I used the Arch Wiki entry about WireGuard. The trickiest part was some MTU nonsense.

Tailscale is a bit simpler and I think I just figured it out with some docs on their website.

WireGuard on my VPS, because otherwise I’m stuck behind CGNAT and can’t access anything in my network from elsewhere. Or Tailscale, but that’s not really self-hosted.

Not taking a picture, but here’s what I have:

• Ryzen 1700 in a giant case sitting on my desk (desktop PC is on top of that in a mini-ITX case); 2x 8TB HDDs, connected to network over Wi-Fi; hope to cut the size significantly once one of our ITX boxes need an upgrade (both Ryzen 5600s)
• Mikrotik router (5 port) and Ubiquiti AP sitting next to my bed; Mikrotik handles my local static DNS for my public services

Running:

• Jellyfin, as well as Samba and some other NAS stuff
• HomeAssistant (nothing monitored though, but I plan to add my Sensi thermostat soon)
• Actual Budget
• Nextcloud
• Vaultwarden (currently unused, plan to switch soon)

I also have a VPS to get around CGNAT, and I have a Wireguard VPN configured so communication is encrypted.

Plans:

• upgrade NAS to either a mini-ITX motherboard or a mini-PC w/ external USB-C enclosure
• actually run Ethernet - have been putting off for years
• configure my Sensi thermostat in HA and maybe get some other smart home crap
• use Nextcloud more - want to get SO using the notes app so I can finally kill Google Notes for shared shopping lists
• port my PF spreadsheet to LibreOffice and actually learn to use LO Calc (currently using Google Sheets); I use GoogleFinance func for stock quotes, so I need to replace that with some other workflow (mostly rebalancing investments)
• replace our TV or at least have an alternative for Jellyfin - the config disappears whenever our TV WiFi screws up, which is like 2-3x/month; screw you LG…

So yeah, somewhat simple. My family likes Jellyfin, but I haven’t really gotten them on board with anything else.

Here’s how I think about it. If my NAS goes down and I need a specific file from backup, how would I get that? With OCIS, everything is stored with a hash, whereas with Nextcloud it’s stored by filename. So to me, Nextcloud seems easier to deal with.

Nope, I live in Utah, US, which is mostly coal, natural gas, and solar, in that order, and we’ve been scaling coal back significantly and replacing it with gas and solar (and a little wind). We’re about average for the US:

The average cost per kWh in the U.S. as of January 2024 is 15.45 cents

That said, I heard that our local electricity company wants to hike rates, and that seems to be about $0.03/kWh. So my range would go up to $0.15-0.18/kWh, which still isn’t that crazy.

Here’s my current bill:

• usage - 420 kWh
• total - $58.86 (mix of winter and summer usage)
• stated rate - $0.09-0.10/kWh for “block 1”, 0.10-0.12 for “block 2” (they charge more the more you use)
• calculated average rate (inclusive of all fees and credits) - $0.14/kWh

And here’s my previous bill (all summer usage w/ AC and whatnot):

• usage - 522 kWh
• total - $80.17
• stated rate - $0.09/kWh for “block 1,” $0.117/kWh for “block 2”
• calculated average rate - $0.154/kWh

That’s why I gave the $0.12-0.15/kWh range, because it depends on time of year, total usage, etc. It’ll probably be closer to $0.12/kWh next month since we’d use hardly any electricity (we use natural gas for heat).

That really depends. If you’ll eventually get a NAS, I recommend a NAS HDD because they do better with 24/7 operation. They also use a bit less power than desktop HDDs (which you shouldn’t get anyway, just get an SSD for your desktop/laptop), if you care about that.

I use two WD Red HDDs in my NAS (just an old desktop PC), and I’ve had Hitachi in the past. I use SSDs exclusively for my gaming desktop and laptop though, because performance is a lot more important than cost.

Power costs would have to be bonkers for it to matter.

8TB NAS HDDs are <$200, so even if it uses 15W vs 3W, that’s 12W difference, or 8-9kWh/month. If you pay a ridiculous $0.40/kWh, that’s $40/year. That means the SSDs would pay for themselves after ~15 years, and I’m guessing you’d replace/upgrade them long before then.

But NAS drives use a lot less than 15W, usually around 4-6W idle. So the payoff period is probably closer to 30 years… My electricity is more like 0.12-15/kWh, so it’s never going to pay back for itself.

I started and ended up bailing. The deciding factor for me was the way data is stored with OCIS (basically hashes), so backup/restore would be a much larger pain. So I’m sticking with Nextcloud as much as I hate PHP and dislike the performance issues.

Does this really need to be weekly? Surely a monthly or even quarterly update would make far more sense.

That doesn’t follow. If there’s a bad commit in Windows 10 or 11, I won’t even know about it. If there’s a bad commit in Grayjay, I can:

• not upgrade, or downgrade to an unaffected version
• report the issue on their issue tracker
• technically violate the license by patching it myself and building my own copy (probably fine provided I don’t distribute changes)

I can do exactly none of that with most proprietary software, so this source-available license is much better than those. Again, it’s not ideal, but considering it the same as every other proprietary software license is absurd.

It’s really not. Windows XP had its source leaked, it’s not source available. Grayjay is source available, so I can see every new commit before it hits my phone. That’s a pretty big difference, and it’s the most important when it comes to public security audits.

Grayjay is source available, which is better than nothing. I’d prefer FOSS, but the features make up for the poor choice of license.

Grayjay on my Android phone. I like that it supports a lot of different services, and I have subs on Odysee, Rumble, and Nebula (I pay for a sub there). I sometimes download videos for offline use if I’m going to listen on my commute or something (no point in using up data if I don’t need to).

On my desktop/laptop, I just use YouTube directly w/ uBlock Origin on Firefox (to block ads) without logging in. I don’t watch much YouTube on my desktop/laptop, and when I do, I’ll just look for a specific video or whatever.

I also have NewPipe installed on my phone for when I want to find something specific (i.e. background music or something), because Grayjay’s search kind of sucks.

I liked FreeDNS when I used them, but that was something like 10 years ago. Could be worth looking into.

I’d look into Hetzner, their pricing is pretty fair and they have some nifty features.

Also check out Vultr, they have block storage and some interesting addons.

That’s where I’d start, but I haven’t needed to host anything like Lemmy.

Here are two somewhat reasonable routers that support 10G (via 2 SFP+ ports):

• https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_16g_2s_pc
• https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_16g_2splus

Both have max power draw under 50W, though I don’t know what they’d actually draw (would depend on how much traffic and whatnot).

And here’s a switch with 2 SFP+ ports with max draw of 11W: https://mikrotik.com/product/css610_8g_2s_in.

I only have a GPU because my CPU doesn’t have any graphics. I don’t use the graphics anyway, but I need it to boot. So I put our crappiest spare GPU in (GTX 750 Ti) and call it good.

I wouldn’t bother. If you end up needing it, it’ll take like 15 min to get it installed and drivers set up and everything. No need to bother until you actually need it.

Ooh, sounds quite practical. Would work even better with a cow, and you’ll get milk out of the deal too!

Hmm, is that waddling or flying power? Swimming?

Also, the only reason for the 3 horsepower is so the others can rest, so we’d probably need far fewer than 393.6 ducks, I think we could get away with <100, provided we can manage their sleep cycles properly.