Pi5 8GB with SSD. Only 1 user but often sharing folders with others including Memories photo sharing add on. Syncs between several machines & mobile. Also syncs Joplin notes. Pi5 also hosts variety of other (lightweight) stuff with no issues at all (Portainer, Nginx Proxy Manager, Linkwarden etc).
Previously hosted on Pi4B (4GB) with external hard drive. I’ve found the Pi5 + SSD faster & more robust so for me it’s been a worthwhile upgrade
I’m not an “imagephile”, my eyes can tell the difference between 4k & 1080p but for a 45 min TV show I couldn’t care less if its in standard def.
We have an HTPC handling all media including TV recrdings so I took a USB with a few media files of differing qualities & tested them on TV’s in the store - no way I’m buying a TV without seeing how it handles everyday stuff that isnt the ridiculous over bright awful motion smoothed in store demo scenes.
I’d never use the “smart” features of a TV, that thing is never going online.
Last 3 TV’s have been Panasonic. One of them was a lower priced set but still fantastic picture. Not the best UI & to be honest a nightmare menu system but excellent panels & no ads or BS in the UI.
The way the tech overlords are heading I’m not looking forward to replacing our set when it eventually needs it
Wouldn’t say scam but potentially unsustainable. Some years ago I signed up for a brand new startup Nextcloud service which was priced far too low & went under very quickly. Switched to a hosted Nextcloud provider who had been around a long time (still around). They were really good but after a short time I decided to learn how to host it myself.
Hardware wise you don’t need much, I upgraded to a used Pi5 8GB with fanless heatsink case & added an m.2 SSD. Only 1 user on my instance but I often share folders with others, it’s robust & never once crashed.
If exposing to www you need to keep your network secure. There’s a learning curve but self hosting can be rewarding. Any if you’re lucky you might get to spend hours & hours problem solving when something breaks 😉😁
I use Keepass but I recommended Bitwarden to less nerdy family members as it syncs out of the box & does what they need it to do. Sync is simple enough to set up with Keepass & the big plus for me is that it allows storage of files/documents. Last time I checked this was a limited/paid feature on Bitwarden
Nothing exciting I’m afraid - a few football related feeds (Guardian & Telegraph are solid for football stories, usually interesting articles rather than made up transfer horseshit) plus some general news headlines/generic/“top stories” type feeds & a couple of tech bits like Ars Technica.
A few I’ve not seen mentioned yet:
If you’re an Android, Kiwi Browser has an option to remove AMP (use direct website over AMP version)
Windows, free, not well known/talked about?
Hands down qttabbar. Adds tabbed browsing to Explorer. Absolutely no idea why this isnt built into Windows, I’ve used it for some years & hate using a Window machine without it.
More well known:
No because I haven’t used the app for years so I’m not signed in. I use browser with uBlock “etc” on both mobile & laptop/desktop.
Any feeds that I watch regularly plus interesting videos I stumble on or recommended in places like !videos@lemmy.world i put directly into a notes app which syncs to all my devices. All grouped by length so its easy to find something depending on how little spare time I have to kill. Its a slight extra step compared to clicking “watch later” in the YouTube app but ive done it for so long now its become second nature
I personally would be very wary of eBay as even with a paid check before buying, the seller could potentially take your money then claim on their insurance. The phone then becomes blacklisted (sim no longer works, only works abroad or on wifi). If you confront the seller they could just say a previous owner must have reported it stolen.
CeX used electronics store guarantees against this & also gives a 2 year warranty
Some years ago before online banking, buying a fairly sought after but relatively uncommon type of used hot hatch car. Back then there was a strong chance potential car buyers would have cash for the transaction. Magazine ad made out it was from a dealership/garage. Something about the phone calls got my spider sense tingling, especially when they claimed the car was elsewhere so I’d have to meet them off site. I’d already traveled so thought what the hell, I’ll look but definitely not buying from this chump outfit.
I’m a big muscular fella, just over 6 feet tall & around 19 stone of solid muscle so fairly intimidating looking & was standing leaning against my own car waiting for them to turn up. All of a sudden I hear the roar of the car, strangely with with a bunch of undesirables in it hanging out the windows. They slowed right down checking me out, thought better of it coz the driver floored the accelerator & disappeared. No doubt in my mind they were planning someone was gonna get mugged for a few grand that day. No doubt they’d done it before.
An old version of Nova from before the big data collection switch. Use it because it has a scrollable dock. I have all apps inside folders in the dock, the folders are sorted by category. I can scroll between app categories & get to any app within 2 or 3 touches.
I really want a launcher which has a scrollable dock with a user defined news feed such as NeoFeed.
Smart Launcher has user defined categories which negates the scrollable dock requirement, but the news feed is Microsoft which is as bad as Google in my eyes.
If anyone has any suggestions I’d love to know them
Some years back there was a password manager which stopped sync through cloud (probably Dropbox) & insisted it went through their own servers instead. The whiff of subscription service was in the air so I switched Keepass.
I sync Keepass between devices myself but I recommend Bitwarden to family who probably couldn’t figure out how to set sync up with Keepass if I’m not around. I stick with Keepass as I like the key file aspect & because it allows multiple documents to be added to entries (restricted on Bitwarden). The documents are available offline, such as vehicle breakdown documents etc. Could be very useful one day!
Just a few of my daydreams whilst getting kicked by The Man:
Lemmethinkaboutit
Wouldn’t trust any of them. Who knows where that data will end up. Especially when they suffer an inevitable breach
OsmAnd. Navigated me through numerous countries on holiday. Found us places to eat. So useful it persuaded me to start updating the map locally to help any fellow travelers
Joplin notes. Use this every day without fail
Nextcloud. Self hosted cloud that Ive come to rely on
Yeah I just use a HDD. On the whole its pretty stable though through tinkering Ive managed to crash my setup a few times. Sometimes restarting the Nextcloud Docker container is enough (Portainer makes it simple), when i really break it i start from scratch. I use a simple script to automaticacally back up all my data to another drive weekly
Not a 3rd party front end as such but on android I use YT through browser with DeArrow, Sponsorblock & uBO. I never sign in to YouTube, subscriptions & “watch later” i handle via a specific note set up in Joplin. Also all tracking is removed first via Untracker. Takes an extra few seconds to add video links to Joplin but its become second nature & works well for me & of course this way let’s me save links to PeerTube content & any other sources too