Don’t know if I can pick a favorite but I’m often the most happy when I’m actively using Homebox and LubeLogger. I track my tools with the former and track service records, parts inventory, mileage and such with the latter. If I’m using those services extensively it’s because I’m wrenching on something and adding more RockAuto magnets to my collection. Even when the circumstances suck, I genuinely enjoy an opportunity to take things apart, tinker and repair them.

I’ve got the family’s vehicles in LubeLogger, having become the mechanic for anything short of transmission problems or requiring welding or a machine shop. The riding mower is in there too just because. It’s never often enough and I’m tempted to find a bike or an old beater I can tune up just to have a project that doesn’t have me sitting at the keyboard.

There was (is, as a fork) a front-end for Lemmy called “Tesseract.” Some folks liked it because it has improved filtering options, better mod/admin controls, et cetera. At least up until it was discovered that several instances had been hard-coded to be filtered while the front end erroneously reported it as an incompatibility issue. Then it was also discovered that it retrieved an additional blacklist from the developers server (as base64 encoded data, which decoded into a gzip file, which extracted to a json file of the actual blacklist - if you’re curious about that). Aside from some filtering that most would be indifferent to, it seemed the dev was also hand-curating this blacklist to include individual users. People that must’ve “wronged” them or posted something they didn’t like at some point.

None of this was disclosed in the project’s README.md on GitHub. To my knowledge, as I didn’t use the front-end, it wasn’t disclosed anywhere outside of having to manually review the source code and discover it for yourself. There was supposedly, somewhere in the settings, an option to enable “Toxic Mode.” That was the means of disabling some of the above (maybe the blacklist, not sure about hard-coded instances) but it doesn’t sound like it was very descript about what was happening when toxic mode was disabled.

Sooooo, tldr:

• Improved front-end for Lemmy
• Dev wants Lemmy to be nice for normies
• Decides they need to hide toxicity from them
• Decides they’re the supreme arbiter of toxicity
• Hides toxicity, as they defined it, from users
• Users discover dev is making decisions for them
• People don’t like when others make their decisions
• Dev posts unapologetic crash out

And we’re now at their last Huzzah: Adding spiteful and malicious code. They were just a coward before that. They might’ve saved some face in acknowledging that they should’ve been forthright in their filtering. Now they’re a coward and a heaping pile of shit whose work can never be trusted again.

I don’t have a clue but here I am spreading my whole ass for the world.

Since you’re so special and you touch grass, here’s an analogy: Imagine buying a mower whose packaging jerks itself off about how great of a mower it is. It improves on regular mowers in X, Y, Z way. It’s a mower for Lawn Chads with Chad lawns. You fire it up and then immediately it cuts off and tells you “Incompatible lawn detected.” But the reality is it’s lying to you. That fucker could mow your whole lot and ask for a second helping… if it weren’t for the fact the company just has something against Zoysia or Kentucky Blue or whatever.

Tesseract is a Lemmy front-end doing just as much. Advertised are it’s enhanced admin/moderation features and blah blah blah. Meanwhile it has hard coded filters and retrieves a blacklist not disclosed in the GitHub readme. Not “hidden” per se, because you can dig through the code base, but not made known in an upfront and honest way.

If they just bothered to disclose their position, it wouldn’t be an issue. I mean, some terminally online justice warrior can go on a tirade about how much of a Nazi they are, how their software isn’t inclusive, blah blah blah. End of the day, if someone wants to write software that explicitly aligns with their positions - so be it. Don’t like it? Don’t use it. However, in that case, at least others will know outright where the developer stands and whether or not they want to use it, manually delete the offending code in their own deployment, or even maintain their own fork.

When a creator omits the fact that they’ve done such a thing, leaving the end user to figure it out for themselves, it’s just fucking cowardly on their part.

This has been my solution. Subscribe to a playlist or an entire channel, set up the schedule, and you’re done. If you’re a supporter of the project I believe it has real-time monitoring for new uploads.

I will note that, somewhat recently, YouTube changed the URL format for playlists and this has broken subscribing/downloading playlists that use the new format. I haven’t checked today but there’s a patch that was still waiting to be merged. Unless there’s a new release incorporating it, you’ll have to apply it yourself or feed the URLs in manually for now.

