You can also do the following to prevent unwanted writes when something is not mounted at /mnt/thatdrive:
<span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># make sure it is not mounted, fails if not mounted which is fine
</span><span style="color:#323232;">umount /mnt/thatdrive
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># make sure the mountpoint exists
</span><span style="color:#323232;">mkdir -p /mnt/thatdrive
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># make the directory immutable, which disallows writing to it (i.e. creating files inside it)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">chattr +i /mnt/thatdrive
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># test write to unmounted dir (should fail)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">touch /mnt/thatdrive/myfile
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># remount the drive (assumes it’s already listed in fstab)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">mount /mnt/thatdrive
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># test write to mounted dir (should succeed)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">touch /mnt/thatdrive/myfile
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># cleanup
</span><span style="color:#323232;">rm /mnt/thatdrive/myfile
</span>
From man 1 chattr:
A file with the ‘i’ attribute cannot be modified: it cannot be deleted or renamed, no link can be created to this file, most of the file’s metadata can not be modified, and the file can not be opened in write mode.
Only the superuser or a process possessing the CAP_LINUX_IMMUTABLE capability can set or clear this attribute.
I do this to prevent exactly the situation you’ve encountered. Hope this helps!
It’s probably best to limit yourself to a used laptop.
Reading and writing code is nothing more than reading and writing text, and for that you don’t need a fancy gpu or screen.
What I would recommend you look for in a laptop is
an SSD instead of an HDD
more cpu cores (at least 4 cores)
more memory (RAM) (at least 8GB, preferably 16GB+)
More memory and cores will help you with compiling and running your code.
And make sure you take regular backups! You never know when your disk will fail.
Also make sure to check linux compatibility before you buy. Laptops used to be a pain (10+ years ago), and it’s gotten a lot better, but it’s not always perfect. Just search for “[brand] [model] linux” or try to find the model on the archlinux wiki.
<span style="color:#323232;">150 TWh / year
</span><span style="color:#323232;">————————— = 0,75 TWh / user / year
</span><span style="color:#323232;">200 million users
</span>
Banking system
Users
There are over 8 billion people on the planet today, let’s assume 4 billion of them have access to the global banking system.
Total energy consumption
The global banking system used an estimated 264 TWh in 2021[1]
If we assume the same consumption increase rate for banking, that’s about 348 TWh/year currently.
Energy consumption per user
<span style="color:#323232;">348 TWh / year
</span><span style="color:#323232;">————————— = 0,087 TWh / user / year
</span><span style="color:#323232;">4.000 million users
</span>
With these numbers, bitcoin uses almost 10x the energy per user annually.
There are of course a myriad of things one can argue over whether it makes a fair comparison, none of which I feel like arguing, since this is just a really simple estimate with a lot of assumptions.
1: I used the numbers in this article uncritically, if you have better numbers you can run your own calculations.