My homelab is a learning tool that became useful enough to keep some things alive. It started with a raspperry pi and docker and has evolved to multiple systems with backups and some decently complex networking.

Ive always seen a “homelab” as different from a “home server”. Homelabs are meant to be fucked up as you learn things. Have a home lab long enough and you end up with a test lab and production environment.

I dont know how tech saavy you are so apologies if this is an oversimplification but:

Matrix is a protocol. Think of it like a language. There are different matrix backends (synapse, continuwuity, etc) that run the server, which speaks the matrix protocol. Anyone can make a server and host it. They can open it up to federate, which lets other matrix servers talk to that server.

To join matrix you pick a server (matrix.org has one but there are many more. Some fediverse servers like bark.lgbt and blajah.zone have their own matrix servers under the same name). You sign up for that server same way you did for lemmy.

Then you pick a client. Element, cinny, sable, fluffychat are a few. These all “speak” the matrix protocol, the way something like the voyager app speaks activitypub, the protocol for lemmy. They all have slightly different features so use the one that has the features you like.

I love matrix. I self host my own but started on matrix.org. ive migrated my D&D group and friend group from discord to matrix.

if the server you join supports it, you can also bridge discord, telegram, and other chats to matrix. I still talk to some people on fisvord through a bridge.

Matrix is what I moved to. To make transition easier for my core friends I wrote a guide with step by step instructions and pre-made a replica of our discord server. I got probably 70% of them to come over.

The real hit was large communities. For roughly a month I came in daily letting my communities know about what was happening and that I was gonna switch so if people wanted to find me here is where they could find me. I got 3 kinds of replies:

1. The nihilistic “I’ll never escape it, everyone already has my information, why fight it”
2. (In reference to the ID verification) “I’m not American so I don’t care if people have my ID because my country doesn’t have the problems America has”
3. “Moving is too hard and I use one specific feature the other apps don’t have and my friends are here so I’ll move when they move”

Moving to the new platform, giving a grace period to friends, and then moving and cutting contact with the platform had the highest success rate. People that want to talk with you will move, even if it’s just to only talk with you. But the hardest thing is accepting that some people just don’t care about their privacy and want the easy to use features enough that they are willing to lose contact with you.

My coworkers use Claude like an actual brain subscription, and I have started to write off everything they say as if it came straight from the AI. They have gained so much unearned confidence about shit they have no idea about, and have even argued with the development team about it.

I got into an argument about how in band and out of band DTMF work with one of them for a solid half hour before they finally admitted they didn’t actually know but were going off what claude said.

I wanted to punch them for wasting everyone’s time. If you don’t understand stop answering definitively like you’re the expert.

Some customers have switched to using AI emails too. Customers that used to ask extremely low level questions will now submit a 2 page long email with action items and explinations about why our product does X, Y, Z, and I have to read it twice to figure out their problem isn’t even in the action items because the AI hyper focused on the wrong thing.

Like ok thanks you dumped the entire app log into Claude and asked it “why no work” and Claude read an error message that’s benign and now the customer is demanding fixes for something that is not and never has been a problem and won’t actually solve the root issue.

If I see a restraunt that has all AI images of their food I automatically assume it’s a ghost kitchen and refuse to buy from it. Ill take a low quality phone cam pic of the food over AI because at least I know what I’m getting and know it’s real.

I am appalled that no one has brought this up so far- but it hurts because they are touching the cervix, which generally doesn’t get touched, and can be very painful to hit. The speculum they are inserting is designed to slightly open the cervix for the examination.

OP, there are many sizes of vagina. You may have one that’s on the smaller side, with a low pelvic floor. My partner is the same way, and penetration can be painful for them. We have switched to using very small toys or focusing on clitoral stimulation to get them off instead of relying on penetration.

If your doctor clears you, you may just have a low pelvic floor, and may not like penetrative sex. Which is fine! It’s just good to know about yourself.

I vastly prefer it to calibre web personally, but it’s all up to personal preference. Kavita has a pretty extensive user guide too

I use calibre to label books by series. I don’t think I did anything crazy with the folder structure outside of putting comics, manga, and books in separate directories.

