Idk if this is the right community for this conversation, but it’s been on my mind and I want to share it with someone.
In the 00’s every new thing we heard about the internet was exciting. There were new protocols, new ways to communicate, new ways to share files, new ways to find each other. Every time we heard anything new about the internet, it was always progress.
That lasted into the early teens and then things started changing. Things started stagnating. Now we’re well into the phase where every new piece of news we hear is negative. New legislations, new privacy intrusions, new restrictions, new technologies to lock content away and keep us from sharing, or seeing the content we were looking for. New ways to force ads.
At one point the Internet was my most favorite thing in the world. Now I don’t know if I even like it anymore. I certainly don’t look forward to hearing news about it. It’s sad, man. We’ve lost a lot. The mega corps took the internet from us, changed it from a million small sites that people created because they had big ideas, or were passionate about small ones, and turned it into a few enormous sites with no new ideas, no passion, just an insatiable desire for money.
We’re at the end of an era, and unlike the last 20 years of progress, I don’t think most of us will like what the next era brings.
That widely depends on what you are using it for. I think it’s amazing.
I can buy a computer for $500 with 8 cores, 32GB ram, 512GB NVME storage. I can install free open source linux distribution on it that manages virtual machines. It can run dozens of containerized free/open source applications on it.
Then, i can use my domain name and freely available services like letsencrypt and cloudflare to make it securely available on the internet.
Internet is what you make of it, always has been.
If you only rely to 3rd party websites then you’re missing out on a lot of usability.
I guess it depends on when you stared using it.
Today, a lot if people take a lot of things for granted.
I still remember the days of waiting for a website to load, making myself coffee while it’s loading.
Now i can stream realtime 4k video of my house on my phone, served by my computer.
I can game with friends conencted to my voice chat server that i own and has awesome voice quality and low latency.
I can have all my files available wherever i am, instantly.
I can forget my phone and my laptop, login to my server at a friend’s computer and do whatever i need to do.
All that wouldn’t be possible if the internet was stuck in the 90’s.
Bit of a silly question:
I got quite the overkill server‡ for free‡‡ a little while ago and I’ve been struggling to find stuff to do with it
What kind of stuff do you self host?
Basically all I’ve got currently is TrueNAS Scale running on mine and it feels like a bit of a waste just running that.
‡ My server is from 2012 but it’s got dual hexacore Xeons (can’t recall exact model), 192GB of RAM, and about 40 TB of storage in Raid-Z2. The storage came from my old crusty NAS, I didn’t get that for free.
‡‡ Well mostly free, I was told I could have it if I got it out of they’re garage which took about 2 days.
So it idles with a 250W power consumption?
Surprisingly no
It idles at about 150w
Here are a couple of ideas:
I’m sure there’s more
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I’m not hosting a lot, just things i wanted to have in order to replace having a pc with installed apps. I want stuff to be a available on a web browser.
Some of the things i host:
NGINX Proxy manager - pretty much required Joplin - notes, apps for all platforms available Wiki.js - to replace Joplin, i don’t like installed apps HomeAssistant - home automation Mealie - converted my family paper cookbook Paperless-ngx - documents organization Mumble - voice chat server for gaming and meetings NextCloud - pretty much self explanatory Jellyfin - i want to be able to play media that is stored on the NAS, family photos, videos MQTT - self explanatory ZigbeeToMQTT - connect zigbee devices to MQTT Grafana - pretty graphs WireGuard - VPN access Trillium - to replace joplin for actual note taking Homepage - to display and organize all services VS Code Server - self explanatory OctoPrint - printer management Whoogle - i don’t like ads and “algorithms”
My total TDP is 15 watts. Idle is about 5W. I can’t imagine what i would do with a higher power consuming machine, it wouldn’t be financially feasible.
The best (and simplest) thing I have running is AdGuard Home. It’s a DNS server you run that blocks ads on the entire network.
I also run a wireguard server on my router and clients on my laptops and phone.
With these combined when on the road on cell or Wi-Fi connections all my traffic goes right to my home internet and it’s like I’m home.
I have access to all internal services, devices, and I get no ads in apps and websites (where technically possible). Highly highly recommend. I couldn’t live without it.
I also have home assistant running but that is way more work than just installing a server. It’s almost a hobby in of itself.
Editing - I didn’t mention it but PiHole is an alternative to AdGuard Home. I didn’t mention PiHole to keep things simple but after years of using PiHole I’ve switched to AdGuard Home mostly because of the per client configs, ease of maintenance and UI. As always, check out both and choose what’s best for you.
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I don’t know what you’re on about.
https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome/blob/master/LICENSE.txt
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