Universities all have programs that let you rent out computers.

Hah. What the hell would upscaling a sedan even get me. My car car play CDs!!

… I think I am good.

I feel you misread. I mean what I spelled, county, the collection of cities that define the specific region I live in.

My library card gives me access to many libraries in that county, which yes, has works from people across the globe.

I know. It is not great. I ended up using FFMPEG to upscale to 4k using lanzcos filter.

Not the crispest, but vastly more watchable.

I will try AI upscaling when I can.

I have been rekindling my patronage to my county’s libraries and archive.org.

Sure, these are DVDs, but they can be upscaled and are easily backed up.

I buy a crap load of books like I have a spending problem, but I get them used from bookstores and thriftstores. Libraries will always have something I can’t find, with the added glory of browsing serendipity.

Sure, I like to pirate, but there is more treasure at your ports than you think.

Proxmox is awesome. Sort of the answer to most of my server wants.

Honestly, a terabyte can be filled up pretty quicky just with video games. High resolution films add up quicker than you think.

The library is good if you have the hardware to rip.

Not to mention stuff from the Internet Archive, which has all the things you definitely have never seen. It is nearly bizarre the gems one can find in the public domain.

Cool recommendation! I just bought one!

I am hoping with all hope that it will let me replace my Roku for streaming.

As great as the functionality of the Roku is, the constant advertising makes me loath this thing. I do not want it anymore.

That is the thing, I am willing to pay for email, because then the incentives are real to the provider to follow best practices for privacy and quality of life, but the pricing blows up too quickly due to to features I will never use. I need something more granular.

I am also looking at Disroot and Posteo, which I like because the have hardened ethical principles driving their services, and that is worth supporting.

Hell yes, I love the enthusiasm! I just got a domain, which is giving me 3 months of email, so that is great. I feel like Tutanota is the most honest email service when it comes to advertising privacy, and they do some stuff that Proton definitely does not, like make recovery impossible without a key, and use no other method.

My next step is to get a VPS, and Hetzner is the name I have seen pop up the most. I will use that.

Thank you!

Hm, I could have looked at namecheap too. I ended up going with Porkbun because of well… it is cute and lovely. Not a great reason to choose a service, but it came highly recommended.

Thank you for the offer! There seems to be a lot of packages that automate all the hard stuff, so I think the hardest part is actually getting my own domain and paying for a remote server.

Any suggestions on that?

Yeah, I think getting my own domain is the first step I have never taken. Closest thing to web development I have done is a Neocities I have not messed with since getting an account.

Fuck them. Even after completely degoogling they still manage to fuck everyone over.

Neato. Yeah, just today I spent more than that on a haircut. Will deeply consider it.

That is cool. Everytime I have created a new email account, it has been an island. Never learned to preserve emails… Well, except the one time I use Thunderbird. I should set that up again. Maybe it would solve my issue of multiple accounts??

In any case I like consolidation and I don’t like logging into a website everytime if I can avoid it.

This is what I want! I want that granular control of having an email address compartmentalized for specific kinds of communication. I mean, I know it is something provided by basically all email providers, but I don’t know, for sure there are limitations. A unique address for each website seems like such a smart thing to do, on top of being stingy with giving out my email address.

That was a sobering read. We all feel victorious when we see big tech fail after they wronged their users, but fundamental technologies that actually run the world have already been lost, and may never be recoverable for egalitarian use.

Damn, it is so bizarre that email of all things would be the least operable by tech savvy individuals. Someone linked an article that explains it, and it truly is depressing. Like, it makes me not want to even have email… which is not really possible if I want to be employed. Eh, it’s not like I DON’T already have free email accounts, I just don’t always like the decision my provider makes.

I think this is the solution I was thinking about in the first place. I was just musing about it being part of a home lab. I have to consider whether this solution is is better than just paying for secure email.