0:00

I went to dinner at a barbecue joint

0:02

last night. I had the World's Salty ist

0:04

pulled pork Salty pulled pork or is it

0:06

a special or was it a bad cook?

0:08

My was bad It was just like know

0:10

there were just like pocket the like. You

0:13

take a bite and it will be fine

0:15

then the next bite there's just like a

0:17

pocket of so and is like oh oh

0:19

man seasoning gun wrong Yeah so I imagine

0:21

you probably stood up. Said.

0:23

Ma'am I need to speak to the chef right

0:26

now for hit the heights like a like a

0:28

man and a that be an idea of going

0:30

out. I woke up this morning and my tongue

0:32

was like a desert. it was the hook it

0:34

was no good. Betty

0:37

with that wasn't really the point of the story

0:39

I went see I went to dinner with a

0:41

a person who now works for Apple which I

0:43

thought was pretty interesting. He. Was on that

0:45

your server back and stuff and. It.

0:47

Turns out the app will have a bunch of Aca to

0:49

know how much I can actually say but. He.

0:51

Was very aloof. Him what he told

0:54

me like what if Apple didn't have

0:56

cable that sees in house but had

0:58

their own orchestrates? Earnest whole bunch of

1:00

other stuff. I believe that. I

1:03

would totally blew not invented here. Syndrome

1:05

is strong. Vienna. Also

1:08

that you know that I bet you they

1:10

run tobacco As and production the A think

1:12

so. I can imagine what a nightmare that

1:14

must be and I'm sure that the tooling

1:16

around. Workers. Ready Mac o s

1:18

is probably pretty incomplete. I. Know they

1:20

run some linux too. so I wonder if they

1:22

have Apple Silicon in their data centers. Only thing

1:24

I bet I mean if you're thinking about it,

1:26

they're doing a bunch of a I recognition for

1:29

I cloud stuff. I bet you they have a

1:31

bunch of their own narrow processors. An.

1:33

M Series. Probably. On

1:35

a board. Not. Probably even any chassis.

1:37

probably just on, you know, trays or whatever.

1:40

And if they don't they're miss an hour

1:42

and they should. Kind of crazy. He.

1:44

Thing back. What? When was the I'm Whimsy

1:46

Am one? It was twenty twenty right? has

1:48

been a bit now, has been for four

1:50

years or so. It doesn't feel that long

1:52

but it has He was gonna say if

1:54

you if you even thought back five years

1:56

before the M One was announced. Arm.

1:59

was useful for phones and Raspberry

2:01

Pis. It just

2:03

wasn't taken seriously, was it? No,

2:06

and now you look, you got the

2:08

Microsoft co-pilot PCs. It's

2:10

kind of like co-pilot plus PCs or whatever.

2:12

It's kind of silly branding, but the

2:14

hardware actually looks really

2:16

quite nice. Like the CPU performance

2:19

looks very legitimate. It's

2:21

got 256 gigabyte

2:24

SSD on that thing. It's got 16 gigs of

2:27

RAM. It gets a real PC with real performance

2:29

and it's an ARM CPU. I thought of a

2:31

dad joke. We're in an

2:33

arms race right now. Oh,

2:36

I mean, I'm not an anti-arm guy. In fact,

2:39

you know, you know me, I

2:41

really like low power solutions and I think arms pretty

2:43

great. I'm not convinced though that

2:45

the desktop world needs ARM or the business

2:48

world needs ARM on the desktop. I don't know. I'm

2:50

just not really seeing it yet. I think

2:53

where it comes into play, it allowed people

2:55

to break free of the shackles of Intel

2:58

and well, x86, I suppose,

3:00

like the instruction set. And it

3:02

really heralded the rise

3:05

of like chip computing and

3:07

dedicated hardware circuitry computing, you

3:09

know, like a6 for everything.

3:12

Yeah, I get it in like the Apple

3:14

case where they're building the whole package. That

3:16

makes sense. But for a general

3:19

desktop PC technology market, I

3:22

don't know. To me, x86 seems more attractive than

3:24

it ever has in my entire lifetime. Brother,

3:27

I've been around since before the

3:29

Pentium and watching these things, you know, since

3:31

the very six very first

3:34

Intel machines were going out to

3:36

consumer PCs. And it was a

3:38

clear, clear advantage having this general

3:40

x86 platform. And it's never

3:42

looked better. I mean, yeah, there's the

3:45

other security issues. I grant

3:47

you, but I would imagine there's probably going to be

3:49

all kinds of undiscovered fun in ARM as we begin

3:51

to push the limits there, too. So

3:54

I'm kind of I'm kind of I guess a

3:56

lot in this area. But to me, an

3:59

ARM laptop is. just not really a very

4:02

good proposition except for the Mac ones where

4:04

they have the whole cohesive ecosystem. It's

4:06

not yet. What about for you? Would

4:08

you consider getting a PC ARM laptop and

4:11

say running Windows or Linux on

4:13

there? No, I don't think I

4:15

would. In fact, the only reason

4:17

I run Macs the way I

4:19

do is because the fact they are the hybrid operating

4:23

system for people that want to run

4:25

3D stuff,

4:27

Adobe Suite, and also have a

4:29

decent terminal experience and a proper

4:31

SSH experience. I

4:34

know WSL gets you a long way there with

4:36

Windows these days, but it didn't use to historically.

4:39

With all the video editing I do now, MacOS

4:41

is great.

4:44

Honestly, I kind of

4:46

hate it, but I kind of love it too. Yes,

4:49

I'm not super convinced, in fact, of anything. I

4:53

even find less and less use cases for Raspberry

4:55

Pis these days. So even where

4:57

I used to use ARM, I'm

4:59

using x86 now. Uh oh. Well,

5:01

that's not boding well for the IPO that

5:03

the Raspberry Pi Foundation just

5:05

announced for June. There

5:08

is some irony that it's kind of like

5:10

now that their popularity seems to be

5:12

on the decline and other solutions are getting

5:14

more competitive. Now it's time to IPO. You

5:17

could argue they timed it perfectly. Peak

5:20

Raspberry Pi is, I would

5:22

say, behind us. Certainly in the hobbyist world,

5:25

like the self-hosting world. The

5:27

reason that we're mentioning this

5:29

is because, when was it, 2012? I

5:32

think the first Raspberry Pi came out. It

5:35

was a revelation. A

5:38

$30, $35 credit card

5:40

size, little single board computer. There

5:43

was nothing else like it. There never

5:45

had been, and it was

5:47

revolutionary in its day. And nobody really

5:49

took the focus on cost like

5:51

they did. I mean, they got this thing down to $35, basically. Unbelievable

5:56

back then. And so they're going

5:58

to sell a lot to schools. They

6:00

always do so that there's two entities right there's

6:02

the foundation and there's raspberry pie limited. And

6:05

they will the commercial company make a big

6:07

donation to the foundation which i'm sure the

6:09

tax write off every year. And

6:12

the foundation takes that you know those millions of dollars

6:15

and goes and invest in deploying

6:17

raspberry pies and education that's

6:19

great. So for the

6:22

foundation this IPO means that when people buy

6:24

the stock. They're going to

6:26

get the cash out and raise money

6:28

for expansion of the foundation so

6:31

the foundation doesn't go away. But

6:33

now the commercial arm will

6:35

be a public company if

6:38

you know i think this is going through. Last

6:40

goodbye with the raspberry pie for agree

6:43

yeah i don't know i haven't used the five

6:45

so i don't know i don't feel like i

6:47

can definitively say but. My

6:49

sense is the three series

6:51

was really really great for a long time in

6:53

the four came out and. What

6:56

was so fantastic about the four is

6:58

we saw that horizontal expansion that actually

7:00

made sense. For a minute when

7:02

the cm four came out i really thought we

7:05

were going to see this embrace of the of

7:07

the compute module and all of

7:09

those little boards for all these purpose bill

7:11

applications i was so excited about that yeah

7:13

but then the supply constraints hit because they

7:15

made the wrong decisions during. A

7:18

tricky time granted and the

7:21

cm four lost all its momentum the other thing

7:23

is though. The five

7:26

starts i think the four gig model

7:28

starts at sixty dollars now. Basically

7:31

doubled in price give or take and

7:33

then by the time we always say this but but i'm

7:35

gonna power supply in a case and everything

7:37

else you need it's not it's

7:40

not the same proposition as it once was. It

7:43

still is a good deal but yet not the

7:45

good deal right like that some of

7:48

the good intel stuff until based up yeah. The

7:50

cheaper stuff that i've seen starts around one twenty

7:52

but the good stuff more like one seventy one

7:54

eighty just to get the board. That's

7:57

maybe before memory and desk so raspberry pie

7:59

still hasn't. beat on the overall value.

