I’ve been doing research on this and came down to two.

1. simplex
2. delta chat

simplex won because of the robust encryption and selfhosted option.

a close contender was stoneage. I liked all it took was an S3 bucket. I didn’t like that it hasn’t been updated in 3 years.

let’s get real…google isn’t going to stop. why would they? there’s zero repercussions for their aggressive strategy against their own consumers.

so stop using their products. cut google out, entirely.

just don’t “google it”.

at the molecular level at that.

one thing to consider with a raid is the drive resonance. if you don’t have proper hardware to ensure the drives are properly isolated you could shave months or years off their lifespan.

always use the same make/model and data density when building a raid. you should also buy them either all new or used that were pulled from another raid.

also more is better. raids are designed to fail. buy extra drives to replace active drives. my personal rule is to buy 50-75% more than required. so if the raid will have four drives, I buy six or seven.

also, when one drive fails others will inevitably follow due to manufacturing defects or resonance changes. replace your backup stock when affordable.

I do agree though. of you’re selfhosting, a raid array is the best place to start. though, I’m personally partial to a raid-10 over a 5.

these are people who “have an idea for an app” that pester devs to build their dumbass ideas.

Removed by mod

Removed by mod

Removed by mod

sometimes the easiest solution is the best solution.

nothing is exposed publicly except a VPN. no key, no service. (edit: firewall rules only activate on special request from an app on my phone. via software I wrote that polls specific values with specific signatures)

VPN drops you to a vlan that only has app access through reverse proxies.

all network traffic is monitored and alerted using graylog. same for system logs as well.

all alerts notify me directly. all WiFi is whitelist only.

why so strict? mostly because I’m paranoid. I had a stalker earlier in my life that made me fully appreciate privacy.

Removed by mod

Removed by mod

Removed by mod

who needs cybersecurity? nothing bad should happen.

Removed by mod

Removed by mod

I’ve got a 12tb sitting with a dead control board. looking for parts to fix it with tbh.

I’m sure there are folks selling drives like that online.

What he said. DF won’t take into account the contents of mount points within a directory.

look at used XPS line laptops. they have USBC TB3 that can have a ceiling of 40gbps throughput.

this means you can have a newish gen i7 with 32-64gb of ram with a hub for your networking and storage with a 40gbps bandwidth for it to pipe through. most of that will be available to you since you’re not using it for video out.

keep in mind, Thunderbolt cables/hubs are graded and length of the cable will wreck your bandwidth ceiling. shorter is better. shielded is better.

I once had two XPS laptops networked over TB3 and was getting 10gbe on a 6ft cable. shorten it to a 10inch cable and it would have been likely 40gbe.

they do get warm, make sure you have good airflow and a decent pre-filter and you shouldn’t have any problems.

the standalone laptops will usually run on 100-115w but using a TB15 dock you’re looking at 125-270w. the TB15s are finicky on Linux so you might be better off using a TB3 rated pocket hub with power passthru.

good luck.