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rufus

@rufus@discuss.tchncs.de

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rufus OP , (edited )

Thanks. Yeah I know most of the story/history of Matrix. I'm just now making the decisions for the years to come. And Dendrite has been the announced successor to Synapse for quite some time now... I'm not sure what to make of this. If it's going to happen soon, I'd like to switch now. And not move again and relocate my friends more times than necessary.

Judging by the graphs on my Netdata, Synapse plus the database are currently eating more resources than I'd like for just chat. Afaik the other projects were meant to address that. But I've never used anything else. And I've always refrained from joining large rooms because people told me that'd put considerable load on the server. If there's a better solution I'm open to try even if it's not the default choice... It just needs to work for my use-case. I don't necessarily need feature-completeness.

Yeah, with the multiple domains: I meant I have 1 VPS and like 3 domain names for different projects. I have a single email-server, one webserver and they just handle all three domains. Even Prosody (XMPP) has "VirtualHost" directives and I only need to run it once to provide service on all the different domains. With Matrix this doesn't seem to be the case... I'd need to launch 3 different instances of Synapse simultaneously on that one server and do some trickery with the reverse http proxy. That'd be more expensive and take more time and effort. I don't really care about how the identities are handled internally, I can provide them in a format that is supported. And the users are seperate anyways. It's just: I'd like to avoid running the same software three times in parallel.

rufus ,

Out of curiosity: Do you have to deal with that much spam? If so: Is there a specific reason?

Because I only get some bot join one of the public rooms and start spamming every few months or so. And we deal with that pretty quickly. My own account has been perfectly safe for years... So my experience is different. Might be my usage-pattern vs yours?!

rufus , (edited )

Quite some AI questions coming up in selfhosted in the last few days...

Here's some more communities I'm subscribed to:

And a few inactive ones on lemmy.intai.tech

I'm using koboldcpp and ollama. KoboldCpp is really awesome. In terms of hardware it's an old PC with lots of RAM but no graphics card, so it's quite slow for me. I occasionally rent a cloud GPU instance on runpod.io Not doing anything fancy, mainly role play, recreational stuff and I occasionally ask it to give me creative ideas for something, translate something or re-word or draft an unimportant text / email.

Have tried coding, summarizing and other stuff, but the performance of current AI isn't enough for my everyday tasks.

rufus ,

What's that got to do with AI?

Edit: Ah. Probably the search bar from the screenshot.

rufus ,

Isn't that very similar to what TikTok does? Just with a different algorithm and maybe other content than just videos?

rufus ,

Everyone hates that.

rufus ,

Thanks for broadening my perspective.

rufus ,

Hmmh. Good reminder not to rely on these cloud services too much. And I mean the terms and services are kinda vague and enforced by a (rogue) AI. She could have stored murder mystery stories to the same effect.

rufus , (edited )

They're fairly known to do this. For YouTube creators it's been this way for years. With nobody at the other side, just AI. Every now and then some YouTuber makes a video how they were able to restore their account against all odds.

I mean with that it's bad because peoples livelihood is on the line. But also getting a regular Google account can have serious consequences. People use it to login to other services, have half their lives stored there and their phones connected.

And I think there is a general push towards AI powered customer support. I'm afraid in 10 years it'll be very hard to reach anyone that can help you if it's not the standard procedure. And it'll be more a sci-fi dystopia. With most companies and contracts.

rufus ,

Hmmh. That is about a different author who said that on Instagram. And reading that Instagram post (which I haven't done before) ... There seems to be more to it. Sharing documents with explicit content with multiple people seems to be the issue. And that'd align with my experience. I've worked on 'normal' Google cloud documents with ~30 to 50 people and nothing ever happened. That could be coincidence but I suppose lots of people do that. Maybe it's really the combination of the two factors.

rufus ,

Sounds more like a floppy disk drive to me.

