Glad I could help. I’m not always immediately available, but I don’t mind answering questions if you run into troubles. Just send me a DM and I’ll do what I can. :)

You don’t need a static IP, you just have to keep track of what your current dynamic IP is.

You can do this with either a free or a paid DNS service.

There are a few different ‘free dns’ services that will delegate a subdomain of theirs to you at no cost. Admittedly, I’ve never actually used one of these so their names escape me. Hopefully someone else can point one of those out if that’s what you really want.

I purchased a domain via google domains, when they existed. It’s now transferred to squarespace, because they bought out google domains a few years ago.

It was around $13/year when I first got it a decade ago. It’s now around $28/year.

This allows me full control over the domain: I can use as many subdomains as I want to give each service I use it’s own unique name. (Instead of using their own separate ports that you’ve gotta remember) My domain will also forward all inbound email to my gmail account; this lets me use email addresses like <servicename>@mydomain.example. This way, I don’t share my real email and can immediately tell who sold my info to the highest bidder when I get spam. (I could also host my own email service if I really wanted, but I haven’t bothered)

Add Cloudflare ontop (for free); and it can filter out known attacks, ddos attempts, geofence your services to regions you’ll actually be in, provide/autorenew ssl certs for https, show you usage analytics, cache static data reducing server/network load, etc.

Ultimately, the paid option is well worth it IMO. $2/month (which I typically pay in 3-10 year blocks) is hardly anything.

/edit; vpns are good and all, but they require you to setup software on the remote device to connect to it, and that typically routes most if not all your traffic back to the vpn server then out to the internet. That can create speed/bandwidth issues.

A domain allows you to access your services from any Internet connection with 0 configuration on the client side. Just accessing it like any other website.

I also host a vpn directly from my network, that I access/find via my domain. This means I’m not dependent on a public service like tailscale, but can still add additional security to access private only services (stuff I don’t expose to the open internet)

It’s a shame he stopped publishing his words to his own blog and just started linking Xitter posts instead. Can’t read 2/3rds of it without making an account - fuck that.

/edit. I decided to at least voice that opinion to him via the contact form on his blog:

Who knows, maybe he’ll improve that aspect.

What in the fuck have these people been smoking…

I can’t think of a less green form of transportation besides perhaps rockets.

for when they do get a license

We asked Valve whether there was any way to keep the project alive: properly licensed, with their blessing, on their terms. They said no.

Valve’s refused to sell them a licence.

There is no ‘when they do get a license’.

Beg forgiveness instead of ask for permission is a gamble. dBrand lost the dice roll.

If I hit somebody that steps into the street then it’s my fault no matter what.

This is not at all true. If someone steps out in front of you with little or no time for you to react, they’re just as much at fault. It will be much easier to argue that you’re to blame, when you’ve intentionally disabled the saftey device that would have alerted them to your presence though.

Even if it was true however: Just because it would be your fault doesn’t mean you should increase the chances of it happening.

Besides, most people wear earbuds when walking around town.

This is entirely your own false perception. Many if not most people don’t wear headphones near traffic, or at least only wear one, so that they can still hear their suroundings.

Regardless; Some people choosing to blockout sounds is no excuse for you putting everyone else in danger.

You should fix this, or you should be cited for willful public endangerment and the vehicle towed+impounded.

Ouch… Getting injection moulds made is really REALLY pricey. That’s an expensive lesson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation#NAT_hairpinning

TL;DR Your router sees you trying to reach your external address and routes the connection back to your LAN without leaving the network.

This does still depend on a functional internet connection however, as your client gets your public IP from a public DNS server over the Internet.

If you were to run a DNS server locally (I use pihole for this), you could have that DNS respond with your local IP, allowing clients within your LAN to resolve the name without needing to reach out to public DNS. This means your local connections will still work when your internet is down; it also provides more privacy by keeping those requests local and can let you make local-only names that aren’t publicly listed.

Of the ~28 FQDNs in my setup, only 4 are public. The rest is local/vpn only and not publicly listed due the above. The reverse proxy then drops all connections that don’t use one of those recognised names, before even completing the TLS handshake. (So direct connections from someone port scanning my IP or using a domain name someone else has pointed at my IP are completely ignored/dropped without response. The server doesn’t even send the TLS cert so as to not expose the names defined in it.)

proof of the kid and parents thing

Spend some time around todays parents and their young kids. It’s so incredibly common to see small kids (I’m talking 2-8y/o) just completely enticed by a screen, ignoring everything else around them, and screaming their heads off whenever it’s taken away. It’s become a bit of an epidemic, with many many article’s and videos discussing the topic.

