Lettuce eat lettuce

Always eat your greens!

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 12th, 2023

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  • I play Lichess on my GrapheneOS Pixel6a, works well. Same with Signal, Firefox with several mobile browser extensions.

    Bitwarden, NewPipe, Tailscale, Duolingo, Uber, Discord, Matrix Element, all the Proton mobile apps, Backblaze, etc etc.

    Pretty much every app I try works flawlessly. On rare occasion I’ll experience minor bugs, and twice I’ve had to use GOS’s extra privilege mode to get an app to work.

    Overall, Love GrapheneOS and I’ll use them as long as they are around and making an awesome alternative to Google’s garbage.





  • If you’re very comfortable with containerization, networking, and security practices, plus you are a pretty decent full stack web dev, sure.

    It’s pretty trivial to set up a separate business internet line from your local ISP. Depending on the volume of traffic, a basic load manager and reverse proxy, combined with strong firewalls and container safety would be sufficient for most SMB needs.

    You don’t need much power to host a basic website. Setting up a local box with a low-impact distro, Docker, and some solid control-plane MGMT software should be plenty to host several dozen SMB websites.

    There are a lot of technical and even legal considerations though. Do these small businesses need a web app on their site? Do they need a storefront? What about member-only content locked securely behind an authentication layer? Does your local ISP have rate limitations? Does your city/state/country have restrictions on offering business services like that? What is your liability if your setup gets hacked and your client’s data is stolen/exposed?

    Ultimately, you have to answer the question: Why shouldn’t those businesses just go with an easy pre-made hosting solution like Squarespace, Wix, etc? Not saying there aren’t good answers to that, but from a business perspective, the businesses will want to know that.

    As with anything in business, ask yourself, what are you able to offer that they can’t get easily somewhere else? I used to work for a tiny MSP that offered in-house data backups. Our clients paid a good chunk of money to have us backup their data to our own servers. I didn’t say anything at the time, but our clients could have gotten much more secure and faster backup services for cheaper using something like Backblaze or Synology’s S2 cloud backups.

    Don’t find yourself unable to clearly and concisely explain to your clients what you can give them that they cannot easily get somewhere else. If it’s purely the principle of the thing, that’s totally valid, but make sure that’s what you’re selling to them, and also what they are looking for.




  • Magic Earth. Organic Maps as a backup. I’ve found that Magic Earth is the happy middle ground of map apps.

    Closed source client, but uses OSM for its map data. European company, so better on the data front.

    I tried using Organic Maps as my main navigation app, but there were slightly too many times where it couldn’t find the address, or the navigation got stuck, etc.

    My IT job requires me to get to places quickly if they need on-site support. I have to be able to depend on my map app to get me there reliably. Magic Earth does that, Organic Maps is very good, and I keep it around to use in case I have issues with Magic Earth, but at least in my region of the country, it just isn’t quite up to snuff.





  • IP white lists and firewall exceptions will help, but exposing ports on your home router is almost always a bad idea, especially for something as trivial as a game server.

    I would highly recommend Tailscale. It’s free for up to 3 users, and if you have more friends than that, I would have them all sign up with free accounts and then share your laptop device with their tailnets.

    It’s very easy to setup and use, costs nothing, and will be far more secure than opening ports and trying to set up IP white lists, protocol limitations, etc.

    Tailscale creates something called an “overlay network” it’s basically a virtual LAN that exists on top of your real network and can be extended to other people and devices over the internet. It’s fully encrypted, fast, and like I said, very easy to set up.





  • This is kind of like asking, “what is water worth?”

    To an upper middle class person in the developed world, a dollar or two. To a person stranded in a desert, they might literally kill for it.

    If you are just a Joe shmoe out in the world living a basic life, privacy might not be worth hardly anything. But if you’re a whistle blower or a political dissident in an authoritarian country, your privacy is worth everything.