Yes - literally just pick the right Caddy (or similar) image with Let's Encrypt client included - and you can simply add a tag/label to your docker compose files for each of self hosted services to get a real SSL, that auto renewed ...etc.
With one of self hosted services being Adguard-Home can do both ADs blocking and internal DNS... The public DNS records for your "internal use only" domain remain empty.
> "By the time Yahoo stopped controlling webring.org in 2001, search engines had become good enough that web rings were no longer as useful."
Given how those good (enough) search engines work these days ... I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of the old social/discovery things things (DMOZ and such) start coming back.
While I agree with you on ideally having a dumb TV - being able to install TailScale on your TV and then using your exit node in another country (to watch that other countries local IPTV) is a really nice convenience. And you can no longer buy a dumb TV, at least not in typical living room sizes.
The dishwashing machine being able to notify you ahead of time that you're low (but not already out) of softening salt or rinse aid liquid is also convenient - but indeed also solvable with display on the machine itself.
But the automation like lights, or blinds/shutters... Being able to open/close shutters from your bed (or automatically in the morning as part of waking you up), or turn on/off lights based on motion/presence detection - is actually useful.
Of course you shouldn't need Internet to operate it. And many people use Home Assistant exactly because they don't want their "smart devices" to talk to the cloud.
Expat/kennismigrant here - it's same "ends up late and over budget" for literally every country (and private businesses).
What Dutch government/politicians seems to be "ahead" compared to other countries - is combination of narrow or short sightedness and (over)correction trough rules, laws and regulations.
Like giving subsidies and tax breaks for electrical cars, rooftop solar panels and mandating household switch from gas (LPG and such) to electric heating and cooking. And ignoring industry professionals for decades saying the distribution network won't scale.
More of the same with stuff like 30% tax rule for expats, which was originally introduced as cost saving measures because actually doing bookkeeping for expatriate expenses was costing government more money. But then more recently expat tax breaks have been reduced and phased out "because cost saving". Meanwhile employers have trouble finding highly skilled workers. And we're limiting numbers of foreign students in universities (by forcing them to do it in Dutch instead of English).
Some Bulgarians cheated/defrauded Dutch tax returns or such - and "solution" was ML/AI reviewing things - but it turned out to be broken/biased and (ab)used for other things - leading to the whole toeslag scandal and government resigning.
Same for nitrogen vs lack of housing... And many more.
ADHD brain just recalled that similar concept was used for traffic jams being sent along FM radio signal.
Not talking about stuff that would automatically change the FM station to the one with traffic announcements.
Our ~2012 Škoda Octavia had typical Volkswagen Audi Group navigation built in. It would receive data about traffic jams in the background, and incorporate it into route/navigation decisions.
Not sure if switch from FM to DAB carried that over too. Kind of doubtful since mobile phones took over navigation even before Android/iOS Auto stuff showed up.
I recently learned that captions on BBC are teletext based (page 888) so I turned them on and got surprised that it's still working that way - especially considering I'm watching it basically via IPTV (using Dutch KPNs Android SmartTV app).
If you're thinking about Linux/Gentoo - but don't want to spend a lot of time for maintaining/updating and most importantly not need time to fix stuff that broke because you didn't update it in months...
I would suggest Calculate Linux.
It's 100% Gentoo, with additional customization (e.g. profiles presetting not just sane defaults, but also things you usually want on desktop [e.g. samba, network printers ...]), there are pre built binaries for all profiles and basically all the software (but you can still override some and get it compiled with or without specific features) ...
And perhaps most importantly - there's extra tooling/automation around the Gentoo/portage updates and such.
With vanilla Gentoo - beyond regular PITA to update packages due to various package/use-flags conflicts (which would make me do it even less often). I was also regularly (every few years) having to reinstall Gentoo because my glibc/bintools/python/etc were so far behind that during system update something would break and fixing it was basically reinstalling Gentoo from stage3 tarball.
It's been ~10 years that I've "switched" to Calculate Linux - and it's "cl-update" was automatically solving even those things that would've left me with world update broken system.
Again that reasoning falls apart because they offer free Windows version. So basically those academic/small companies are incentivised to switch to Windows (or use Wine/Proton) to use this software?
And that's aside the fact that if support cases are the actual issue - they could (and probably already do that) just not allow free users to open/submit bug/support cases.