Beets for importing, ascii only, lastgenre, fetchart, whatever other plugins I’m forgetting, /artist/yyyy_album_name/ directory structure, 01_title.ext for single disc, 01-01_title.ext for multi disc. I invoke beets manually just to keep an eye on how things get matched up and tagged during the process. I deal in full albums, LPs, compilations and such because it’s often easier to maintain and match metadata than with individual tracks. I guess it’s a data hoarder / archivist compulsion too, but it’s rare I can’t find at least one other track on an album appreciable so… why not?

A weekly rsync pushes the beets DB and library from my TrueNAS server to another server with a 8TB external dedicated to backing up my most important stuff (personal projects, password store, compose files, confs, etc). I’ve got an rsync alias set up on my laptop I invoke manually because I’m nearing the limit of what I want to allot to music. At least until I decide to get a larger drive.

That’s local in triplicate, with zraid on the NAS and a fourth copy on my phone, which leaves me feeling pretty good about not losing any music outside of a house fire or tornado. I was also rsync’ing all my media (music, movies, shows) to another TrueNAS setup at a relative’s but some things have changed with that so it’s on hold. Not fond of missing my off-site backup but hopefully can resolve it soon.

Everything is local only right now. The library is mounted read-only in Jellyfin so can play music from pretty much any phone, TV, computer, my Steam Deck, etc throughout the house. If I ever decide to open things up, reverse proxy or whatever, I might look into Finamp but I buy a flagship phone every six to ten years for the storage space so I can just take my music with me. Might eventually switch that to a dedicated music device.

I can give another good anecdote for this.

Crank shaft holder for Toyota/Lexus. You attach it to a breaker bar, that you can let pin itself against the frame or ground, while reefing on a torque wrench to get the crank nut back on - something like 283 ft-lb for my truck iirc. Not a small amount of force if something breaks or slips and things go flying.

One of the good, brand name options is made by Oni. It’s also over $60. You can get a knockoff for between $15 to $25. The bad knockoffs are just the ring portion shoddily welded to the “arm” (where you connect your breaker bar), and those two halves often come apart at the welds under use. The good knockoffs are obviously cast as one piece from a mold that was probably made from an Oni or similar. They get a questionable dull black coating, lacking the polish and clean finish of the name brand, but they’re still a singular solid tool.

Not knowing which one will hold up and which one might give you summer teeth is a huge risk for any uninformed home gamer just trying to DIY some auto repairs on the cheap.

Yeah, Jellyfin was my best example. I’ve got the motions memorized, to get to the admin panel, as well but Homepage is my homepage so it saves those few seconds. I agree otherwise about urgent messages. Important stuff of mine hits a Discord webhook for now.

Eventually I’ll set up some other alternative to get push notifications. I took the time to write a few half-assed cogs for pycord, and I enjoy(ed) the process and using them, but I don’t really trust the platform. I might need to give good old IRC a go again. I’m sure some Android client can do push notifications on a specific channel/sender basis.

Most are definitely just showing off; “Look at how many photos I have stored,” “I have so many podcasts and ebooks,” “Bow to me, mortals!”

On the flip, some are useful. PeaNUT gives UPS off/on line power status at a glance, Jellyfin shows active streams iirc, FreshRSS shows if there are unread feeds, Portainer shows if any containers have stopped, etc. Jellyfin is a big one since I don’t have to get into the WebUI to see if updates or whatever are going to interrupt someone. Otherwise I’m mostly in agreement and just use links in lieu of widgets and silly API calls.

04 Tundra with a tape deck. And a 6 CD changer! Although I think that has some stripped out gears, bad motor, or something 'cause it stopped working years ago. I took it apart once to get the discs out but didn’t bother making a diagnosis since I rock a cassette adapter anyway.

The more I see about the mid 90s through 00s Toyotas, the more I really don’t want anything newer. Unfortunately everyone else seems to have the same opinion. There’s not a single gen 1 Tundra at any pick’n’pull junkyard within 20 miles of me, and running ones are selling for more than I paid for mine used 14 years ago. Blows my mind my little 22 year old pickup has somehow maintained or increased in value in this ridiculous market.

