I left Windows 11 for Linux Mint because I bought 11 Pro OEM and was downgraded to home with 11.

Professionally, I am doing my best to acknowledge people’s loss in the workplace as I migrate them to 11.

Jeep going belly up due to tariffs would be quite ironic.

Flyover state.

I’m aware, but I’m enjoying the game mechanic enough to pop in $5. It’s just a little depressing to think about how much I’m spending. It’s my concession to not spending money on the currency.

Playing arknights. I spend $5 on the monthly pass for non premium loot box currency as daily rewards. Every month I decide if I’m enjoying the game enough or if I should scale back. When I consider how much I’m spending annually, I always consider cancelling. It’s not fun at all.

I was avoiding these cards, but the driver base appears to be improving.

I think it is important to have combat that feels like everyone is participating and nobody feels like it takes 20 minutes to get back to their turn.

DND provides due bonus actions that can be used as interrupts.

From what I can tell, DaggerHeart has people taking their turns in volunteer order, and if they don’t volunteer an action then the GM goes.

A lot of delay comes from game management, so even a ‘fast’ game system can be torturous the right hands.

Well, I agree that if nobody owns the IP then there is literally no harm no foul.

Again, not that I’m here advocating for the rights of the poor IP holders, but it would be important to determine if there is an owner to property to call it abandonware.

Unfortunately, Nintendo diligently patrols their interest in this matter. I believe they hold titles until they determine they can generate revenue. Part of it is trying not to saturate the market so they can continue making money off new games. Some of it is possibly due to the willingness and availability of partners.

The legality of abandonware is disputed. Traditionally, even if the IP is unavailable, it doesn’t make it legal to distribute. Copyright law is also defined jurisdictionaly. I’m not defending copyright, but it is important to understand risks when accessing this.

Now, in the States, I didn’t believe receiving or even playing this game system would be illegal, but people have been jailed for making and distributing such devices. Our corporate overlords also have no qualms about squelching content based on perceived copyright violations.

This influencer is in Italy, and the laws seem to be heavily against owning such system.

Every time I read one of these I get really excited, then I remember the long-ago promised wood batteries and calm down again.