dieTasse

Yes, the best option is to deploy your services on it. That Nginx is well established doesn’t mean its secure. A) popular software is preferred target for hackers and B) Nothing is safe, especially now, when LLMs are getting good at finding holes in software.

1. I would recommend a VPS for publicly facing services, you simply don’t want to open your home network, one mistake is enough, old router software, one small misunderstanding or a bit of bad luck. If someone gets into your VPS, few services will be hurt, if someone gets into your home network its game over.
2. There is nice little app called immich proxy, I didn’t yet try it myslef (but I plan to), but basically if you want to just share some albums or photos, you can make the proxy accessible publicly but your Immich stays safe.

There is already so many answers so maybe you won’t even read this, but the main point I think is just start, this is not valid only for self hosting but for any project. Just start doing something, anything and the path will draw itself. Doesn’t need to be correct or perfect, it just needs to be started. Maybe you can start with the old laptop. Have you tried linux yet? Try it because that will be a basis for your self hosting. Just get the vibe, use it for a while, install shit on it. Go through tutorials. Maybe you realize it would be cool to try and host a simple website on it, just for funzies, just on the local network, you will learn so much on it and half way through you will have a dozen other ideas… I know this advice may be vague, but just go with the first thing you see and you think to yourself “this would be cool to have/do” 😊

You can create an accout using trow away gafam account. Create network, then invite yourself over email. When invited you can actually make an account using only passkey. So create second account with passkey, you can leave the invited-to network and create new one completely separately from the first one. You can delete the first account and the gafam account. Job done 😀 (and yes I did exactly this) 😀

I think the problem is not your opinion but the attitude.

I think its not about being allowed or not. Its about thinking before deleting if the action helps you in anyway and not doing it maybe helps many others.

I found this an interesting point worth thinking about. And I kinda agree, why delete good information.

I don’t think most people think of this to be ephemeral. First of all, this replaces reddit and we all know how valuable reddit was when searching for issues. Second of all, this is also kind of like forum, and not many people would think of a forum to be ephemeral. Not everything save-worthy has to be wikipedia kind of stuff.

In syncthing you can configure ip of a device and you can turn off discovery. You can add devices by id or scanning qr of the id. I have been using that for years since I didn’t want third party servers in the equation…

Used to use syncthing for files, now I just mount smb shares since I finally found how to do it on Android. Also kdeconnect is indispensable tool for me.

I use storj. Its well integrated with true nas. And the encrypted files are fragmented, duplicated and scattered around the world. (many people host storj node no their true nas as well).