They weren’t replying seriously. It’s a reference to the film “Clerks II.”

I’ll say $2700 on the oil changes. Two accessory drive belts are like $30. $160 for a couple drain and fills, with pan gasket and filter, for my transmission. $240 for front pads and rotors, twice. For posterity I’ll add $300 for complete rebuild of the rear brakes (drums, shoes, springs, tensioners, cable, bell cranks, cylinders). I’m at almost 190k miles with no fuel issues so I question that fuel filter figure, but $105 for 7 filters. $110 for the pump I’ve yet to need. Could be cheaper but I go with Denso since they make most of the OE stuff. $125 for the alternator (also yet to need). $400 for two AISIN timing belt/water pump kits, because they should be done at the same interval. Napkin math, erring toward our current gas prices rather than the cheaper past, $33,250 on that 190k miles. I bought used for $10,000, so I’m not even on the hook for all 190k, but we’ll say I’m all in for $47,420, still running strong and owner serviceable. All maintenance being done myself. Substantially increase the figure if you’re paying a shop.

A used 2022 Leaf with 17k is gonna run me $15,000 (just lazily searching for “inexpensive reliable EVs” and seeing what pops up in my area). I’ll have four years or 83k of warranty left on the battery. Middle of the road - $1,500 to have a charger installed at home. I’m estimating $7,000 in electricity based on driving habits and local rates (and assuming those rates won’t increase). Add the low-ball figure of $7,500 for an out of warranty battery replacement, which I’m seeing will probably be needed (or at least wanted, due to degradation) by around 150k. $31,000 “all in.”

$47,420 vs $31,000 for the same 190k miles.

The Leaf will also need pads/rotors and it has some of its own fluids that require changing. Mine needs plugs and coils, the occasional sensor, etc. Both need brake fluid flushes but no sense factoring that in for one and not the other. The difference isn’t small, $16.4k is nothing to scoff at, but I’m also comparing operating and servicing my 22 year old Tundra against a 4 year old electric car. I bet the gap closes even more if I had something like an old Corolla with better mpg going toe to toe. Hell, that’d probably cut my gas expenditure nearly in half, nevermind potentially cheaper parts for a car vs a truck.

Not sure what my point is but that list compelled me to actually math it out. I’m keen for corrections or other insights. Maybe a Leaf was a poor choice, but I’m poor too and not buying new so I glanced at “affordable” used listings nearby and it’s what I found. Even if I could buy new, given current offerings I can’t say I’d want to, neither EV nor ICE. Micro transactions, rolling data mines, the erosion of ownership… Until things get better (wishful thinking), fuck the whole lot. I’m mid life and inching towards my cranky old man arc; the next generation can own nothing and be happy if they don’t start resisting it.

HDDs are another regret of mine, along with trying to save a bunch by opting against a chassis with hot swap. I went with four 10TB Red Plus drives. That ended up being about 26TB actual in a RAIDZ1. I failed to consider just how quickly I would start filling it between archiving some YouTube videos and taking DVDs and BluRays out on loan from the local library.

If prices ever improve I’m tempted to get at least a 12 bay, switch to RAIDZ2, and up the number of drives to start with. After migration I’ll probably repurpose the old chassis to be a dedicated NVR. Something lower power that hopefully won’t have to shut off right away if there’s a power outage. As it stands when the lights go out so does TrueNAS and 98% of what I host.

That’s the dream, anyway. Time will tell if it pans out.

I paid $158.99 in November of 2024, building my TrueNAS server. Wish I’d doubled up back then.

Because this reminded of it: For a similar reason, and if you own an older vehicle, you don’t want to replace the warning lights (battery, oil, engine/MIL) with LED bulbs. Or you’ll need “error free” bulbs with built-in parallel resistors. LED gauge lights are usually fine but, on a lot of vehicles, an incandescent bulb is expected on the warning light circuits. If you replace, for example, the battery bulb with an LED - the alternator might not engage as it should, because there won’t be sufficient current for it to do so, and your battery could drain despite a running engine.

