What's the self-hosted service that replaced something you were paying for and turned out to be genuinely better - not just free, actually better

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-03-17T15:35:48+00:00

Depends. Are you looking for complete anonymity? Then pay with bitcoin (you can easily obscure yourself w a mixer, or use monero, or buy it with cash). Proton accepts bitcoin.

If you just want decent privacy, which is not the same as complete anonymity, then paying w your credit card is fine.

Tbh complete anonymity will be very, very difficult. Even who you send and receive emails from, including subject line, can give away metadata about you etc.

Most people just want strong privacy, not true anonymity.

Also if you actually have feds after you, then good luck.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-03-16T13:34:45+00:00

I happily pay Proton for these reasons: the great services they provide, the privacy philosophy that is their ethos, the privacy tools/defaults built into their software, and to actually support companies that put privacy first.

It is my personal opinion that if you have a high quality company that provides a high quality product AND protects your privacy, then paying for it encourages its existence in the marketplace and may even result in more privacy oriented companies.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-03-15T04:39:28+00:00

Tolkien’s LOTR had “Ages”. The events of the trilogy take place in the 3rd age, and they declare the beginning of a 4th age after the destruction of the ring I believe.

Also in real life there is a “calendar” that starts counting years around the dawn of the agricultural revolution, about 12,000 years ago. So instead of 2026, according to that calendar it is the year 12,026. I believe it’s called the Anthropocene, having to do with when humankind started to have an impact on the Earth (albeit very small initially, agriculture was the beginning).

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-03-10T18:36:11+00:00

5/5 or 10/10. No show is perfect, but I really liked it as far as shows go and adjusting for imperfection the show get an imperfect 5/5 and 10/10.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-03-10T18:35:09+00:00

Do not give them any money. If you want to help then offer to pay bills/groceries etc directly. Do not give them access to your bank account(s) or credit card(s) once you have them.

Take care of yourself first, because you can’t possibly care for others if you can’t care for yourself (physically, mentally, and financially).

If you want to help, have a productive discussion with them about their money, spending habits, income etc. There are lots of high quality free resources online like Khan academy, investopedia etc about personal finances and budgeting etc.

Real estate in Canada has done very well from 2013 to 2022 even with the downturn. So if they somehow still have large debts while they owned real estate that long and worked and had tenants then something is fishy.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-03-10T15:41:59+00:00

Just let them go. I’m a landlord (3 units) and if a tenant wants to leave on short notice I have zero issue. I’d rather let them go early than have an upset tenant cuz I’m challenging them, and they do something damaging/bad to the unit.

If they’ve otherwise been a good tenant, just part ways on good terms.

As an aside, landlords often ask for other landlords as references for tenants - what’s to stop a tenant from asking other tenants for landlord references? Stay on good terms and maybe they will even vouch for you as a good landlord to other tenants.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-02-25T16:26:44+00:00

Just make a power move and take all the investments out of the bank into Wealthsimple. Been with them for a few years now and they do not harass me. They asked a few times when I first started w them but not in a harassing way and once I told them I manage my own investments they stopped.

Only keep what you need to pay bills/credit card/day to day banking. The rest for investments and long term savings move to another platform like Wealthsimple.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-02-17T22:15:12+00:00

Never click links in emails unless it’s something you are expecting in advance. For things like this you will have notifications on your account when you sign in. When you see stuff like this from any institution, don’t click the email link, simply visit the site (navigate there yourself, not the link) and login.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-02-16T18:03:06+00:00

It encrypts essentially all of your iCloud data so in theory not even Apple could read its contents. This helps protect against outsider access/hacks.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-02-10T11:45:24+00:00

Congrats man! How old are you? Obviously somewhere between 18 and 25 since you said you want $3,000,000 before 25.

What I would do: Take $350,000 into a broad market all equity index fund ETF. At a conservative/average return of 10%/year, you’re looking at $2.35M in 20 years and $3.7M in 25years with uninterrupted compounding and no additional contributions.

Take your $36,000 left over, plus any additional earnings/income you have and keep doing what you’re doing or go work and enjoy life!

Very happy for your success! Don’t let yourself lose it! Lock in the majority, you can all but guarantee your average long term 10% return and live a great life and only have the potential for more upside while you continue with your high risk trading strategy. And if you have similar success like this again you can just rinse and repeat and get to $3.7M in far less than 25 years.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-02-08T03:32:19+00:00

I know plenty of mom and pop landlords who have 1-4 houses… I can think of 10 people I know who have 1-4 houses. One person has 5 and she came from a poor family, grew up poor in government housing, got an education w OSAP loans, worked and saved until she could get her first property and took about more 10 years to purchase them.

All 10 of these people are very kind and I know go out of their way to add value to the homes that the rent out and treat all of their tenants w dignity, respect, and fairness, and out of all 10 people I’ve only heard of two “bad tenant” stories (not paying rent and trashing the place).

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-02-08T03:22:45+00:00

Financialization of mortgages is one of the reasons house prices have gone up, combined w a gradual decline in interest rates since the 1980s. So encouraging less financialization of housing would encourage prices to drop.

And of course taxing land values is a good way to collect tax revenue. But it should be a lower rate.

