I did this for a while, it's pretty good but I occasionally came across dependencies that were difficult to install in containers, and other minor inconveniences.

I ended up getting a mini-PC solely dedicated toward running agents in dangerous mode, it's refreshing to not have to think too much about sandboxing.

I totally agree with you. Running a cheapo mac mini with full permissions with fully tracked code and no other files of importance is so liberating. Pair that with tailscale, and being able to ssh/screen control at any time, as well as access my dev deployments remotely. :chefs kiss:

why a mac mini rather than a cloud vps

I use a new Ryzen based mini PC instead of Mac mini, but the reasoning is the same. For the amount of compute/memory it pays for itself in less than a year, and the lower latency for ssh/dev servers is nice too.

One less company to give your code to.

Regular WD40 should not be used as bearing lubricant!

Exactly!

nit: the last letter of PCB stands for "board"

Do you do this in a professional setting? I'm curious because I did some embedded/uC work about 10 years ago and considering the state of C/C++ SDKs (and IDE support) at the time, I would have expected it to take decades for Rust to get a foothold.

Yep; do it at work (Security-related sensors for a DoD contractor) as well as my own small business. It doesn't have a foothold, and may not ever; we will see. I think a lot of the embedded rust content you see online is makers who are more interested in doing tricks with the ownership system and Async. So, I am an exception, but... I do recommend this workflow despite its lack of popularity!

I just like rust for the overall language and tooling. (For example, the workflow I described above); don't really care about the memory safety aspect to the degree it's often presented.

The biggest downside is I have to do a lot of leg work which wouldn't be required if done in C or C++. E.g. implementing hardware interfaces from datasheets and RMs. Sometimes there will be a Rust lib available, but in my experience they are rarely in a usable state.

As a hobbyist who's written and is working on a couple of async HALs my take is that Rust is well suited to embedded work but yeah there are hurdles. It's immature so while things like Embassy are a joy to work with, they're missing a lot of (sometimes seemingly basic) features.

The mainland and Hong Kong still have significantly different visa policies. I'm not sure if it's changed at all since the handover, except for mainlanders entering HK.

Yes I know, but HK is still part of the PRC and there are people who cannot travel to the PRC.

It's not about (in)ability to obtain a visa.

If I was letting some random person rent one of my servers without oversight, I'd sure want to see some ID first.

I don't think it's naive, I often do the same in Vue. A pretty useful subset of vue-router can be implemented in less than a tenth of the bundle size.

I don't think 1, 2, and 4 apply to many high profile open source projects.

That's what the GP was saying, I think. Once they get the MAC address, they can find you. Not via software on the phone, from exfiltrating and using shady third parties that collect data from access points, etc.

Okay, but if there's collusion between the app developers and external routers then it doesn't matter if the MAC is randomized. The app can still see the current MAC address and report it, and you can still be located, if nothing else, to within the range of a wireless router. Nothing is solved by randomizing the MAC address.

Do you use AI agents on repos without version control?