I’ve used a retired desktop for my home server since 1999. It doesn’t have the fancy web-UI management of commercial NAS, but I’m comfortable with command line and config files.

At some point, I realized I could use its wifi card and hostapd to replace my WAP. That was a bit of an adventure initially finding a card that really supports AP mode and setting up hostapd, but has now allowed me to migrate from 802.11g to n to ac much cheaper than buying whole new devices,

Recently converted to an N100 with 4x ethernet ports, which let me unplug my little 5-port switch.

Managing this doesn’t feel like a second job: it’s stable and just works. Automatic updates, with kernel blacklisted; periodically log in, update kernel & reboot. It does give me the opportunity, when I get inspired, for a weekend project, like adding hostapd or a new service, either via docker or bare metal. I like that I have one device doing “NAS,” WAP, and router jobs.

That drive averages 900 hours between power cycles? In Windows?

A lot of those 45+ are in two-earner households. They might be ok independent of each other, but not at the same level. Then the whole retiree population…is someone on social security ‘financially supporting themself?’

This is one of my pet peeves with containerized services, like why would I want to run three or four instances of mariadb? I get it, from the perspective of the packagers, who want a ‘just works’ solution to distribute, but if I’m trying to run simple services on a 4 GB RPi or a 2 GB VPS, then replicating dbs makes a difference. It took a while, but I did, eventually, get those dockers configured to use a single db backend, but I feel like that completely negated the ‘easy to set up and maintain’ rationale for containers.

Room temperature above 24°C, no blanket. Above 26°C, I don’t even need a sheet, but I’ll usually keep it, because cold air from the A/C sometimes disturbs me.

I know plenty of people who insist on cooling their room at night so that they can be comfortable under a blanket.

I’m used to ‘Packaged in the USA’ labeling on Made in [somewhere else] products. ‘Designed’…same-same, definitely since NAFTA, maybe before. The bible verses are new to me.

Sounds like OP wants his SDIRA to own the LLC, which he would then use to buy his crypto or Monets.

The services you’ve mentioned are all pretty low compute impact, just bandwidth, so I’d expect your MBP to be fine. Transcoding for jellyfin is the only real wildcard, and that depends on your media and client setups. I run pihole, homeassistant, immich, and kodi on a raspberry pi 4 with plenty of overhead for more services. NAS is nice if your library outgrows a single disk and your storage bandwidth gets choked by USB multiplexing.

My suggestion is to consider a cheap VPS and vanity domain for external access. Domains cheap as $5/year; fair VPSs cheap as $30/year. Use SSH to forward localhost ports on the VPS to container ports on the MBP, then nginx on thee VPS to reverse-proxy to those forwarded ports. You get unique names for every service, LetsEncrypt certificates, and an offsite location for critical backups. Make sure you are the one paying for VPS & DNS so they don’t get surprise-cancelled.

Part of “less crime in the sticks” is a population effect. The rate of violent crime in New York City is 494/100,000 people. The rate of violent crime in the whole state of Alabama, from its stickiest sticks to the 225,000-resident Huntsville metropolis, is 404/100,000, which isn’t that different, in my book.

Second not using local.com If OP doesn’t want a real domain, use an unresolvable TLD, like “private” (so, pihole.private, audiobookshelf.private), but a real domain will just work better, will let them use real TLS certs, and prevent problems from apps bypassing system DNS. Even if it’s not as pretty or memorable as the hijacked domain name.

The law only gets you compensation after the abuse and destruction ends. If anything.

My Pi spends all of its time around 55°C in a 20-25°C room. Main server idles at 47°C. Those aren’t worrying temps.

I’ve watched enough Lock Picking Lawyer never to want a consumer ‘smart lock.’ Half of them can be opened with a magnet. Maybe commercial grade is better, but I’ve been locked out of my job after every power failure for the last 10 years, until someone comes along with a physical key.

Re homeassistant on a Pi: homeassistant does a lot of database transactions, so you may want to have db storage on something other than an SD card.

The main difference is who bears the risk. For pensions, it’s the employer, who has to make extra payments if the pension fund falls behind it projected obligations, or surrender its management to PBGC. That open-ended risk is why most companies have abandoned pensions. For SS, it’s the government (although they do have the power to change their legal obligation). For annuities, it’s the recipient, who will just get less money if the annuity’s investments underperform during the accumulation phase.

SS is a defined benefit administered (and guaranteed) by an independent agent. Pension is a defined benefit administered by employer (or PBGC). Seems pretty similar to me.

Annuity is a defined contribution disbursed formulaically by a company you hired. The only similarity is the regular payment.

Don’t even try to pick based on performance. Whatever they did in the last year, or 5, or 10 is mostly irrelevant to what they do in the next 30. You’re betting on the economy, not on a stock picker.

Beyond that, it kind of depends on why you want an ‘SRI’ fund. If you just want someone to tell you your investments don’t make you a bad person, then pick a fund from a large brokerage with low maintenance fees, ideally in the range of 0.1%/year. If you want an SRI because you think the market is going to reward ethical companies or punish unethical companies, or because you’'re willing to sacrifice long-term performance for not actively exploiting externalities, then you need to dig into the funds a little deeper and find out what they mean by ‘social responsibility.’ It’s a hot marketing phrase right now, with no regulatory meaning, so you can be sure that there are products being called ‘socially responsible’ with little or no difference from products not so labeled.

If you actually have a specific ethical agenda, then you need to be prepared to do a lot of work. You’ll need to understand how the fund defines SRI, find out what benchmarks they use to greenlight companies, and figure out whether those benchmarks can be greenwashed. Can Exxon donate a few million dollars to a sketchy ‘reforestation charity’ and claim to be carbon-neutral? I imagine this research is out there, but the people interested in Wall Street tend to be a different set than those interested in climate, labor rights, or political freedom.

You can only spin drives down if they’re idle. If you have a service that touches it - say, homeassistant logging data, tvheadend updating EPG - then they’re going to keep spinning.

I switched from an I3-530, nominal TDP 73W, to an N-100, nominal TDP 7W, and power from the wall didn’t change at all. Even the i3 ran around 0.1 CPU load, except when transcoding, and I’m left with the impression that most of the power goes into HDDs, RAM, maybe fans, and PS losses. My sense is that the best way to decrease homelab power use is to minimize the number of devices. Start with your seyrver at 60W, add a WAP at 10-15W, maybe a switch at 10-15W… Not because of the CPUs, necessarily, but because every CPU every CPU comes with systems to keep the CPU going, keep the power regulated, etc.

I’m not a huge docker expert, but I recently spun up a tandoor…dev, and their config instructions explicitly point out a couple of mounts that have to be volumes and can not be binds.

Docker’s own comments are https://docs.docker.com/engine/storage/volumes/ which my tl;dr is faster, can be shared by multiple containers, and can be a remote (NFS/CIFS) target.

I’d guess that maintainers use the volume structure to let docker handle the details of creating and maintaining the mount, rather than put it on the user, who may be spinning up their first-ever docker and may make all kind of naive mistakes.

My ISP seems to use just normal DHCP for assigning addresses and honors re-use requests. The only times my IP addresses have changed has been I’ve changed the MAC or UUID that connects. I’ve been off-line for a week, come back, and been given the same address. Both IPv4 and v6.

If one really wants their home systems to be publicly accessible, it’s easy enough to get a cheap vanity domain and point it at whatever address. rDNS won’t work, which would probably interfere with email, but most services don’t really need it. It’s a bit more complicated to detect when your IP changes and script a DNS update, but certainly do-able, if (like OP) one is hell bent on avoiding any off-site hardware.