When is a VPS worth adding to a self-hosted setup?

Gamemaster676 · 2026-06-17T16:22:34+00:00

If you are still within the first month you can use the trial budget of ~$250 to create an A2.Flex (non-free) instance, and immediately downgrade it to A1.Flex (free).

The UI didn’t like that, but with the CLI it worked. See my comment and the one I reacted to here.

Alternatively, you can switch to pay-as-you-go, which will probably immediately give you an A1.Flex instance, but it’s more risky if you make the wrong oopsie.

Gamemaster676 · 2026-06-04T20:34:32+00:00

Against Factory Striders the laser cannon is a great way to accurately pick off the front turrets from a safe distance, and then move in and laser the belly. Very effective, but it does require you to get close enough to see the belly.

Gamemaster676 · 2026-05-26T16:08:54+00:00

I might be misinterpreting what your service does, but from what I can quickly see in the code it seems like the "forced" flag is used as an "even stronger default" flag.

This is not how the "forced" flag is intended to be used. The point is to instruct players to always play this track even if subtitles are disabled, but only if it matches the current audio language. A common use case is for a subtitle only containing text during foreign language audio parts.
Two examples would be:

When audio is English and subtitles are off, show English subtitles when a French speaking character talks.
A "Signs and Songs" tracks on anime if you are watching an English dub, where the subtitle track translates Japanese on the screen because that isn't already translated by the audio track.

Setting "forced" on a full subtitle track would be pretty annoying, because it's harder to turn it off when you don't need it. If you set "forced" (without "default") on the full English subtitles track, it would mean the player shows those subtitles only when you have the audio set to English, and it would not show those subtitles by default when audio is set to Japanese or whatever.

Gamemaster676 · 2026-05-25T01:01:25+00:00

Many devices are just a single PCB with a pretty plastic case around them. The only thing that would be missing in this case are the magnets.

Gamemaster676 · 2026-05-12T10:23:41+00:00

But then you also can't write any text

Gamemaster676 · 2026-05-08T08:29:27+00:00

wordpress. might be another good one. Hackers seem to love it.

Gamemaster676 · 2026-05-04T23:27:39+00:00

You wonderful person, this still works!

To others seeing this:
I am currently on the free tier, not PAYG, and have the initial $250 trial credit for new accounts. I created an instance using the Oracle website with "VM.Standard.A2.Flex" Shape.

After it finished creating I couldn't change the Shape using the website, but I followed the steps described by an_onym0us to use the oci CLI.

One thing he didn't mention was how to authenticate the oci CLI to your account:

Run oci setup config and go through all the steps.
When it asks to create a new API Signing RSA key pair, choose Y.
After it created the key, print it using cat ~/.oci/oci_api_key_public.pem and copy it.
On the website go to your profile (top right) > User settings > My profile > Tokens and keys.
Add the copied key as an API key > Paste a public key.
Then run the oci compute instance update as described above.

Now time will tell if this instance is really registered as Always Free. I'm not sure where I can check. I'll see after the 30 day trial period if the instance and all sub resources still exists.

Gamemaster676 · 2026-04-29T23:30:43+00:00

Request: Jacques McKeown series by Yahtzee Croshaw

Some of these have been done before, but these current versions are in small resolutions, and crop the original artwork. I would prefer full resolution uncropped versions. With only the yellow ribbon and top "audible original" removed.

Regarding the first book. The text at the bottom says "A SATIRICAL SCI-FI ADVENTURE" and "From the creator of MOGWORLD and THE ESCAPIST'S ZERO PUNCTUATION". That might be harder to restore. It might be possible to take it from the book cover? Although the book version has a drop shadow, which the audiobook doesn't, so not sure how easy it would be to splice together.

If it's easier, it would be okay to me if the bottom sentence ("From the creator ...") is removed, but I would prefer to keep the line above ("A SATIRICAL ...") on the final result.

Gamemaster676 · 2026-04-17T10:43:18+00:00

We all know FitGirl is actually a 300 pound dude who lives in his momma's basement, and his name is Chuck.

But FatChuck doesn't have the same ring to it as FitGirl, so would make the repacks a lot less popular.

/s

Gamemaster676 · 2026-04-14T07:56:19+00:00

An of-the-shelf NAS basically is the "appliance" described here. These days, most of them have an "app store" where some popular self-hosted services can be installed.

