If we recommend you a tracker tracker, soon enough you’ll just be back asking for a tracker tracker tracker. When does it end?!

Last I checked (which, admittedly, was a few years ago) I literally couldn’t find any security cameras that weren’t compromised in some way. The only options are basically:

• Consumer models tied to “cloud” services
• Generic Chinese ONVIF cameras that probably phone home to who knows where unless you firewall them off from the Internet
• ONVIF cameras that might have a slightly better reputation than the previous category but are only sold through security system installers, not normal retail channels
• Analog (not IP) cameras that you hook up via coaxial cable
• Building your own goddamn camera from scratch with a Raspberry Pi or something

It’s ridiculous!

For TVs, there used to be the option of Sceptre dumb TVs, but even those have disappeared from the market in the last year or so.

I’ve been looking for a smartwatch/fitness tracker (and a bike computer, which is kind of a similar category) and the pickings seem very slim there, too. There’s the Pebble and the PineTime, which are open but maybe lack some of the sensors one might want in a fitness tracker, and there’s stuff that’s intended to be proprietary but supported by Gadgetbridge (e.g. iGPSPORT bike computers) . There might be others, but I don’t know about them.

It’s fuckin’ bleak, y’all. I’m at the point where I’m seriously considering building almost all my own tech out of Raspberry Pis and/or ESP32s because that’s easier than searching for needles in the infinite haystack of surveillance capitalist slop!

Why does this need to be a hosted service/web app? Why can’t it just be a regular-ass application?

I don’t like the guy’s breathless over-enthusiasm, but NetworkChuck has a video on how to integrate LLM-based voice assistants with HomeAssistant using Whisper and Ollama.

I buy TPLink gear, but only because I check to make sure it can be flashed with OpenWRT beforehand. I may not actually do that (my router is running it, but my PoE access points aren’t yet), but I make damn sure I can.

(Also, I almost bought Kasa smart plugs, then checked to see whether they could run ESPHome or Tasmota and picked a different brand instead. You always have to check, every single time!)

Inb4 “Awesome²”

Nothin’ I’m running, that’s for sure!

It’s not really that there are services that require that much processing power for a single request; it’s that it’s designed to handle normal requests for hundreds or thousands of users at once.

I suppose that supporting 0.5TB of RAM means it could deal with quite a big LLM, but any sort of halfway-modern GPU would absolutely run circles around it in terms of tokens per second, on any model that fit in their VRAM.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s possible to get by just trusting any particular guide without developing at least some actual understanding of the concepts underlying what you’re doing. The field is just too wide and rapidly changing for any source of info to be authoritative (and stay authoritative indefinitely after the guide is written), so it’s super important to develop the skill of looking up multiple different and possibly conflicting approaches to the task, thinking critically about them, and then synthesizing your own approach that works for your specific situation.

Your question is like asking how to convert a cake into flour, sugar, milk, butter and (unbroken!) eggs.

Be prepared for some respondents to choose the middle option as a proxy for “not applicable,” because that’s what I did.

“They” keep trying to sell us disc brakes as being better, but I believe it at little bit less every time I have to change the pads on those hateful fuckers. Frankly, at this point I want my damn rim brakes back!

I’m aware of that, but OP requested “explain like I’m stupid” so I omitted that detail.

A program isn’t just a program: in order to work properly, the context in which it runs — system libraries, configuration files, other programs it might need to help it such as databases or web servers, etc. — needs to be correct. Getting that stuff figured out well enough that end users can easily get it working on random different Linux distributions with arbitrary other software installed is hard, so developers eventually resorted to getting it working on their one (virtual) machine and then just (virtually) shipping that whole machine.

My plan is to use the $20 Onn (Walmart store-brand) Android TV box LTT recommended as being eminently jailbreakable about a year ago, but I haven’t actually gotten around to hooking it up yet so I can’t authoritatively endorse it.

Relevant to !selfhosted because one of the projects getting funding cut is Let’s Encrypt.

Inspired by yesterday’s Jeff Geerling video, were we?

Thanks, I now also understand the purpose of Immich because of this post.

Personally, I think most “traditional” pickup trucks are ugly. The F150, Ram, Silverado? Those are at the very best - boring. They’re definitely not attractive. At least the Cybertruck is a fresh concept for a pickup.

I know they’re inherently not very safe, but I’ve always wanted a stylish/futuristic cabover pickup, like the Dodge Deora concept:

Most “SUVs” are lies – misnamed glorified station wagons. What an SUV is supposed to be is a vehicle that can ford streams and crawl over rocks. I own an old Toyota 4Runner and a Kia Sedona. The Sedona is absolutely the better car for most uses (especially hauling stuff), but it absolutely cannot do the things I use the 4Runner for.

that also includes Tim Berners-Lee

You mean that traitorous piece of shit who sold us out to DRM on the Web?