The EFF is missing the point with the American Privacy Rights Act (www.eff.org)

The EFF has been calling for national private legislation for a while but now that we have something on the table they are criticizing it. They are calling for state level laws but the problem with local laws is that there are 50 different states for companies to try to keep track of. The other problem with local legislation is...

rufus , (edited )

It depends on how "far from perfect" the bill is. I think most of the times it is wise to revise a bill before it gets passed because it becomes more complicated after that. You'd need a whole new bill for that, start at zero with that, and convince everyone that it's necessary to tackle the same issue yet again. Of course the role of the EFF also is to advocate for privacy and the people and pick on things if politicians don't do it right, not agree with a healf-hearted attempt. So they're bound to be negative about smaller issues with any proposed solution.

I see some valid concerns. There are several loopholes. Some things won't get protected. I think it's a bit strange that contractors can do whatever they want. And "pay-for-privacy" isn't what we should strive for. Sure, it aligns well with American ideology, but it only helps the rich and people with time at hand to care about such things, while exploiting the average Joe and 98% of the population.

And immediately introducing a mandatory ceiling is more caring for the big tech companies, than for the citizen.

(Edit: Concerning the "pay-for-privacy": https://lemmy.world/post/14442251 )

rufus ,

Sure, I mean the needs and wants of the consumer and the companies can be opposed to each other. It'd be convenient for the companies if it were simple(r). Maybe at the cost of the people.

I'm not that gifted with the lawmaking process in the USA. I don't really understand what is the responsibility of whom, national or federal... It sounds to me more like an issue with complexity of having a federal republic than anything with privacy...

And I mean you already have different legislation in all of the states that affect businesses and what they can sell to whom. (And how.)

rufus , (edited )

Hehe, No it's up and running. I also don't get the question. Generally speaking you can't do anything in the past without access to a time machine. You can only ever do things in the presence. present time.

rufus ,

In the presence of whom

hehe. i meant in the present time

Why do we have to do the health insurance company's job for them?

Just so tired of almost every time a doctor submits stuff to insurance, we have to be the ones to make multiple phone calls to both the doctor's office and insurance to iron everything out, figure out what the issue is (it's always a different issue), and basically be the go-between for the office and insurance. What am I...

rufus , (edited )

It is unique to the way healthcare works in the USA. I don't know why, the complete system looks broken. I can only tell you we pay less for healthcare here in Europe and we don't have to call unless it's really complicated and a rare situation. I'm sorry if that sound a bit off and doesn't help...

rufus , (edited )

Hmmh. I recently learned about that. Seems to be roughly 1980 (Reagan era?) when things started going really sideways and nowadays it's just bad beyond words...

Life_expectancy_vs_healthcare_spending

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_United_States

rufus , (edited )

That was the graph that opened my eyes a bit back in another discussion. I knew that people were dying in the States because they can't afford insulin/medication/treatment. But I somehow thought they were at least paying less for healthcare and just poor and society didn't care about people in need. But it's way worse. They are dying 2 years earlier WHILE paying twice as much for healthcare. And ruined financially if anything happens to them or their loved ones.

And all of that is a scheme to rip off everyone. Sadly a quite successful scheme for decades already. I mean I'm really amazed by the extent. And I wonder if it were possible to adopt another style, give healthcare to everyone plus every citizen an additional $5.000 for free each year. I don't really see that happening though. Every government in the past decades, no matter their color, has contributed to keep that graph going in this direction.

Edit: And I'd like to see that diagram for a few other countries. Not just against Europe, Japan, Australia, Israel and Korea.

rufus , (edited )

I don't think that's what the graph shows at all. It shows what the average person spends on healthcare each year versus what they get out of it (life expectancy.)

It does so for several countries and shows how things changed over the last half a century. The steeper a line of a country is, the more the healthcare system and medicine has improved. The flatter a line is, the more money you're pumping into the system for less benefit. And medicine should improve. We've made quite some progress since the 1970s and found cures to ilnesses that were a death sentence back then.

