I canceled my subscription right after I got that email. I don’t use it enough anyway. I’ll just sail the high seas if a new show that I want to watch ends up there.

While this program doesn’t relate to my situation, I did just move to the Boston area, and know first hand how shitty the rental market is here. I’m not even talking about the overall monthly rents you need to fork over (which is insane), I’m talking about brokers fees when signing a lease. It seems like 90% of the places for rent require first + last months rent, security deposit, AND a brokers fee equaling one months rent. Sure, you can use a broker yourself, so it would make sense that you would pay them for their services, but the landlords are the ones using them, and passing the fees on to the renter.

Coming from the western US, this was shocking. No wonder so many people are at risk of losing their housing - they can’t even afford to move to a better situation.

Are you in the US? If so, what state? This might be one of the few things I would never consider self hosting. There are so many legal issues you could run into, and if your self hosted solution fails, you’ll be fucked (to put it lightly). I’m an HR/payroll professional by trade, in case that helps.

I went with the yearly unlimited subscription through Frugal. I believe I paid $39.00 for the year, plus it comes with a 500gb block account through Blocknews.

A good indexer is critical to your setup. Since I just started my Usenet journey a month ago, I can only recommend two: NZBgeek and Drunkenslug. There are many others that I’m sure are worth it, I just haven’t had time to test anything else. NZBgeek might not have open registrations right now.

I use SABnzbd as my downloader.

Other than that, one of the best resources I used when getting set up was TRaSH Guides. Endless guides on configuring your downloader, indexers, and much more. Do some research on Sonarr, Radarr, and the other arr programs. Takes a little bit of effort getting it all set up, but makes everything so easy once you’re done.

I figured email would be a common theme. I’m just starting to dip my toes into all of this, so an email server is not on my to-do list (and may never be).

I wish the Firefox experience on iOS was as good as it appears to be on Android.

I know some others have already mentioned it, but this would be a great time to move your passwords to something more secure. I recommend Bitwarden as well. You can import you current passwords fairly easily.

What’s the issue with the Pixel cameras? I thought they were typically one of the selling points of the phone? Maybe I haven’t paid enough attention to recent reviews (been on iOS for a few years now, but want to switch back to Android).

Buster is actually calculating the surface area of your server, and has already determined that he will fit perfectly on it.

Email was one I figured I would get an answer for. I know plenty of people do it, but I’m not sure if I’d trust myself to do it right.

The paid offsite backups just seem like a good idea. Some might have the ability to also self-host that, whether it be in a friend/family members home, but if that isn’t an option, paying for a service could save your ass some day.

That is my understanding of how it works. I have Firefox on my phone, but mainly use it to interact with my home server/bookmarks. Everything else is done through Safari for ease of use.

I’m also a person that has always struggled to learn by solely reading. Typically a combination of video tutorials and documentation, while actually doing the work on my end, is how I usually grasp concepts.

Hack The Box looks like it could be quite interesting and fun. I think I’ll start there. I appreciate your feedback!

Based on some of the other comments, it sounds like this might be the way to go. What NAS are you working with?

I’ll probably start out with just letting my parents access Plex to see how it performs. They would be remotely streaming off an Apple TV, so I’m not entirely sure how much, if any, transcoding will be needed. My other issue is that transcoding is uncharted territory for me, so I should probably work on getting a better understanding of how/when it might come into play in my situation.

Everything else you described sounds like it would fulfill what I’m looking for. I don’t plan on solely hosting “mission critical” aspects of my life on this (at least for now while I continue to learn and possibly break things), but it would help me take the training wheels off my bike.

I wouldn’t say energy usage/efficiency is super high on my list, but I am also not opposed to being somewhat conscious about that. Basically, a little bit extra on my electric bill won’t kill me.

Separate servers is also something I would be fine with. The Pi has been great, and I figured I could keep utilizing it the way I have been with some other services. It is currently running some form of Ubuntu server (can’t remember off the top of my head), and everything is containerized.

Thanks for the great info! What mini PC did you end up going with? I’ve heard Beelink and a few others thrown around here and there, and most seem to be impressed with what they can do. Do you mind elaborating some on how you handle your drives with this type of setup? Do you just have some sort of NAS connected directly to the pc?

I was originally thinking at least 4 drives (4 if I went the synology/other of the shelf option, or more if I went the DIY route). Not opposed to a secondhand computer, especially if the price and performance is good. It seems like a brand new NUC can get fairly expensive.

I have been for about a year with one 8gb Pi 4 with a 500gb ssd. I bought it as a way to dip my toes into self hosting. Started with Home Assistant OS, but now I have a bunch of containers set up, such as Home Assistant, Plex, Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, qbittorrent, and a few others. I will eventually get something a little beefier to host my media, but will absolutely keep the Pi running.

You know, I’m not sure why this didn’t cross my mind as I started doing research. I have seen this recommendation countless times around here and people seem to have great experiences going the mini pc route. Thanks for your insight. Do you have any specific mini pc or NAS in mind that you would recommend?

The iOS version certainly works without issue, but it is extremely barebones. Basically no features you’d expect from Firefox. Mostly due to Apple requirements. That being said, I am so thankful I can use Firefox as my desktop browser every day. That’s what really matters to me at this point.

What synology model did you go with? Do you host any other services with that type of setup?

This is something I have on my to-do list. I just need to figure out which router to go with.