(I’m far from an electrician, nevermind an automotive one, but I did a lot of research before upgrading/replacing my burnt out dash lights and that’s a mistake I would’ve otherwise made)

I’m not 100% sold on running actual ads although, if I recreated Nickelodeon, it might be fun to throw in commercials for stuff like Gak or the old Stick Stickley bits (provided I could find those). Maybe roll my own Snick and Nick-at-Nite blocks. For the latter it’d be neat to have some more period-correct stuff - even if it’s just Fred Flintstone hocking cigarettes or whatever.

I’d probably need to significantly expand my storage and media collection to make more than a couple channels doable. Definitely a bunch of bumps, “coming up next,” etc if I want to keep a strict 15/30/60 type schedule. And a 24/7 weather channel with the old WeatherStar 4000 style.

If you find the channel, let us know. I’d probably be keen to pull at least a handful of old adverts for padding.

I can’t find the video anymore but I remember someone recreating retro cable TV using dizquetv and an RPi (maybe just for the “receiver”). Searching now, I mostly find that ErsatzTV and FieldStation42 seem to be the goto options. I keep bouncing the idea around of setting up actual “channels” for Jellyfin, complete with silly self-recorded ads/bumps/promos/etc, but haven’t decided on a solution.

If you’re already doing so, do you have any insights? At a glance, ErsatzTV Next appears the most dynamic but also most barebones in that focus is mainly on the streaming. Library management and station programming looks to be external, which would mean having to roll my own scripts or whatever.

Eh, Windows still needs PowerToys (mainly FancyZones) for a better experience. I like around a 30/70 split between Windows Terminal (for PowerShell and WSL) on the left and some primary application like a browser on the right. It does have keybinds for shuffling through a stack of windows but only on the side that has focus. It still really needs a way to swap focus between zones that isn’t Alt-Tab’ing until you’re on the desired one or grabbing a mouse to click a program in another stack.

What are your other hobbies/interests? What are some things you’re completely uninterested in but it’s annoying shit you would really like a better way of handling? Got some answers? Now check the awesome self hosted page to see if there are any existing solutions that look promising. If so, now you know at least some things to host.

How to go about it? When I started I was an idiot kid, on Windows ninety-something (or maybe ME), running Apache, MySQL and phpBB. Copy-pasting snippets in Notepad and not comprehending everything. I found desktop Linux later, learned about init systems, watched that go out the window with systemd, etc. I was installing Ubuntu on every beige clunker I could get my hands on back when the Beryl (Compiz) cube desktop video went semi-viral. Eventually moved on to Arch, learned more about CLI tools, editing configs, etc. If you have something that can host VMs, and you want to play with mock bare-metal setups where you create the users, directories, set permissions, blah blah blah - VMs aren’t a bad way to go. It’s good stuff to learn and know. Gives you an excuse to play with tmux’s synchronized input feature, maybe learn some Ansible, and whatever else. If you just have one dust collector sitting around, start trying distros on it. Mess with stuff til it breaks, boot into install/recovery media and try to unbreak it, repeat. As long as it’s fun (or tolerably annoying enough to reach some end goal).

I’ve personally gotten lazy and I’m nearly all-in on containers. A few things are manual but I’ve come to like Docker. I do still manage mine with compose files, even on my TrueNAS system with their “apps,” because compose files are easy to read, keep track of, and modify. My non-TrueNAS machines, I use Docker + Portainer. I should maybe look into podman and quadlets but haven’t bothered yet.

My recent hardware went from RPi4B to Thinkcentre mini PC to building out a 2U TrueNAS system. A PoE switch powers a Home Assistant Yellow and a few cameras. The RPi was repurposed to only host Homepage, NUT (server, watches my UPS and tells more power hungry machines to shut down during outages) and might eventually host Grafana if I ever get into learning it. Another 4B is my Pi-Hole. The Thinkcentre has an 8TB external plugged in and scheduled rsync tasks, on the TrueNAS machine, push back ups of my more important files to it. It also has a couple users set up strictly for running game servers (ioquake and teeworlds at the moment). Those aren’t containerized and things like rcon, config management, map rotation, mods, etc are all handled manually.