Here’s the first result I got on YouTube: (having just now listened to it while typing this comment, it actually does a descent job explaining the problem) https://youtu.be/QE_E9Q9jVzU Feel free to do further searching yourself…

It’s not limited to just children either, they’re just the most susceptible.

Lmao, I think I first saw this one on a post about Russian’s crying about their gas prices/queues.

Boo fucking hoo, the consequences of my (in)actions

I don’t downvote people very often…

When I was around 3 or 4 y/o, a neighbour kid managed to convince me to take a bite of a dried dog shit.

I don’t remember what he’d said that convinced me, I just remember the laughter when I actually did it… I wasn’t the brightest kid, but very curious and gullible.

Yup. There are a few medical conditions that can cause you to fart through your urethra. UTIs, and damage to your bowel mainly.

Your ass, genitals, and mouth can all produce all three states of matter.

Hmm…

I don’t like captcha, (or more specifically; I don’t like being farmed for AI training) however I understand the need to filter out bots vs humans.

I really don’t like the idea of being forced to use a google approved operating system and/or provide documents to prove my legal identity. (With a vague promise that my data will deleted, after it’s distributed to a hundred different affiliates that don’t bother with privacy…)

But this is kind of intriguing, at least on the surface. If you can just point a camera at a bland surface like paper or a blank wall, then perform some hand gestures, to satisfy the ‘I’m human’ test. Without being forced to use anything more. I’d be far happier with that, than I am with the current proposals of ‘upload your govt ID to everyone that asks, to prove you exist. Trust us, we’ll all delete it immediately after, perhaps throw in a facial scan while we’re at it, wouldn’t want to be uncertain…’

So, what’s the catch? I’m sure the footage can and will be used to improve AI video rendering, particularly hands obviously. At least you can choose a background that’s not identifiable, and keep the rest of the scene empty (hopefully?)

Is it going to function on linix PCs with whatever flavor of FOSS or highly customised browser people want to run? Or are people still going to be told, ‘pick a corporate overlord, buy one of their devices and don’t you dare modify it, or good luck accessing modern society.’?

I’m not hopeful of the answers to those questions.

I’d argue that Lemmy is a type of Internet Forum. At least far more so than Discord is. It’s just far more distributed and less focused on a specific topic, while still maintaining the ability to hold longer form individual conversations that are indexed, open to the public, and searchable.

[A comment I posted 9mo ago]

I fucking hate Discord and how it’s absorbed what should be forums.

When I’m creating a discussion online about a particular game or project, I’m looking to hear from the broader community over a longer term; not just limited to whomever happens to be online on this one specific platform at the time of posting.

People have different schedules, we’re not all online together at the same times; especially when you factor in timezones. Discord however makes it massively frustrating if not impossible to hold a discussion unless everyone you want to talk to is present and ready to read and reply now. Otherwise your conversation gets burried in the mess of other people having their own conversations and nobody wants to scroll through thousands of messages in the history of when they last logged on.

You can break out conversations into their own rooms, but that only goes so far and at that point you may as well just have a damn forum; that’s what they are for.

Then you get into the problem of repetition and searchability. People often run into common problems or ask the same questions; but with Discord, you’ve got to re-explain the same things every time they’re brought up, instead of just pointing the user to an old forum post that already solves their problem (they may have even found it themselves through a web search, saving them from even having to ask and waste people’s time. Discord isn’t indexed by search engines so old conversations/solutions are lost).

A group chat platform is not an acceptable replacement for a forum and I will die on that god damn hill.

Deepfakes combined with a romance scam. Pretend to be someone with a legitimate background that you father can verify himself, legitimised with synthetic images and voice (video isn’t quite there in terms of reliable quality, so they stick to static images), some of which will even contain current dates/events and even his name written out, all to make it seem like a real person.

The scammer is playing the long con, building a relationship and slowly working towards a situation where your father wants to give them money, or even slips up and provides them with some sort of access to his accounts. It’s not going to be sudden or obvious. They may not even ask directly, but craft a scenario where your father offers himself.

https://youtu.be/srr0rRgF2Fw

https://youtu.be/ACijyfS3ya4

I wonder just how much would absorb that way… Literally swimming in cocaine?

Skin contact + sweat to disolve it. Breathing in airborne powder. Whatever makes it into your mouth/eyes…

You’re not comming out of that bath sober.