Youlag is a FreshRSS extension that allows you to browse your YouTube and article feeds through a modernized design that incorporates quality-of-life features.

Optimized for both watching videos and reading articles.

Why?

Stay connected with creators without a Google account by using RSS. Don't be tied to a specific platform and access your subscriptions from any device.

You can also use Youlag solely for its theme and quality of life features, ignoring any video feature.

Highlights v4.2.0

This update continues the trend of adding more customization and quality of life features.

• Curate your own "recommended" videos based on your Watch later, or Subscriptions, or the current author
• Video chapters/timestamp support, with prev/next buttons for skipping
• DeArrow support
  • Replace clickbait thumbnails to screencaps
  • Use less sensational titles (when available)
  • Display video length (when available)
• Compact view for browsing videos on mobile

...20+ more updates in the changelog

Other features

• Block incoming YouTube shorts
• Whitelist specific categories to use the video mode layout
• Use Invidious instance as video playback source
• Modernized interface for articles
• Activate mini player to follow across pages; read articles while keeping a floating video at the bottom

Find more details: https://github.com/civilblur/youlag

I bought into the ecosystem while taking my networking cert classes back in 2017. They were much cheaper than Cisco gear for business-grade networking, and overall I've been happy with them.

Their security offerings are locally managed, and you can make local accounts, but I just bought a NAS from them and I had to sign in with my ubiquiti account first before I could make a local account, and it seems the cloud account has some privileges that you can't give to local super admins.

So now I'm having second thoughts. I figure since it's enterprise-grade stuff they can't really make it cloud-dependent like you see on the consumer side since a lot of companies need air-gapped networks. On the other hand, on those occasions that I didn't have internet access and hadn't yet made a local-only account, I was locked out, so...

Regarding the NAS specifically, I use a TruNAS system at work and it works well enough on a rack server, but since it uses ZFS I don't know it would be good for home use. What alternatives are there?

Are there any truly FOSS networking options? I figure especially on the switching side you need purpose-built hardware, right? There aren't generic motherboards with 48 network ports you can buy.

I like my Unifi setup, I'm just scared of a rug pull.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/24650125

Because nothing says "fun" quite like having to restore a RAID that just saw 140TB fail.

Western Digital this week outlined its near-term and mid-term plans to increase hard drive capacities to around 60TB and beyond with optimizations that significantly increase HDD performance for the AI and cloud era. In addition, the company outlined its longer-term vision for hard disk drives' evolution that includes a new laser technology for heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), new platters with higher areal density, and HDD assemblies with up to 14 platters. As a result, WD will be able to offer drives beyond 140 TB in the 2030s.

Western Digital plans to volume produce its inaugural commercial hard drives featuring HAMR technology next year, with capacities rising from 40TB (CMR) or 44TB (SMR) in late 2026, with production ramping in 2027. These drives will use the company's proven 11-platter platform with high-density media as well as HAMR heads with edge-emitting lasers that heat iron-platinum alloy (FePt) on top of platters to its Curie temperature — the point at which its magnetic properties change — and reducing its magnetic coercivity before writing data.

I've been using Termius for a few years for an SSH client. Have have a lot of self-hosted servers both in my home lab and on VPSs. I'm looking to cut some costs since it's $120/year and really the main thing I use it for is syncing my SSH accounts and credentials between a laptop, a desktop, and my Android phone. So I'm looking for a new method to sync these things.

I'd prefer a single application, but I'd settle for a good, secure way to sync the credentials and recommendations for applications on Fedora and Android.

Edit: I'm OK with a one time payment application, but prefer open source or a solution I can self-host the sync server. And I don't want a subscription.

Here is my setup:

I have multiple DuckDNS domains (and subdomains) pointing to my home IP. My home router has port 80 and port 443 forwarded to Nginx Proxy Manager on my home server. Nginx Proxy Manager points to the appropriate docker container and each one is encrypted with Let's Encrypt.

Am I missing anything here or is this how I'm supposed to be doing it? Every app that has a DuckDNS url has a password in some shape or form.

Asking because of the latest issues with the maintainer.

Every morning, I do a multiple DNS Leak test just as a precaution. Today, I did the leak test and all my IPs were different. They were the same IP block, just different. This made me suspicious and I set about trying to track the problem down. Turns out, there was a misconfiguration in the VPS. Worked yesterday, different today. I guess it was ghosts or gremlins in the machinery.

