2026-10-03 08:00:17
The N100 mini PC has been an automatic recommendation for home lab use since it was introduced, and it earned that spot legitimately. It's low power with cores powerful enough to run a decent collection of services on, and it doesn't cost a fortune to leave running 24/7. It's still a good mini PC, but if you're entering into the market today and looking for something brand-new, the N150 costs about the same. Just don't overpay for it, because the N100 is still a worthy node in many respects.
2026-10-03 07:19:20
Buying second-hand hardware is smart if you want to keep the costs down, but it turns out that anti-cheat mechanisms in video games are getting so advanced that they can blacklist specific components from confirmed cheaters. Someone discovered this the hard way when they purchased a second-hand CPU, put it into their PC, and then got immediately banned from Valorant when they booted it up.
2026-10-03 07:00:19
I never set out to fill my Windows PC with open-source software. It happened gradually as I found tools that fit the way I work better than some of the alternatives I had tried. The surprising part came later when I realized how many of these tools were connected to Microsoft. Some are fully open source, while others have an open-source foundation with Microsoft's own additions. I had been using them for years without really thinking about where they came from. Here are a few that have become regular parts of my Windows setup, and the Microsoft connection surprised me.
2026-10-03 06:22:18
Whether or not 2026 will become the 'year of Linux' is highly debatable, but one thing that's objectively true is that it's the year when lines were drawn in the sand over AI use in Linux projects. Now, COSMIC is the latest development team to make its stance known, as it declares a hard pass on all LLM-created content, including comments and descriptions.
2026-10-03 06:00:21
I was tired of my titles in my Plex library showing up at random. Even with the best companion apps, I end up flipping endlessly through movies and poster art icons, trying to find something to watch. I wanted a new experience more like linear TV, so I could turn my self-hosted library into a TV station.
2026-10-03 05:30:18
I started self-hosting to take control of the services I use every day. Over time, though, I noticed that some of my setup worked better on a desktop than anywhere else. That became annoying whenever I was away from my computer and needed quick access to something running on my server. Instead of treating mobile access as an afterthought, I started looking at it when choosing services for my stack. That changed how I built my setup. I began favoring tools that offered a proper mobile experience alongside their self-hosted versions, without sacrificing the flexibility I wanted.