8:02

But then that x86 version is probably

8:04

faster, does a lot more, way more

8:06

compatible, and probably has more expansion

8:08

options. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. I

8:11

still feel like there's a space for

8:13

a, as cheap as it possibly

8:16

can be, computer that has a

8:18

great ecosystem around it. Right? Because

8:21

we haven't talked about any of the rock stuff

8:23

or the orange stuff. Like the reason why Raspberry

8:25

Pi is such a big deal is actually because

8:27

of the ecosystem around it, of all of the

8:29

images and all of the vendors that make

8:31

stuff for Raspberry Pi. None of

8:34

the other SBCs can even match

8:36

Raspberry Pi's reach and ecosystem. And everybody

8:38

knows what it is too, like name

8:40

recognition. If you go

8:42

into any hack of space or like

8:44

any kind of community that does anything

8:47

tangentially related to anything

8:49

technical, like for example, you

8:51

want to measure temperatures or

8:53

build your own, like Casey, Casey Liss is a perfect example.

8:55

He was on a couple of episodes ago. He

8:58

didn't reach for an ESP board. He reached for

9:00

Raspberry Pi and then wrote some custom Python code.

9:02

And then I opened his garage door that way

9:05

when actually an embedded ESP device might have

9:07

actually made more sense. But

9:09

Raspberry Pi is, was

9:11

the de facto standard in that world

9:13

for a decade. Yeah.

9:16

And like I said earlier, still strong in

9:18

education. You know, we were at the Bellingham

9:20

Technical College for Linux Fest Northwest and this

9:23

big Raspberry Pi community there. That Raspberry Pi

9:25

community is going to be essentially running Linux

9:28

Fest. You

9:30

know, they've kind of taken over for the Bellingham

9:32

Linux users group. So they're kind of like the

9:35

new Linux users group is these Raspberry Pi groups

9:37

of students. And so I see

9:39

the use case there still, especially at that price point.

9:42

Also for me, I still want something, but I could do

9:44

this with an old Raspberry Pi 2 or 3. But

9:47

I want something, you know, I can glue

9:49

or tape to the back of a television

9:51

and just run a loop or run a

9:53

display. My wife setting up

9:55

a new clinic and the old tenants left

9:58

a plasma television on the the wall. And

10:01

so she's like, well, what

10:03

do we do with this plasma TV? I don't, I don't, we're

10:05

not going to watch TV in my clinic. And

10:07

I said, well, what if we put an aquarium on it? You

10:10

know? And so if you have to put

10:12

an aquarium on a plasma television, your

10:16

first thought is a Raspberry Pi for that job. I mean, there

10:18

may be other, in fact, I'd be curious to know what the

10:20

audience would recommend. Boost in and tell me how you'd run sort

10:23

of a perpetual always on display

10:27

that maybe turns off in the evening or something. I don't

10:29

know. You know, the first

10:31

thing, okay, well, I could glue a Raspberry Pi to

10:33

the back of her TV, bring it in over the

10:35

HDMI and she could just turn it on and have

10:37

an aquarium up there. And, you

10:40

know, that's where maybe $170 x86

10:42

SBC doesn't really make sense. True, true,

10:45

true. Another area that I

10:47

actually still use, well, I think

10:49

I've still got two in deployment in

10:51

the house. One is a Pi

10:53

KVM because the Raspberry

10:55

Pi 4 has

10:58

the HDMI

11:00

CSI input through the camera port

11:02

on the board. And

11:04

the five has actually stripped out

11:06

the hardware video encoders that Pi

11:08

KVM uses. So even if you're

11:11

to upgrade from a four to a five for

11:13

Pi KVM use, it's no good. The

11:16

other one is as an OctoPrint

11:18

node behind my Mark

11:20

III Prusa printer. And, you

11:23

know, it okay, OctoPrint a

11:25

little slow, but for

11:27

what it does, it really, it's

11:29

just solid. It just does what it needs to do and gets

11:32

on with it quietly. And fanlessly

11:34

too, like the five is power

11:37

hungry. And the four was just

11:39

on the cusp of being okay to be passive.

11:42

I know somebody out there listening is thinking,

11:44

well, what about something like Cody guys? They

11:46

make great Cody boxes or, you know, even

11:48

a... That's true. That's very true.

11:51

That is. And again, it's nice because you

11:53

can plug it up right up to a

11:55

display again. Really low key doesn't make noise.

11:57

So I don't completely take away from

11:59

it. from the Raspberry Pi. But speaking

12:01

of media, I am still really, really liking

12:04

that. ersatzTV or whatever it was, Alex, that

12:06

we talked about a couple of weeks ago,

12:08

using it every night. Yeah, same.

12:11

I set up a Peppa Pig and a Bluey channel

12:13

for my little one. And

12:16

just removing the choice from

12:19

her day has actually made everyone's lives

12:21

better. Oh, same with the kids.

12:23

My kids. It's unbelievable. Like,

12:25

no more ice, because we would sit there and, you

12:27

know, be like, okay, do we want to watch some

12:29

TV, you know, after dinner? And there

12:31

would be a five-minute debate between the

12:33

three of them on what they want to

12:35

watch. And now I just hit the kids'

12:37

TV channel, and there's no debate. And nobody

12:40

can, nobody, not literally one complaint. It's a

12:42

little clunky to set up. I mean, there's,

12:44

there's a, I think the trouble is it's

12:47

trying to expose a lot

12:49

of options to you. Like, there's a

12:51

bunch of encoding presets you can go with. And

12:53

the way you sort of create,

12:55

what do they call it, broadcasts or

12:57

show, showtimes or something, I forget. It's

13:00

a little clunky to use, but once you kind of get

13:02

your head wrapped around the way in which they want you

13:04

to interface with it, it's

13:07

a perfectly great project. Just quietly gets on with, with

13:09

what you want it to. It does feel

13:11

like there's some redundancy in there. Like I'm kind of

13:14

setting up the same thing a couple of times. And

13:17

if I was actually running a television

13:19

station, you know, I think maybe

13:21

I would appreciate some of that and some of

13:23

the variation it gives me. But

13:27

no, otherwise, yeah, I wish it was a little simpler.

13:29

Can confirm it works really nicely with Jellyfin though. Yeah,

13:31

I also have had good experience with Jellyfin integration. In

13:33

fact, what I didn't realize when I talked about it

13:35

the first time in the show is you can actually

13:38

go in and you can narrow down, like I just

13:40

want these seasons of a show. So now I've restricted

13:42

it to just stuff we haven't, we've already watched. So

13:44

there's no spoilers in there. And that's

13:46

been really, it's been really great. So

13:49

for me, the sit down, hit a

13:51

button and I know it's something I

13:53

like. It might even be part way in.

13:56

Works so well. It's ridiculous. What's

13:58

your thoughts on when you hit, you hit play? You

14:00

might already be 10 15 minutes into the show for

14:02

some reason. I love it I just love

14:04

it. We love it because we're old farts

14:06

that that was how we grew up watching

14:08

TV. I think yeah I might be here

14:12

Some of it right if you've seen the show a

14:14

hundred times It doesn't matter if if you come

14:16

in 10 minutes or 37 minutes into a 40 minute show, right?

14:20

But I think that actually there is some

14:22

degree of if you have to fill

14:24

in the blanks But you have to

14:27

try and work out what's going on It's

14:29

more of an intellectual exercise. Okay, so it's hardly

14:32

like solving the da Vinci code But it's it's

14:34

more of an intellectual exercise than just watching everything

14:36

spoon-fed to you from the beginning Yeah, and again

14:38

of shows you like content you like without a

14:41

bunch of crap in there But the one thing

14:43

that I've been thinking about and I'm not sure

14:45

how to solve is I think there's a way

14:49

Hmm. I I right now my

14:51

I'm feeding in the program data. So when you

14:53

bring up The playback you

14:55

see like what the coming up schedule and you

14:57

see what's currently playing I don't even

14:59

want it to show me that I want

15:01

to figure out a way to have it not display the

15:03

program date I'm gonna have to play around see if I

15:05

can just maybe if I just pull that XML file out

15:07

We'll see because to me I don't even want to know

15:09

what it is. I'm about to watch jelly

15:12

fins the best plexus support is Particular

15:14

what I what I've learned now is you

15:17

do have to have it in MPEG-TS And

15:20

it needs to be at a certain frame rate

15:22

at the default that or SAT TV ships with

15:26

Will upscale everything to 1080p if you're

15:28

not using plex that is not necessary

15:31

in fact if you're not using plex you can

15:33

just have it pass through the native codec and

15:35

the name resolution and That's really

15:37

the way to go if you are using plex

15:39

you need to stick with all of the default

15:42

settings But I have learned you can change the

15:44

bitrate and the

15:46

resolution which for me Was

15:49

handy so that way I could stream from the

15:51

studio to home over

15:53

Starlink So and I did not need it to be like 40 megabits

15:57

1080p. Whatever The default is.

