The scenario you describe with ISPs is pretty US-centric, as are the various copyright laws and companies backing it, which is (one of the reasons) why many of the most successful VPN companies are either not based in the US (and most have server nodes that are not too).

Mullvad is from Sweden, for example, and Proton is from Switzerland, so if a content company can even figure out which endpoint nodes are hosting/routing the pirate content they then also have to figure out (a) who owns the node and (b) then send them an angrygram which will just immediately be torn up by the VPN provider as they’re not subject to US law.

Finally, an operating principle of these companies is to keep no logs, so even if a US-based VPN company got an angry letter, they’d probably be unable to do anything since they would have no record of the activity.

Correct but there are really only 2 parts (3 if you’re adding a front-facing proxy which it sounds like you know how to do). If you’re using something like truenas or proxmox there are prebuilt containers for both iCloudpd and immich/photoprosm/whatever and even if not both have generic Docker containers or can be run out of their own repo checkout. So you just need:

1. iCloud <—> local folder via icloudpd
2. local folder <—> local web front end with immich
3. local web <—> public web with your proxy or cloudflare setup

Good luck!

Right, this is for the “hard” part of getting your content out of iCloud in an automated fashion. You’d then put the content in storage locally and use photoprism or immich or a similar self hosted gallery to be able to access them

icloudpd can be run in a container or just your host machine. It’s a little finnicky to get logins set up (and honestly I haven’t done it in a few months), but once that is working you can automate a job to pull down a backup every day/week/month and delete files from icloud.

This was my whole month of December.

I am definitely sliding down from the peak toward a trough. In which direction I can’t say tho.

I wonder if this matrix app was just a honeypot that was named to trick people into thinking they were using the “real” matrix.

Obsidian or Joplin. Offline first, clients for every platform, and easy self-host (if you want) syncing options and plugins.

Of the changes made last week to the license, this one stands out:

10. None of the Work may be used in any form as part, or whole, of an integration, plugin or app that integrates with Atlassian’s Confluence or Jira products.

That is a weird carve-out, so I’d guess the license revision (and technically the reason it’s no longer open source) somehow has to do with Atlassian or their plugin marketplace?

Feel like the (totally impractical) fediverse end-game would be for each individual to have their own activitypub service, and federation happening on a person-by-person basis. So you retain some control over anything you publish, and your history is yours to keep.

As others have said, changing UPS batteries is required maintenance, and I agree 18-24 months is the typical service life for even high-end UPSs. However, you may want to look into LiFePO4 based UPSs, which can handle many more charge-discharge cycles and often have 5-year warranties. More expensive and potentially not as recyclable as lead acid batteries, but maybe appropriate for your use case.