This is basically what happened to the music industry. Shawn Fanning scripted Napster, others followed suite. The RIAA squealed and threw a tantrum, busted a realitivly small amount of people, and then all of a sudden, we had .99$ downloads that were quality. The music industry has always been reactive in lieu of proactive. When AM radio first became a thing, the music industry execs squealed because the morons couldn’t figure out how to make a buck off of AM radio. ‘They’re taking our jerbs!’

AFAIC, Shawn was the pivot point in a digital age of music. I don’t condone it, but I understand it.

Why did you choose China specifically over

This was my first foray into bringing an idea to fruition, patent it, and market it. I wasn’t looking to make a million dollars off the tool. If it happened, great, if not, no worries. It was a very simple tool to allow someone to easily put the spring coil back in your mower without cutting yourself to ribbons. If you’ve ever yanked the pull cord out of a chainsaw, mower, etc and tried to put it back in, you’ll understand. I wanted a product the average homeowner could purchase, have in their tool shed to use when needed. I found that the better marketing strategy was to market it to repair shops.

After reviewing production pricing, I ‘chose’ China quite begrudgingly. Like I mentioned, I really wanted this tool to be US made. I could have just decided to have it made in America, but I would have never recouped my initial investment and would have never made any profit. I at least wanted to break even. Despite Americans enthusiastically waiving the ‘America First’ flags during election years, when it gets down to brass tacks, they want cheap goods, and that usually means manufacturing outside of the US. The good ship ‘Made In The USA’ sailed in the 60s and it’s not coming back. It makes for good campaign fodder tho.

My main point is: you need to understand and play this game of tango.

Very true, and good point. The average technology consumer has no clue of what is going on behind the pretty pictures. I don’'t say that to denigrate them. It’s a lot to digest. If you hit the average Joe with a barrage of information and stuff he needs to stop doing right this minute, he’s going to think you’re a bit paranoid and perhaps a touch mental… message not received.

I’ll have to say that this is about one of the most detailed instructions I’ve seen, replete with copious screenshots. I’m going to have to give it a go just based on that. LOL

The train illustrations are awesome. LOL I have never played OpenTDD before, but at one time I was heavily into Cities: Skylines. Healthchecks.io, from my reading, is pretty cool stuff. I don’t run enough crons to justify all it can do, but still…pretty cool.

I don’t know of any free tiers in the EU, however, very cheap options do exist. Not in the EU, but one of my VPS runs $25 USD a year. It’s a pretty capable little server, and at $25 USD, it’s about as close to free as you going to get. Take a look at https://lowendbox.com/. You might find something poking around there.

Step 1: Figure out where your tailscale.sh actually is.

find / -name “tailscale.sh” 2>/dev/null ?

Or with mlocate:

locate tailscale.sh ?

I had never heard of Neocities so I took a look. Hmmmm…I sure am glad we have advanced past that point of website creation, or at least some have. Way too much gaudy animation.

LOL You gave me a belly laugh. Yes. Really 70…well soon to turn 71 ifn’ the creek don’t rise. I have that same reaction sometimes too. Damn! I’m really 70!? Yes, the world has changed so much since I was born, and frankly, I am glad it has. I am thankful that technology and music have walked along side me all these many years. It’s been a good life.

Don’t let them give you shit about your ponytail OP. Try again. It’s a learning process. Keep whacking away at it. Success is just a string of failures.

Any advice would be much appreciated. This would be a huge change to the way I’m currently running this thing, but would be a worthwhile upgrade for sure.

If I was standing up a new server, that’s the route I would take. It looks like a very capable piece of open source.

It was a frustrating experience. On the one hand, I really really really wanted the tool manufactured in the US. However, if I went the US route, I would have never sold one piece because it was just too expensive. It wasn’t an easy decision to go to China. After doing a couple runs, I had recouped my investment plus a little pocket change to put some 'taters on the table. I learned a lot on the way tho. You hear people say, ‘You outta patent that’, but the process is not that easy. At any rate, at least I can say ‘Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. No better or worse for the exercise.’