16:00

The Way: too much as you can tweet

16:02

that stuff, it'll still work with plaques if

16:04

you leave. All. Of the other

16:06

encoding setting like the frame rate and the Kodak

16:08

in the audio, you can change resolution a bit

16:10

rate. Surface. I hey wondering what

16:12

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talked about assets t V which is a.

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A live streaming Basically create your own

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directly using docker or community. Apropos the poll

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from things like add guard pile, home assistant

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blanks. Jason. And.

17:06

Of course, much more. Are you not to your

17:09

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18:01

unraid.net/self-hosted Okay,

18:05

it's soapbox time rant time this is

18:07

typically your role in the podcast, but

18:09

I think I'm going to assume it

18:11

tonight I think this is justified Spotify

18:14

car thing You've probably seen this in

18:16

the various places you get your news

18:18

from it's a little four-inch touchscreen With

18:21

a little volume control that basically

18:23

was a small Linux or Android

18:25

type device About the size of

18:27

an old like an excess 5 or something like an

18:29

old cell phone and All

18:31

it did was connect into Spotify

18:33

using I think

18:35

Spotify connect or something similar on the back

18:37

end To show you what your Spotify

18:40

account was now playing and it was just a dedicated

18:42

little device But I had on my

18:44

I didn't use it in my car I actually

18:46

used it on my desk to control my Spotify

18:48

playback for my computer Spotify

18:50

decided this past

18:52

week or two to turn around and say to everybody

18:56

Okay, thanks for Thanks

18:58

for the fish By the way,

19:00

you can send this device to your local recycling

19:02

center. We are going to turn it

19:04

off completely in December 2024

19:08

ricking it what really is frustrating about that

19:10

too is They announced it

19:12

in 2021 It wasn't

19:14

available for a year and it becomes

19:17

completely non-functional this December and Spotify stopped

19:19

Manufacturing a thing in July of 2022,

19:21

but just kept letting everybody buy him

19:24

knowing Really? They were

19:26

gonna end this thing I've owned mine

19:28

for 600 days and it's okay by the

19:30

time it gets to December is going to be a

19:32

little more than that but this is just almost a

19:34

classic example of What

19:36

we kind of talked about a lot on the show, which is this? Vendors

19:40

that just neutralize this hardware after

19:42

almost, you know No

19:44

time like we're gonna see this with a bunch of smart

19:46

plugs I bet in a few years we're gonna see a

19:48

rash of a bunch of smart plug vendors pulling their back-end

19:50

services because You know several factors including

19:52

product demand and supply chain issues or you know Because

19:55

of costs or like whatever whatever they want to cite.

19:57

They'll just have a reason to just stop supporting them

19:59

on the back Yeah, because it

20:01

rained three Tuesdays in a row back in 2023.

20:04

That's an interesting use case

20:06

with the computer. Everybody I've seen talk about

20:08

this was all in the car. I have

20:11

to be honest with you, it never quite did

20:13

make sense, especially with Android Auto and CarPlay becoming

20:15

a little more common. But

20:18

also, this thing needs Wi-Fi, so you

20:20

kind of have to have your phone in

20:22

the car for most cars. Yeah. It's

20:25

a bit fiddly, honestly. But at the

20:27

desk, it actually seems pretty clever. Yeah. Well,

20:30

what's frustrating to me is that it's clearly got

20:32

some kind of an SoC in it that could

20:34

run, I'm assuming, a

20:37

Linux kernel. And there is actually

20:39

a subreddit called Car... What

20:42

is it called? Carthinghacks. And

20:45

this subreddit essentially

20:47

lets you jailbreak the device. What

20:50

I would love to see is Spotify, rather

20:53

than just saying, you know,

20:56

we're going to sunset this device, we're going

20:58

to turn it into e-waste essentially, is we're

21:01

going to donate, let's pick

21:03

a random number, a thousand man hours

21:05

of developer time to make

21:07

this thing an open core, open

21:09

bootloader device and let the community

21:11

take hold of this thing. Because I think I look

21:14

back and I got mine on sale for like $40

21:16

or something. So I didn't pay the

21:18

full $90 to $100 price that a lot of people did. But

21:24

even so, it doesn't feel right to

21:26

me that it's not

21:28

illegal to do this. You

21:30

should when you... Can you imagine?

21:33

Okay, this might be a little bit of

21:35

a stretch, but can you imagine if Ford,

21:37

for example, sold the F-150 Lightning truck and

21:40

then after 600 days turned around and

21:42

said, yeah, actually, electric cars aren't

21:45

the future. And by the way, every

21:47

electric car we've ever sold is now completely

21:50

dead in the water and bricked. You

21:52

can't drive it another inch. You know, GM

21:54

did that. Back in the 90s,

21:56

they had an EV. They

21:59

only let folks... release it and then at some

22:01

point they decided they were done with it

22:03

and they reclaimed all of them and destroyed

22:05

them. Yeah, it's disgusting. People

22:08

loved those cars. Yeah. There's

22:10

a documentary about it. Did you make me watch that documentary?

22:13

No, I don't think so, but yeah, there is a documentary.

22:15

It was great. We put a

22:17

link in the show notes. But you're right

22:19

that it would be really great if we

22:21

lived in a world where these large corporations

22:24

could just say, okay, we're

22:26

done with the device, but we've unlocked the bootloader,

22:28

have at it. I suspect

22:31

they won't do anything like

22:33

that because of liability concerns. The

22:36

law department, the law man at

22:38

Spotify will argue against

22:40

that because are they then liable

22:44

if this device has some major flaw

22:46

or if there is somebody

22:48

decides to put some sort of Spotify premium

22:50

bypass thing on this and people start loading

22:52

this up with the Spotify pirating

22:55

software. You could see how they'd

22:57

make up all these concerns so

22:59

they just would decide the easier thing to do would just be get

23:01

rid of it. Take a tax

23:03

write off. All of those things are

23:06

true also of a general purpose computer.

23:09

Okay, this one happened to be manufactured by

23:11

Spotify, but I see what

23:13

you're saying, but it's... Yeah. We

23:16

really... There needs to be some kind of like

23:18

contract that says, I buy this, I get

23:21

10 years of whatever back end service this hardware

23:23

is dependent on and if you violate that 10

23:25

years, then you open the bootloader.

23:29

You're not required to do anything beyond that. Maybe any

23:31

specs you could publish would be great and

23:34

that's part of a EULA. We need the EULAs

23:36

to actually have something in there for

23:39

the user for once and this would be something I'd love

23:41

to see because something else to consider here is

23:43

this thing also to use it properly required

23:45

the Spotify premium service, which is $11 a

23:48

month. If somebody buys this thing, it

23:50

requires this $11 a month. So you spend the 100

23:53

bucks on this, whatever it was, and then you spend

23:55

11 bucks a month to have this thing and then

23:57

they just pull the plug and they tell you to go throw it in the

23:59

trash. Where is the right to

24:01

repair legislation on this kind

24:03

of thing? It's one thing being

24:05

able to repair a physical impediment with your

24:07

device that stops it from working, but having

24:10

the back end, I mean, we see it a lot with games,

24:13

sun setting their game servers and stuff. It

24:19

riles me because this is

24:21

what happens when

24:24

you own nothing. You

24:27

are literally renting everything these days.

24:30

And for me, it speaks to right to

24:32

the very core of why we do self-hosted.

24:35

It's not cloud bad. I

24:38

think right at the beginning, you were very clear to me

24:40

to say, this podcast can't

24:42

just be cloud bad, local good,

24:44

because it's much more nuanced than that. But

24:47

in this specific scenario, this is

24:49

a perfect example of why having

24:52

local hosted media, music

24:55

in this situation, and

24:57

devices and control services to

25:00

interface with that collection, you

25:03

put these building blocks in place once. It's

25:06

similar logic to why we both love Nick

25:08

so much. Like you solve this

25:10

problem once with a module, with a building

25:12

block, and you never have

25:14

to think about it again. I think it's really short sighted

25:17

of them to get out of this market too. I actually

25:19

think building a

25:21

solid, viable little screen

25:23

for cars that

25:26

interacts with your media, especially if you wanna own

25:28

podcasts too like they do, it

25:30

just seems like a no brainer for the car because I was

25:33

doing a little reading. The average

25:35

commuter car right now on the road in

25:37

the US is 14 years old. That's

25:40

bonkers, dude. That's the highest it's

25:42

ever been in the history that these numbers have been tracked.