I got to thinking, for you guys who download a lot of Linux ISOs, might be a good idea to check daily. Even though you are setting behind a VPN, it's still worth the minute it takes to fire off multiple DNS Leak checks just for a sanity check.

Hey everyone,

I have an unraid server and over the years I've gathered quite a lot of tools, some of which are now exposed to the net.

I've been mostly checking on my server every once in a while to see if things are healthy, but I would like a more central version to look into the health of my network, any issues from docker logs, etc.

Anyone got a good ui for that? (preferably deployed through docker)

It's a different feeling, similar to communicating without censorship or surveillance.

I can see why "they" would try to keep it from us.

Hello. Tors community Leader gus just called for help to run more Snowflake proxies due to the recent internet restrictions in Iran.

What is Snowflake?

Snowflake allows you to connect to the Tor network in places where Tor is blocked by routing your connection through volunteer proxies located in uncensored countries.

Similar to VPNs, which help users bypass Internet censorship, Snowflake disguises your Internet activity as though you’re making a video or voice call, making you less detectable to Internet censors.

How can I help?

You can set up a standalone proxy on your Server or, if you don't feel for the hustle, you can install Tors Browser extension and just keep your Tab open.

You can even help with just your phone! Install Orbot (iOS/Android) and enable Kindness mode.

Every Snowflake counts! Thank you!

So I'm quite new to the self hosting world, and not the most tech savvy, but I'm looking for a way to expand and increase the reliability of my file storage. I used to just use cloud storage but got concerned about privacy and environmental impact and whittled down all of my data to about 200GB including all my music, photos, movies, backup files, etc. I have a laptop, phone, and mp3 player and currently use synching to sync all of my files across all three devices. This works great, I love how seamless, cheap, and automatic everything is. But I want to expand my storage abilities and include a backup that isn't with me / in my apartment. I was thinking of getting a couple raspberry pis with m.2 ssds, one to leave at my sisters house (small and unobtrusive little plastic box connected to power and her wifi) and then one at my apartment to act as another node, freeing up space on my phone so that all my files are in at least 3 different devices (3:2:1 rule?). this feels like an fairly easy project to set up, but I have a feeling there is probably a better way to go about what I'm trying to achieve.

Hi all i am new to self hosting, I have everything just about set up. I am on linux server (docker host). I am good with movies/tv VPN Jellyfin etc. For music I have llidar and slskd setup and both running. I have tinkered Wireguard and Finamp and had it working.

So i have these 2 problem/s I could do with some advice/opinions on if you guys would be lovely enough to help.

1. I am currently using SLSKD more as I like partial albums. I then do a manual import via Wanted...this is cumbersome as i have to then add the artist etc in lidar, then go import the tunes.

2. I have a ton of old spotify playlists for example 80s etc. I would like to be able to bring them in and automate it somehow rather than finding them one song at a time.

I hate AI but its somewhat helpful in these situations. It suggested adding soulmate (docker) that has been slightly problematic, i also saw tubifarry and another plugin.

What are your suggestions of a route to take for my problems...should i faff about further with soulmate or another option? Nice to meet you all 🙂

So one thing I've done to help me find more things to self host or do is think like a prepper. Like...what if my ISP goes out? How can I remotely control my homelab or even trigger Home Assistant events if my ISP is out? I had no idea how to solve this until about 6 months ago when I discovered Meshtastic.

For anyone who doesn't know: Meshtastic is basically an open-source, public mesh-network. You just buy a cheap ESP32 device, flash it with Meshtastic (They have a SUPER easy web-flasher so you don't need to be super technical to do it), and connect to it via Bluetooth with your phone and you're good to go! Then you can send messages to other nodes around you and have fully off-grid communications!

Well, while Meshtastic supports MQTT, that does require at least one end of the connection to have internet access. I wanted a way to SSH into my servers and diagnose or fix things without needing to rely on my ISP at all. Or even trigger things in Home Assistant without having access to any ISP. So, that naturally gave way to the idea of MeshExec.

