DontTakeMySky

Many registrars let you buy a domain and set up dynamic DNS for it within their system so you can own a domain and get dyndns on it.

Otherwise you could accomplish it with a VPS but you’d only need the smallest one available because it would just need to run nginx to forward to your home ip (and a small tool to update that IP when it changes). So you could probably get something for less than $5/mo.

The Lemmy app we are using on our phones needs to download content from Lemmy so it can be displayed to us. Lemmy might just have one big file full of links, but that’s annoying to have to write code to handle. Or it might have a folder full of files where each file is a post, but that’s also a bit annoying to write code to manage.

It (probably) uses a local SQLite database to store all of the cached posts.

Conceptually, a database is just a place to store things, just like a big text file. The database just handles a lot of the grunt work for you and makes it easier to search, organize, and filter the data.

So anywhere there is data, there could be a database.

It’s probably too expensive for them to record and upload every call, but im sure the transcripts of calls are likely to leak soon after this.

It really isnt bad. I do most of my computer at home so I really only need a small cloud box to pipe things through when needed.

And I could reduce the B2 price a lot with some deduping of my data, but that’s an ongoing and painfully slow process since I was too reckless with my local backups in the past, so $7 to avoid that process is worth it.

And for electric I suspect it’s pretty low. I’m running 3 raspberry pi, a 4 bay NAS, and one micro PC and I live in an area with pretty cheap electric already. I think my gaming machine probably takes more power in a few hours than the rest of the system does in a day.

I largely run raspberry pis so my electric costs are likely minimal (I’ve never calculated it). Besides that:

• PIA VPN: ~$4/mo

• Digital Ocean Droplet + Backup snapshots: $7/mo

• Domains: ~$25/year

• Backblaze B2 backups: $7/mo

It’s not even limited to smart cars though. Yes used does let you a oid it, but it’s not like this is just people buying the fancy trims either. Shit like this is working it’s way down to the run of the mill standard cars year after year.

And each type of communication needs it’s own switch. Don’t let them pull some BS trying to make you enable all the hardcore tracking via a cell network just because you want to connect to Bluetooth.

Cool. Now all of Google Drive is blocked because one guy hosted a movie there for a few days.

How long are folks planning to wait before migrating to something new? I suspect this is still safe for at least a few months before things fall out of date, right?

Or I guess it allows wire guard to update freely so it’s probably safe until something specifically breaks.

Just be careful you don’t get their “smarthome” line, at least for cameras. It doesn’t require Internet to operate, but it requires Internet for configuration and management.

I’m not sure if that’s the same with their doorbells, but it was true of their wifi cameras.

Especially for physical goods.

I wonder if you could copy (or buy used) some crypto mining rigs for this. I’m not sure if there’s some kind of bottleneck im not aware of though.

That’s a shame. I didn’t realize it was that locked down. Ive had a lot of terrible routers but all the ones I remember allowed me at least a port forward.

I think OP can accomplish some of the same result if he can get a cheap VPS to connect through (have the laptop Wireguard to the VPS, then have a proxy on the VPS forward to the laptop over the VPN, but that’s probably not worth the hassle for a starter project unfortunately.

With most consumer wifi networks you can usually enable port forwarding. That would let you access services from anywhere.

Personally I would set up a Wireguard VPN server on the laptop and enable port forwarding only for the Wireguard port. This will let you access your laptop from anywhere, and it will protect you by limiting your attack surface (basically you only need to have a device Wireguard connection and you don’t need to worry as much about securing every other service you want to run).

Then I’d set up dynamic DNS with any DNS provider so you don’t need to keep track of a changing IP.

Then you can install whatever services you want on the laptop and you’ll be able to access them from anywhere by connecting to the Wireguard VPN. It does mean you can’t easily let a friend access a service on your laptop, but the tradeoff is you don’t have to worry as much about security while you’re learning.

It’s especially weird when the existing targeting can be so effective for much cheaper.

For tvs for example, they can see what you watch, when, what ads you mute and which you don’t, what you display over HDMI (content ID), the other devices on your network, your location, your accounts for every streaming service, what you search for. Then if you install their companion app they learn the other apps on your phone, your location habits, the media you play on your phone (looking at you Bose connect app…), bluetooth and network devices you are near (connecting you to other profiles they know), and probably a lot more.

Maybe. They might do some processing locally and just upload as text so it might be easy to batch the data, making the upload volume and pattern less obvious.

It also saves them network bandwidth so I’m sure that would motivate them too. Uploading raw mic data from all TVs would be expensive.

This feels most likely to me too, though maybe even for an Edu or “managed” Windows install of some kind where you get more support and more opinionated stable installs or something. Sort of like Windows S mode but maybe with more help.

Google lists the sites you use single sign on for, but it doesn’t keep track of how many sites list your Gmail account as your recovery email, or the sites where you had to create an account that uses your email as your username.

If you’re lucky all those accounts aren’t important, but there’s always a chance you’ll forget one that matters and if youve canceled your Gmail account you’d be screwed if you need to recover that random account.

So you’re basically stuck keeping Gmail alive for a few years even after you’ve stopped using it just in case you forgot some accounts.

That’s a great solution but still takes a bit to switch to initially. I’m just talking about the switchover, after that using an alias service or having your email on your own domain helps save a lot of pain later.

The main trouble is the same with switching any email service really.

1. You need to update your email everywhere…everywhere… this usually means keeping the old email account alive perpetually just in case you find some old account you didn’t (or can’t) update.

2. You need to back up all your old emails. This is usually easy on things like Outlook or Thunderbird or anything similar.