I've run my own email server for better part of 25 years... Mostly because of past professional experience, I didn't want to lose the skill. A couple thoughts:

- All the links are booby-trapped. Seriously... Just expect it.
- Create and use "burner" email addresses in /etc/aliases. Create hundreds, if not thousands of them. Think in terms of zeroing in on a date, ala "Billy06162025" so you might have a chance of figuring out who sold you. And Gen X... Definitely use a burner account when you sign up for social security. One of my users is a boomer... OMG! The spam that one event unleashed...
- (Major unnamed free email vendor) sends 40+% of my UCE using randomized accounts. They simply don't care, and provide no resources to address it. I bounce it back to them out of spite.

The only time I've ever gotten any satisfaction from an unsubscribe link... I rigged up a script to pull the page using "wget 'link' &" and toss it in /dev/null for a week, using a hosted VM in a well connected data center. But it was a short lived victory.

If they're working in AI, I'd like to see some advanced chemistry. There are whole QA teams trying to test their AI models, and I'm watching them get all excited and file bugs if they can get one to emit a recipe for street meth. I'm thinking to myself... That's nice, now try binary nerve gas...

You'll find the urban dictionary diverges from Miriam Webster as well, offering up several definitions, some involving "side hustles", many others fitting your dictionary definition, and another that's just "hanging out on the beach", which I find a stretch. So there seems to be some variation here that you're insisting not be allowed.

https://www.urbandictionary.co...

Furthermore Jeff has posted elsewhere here and is free to defend himself if he feels the need. But I suspect "the playa is too busy running his game".

And I'm not actually the originator of the post that invoked the original "grift" in this thread. So your pedantry is noted and dismissed with prejudice.

T

You two are reading way to much negativity into "grift". Busking on a guitar in the subway for change is a grift too. Both take skill. At the end of it, he's a self-made man, and I respect that.

He makes videos mostly about other people's technology, and sometimes it's contrived stuff just to make a video about the latest tech toys.

But in his defense:

The people that make a lot of the stuff he works with are too busy creating to make their own videos, and are probably not as good at it as he is. He actually does a pretty good job on the production & editing side on complex topics. Go watch some of his peers, there's a lot of bad content in the Open Source / Homelab / self-host arena. He actually works from scripts, stages & edits, and speaks clearly.

As I understand it, he has some significant health issues. The kind that prevent you from commuting to an office and keeping someone else's schedule. So he's carved out a niche for himself, and can take care of himself and his family. That's to be commended, even if YT is a bit grifty. And let's be honest, most of the guys I went to high school that went into construction worked their a**es off and did well for themselves. But they had to be sharks to land the work. There's a bit of that in YT as well.

T

I have a Tb of home movies & pics of my kids childhoods. I can turn my server off and toss the drives in a drawer, get them out 5 years from now, and those memories will still be there. I miss a single payment to AWS and my storage goes away without so much as a puff of digital smoke. Same with B2, DO, OCI, etc...

That's just one example. My homelab does quite a bit more than that, Git, Jenkins, Security PVR, DTV PVR via an HD Homerun, etc... All away from Google's prying eyes. If the local PD wants my doorbell footage, they have to get a warrant. Ring will just hand it over without telling me.

And it's fair to judge your poor judgement... You just think you don't get good answers. That's you imposing your standards & values on someone else. Not everyone is a cloud apologist stooge with money to burn. Some of us like to tinker and live frugally, and we don't need your or Google's permission!

T

The various "arr" plugins... Ala Sonarr, Radarr, etc... They're quite the collection of misfit toys. Usenet & Torrent scrapers & automation.

I would steer clear of them.

Weird Stuff was always an interesting place to visit. Halted was a bit different if I'm remembering correctly, I think I only made it there once or twice, and once as a seller.

Another fun thing in the Bay Area maker / techie junk scene was the GSA surplus sales they used to do at Lawrence Lab out in Livermore. I actually picked up a fully functional 19" rack mount ion-gauge controller for high-vacuum (think 10^-6 Torr or higher) chambers for under $100. I cleaned it up, tested it, and sold it to Halted for 5x what I paid for it!

T

Part of the problem is we no longer have that tinkerer mentality in the hardware space. What we do have is somewhat curated, ala 3d printing, Ada Fruit, etc... Most consumer electronics are locked down, and much of our manufacturing that lead to these interesting shops has been off-shored, so the supply dries up. It's been a slow progression much of my life.

