To anyone and no-one:

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize,” Kevin Alfred Storm, noted Neo-Nazi caught with a non zero amount of child porn, talking about Jews. Also, paraphrased by William H, talking about Muslims.

I fought against getting a contactless debit card for so long. I used to call my bank a month or so before my card expired demanding a non-contactless card. “But sir, you could just not activate the contact…” I don’t want any of it. I’d say “when I forget my pin it’s time to go home” paying chip and PIN like a peasant. I probably said “PIN Number” for how stupid I was being.

Anyway, contactless payment is awesome.

My fears are still grounded. Originally it was because, near weekly, I saw someone paying with a card they just picked off the floor. I hated the limit being so high long before they raised it, let alon after they raised it again. Also a skill check before ordering another beer has some merit.

“Cults do like to cut off and distance their members from outsiders and their families” In the same email that he was threating to block me for suggesting his quoting of a Nazi might be a bad thing.

Close second: “Trump (married to a woman) is misogynist” but also “I (British), married to a Malay, can’t be racist because I’m married to a Malay”.

Honourable mention: “I don’t like the word ‘Islamophobia’ or your Newspeak”. My guy, Newspeak was famous for doing something to the dictionary, and it wasn’t adding words to describe more concepts.

Anyway, he blocked me… Like cultists do. All quotes are paraphrased, I CBA digging through the emails.

Hardware wise I’d go AIO. A mini and a pair of mirrored USB drives is my setup. I have an off-site backup running: another mini + USB. Finally, I have an inherited laptop as a redundant network box/local backup/immich compute. I have 5 households on my network, and aside from immich spiking in resources (hence the laptop), I have overhead to spare.

An n100 mini (or n150, n200, whatever) is cheap enough and powerful enough for you to jump in, decide if you want to spend more later. They’re small, quiet, reasonable Value for Money, easy Wife Acceptance Factor, and can age into a bunch of devices if you decided self hosting isn’t for you. I’d make a retro console out of any spare mini.

This way, when spending £x00s on a server, you’ll have some idea on what you actually need/want. The n100 can the age into a firewall/network box/local back up/etc if/when you upgrade.

All that said. An AIO storage-compute box is where I’m headed. I now know I need a dedicated graphics card for the immich demand. I now know I want a graphics card for generative AI hobby stuff. I know how much storage I need for everyone’s photos, and favorite entertainment, permanent stuff. I know how much storage I need for stuff being churned, temporary stuff. I now know I don’t care about high availability/clusters. I now know… Finally, the ‘Wife’ has grown used to having a server in the house: it’s a thing I have, and do, which she benefits from. So, a bigger, more expensive, and probably louder box, is an easier sell.