25:44

The truck, the average truck is a little bit younger at

25:46

11.9 years. So

25:49

these are not vehicles that are

25:51

gonna have CarPlay or Android Auto. They

25:54

might not even have screens at all. And so these are

25:56

folks that are probably maybe using their phone on the dash

25:58

or something like that, that would maybe really like. the

26:00

convenience of a dedicated hardware

26:02

device that just does a couple of things really

26:04

well with a freaking knob. If

26:06

that meant you had to go through Spotify to get your entertainment, you'd

26:09

probably be willing to do that. I

26:11

don't think they're reading the market here very well either. I have to

26:13

be honest with you. If

26:15

you've got 14-year-old cars on the road

26:18

as the average age, then there's probably a

26:20

lot of people who are looking for a device like this. Open

26:23

it up and let another market take over. Time

26:25

for another cash for clunkers drive, don't you think?

26:30

I don't know. I kind of like it. You

26:32

know, because that means more and more people are looking at ways

26:34

to probably keep those things running. And

26:36

perhaps it's going to encourage a culture of taking

26:38

care of our stuff and our cars again. This

26:41

is where the auto industry turns around and says,

26:43

oh, we've made things too reliable now and they

26:45

start, oh wait, planned

26:47

obsolescence definitely isn't already a thing. Yeah,

26:50

yeah. There's still plenty of parts that

26:52

like to obsolete themselves out as these cars

26:54

get all that. Let me

26:56

tell you, I'm juggling that with some of

26:59

my cars. Obsceneate themselves? Yeah, they obsolete themselves

27:01

out over time. I'm looking at

27:03

you catalytic converter. I'm looking at you right now.

27:06

The car is running great with 170,000 miles,

27:08

but the catalytic converter I think might be done. And

27:11

that is an example of components that

27:13

in the everyday car industry just have

27:15

a certain expiration date on them. And

27:18

then you eventually throw them away. But

27:20

170,000 miles is a lot different than 600 days. Get

27:29

grist.com/self hosted. That's

27:31

get grist.com/ self

27:34

hosted. Grist is the open

27:36

source alternative to air table and Google sheets.

27:38

Yep, there really is one and it's great.

27:41

I swear every company has one of those load bearing

27:43

spreadsheets out there. Oh man, have

27:45

I seen some monsters in my day. They're impossible

27:47

to maintain. They're super important to the company. In

27:50

fact, a lot of times like only one person

27:53

even knows who originally set it up and they'd

27:55

like the whole lore to it and

27:57

everyone relies on it. It's

27:59

really kind of. ridiculous but it's the state

28:01

of technology for most corporate american now. You

28:04

know people are just trying to use a spreadsheet

28:06

as a database. It makes sense they're comfortable spreadsheets

28:08

but the spreadsheets not the right place

28:11

for this. This is where Grist

28:13

comes in. It's really good at combining

28:15

white people like spreadsheets with databases that

28:17

make sense. The user doesn't really have

28:19

to know what they're doing with a database. They're just interacting as

28:21

far as they know with a spreadsheet. But it's

28:23

actually all backed by SQL. There's

28:26

a lot of no-code tools out there but spreadsheets

28:28

are the original low-code app and I think that's

28:30

why they've gotten this position of prominence. People

28:32

have been building CRMs and payroll

28:34

and event management and scheduling and

28:37

repair shops for

28:39

decades. Even though

28:41

it's awkward in there, like it's

28:44

limited formulas, this is

28:46

where Grist is really smart. It's

28:49

got a no-code or low-code app building system. It

28:51

takes what people already know and like about

28:53

spreadsheets and it connects it to what people like

28:55

about more robust software. You

28:58

get collaboration, granular access, there's an

29:00

API. You get all kinds of

29:02

different ways to view the data. It

29:05

raises the ceiling, letting advanced users work with

29:07

the data using Python if they want or

29:09

build custom widgets to give the display that

29:11

they need. Grist is also easy

29:13

to integrate with because of that REST API. You

29:15

can pull into other aspects of your business and

29:17

there's already lots of popular integrations ready to go.

29:21

Unlike the others, Airtable, it's open

29:23

source. It gets contributions from the French

29:25

government and the users who use Grist in

29:27

the community. Try it out.

29:29

Others have. Grist is the best. Grist,

29:32

the open source alternative

29:35

that you can host.

29:37

Go try it out

29:40

and support the show.

29:42

That's getgrist.com/self-hosted. That's getgrist.com/self-hosted.

29:46

Can we play GIFs on this show? Some

29:49

actual podcast clients do support GIFs in the

29:51

album art because I want to play the

29:53

It's Happening GIF right now. Yeah. Oh,

29:56

we can all picture that one. Yeah, we can all

29:58

theater of the mind that. Jazz hands. it's

30:00

happening. Fiber is coming

30:02

to Alex's neighborhood. That's, I'm

30:04

both extremely happy for you

30:06

and extremely jealous. Yeah.

30:09

Now, you've teased this for a while, do

30:11

you know for sure? Like it's actually coming

30:14

to where you're at? Yes,

30:16

Men with Shovels are at the end of the road

30:18

this morning. Oh, that's

30:20

pretty conclusive. I have literally been,

30:22

so they started yesterday, so as

30:24

we record, it's Wednesday,

30:26

Memorial Day was Monday, so they

30:29

started work on Tuesday and

30:31

I have literally found excuses to drive around my

30:34

neighborhood the last couple of days just to go

30:36

to, you know, just to... Yeah, it's gone on.

30:38

Go and have a look and one

30:40

of our listeners actually, who I've been doing a bunch

30:42

of stuff with works for AT&T,

30:45

it turned out, I didn't notice at the

30:47

time, but anyway, he sort of let me know what

30:49

was happening and where the fiber connections were all going

30:51

to happen and all this kind of stuff. So I

30:53

know exactly where to look and where to go and

30:55

like they started spray painting lines on the road and

30:57

connection nodes and, you know, it's quite

31:00

fun to watch when, you know, just a little bit more than the average

31:03

about it and I just can't

31:05

wait for all the doors that

31:08

having a decent non bandwidth limited

31:10

30... I'm limited to 30 meg

31:12

upload right now, okay, I've got

31:14

1000 down, but 30 up

31:16

is for someone that does off-site

31:19

backups and video work all day. Oh,

31:21

yeah. It's excruciating. I feel

31:23

you. Definitely feel you. I

31:25

definitely feel you on that. Oh, man,

31:27

I'm so excited. You know, I mean, as

31:29

any self hoster that has access to fiber

31:32

at reasonable prices, I mean, that's

31:34

just a special moment. I

31:36

have to remain patient, but I'm very excited

31:39

now. I imagine you're already kind

31:41

of thinking about maybe any gear that might have

31:43

to change out, thinking about timeline, like that kind

31:45

of stuff. I'd be curious to pick your brain

31:47

on. Well, the funny is the day that they

31:49

carded my front door and said AT&T fiber is

31:51

coming to your neighborhood. I

31:53

rang Spectrum, who's my current ISP, probably

31:55

the closest equivalent in England for those

31:57

of you who listen from England. is

32:00

Virgin Media. So they use

32:03

DOCSIS as their, you know, it's over coax,

32:05

it's over copper. And I

32:07

was on a DOCSIS 3 modem that

32:09

I've had for, well, I guess since I

32:11

moved into this house like four or five years ago.

32:13

And so I rang up to threaten to

32:15

cancel because I'm like, well, I could just

32:18

go with that T-Mobile 5G connection for, you

32:20

know, 40 bucks a month, whatever it was.

32:22

Because I was paying $140 a month for 1000 down and 30

32:24

up, which, yeah, my

32:30

pants around my ankles with that one. But

32:33

when I rang up, the lady was like, oh, yeah,

32:35

we can stick you on a one year introductory offer

32:37

as a new customer. And I'm like, okay,

32:40

so what does that work out to? And she

32:42

was like, let me see,

32:44

how does $80 a month sound? That's

32:47

a lot better. All I had to do was ring up

32:49

and threaten to cancel. I didn't. It's

32:52

like, why do we have to play these games? And

32:54

we're not, you know, if it was like a five

32:56

or 10% discount, fine. I just

32:58

wouldn't bother. But like $140 down to $80, that's just taking

33:00

the St.

33:03

Michael, isn't it? Now, did you have to sign

33:06

a contract? Well, I don't think so. I

33:08

think the introductory rate is valid for 12 months.

33:11

I don't think that means I'm locked in

33:13

for 12 months, but here's the really weird

33:15

part. They wouldn't let me keep my old

33:17

modem. I had to get a DOCSIS 3.1

33:19

modem. So

33:22

they sent me out a new modem, even though

33:24

the one I've had previously worked

33:27

totally fine. Need that new firmware to

33:29

get them better speeds? Speaking of e-waste,

33:31

huh? Yeah, no, I can't explain

33:33

it really. Same speed, just new modem, huh? The

33:35

only difference I could tell between DOCSIS 3 and

33:37

3.1 is that the 3.1 modem has a two

33:40

and a half gig ethernet port on the back.

33:42

Okay, so is your edge gear going to be

33:44

fiber ready when they do show up? Okay.

