plateee

Would you make someone you love a home server?

No. Especially no for a non-technical, remote person.

Troubleshooting my lab in the basement is hard enough without having to try some weird screen share app, or telling the person, “press the blinky light button. NO NOT THAT ONE”.

If you want to share the joys of a home lab, do what I did for my technologically impaired in laws - get a wireguard VPN client on a laptop and walk them through (several times) the process of connecting to the VPN, browsing to your services, logging into the services, doing the thing, then disconnecting from the VPN.

• Show them the process while they take notes on the process.
• Let them follow their own notes with minimal help (except to correct the notes) while they do the process end to end.
• Repeat that last step a few times with zero feedback so they build confidence in the process.
• The next day, have them do it again based exclusively on their notes and memory.
• If you’re still in town, wait a full day and repeat the last step a few days later.

My in-laws are now experts at VPN’ing in and interacting with my services.

Sure, I have no plans to move anytime in the next decade, but my 5 year old 50" TV might need to be packed perfectly with all the Styrofoam just in case.

I always ask “Annie, is it okay?”

Not OP, but I was curious too. There’s a guide that looks legit for running your own multi-hop wireguard: https://vpnlab.io/en/guides/multihop-wireguard-chain-setup-guide-50

And a more sketchy/AI looking python project: https://github.com/a904guy/VPN-Chainer

How in the heck can you pay for something like that with cash?! I looked in their FAQs, but I didn’t see if you just mailed them an envelope with 20s or what.

At work, I used ssh-signed certificates for Linux server access - those certs are only valid for about 15 minutes.

The whole idea of shorter lifetime certificates is to address if a certificate is compromised. (Especially for client certificates which, iirc, Let’s Encrypt no longer offers).

For a home lab? With no externally accessible services? Short-lived certs aren’t really a big deal. Nobody is going to be hacking your homelab, stealing your private keys, poisoning your internal DNS, and pointing you to a different, malicious service.

Shit, between the payoff from the Chinese for opposing data centers and the Soros checks for being a no kings protester, you’d think I would be rolling in dough.

Don’t forget any home improvement tasks. Need your yard leveled? Landscapers would love to give a slight cash discount.

Tree needs taking down? Cash.

Tuckpointing a chimney? Cash.

Annoyingly, you can’t actually use “cash” cash for a cash down payment on a house. Mortgage lenders like to know where the money is coming from.

The Hobbit 3: but this time, they take a time traveling steam engine to the future to help get Frodo to Mount Doom.

But I love dogs!

It’s the perfect guest house. Separate from the main house and not comfortable for long term visits.

So I’m the unicorn for this. My work is a M365 shop, but I’m running Ubuntu for… reasons.

My only option for teams/word/visio is either using the shittacular web version (chrome only - ff is too flaky with Microsoft’s shit) or hopping on Citrix to a windows 11 box.

If this works, I could finally ditch chrome and have a full in featured office suite for when I have to work with non-linux coworkers.

Edit: OneDrive can still go fuck itself.

The only reason why I hesitate to recommend Ubiquiti cameras is even their cheapest offerings are kind of expensive.

And although you can run isolated from the Internet, managing updates is a bit painful. (Ask me how I know)

They gave POE cameras that will just work with an Ethernet cable (although they gave weird POE requirements). Their USB powered ones are wifi connected.

Source: I’ve had them for years and am happy with the setup.

Money doesn’t corrupt, it just exposes.

Weird, it must be a combination of the Summit app and piefed - if I open it in a browser, the link is there. Apologies for taking up your time!

Are you posting from Lemmy? That link also is incomplete.

By incomplete, I mean the link is missing some text and it’s being replaced by “…”.

I have a “smart” TV. It wouldn’t let me get past setup until I put it on wifi, so I spun up a hotspot, then immediately killed it and just plugged in a micro PC running Linux to the HDMI port.

Occasionally, I’ll sit on the remote and a pop up happens saying I’ll need to connect to the Internet for <feature> to work, but that’s about it.