I have one media directory with books / manga / comics in separate subdirectories. I process metadata with calibre or other tools as needed, and point Kavita at my books directory and tell it to scan. Kavita should automatically group books of the same series together provided the series name is exact. (eg: “The adventures of Bob” vs “adventures of Bob, The” would be seen as different series. Kavita should also group the libraries together by directory, so I have 3 libraries, books, manga, and comics.

You do need to make sure books are all in the correct formats. I batch convert everything to epub and limit Kavita to only show epubs to avoid duplicates.

The upside to all this is that Kavita comes with a cleaner interface imho, opds is easier to set up, and I’ve had less issues with it. Also users can set their own reading lists and collections if you are setting this up for other users.

For books: mam (manually now that readarr died) -> calibre -> Kavita

If it’s a manga or comic, bypass calibre, straight to Kavita + komf for metadata / covers.

I literally use matrix voice for my d&d group every week lol, just join a server that has voice

Only thing I dislike is the lack of software based noise cancelling is a bit awkward but very managable

It’s not the average consumer spending thousands on tokens. Even my work just had a meeting about how “the free lunch is over” now that AI costs are expanding, and they bought their own hardware to investigate hosting local models.

Linux is widely used in the enterprise world. It’s the home consumer world that doesn’t use it as much and even that is rapidly changing as things enshitify.

A phenomenon I’ve seen that’s rather interesting is I moved from the US to Spain, and everyone here is friendly and far more trusting and kind to random strangers than the US ever was. My suspicion and anxiety around strangers has dropped significantly.

The number of random conversations I get into is much higher, people take an active interest in small talk even when standing in line, I’ve had more people randomly approach me to ask for help, and the idea of someone hurting you physically is an alien concept.

If you’re from the US, I think the US is just cooked man. Spanish internet, at least from what I’ve been able to find, is also more civil, even in places talking politics. Now maybe I’m not in the myriad of WhatsApp groups where people are actually getting I to it, but the public facing side of things is far more civil, and I rarely see Spaniards in mainstream socials like reddit and whatnot. The joke I’ve heard is that Spain “hasn’t really gotten on board with the internet yet”.

I think that the modern internet is fed by a social media stream that incentivises devisiveness. Engagement is higher on negative posts, and engagement drives the algorithm. I’ve long been against algorithms feeding you content because those algorithms are slanted to keep you engaged longer, which means showing you content that will upset you, then calming you down with kitten photos until you’re ready to get into another fight.

So to answer your question, I don’t think it’s a chicken and egg problem, I think it’s a problem with amplification. I think the English speaking internet has long been US centric (or at least caters to the US unfairly) and the US has bred a suspicious and anxiety ridden society. Then corporations came along and figured out just how much gas to put on that fire to squeeze money out of people through social media to take control of what was once a free space of creativity and turn it into an engagement farm, where art and conservation has been converted to “content” and distressing news and devisive conversation has become tools to keep you invested in your feed long enough for them to build a consumer profile on you to ship you targetted ads on Amazon. This in turn amplifies the suspicion and fear already inherent in the meatspace sphere, which feeds the online polarization.

When you stop either one - either unplugging or entering a calm and connected IRL space (like I did) you break the amplification, and the anxiety stops. This is why “internet detox” is a thing people try to do.

The internet in its current form is addictive, and like a parasite corporations have learned exactly how much they can take from you and not kill you. It wants to keep you engaged and scared, but it is also exploiting societal issues that were already present to begin with.

That’s legit. I have a burner account that is only used for things I absolutely have to, like my utility bills.

In many parts of the world Whatsapp is the dominate communication platform. My landlord sends me my utility bills through WhatsApp, as is my doctor’s scheduling platform, and my vet’s contact info, etc. It’s basically impossible to do things without it.

I use audiobookshelf to manage my TTRPG pdfs. It can correlate multiple files under one “Title” which makes organizing ttrpg stuff simple and it’s a nice interface. Plus it’s self host able so I can share it with the other people at my table. I just wish the PDF reader was a little more robust but it mostly does the job.

Unless you’re like me and the websites you use for work require it and don’t work in literally any other browser (I have tried everything)