Ah yeah, phone is a frequent sync with FolderSync, including deletions, and USB is a manual backup. A rental VPS is a good idea…

What do you use for 3-2-1? I try, so far I have my phone, backed up to a server HDD via SMB (Too poor for RAID-1 atm), and the very important stuff sent to a USB drive and returned to a drawer. Am I doing it right haha

Afaik copyrighted, DRM-protected content is encrypted at bitstream-level, meaning only licensed receivers have the ability to decrypt it. If the receiver, aka the pirate, doesn’t have the key, that portion of the stream will be blank or substituted before transmitting to the viewer.

Maybe a Wayland integration in the browser is the solution to this - if it’s built in there may be a setting in the browser to enable playing DRM content

Right? My one has developed a nasty case of defective WiFi/Bluetooth chip. I’m convinced it’s a superficial, intentional break. Flashing it could well revert what Google’s doing to it

Aside from being hella slow, I just don’t like that it can’t use the same directories as my network shares and requires uploading. This script might help but honestly I just stick to the basic shares because of this

From my experience using a mailserver with no PTR and an ISP who likes to put their addresses on a PBL, it’s very good. Gmail tends to be the most annoying and wants that PBL listing removed or you’ll go to spam for new recipients, but other than that 10/10. I’d be interested to hear what your findings are if you do test it!

Get yourself a Sonoff ZigBee bridge! Hue light support is practically native, and they act as extenders to reach your other ZigBee devices! Just don’t expect to be able to sync them with any movies or peripherals. I think there is a virtual Hue bridge on HACS and that might help with that, but idk

Smooth sailing for me too, shockingly. I’ve recently added my 26th service to Proxmox - LibreELEC (Kodi), with the very complex matter of monitor passthrough. It’s such a versatile program and it has replaced my Chromecast with more features and side bonuses than I could’ve imagined. Another huge step towards degoogling.

Nice… I use ytdl-sub for downloading music, highly recommend it. You can write tag metadata but if you want embedded stuff I’d recommend trying beets. Running both as a user whose primary group matches Jellyfin is a must if you want stuff saved next to the video files… The dev is also very active.

I just installed Ollama and use gemma3 for now. I wanted to use dolphin-mixtral but holy crap it wants more RAM than my entire setup

Snikket is great. I liked my choice of Prosody with Monocles and Gajim for server, Android and Windows/Linux, respectively

XMPP for my attempt just worked, voice and video calling too. The Android clients Monocles, Cheogram and Conversations are great, as for desktop they all look like 90’s messaging clients haha

I ultimately switched to Matrix because the encryption key sharing is much more friendly, at least for helping non-enthusiasts use it, and I didn’t realise I could decrypt old XMPP messages for new clients by transferring them manually, but at least Element Web is nice. It has flaws, definitely - on Android I find myself using Element Classic for creating unencrypted rooms and voice/video calling using my TURN server, and Element X for general messaging, caption and Markdown support. That’s another thing - for me the Element clients are the closest to being usable, the few others are borked.

In short XMPP is ugly but functional, and the client devs try their best, and Matrix is enticing but, as you said, finicky. Element is pretty but their new client that promises full e2ee for calling hasn’t reached a level I would consider out of Beta yet.

I just set up LibreELEC on my Proxmox machine, on a VM with monitor passthrough and Bluetooth passthrough so I can use my Chromecast remote and stream audio, then installed the Emby Next Gen addon to access my library on it. Super happy rn.

Especially as I’ve been until now using the 2022 Chromecast with Google TV and, now they’ve brought out another device, it’s been breaking slowly. The wireless chip has been spazzing out to the point that every day it loses connection and the only solution left that works is to forget the WiFi and use my phone to quick-add it back via QR code. Even then it’s started constantly saying ‘connection lost’ and ‘connection restored’ during playback. Well, a few days ago it started breaking connection to its (Bluetooth) remote as well, meaning I kept having to use my backup remote on Home Assistant that uses wireless ADB. When both wireless breaks, my only option is to use the Chromecast’s button to trigger re-adding the remote. And when that fails, well…

EMAIL PROVIDERS:

1. Posteo - Their choice of domain
2. Mailbox - Custom domain, free trial
3. Runbox - Custom domain, free trial

DEFINITELY FREE TIERS:

4. Tuta - Focused on security and resisting influence, but incoming mail can only be accessed by the Tuta client (because of their e2ee)
5. GMX - Apparently has ads
6. Zoho - Business focused
7. Proton - Feels walled garden-esque, has one email for free, may cooperate with governments

That’s going to be very interesting with persistent spam senders.

Proton allows only one free email address, which is what taught me to be wary of unexpected restrictions on services. I’ve got to say the only one I trust fully is my own, with complete certainty of security and features are all only limited by the hardware. Whenever someone talks about paying per month to get more addresses, aliases, calendar or storage - nah. Self-host. DuckDuckGo email is a good firewall layer as well - it forwards all mail to your chosen actual address after trying its best to strip the mail of trackers.

You know, I have purchased around 200 games. I have no idea how many of those can be mine because they’re linked to a store, maintained (usually) by a corporation hellbent on optimised profits, subject to mandatory updates so I have no choice but to play the way they want me to, and I don’t have the space to store them all. I don’t feel like any of them are really owned by me (and I know this is true but I reject that notion), not until they’re transferred to an offline machine.

For games released in the last 24 months:

For those released in 2025:

Yo I just wish you could opt out of government ownership

This. Why pay £6/m when, with self-hosting a Samba/NFS/NextCloud instance, I pay a fraction of the corporate cost.

Currently I’m paying ~£15/m as my server now has a GPU for better streaming and local assistant purposes. It uses ~80W. Without the GPU I was paying ~£4.50/m, which gets me:

• Network-wide traffic protection, ads, spam etc.
• Hub to remotely control, secure and automate my home
• Cloud media, frequently synced between devices
• CCTV
• Password management
• Email
• Notekeeping
• Instant messaging
• Streaming for locally stored movies, shows, music, podcasts, books, audio books and YouTube subscriptions
• Multiplayer Minecraft server
• Website/blogsite
• Remote desktop access
• Group video calling/presentation hosting
• 54TB shared storage between everything
• Network-attached storage

Imagine the cost of outsourcing all these services for unlimited access, unlimited* storage, unlimited e-mailboxes, and complete independence** from outside influence. I know I’d be paying £8/m to Google for their 2TB media storage plan alone.

*Limited by the drives you can afford
**Relying only on the developers of the software
It cost approx. £200 for the base parts, £200 for the GPU and £900 for the hard drives. A valuable investment.

I’ve worked out that I’ve had the server running for 3 years. If I take into account the money I have saved by not paying Google £8/m, I’ve saved £40/year. If I account for Netflix £25/m, I’ve completely covered the £900 I spent on storage. Disney+ £15/m takes me well over the remaining hardware costs. The media I own is far less than that offered by streamers but it’s everything I can need for the next 20 years+. I’ve counted. Every other service is just a bonus.

I used Ghost Spectre once and it was great, but was scared off it by frequent mentions online of other security flaws with prebuilt ISOs, the same potential risks as any closed-source and unregulated software. I never saw issues, just got fearmongered out of it