I think P2P is still the way to go. Sure it’s not perfect, but it’s simpler and by it’s very nature doesn’t require the infrastructure we know will be a problem.

Plus, don’t forget screen sharing in discord isn’t very good as is (720p30) if you’re not a paid user.

I haven’t tried, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It was years ago that I set it up, but I belive it wanted an app. I would stick with one designed for local only.

I have an EcoBee thermostat which is typically web managed, however it also supports HomeKit. Using the homekit plugin for HomeAssistant I now get best of both worlds.

If I were to do it again I might consider a Z-Wave or ZigBee thermostat, but living in a cold climate I really appreciate knowing that if for some reason my home auto fails there is a backup service to alert me, or vice versa.

Absolutely. It sounds ideal for something like that.

The issue is they sit in this odd place from a price perspective. I can get an N4000 based stick PC with 4GB RAM and eMMC storage for $140 CAD, or a vastly better performing N95 based mini PC with 8GB RAM, real SSD, and additional outputs for $50 more.

The stick PC really only makes sense if you need that form factor, or if you’re on a really tight budget. The improvements for $50 are just too much to ignore.

Your wishlist sounds almost identical to mine. As frustrating as the limitations of streamers are, they are easy to use. HDMI CEC makes single remote setups possible, easy volume changes, input switching, etc. Apps are vetted so they “just work”.

As for casting, most platforms support running Miracast or AirPlay receivers. Google is the stickler here that won’t let you run a Google Cast receiver (or at least I haven’t found one) and also doesn’t implement Miracast on Pixel devices. It’s such a shame because I vastly prefer casting the URL to the TV and letting it source the content than mirroring my phone all the time.

Yeah, those were on my radar as well. I haven’t yet had a chance to look into what the Linux compatibility is like, but that sounds promising that you were able to do it.

The big downside I see is that while the power consumption is low, they’re running a really old SoC, usually based on Intel N4000 (launched late 2017). Looking around it seems to have h.265 decode which is the most important one to look out for. It doesn’t support AV1, but that’s mostly streaming services and not that common (I think?). There may be other disadvantages I’m not thinking of at the moment.

What was the performance like for you?

I do have surround sound, but I wasn’t aware of that being an issue with a PC solution. Have you encountered issues getting that to work?

All my current self-hosting is running off an N100 mini-PC. OPNsense, NginX, Home Assistant, Unifi Controller, Docker host, etc. They are fantastic, it just seems a bit overkill for sitting behind the TV and playing Plex/Jellyfin and the occasional web stream in a browser. There’s really not much competition though as all the products below it offer a lot older processors that don’t have very up to date HW decode.

Are you using the Unbound built into OPNsense, or something else? I ask because it’s easy to configure Unbound in OPNsense for DoT. If your ISP isn’t blocking DoT it will be just as secure.

And yes, it will be much more private. Right now if you’re using neither DoT or DoH your ISP will be able to see all your DNS requests in the clear. With either of the above it will be encrypted and they will not be able to read them.

How would you change his setup to prevent ARP attacks? More network segmentation (clients and servers on separate VLANs) or does OPNsense additional protections I should look into?

What are too currently using for your OpenWRT router? I just got one of these and I would highly recommend it: https://a.aliexpress.com/_mq4HxaS

Get the N100 barebones version because you can slap an SSD and RAM in there for cheaper and have more selection. It has four 2.5Gb NICs and the internal PCIE slot for a WiFI card if you really want, though I would recommend getting a Ubiquiti AP to go along with it.

You can put OPNsense on it bare metal, or proxmox and then run your network related VMs there instead of your main server. Your choice.

I bought the N100 version of what I linked above and it’s been great so far. Obviously you have your own requirements, but IMO this is a waste of a U. The system is so compact that you’re better off putting it on a shelf with other things.

More powerful N100, smaller, cheaper, no brainer to me.

Why buy a mobo when you could get this for cheaper, in a smaller footprint, and comes with a case and PSU? Do you really need the SATA ports?

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mtmaWfo

Lemmy and personal forums have a similar issue though. Just like users were previously at the whim of the large company to provide service, now they rely on you. What if you were to get board of running the forum or (however terrible) something were to happen to you?

Now the site and all of it’s content is lost for the users permanently. Lemmy instances also have this problem. They rely entirely on a single administrator, (or small group of them). In the Web1.0 days this wasn’t such a large issue, because websites were most often read-only for content consumption and web forums were small and populated by niche tech savvy people. These days however, the users create a lot of the content that is hosted and they naturally expect it to persist.

Lemmy needs some way of allowing users to port their profile and content from one instance to another, and a redundancy system where instances can partner with others to host data for redundancy purposes, or something to that effect. Maybe users pay a small hosting fee for their own content and it’s not tied to an instance? Though I’m not sure how that would work, I’m just spitballing.

There’s a lot of problems to solve, and this fediverse is a very interesting idea, but it’s not perfect and introduces a lot of questions. I don’t want perfect to be the enemy of good, but I’m not sure entrusting the longevity of the content to admins of a particular server is the best plan.

I know it’s not exactly what you’re looking for, but don’t forget you can often grab a cached copy of the page if you found it via Google. That’s probably the best way to extract some information without giving Reddit a hit right now.