Wouldn’t that efficiency thing largely depend on what silicon you’re using though?

I would think so, but anecdotally, I didn’t see a horrific rise in electrical costs. Most of my equipment is 5 to 10 years old. Some people spend way more on their hobbies so I figured my costs were in-bounds. If you are in a locale where electricity is at a premium, yeah, I’d probably want equipment more modern that has less power consumption. If OP did a little diffing around on ebay, they could probably pick up a dual nic, small form factor, fanless for pretty cheap.

I don’t think you have to worry about security with old(er) computers that have been reassigned to be a server. You’re going to most likely be running an up-to-date Linux OS, and as long as you keep everything updated, you shouldn’t have any issues. Couple that with security deployments, and I think you will be good.

The problem is that very old computers are not as efficient when it comes to electricity to run them. Will it run your power bill up an extra $100+/month. Probably not. I would stay clear of old enterprise equipment because they definitely are power hogs. It really depends on how expensive electricity is in your local. For me, it’s relatively cheap. I think I saw an increase of about $25 which is probably a nominal amount that most people would spend on a hobby.

You could self host this on a droplet: https://github.com/dgtlmoon/changedetection.io

Example Picture

I find the discussion interesting. It’s kind of like telling me you’ve eradicated Google from your life. I guarantee you that at some point in your daily traversal of the internet, you’ll encounter some Google service or skunk works project. It’s inevitable. At some point or another you’re going to have to hold your nose and get a little dirty…or go build a cabin on some hilltop and disconnect from all of society. I live in a tiny house on a 22 acre farm. As self sufficient as I endeavor to be, yes, I still have to use Amazon, or WalMart on occasion.

Not really. I have none of those apps or alternatives. and I don’t know anyone I want to chat with on Discord, WhatsApp, Insta, or other. Not that I’m antisocial, I just have no interest. Lemmy is about as close as I want to get to anyone. Before, it was Reddit, but they have tanked as a place to search for knowledge.

Encrypt your DNS. Use only DNSEC servers. TLS 1.3, Secure SNI. Use a VPN with double hop proxy.

The issue is not all servers support TLS 1.3 and Secure SNI, so you are at the mercy of that particular server. Truth be known, there is probably zero ways to be totally secure, private, and anonymous, but that shouldn’t deter you from locking down what you can. However, if your threat model is hiding from a government, then unplugging is probably your best bet.

People I talk to about security, anonymity, and privacy always ask me ‘Are you hiding from the government?’ which is rather hilarious to me. I send them tax forms every year. I vote once every four years and in local elections. We are in touch. If I were a person of interest, they’d come visit. However, there is absolutely no requirement to over share…with anyone.

https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/encrypted-sni

Well, it worked so well on the home front, why not export it? At least in other countries in my observation, for the most part, the population pretty much knows it’s bs. They do not speak out for fear of harm or death. However, here in the US, average citizens don’t even blink. It’s gobbled up and regurgitated ad nauseam. Then, to seal this in the hearts and minds of America, they label those who would exercise their rights as an American citizen: ultra paranoid, schizophrenic, perhaps a bit mental. The American propaganda machine has no equals.

many of those magazines are bedaubed with felt-tip where I marked my progress whiling away hours typing in those programs.

I got into computers in the mid 70s with the advent of the Altair. Reading your comment was like a flashback. I remember you’d finally get through, meticulously typing in all the pages of code. So your cross your fingers and ran it and got an error. But I was hooked. I still have my Altair, Timex/Sinclair, Ti 99 & 994a. I had/have everything imaginable for the Ti. You needed a kitchen table to spread all that out on.

Later on, as you say, demos became a big thing, I loved the demos. I would write just about anyone giving away a demo of something. Game demos would at least let you play one or two levels.

(Is sublemmy the right word)

Never heard it before but it does sound appropriate.

I definitely need some advice for self hosting!

Great SelfHosting resource: https://lemmy.world/c/selfhosted

I selfhost a lot of the services I use. It’s cost effective and educational all at the same time. The RPI is a good point to deviate from. When you outgrow it, repurpose it into a Pi-Hole. Personal VPS servers are quite affordable if you know where to look. Do some poking around and be sure to ask some questions. We all were noobs at something at some point and all knowledge and wisdom starts with a single question…so don’t be afraid to ask it.