That people need more treatment if they're old is a true fact. But it's not really depicted in this graph. Sure it's somewhere in the numbers but you'd need a different diagram for that. Keep in mind that also in the 1970s people grew older and there were old people around... People had grandmas back then. And also people nowadays are healthier for a longer period of time and also retire later. These things work against what demographics makes worse. But it also doesn't cancel out each other. You'd need a more comprehensive study and more number to tell, not just speculation which is most certainly wrong.

But the mere fact that the line for the USA is such an outliar shows that there is something severely wrong with that healthcare system. And you can see when it started and that it steadily continues this way. Either you're a different species and medicine works differently for US citizens than for Europeans, or you have severely unique circumstances in the country, or you're just getting ripped off and some people get rich with the billions that don't contribute towards health.

And that you someday retire and become a burden on the system is how it's supposed to be. That's why you paid all the money during the decades you worked, despite not being sick (yet.)

And there are some more pecularities in the graph. For example you can see that life expectancy is actually decreasing(!) in the last years. That could depict the drugs (Fentanyl deaths) and the rise of suicide in the last years. I'm not sure but these could be possible explanations. Also im Germany where I live mortality rises. Especially during the Covid years and somehow it affects people from the eastern parts of Germany more than people from the western part of the country. That's all not in this graph however and the reasons are complex. I'm not sure what the cause is for the decline shortly before 2018. People speculate it's influenza waves and things like that.

rufus ,

Maybe consider a tool made for the task and not just some random Claude, which isn't trained on this at all and just makes up some random impression of what an expert could respond in a drama story?!

rufus , (edited )

It's because you're exactly in their blind spot. If they're on the street and you're on the sidewalk next to them. They'll run you over at the next junction, as it has happened in this case. It's always right turns and things to the side of cars. And you'll be exactly there when cycling on the sidewalk.

Additionally car drivers don't anticipate fast moving things on the sidewalk. They'll have a quick glance at the sidewalk directly before and after the junction. Because a pedestrian can only move so far in the time until they made the turn. Then they'll watch out for other traffic on the street, signals and so on. In the meantime you'll emerge out of nowhere on the pavement, moving at 5x the speed of anything that's anticipated to be there and that's going to be a problem.

I don't know how it's in the US. But generally you should just cycle in plain sight directly infront of them on the road. It's difficult to miss that.

rufus ,

As I said I don't know how driving is in the US. I heard it's really bad in some places. I know it's the way we do it here. There is just one road and cars and bicycles need to get along and share it. It's not always easy, you're right with that. But the sideway isn't an option. Pedestrians and bicycles don't mix well and there regularly are really bad accidents. And the cyclists also get killed by cars there.

There are studies. You end up having a 10x or 20x higer chance to die when cycling on the sideway by being missed by a car driver (I forgot the exact numbers). You can try and mitigate for that by really paying attention yourself, slowing down etc. Keeping track of all the cars around you. I'm not sure if you end up at the same chance to die as if you were cycling on the street. I'd hop off my bike and walk it across the junction if i were on the sideway.

Btw. is it legal to cycle on a sideway where you live?

rufus , (edited )

I think you're right. Having a semi go past you at 50mph is mental.

I think at some point I need a detailed lecture on how cycling feels in the USA or go and see for myself. It's really difficult for me to judge all of this. Only thing I can say is the sidewalk is a very, very dangerous alternative. But it might very well be the case that you don't have a good alternative.

We usually avoid sharing roads where cars drive at 50mph. Most of the time it's 30mph where you'd get in such a situation. You're allowed to use the sidewalk if you're younger than 10 yo. It's plain illegal for people older than that. In the city cars have to keep a minimum distance of 1.5m to bicycles, that's about 5 feet in crazy people's units. Usually that means the car drivers are forced to switch lanes when going past a bicycle. And it's a bit more sideways distance outside of the cities. All of those rules are written in blood. We're not good at sharing the roads, but car drivers slowly learn to abide by the law and actually keep that distance, it's really getting better in recent times. (But far from perfect.) And my city is half-heartedly building some more bicycle lanes and seperate small roads across the city, exclusive to bicycles. All of that is a major effort and we still get accidens on a regular basis.

