if you could start again in your self hosting journey, what would you do differently? :)

That’s an excellent question.

If I were to start over, the first thing that I would do is start by learning the basics of networking and set up a VPN! IMO exposing services to the public internet should be considered more of an advanced level task. When you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s risky and frankly unnecessary.

The lowest barrier to entry for a personal VPN, by far, is Tailscale. Automatic internal DNS and clients for nearly any device makes finding services on a dedicated machine really, really, easy. Look into putting a tailscale client right into the compose file so you automatically get an internal DNS records for a service rather than a whole machine.

From there, play around with more ownership (work) with regard to what can touch your network. Switch from Tailscale’s “trusted” login to hosting your own Headscale instance. Add a PiHole or AdGuard exit node and set up your own internal DNS records.

Maybe even scrap the magic (someone else’s logic that may or may not be doing things you need) and go for a plain-Jane Wireguard setup.

Well y’know, tomato potato

Nix store go: 😭

Strongly second this recommendation. One of the biggest benefits of nix is being able to use the package manager on Linux/MacOS. You can quite literally start out by simply porting whole config files into the nix store. Just copy the file into your nix configs repo and have nix create the symlink.

I personally play around with these via imports. Say I want to start configuring Firefox via home-manager. I could start with configuring Firefox manually, then storing my raw /home/luc/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini in my nix store by the method above via a file called firefox-native.nix. Then in firefox.nix I play around with parameters in the nix config. If I hit a wall and don’t have time to figure out the “real” nix configs, I just switch my import over from:

# home.nix
imports = [ ./firefox.nix ]; # the nix way

to:

# home.nix
imports = [ ./firefox-native.nix ]; # fallback - known working native config file

Don’t forget about the Discourse page! I’ve found folks there to be very friendly and helpful.

Other useful tools are: search.nixos.org - for seeing if a package exists. mynixos - for exploring options within a program/service configuration.

Another +1 from me. Very similar setup and it’s been working for me for years.

Kind of. Synthing-fork is alive and well.

Second this! I like the interface. Especially useful for euro banks where you can auto sync.

OpenScale works great and kind of does what you want. If you have an old Android phone laying around you can have it persistently connected to a cheap Bluetooth scale. Functional, but at a much have higher power cost than an ESP32 solution. Automated database exports to a local file (on the android device) and Syncthing can move your data around for analysis.

The good folks over at Gadgetbridge might have a solution too, although their list of supported scales looks pretty short.

You might also look into making a project like rmfakecloud to trick your Fitbit device into pushing data to a local server.

Not sure about home assistant though, I’ve never used it.

Nice work! Thanks for putting in this work and self promoting. I hope this continues to grow.

5, years, later…

Debian: You’re good bro, no updates today.

Cosmic has been excellent on NixOS.

Alpha bugs and all, it’s been totally usable. Once it’s out of Alpha it’s likely to be the only DM I use.

Or switch to NixOS 😉

This is pretty normal in military / federal positions. It is well known and a part of training that you are responsible for returning overpayments.

Most of them.

55 BURGERS

So folks know this isn’t a hypothetical Edison Motors 🍁

Came here to ask the same thing. I’m half tempted to pick up a pixel 3a just to try. They’re very cheap these days.

Unbelievable. What would we do? Hand it over to a non-profit akin to the Linux Foundation so we can have a flourishing ecosystem of technologies sharing momentum while branching out into their own flavors and augmentations? All of that, for what! To serve a public good via most common piece of software used on a day to day basis? Madness!

The age of the great north Korean porn revolution is upon us

I think if you’re assassinating a public figure you’re a little past caring about what’s “allowed”