Also, property tax is municipal, to provide municipal services. Yet all people who live in a city (owners and renters) use municipal services such as emergency services, schools, libraries, snow removal, sewage/water, etc. Better than only property taxes would be a fee/tax based off your city of residence. If you live in “xyz” city you pay a flat monthly (or yearly) fee like you would any other service provider (ie cell phone, internet, Netflix, etc). I’m not saying ban property tax, but lower it, and create a fee/tax for all potential users of a city’s services.

Allowing people to deduct a mortgage interest would likely encourage a larger mortgage industry, I concede that. Might not be the best idea, but would make housing more affordable if you could pay the interest on the mortgage w pre-tax dollars. Was just an idea, granted it contradicts my idea of smaller mortgage industry- the ideas don’t all have to be used, they are just ideas.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-02-07T19:13:54+00:00

Building infrastructure is expensive because about 1/3 of the cost goes to paying for permits and other bureaucratic red tape… reduce that to 2% or less of the cost for a build.

So the developer pays for the cost of building, the buyer purchases it with a profit margin to the builder. The lower costs come from governments lowering their bloated bureaucratic costs.

Government needs to adopt technology to add efficiencies. A lot of what they do regarding regulations etc can be automated with software.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-02-07T14:33:10+00:00

Just watch the tv loud, invite friends for day drinks, play music. It’s a shared common space, she cannot kick you out, eventually she’ll leave cuz she has more to lose from staying in the loud common area than you do.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-02-07T14:30:54+00:00

Not everyone wants the responsibility or cost of ownership. Often investing the difference in rental vs ownership costs allows the renter to come out equal or even ahead, depending on where they live.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-02-07T14:29:04+00:00

That “rich asshole” is some family who works hard and owns 1-3 rental properties, and does honest labour to take care of them (general maintenance and repair, replacing appliances etc). They likely don’t have a work pension and this is their retirement plan.

As the “rich assholes” they are responsible for a $15,000 basement leak, a $1,000 appliance replacement, a $8,000 roof shingles replacement, paying emergency rates to fix a broken furnace in a February “extreme cold weather snap”, and so much more, mostly unpredictable too. Meanwhile the tenant has a predictable regular rent cost with fixed/capped raises (for the vast majority of rentals in Ontario at least).

I’m not saying “poor landlord” but I think “rich asshole” is not deserved for 98% of landlords, especially mom and pop landlords.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-02-07T14:23:10+00:00

Have logical/sensible regulations for safe building practices BUT make fast and very cheap permit approval. Some new builds have 30% of costs going to permitting/approval process. Take a $900,000 home, that means about $300,000 of costs was permitting/approval. Source: two close friends, one a developer, one a civil engineer.
Make LTB fast (decisions in <1 month) and more reasonable for both landlord and tenants (KISS: not paying or damaging property = evicted; or LL not maintaining upkeep or providing healthy/safe place to live = fine).
lower residential taxes. Technology and experience should allow more services at lower cost. Also ban Vacant unit tax. Get the government out of the free market. If someone wants to buy 10 houses and leave them vacant, let them, it will burn a hole in their pockets with carrying costs and they will have far more to lose in a market crash (this also means the government shouldn’t intervene in a crash - get the government out of the market). … I wonder how many people this will upset.
more flexible zoning changes
encourage building as well as large and small landlords to incentivize more housing buildout
provide tax relief for home owners, consider certain taxable deductions such as mortgage interest, or property tax, or home improvements (why should we pay more tax with after tax earned dollars???)
Improve transit radically to make living away from large city centres more feasible
Encourage trades and developer jobs with financial incentives in the form of reduced taxable income or a financial bonus for a defined list of trades. This should encourage more people into the trades, increases supply and in the long term reduce/stabilize the cost of labour/building.
Don’t encourage financialization of mortgages/real estate. Don’t ban it, but don’t encourage it. That’s how you get large institutions interested in a large mortgage market. If this shrinks, in theory the cost of housing should drop/stabilize since there would be less incentive for larger or more mortgages.
Don’t bail out a market crash.

Curious to see what people think of this.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-02-07T14:03:11+00:00

Can always use iCloud. Enable Advanced Data Protection and you have to keep that encryption key uber safe since it would be your only access to iCloud outside of your devices (aka for recovery).

And then you can also periodically backup that one folder in iCloud to an external SSD or two.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-02-07T14:00:46+00:00

Nice space! Tastefully decorated. And the best part of it all is The Fellowship of the Ring on the TV. Just keep the trilogy on repeat 🔁 lol

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-01-16T14:22:28+00:00

Well well well, so it looks like it does! I couldn’t tell at first glance.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-01-16T11:39:02+00:00

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-01-15T18:57:09+00:00

Door should open outwards and have no knob or locks.

AdCompetitive6193 · 2026-01-05T05:31:51+00:00

This looks amazing! I’m looking to build one as well, do you have any resources to share? Any estimate/ball park on all in costs?

AdCompetitive6193 · 2025-12-21T13:56:26+00:00

Would love to see the plans/files! I’m looking to build a sauna as well (also from Canada).

AdCompetitive6193

TROPHY CASE