Mikelius

I'm honestly... In the middle.

My home network is covered by a VPN, which means I can't use streaming services without punching a hole for my home IP and sacrificing a little privacy - which I'm not willing to do. I've gone through my part and contacted providers to lemme through, without success. Even Amazon who CLEARLY knows my name and mailing address still won't let me watch things even if I own Prime...

So yes, I pirate movies and tv shows. I've tried to cooperate, but if my money isn't enough, then so be it.

Video games I no longer pirate, I'm content with Steam. I also backup all my installs on an external hard drive in the unlikely event Steam goes under or a company demands pulling a game from my profile.

This is no longer true for Nintendo. Their latest attitudes have resulted in me deleting my account and becoming a loyal pirate for Nintendo games. They literally turned me into what they're fighting, ironic right?

I also no longer pirate general software because 98% of the software I use are FOSS, self created, or just free+offline in general. The other 2% is software I purchased because it was a lifetime permanent license and for software I felt deserved the money for support.

So yeah big tech is my main enemy. If I need something and they won't work with me without ransoming my privacy and rights, then yeah so be it.

I'm not familiar with those two... But I've always been hunting for the perfect replacement.

I started with Nextcloud Deck and used it extensively until they got rid of my markdown support.

So then I tried taiga and a few others before landing on Wekan. Really great software, but the terrible API, horrible mobile support, and slow outdated UI drove me away..

Now I'm on Vikunja, which ironically doesn't support markdown text. So I basically returned to square 1 with a better UI lol. I almost stayed on Wekan because of the checklist support, but the faster speeds, nice API, and slick UI in vikunja landed me here... for now.

Last I checked, Populous the beginning still has a small community going on Popre!

If you go for btrfs, be careful going backwards on kernel versions.

I had upgraded my kernel on Gentoo, which also happen to include a btrfs update. Booted up and found the latest kernel didn't like something about my full disk luks encryption with RAID mirror setup (for the root partition, and unrelated to btrfs), so I decided to go back to the previous kernel. Big mistake.

My entire root partition got corrupted to hell. It mounted read only at first so I decided to try to go through regular repair steps. It got worse. Got to an eventual step that someone said could take a few weeks to restore (forgot the commands). This isn't an option for my server. So with snapshots broken, unable to use the old and now new kernel due to corruption from attempting to go back to a previous kernel, I had to restore with a full partition clone backup I had created prior to the kernel upgrade... Also went back to ext4 again afterwards.

Btrfs treated me really well for a few years, and snapshots and performance are great, but once it hits a hiccup, you might in a world of trouble. Don't think I've ever run into such a thing with ext4 over the years, which is why I reverted to it - not saying it's immune to such things, but this is just me.

Not sure if zfs would have such a dramatic situation, but maybe something to consider about btrfs if you ever decide you'll need the ability to go back a kernel version due to whatever reason.

Dang, talk about flashbacks I didn't expect. Nicely done!

Another screensaver I miss and would actually put on my machine if I could... Johnny Castaway.

I saw the controller and tv and honestly thought the comic was going to end with him being forced to update to play, and then not having time anymore once the update finished. At least that's always my experience with my console, which is probably why I don't play on it anymore lol

I've been using "passwords" on nextcloud for a few years now. Minimal issues with the app, moving apps, and browser extensions. Not perfect, but hey it's self hosted and reliable.

I also wouldn't consider this a secret....

I found years ago that if you block ubi.com and ubisoft.com (if you have a self hosted DNS or a way to block domains on a network), and any other sub domains you might spot, the games work fine. They just take like a full minute to load while they try their best to hit the servers. So yeah I've never agreed to the TOS for a few games as a result.

Needles to say, you'll need these domains unblocked to play multiplayer.

Yeah I'll have to look through them and play with the firewall and router. Project zomboid did something very similar but I was able to find a way to make it work with my two custom ports.

Absolute worst case scenario, I create my own MITM to replace the 8888 for the client response lol

I host my server behind a VPN, which cannot have 8888 open.

Will setting the external port mapping settings let me continue and let my friends connect like usual?

I was seriously just finally starting to become interested in using them a lot more for gaming since I got some success getting it to work on my Linux install. This would make me do a full 180 though...

My personal advice, secure it down to only permitting what needs it, regardless of your trust to the network.

Treat each device as if they've been compromised and the attacker on the compromised device is now trying to move laterally. Example scenario: had you blocked all devices except your laptop or phone to your server, your server wouldn't have been hacked because someone went through a hacked cloud-connected HVAC panel.

I lock down everything and grant access only to devices that should have access. Then on top of that, I enable passwords and 2FA on everything as if it were public... Nothing I self host is public. It's all behind my network firewall and router firewall, and can only be accessed externally by a VPN.