Brewchin

10W? That’s incredibly low - under 100mA wherever in the world you live. About the same as an LED bulb, or a tenth of an average incandescent lightbulb.

For comparison: my NAS and NUC (mix of HDD and M.2 drives; both hosting services) draw 75W combined at idle, measured via Home Assistant and a smart plug, and that’s generally considered low-power self-hosting.

I’d be pleasantly amazed if you could get a laptop to use less, so I look forward to other replies.

I still use all 3, though I’m slowly moving CPU intensive containers to the NUC. The Pi is untouched so far, partly because having edge services there will make it easier of I decide to implement a DMZ.

The NUC+Proxmox is a great combination. Bit of a learning curve (eg. as with Docker, you need to pass devices in Proxmox and then to the container; same with CIFS shares), but there are lots of resources out there. I have no regrets going this route, and it had low power consumption.

On Windows thing, I was specifically referring to the server OS as the NUC came with Win11. Do whatever works for your desktop/gaming setup.

Though I also switched that to Linux (EndeavourOS, though there are other game-friendly options) a couple of years ago, and its worked out great. Guild Wars 2 was my most modded Windows game, and I can run all except one of the Windows-based addons I want for it. Setting it all up the first time is a ball ache (as it was with Windows, but that was done over time 🤷‍♂️). 😊

I was hosting most of my Docker stuff on my Synology DS920+, use Docker in a Pi 4B for AdGuard Home and WireGuard, and found myself wanting to use Home Assistant.

Can’t use Docker for HA if you want HACS (addons) and Synology decided to kill USB drivers some time back, so looked around for options. Considered a Nabu Casa Yellow with a CM5 compute module (for Voice PE) and its price was more than a GMKtek N150 NUC, which has far higher specs and enough headroom for other things. So I got the NUC.

First thing I did was nuke Windows and replaced it with Proxmox, then installed Home Assistant OS (HAOS) as a VM in it. Plenty of headroom left, so now it’s also got a Linux VM, a few LXCs, etc. (The Proxmox Helper Scripts site makes it very easy).

Could easily install AGH or PiHole and a bunch of other things on it. Think it’s the best bang for buck thing I’ve bought in years.

The Green brothers are interesting and thoughtful. They try to be an overall positive influence on the internet, even aside from their vlogbrothers thing.

FTA: The IDs leaked were from people appealing age verification.

That’s different from the age verification process, which goes through a third party provider.

In short, the leaked IDs were from a standard shitty support platform (Zendesk, Salesforce, etc), not the much-advertised “safe and private” age verification system.

This kind of malicious compliance is exactly what this dogshit Think Of The Children Act needs. Convenience is everything to the majority of population.

If other major sites and resources do this, then the pressure from the people impacted by it will force UK PLC to un-fuck this awful legislation.

It certainly removed my ability to say “Companies are shoehorning AI into everything! I wouldn’t be surprised if they do it with Notepad…” as a form of mockery. It was one of the first damned victims.

Edit: I’m genuinely surprised technical people (with appropriate rights on their PCs) still use it, though. I switched to Notepad++ nearly 20 years ago.

In case anyone is unaware of the point of this: it’s about the UK’s (for now) new age verification law, where you have to be 18 to have a credit card.

This really is the least-worst implementation of this I’ve seen so far, providing you have (or can get) a CC.

And at least it lets you continue buying games/content until this awful law gets repealed or rewritten by competent adults.

Doubling down on the batshit. Everyone knew VPNs were going to be the low effort workaround to this authoritarian batshittery.

I get what the (well meaning, I think) people lobbying for this are trying to achieve, but everything from the lobbying to legislation to enforcement seems to be happening in the worst way imaginable. Almost like it’s an intentional “You want to see how badly can we do this? Hold my drink! YOLO!!”

For me, the tell was UK PLC leaving it up to the sites themselves to decide who/how the verification would be done. Classic bad management “I don’t understand the slightest thing about any of this, but HOW HARD COULD IT BE?!” response. It’s like the “series of tubes” stupidity all over again.

Are you linking “everything is an Xbox” with growing their platform? Are you new at internet arguments?

I mean, it sounds like they’re copying Microsoft’s “everything is an Xbox” lunacy, but its unclear if that’s reality based on what I read there.

But I’d not be surprised if the “Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man” meme applies to this, given how focussed the VP of each company’s console division is on their main competitor.

But who knows… Perhaps not even them? 🤷‍♂️

Not sure it is the same kind of thing, but I’ve been using Homebank ever since the various personal financial management applications pulled out of the UK market.

I swear “How to disable AI in x…” is all our lives now. 😬

Prompted by this, TIL that !chargeyourphone@piefed.social exists. 😄

By “that shit”, do you mean every website/app that may contain age-restricted (not just sexual) content? Because that’s what comes into force in the UK next week.

I’ve been dreading this for decades. 🤬

It’s not just Reddit, nor are they the first to roll it out early.

Doesn’t every Instagram user automatically have a Threads account now? (Even if they’re unaware of it.)

Meta faking Threads user count that way on top of what’s happened with X user count would explain this “milestone” quite easily.

If it eventually gets outed as being Ponzi scheme, I’ll not be remotely surprised.

Found this to be an interesting read, and well written. Thanks for sharing it.

Pocket won’t be missed. Self-hosted alternatives like Wallabag are better and private, so switched to it many years ago. Integration (and enabled by default, requiring about:config to disable) ensured I’d never use it out of principle.

Fakespot (the website) was genuinely useful to help ID scams on Am*z*n Marketplace, though I never used the extension. But I think that enshittified in recent years, so (in the style of Stephen King’s Misery) it’s probably for the best.

Related, the Keepa extension is useful as a price rigging detector, but I expect that will “number must go up!” soon enough, too…