MeshExec is a little binary that attaches to your serially-connected Meshtastic node, and looks for messages in a specified private channel for aliases to execute. Then it will execute whatever commands you specify and automatically chunk them and send them back through the mesh in a staggered fashion. This chunking is done to both fit inside the max message size that Meshtastic supports, and so that the mesh is not overwhelmed with messages and drops them.

You define the aliases, the shell used to execute the commands, etc. So you can basically use it to do whatever you want over the mesh! I've set up a handful of aliases to do simple diagnostics on my homelab servers. Things like restarting docker containers, checking the top 3 processes consuming the most memory, etc.

I decided to use aliases because I figured direct shell access to a server is SUPER dangerous, especially if you accidentally attach the daemon to a public channel.

No idea if this will be useful to anyone else, but I made it as easy to use as possible if anyone does want to use it. Here's the link to the repo if anyone wants to give it a go.

I just wanted to share how I've managed to find a way to further reduce my reliance on big corporations and my love for open-source software!

If anyone decides to give this a try, I'd love to know your thoughts or answer any questions you have!

I'm planning to build several WiFi connected devices for home automation: an AC remote control and air quality sensors. These devices would send data and be controlled through a local server. I'm considering two approaches: running custom software on a server PC (hardware to be determined) or integrating with Home Assistant's protocols and purchasing their hardware. Would using Home Assistant be excessive for this use case?

I'm building OpenWatch, an open-source self-hosted video platform as an alternative to YouTube. It's designed for content creators who want to back up their content on their own infrastructure (in case of strikes) or for anyone who wants a personal video hosting solution.

The project is in early stages, but I've built out some core features:

• Home feed
• Video player with adaptive streaming
• Playlists
• Interactions (likes, comments, subscriptions)
• Creator Studio (dashboard, content management, channel customization)

Tech stack: 

• Next.js 16
• Tailwind CSS v4
• Drizzle ORM (PostgreSQL)
• FFmpeg
• HLS.js
• Zustand
• Docker

GitHub: https://github.com/openwatch-app/openwatch

Feedback would be helpful, especially around self-hosting considerations and features you'd find useful.

Hello,
I recently setup a piefed instance on a vps with yunohost. I am now having the issue that the only user I can login to is my admin user, and any other user attempted to create gives me the error login failed. I tried adding new users from the admin panel, creating them logged out of piefed, registering then approving a user. Help would be appreciated.

Hi all, does anyone know of a good alternative to games like Wordle, Connection, and Skrbbl? Self-hosting puzzle and party games would be fun I think. Preferably options that have intuitive UI (else no one will use them!)

I have found a couple options, awesome selfhosted mentions scribble(dot)rs which seems pretty cool. Awesome selfhosted also suggests "word-mastermind", and the demo instance is down, is it any good? (a quick search shows a bazillion Wordle clones that people have made as a programming challenge. If I had the time I might try making my own, but I have loads of schoolwork on my plate right now)

It's perfect! Do you guys already do this?

I open a letter, I take it's picture with FairScan. The FairScan-folder on my android device gets syncthinged to the ingest folder for Paperless-ngx on my "server". Paperless imports it, deletes the file and sets the new documents tag to inbox. I decide if the document goes to the binder for important stuff, or if I just toss it in a binder with all the paper I most likely will never touch again. Next time I look at Paperless, I edit all documents with the inbox tag and remove the tag.

To be more specific, I have a friend who pointed out a couple of features that they wanted. They're present in Immich, but I'm wondering if they're replicable in Nextcloud since I already have that installed, and Immich is giving me trouble with installation. I'll troubleshoot Immich later if it can't be replicated

The features:

• Having a world map that has pins on it based on location EXIF data in photos
• Preferably a UI similar to google photos on mobile besides that

Edit: Someone in the comments pointed out that Memories (something I already installed) had come a long way. Ended up finding out there's a mobile app, and it is exactly these two things.

cross-posted from: https://indie-ver.se/post/20213

Hi again!

I am trying to improve the security for my website, but I am unsure of which paths federation and API traffic hits, and which paths should be exempt from e.g. Javascript challenges? Could somebody give me some insight into this?

