Jeff GeerlingModify

I'm in the process of rebuilding my homelab from the ground up, moving from a 24U full-size 4-post rack to a mini rack.

One of the most difficult devices to downsize (especially economically) is a NAS. But as my needs have changed, I'm bucking the trend of all datahoarders and I need less storage than the 120 TB (80 TB usable) I currently have.

tl;dr: If you're an EU citizen, sign the Stop Killing Games initiative here. Or, if you're in the UK, sign this petition.

A month ago, I had a second video on self-hosting taken down. YouTube said it was 'harmful or dangerous content'. I appealed that, but my appeal was rejected.

Luckily, I have enough reach I was able to get a second chance. Most content creators aren't so lucky, and content about tools like Jellyfin and LibreELEC get buried over time.

But it's not just self-hosting.

Note: This blog post is a lightly edited transcript of my most recent YouTube video, You will own NOTHING and be HAPPY (SKG).

I've had a Pi and SDR earmarked for 'getting weather data from my weather station' for a long time now. I don't know why I waited so long, because it was shockingly easy.

I have a Acurite 5-in-1 weather station (with separate lightning detector) mounted about 15' in the air in my back yard. It comes with a fancy little LCD display to show all the stats it transmits over the 433 MHz wireless frequency.

But I want to ingest that data into my Home Assistant installation, so I can have better access to historical data, set up alerts (like if wind speed is above 50 mph, or there's lightnining less than 10 miles away), etc.

I'll work on the HA integration later, likely using MQTT. But for now, just getting the data to decode on a Raspberry Pi 5 was quick:

I've enjoyed using Ubuntu Server's GitHub SSH pubkey importer for a long time, it's a quick and easy way when doing an interactive server installation to get the built-in OpenSSH server configured for remote SSH access.

However, many computers I work on have Ubuntu Desktop installed instead, and it doesn't even include OpenSSH Server in the default packages!

So I thought I'd write up a quick guide for how to set up SSH on Ubuntu Desktop pulling in my GitHub SSH public keys quickly, since I haven't found a similar guide elsewhere:

Install OpenSSH

Open Terminal and enter the commands:

sudo apt install openssh-server -y
sudo systemctl enable ssh
sudo systemctl start ssh

OpenSSH is running with Ubuntu's default configuration. You can edit the configuration inside /etc/ssh/sshd_config if you want (make sure to systemctl restart ssh after doing so).

Import your GitHub public keys

Ubuntu includes a handy utility that does this for you:

Over on the 2nd channel, I posted a video detailing my process for making thumbnails for my YouTube channel:

My videos target a more technical audience—and often deal with subjects crowds like those on HN might find interesting.

Technical audiences don't often enjoy the feeling of being 'bamboozled', especially in subtle ways that feels like marketing or deception.

Therefore YouTube thumbnails are often a contentious topic. In the early days, thumbnails were just a still frame from the video, meaning it was harder (but not impossible) to 'game the system' and introduce clickbait.

Any time I show power consumption graphs for the SBCs, computers, and servers I test, I get a number of comments asking for more details about the setup.

It's quite simple, really: using my Home Assistant Yellow's built-in Zigbee radio, I connect a number of ThirdReality Zigbee Smart Outlets to it, and then I use ApexCharts Cards to add graphs of power consumption over time on my Home Assistant dashboards.