There can be a period after graceful shutdown where the UPS is still running and the server will not restart if mains power comes back on. Not a likely scenario, but for apps you can’t afford to have down it’s something to consider.

Google is now expecting users to watch ads that are sometimes a full 25% of the viewing time, or slowing access and requiring logins when adblock is being used. And even if you wade through all that, watching Youtube tech and info videos has become a lot like looking at online recipes. The majority of what you find is fluff and filler for only small amounts of useful content.

I used to go to Youtube daily for research and entertainment but now I avoid the site completely whenever possible. It seems we’ve finally reached an enshittification tipping point.

It’s about time.

Every wifi device we own that’s connected to wifi and the Internet can be precisely located by the companies involved even when using a VPN.

If you have an Android phone you’ve probably noticed a prompt at some point asking for your permission to transmit precise location information and enable wifi scanning. Those wifi SSIDs and MAC addresses along with its GPS location is sent back to Google. The combination of all that information is almost as unique as a fingerprint. They can use that along with signal strength of each AP in the area to determine your device’s location with precision. (Google used to allow apps like Maps to be used with wifi scanning turned off, but no more.)

Your Google stick can’t tell it’s on a VPN directly, but even without GPS Google can still pinpoint its physical location using their database of SSIDs and MAC addresses, and if they want to they can determine you’re using a VPN by comparing that to the expected location of your IP address. There probably aren’t enough people doing this right now to make it worth the trouble to detect your VPN, but IMO it’s just a matter of time before they decide it is.

I also expect that Google sells that information to every company willing to pay for it, so almost every single wifi enabled device can be precisely located if it can transmit data to the Internet.

We live in a scary time.

I’ve been running Mint since 17.x and have only had one upgrade fail in all that time. You’re very unlikely to have a problem, but backup your system just in case!

Thanks for that list. No need here for more advanced hardware so I’ll have to put off networking upgrades until I can come up with a reason to justify it.

As a home user, what additional features have you found useful on enterprise networking equipment? Just because what I’m doing is already ridiculously complex doesn’t mean it can’t be more so.

OpenWRT is amazingly flexible and would be a great place to start.

I switched from DD-WRT last year and have been amazed how good OpenWRT is. There are thousands of software packages that allow you to do pretty much anything you can think of on inexpensive hardware. Used Netgear R7800s are available for less than $50 on ebay or there are plenty of newer hardware options if you want to spend more. Those thousands of downloadable software packages include Wireguard and Adguard Home, plus there are OpenWRT integrations for Home Assistant. The forum is full of people who are happy to help newcomers.

I started by running OpenWRT in a virtual machine to get familiar with the UI and moved on to a live installation. Highly recommended, especially if you enjoy learning.

4gb isn’t much ram, but it can be surprisingly useful if you configure Zswap. Lots of guides out there. Here’s one of them.

What are those alternatives? I can’t think of any that are ready for prime time.

Not everyone cares enough to avoid Google. Some of us that want to do so are related to them.

You can stop using all Google products.

That may be true for you, but other people face different realities. When Google implements the sideloading block it will eventually be pushed to everyone who doesn’t use a custom ROM.

The infuriating part of the Google enshittification process is that there is absolutely nothing the user can do about it.

Literally the only thing that motivates Google is profit. Controlling side-loaded apps will almost certainly boost their profits by a infinitesimal fraction of a percent, therefore it will be done. Even if consumer uproar causes Google to back down in the short term, they’ll simply implement this a few months later. Late-stage Capitalism sucks.

A single Opteron 6272 is somewhat faster than the N200, but the Opteron’s TDP is 115 watts while the N200’s is only 6 watts. OP’s server with 2 processors is more than 2x as fast as my single processor laptop, but can require nearly 40x the electricity. For a home server it’s major overkill.

Sounds like my laptop will be plenty fast for some time to come.

This platform doesn’t use much power to begin with, but I do run TLP using a battery profile despite the fact it’s always plugged in. My intent is to lower the power consumption a bit further and extend battery run time if the power fails. There’s no noticeable impact on application performance. If you’re running Linux maybe it will work on your hardware.

Tangential question: What kind of server apps require that kind of processing power? I run a server on an Intel N200 laptop with multiple apps and services and it rarely uses more than 12% CPU and 15 watts. I’m wondering if I’m going to eventually run into something that needs a more powerful platform.

If I’m understanding what you want to do, I have this set up on an OpenWRT router with multiple remote endpoints used for different devices. Our phones go to a hosted Wireguard server in one city, PCs to an OpenWRT router in a different location, and IOT devices that aren’t blocked and guest devices exit access the Internet locally. With some additional work you should also be able to have remote devices connected via WG exit wherever you like.

Policy Based Routing on OpenWRT makes this possible and it should be doable as long as the devices you want to allow to exit the remote server are included in that server’s “Allowed IPs” setting. (Maybe there’s a way around that, but I haven’t had to deal with it.)

As others have said, get something that works with OpenWRT. It’s unbelievably flexible and the OpenWRT forum can be really helpful, both for finding ways to implement things and for solving problems.

And Maga will cheer for a 3rd term.

Meta’s done worse: https://www.hipaajournal.com/meta-facing-scrutiny-over-use-of-meta-pixel-tracking-code-on-hospital-websites/

Meta Pixel is a snippet of JavaScript code that can be used by website owners for tracking user activity through the use of cookies.

The problem is the data collected via this code snippet may be sent to Meta, and may include patients’ protected health information. Meta is not a business associate of HIPAA-covered entities, and under HIPAA compliance rules, any data transmitted to Meta would require patient consent to be a HIPAA compliant website.

Criminal and civil judgements are dwarfed by the huge profits generated by the violation of privacy laws. Shareholders and C-Suites don’t care where the money is coming from as long as it keeps coming.

Debian 12, Mint, Pi OS, Windows 11, Android. Works perfectly on all of them.