Wow, this is awesome!

I don’t want much in a smart watch, really just notifications and some nominal ability to interact with them (snooze/dismiss reminders, pause/skip what’s playing, etc).

An ePaper screen fits my use-case just fine. Easily readable in most situations, and crazy low power draw.

When you say sync, what are you wanting to sync?

Passwords, keys, etc? Bitwarden (maybe with vaultwarden).

Going from memory, I think the app Immich is often talked about as a server for your own photos. I haven’t tried it yet.

Oh, nice combo of tools. May actually be a better approach than Resilio or Syncthing.

Comes from being a compromise “standard”. The name says it all, being named after a king that brought multiple tribes together.

I had an “unlimited” plan with a cell company - I took them at their word and downloaded gobs of stuff. Got shut down in a week.

Syncthing.

Möbius on iOS, Syncthing on Mac/Linux, SyncTrayzor on Windows, Syncthing-Fork on Android.

Alternatively Resilio Sync.

I do find Resilio works better for iOS - it handles photos better due to iOS restrictions.

A used flagship is a great phone (except for the glass nonsense, give me all plastic please). It’s all I buy, 2 or 3 year old flagship for 1/4 the price of new.

I just upgraded from a 2017 flagship to a Pixel 5, for $120!

I haven’t had a charging concern for Bluetooth for probably 10 years.

Today, my ear buds have a case. If I use them for music for 8 hours, they tell me they need charging. That’s how much they’ve improved.

The charging case rarely needs charging, and it supports wireless, so I just set it on the charging base.

A “must”, only for a subset of users.

If it were truly a “must”, more people would be complaining.

I get it, you find Bluetooth unappealing for reasons, just like I find larger phones unappealing. Unfortunately, we’re a minority, neither of these are a “must” for most people.

Make sure your stuff is not visibly dirty?

It’s dirty clothes. Please, enlighten me on how to make it “not visibly dirty”.

Life is messy. Ever changed a baby’s diaper? A cloth one? And had them pee and poop on you while doing it?

That’s life. It’s messy.

Oh, neat setup!

So, paid app (if you want wireless sync) - Media Monkey.

The Android app can read network shares and network media servers (I forget exactly what it can read). But it works best if you run the server app - then you can stream the library or sync media, similar to iTunes.

The Android app is free for basic functionality ($5 for wireless sync), the desktop/server app is free ($30 to enable wireless sync and a few other features). It’s been worth it for me. Even the free versions work very well.

Damn, 5 years from LTS? That’s impressive

Documentation has been mentioned already, what I’d add to that is planning.

Start with a list of high-level objectives, as in “Need a way to save notes, ideas, documents, between multiple systems, including mobile devices”.

Then break that down to high-level requirements such as “Implement Joplin, and a sync solution”.

Those high-level requirements then spawn system requirements, such as Joplin needs X disk space, user accounts, etc.

Each of those branches out to technical requirements, which are single-line, single-task descriptions (you can skip this, it’s a nice-to-have):

“Create folder Joplin on server A”

“Set folder permissions XYZ on Joplin folder”

Think of it all as a tree, starting from your objectives. If you document it like this first, you won’t go doing something as you build that you won’t remember why you’re doing it, or make decisions on the fly that conflict with other objectives.

Yep.

I have friends in the SMB space, one thing they do is a regular backup verification (quarterly). At that frequency, restoring even a few files (especially to a new VM), is very indicative, especially if it’s a large dataset (e.g. Quickbooks).

In Enterprise, we do all sorts of validation, depending on the system. Some is performed as part of Data Center operations, some is by IT (those are separate things), some by Business Unit management and their IT counterparts.

Performance may be an issue. It’s not specifically designed for streaming performance, and being a software VPN, it will depend a great deal on the devices used at each end.

Great summary!

Why Debian or Ubuntu? (I have my own thoughts, but it would be useful to show even high-level reasons why they’re preferred).

Re: Backup - Backblaze has a great writeup on backup approach today. I’m a fan of cloud being part of the mix (I use a combo of local replication and cloud, to mitigate different risks). Getting people to include backup from the start will help them long-term, so great you included it!

It’s up to the squatter to actually spend the time and money to sue though.

A C&D is a letter from a lawyer to stop or they’ll sue, it’s not a court order.

Yea, if you use Tailscale with Funnel, you get a secure connection with no config required by the web user.