Yes but you actually have to give it connectivity to accomplish that. As it is, it’s just a dumb robot bumping into things until it’s covered all the space. Jack’s a doughnut, Bob’s your uncle. I have an older one, wood floors, and two dogs, That thing gets a work out. Do the new ones require an active internet connection? I don’t know.

I firmly believe, given enough time and technology, and barring we don’t destroy our own selves like dumb asses of the highest order that mankind is…I think we can achieve just about anything we can possibly think of. Which is a beautiful picture if we weren’t so short sighted.

I have a brain injury from impact. Tho I am not a paraplegic or in a wheelchair, I have suffered some mental/neural maladies. I am pretty mobile, I read a ton of content off the internet. So, I function with some defficiencies. Imagine for those far worse off than I, like a paraplegic with significant brain/spinal damage. I always think ‘I wonder if they have any kind of inner monologue?’

In a general sense, we loose very few of our memories over our lifetime. Yes there are caveats but, a majority still exist, our retrieval system lags. I realize it’s a lot more complicated than this simplistic explaination. If we could somehow tap into that lost archived data bank, that would open up a lot litany of issues. Solving crime comes to mind.

Honestly just need to bring back Usenet newsgroup traffic

Hey bro. I appologize for the late reply. Apparently I lost track of time.

First, I am a mediocre musician on my best day. I’ve been playing stringed instruments for about 65 years, but it’s more of a hobby that I get a lot of satisfaction out of. I did entertain the notion that maybe I could pick up one or two gigs doing background music for an indie game dev, which is why I was using YT. I do have some tracks on PeerTube, but as you are probably aware, the traffic flow of PeerTube is rather spartan.

I’ve always wanted to try one of these.

It is my unconfirmed opinion that even though they say they have deleted your data and account, it still exists on some backup in some server farm somewhere.

As far as YT & Google et al, I don’t participate. A good while back, I tried to promote some of my music on YT. The experience was… terrible afaic. I used to use YT for tutorials, but there is no way I’m going to jump through all their hoops and endure back to back, un-skippible ads, to find out that the tut is shit. Screw that noise.

Reddit has been silently rejecting accounts that sign up with a VPN for quite some time now. If you make an account using a VPN, an alias email, using a hardened Firefox, and all the blockers, you can expect that your account will be shadow banned almost immediately. So, as long as Reddit front ends work, I’ll still use it as a resource…for now.

I foresee that private forums will become a thing again where people of like minds congregate and exchange info, expertise, ideas, content, etc. They were once quite popular but people gravitated to these multi billion dollar corp owned social media outlets because it was the next best thing, and now the other shoe has dropped.

Every time I access the internet on a device that isn’t mine, I’m blown away with how bad it is.

Sometimes my friends will ask if I can take a look at their computers because it’s not working as expected or something is definitely wrong. I am always blown away by all the ads and crap all over the screen. It’s like going to a porn site. I always ask ‘How the fuck do you do this?’ At the very least, install an adblocker. Sometimes I’ll just go ahead and install UBlock, but there’s an issue with doing that. Ublock Origin has a little bit of a learning curve. You actually have to put in a little work before it really works optimally for you. I find that people are not willing to do the work.

Several things:

• How did no one notice?
• Maybe stop using Google services
• Maybe use AI to explain the purposfully vague and ambigious TOS

100000 users and one screenshot per page load.

Being under police shouldn’t really worry anyone who isn’t doing anything illegal who has half a brain cell, it’s literally anyone else who wants into your shit that you need to worry about.

Pardon me, but this sounds like ‘I’ve got nothing to hide’ or ‘Don’t be an enemy of the state.’ Daily I could inundate your email with example after example of people who have been surveilled, but not doing anything illegal. Protestors, average citizens speaking out. In America we have rights to protest against our government. They weren’t doing anything wrong either except exercising their rights as an American citizen.

You see, governments like their own self imposed status quo. Everything and everyone in a nice neat little box, each sorted, collated, and stapled into their respective groups. Here comes Paula protestor and she may have an LGBTQ+ agenda. Personally LGBTQ+ rights are covered under ‘We the people find these truths to be self evident.’ In other words, duh! No explanation needed. How is Paula protestor seen by the government? She is seen as an adversary because she represents instability to the government’s self imposed status quo. If you speak out against the government, you are also seen as an adversary. etc et al

You don’t have to be doing something illegal to be surveilled.