TrumpetX

I prefer the term “Meat Proxy”, but I get that it’s more of an ad hominem. I use both terms.

This guy stole my brain and dumped out all the thoughts I have.

I wanted to like only office, but it’s just not as good. Better than libre, I think. O365 is still the best (as much as I hate it).

So, I installed zwave lights everywhere. It was a giant pain!

I replaced them all with light switches that have motion sensors. Some turn off automatically after being turned on with no motion. Some turn on somatically with motion (and off again later.)

A small handful were turned back into normal light switches because I didn’t want the automation for those rooms.

To me, THAT is automation. Wherever I was thinking about using an app from my bed was not automation. I just moved the light switch to my phone.

Should people use OSS? Yes. Should it be illegal to not to? Hell no.

The advertising caveat there I can get behind, but that’s not about paid vs unpaid.

Policy and legality are two wildly different things.

I bounced around a bit after Storj decided to hate consumers and institute massive minimums.

I’ve landed on Backblaze B2, S3 compatible. Add others have mentioned, doing a shared NAS 2 NAS hookup with a friend or family member is a nice ideal way to do it without monthly fees.

I use Borg backup from my PCs to a NAS (QNAP), and from there using the built in backup software to go off-site. My self hosted PCs will mount NAS drives directly (like immich and audiobookshelf) and those are also in the NAS off-site job.

Reolink stores to a SD card with the option to upload to FTP backups.

I suspect a big 128 gb card would be good enough without off-site storage.

Dumped it last year. It was a good run.

Onn boxes from Walmart are hands down the best deal out there. $45-50 for the pro is solid.

It has boat, but you can get custom launchers or place it in app only mode to cut down on that.

I just picked up a Reolink, great privacy so far. I haven’t set up Home Assistant yet, but I’ve read it’s not great.

Look into zen.ai which is opencode’s sister company that provides llm access. “At cost”

You can see just how cheap they are. I use Augment Code at work and they have kimi 2.6. It’s really solid. Opus/GPT are still better, but for many tasks, kimi works great and doesn’t make me cringe at the price.

Qwen 3.6 is supposed to be really good too. I haven’t used it that much.

+1 to everything this guy said for me as well.

I’ll add that I think the price is probably too high for what I use, but it’s still worth it to not use Google.