Nothing of value was lost.

Some of Synology’s software can feel a little clunky to use but generally I’ve found it to work great despite my limited knowledge.

Yeah, I make regular use of some of their built-in apps (Note Station, Drive, Photos).

But they aren’t perfect.

For example, Note Station has no good way to export the data for use outside of Note Station (poor data portability) and Synology Audio just feels so outdated. Photos is their best software, IMO.

The beauty of self-hosting this stuff is that you can use any third-party software that reads the files, and you’re good to go. Your music, videos, photos, and documents are available as you see fit.

But you likely haven’t claimed to be the top expert of all knowledge in the universe, have you? 🤫

My adventure into self-hosting started with a Synology NAS maybe 5 years (?) ago.

With just the built-in software, I was able to replace Google Photos, Evernote, Dropbox, Google Calendar, Google contacts, and Google Play Music and Movies.

Then as I learned how to use docker, I was able to replace more services.

There may be “better” options out there beyond what Synology offers, but it’s been such a “set and forget” experience, that it’s easy for me to recommend them as an option.

The biggest barrier, IMO, isn’t the learning curve, but the initial investment for the NAS + HDDs and the upgrade path as your storage needs grow.

He doesn’t even know the difference between windmills and wind turbines. Is anyone surprised? 🙄

Looks like I’ll be buying American toilet paper after all! 😒

The only feature I want in FreshRSS is a way to DELETE entries. This is critically important if you’re using RSS feeds for something like Lemmy (or Reddit) where some very NSFW or illegal content gets through before it’s moderated out of the platform. I really don’t want to be archiving that shit!

I wouldn’t even want someone like that to get a fine from bylaw. They should get criminal charges for endangering everyone in that community.

People like that have no regard for human life.

I follow their news updates via RSS, so pretty much every day I’ll get an outright casino/gambling ad that looks like an article written to share some topic about the casino industry or whatever. I ignore them after rolling my eyes.

This was the first time I was reading, and re-reading, then laughing, then re-reading again… it truly is a spectacle!

This ad most certainly seems like AI word salad. Their actual news articles appear to be written by someone with a pulse. Maybe. 🤔

Just fired up Prime to see.

The movie is there, but you have to have the “Hollywood Suite” or rent/buy it to watch.

Paid subscriptions need additional paid subscriptions to work. 🫠

This is more than mildly infuriating, tbh.

It should be pretty simple: real news that affect people’s lives should always be free, since that’s a journalist’s duty to society.

Entertainment, sports, and the other stuff can be behind a paywall because people do pay for stuff like that. Plus, sensationalized stories about celebrities to get views would be far less damaging to society than sensationalized (often fake) stories about politicians to get the same views.

Even if “better” is just lack of nags.

Well, they just swap nags from “download our app” to “rate our app” no matter what you do, you’ll be nagged…

That’s exactly it. Easy to block ads and trackers on a website, but more difficult or impossible on some apps.

One of the banking apps won’t show the total balance of the account unless I’m using the app. How ridiculous.

As I’ve been making an effort to replace apps with the browser version of the service. It’s so abundantly clear that companies don’t want you using their website.

Even if they don’t outright cripple functionality, they’ll hound you endlessly to install the app.

It’s infuriating to say the least.

every website I’ll ever visit and have visited in the past might be a threat

In that sense, you are right. However, there are ways to cloak your IP address and location.

Privacy is a massive rabbit hole depending on what threat you are trying to protect yourself from. Sometimes, the effort (and the stuff that breaks along the way) isn’t worth it.

If location implies an area extending 300 km in either direction, does it really matter? To most people, not really.

Location could also imply IP address-based location, and not necessarily GPS.

According to the actual Aluminum Association, only 43% of aluminum cans shipped within the United States are recycled.

Not only that, but unless you can guarantee that a significant portion users will recycle those aluminum cans, they are significantly more energy intensive to manufacture compared to single use plastic bottles.

We had a big ass satillite dish in the backyard when I was growing up, and I remember my dad needing to input these codes every so often to unlock a bunch of channels.