If you don’t mind horror, I would definitely recommend SOMA. It’s also one of those games where it’s best to go in blind. If you are interested, do yourself a favour and do not look at any spoilers before playing.

Lots to think about.

Mapping with this app is a lot of fun! Sometimes I just go for a walk and open up StreetComplete to see if I can add some small contributions, like the opening hours of some nearby establishment or whether a given entity is still at the location.

You can also customize what kind of questions are shown so you can skip on things you may not like.

Thanks for the tips and your measurements!

I have previously tried selfhosting searX with varying results

I know of protectli, but I wouldn’t consider it a low-budget option. I mean it is reasonably cheap, but I was hoping I could get away with some much cheaper used hardware.

Thanks, never heard of Zimaboard, sounds interesting

Thanks for these insights! Gigabit is of secondary priority at the moment, just a nice to have. Maybe in the future I would break things up even more and have a dedicated firewall with minimal resources, then this machine I am planning on getting now would be a dedicated OpenBSD based server for proxying, load balancing, etc (basically everything I can do easily on OpenBSD without docker) and finally I would also have a stronger box for several docker services.

Wouldn’t there generally be a significant power draw difference between an SFF and a smaller (micro, mini, SBC…) machine?

Thanks, I haven’t considered ThinkCentres much yet. I should have mentioned that I am located in Central Europe, so I am a bit more limited on options where I can get hardware. I am a bit worried about shipping costs when ordering from abroad.

I found an offer for an M700 tiny with an i5-6500T, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and an SSD included, for €120. Is that in a similar ballpark as the M720q you mentioned?

Honestly, I don’t think I am likely to find 8th gen i5 boxes in my area (haven’t seen any adverts so far).

I have used mailbox.org before migrating to my own server. Pretty solid.

Pixel 7 for GrapheneOS

It’s kind of broken at the moment, but I have set up duplicity to create encrypted backups to Bacblaze B2 buckets.

Of course the proper way would be to back up to at least 2 more locations. Perhaps a local NAS for starters. Also could be configured in duplicity.

The only smart appliances I have ATM are smart light bulbs. These also partially contribute to saving energy (eg turn off lights when nobody is home / in the room), but even if that is not your priority, you can set up nice automations to soften the light as it becomes darker. I also use HA with Rhasspy to voice-control the lights.

As for fridge contents tracking, I wish there was a usable solution to what you describe. I have tried Grocy (can be integrated with HA), which looked nice, but I eventually stopped as it took a really long time to maintain. After each shopping, I had to input everything I bought (almost an hour usually). Then, each time you use something (eat a bun with some cheese, finish a bottle of milk, open a new sachet of some seasoning, etc), you must ‘consume’ it in Grocy. 99% of the time I forgot or was too lazy (once again, it just takes too much effort) and therefore the stock database was always out of date, making the whole thing useless.

Other things: I haven’t tried yet, but I also want to acquire some cheap sensors for temperature, and perhaps other things that I can’t think of right now. Maybe turn on the AC for a bit when it gets too warm (and somebody is in the room)?