And for the things that aren't in official portage nor one of 100s of other repositories - you basically just drop an ebuild file (that LLM can do for you ) into your own local repo.
There's already tooling for using say .deb or golang packages - but still having them installed as proper Gentoo/portage ones.
And at the same time, at least for last few years - you can also get the same (same but different) experience/convenience of having binaries available.
The Gentoo profiles mentioned in another comment is what still allows the system to have packages compiled with a consistent subset of things.
I don't see how that particular line of thinking applies when:
1) They continue to have a free version for Windows
2) They continue to have a version for Linux
I just can't see that cost of having a free Linux version (on top having a paid Linux version) is big?
I've seen/noticed this simply from being on a low carb (aka KETO) diet.
Besides AI grossly over/under estimating values even when you give it a photo of the packaging with nutritional table and tell it weight you used.
The other thing that surprised me, at least until I read up on how LLMs are actually working. Was how it would confidently BS you for your daily total.
Even when the chat/messages are just "Ate ABC with XYZ values, what's my daily total?"
While I guess new chat for each day, or some MCP for storing and retrieval of record/meals would've helped with those daily totals.
The total would still be wrong - unless you explicitly specified each of the values you need to track (e.g. carbs, fat, protein, kcal) to be put into records.
At which point of course - you're not really using AI/LLM but basically an CRUD application.
How/what are you basing your "sweets/desert impacts my sleep more than a drink or two" on?
I was waking up an hour or more before the alarm (so waking up <=6AM with 7AM alarm). And I thought my sleep was good - after all Fitbit sleep score was 80-85.
Then after stopping alcohol I started sleeping longer. Specifically waking up later, at least for the first few weeks.
Seemingly alcohol was causing earlier waking due to spiking cortisol too early.
While waking-up time took a few weeks to recalibrate. Already 2-3 days after stopping alcohol - Fitbit was showing clear improvements in actual sleep quality metrics - HRV was increasing and RHR/BR were decreasing.
And now my "bad nights" have Fitbit sleep score of ~85, and it's regularly 90+.
Lab results are night and day - e.g. CRP was 20 (>5 signals inflammation), just few weeks after stopping alcohol it was ~10 while I was having cold/fever, and now it's <1.
The biggest/hardest problem for me was that after stopping alcohol, my sweets intake increased, especially in the evening. I was doing almost no carbs during the day, and then in the evening ... I guess brain was lacking some easy dopamine that it would previously get from alcohol... I would crave sweets, ice cream ...etc.
It took almost 3 months to be able to stick with strict keto diet. I'm finally doing <=20 gram of carbs because from past experience - any higher and I have a hard time limiting carbs to say just 50 (which would still be low carb/keto).
Since it was Dutch news and Dutch ship - I'm betting they used ~€5 Bluetooth tracker available in Action stores.
Not sure how different it works from Apple/Samsung trackers. But my Motorola Android phone can set it up, and phones out and about are reporting where it is.
I used to work for a GSM messaging gateway/SMSC. And seeing first hand how most of those SMS messages (2FA, password reset, bank transaction/balance ...etc) are usually routed (sure over SSL but stored/forwarded as unencrypted GSM packets) through several different companies around the world - before reaching your mobile operator ...
And on top of that you add stuff like sim cloning, and all the other things that one gets by having a direct SS7 connection (there were blog posts/YouTube videos - IIRC Linus Tech Tips calls/SMS got routed to Australia).
Using SMS for 2FA or anything similar is my last resort.
Granted I stopped working there 15+ years ago - but I imagine that the basic economy reasoning where it's impractical for every mobile operator to have a direct peering contract with every other operator in the world - is still the same.
And messages originating from non mobile users/operators (like DigiD 2FA) always start at one of these messaging gateways/SMSCs (e.g. InfoBip.com), and often go through a few different ones before reaching your mobile operator.
In The Netherlands I wouldn't be able to login to any government or adjecent websites (e.g. portal of my local health center/GP, health insurance, retirement/pension insurance) without a smart phone running DigiD app for 2FA.
The non-EU Serbia has the equivalent app, but also you might be able to get individual/personal e-certificate (for logging into e-government or signing e-documents) added into smart card chip of your ID. But in practice it seems thats only used for business purposes, like CEO/Accountants/etc to sign/submit business records/taxes.