TrueNAS hosts everything else. If you need ideas based on what others are hosting, here’s some of what is on it:

• Jellyfin, for TA (see below) and my legally obtained DVD backups.
• TubeArchivist, (TA) for backing up YouTube videos, descriptions, comments. Has a Jellyfin plugin so your backup library is watchable in JF
• Homebox, for home inventory management. I use it to keep track of my tools mostly. You can have locations, sub locations, items… if I pull a rail of sockets, stick them in my toolbag, then carry it out to the shed - so long as I bothered to update their locations in Homebox I won’t waste time digging in the back of my truck, tool chest or other bags because I can’t remember where I last used my 1/2" drive 14mm deep impact. It’s a mildly inconvenient extra step to essentially “check in/out” my own tools, as if I’m working in an aircraft hangar or I’m doing IT asset management, but I find it worth it.
• LubeLogger, for keeping track of vehicle service. Early this year I put a lot of money into fixing my truck. A lot of tools, fluids, and parts to handle a broken water pump and do some preventative maintenance. Still a quarter of what a shop might’ve charged. Since I’m becoming my own mechanic, I wanted something to properly record what I do and how much I spend on it. LubeLogger fits the bill.
• Factorio, for the factory must grow.
• Dawarich, self hosted GPS logs. Seems decent but I might shop around still. I just wanted an alternative to Google Maps for tracking my travel history.
• Audiobookshelf, for some audiobooks but mainly for archiving a small handful of podcasts.
• Romm, because I’m compelled to hoard old games and occasionally even play them.
• Immich, because I’m not paying Google to store my photos.
• FreshRSS, because there’s still a dwindling number of sites that don’t force you to visit them to read an article in its entirety. Mainly for Hack A Day, a couple devlogs from game makers, the latest CVEs, some global news sites, NASA’s “Astronomy Picture of the Day” (APOD), etc.
• Samba, for some SMB shares that family can dump files into
• ClamAV, because family is dumping files into their SMB shares

I’m looking at hosting lemon-manuals (successor to charm.li). It’s basically a massive collection of service procedures, bulletins, fluid/torque/etc specs, and so on for decades worth of automobiles. Stuff the industry would like to force you into paying AllData, Identifix, or whoever for. I just haven’t had a chance to review their provided “server.” It’s also over 1TB. It’s overkill when I’m only working on three vehicles (mine and my folks’) but I’d like to have it all in case an auto industry lawyer tries to shut them down or i inevitably get a new set of wheels.

I’ve also got intentions of implementing some sort of documentation system but I haven’t settled on one yet. It’s not really for me. I can read my configs and go off plain text. Mainly it needs to be simple enough for my family to work with. My homelab has a bus factor of Me. Whoever has to deal with it when I’m gone needs to know enough to retrieve my encrypted password database so they can get into my emails/bank account to cancel/pay for things or whatever, back up any media of mine they want to keep, back up their own stuff, probably some instructions on how to burn their shows/movies/music back to discs, and shut everything down. Because one day things will break, servers they don’t understand will have failures, they’ll sell the hardware or give it away to designated friends/family members who can hopefully use it… all that unhappy stuff most of us don’t think about until it happens. In fact some sort of contingency plan should probably have been the first thing I recommended, but with some luck you’ve read this far and will put your own into place.

Anyway, hopefully something in the above rambling helps you on your way.

Fail secure sounds good but now you also need to consider how quickly the brakes engage. Don’t want some random electrical hiccup locking up your brakes mid curve while you’re three-wide doing 70 on an interstate. Slowly draining capacitors or whatever to gradually engage them might be an option. Then you also, preferably, need some means of physically disengaging them. Otherwise you’re gonna get disabled vehicles in the middle of roadways that have to be dragged up onto flatbeds or the side of the road because the wheels won’t roll without restoring brake power first.

“You are not acting like the person Mr. Rogers knew you could be.”

Guaranteed to slug the inner child of, at least, three or four generations. Might have diminishing returns at the extremes (brainwashed boomers and brainrot zoomers) but should still hit pretty hard on those who grew up watching Fred Rogers and are capable of some amount of introspection.