Take care.

rufus ,

This isn't a new thing. It's been a long time ago that the internet shifted from being a level playing field and a means of connecting people, to a place where the big companies make money. And it brought some of the currently biggest companies on earth into existence.

Things changed a bit. Harvesting private data and selling information about the users used to be the dominating business model. It still is, but now it gets mixed with selling their content to train AI. I'd argue that in itself isn't a dramatic change. It's still the same concept.

But I also always worry about centralization, enshittification and algorithms shaping our perspective on reality more and more.

rufus ,

Yeah, I think comments shouldn't vanish along with a deleted post. And posts and comments shouldn't get automatically deleted alongside an account. Somehow everything is just the other way around here. And it's rarely a good thing.

rufus ,

Why do so many people tunnel their personal data through cloudflare anyways? No port forwarding possible? Or afraid of DDoS attacks? Or am I missing something?

rufus ,

Thx, that is a good reason to do it. I'm eventually going to lose my static IPv4 address, too. But I'm preparing to move some of my services to a VPS instead and in the process set up the firewall and the reverse proxy to the Nextcloud on my homeserver and so on there (on that VPS.)

rufus , (edited )

Thx for explaining. I'm not sure if I'm willing to do the same trade-offs. Supposedly their WAF is very good and quite some people use it. Probably for a good reason... It just comes at a hefty price. I'm doing selfhosting to emancipate myself, stay independent and in control. I'm not sure if becoming dependant on a single large company and terminating my encryption on their servers that do arbitrary magic and whatever with my packets is something that aligns with my goals. (Or ethics, since I think the internet is to connect people on a level playing field. And that's no longer the case once many people transfer control to a single entity.) But I don't see a way around that. Afaik you have to choose between one or the other. Are there competitors to cloudflare that handle things differently? Maybe provide people with the WAF and databases to run on their own hardware, let them stay in control and just offer to tunnel their encrypted data with a configurable firewall?

Edit: Just found modsecurity.org while looking that up. But I guess a good and quick database of bad actors' IPs is another thing that would be needed for an alternative solution.

rufus ,

Ah. Makes sense. I don't think you have to specifically use cloudflare in that case. But I remember CNAME records can't be used for everything... there are some limitations. I know I had issues with dyndns and a domain at some point. I just can't remember the details. I know it didn't work with every registrar / DNS provider. But some of them offer some magic to make some things work. I believe back then we ended up transferring that domain to some other hoster. And my domains are with a company that offers an API. I can just have a small script run in the background that changes around entries and do dyndns that way. But obviously you need to pay attention to things like the time to live for your records and set it accordingly once you do dyndns yourself.

rufus ,

Thanks. I read a lot of people recommending cloudflare. I believe a substantial amount of that group is on the free tier and not exactly making informed choices. Being a registrar, DNS provider and offering tunneling / port forwarding or some mechanism to traverse your home NAT are valid use-cases.

rufus , (edited )

I mean theoretically... I guess, if they do it right? It depends a bit. Some Linux distributions are crazy fast with patching stuff. And some stable channels have a really good track record of open vulnerabilities. Nowadays that's not the only way of distributing software, vulnerability might depend on your docker container setup etc.

Are there actual numbers what Cloudflare adds on top? What 0-days they focus on? I mean do they have someone sitting there, reading Lemmy CVEs and then immediately getting to action to write a regex that filters out such requests?

And how much does it cost? They also list the same ModSecurity in their lower plans. I don't think 0day protection would help people like me if it's $200 a month.

rufus , (edited )

https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/10128/2237/how-to-create-an-alias-record/

https://kb.porkbun.com/article/85-how-to-connect-your-root-domain-when-your-web-host-wont-provide-an-ip-address

Took me a while to remember... I think other providers don't call it CNAME flattening, but ALIAS records. And namecheap lists them in their documentation. You maybe need to look it up if you're interested, but I think they do in fact offer it. (I mean I'm not advertising for or against anything here. If you're happy with your provider and your setup works, that's fine. It's definitely not available everywhere.)

rufus , (edited )

I tried to look it up but I wasn't very successful. What they do in their free tier keeps being a mystery to me. In the $20/month is the the core ruleset from ModSecurity. I don't need to pay them $20 to deploy that for me, the dataset is free and publicly available. I've just installed it on my VPS... It's only a few lines in Nginx to enable that.