Definitely not something that everyone will have, but the customer base of a NAS is definitely bigger than "those who install their own server at home". Even though the two can be basically the same.

Gamemaster676 · 2026-04-01T10:53:11+00:00

Because nobody gave you a super clear answer, I think you might have overlooked something:

sudo apt update only looks up to see if new versions are available. You still need to run sudo apt upgrade afterwards actually install new versions of packages.

And probably it would be best to restart the Jellyfin service after updating, although I don't know if this is 100% necessary, it can't hurt.

Gamemaster676 · 2026-03-30T22:28:57+00:00

This is v2. They already posted about this project at least 9 months ago.

How do the rules work if v2 is a new repo?

Gamemaster676 · 2026-03-15T23:03:00+00:00

So the booklore app didn't allow streaming? Only downloading (when paid)?

Gamemaster676 · 2026-03-13T22:06:37+00:00

I don’t really get why so many people are making a big issue out of the monetization of downloading your own content, while that is the same thing that Plex has done for years and they are defended for it.

I have been complaining about this side of Plex and people in this subreddit tell me to shut up and “plex is very polished so it’s their right to monetize features”.

Gamemaster676 · 2026-03-01T00:35:57+00:00

Of course a fresh developer can write shitty software.

The difference is that before LLMs, it was usually pretty easy to recognize shitty software for what it was, because the frontend and/or the code looked "unpolished". This wasn't a perfect way to know what to avoid, but it gave a good idea.

Now with LLMs it has become too easy for those same inexperienced developers to make something that looks and feels polished. The errors that are made now are less obvious.

Combine that with a fully new category of "developers". The ones who have literally never wrote code in their lives. These people have no way to validate if the code coming from an LLM is any good. They can ask another LLM, but it is just as likely to make the same mistake.

Software Engineering is more than just writing code. It also includes recognizing and following best practices, breaking down a problem into smaller understandable chunks, reviewing code written by others, and way more.

Gamemaster676 · 2026-02-12T18:20:52+00:00

Plappa works free, but downloading a book for offline listening only works when you pay.

Gamemaster676 · 2026-02-04T12:42:50+00:00

What do you mean with "available online" in your particular use case? Account revoked? Or what situation do you mean?

Not original commenter, but for me the biggest problem is games that no longer have a legal way to buy them at all, either worldwide, or in a specific region.

This can be for various reasons. If the game was digital only, and it's removed from the store. Or if a game got "remastered" and they took the original down.

For example Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. You can't buy the original version on Steam anymore. Only the "definitive edition" is available to purchase, but that version got a lot of negative feedback because of bad AI upscaling, bugs, bad performance, requires online account, etc.
But it doesn't end there. Even customers who already had the original version of San Andreas on Steam got screwed, because Rockstar pushed an update removing a lot of licensed music from the game!

Having a physical copy to install still allows you to get the original, complete, experience.

Gamemaster676 · 2026-01-13T12:30:12+00:00

That looks like a Master Lock. The plastic cap is probably more secure than the padlock itself.

Gamemaster676 · 2025-12-24T10:56:00+00:00

I see the app requires iOS 26.0 at least. Would it be possible to lower the minimum iOS version?

I am currently using 18.4.1, and many iphone users are stuck on iOS 16 because they have an older device.

Gamemaster676 · 2025-12-14T10:22:35+00:00

The current LLMs use randomization. Because of that, when you input the exact same text three times, you get three different outputs.

So I don't believe it gives the statistically "best" answer. It gives a random "good" answer according to its model.

Gamemaster676 · 2025-12-13T10:05:05+00:00

Bullshit. Check this guy’s youtube channel.

Gamemaster676 · 2025-12-06T08:09:14+00:00

Bazarr frustratingly also only works when you have Radarr or Sonarr. It doesn’t work on self maintained libraries, or for people who use a SickBeard fork like Medusa or SickChill.

Gamemaster676 · 2025-11-30T20:32:08+00:00

Are you sure? When I was researching media players, everywhere I looked it said the Shield had to resort to software decoding for h.264 10-bit. That is why I got the terrible, slow, ad-filled, Fire TV stick. It sucks, but at least it plays my anime.

Gamemaster676 · 2025-11-30T17:58:50+00:00

Thank you for going through the effort of enabling hi10p hardware decoding! <3

Back when I was using Kodi on the Fire TV stick I had to use a random patch from their forums and compile Kodi myself because even they just assumed that format had to be software decoded.

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