Protectli VP2430

Pricey. I mean, if you have the cabbage, no worries. However, you can find off brand, but similar for much less on ebay or Ali Express. I don’t run OPNsense, but I do run pFsense. My pFsense box runs pfblockerng, suricata, ntopng, unbound, tailscale, I use a ton of feeds, and quite the robust set of rules. It doesn’t take a super computer to be an effective OPNsense or pFsense firewall.

Mini PCs

Lenovo’s are nice, sip power, quiet, but unless you can source some used ones they get pricey.

I wish you the best with you efforts.

Fascinating. I did some digging through old bookmarks and finally found the site I was refering to with Russian life and a lot of abandoned structures in Russia: https://englishrussia.com/?s=abandoned

That’s worth a bookmark. Thanks for the share.

Oh sure I understand data hoarding. I was just thinking, to restore 50 tb from the internet is going to take more than a fortnight.

Because the cheapest way would be to trust that it’s already backed up on the Internet

That’s a shit load of downloading. LOL wow!

Backblaze personal is about the cheapest I know of: $99 per year unlimited. Caveats would be that the drives have to be physically connected to the computer doing the backup. Additionally, should you ever need to restore the backup, the best way would be to buy a 10 tb drive from Backblaze, restore the data, then send the drive back for a full refund x 5. Restoring 50 tb online would be excruciating.

Understandable. I don’t know what your threat model is. I don’t trust any of them except to do what is in their best interest, globally. However, there is nothing stopping Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, UK, or even your country, from doing the very same thing. Governments make laws for citizens, not themselves. Everything can be compromised at any time a government decides to. That is the reality of it all. If I am going to have to hide my online activities from a government in 2026, then game over, and there’s not a damn thing I could/can do about it. I’ll just unplug, and live out the rest of my life in the seclusion of my farm/compound.

data server

Here is the way I understand Tailscale to work. Feel free to correct any misinformation.

Tailscale doesn’t operate ‘data‑center’ servers that store or forward your traffic.

• Control plane: Holds device metadata, public keys, ACL policies, and the DERP map. It is a small, highly available service that all clients contact only when they start up or need a policy update. Tailscale runs this service on a handful of cloud providers (primarily AWS and GCP) in the United States. TThe service carries no user data. Only control information.

• Data plane: Carries the actual packets between your devices. After the control plane tells two devices how to reach each other, they open a direct WireGuard tunnel that is end to end encrypted. There are no dedicated ‘data servers’. Traffic travels directly between the peers. If a direct path can’t be established because of strict NATs or firewalls, the connection falls back to a DERP relay. The DERP relays are the only servers that ever carry user payload.

However, to keep with your fear of the US having all your Tailscale keys, what makes you think that Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, or the UK wouldn’t/couldn’t do the same? I’m no shill for Tailscale. AFAIC, you can either use the service or not. Your choice, no skin off my back. I’m just curious how far the paranoia rabbit hole goes.

While true, only partially.

• United States Ashburn, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle
• Australia Sydney
• Brazil São Paulo
• Canada Toronto
• Finland Helsinki
• France Paris
• Germany Frankfurt, Nuremberg
• India Bangalore
• Japan Tokyo
• South Africa Johannesburg
• United Kingdom London
• Others Various locations in other regions, including Asia and Europe

Absolutely agree 100%. Self sufficiency is something I have diligently worked on to achieve in my life. Not only in the digital sphere, but in my daily life as well.

It’s a tool. A tool that needs some heavy regulation, but a tool nonetheless

These are my opinions. There are many like them, but these are mine.

I believe in, and practice privacy, security, and anonymity in every facet of my life that I can. Selfhosting fits in with that just nicely. However, I am very realistic about the whole thing. You are never going to take down Google, Amazon, Microsoft, AI, et al. The best you can do is disconnect from them. However, in the case of Google specifically, that’s a very tall order. The amount of domains and subdomains they run will blow your mind. Almost daily I find yet another one to block. Which makes the likelihood very high that you will encounter one that isn’t in your blocklist, or what have you. Same for Microsoft, same for Amazon, same for all of them. So, to me, chest beating about taking down ‘corpos’ as is usually the jargon, is kind of useless. Oh, it makes us feel good, but in the grand scheme of things, it does little. I would say the percentage of privacy minded individuals that actually practice it, and the percentage of selfhosters is very slim when you consider there are 8.4 billion people on this planet.

Additionally, I hear people saying ‘I run this or that federated’, or whatever ‘…and that can’t be taken down’. That’s a false sense of security to me. Everything can be taken down and a moment’s notice, even the internet. I’m not saying capitulate or rage quit. Again, I’m just very pragmatic and realistic about life in general.

Be prepared that this can be shut down.

Everything can be shut down. Just because you don’t see it happen much in the US, doesn’t mean it’s not on some official directive.

To the folks in the comments debating whether I’m an AI: I’m flattered by the grammar check

This is the world we live in. If you can actually string words together into grammatically correct sentences, then you are AI. It matters not whether you are or you aren’t. Like the witch hunts of Salem, all that is necessary is the accusation. I personally don’t care if you used AI, the message resonates. Don’t let 'em give you shit about your pony tail.

Can we all pitch in and send @Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com a box of zip ties?

I just installed Linux a few months ago as dual boot after being a lifelong Windows user (since 3.1 lol).

Well then, you are on your way.

The only thing I use the PDF format for is ebooks. I just always thought PDFs were something you spammed geriatric people with to get them to fall prey to your scam. LOL Like CD/DVDs. Someone here was talking about CD/DVDs a while back, and I got to thinking, I haven’t burned a CD in at least a decade.

you are also formally violating the law

As a population, I would venture to say that we are all formally violating the law in some form or other. Laws are written to be purposefully vague and ambiguous.

It is impossible to place telephone nodes in Russia without equipping the server with threat protection equipment.

I assume you are from Russia since you speak in first person, however, if the laws are so stringent against self hosting or private hosting, why is it a large portion of Warez sites emanate from Russia? They exist all over really, but it seems a lot of the very popular ones are in Russia.

It is also impossible to host sites with more than 10,000 visitors without registering with Roskomnadzor

This sort of ties in with the PBX thing. I am certain that popular Warez sites in Russia get way over 10,000 visitors and I’m sure they don’t register with Roskomnadzor.

Just curious. I’ve always had a curiosity with Russia among other countries. The history is very intriguing and vastly unknown in the West because of obvious propaganda. There used to be a blog I followed years ago about people visiting and photographing abandoned structures in Russia. It was very interesting, but sadly I have lost track of it over the years. I always wanted to visit the Red Square, but sadly I am too old to realize that dream. I have been as far as Latvia, which is not part of Russia, but very beautiful as I remember.

In some countries, it is also illegal to engage in self-hosting.

Really?! Can you elaborate?