33:46

Nope. My current open sense

33:49

box is just gigabit ethernet,

33:51

like pretty bog standard. Same

33:53

thing I've used for ages. I mean,

33:56

it will do gigabit speeds, so I

33:58

suppose ostensibly it will. be fine

34:00

with the gigabit internet service that I could

34:02

sign up for, but the lines

34:05

they're running and all of the neighborhoods around

34:07

me that have fiber, AT&T offer 5Gig symmetric.

34:09

Yeah, there you go. There you go. Okay.

34:11

Okay. Now I don't know is that I

34:13

would actually sign up for 5Gig today. Oh

34:15

yeah, you would. I might sign up. It's

34:18

going to be $250 a month. Oh.

34:21

Yeah. Well, you know, at business

34:23

expense, you know, if you know, there's a, there's a. What

34:28

I'm thinking about is like you want to, you want

34:30

to have headroom for like, cause you're going to put

34:32

more stuff on that. So you want headroom for that

34:34

stuff to have plenty of bandwidth, but then you also

34:36

want plenty of bandwidth for your personal day to day

34:38

usage. Well, we are talking

34:41

about moving some of our stuff off

34:43

of cloud providers for, you know, for

34:45

JB into my basement now, you know,

34:47

like some of our, you know,

34:49

like where editors get files from that

34:51

kind of stuff, just to reduce costs a little bit.

34:53

And with having fiber in the house, like it

34:56

makes that so much more viable. It's like the, you

34:58

know, like the source of truth is there. And then

35:00

you're like the data center all of a sudden I

35:02

can replicate it to your house and you have a

35:04

backup copy in case I'm offline or whatever. But

35:08

no, I don't know what I'm going to do. There's a bunch

35:10

of small form factor machines that Lenovo

35:13

make that have PCIe ports, the

35:15

little one liter PCs. There's an

35:17

M720Q and an

35:21

M920Q. There is a fantastic serve the home

35:23

thread, which I'll put a link to in

35:26

the show notes where it goes

35:28

through all, you know, how many M.2

35:30

slots these things have, how many PCIe

35:32

lanes they have, like what chips power

35:34

draw, you know, what brackets you need

35:36

to buy and what ribbon cable

35:39

you need to get for this specific expansion

35:41

card, et cetera, et cetera. It's

35:43

a goldmine of information, this thread. So

35:46

I'm seriously thinking of either going

35:48

for a one liter Lenovo probably

35:50

M920Q or something, or

35:53

just building a one new chassis,

35:55

like mini ITX based system. The

35:58

heat will never be a problem. I can just. put

36:01

pretty much generic off-the-shelf components into and

36:03

not have to worry about specific stuff

36:05

to fit into this tiny little computer

36:07

because you know I've got a big

36:09

basement down there where I could you

36:11

know it's not like space isn't

36:14

an issue because you know I don't want

36:16

this thing to be the size of my

36:18

house but you know

36:21

if it was the size of a Mac studio versus a

36:23

Mac mini I'm not going to care. Oh

36:26

man so what would you guess like

36:29

from digging right now to actually like you

36:31

could sign up do you think it's six

36:33

months? Could be. Three months? Really? It could

36:35

be as little as six weeks apparently or

36:37

as much as a year depending

36:39

on because once

36:41

they've because I think all they're doing right now is

36:44

they're putting the conduit in I don't know if they

36:46

actually pull the fiber at the same time

36:48

like I'll watch them as they go past my

36:50

house and tell you next time but

36:54

what's interesting is like they've got these ditch witch

36:56

things that like have these like pneumatic like

37:00

I guess like moles that go under the ground and just

37:02

push through the dirt like 10 feet and then they dig another

37:04

hole and they send it another 10 feet and off they go

37:07

and off they go you know. I want

37:09

one of those. It's

37:11

kind of fun to watch but because it's fiber

37:13

and everything has to be direct connections and stuff like

37:15

that it's fiber to the house it's not like a

37:18

lot of fiber in the UK is fiber to the

37:21

box or fiber to the street and

37:24

then the last little bit is still copper or

37:26

not like direct fiber to the home. Luckily

37:28

this is pretty standard in America

37:30

where it's fiber to the home so I

37:32

should get some pretty good speeds. Yeah too

37:35

bad your next cloud's too slow right I mean doesn't

37:37

matter how fast your next connection is the next cloud's

37:39

too slow. Yeah I'm sorry Brent if you're

37:41

listening to this but I was having a bit of a play around

37:43

my next cloud earlier and I just

37:47

wanted to deploy a really simple

37:49

Kanban app. I wanted

37:51

to just put some basic cards in place just for

37:53

chores around the house like for

37:55

example wife and I need to

37:57

repaint the railings on the porch of our house. house.

38:00

Nothing crazy like the metal railings and there

38:02

are a few tasks that need to happen

38:05

to do that. One of us needs to go to the

38:07

shop and buy paint thinner to strip the paint off and

38:10

then we need to sand it down and like all these things like just

38:13

little tasks you think right well if I'm out

38:15

I could just look at the task list and

38:17

see what's it's almost like a shopping list you

38:19

know and so I thought well rather than

38:21

these things kind of getting lost in translation

38:23

or us forgetting and

38:25

then you know having a minor

38:28

marital about why haven't you done this yet or

38:30

what you know it's like right let's just put

38:32

it in a ticket system because that's what I

38:35

know works from dealing with software engineers

38:37

at work like that's just how my mind works

38:39

like if someone says something to me I'm

38:41

like is it a ticket no it doesn't

38:43

exist okay cool. This is a great idea actually

38:45

I bet some people are rolling their eyes but

38:48

a ticket system for home is a brilliant idea I

38:50

don't know if can ban cards are what I would

38:52

use. Well you don't need much

38:55

uh resolution when you're at home really you just need

38:57

like to do yeah blocked by

38:59

in progress done.

39:01

I want to hear people's suggestions for a ticket

39:04

system at home maybe anyways maybe like

39:06

a wish list of you know like if money was

39:08

no object list as well. So I think going to

39:10

next cloud is a good idea it's a good default

39:12

at least because you've already got it that was my

39:14

logic there's a lot of apps too that I didn't

39:16

need to spin up yet another app just for a

39:19

Kanban board right so I go to my next cloud

39:21

I log in and bear in mind I've had this

39:23

thing running now for about six or seven years it

39:25

started life in London I then

39:27

migrated it to digital ocean

39:29

whilst I immigrated for about a year and

39:32

then it came back into my house again and

39:35

then recently about six months ago moved

39:37

it to a completely new server so

39:40

it's been around a bit this thing. It

39:42

also runs out of a shared my sequel container

39:44

because when I set this thing up I was

39:46

still quite new on the whole self-hosting journey back

39:49

then and I hadn't quite come

39:51

to the same strictness

39:53

about like one database container

39:55

per app that requires a

39:57

database so this my sequel container ran

40:00

runs my git t instance,

40:02

it runs my nextcloud instance,

40:04

it runs invoice ninja, there's

40:07

three fairly heavy apps all hitting

40:10

this one, I mean it

40:12

should be fine, it's all running on

40:14

a mirrored NVMe zfs array, it

40:17

really shouldn't be constrained by IOPS or anything

40:20

like that or even processor stuff

40:22

because it's not doing that much. But

40:24

I went to click on the apps button just

40:26

to have a look and see what Kanbam apps

40:29

were available for nextcloud, I clicked the

40:31

apps button and it just spins. So

40:33

I look in the logs and there's nothing and

40:35

I'm like, hey Brent, is this common or is this just

40:37

an Alex problem? He goes, yeah it's

40:39

probably just an Alex problem and I'm

40:41

like, uh oh. So

40:44

then that led me down the rabbit hole

40:46

of like, well if I click on this

40:48

apps button and leave it overnight does the

40:50

page actually even ever load? And it

40:52

did, it sort of half loaded but

40:54

it didn't fully load so I can't tell

40:56

you what's going on with

40:58

my nextcloud other than after seven years

41:00

I think it's time to new compaif.

41:04

I have recently had just probably in the

41:06

last two months or so when

41:08

I log into my nextcloud the

41:10

login actually happens and it

41:12

starts to load the dashboard but it never

41:14

does and then if I refresh the page

41:17

I immediately get my dashboard. Yeah.

41:19

But like I don't know what's been going on there, that

41:21

could be something I did during my upgrade but I

41:23

will tell you this Alex. For a

41:26

little experiment and I'll put links

41:28

in the show notes, we did a nextcloud

41:31

module and that pulls in

41:33

Redis and uses a Redis cache

41:35

in front of nextcloud. Oh

41:37

man did it make a difference. I

41:39

mean I am telling you a genuine performance

41:42

difference like I have never seen.

