Yeah you could not get me to go back in time to scan all of my docs but from now on a bunch of my emails automatically added to paperless, and I have found that I am actually putting things in there on my own now that it is installed and a bunch of automations happen.

Just wait that “lifetime” package will end and they will say we need your money every month now, sooner rather than later.

I paid a lifetime thing for a medication app, to help me keep on track of my meds. It was free for x number of drugs but then they wanted me to pay for more. A few months ago I got notified that my “life time” access was going to become a subscription so I said nope, no thanks, nada and uninstalled the app and set up HA alerts that remind me. Finding out I could do that was such a freeing feeling, I set up reminders to do a whole bunch of things and they remind me on my watch.

Spin up pihole and just look at the data coming to your “smart” TV’s even when you are not using them. Then consider the data they must be sending home, the only thing “smart” TVs are good at is watching you watch them (or not watching them). I would highly recommend getting a pi or media computer for your TV’s.

I do not think I can stress this enough smart TV’s are not smart for you they are smart for whoever made the TV. Manufactures sell TV’s at a loss now because they get more by selling you.

My home server is hiding under a bunch of Ethernet!

Didn’t know you could block users. Thanks for letting me know, I appreciate your insight and have blocked this user.

Cool did not know that I will have to look into that when I set up my pi 5 firewall.

I just use wireguard, no there is no simple GUI or anything like that. I also run it bare metal no docker.

It currently sits on a pi zero 2, it has just enough power to use my pihole DNS’s. I plan on moving it to a pi 5 whenever I get around to building my firewall.

Yes it is something like this, I do not have all of my emails go to paperless-ngx that would probably kill my little home lab.

I deal with a lot of financial and insurance things, having them go automatically to paperless-ngx was the plan but then I saw what I could do with automation and I spent hours setting up automation. As this is all new to me and I am dealing with some recent flooding I did not want to need to remember to start forwarding things I needed saved as pdf’s.

The automations include things that should not be forwarded to the paperless accounts, then each of the paperless accounts have rules on what to block if something slips through.

I got an unlimitted email package from a host, before my journey into self hosting. I use a different email address for everything I sign up to or need to confirm I am human with. They all forward to 6 or 7 different emails I check I have just decided that those email addresses would forward to paperless email address to keep stuff sorted.

*edit I get next to no spam, if I do I either close the email or tell the company they have had a data leak and close the email.

My scripts work together to find news stories in different RSS feeds and web pages combines them all together and than emails stuff to me, the same news stories should not show up in different emails.

I wrote python scripts that run on my pi

It is a python script that runs on my pi, Claude just helped me fix my errors and replicate it.

It searches multiple places and does not include things in previous emails, or stories in more than one outlet. Yes RSS would be easier but that is multiple streams.

My last mac computer bit the dust a few years ago so I was using my iphone, ipad, and icloud. For mt things then stuff happened and I stopped using iCloud and do not have the money to replace my other devices quite yet so I have a hand full of raspberry pi’s attached to HDD’s, NVMe drives, and SSD’s. I currently have pihole running on 2 of them, I have a pi zero 2 running wireguard so that I can access my dns hosts, but it is not strong enough to access my self hosted Nextcloud on the go, for that I am told I should use at least a pi 4. My pi’s do a lot more than host nextcloud, pihole, and wireguard though!

In the not to distant future I will be retiring wireguard from that pi zero 2 and turning it into a pots server. I have grand ambitions to make a better home lab with a few more pi’s and to help me get away from big tech more.

The only thing google I have is an email I do not use but so I can watch YouTube, but I use unwatched to block ads.

The only thing apple is my iPhone and my iPad, when it becomes time to replace those I will have to figure out graphenOS and some Linux distro for a tablet of some sort.

I actually have Wireguard running on a pi zero 2, all it really does is provide me my pihole DNS.

Edit:

I should say I have pihole running on a couple of pi 5’s currently, overkill yes but one of my pi 4’s was sacrificed to the whims of magic smoke another was donated to a friend and another now hosts HAOS, I have a few pi zero 2’s (only one was sacrificial) the one that hosts wireguard has one of my last few working SD cards. The pi 5’s host many other things other than just pihole.

I have a .ca domain at hosthero and a .ca domain at easydns if you are in Canada I would recommend them. They offer more than .ca if you are not in Canada.

So my home lab has been raspberry pi’s of varying shapes and numbers for a few years. Recently my single floor condo flooded so half of my place has been ripped up and so much crap has been stuffed in the other half I decided I should get around to planning out a more complete home lab setup. Money is a bit tight but I called up my ISP and it turns out my internet package comes with two static IP addresses so I decided to snap those up. I will be building up a firewall with a pi 5, I will continue to use a pi 4 I have running HAOS, as I try to get out of all the ecosystems. I was born into the Apple ecosystem, the first computer I remember using was some old Apple DOS computer, so breaking out of that walled garden is going to be tough but it helps that Tim Apple gave Trump a golden Apple plaque so it hurts less with every service I turn off.

Any who because I have had a lot of time to make plans and game through my plan with AI I have decided I am going to self host my domain and email (Simple blog and 200+ annonomized email addresses) on a pi 5 that will be the third pi 5 after my firewall the first pi 5 will host things like immich, nextcloud, and the other things it is already doing one of those other things is pihole and that is where my DHCP is currently, I am on the fence about moving it to opnwrt or not. The Second pi 5 after the firewall also hosts a secondary pihole as a back up dns and all my high seas (like sonarr.tv) things and jellyfin.

To top it all off I am going to get another pi 4 with a hdd and I will ask for it to be hosted some where to do off site back ups.

As more of the world is moving into the #boycottUS movement more people are moving to open source alternatives. I personally wish more people would move to more open source things rather than alternative closed source things that could be sold to a US company.