And what you're talking about is $200 a month. I seriously doubt anyone here uses that plan for their homeserver. I wouldn't pay $2400 in a year for it.

I still don't get how that would work. Sure you can filter spam that way. And migitate attacks while the worst wave washes through the net. Or do machine learning and find out if usage patterns change. But how would it extend to 0-days faster than the software gets patched? This sounds more like snake-oil to me. If someone finds a way to inject something into a Nextcloud plugin and change things in the database so they have access... And then they do it to 100 cloudflare customers... How would Cloudflare know? If it's a 0-day, they -per definition- don't know in advance. And they're just WAF, they don't know if a user is authorized by mistake or if they're supposed to have access. And they don't know anything about my database, since it runs on my machine. And they also don't know about the endpoints of the software and which request is going to trigger a vulnerability unless this manifests in some obvious (to them) way. Like 100 machines immediately start blasting spam through their connection and there is one common request in the logfiles. Otherwise all they can do is protect against known exploits. Maybe race the software vendor and filter things before they got patched. I just don't see any substantial 0-day protection that extends to more than "keep your server up to date and don't use unmaintained software." Especially not for the home-user.

rufus ,

Thx for explaining. I think I halfway know what this is about now. I don't think I'm their target group. But I learned something about web application firewalls in the process and that is a good thing. I think I'm going to activate that for some of my private services since it's so easy and look up if there are good ip ban lists. It's a bummer that I don't get to see proper documentation on this, since security is all about exact facts and scenarios. But I guess no answer is also an answer. If they just feed buzzwords to me, either my initial skepticism was warranted, or I'm just not their target audience and they only target enterprise users. Either way I'm better off with my current approach. I appreciate I got to learn something :-)

rufus , (edited )

Cloudflare, Pagekite, a cheap VPS with a reverse proxy. Maybe IPv6-only access if your CGNat does that, ngrok, serveo, rathole, sish, a VPN... I also found portmap-io, webhook relay, packetriot and countless other smaller companies. There are quite some tools and services available. And which one is right for you might depend on the exact situation and what you're hosting. I'm not an expert on this. I have an internet connection without a NAT, and additionally a really tiny VPS with a mailserver, a small website and wireguard. I just use that to tunnel through NAT if i need to. But that means I haven't compared all the other services since I don't need them (yet.) I've learned a bit about Cloudflare from this discussion.

eBay restricted my account permanently and won't help me with it

I'm a casual eBay user. On rare occasions, I will sell household items when I no longer use them. Well, I went to sell my Nintendo Switch on eBay and found out my account has been restricted indefinitely selling. When I tried chat with the customer service agent, they provided a name of some entity that I don't recognize in...

rufus ,

Maybe AI? I mean there wasn't anything of substance in the replies.

rufus ,

Anyone an idea or a link what kind of AI they want to run on people's machines? Will it add something for the user or just annoy you and add more targeted advertising?

rufus ,

Hehe, pretty sure it's that. With Microsoft's history of letting loose racist and unhinged chatbots... I'm eager to get to know Clippy v2.

rufus ,

Forgejo is a fork of Gitea. As of now I don't think they have diverged much. So they're about the same. It was mainly created because of the takeover of the domain and trademark by a for profit company. Not because of different functionality.

https://forgejo.org/compare/#why-was-forgejo-created

Shrinkflation hits IKEA Family by removing 5% discount (i.imgur.com)

IKEA Family is a membership program, like grocery store memberships. The only real feature of the program was their 5% discount. But now, they are getting rid of it to focus on "New Lower Price offers". I'm not holding my breath that their prices are going to come down anytime soon....

rufus ,

Hey, that's unfair. Here in Germany we don't get 5% discount with IKEA family. Just discount on a few select (changing) products and free coffee.

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