41:45

Everything was snappier. Now I think there's still some stuff that

41:47

takes a bit to load internally but every

41:49

page loaded so much snappier with

41:51

Redis acting as a cache in

41:54

front of nextcloud. The trouble is

41:56

with that though, I've been running

41:58

mine out of docker. the last six or

42:00

seven years and it as I

42:02

said to you I've ported it between multiple

42:05

different continents different cloud providers

42:08

even three

42:10

or four different machines and if I was to

42:12

go the Nix OS module route I

42:14

have to use Nix OS now I

42:16

have to because that's how it's configured so

42:19

what becomes my deployable artifact is

42:22

it a container that I build

42:24

using Nix OS primitives to spit out

42:26

an end spawn compatible system the end

42:29

spawn compatible container or am

42:31

I literally limited to a Nix OS VM now

42:33

for next cloud that's my that's

42:35

my real fear here yeah I think it's easier in

42:38

a world where the host system would be Nix OS

42:40

and then you could spin this up so in our

42:42

config that's what we were doing is we had a

42:44

host system then we

42:46

installed essentially next cloud locally it's not

42:49

inside a container but

42:51

of course it's defined by

42:53

Nix and I

42:56

don't know I guess if you're if you're gonna just put that

42:58

in a VM that seems like that I would work the same

43:00

you just install a Nix OS base VM

43:03

and then you know build this inside there

43:05

and that doesn't seem

43:07

much different to me than running say next cloud

43:09

on an Ubuntu VM or something to that effect

43:11

I just love the portability of containers where all

43:13

of the data is divorced from the runtime yeah

43:15

you sure could still go yeah it's true boy

43:17

I tell you what though if there is a

43:20

if maybe and maybe somebody knows of a next

43:23

cloud container setup maybe I bet you that all in

43:25

one has read it I bet you well

43:28

I mean I do have read it in front

43:30

of mine right now oh you do yeah in

43:32

Docker but I'm never sure if I've

43:34

quite configured it right because you have to jump

43:37

down to the config PHP and kind of fart

43:39

around in there for a little bit and you

43:41

know how it goes sometimes like you get distracted

43:43

kid runs in pokes you in the stomach like

43:46

who knows what's going on when you're configuring

43:48

this stuff sometimes well you're not the only

43:50

one I was watching Lewis Rossman's video on

43:52

why futo is investing an image

43:56

and it's brutal on

43:58

next cloud like three

44:00

or four times Lewis clearly

44:02

and plainly states that

44:04

he was so frustrated with the performance of his

44:07

next cloud that he Sought out something

44:09

to replace that functionality discovered image and

44:11

then because he says next cloud was

44:13

so bad I'm not even exaggerating he

44:16

he decided that to encourage the Fudo folks

44:18

to invest an image because we needed something

44:22

Outside of next cloud that was his

44:24

motivation for encouraging them to invest

44:26

an image So you're not

44:28

the only one that's been complaining about his performance We

44:30

love our buddy Brent and we also

44:32

are very very heavy next cloud

44:35

users But I've I

44:37

often have complained about the performance of next cloud and

44:39

I just always assume It's because I don't run on

44:41

the most performant hardware, but your hardware

44:43

is pretty decent loose as hardware is pretty decent.

44:45

I Don't know maybe maybe

44:47

it's just us, but maybe there's a performance problem there

44:50

Maybe redis can only do so much there

44:53

comes a point where PHP can only do so much

44:55

I think yeah, maybe it could be it.

44:57

I don't know it could be it Tailscale

45:01

comm slash self hosted get it

45:03

for free on 100 devices. You

45:05

can really kick the tires It

45:08

is the easiest way to connect devices directly to

45:10

each other wherever they are behind

45:12

double carrier grade now Whatever it might

45:15

be secure remote access to your production

45:17

systems databases servers, the Kubernetes cluster, whatever

45:19

it might be and it's fast It's

45:23

really really fast. It's privacy for

45:25

every individual and every organization It's

45:27

intuitive to set up easy

45:30

to deploy and it's all protected

45:32

by wire card and the

45:34

new Android app They just released it's

45:37

absolutely great. I wasn't sure what to

45:39

expect I am

45:41

really really impressed build simple

45:43

networks across complex infrastructure And

45:46

you can use the ACL policies to

45:48

securely control access to devices and services

45:50

with their next-gen access controls What

45:52

I'm saying is you can replace

45:54

your legacy VPN infrastructure in just

45:57

minutes Save time with a

45:59

trusted and- proven networking solution that

46:01

just works powered by WireGuard. Securely

46:04

connect anything to anything no matter

46:07

what operating system, hardware type, or

46:09

configuration is in place. You

46:11

can also do nice things like send files

46:13

between devices, use it to authenticate your SSH

46:16

logins. You can even run

46:18

it on your iPad so you can connect in

46:20

and manage your Linux box. I mean, it's every

46:22

device, every platform. It really makes

46:24

it simple and straightforward to access

46:27

your resources wherever you go. Every

46:29

application I run, either at home

46:31

or for work, on a VPS or locally

46:34

on my LAN, everything goes into my tailnet.

46:37

Everything's in a flat tailnet network for me.

46:39

It doesn't matter where I'm at, if I'm traveling

46:41

or if I'm at the studio or

46:44

maybe I'm at Denver for Red Hat. It doesn't matter

46:47

because I address everything the same way using

46:49

internal name resolution on that tailnet. Just

46:53

so, so, so cool when you really start to wrap your

46:55

head around it. I try to tell you, you got to

46:58

try it to really get how powerful it can be. Go

47:01

take advantage of those 100 devices

47:03

and support the show. Go to

47:05

tailscale.com/ self-hosted. 100

47:08

devices for as long as you want to use it. You

47:10

know I use the heck out of Tailscale. I talk about that

47:12

all the time. I still haven't used

47:15

up my 100 devices. I'm on the free

47:17

account still. That's how great it is.

47:20

100 devices really lets you try it out and kick the

47:22

tires. Go see what I'm saying. Support

47:25

the show. tailscale.com/self-hosted.

47:27

So after

47:30

the last episode where you talked a little bit

47:32

about dashboards and stuff, I gave Dashie a try.

47:34

Oh really? How are you finding your

47:36

dashboard set up? So I gave Dashie a quick

47:38

try and then I hit the pause button after

47:41

you talked me into maybe building it on home

47:43

assistant. So I've been thinking

47:45

about that and then I went back to Dashie for

47:48

a couple of days just to play around with it.

47:50

But I haven't proceeded. I

47:52

actually have kind of been discouraged on the whole thing.

47:55

I don't know. It's like

47:57

I just I don't necessarily think I

47:59

want to. anything else to set up right now.

48:01

We've trodden this path before. We know what's going

48:03

to happen in time. Like it's, it's a, yeah.

48:07

We did get a lot of good, a lot of good dashboard

48:09

tips. Yeah. I will say

48:11

one thing about Dashie that kind of caught me out is

48:13

it's got quite a long startup time. It

48:16

rebuilds itself every time so that by the time

48:18

it's, it's built, it's like a two or three

48:20

minute delay whilst it starts up. The

48:22

logic behind that from the developer in one

48:24

of the GitHub issues is that, well,

48:27

if I rebuild dynamically at startup,

48:30

it becomes a static site that

48:32

I'm serving and the performance is

48:34

better. I was convinced that I'd

48:36

screwed up my DNS somewhere or that I

48:38

was doing something else wrong or, I

48:41

like I futzed around with this thing for

48:43

about an hour before realizing no, Alex, you

48:45

just need to be more patient. Cause suddenly traffic

48:47

was like, oh, I'm going to grab you

48:49

a cert for that. Sure. No problem. After

48:51

like three or four minutes. And I'm like,

48:53

but what? I didn't do anything. And

48:55

it just worked. And I was like,

48:58

oh, so it's building. That's what's happening. And

49:00

I think maybe the documentation

49:02

could be a little clearer on that. Cause once

49:04

you know, you know, but it's one

49:06

of those things that really catches new users out. And

49:08

we got some great boosts this episode. Scuba Steve's back.

49:11

It's good to hear from him. And he's our baller

49:13

this week with 80,000 sacks. And

49:16

he says for years, I love this boost.

49:18

For years I've been privately grumbling about the

49:20

constant homelessness and talk on the show. She

49:23

barely has toned down in the past few months. I

49:26

live in a small New York city apartment. So the

49:28

vast majority of home automation projects, just not

49:30

practical for me. And despite hosting a

49:32

number of services on my land, I've never installed

49:34

home assistant until last week when

49:37

I became determined to fix an ancient broken door

49:39

buzzer in my bedroom. Now, same

49:42

person would have asked her landlord to install

49:44

a new $15 Chimebox. But

49:46

I instead purchased my first Zigbee radio

49:49

from cloudfree.shop, along with

49:51

the Aquara door window sensor. It

49:53

turns out the magnet in the old Chimebox

49:55

is enough to actually trip the door sensor

49:57

when it goes off, allowing me to...

