Yes - I do this with Pi-hole. It happens to be the same domain name that I host (very few) public services on too, so those DNS names work both inside and outside my network.

It all depends on how you want to homelab.

I was into low power homelabbing for a while - half a dozen Raspberry Pis - and it was great. But I’m an incessant tinkerer. I like to experiment with new tech all the time, and am always cloning various repos to try out new stuff. I was reaching a limit with how much I could achieve with just Docker alone, and I really wanted to virtualise my firewall/router. There were other drivers too. I wanted to cut the streaming cord, and saving that monthly spend helped justify what came next.

I bought a pair of ex enterprise servers (HP DL360s) and jumped into Proxmox. I now have an OPNsense VM for my firewall/router, and host over 40 Proxmox CTs, running (at a guess) around 60-70 different services across them.

I love it, because Proxmox gives me full separation of each service. Each one has its own CT. Think of that as me running dozens of Raspberry Pis, without the headache of managing all that hardware. On top of that, Docker gives me complete portability and recoverability. I can move services around quite easily, and can update/rollback with ease.

Finally, the combination of the two gives me a huge advantage over bare metal for rapid prototyping.

Let’s say there’s a new contender that competes with Immich. They offer the promise of a really cool feature no one else has thought of in a self-hosted personal photo library. I have Immich hosted on a CT, using Docker, and hiding behind Nginx Proxy Manager (also on a CT), accessible via photos.domain on my home network.

I can spin up a Proxmox CT from my custom Debian template, use my Ansible playbook to provision Docker and all the other bits, access it in Portainer and spin up the latest and greatest Immich competitor, all within mere minutes. Like, literally 10 minutes max.

I have a play with the competitor for a bit. If I don’t like it, I just delete the CT and move on. If I do, I can point my photos.domain hostname (via Nginx Proxy Manager) to the new service and start using it full-time. Importantly, I can still keep my original Immich CT in place - maybe shutdown, maybe not - just in case I discover something I don’t like about the new kid on the block.

That’s a simplified example, but hopefully illustrates at least what I get out of using Proxmox the way I do.

The cons for me is the cost. Initial cost of hardware, and the cost of powering beefier kit like this. I’m about to invest in some decent centralised storage (been surviving with a couple li’l ARM-based NASes) to I can get true HA with my OPNsense firewall (and a few other services), so that’s more cost again.

Jimmy Diresta. I’m a huge fan of makers, and the maker movement in general, and there was a time I just couldn’t wait for Jimmy’s next video.

Lately, I’ve come to feel that he no longer lets his work speak for itself. His videos used to just be really well made time lapses of him making a thing. But, for the past couple of years now, he feels the need to narrate just about everything. And there’s the faintest whiff of semi-arrogant self promotion about it, which just puts me off every time.

Don’t get me wrong. Talking through the making process is 100% OK with me. I watch plenty of makers that talk through their videos (Pask Makes, Wesley Treat, etc) but something has changed in Jimmy’s style, and I just don’t like him any more.

Shame. Arguably, Jimmy is the one that (re)ignited the movement’s popularity on the internet, but it just kinda feels he’s let it go to his head somehow.

I do exactly this! I use Calibre Web and have all the PDF manuals for my appliances in it (among other books). I then encode an NFC tag for the Calibe Web URL to the manual for the appliance in question. Works perfectly!

Some people just want to watch the world burn

We need Cory to coin a term for what comes after enshittification. Perhaps we can call it the Great Wipening, where we all stop paying to be treated like serfs and start taking back control of our content and data.

Bloody oath! My brothers and my closest mates all get hugs, and my near 18yo stepson and I still hug goodbye or goodnight too.

I pay for Usenet - not my fault if they don’t pass it on.

Joking aside, like some others have said, I support many artists via Bandcamp.

lol - I’m the same, and frequently wonder if I’m allowing tech debt to creep in. My last update took me to 8.0.3, and that was only because I built a new node and couldn’t get an older version for the architecture I wanted to run it on.

This is more about the car maker harvesting data, rather than just tracking the car. Car makers have been (quietly) building more tech into their cars to collect data for the purposes of selling it to third parties. It’s effectively the enshittification of cars.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-09/toyota-car-brands-collecting-driver-data-privacy-concerns-laws/103443500

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-09/toyota-car-brands-collecting-driver-data-privacy-concerns-laws/103443500

Unfortunately, any mobile data component likely to be integrated with something more integral to the car, like the entire entertainment/climate control interface, or something equally difficult/impossible to drive without.

I think OP is referring to the whole “connected cars” thing, which isn’t the same as GPS. Many cars nowadays have mobile data capabilities on and are, unbeknownst to the owner, sending all sorts of information to the car makers.

This isn’t just governments and government contractors collecting data for road use and tolling. It’s for-profit companies harvesting consumer data for their own purpose. OP is right to be paranoid.

Nice one. This statement in particular sums it up nicely:

Jung did not see the type preferences (such as introversion and extraversion) as dualistic, but rather as tendencies: both are innate and have the potential to balance.

I remember reading elsewhere that it’d be like drawing a line down the middle of a table of people’s heights, so that those who were 5 feet 10 inches and under would be the “shorts” and those 5 feet 11 inches and taller would be the “talls”.

I’ve always felt that the Myers-Briggs shit was utter nonsense, having been forced many times to go through it at several employers over the years.

Any chance you’ve got a decent source that debunks it? I’d love to have it in my pocket for next time…

I remember buying some bits and pieces to setup my home theatre in a new house years ago, and the guy at the store tried to sell me a $100 TOSLINK cable. When I asked why a $12 cable was going for so much, he pointed out that it was the “premium” cable, to ensure the highest quality audio.

I couldn’t stop laughing. Like their special cable scrubbed the photons before sending them or something.

Yep - same here. I use MAC auth on all of my SSIDs, as well as PEAP auth for the “user” SSID. The kids’ phones get dropped into a dedicated VLAN, so knowing their MAC addresses is key to that.

Yes, every time they change phones, they have to ask me to add it to the wireless for them, but I have my RADIUS database in Postgres - I can easily use Adminer to add/change/delete the relevant table entry with the correct MAC address.

When I caught myself planning exactly how I’d scale that building wall, AC style.

*sigh* Chester… Him and Chris Cornell. There’s always gonna be a hole in my music-loving heart when I hear either of these guys sing.

Actually, Nintendo Switch, mainly because I can take it anywhere. I just don’t find myself with heaps of time to sit down for proper gaming sessions any more.

The tyranny of getting older, and having family responsibilities.