Right? My one has developed a nasty case of defective WiFi/Bluetooth chip. I’m convinced it’s a superficial, intentional break. Flashing it could well revert what Google’s doing to it

Aside from being hella slow, I just don’t like that it can’t use the same directories as my network shares and requires uploading. This script might help but honestly I just stick to the basic shares because of this

From my experience using a mailserver with no PTR and an ISP who likes to put their addresses on a PBL, it’s very good. Gmail tends to be the most annoying and wants that PBL listing removed or you’ll go to spam for new recipients, but other than that 10/10. I’d be interested to hear what your findings are if you do test it!

Get yourself a Sonoff ZigBee bridge! Hue light support is practically native, and they act as extenders to reach your other ZigBee devices! Just don’t expect to be able to sync them with any movies or peripherals. I think there is a virtual Hue bridge on HACS and that might help with that, but idk

Smooth sailing for me too, shockingly. I’ve recently added my 26th service to Proxmox - LibreELEC (Kodi), with the very complex matter of monitor passthrough. It’s such a versatile program and it has replaced my Chromecast with more features and side bonuses than I could’ve imagined. Another huge step towards degoogling.

Nice… I use ytdl-sub for downloading music, highly recommend it. You can write tag metadata but if you want embedded stuff I’d recommend trying beets. Running both as a user whose primary group matches Jellyfin is a must if you want stuff saved next to the video files… The dev is also very active.

I just installed Ollama and use gemma3 for now. I wanted to use dolphin-mixtral but holy crap it wants more RAM than my entire setup

Snikket is great. I liked my choice of Prosody with Monocles and Gajim for server, Android and Windows/Linux, respectively

XMPP for my attempt just worked, voice and video calling too. The Android clients Monocles, Cheogram and Conversations are great, as for desktop they all look like 90’s messaging clients haha

I ultimately switched to Matrix because the encryption key sharing is much more friendly, at least for helping non-enthusiasts use it, and I didn’t realise I could decrypt old XMPP messages for new clients by transferring them manually, but at least Element Web is nice. It has flaws, definitely - on Android I find myself using Element Classic for creating unencrypted rooms and voice/video calling using my TURN server, and Element X for general messaging, caption and Markdown support. That’s another thing - for me the Element clients are the closest to being usable, the few others are borked.

In short XMPP is ugly but functional, and the client devs try their best, and Matrix is enticing but, as you said, finicky. Element is pretty but their new client that promises full e2ee for calling hasn’t reached a level I would consider out of Beta yet.

I don’t have any small form factor recommendations, but I can recommend - if you’re comfortable going AliBaba/AliExpress - the Ípega brand. It’s about £10, requires an app to configure, but extremely long-life battery and switchable modes. But the best controller for the rare few mobile games that support controller input natively is an Xbox One… one, and any other made after that point

This. Why pay £6/m when, with self-hosting a Samba/NFS/NextCloud instance, I pay a fraction of the corporate cost.

Currently I’m paying ~£15/m as my server now has a GPU for better streaming and local assistant purposes. It uses ~80W. Without the GPU I was paying ~£4.50/m, which gets me:

• Network-wide traffic protection, ads, spam etc.
• Hub to remotely control, secure and automate my home
• Cloud media, frequently synced between devices
• CCTV
• Password management
• Email
• Notekeeping
• Instant messaging
• Streaming for locally stored movies, shows, music, podcasts, books, audio books and YouTube subscriptions
• Multiplayer Minecraft server
• Website/blogsite
• Remote desktop access
• Group video calling/presentation hosting
• 54TB shared storage between everything
• Network-attached storage

Imagine the cost of outsourcing all these services for unlimited access, unlimited* storage, unlimited e-mailboxes, and complete independence** from outside influence. I know I’d be paying £8/m to Google for their 2TB media storage plan alone.

*Limited by the drives you can afford
**Relying only on the developers of the software
It cost approx. £200 for the base parts, £200 for the GPU and £900 for the hard drives. A valuable investment.

I’ve worked out that I’ve had the server running for 3 years. If I take into account the money I have saved by not paying Google £8/m, I’ve saved £40/year. If I account for Netflix £25/m, I’ve completely covered the £900 I spent on storage. Disney+ £15/m takes me well over the remaining hardware costs. The media I own is far less than that offered by streamers but it’s everything I can need for the next 20 years+. I’ve counted. Every other service is just a bonus.

Nobody should’ve bought games published by Amazon in the first place

I imagine it’s more like this

As I’ve seen gaming server subscriptions go from £36/y to £23/m (Xbox) in a few years, and cloud CCTV storage from £40/y to £16/m (Google via acquisition of Nest) in a few months, I say we count our stars when a subscription cost remains fair.

Incroyable!

Pretty much every time I played Oblivion I’d spend a week in the tutorial cave, levelling Agility by using a turbo controller and rubber band, jumping in a corner where the ceiling height is just high enough so you can spam about 5 jumps per second. Later on you can do what you said near a goblin to max Sneak, but I think it’s quicker by that guy you need to kill for the Dark Brotherhood as he’s ill and perpetually sleeping

Yay, sweet! 50% more content, right?

Boycott Microsoft

Block all updates to the games and launchers you have, just in case. Sims 4 is dead, guys

I hear you. I’ve taken to writing myself guides on how to set up things based on what worked for me, in case I need to again, purely because of how complicated each one is. Might write blogs later aha

Yeah, the way things at going I feel like I should protect myself further with a VPN, but it does break some of my services’ access. Just another hurdle in the track to net independence that will be overcome! Heaven knows we’ve overcome many to get where we each are.

No need to bust your brain trying too hard - you’ll find an answer eventually!

I love community.