One thing I do is instead of having an open SSH port, I have an OpenVPN server that I’ll connect to, then SSH to the host from within the network. Then, if someone hacks into the network, they still won’t have SSH access.

It depends how much they’ve got to offer beyond AI. If the only thing they offer is AI (like OpenAI), yeah, they’re in trouble.

Turns out when you build your entire business on copyright infringement, a. it’s easy to steal your business and b. you have no recourse when someone does.

Cause they work better. Brand new ads, awesome new subscriptions. Flashy new AI features that definitely work super well and are definitely useful.

/s

Setting up your domain with a provider is not too difficult. You just have to add some DNS records. Most places will check them once you’re done and let you know if there’s anything wrong. The hardest part is that every domain registrar has their own DNS management interface, so you might have to read a few guides from your registrar to navigate it. It’s definitely worth doing though. It’s really nice to have your own dot com.

Yep. My dad said it’s working great for him.

Yeah. I had to go into the settings and change some setting to get it to work with keyboard input.

I had the same experience with my parents. They have a Samsung TV and the Jellyfin experience was awful.

I ended up getting them a little N100 mini pc and installed Bazzite and the Jellyfin app from Flathub. You can configure it so it knows it’s on a TV, and responds to keyboard controls. I got them a remote from a company called Pepper Jobs that gives keyboard input and now they have a great experience with it. Even my mom, who’s a big technophobe, loves it.

My dad also has an LG TV in his workshop that doesn’t have a working Jellyfin app (cause it’s ten years old), and he uses the Jellyfin app for his Xbox on that one.

And that’s why open source is best.

Yep. You are 100% right about that. It’s the best thing to be independent, but it’s so fucking hard because we’ve all just let these big email providers take away this wonderful system from us.

That’s why I’m super picky about which blocklists I use for my own email service. If a blocklist charges for removing your IP, or even if they make you jump through unreasonable hoops, I refuse to use them.

I also have to check regularly to make sure my own IPs aren’t on any lists. Apple is the worst, because they use a blocklist provider that has terrible communication and service unless you pay a huge subscription fee.

(One point though, it’s not the domain that goes on the blocklist, it’s the IP address of the SMTP server. You can use a custom domain name with most providers, then you’re using their SMTP servers, so their IP addresses. If you’re unhappy with them, it’s pretty easy to switch providers for your domain, then you get to keep the same email addresses.)

As someone who runs an email service, you are 1,000,000% right. I think I had literal nightmares about it.

Yeah, you can rent a virtual host and set up an email server on it. You gotta make sure port 25 is unblocked, which sometimes requires payment (Azure charges for it). Otherwise, you’d wanna look for a specific email hosting provider. You also would need to make sure the public IP you get isn’t on any spam lists, which can be a huge pain in the butt.

On my service, I specifically don’t use any spam lists that you have to pay to get off of, but a lot of places do (like Apple iCloud).

I don’t think Thunderbird is a direct alternative to Gmail. The best alternative is to own your own domain name and use your own email server, but that’s really impractical for most people. At the very least, owning your own domain name that you use for your email is way better than relying on a service that locks you in with their own domain name.

It’s not super easy to set that up, but it’s easier than most people probably think it is. A service with imap support will let you take all your old email with you if you switch providers.

My own email service, Port87, doesn’t have custom domain support or imap, but I’m working to add both of those features. Any service you use should have both of those if you want to be independent.

I’d imagine not very much. I don’t know how to measure just the GPU. It doesn’t have any desktop installed, so it’s only ever rendering a console. It can transcode tons of 1080p streams at once, so even a transcode probably doesn’t draw much power. The CPU is the hungriest part, and that’s mostly idling too.

That’s awesome! Yeah, I’ll definitely check it out. Thank you!

Sorry, but I don’t know. I use an A380 in my system. I got it before the A310 was available.

That’s really cool! I just run the vanilla server, but maybe I should check out Paper. Can it import worlds from vanilla?

Absolutely yes. It’s better to use an old PC for a home server, because upgrades are cheaper, parts are easier to find, troubleshooting is generally easier, they’re usually more energy efficient than an older dedicated server, and you’re saving an old pc from becoming e-waste.

That being said, what you want to run on it determines how old/cheap of a PC could work for you.

Jellyfin works best when you can do hardware encoding, and these days that means throwing an ARC A310 in there and calling it a day. If you have a new enough processor, you don’t even need the graphics card.

Mastodon is pretty disk heavy, but if you’ve got a nice hard disk to put the Minio server on and an SSD for the db, you’re golden. That’s how I run https://port87.social/. It’s running on an old 6th gen Intel i7. The PC I built in 2015 (with a few upgrades).

CPU intensive servers like Minecraft are where you start to run into problems with older hardware. If it’s just you on there, a 10 year old CPU is fine, but if you’ve got a few friends, the server may start to struggle to keep up. I had to move my server off that same system I talked about above, because Minecraft was pegging the CPU a lot. But a 5 year old CPU would be fine for that. (Assuming that the 10 year old and 5 year old CPUs were both top tier CPUs when they were new. Like i7, i9, Ryzen 7, Ryzen 9. A five year old i3 would still struggle.)

Basically unless you’re trying to run AI models on it, cheap hardware is fantastic for personal servers.

FUCK YES!!!

I’ve been waiting for this for years! Omg, what awesome news!!

Cause that’s not simple or easy at all. It takes a fair bit of knowledge to set up all of these things.