Edmund Scientific went full commercial. A little 1cm Ronchi ruling to figure a telescope is now in the $100's...

Fry's Electronics is gone.

Al Lasher's Electronics in Berkeley... Gone.

One of my old favorites from way back... Mike Quinn's Electronics at the old Oakland Airport north field. They had a bunch of Godbout / IMSAI stuff back in the day...

T

300 million years is also enough time for at least 15 generations of massive stars (assuming they could form at all). Stars like VY Canis Majoris, which live at most 20 million years and then supernovae, distributing their carbon & nitrogen "ashes". But stars in this category don't even wait until the die, they churn and pulse and build dust shells around themselves. Their orbits thru galaxies are something akin to Schulz's cartoon character "Pigpen" walking thru a room. We suspect a star's upper limit is something like 1700 solar radii today, but even this can't be assumed in the early universe. At what point in density does a galaxy and a star differentiate into separate objects? That's hidden in that unobserved gap between the CMB and these early galaxies.

T

Understand, 1971 is to 2025 as 1917 was to 1971.

T

That's the average, but... The end result is actually way worse than that. I have to buy a bunch of kWh just to make my house livable in this environment. It's an inelastic cost. It's not that I want to spend that much $$, I'd rather not. If it gets too expensive, I leave. But it also impacts the little things. The little cost cutting (elastic) steps like turning off my homelab have almost no impact. My homelab costs me maybe $10 a month. I'm much better off making sure my air conditioner is in perfect operating condition.

But when you have a tiered rate, any cut you make gets decided at the top rate you pay, because that's the rate you're trying to exit from. Find a Californian with a 3100 kWh monthly bill and find out what they're paying. I'm going to guess it's over $1,000 a month because almost 1000 kWh of it are at the top tier rate. That rate is set to punish you for buying the product, and it's 4x what I'm paying. That's "less than half" by a factor of two, and what's the economic benefit of a Californian running a homelab? From the people I worked with out there... Probably substantially more than $40 a month.

T

I don't know if "pay half" is valid, since you have to consider average amounts.

I signed a 10.9 cent per kWh contract here in Texas over a year ago, and the delivery rate (independent grid operator) was increased so it's now a 12.9 cent per kWh contract. All I can eat 24x7, no tiers, etc... Variable rate plans exist in theory, or at least they used to before the 2021 ice storm. I haven't looked for them much since, but there were "free nights and weekends", where you were punished with higher rates during the day.

When I was last in California there were 5 tiers, and limits at each tier (no time of use), and it topped out above 55 cents per kWh. It was crazy. I can probably buy a diesel generator and feed it untaxed red-dye and make my own electricity for 55 cents per...

But the here's the catch... In California, I turned off my homelab, and managed my A/C closely. And I had almost zero need for A/C after 11pm even in the summer months.

Here in Texas, its cheap enough I keep the homelab up (~105 watts, hoping to get to 60 soon...). The A/C runs around the clock in summer. There is no night time break, it's 90/F (32/C) and 90% humidity all night. In the day it gets hotter and if you're lucky the humidity falls enough your sweat evaporates. But some days are just Hell's kitchen.

Overall, I seem to remember averaging 700 - 1200 kWh per month in California in the hotter outer Bay Area, and had maybe three months of high use in the summer. Here in Texas, in an Energy Star 2016 certified house, I blow through 3100 kWh in August, and drop to maybe 1400 kWh in the depths of winter (heat pump... it actually starts going back up if it gets cold. Kali house had a gas furnace). And several years I've found myself making the joke: "Merry Christmas! I've turned the A/C off!"

T

I have a 25 year old car I've owned since new, and it's got 220k US miles on it all by itself. I expect the engine to last until at least 375k miles. Of the five others I've owned most were around for roughly 80 - 110k each before I flipped 'em. Since pickup trucks have gotten stupid expensive, my most recent is used, and I've put about 25k miles on it in 6 years.

So I'm pushing almost 700k miles and I'm only a year or two older than you. It's about the trips you take and your regular commute. I've spent years with 40+ mile commutes, and I own an RV trailer that I pull coast to coast. I make it a point to spend as little time as possible on the west coast because of the fuel taxes.

T

Corrections:

By 2009 it was 288-bit ECC memory.

Should read: 'more specifically did not accept their "offer".'

MS apparently owns the patent on grammar Nazi API's.