Hi TCP users,

Currently, I have a homelab server that runs Jellyfin with direct access to local media content and a reverse proxy point to it. While it works well for people in Europe (where the server is), it is quite slow for some of my friends who are living in Asia. I am having some options in mind:

• Hire a VPS in Asia and set up another Jellyfin instance there. This works but I don't really want to have two Jellyfin instances with two databases and also accessing to local media content will be curbersome to manage.
• Hire a VPS in Asia and set up a CDN but I am not sure if it will ever work with Jellyfin ?

So I would like to ask do you know any things about this and any idea to improve this situation ?

Thank you very much!

Edit: Thanks for all of your response. Based on my experience, I think the slowness is caused by the fact that there are too many hops to jump through before reaching the final client. So I think I will try to do several things:

• Try to optimize my upload speed, it is fast enough but not very stable recently so it could have some impact
• Set up a second Jellyfin instance and sync a part of my library there for my friends.

Edit: Slow here means both slow page loading and slow buffering.

Hey all, I'm searching for something self hosted that lets me access, read, and edit .md and spreadsheets. I don't need functionality for presentations, word docs, or photos; really just spreadsheets and markdown, and a good mobile experience.

Opencloud is fast, simple, lightweight, and works great for multi-user editing, but Collabora is just so-so on desktop and borderline unsuable on mobile. Also, the build in split-view markdown editor is effectively unusable on mobile. Nextcloud has more features, but I mostly don't use them. It's markdown editor is better, but it has the same Collabora problem. I'm probably about 50% desktop and 50% mobile use.

Any recommendations?

I was hoping you guys could help me with a bit of a more out-of-the-ordinary situation. My older father, who has very little technical knowledge, is the owner of a local news outlet and is in the process of modernizing the whole website and its infrastructure. He is in talks with a local developer (just one guy) who has been maintaining everything for the past 5 years to transfer everything to a new dedicated server and make some much-needed software and design changes. He is currently running everything on an older Hetzner dedicated server, which we decided to upgrade very soon to the Hetzner AX102 (Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 128 GB DDR5 ECC, 2 × 1.92 TB NVMe SSD Datacenter Edition, and a 1 Gbit/s port with unlimited bandwidth). He has asked me to try to help him achieve a favorable outcome because he is aware that, due to his lack of technical knowledge, he might be taken advantage of or, at the very least, the developer will only do the bare minimum because no one will check his work, even though this process is not exactly cheap, at least by our country’s standards.

I only possess a basic understanding of most of what hosting such a site optimally on a dedicated server entails, as this is not my area of expertise, but I am willing to learn in order to help my father, at least to the point where we don’t get scammed and we are able to take full advantage of the new hardware to make the site load instantly.

More context:

• The site is based on WordPress, and we plan to keep it that way when we make the transfer. The developer told me he would strongly prefer running AlmaLinux 10 with NGINX for our particular context and will likely use Bricks as a page builder. I would prefer not to change these, since it would likely create unneeded friction with him.
• There are about 150k–250k average monthly users according to Google Analytics, depending on the time of year and different events, most of them from our area.
• About 80% of readers are using smartphones.
• There are a few writers who publish multiple articles daily (20–25 in a 24-hour window). The articles always contain at least text and some images. There’s a strong dependency on Facebook, as most of the readers access those articles from our Facebook page. This might be relevant for caching strategies and other settings.

For now, as a caching strategy for optimal speed, Gemini analyzed my requirements and recommended a tiered “in-memory” caching strategy to handle high traffic without a CDN. Could you validate whether these specific recommendations are optimal, since I am highly skeptical of AIs?

Page Cache: it suggests mapping Nginx FastCGI Cache directly to RAM (tmpfs). It recommends using ngx_cache_purge with the Nginx Helper plugin to instantly invalidate only the Homepage and Categories upon publishing. It also advises stripping tracking parameters (e.g., fbclid) to prevent cache fragmentation.

1. Object Cache: It proposes using Valkey (Server-side) paired with the Redis Object Cache plugin. The specific advice is to connect them via Unix Socket (instead of TCP) for the lowest possible latency.
2. PHP Layer: It recommends PHP 8.5 with OPcache and JIT (Tracing mode) enabled, optimized to keep the runtime entirely in memory.

**I’d appreciate any thoughts or advice you might have on the overall situation, not just the caching side of things. The caching is just what I managed to study so far since the AI insisted it was particular important for this setup. **😊