I started doing this, maybe 15 years ago, but if I look through my spam folder now, most of it is to the email address I used before I began using unique addresses (the rest is to random addresses in my domains that I’ve never used).

My hypotheses from that are that

• there is probably less ‘selling of email lists’ going on than we think
• I’m less interested in dubious internet sites than I used to be
• or (most likely) these days, your internet thing has to be offering me some real value if I’m going to consciously give you any of my data.

+1 for the Seiko 5s. Love me a SNZG07J1

+1 for Forgejo. I started on Gogs, then gathered that there had been some drama with that and Gitea. Forgejo is FOSS, simple to get going, and comfortable to use if you’re coming from GitHub. It’s actively maintained, and communication with the project is great.

My step-up from Pi was to ebay HP 800 G1 minis then G2’s. They are really well made, there’s full repair manuals available, and they are just a pleasure to swap bits in and out. I’ve heard good things about, and expect similar build quality from the 1 liter Lenovos.

I agree that RAM is a likely constraint rather than processor for self-hosting workloads. Particularly in my case as I’m on Proxmox and run all my docker containers in separate LXCs. I run 32GB in the G2’s which was a straightforward upgrade (they take laptop like memory). One some of them I’ve upgraded the SSDs, or if not, I’ve added M.2 NVME drives (that the G2’s have a slot for).

I love this idea (of just picking something I’m loving each month), it would help me overcome my decision paralysis about who to support.

Yes, a few. Signal (daily use), LetsEncrypt & Certbot (EFF). It’s not enough.

One day I decided I’d spend $x every January (when I do all my other donations) on open source stuff I depend on, and roughly in the proportions I depend on them. It quickly became impossible - I can’t just fund Debian (which I use a lot of in VMs), I’d need to think of all their dependencies, same with NGINX, Node etc etc. The mind boggles.

I need something like a Spotify subscription for open source to assuage my guilt of the great value I extract for my personal use of open source.

The Debian thong made me laugh. Who is buying this? For themselves, their partners? I’m imagining Christmas morning when I’m trying to explain the value of this gift you’ve just opened.

The two extremes:

1. Keep it alive on ZFS with frequent scrubbing. Review best practice every couple of years in case it’s time to migrate it to holograms or whatever,
2. Clay tablets.

This, or two turnbuckles joined at the top point with a couple of links of chain.

I read somewhere that GoPros and other action cameras are one of the least used purchases, so I figured “that should mean there’s plenty on eBay”. So grabbed up second hand bargain, played around with it for a couple of weeks, bought some extra batteries and other accessories, and since then it’s sat in the cupboard except for a single occasion.

Turns out you don’t need an action cam if you’re not getting any action.

Agreed. video link

Absolutely Tailscale - I use it for this exact situation of Syncthing from my NAS. Simple to set up, and secure.

It has a practical element (Hello Jellyfin, Kavita, AudioBookshelf & Syncthing), but for the rest of it, it’s about 60% hobby and 20% learning stuff that could be potentially career enhancing.

Gnu/Linux absolutely annihilating server operating systems means that I can run the same stack, and use the same tools, that giant companies are based on. All for free. In my spare room. 1L x86 computers cost less than two packs of cigarettes! Little SSD’s are ridiculously cheap. And you don’t even need that stuff - that old laptop in your cupboard will do. Even if you kick in to donate for your software (and I recommend you do if you can) it’s a cheap hobby compared to golf or skating or whatever. Anything you need to learn there’s blog posts and videos available.

We live in an amazing time in this hobby. I know there’s companies that would like to take it away from us, but Open Source just keeps kicking goals. Thank you FOSS developers, Gnu, Linus, FSM, Cthulhu and the other forces in the universe that make this possible.

My Dad gets confused trying to make a call on his phone, but he can say “Alexa, call Third Breakfast”.

We have an emergency button to go around his neck, with an monthly phone plan, which seems to permanently live on the kitchen bench…

This is a genuinely fresh and intriguing idea, but you’ve sort of answered your own question (as have most of the commenters) by noting it would immediately be abused. So I think you are going to have to be the one deciding how your compute cycles and bandwidth are being used.

BOINC/World Community Grid is the obvious choice since they are set up for exactly this use case. There’s also things like Sheepit - a render farm. Maybe you could run a Tor node .

Instructions for avoiding sign in, and side-loading etc

Lol, I was more thinking Nano is a hufflepuff who’s just really easy to be around. Who needs rock climbing when you can just lie in on Sunday mornings scrolling your phone and showing each other memes.

I use the Jellyfin app from the store on my Chromeplay, and there’s a couple of Jellyfin iOS apps that work great. Once the server is up, you’re gold.

Hard agree on helping out your future self. I routinely drop a commands.md file in every project now, and dump any commands in there for creating the dev environment, the build step, any thoughts that might help when I come back in five years.

I’ve been around - did COBOL at uni. DOne a lot of commercial work in Delphi and C++. I loved the few months of Swift I tried, but started on webdev 6 months ago. I felt really unsafe in JS, and was looking forward to moving onto Typescript. But, as time’s gone on, I’ve found JS just seems to work how I think it’s going to. I haven’t run into problems with types at all. I assumed I’d end up on a complied language for server side, but the Node ecosystem’s so mature it’s just been efficient to stay in JS land.

If I was going to teach kids to code, this is where I’d start. Low friction to get going, and powerful enough to run most of the world. Bountiful resources to learn and get support.