49:59

then send notifications to my wife and

50:02

my phone via Home Assistant's app when

50:05

somebody presses the buzzer. Today, I've

50:07

even passed through the USB speaker to my Home

50:09

Assistant VM and added a custom doorbell chime. All

50:11

this to say, you guys were right. This

50:14

stuff is really cool. BRB, adding smart

50:16

plugs to all my appliances. Thanks for all you

50:19

do. I've been a listener since 2015 and self-hosted

50:21

since episode one. Resistance

50:24

is useless. Thank you,

50:27

Scoobie Steve. Nice to hear from you. That's

50:29

a great little story. I'll just say for

50:31

the audience, too, I happen to be wearing

50:33

my Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy t-shirt today,

50:36

hence the quote. Yeah, it's

50:38

funny, Scoobie Steve. You'll start putting smart plugs

50:40

on everything. The bonkiest thing,

50:42

is that a word? The bonkers thing?

50:44

A wonky bonky thing I did? Well, here's the thing,

50:46

Chris. Words are only words because we all agree they're

50:48

words. So if we all say bonkiest is a word,

50:50

then you can have it. I think bonkiest is

50:52

good. I just put a

50:55

smart plug on a monitor. I

50:57

ended up with a used professional

51:00

line monitor from Samsung that doesn't have

51:02

a power button. What? Only

51:04

can turn it off by unplugging it. Yeah.

51:07

It's so funny. Who thought that was a

51:09

good idea? I don't know.

51:11

You could tell the thing's run forever, too, because

51:13

it's only a few years old and it's got

51:15

some damage. But I just

51:17

need something like throw up something to screen on, do

51:19

a little check. It's not an important box, but

51:21

I don't want the screen on all the time. So

51:24

I threw a smart plug on the monitor. So

51:26

I just activated with a smart plug

51:28

now. There you go. A

51:30

Stream Deck plug-in as well. What's that one

51:32

you use? Yeah, yeah, but a Stream Deck

51:35

from Elgato. There you go. With

51:37

Bitfocus. You connect that to Home Assistant.

51:41

Yeah, Bitfocus will run on any Linux box. You

51:43

connect that to Home Assistant and then you have

51:45

physical buttons for all your Home Assistant stuff. I

51:47

saw a live stream the other day. Someone recommended

51:49

that I check out the drama, Mr. Greggles on

51:52

Twitch slash YouTube. And

51:54

this guy has, it's

51:56

a pretty ball of streaming set up, but

51:59

right on his. drum kit underneath his high

52:01

hat, he's got a stream deck mounted.

52:03

Oh yeah. So as he's playing, as he's

52:05

streaming, he can just hit transitions,

52:07

and he has this kind of matrix style,

52:10

like, you know, do you remember that camera

52:12

shot where they had like 50 cameras

52:14

that went, the bullet time thing, yeah, of course. Yeah, mm-hmm.

52:16

So he's got one of those around his drum kit, so

52:18

he can actually just change from a left shot to a

52:20

right shot. I love it. With a

52:22

bullet time transition. But yeah, there's

52:25

just so many uses for a stream deck

52:27

that I don't think I've fully grokked yet.

52:30

I need to look at that setup. That

52:33

sounds amazing. What a cool setup. You know, Al,

52:35

you'll love it. Once you get one and use

52:37

Bitfocus to connect, or there's lots of ways I'm sure

52:39

to connect to the Home Assistant, but that's

52:42

how I do it. I think you're gonna love it. Sam

52:45

Bauer comes in with 31,000 SATs. It

52:47

says, first time booster, thanks for the great content.

52:50

Thank you, Sam. Appreciate you taking the hike to

52:52

get that setup. I

52:54

hope you enjoy Fountain. Appreciate that.

52:56

NX211 comes in with 20,000 SATs. Jupiter

52:59

Party member here and booster. Value for

53:01

Value is the future of podcasting. I

53:04

will support image too. Developers and podcasters can

53:06

benefit from Value for Value. I

53:08

agree. I think there's a

53:10

lot of niche content out there, like

53:13

ours and others, that would not be possible if

53:15

there wasn't something like the Value for Value model.

53:17

And I hope more people see that soon. Independent

53:20

content is a rare thing

53:22

these days. Truly independent content.

53:25

Right. And this

53:27

is the name of the media game, and

53:30

it always has been, but even if you're posting

53:32

on Twitter or Instagram or TikTok,

53:34

wherever the media outlet is, even

53:37

if it's an independent creator, they're

53:39

still forced to play the game of the

53:41

platform. Whatever the platform makes them do to

53:43

make their content popular, they still have to

53:45

comply with. Otherwise, their content won't go anywhere.

53:48

And podcasting has nothing like that.

53:51

It is truly indie. There's

53:53

no algorithm or anything like that that people

53:55

have to optimize for, but it

53:58

also means that it's not an automa- system

54:00

where advertisers can just come along and

54:02

buy 20 podcasts. It

54:04

means that smaller podcasts or independent

54:06

creators can have a

54:09

sustainable system that doesn't necessarily rely on a

54:11

commercial platform. Thank you, Enix. I

54:13

love the Spotify tried. Have

54:16

they failed or are they diving back their

54:18

ambitions in podcast land yet? Oh, yeah. The

54:21

biggest thing is they've

54:23

released. Rogan's no long exclusive.

54:26

They didn't renew the deal with the Obamas. They've cut

54:28

a ton of staff, I think like almost

54:31

all the staff. Yeah. Well, if

54:33

they can't afford to keep coughing, how can they possibly afford to

54:35

keep Joe Rogan? It was... And

54:38

then, yeah, they blew money like crazy.

54:42

Hybrid Sarcasm comes in with 20,000 sats. Okay,

54:44

confession time, he says. I

54:46

never saw a reason to use tail scale

54:48

since my needs for WireGuard were simple and

54:50

uncomplicated. But after reading the

54:52

manual for some time and getting comfortable with

54:55

Google authentication, I've been converted. I've

54:57

replaced my entire WireGuard setup with my tail

54:59

net. Split DNS subnet router on PF sense

55:01

and exit node on a Linode VBS. And

55:04

there's nothing extra needed on my devices. Just

55:07

swap out the WireGuard app for the tail scale app. Understanding

55:09

WireGuard under the hood, I see how tail

55:12

scale is truly WireGuard on easy mode. Gosh,

55:15

that is a testimonial and a half. If

55:17

it's okay with you, Hybrid Sarcasm, I mean, we will

55:20

use that in a video at some point. So let

55:22

us know because that's a lovely thing

55:24

to read. Thank you for writing it. I think you

55:26

also wrote into the next episode of

55:28

LUP that I was on a couple of weeks ago.

55:31

We were talking about some of

55:33

the authentication methods for tail scale. So super

55:35

happy to read this piece of feedback and thanks for writing

55:38

in. Yeah, Hybrid, that's so great to hear.

55:40

And yeah, I think where

55:42

people get hung up on tail scale is

55:44

they think of it as a VPN replacement.

55:47

It's so much more than that, right? It's

55:49

really about connecting devices directly to each other,

55:52

wherever they are in the world, regardless of

55:54

the complex networks between them, building a simple

55:56

mesh network between all those devices. It's

56:00

a new flat network that is yours that

56:02

is overlaid on top of the internet It's

56:05

not a Vpn so much as it is like

56:07

a way to connect all your system's It's. He's.

56:10

Gonna go play with it. You. Know

56:12

Tail scale.com/self hosted. A

56:15

thank you for the booth hybrid. Lovely plug

56:17

when I'm Christopher. Bad. Vin One

56:19

two three comes in with thousand and that's ah, thanks

56:21

to Hybrid sarcasm for the Sats, A Hybrid gave him

56:23

the thats a good boost and much as I was

56:25

really cool. Nice. Is thinking. About

56:27

Openstreetmap: Have you heard of Open Map

56:30

Chest? It allows you to put Openstreetmap

56:32

on an old. Garmin. I've

56:34

been using this setup with a $20 Garmin newbie

56:36

from eBay for a while. It's the best way

56:38

to use open street maps Holy

56:40

crap, that's cool. That is really

56:43

cool open again It's called open

56:45

map chest and it's

56:47

a open street maps for your old

56:49

Garmin. They got the United States They got

56:51

can't oh my god. They got the whole world in here. Yeah. Well,

56:53

yes, it's open the street map. That makes sense That

56:56

is a really cool one. Thank you bat. I Appreciate

56:59

that open map chest. I'm checking

57:01

that out You know, there

57:03

is something nice about having an old Garmin

57:05

just a dedicated again You

57:08

know the phones got great now, but sometimes it's

57:10

nice to have a dedicated device You know recently

57:12

whenever we've been going out to dinner and stuff.

