I host a couple of very small websites for personal stuff and a Foundry server for my weekly RPG. Not exactly resource-intensive. And I've been paying for webhosting for a while for it, and it just feels unnecessary.

I always figured when I finally decided to do it, I'd just grab a Raspberry Pi and go to town. But they're... weirdly expensive. The Zero 2 W is sold out everywhere, they have insane resale prices, and you still need to essentially buy the 'kit' first time to have most of the stuff to set one up. So is it worth it?

I've been toying between that or just grabbing an old server off craigslist or Facebook Marketplace for $25-$30 and just going to town from there. What do you guys recommend?

So far I only managed to find two online communities in which people are able to hold a productive discussion and share interesting stuff - Tildes and LessWrong. Do you know if there are any other great online spaces like this?

With the Youtube adblock debacle going on, and my account on Firefox+Ublock getting the dreaded popup, I was trying out the Piped alternative frontends for Youtube. If you're unaware, this is basically lets you browse Youtube without using the actual Youtube site or your Google account, and there's no ads. Whenever this adblock issue comes up, everyone starts pushing other frontends like Piped as the solution. There's also a dedicated bot that automatically replies with the Piped link when anyone posts a Youtube link on Lemmy. People seem to think very highly of this site! The simping for it can be very strong.

I tried using the main instance, https://piped.video, but it was laggy! Completely, unusably slow. I've also had it crash whenever I try to watch certain videos. I heard there were other instances that would have less users and less pressure on the servers, so I tried out the other public instances. One of them worked great for a couple days, now it just stopped loading videos all of a sudden. All the other instances I've tried either don't load videos, or the domain is down.

Are they cracking down on Piped now, or are all these instances just not good and you need to self-host to get anything out of Piped? Are there any other alternative frontends that you've liked?

A recent post here made me realize how much I really wish I just could pop in a CD while driving (you can skip those, and I can make mix CDs, so no need for cassettes haha). I commute a decent amount and I'm using a Pixel with GrapheneOS. Adding a streaming service would just be one more piece of Google I'd have to add to my "work" profile. I'm listening to some great podcasts, but I'd rather go full nostalgia without ripping all my CDs.

That being said, I'd like any recommendations. USB would be nice for the constant power option, but blutooth is doable as well. TIA!

My wife has an ipad pro, and we have a baby monitor. So I was watching the baby monitor and noticed that her ipad was also in view of the camera. What I also noticed is that her ipad seems to flash an infrared light every minute or so.

After some googling I think this is the lidar scanner, although I'm not 100% sure.

Anyway, does anyone know why her ipad is doing this? It feels pretty creepy that a device is scanning your house all the time. Normally you don't even notice, it's only when you view the iPad pro from a camera that also shows infrared.

Maybe I'm just a little paranoid, but it feels like a privacy violation.

So I'm looking for a solution that's basically just a remote to scroll the web while I'm slouched down in the couch. Something that doesn't require a flat surface to work.

I'd also be interested to hear your solutions for your living room PCs. Thanks!

Recent article How can I get my engineers to accept being on call? sparkled some discussion, so I was become very curious.

If you can choose between working without any on-call duties or working where every second/third day you will be 24h on-call, what compansetion will make you accept second options?

Im in my early middle ages, and personally, I think

Looking for recommendations for a multiplatform note taking app. Needs to support Windows and Android. Some things I'm looking for:

• Markdown support
• offline/local support (should be stored in an easily accessible and movable format e.g. markdown)
• is free or only a one time fee
• Syncing (either a one time fee via app dev or built in support for GDrive or OneDrive)
• Mind mapping functionality (including linking between notes)
• flexibility to be both a knowledge base and a place to keep todo lists and general small notes

Obsidian hits most of these features but without paying $8/mo, syncing is a huge pain in the ass. I got it to sync between machines if I store my vaults in Google Drive, but I'd prefer to have them locally then synced. I don't mind paying for software, but I'm trying to avoid another monthly fee on top of everything else I'm paying for. I'm open to staying with Obsidian if I can solve the syncing issues, too.

My company has given me a budget of around ~$1200 to purchase a device. Its technically for "education" so my excuse is that I'll be doing online certifications with it, but the reality is that its going to be primarily a toy to play with, watch movies, play some light games, etc.

Does anyone have any recommendations? I know the ipad pro is the big dog in town but I've never been much of an apple fan and don't have any skin in their ecosystem, I'm mostly an android guy but I'm not married to the idea of an android tablet.

Here were some of the ones I've looked at so far:

Surface pro 9

Dell XPS 13 2in1

Lenovo Yoga 9i

Samsung Galaxy Tab S9+

They all seem like decent options honestly, but I was wondering if anyone had first hand experience with them and could give some thoughts.

I'm open to hearing from folks who have used iOS longer than me. How is the iOS dialer so terrible when it's supposed to be the primary usage of a phone, calling people?

1. Why can't I type the letters of a name in my contacts list, eg "5-2-6" for "JAM" and have all the "James" show up? Android has had that since forever because it's not rocket science.
2. Why can't I type to correct a digit in the middle of the number dialed? Or correct a number I've pasted in?
3. Seriously, is there no way to replace the dialer with something better? And if there is and I just missed it, what are your recommendations?
4. Same question for the god-awful contacts list. I use Google Contacts, have 3 google accounts in which the contacts are… and the syncing seems piss-poor.

Ok, this turned out to be more of a rant than I anticipated. I've gotten to like iOS quite a bit, especially because the android ecosystem has become a very "worst of both worlds" option. But man the dialer's shit. Someone please tell me I'm missing something obvious.