They do maintain an x86 build. I haven’t used pfSense but I have used OpnSense so that’s that closest thing I have to compare it to. I think the upside and downside to RouterOS/Mikrotik is the same thing: it allows very granular control over almost everything. Maybe to a fault. It’s probably overkill for most home networks.

Set up a VPS. Create a VPN tunnel from you local network to the VPS. Use the VPS as the edge router by opening ports on the VPS firewall and routing incoming traffic on those ports through the VPN tunnel to servers on your local network.

I used to do this to get around CGNAT. I ran RouterOS in a Digital Ocean droplet and setting up a wire guard tunnel between it and my local Mikrotik router.

It will obscure your local WAN IP and give you a static IP but that’s about the only benefit. And you have to be pretty network savvy to configure it correctly.

It does not make you immune to DDoS attacks and is honestly more headache to maintain (albeit just a small headache).

Nice to see they’re still chugging the AI Koolaid after completely blundering their test rollout of AI search results.

Mail servers are the one thing I refuse to self host. Years of managing enterprise email taught me that I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life

Oh, I wouldn’t if I could avoid it. The “fun” of tinkering with IT stuff in my very limited spare time vaporized many years ago. If I could pay for services that did exactly what I wanted, respected my privacy, and valued my business while charging a fair price, I would stop self-hosting tomorrow. But that’s not usually how it works.

Self hosting isn’t super high maintenance once you get everything set up but it still takes up probably 10-12 hours per month on average and I would not mind having that time back.

This is a pretty good summary. In enterprise networking, it’s common to have the ‘DMZ’, the network for servers exposed to the internet, firewalled off from the rest of the system.

If you have a webserver, you would need two sets of ports open, often on two separate firewalls. On the WAN firewall, you would open ports 80/443 pointing to the webserver. On the system firewall, between the DMZ and LAN, you would open specific ports between the webserver and whatever internal resources it needs; a database server for example.

This helps limit the damage if a malicious actor hacks into your webserver by making sure they don’t also have unrestricted access to other parts of your system. It’s called a layered security approach.

However, someone self hosting may not have the expertise or even the hardware to set up their system like this. A VPS for public facing services, as long as it’s configured properly, can be a good alternative. It also helps if you have a dynamic WAN IP address and/or are behind CG-NAT.

Edit: maybe good to mention that securing your local network behind a VPN, even one hosted on your local network, is more secure than allowing public facing services. Yes, it means you still have to open a port. But that’s useless to a malicious actor without the encryption keys. Whereas, if you have a webserver exposed publicly, malicious actors already have some level of access to your system. More than they would if that service didn’t exist anyway. That’s not inherently bad. It comes with the territory when you’re hosting public services. It is more more risky though. And, if the exposed server is compromised, it can potentially open up the rest of your system to compromise as well. Like the original commenter said, it’s about managing risk and different network configurations have different levels of risk.

Apparently offshoring basically all of your manufacturing while not giving a shit about the loss of engineering capability and institutional knowledge has significant downsides. Who knew? Who could possibly have seen this coming?? I’m serious. I would ask the people in engineering but they all got fired like twenty years ago.

Data Rule Numero Uno:

Garbage in, garbage out.

Have fun training your LLM on a big steaming pile of hot garbage. That’s 80% of Stack Overflows content.

Now you can have a computer tell you that you’re an idiot and your question is stupid rather than actual person.

Touch screens in cars are a massive safety issue. I’m not saying they don’t have some benefits but the fact that many newer cars have basically no physical buttons to perform basic functions is a problem. I can feel for the dial to adjust the volume or change the radio station. But a touch screen encourages the driver to take their focus off the road. That’s a serious problem.

Half your fleet experiencing engine failure around 110,000 miles really puts a wrinkle in the jihad so I guess that rules out Chevrolet.

Interested to see what you come up with. I manage our personal finances along with my wife’s consulting business. I switched to Quicken about a year ago. I don’t regret switching because it’s does the job better than anything else I’ve used. But I’m not 100% satisfied either and if I found a better solution, I would seriously consider it.

This is not new. Microsoft has been pushing users further into their SaaS ecosystem for years. Creating a local account on Windows 10 is more difficult than signing up for a Microsoft account. That’s by design. It just goes along with the transition of their core business away from desktop software and into hosted solutions and data processing. Annoying? A little. Surprising? Hardly.

If you want a really good, capable firewall that’s easy to configure, go with OpnSense.

If you want granular control and [near] enterprise grade features for a low price, go with Mikrotik.

Windows Hyper-V Server on the host with most of the VM’s split between Ubuntu and Debian. I also have two Windows VM’s that I keep out of necessity.

Reddit is niche when it comes to social media. It caters to a particular group of people and has its own style of both content and engagement, just like Facebook or Tiktok have their own styles. I would argue reddit is, in some ways, more like an old school forum with a fresh coat of paint. It requires more effort from the user to engage with than some other social media platforms. The content can be a lot “heavier” and it’s not centered around people and/or personalities. To be clear thats something I liked about Reddit but I don’t think it really resonates as much with the average user.

Site visits are just one metric and, while it’s an interesting metric, it doesn’t say much without a lot more context. OK, so a lot of people end up visiting Reddit. Why? Is it intentional? Is it because every third Google result is a reddit post? If so, is it driving further engagement? If not, then that benchmark is worth little. If it is driving further engagement, then something else is wrong.

$5 Billion for a chronically unprofitable, niche social media platform in an already crowded field. Yeah, Ok. You’d get a better return on your investment if you just burned the money for heat.

It’s a song that’s been played so many times the record is starting to get worn out.

Big manufacturer buys software company.

Big manufacturer does not understand software business, software company, or software company’s customers.

Big manufacturer makes a bunch of cost reductions based on incorrect assumptions.

Big shot at big corp customer calls peon (like me) at budget time to ask why we spend so much money on this “VMWare”.

Peon explains that "VMWare is very important software which used to be “Best in Class” but has become “Overpriced, second rate, yada yada…” And suggests we switch to Hyper-V.

Big shot asks (a little suspiciously) if we would save money without any negative impact to operations.

Peon says, “Yes.”

Big shot writes big check to Microsoft.

Other big shot at big manufacturer is stuck trying to figure out where all the customers went; not realizing that big manufacturer pissed all over the peons who actually have to use their [now] shitty software.

Big manufacturer decides the acquisition was a failure, learns nothing from it, and sells the shell of the once popular software company for a fraction of what they paid for it.

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As if I needed another reason not to buy their shitty appliances.