The one guy hand-soldering and fumes with no PPE or vent 😱

I can’t see the video but I can just imagine. I’ve had first hand experience with Chinese manufacturing. I used to have the patent on a tool I created for small gas engines. After soliciting US manufacturers for pricing, it was quite evident, even on my small scale, why manufacturing has gone overseas. So we hit upon a guy in China to do a run, I went to observe the process. I’ll have to say, it was not what I had imagined. At one point, the ‘guide’ took us around to vats where they ‘washed’ off the product in some very caustic chemicals that would physically burn my nose when I inhaled. I’m not sure what the chemicals were, but it would eat all the grunge and any reminent slag off. We come around the corner, and there is this dude, standing in the vat of unknown chemicals, fishing around with his arm up to his shoulder in this muck, trying to unclog the drain, so they could proceed to the next step. I didn’t say anything but I remember thinking, for the sake of future generations, I hope that poor guy in the vat doesn’t replicate. That would be a genetic disaster.

I’m a 50+ non-geek Linux user myself, and selfhosting is the one computer ‘thing’ I would love to be able to setup one day but I’m too afraid to seriously start doing as I’m way too afraid of being that ‘low hanging fruit’ you mentioned in your post.

Dude, 70 here. Just do it. You’re going to make mistakes along the way, you’ll learn along the way. You’re already a Linux user, so you’ve got a leg up there. Even if you walk away from selfhosting thinking it’s probably better for you to use those small companies, you’ll have had an enriching experience. I find selfhosting to be rather rewarding in many aspects. For one, it’s one of my hobbies that keeps my mind busy which is a good thing. I’m always digging for something new to learn.

If you are the only user of your server, tying it down becomes a lot easier. allow.host / deny.host, tailscale, ufw, and fail2ban will get you very far and safe so you won’t be that low hanging fruit. I am quite certain there are people here would love to help you on your way. I’m one. I’m an expert at nothing, but I don’t mind sharing the knowledge (?) I’ve learned along the way.

Consider getting a VPS to play around with to learn how this stuff works before you expose your data to the internet.

Highly recommend this, especially when exposing your local server to the internet when you may still be a bit green with the security aspects of self hosting. Small VPS for under $30 a year are dime a dozen really, and well worth the price for the education you can get from them.

Even now, I have a small VPS that I regularly test things on before I put it on the production server.

it lacks a gui

I’ve never used this, but I wandered across it about a month ago: https://github.com/qdm12/caddy-ui

If you search for ‘caddy ui’ there are a number of them. I don’t really see a need for a caddy ui, but some might.

I am a mediocre musician on my best day who has been playing stringed instruments for about 65 years now. I also play keyboards, tho not the piano which, imho, is a different instrument entirely. The AX-Edge is not one of my favorite instruments tho. I bought it on a whim thinking I’d give it a go and see what all the buzz was about. Back in the 80s and early part of the 90s, it seemed like everybody had one. After the initial excitement of discovering a new instrument wore off, it kind of goes south from there. The angle at which you have to strike the keys is very different than the angle of my normal keyboards/controllers which doesn’t seem like much but it gives me fits. Overall, it wasn’t worth the $400 I paid for it, tho I could probably turn it on CL for closer to the original price. The equipment itself is quite capable, it’s just one of those oddities I thought would be cool to learn, but in retrospect, $400 could have been better spent elsewhere.

https://www.trackawesomelist.com/

Tape drives are the keytars of the tech world. They seem cool and a pro can really jam with them… but they’re not the most practical and you should really get a guitar or a keyboard until you know what you’re doing.

That made me snort. But you speak the truth. I have a Roland AX-Edge that I bought off a guy who thought it would be a good idea to play. I think he paid like $1200 for it and after the new wore off, he sold it to me for $400, basically brand new.

In this vein, Backblaze Personal unlimited account would be well worth it to me. $8.25 USD ($99/year contract) for unlimited backups. The downside to Backblaze is if you’re pushing large volumes of data, like above 5 TB, it is excruciatingly slow doing a restore online. Luckily, they will sell/rent you a 10 TB drive with your data, shipped to you. After you make the restore/transfer, you can decide to send the drive back for a full refund, or keep it.