57:14

I've just started leaving my phone in the car

57:16

Oh, yeah, you should try it. Yeah, just one

57:18

time because I found that

57:20

having the phone in my pocket

57:23

is enough of a

57:26

I don't know at this point muscle memory

57:28

of a of a an addiction whatever that

57:30

I Check it. But

57:33

if I don't physically have it on me, we're

57:36

a restaurant for what 45 minutes an hour

57:38

Whatever and I just find myself

57:40

so much more present and it was

57:42

funny Catherine Ella went to the toilet without

57:44

me And I was sat there.

57:46

Yeah We went to

57:48

cracker barrel for Mother's Day We

57:51

never been to a cracker barrel before so I really wanted

57:53

to try some a proper Americana For

57:55

those of you that have never been to one by

57:57

the way, it's this weird kind of like old-timey like

58:00

fake general store with a really

58:02

kind of average chicken and

58:04

gravy biscuits place tacked on next door

58:06

and it was We

58:09

left well, I'll just say that it was

58:11

it was entirely whelming in

58:13

every single way But

58:15

I just found myself looking around the restaurant

58:17

everybody else I can yell time thinking Well,

58:20

what am I gonna do with my brain?

58:22

I can't look up this random fact that

58:24

I want to know that's completely unimportant I

58:27

guess I'll just look at those people over there eating

58:29

and just sort of People watch

58:31

for a bit. It's quite nice. That's funny

58:33

you mentioned this because I was just reading

58:35

this rather compelling series

58:38

of posts by Edward Snowden on noster talking

58:41

about phone tracking and You know

58:43

encouraging people to experiment with leaving their phones at home

58:45

and I thought I was thinking so how would I

58:47

do this? You know in a a

58:50

nav maybe if I needed it, you

58:52

know and having a communications device at either location Maybe

58:55

some kind of long-range radio if you know with

58:57

the wife for real emergencies Like I was I've

58:59

been thinking more about this So the idea of

59:01

not bringing the phone into the restaurant It's

59:04

a good one because I'll tell you what that

59:06

is that situation where you're the only ones that

59:08

have table for a few minutes Is the quintessential

59:11

check the phone real quick moment. Mm-hmm. I know

59:13

it'd be tricky It'd be tricky.

59:15

I you catch yourself doing anything.

59:18

Why? Whatever. Yeah could

59:20

possibly be more important than just having

59:22

a few moments with myself right now.

59:25

Yeah, it's frustrating High

59:27

five connoisseur comes in with a spaceballs boost

59:29

one two, three four five sats and he

59:32

gives a plug for dashes It's dashes a

59:34

dashboard that you can change the config from

59:36

the front page This

59:38

shows great. Thanks for all the content. Yeah, it's pretty nice

59:40

apart from the long startup time, of course Which we already

59:42

mentioned it has a config yaml,

59:45

you know So you could actually define

59:47

it declaratively in a yaml

59:49

file if that's your flavor or

59:51

as you say You can just go

59:53

into the interactive editor and drag and click

59:55

and resize and add widgets and all sorts of

59:57

cool stuff It's actually pretty amazing

1:00:00

some of the stuff that these dashboards have done.

1:00:02

Back in the day, I remember we

1:00:04

had this, this was when I was working for this

1:00:06

bank in London, we had this kind

1:00:08

of internal system that just had a bunch

1:00:11

of icons. It wasn't

1:00:13

like an iPad, it was a little different,

1:00:15

but it was kind of the same deal,

1:00:17

right? It's like a website that your personal,

1:00:19

like we had the Citrix remote terminal thing

1:00:21

you logged in and that was your environment

1:00:23

and you logged into this browser and it

1:00:25

took you to this page and I was

1:00:27

like, on

1:00:30

the Linux server team back in the day, I went

1:00:32

to the guys and I was like, why can't we

1:00:34

have something like this for all of the Linux server

1:00:36

apps or all the Docker containers I'm running? And

1:00:39

so Code, who's the guy behind

1:00:41

Fanart.tv who is one of

1:00:43

the Linux server developers, wrote Heimdall based on

1:00:45

that idea. And we sort of worked through some

1:00:48

of the stuff, what if you had dynamic apps

1:00:50

and stuff that sort of updated in real time

1:00:52

based on what your download client's doing and all

1:00:55

this kind of stuff. It's just, it's amazing

1:00:57

seeing how these sort of dashboard ecosystem was kind

1:00:59

of grown from there because I

1:01:01

don't really think there was much around before

1:01:03

Heimdall. D A S H

1:01:05

Y dot T O if you want to go

1:01:07

check out Dashie. And yeah,

1:01:10

I think that's the one that's got the most recommendation.

1:01:12

All right, we're rounded out. Felward humor

1:01:14

comes in with a row of

1:01:16

ducks and says, Alex, sometime back

1:01:19

you mentioned sending encrypted Zetafest dataset

1:01:21

replicas to your DR Proxmox host.

1:01:23

Is this still something you're doing and recommending?

1:01:26

Yes, is a short answer. It

1:01:30

runs on a nightly basis and

1:01:32

it just does the incremental backups

1:01:35

all the time. I'm actually going to England in a couple of

1:01:37

weeks and I'll be giving that

1:01:40

service some love and some fettling to make

1:01:42

sure it's all still hunky dory. Hardware wise

1:01:44

after the hardware failures I had

1:01:46

with the hard drives last year that Gary from

1:01:48

late that innings went over and helped

1:01:51

swap out the hard drives for but

1:01:53

yeah, it's, it

1:01:55

just works. Yeah. Humor says that

1:01:57

he keeps reading people talking about edge

1:01:59

cases. where replication plus encrypted

1:02:01

ZFS data sets has caused corruption

1:02:04

issues or other failures on one of the

1:02:06

sides. So I guess let us know if you read

1:02:08

into that, but so far. Yeah,

1:02:10

I mean, I don't doubt that

1:02:12

certain people ran into certain failure

1:02:14

scenarios on some rainy

1:02:17

Tuesday, but for me, you

1:02:19

know, the data sample size

1:02:21

of one so far has been

1:02:24

good for me. Vomitfarts takes us

1:02:26

out with 3000 sats. Greeting from Moscow!

1:02:29

I'd hope. I listen at work. I'm a

1:02:31

janitor, and I am about halfway through my

1:02:33

second playthrough of self-hosted after

1:02:35

finishing up the second playthrough of Unplugged. Just

1:02:38

want to say, keep up the great work, boys. Can you

1:02:40

believe that? I can't believe you

1:02:42

didn't mention what speed he's listening at. I

1:02:45

would be curious. Could you

1:02:48

do it at 1X? That would be

1:02:50

really impressive. 1X?

1:02:52

Wow. Shout out to adversary17 with

1:02:54

5000 sats and Todd from Northern Virginia with

1:02:57

11,101 sats. That's

1:03:00

all we have for this week for TimeWise, but we did get a

1:03:02

few more boosts. I'll put them in the boost bar, which will be

1:03:04

in the show notes. We had 12 boosters total. Stacked

1:03:06

188,012 sats. Thank

1:03:09

you, everybody, who boosts in. The idea is it's

1:03:11

an independent network, open source, and it's a way

1:03:13

to support shows directly without anybody in between, and

1:03:15

you can do it with a new podcast app.

1:03:18

It's self-hosted money. Go get a new app,

1:03:20

and then we'll blast some sats. Soundson.fm, Podverse,

1:03:22

and Castamatic are some of our

1:03:24

favorites at newpodcastapps.com.

1:03:28

Thanks, everybody, who streams those sats and boosts in. We

1:03:30

really appreciate it. And, of course, shout

1:03:32

out to our SREs, self-hosted.show

1:03:35

slash SRE. Become

1:03:38

a member, and you get an ad-free version of the

1:03:40

show, and you get a little extra content. You

1:03:43

get that post show at

1:03:45

self-hosted.show slash SRE. Now,

1:03:47

in the last episode, I teased meetups and things

1:03:49

like that coming up. Something

1:03:51

around June the 15th would be

1:03:53

my ideal date for a meetup

1:03:55

in the Norwich and Cambridge area,

1:03:57

something like that. I

1:04:00

was going to suggest we went to a pub

1:04:02

called the Gibraltar Gardens, which is this beautiful, it's

1:04:05

on the River Wensum down in Norwich,

1:04:07

right on the river, beautiful outdoor beer

1:04:09

garden, lovely, but

1:04:11

apparently it's been closed according to

1:04:13

the Norwich evening standards. Open

1:04:17

to suggestions if you live in that area and have a

1:04:19

good idea of where we can go to grab a beer,

1:04:21

just a brewski, nothing too fancy. On

1:04:23

June the 15th at some point, let me know. You

1:04:25

can find me on the internet at alex.ktz.me. You

1:04:29

can find me at chrislass.com or just check out some

1:04:31

of the great shows at jupiterbroadcasting.com. As

1:04:33

always, thank you so much for listening.

1:04:35

That was selfhosted.show slash 124.