I don’t work in IT at all. My self hosting journey started when I got sick of feeling powerless in the face of big tech companies who are increasingly ripping off customers or violating their right to privacy. There’s also the general mistrust that comes from my data being repeatedly breached or leaked because share holder profits are more important than investing in basic security.

When I say local I mean automated PVE backups the same as it would be through PBS. If that makes any difference.

I have a remote pbs but the backups aren’t current because there was a connection error. I have Proxmox backups locally to a USB thumbdrive. That’s what I was going to restore from.

This is the way. Frigate just had a major update and the UI is now amazing.

I had a few episodes saved offline in my apple podcast app but it appears you are correct. Surely there’s an archive somewhere?

In most cases it’s just too annoying of a process to get on the list. But I understand why the invidious team prefers to vet instances rather then have something like a beacon system that auto populates all consenting instances.

Some other good instances:

• https://iv.nowhere.moe
• https://yt.dupindustries.com
• https://invidious.reallyaweso.me
• https://inv.tux.pizza

I operate an invidious instance. Google has really cracked down the past two weeks on YouTube front ends. Its extremely frustrating.

Invidious devs are finalizing a workaround so hopefully things will be working again in the next week or two.

Damn. You’re correct. My brain saw instance and ignored the rest.

Looking in the NewPipe settings I found a place to enter instances and there is one already configured. I guess I was proxied the whole time without realizing. Thanks for the clarification btw.

I often wish all services could provide an opt out “I’m aware no 2fa is risky but I really don’t give a damn about this account so fuck off with the constant email verifications”. Or if companies insist on forcing 2fa, at least support hardware keys. Don’t even get me started about banks…

Good point. I’m aware of the icloud method of imessage cracking, but I often forget that I’m not always the weakest link; it’s up to the people around you as well.

I eventually managed to get the yubikey to work, although it is very buggy and the steps to get it working are unacceptable IMO for the “most secure phone OS”. Hardware keys should be a major priority and should simply work just as easily as using passwords, but it seems to be a stale open feature request for a few years. Luckily for me, once bitwarden is authenticated with 2fa I don’t need my hardware key unless I reinstall it. So that’s one major hurdle behind me. Another plus is that while you need sandboxed google services to utilize hardware key auth, they don’t need network permissions to work.

If iMessages are e2ee and you aren’t using iCloud, is there any evidence your messages aren’t private? As far as I’m aware iMessage is considered a very secure messaging channel. It seems like most people distrust it due to the Apple affiliation. Not that I blame them, I feel the same about Google.

Just for the sake of getting used to / transitioning to a single gos phone, does it make sense to use the insecure phone as a hotspot and utilize the pixel without a sim (so data only device). I would be using e2e encrypted apps for texts and calls so this makes sense in my head.

Appreciate the info.

It seems absurd to me that a third party online service is required for a hardware key to work in the first place. I figured it would be authenticating strictly between the locked service and the user.

Most helpful comment. Thank you. I’m heavily considering carrying two phones. My biggest hurdle is the Yubikey at this point because it locks me out of my password manager and most of my more important apps.

You mention using the usb-c connection. I tried that but it doesn’t seem to register. I guess I just need to research some more.

Thanks for giving me some hope!

When I initiate Yubikey auth via NFC in Bitwarden, it takes me to a Yubikey demo page. From what I’m reading online, for some reason I need to install google play for the key to work correctly.

Also seeing lots of chatter on the forums that a recent gos update broke most banking apps and they’re working on a fix.

Thank you for the info about the keyboard. I’ll check that one out.

I really like mostly everything about GrapheneOS on paper. The UI, user profiles, security features. It’s the inability to use it in a practical setting that’s frustrating me. Yet I see many people claiming they switched to GrapheneOS a month or a year ago and love it. So there’s got to be a solution. I can’t imagine those individuals installed gos and it was smooth sailing since day 1.

Oh this is pretty cool.