Do HDDs noticably degrade when powered off? I’m thinking about getting one of these for cold storage backups. Also, how much of an impact does repeated power cycling have on lifespan?

I’ve been interested in doing this, but I can’t tell why I need to login to Beeper in order to self host. I noticed their previous self-host solution did not require that.

Because of that login step, I decided to look into this other repo which uses Ansible to deploy a Matrix homeserver and the same bridges that Beeper uses. I haven’t finished it yet since there’s a lot of config and choices to make, but it seems like it’ll serve the same end goal.

Edit: lol, maybe if I read the intro, I’ll get my answer.

You can connect any† standard Matrix application service to your Beeper account without having to self-host a whole Matrix homeserver.

Still might go with the second option so that I don’t rely on their cloud services.

I just started using Backblaze B2, switching from AWS S3. I use it through Rclone to encrypt everything before I upload it. Only $6/TB/mo and it only charges what you use. You can download up to 3x your data stored per month for free, so if you ever decide to move or you need to restore a backup, you don’t have to pay egress costs. It was the cheapest service I could find, but there may be others.

You can set price limits on your account to ensure you don’t go over too. It will alert you when you approach the limit. There are some minor costs, like pinging the API, but they are free up to a reasonable amount.

In simple terms, it’s like a VM for an application. You set it up with the right dependencies and your application will “just work” on it, without having to deal with other applications existing alongside it.

What makes it better than a VM is that it is much faster. It interfaces with kernel features that help isolate the processes and files from the rest of the system. It is not virtualization, rather it is namespacing.

Docker also provides a bunch of tools that help with creating this environment automatically and allowing for some escaping into the host, such as binding ports and sharing data with the host’s file system.

Once this environment is created, it can be shared with uses as a single downloadable bundle, called an image. This makes it really easy to download and run an application without having to prepare your system with the right dependencies and files.

Nothing is free though, and the cost here is more disk space and some performance overhead, although it is close to native speed.

I use Home Assistant for controlling my smart lights. They do support Docker, but I installed it as a VM with KVM. You get more features with it, such as add-ons. But you should definitely look into your options. They have a diagram on this page.

https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/

If you haven’t done much writing to the SD card, you may be able to recover the data. Data isn’t really “deleted”, it is just labeled as deleted. There is software that can comb through the raw data and try to make sense of what files were there. I don’t know of any specific software, so if anyone knows, please reply

Edit: Another commenter mentioned some success with DMDE

Edit 2: Worth mentioning that this is true of formats. As long as it doesn’t zero out the entire media, it just edits the file system metadata to say there are no files.

Also, if you haven’t tried to restore from backup, you have no backup.

I’m just curious, what’s your reason or preference for using an alternate init system, if you don’t mind?

I only just realized Memories existed, and man do I wish I knew about it when I started.

Memories allows you to view a timeline, improves loads using generated thumbnails, sorts by location, and even does facial recognition with the Recognize app installed. 1000x improvement over default photos app.