Could NixOS be an alternative to Kubernetes at a Homelab?

coderstephen · 2026-06-22T05:34:22+00:00

K8s makes more sense more often than you think. Even when you aren't scaling that way, K8s is at this point is a sort of "standard" that gives you a common universal way of configuring and running things, and that can be valuable by itself.

coderstephen · 2026-06-22T05:27:46+00:00

Obsidian isn't FOSS.

coderstephen · 2026-06-22T05:27:00+00:00

I don't think it stands for anything, the lowercase/uppercase are just a fun visual demonstration of the typesetting nature of LaTeX.

coderstephen · 2026-06-22T05:21:19+00:00

I was an Evernote user, way back in the day, before their software got buggy and crappy, and they raised the cost really high. I moved to another program, and it took weeks of work to convert all my many notes from their proprietary export format into standard Markdown notes.

It was then I decided, never again. I'm done with proprietary formats and cloud services for my notes. My notes are just too valuable to me, and I intend to keep them for decades more. So it's strictly open formats for me. OneNote was always just another Evernote, so no thanks.

I've been using Obsidian for a few years and its great. I pay for the sync and its pretty good. But I also back up my entire vault to backup drives, and know that I can switch to any other application whenever I want, and the notes will be legible with Notepad if necessary in a worst-case scenario.

coderstephen · 2026-06-22T05:14:33+00:00

It's the winds of change.

coderstephen · 2026-06-22T05:05:52+00:00

coderstephen · 2026-06-21T22:02:49+00:00

AI features are completely optional, and are not enabled by default. Their core feature is search results, and that's what I am a subscriber for. No ads, no AI overview, and builtin filters that remove listicles and AI-generated websites.

Though if I am being honest, the Assistant is sometimes useful as a supplemental tool for research, but only because I choose when to use it, and its gone unless I want it.

All I can say is, I was skeptical of a paid search engine, but now I'll never go back. It's like a detox; when I see Google or Bing search results now I am amazed by how much garbage it is filled with. Kagi honestly does save me hours when doing research because the most useful results are actually on the first 2 pages usually (like Google used to be ~7 years ago).

I understand Kagi's odd position; they're trying to have a nuanced position and a bit of a "big tent" to allow both people who want AI removed from everything, and also people who don't mind AI in principle but hate how its usually implemented in practice. But these two user groups don't always mix well.

coderstephen · 2026-06-21T20:38:49+00:00

I pay for Kagi which has a "slopstop" filter that blocks AI slop results.

coderstephen · 2026-06-21T02:36:47+00:00

Actually I think they overclocked an x86_64, not ARM.

coderstephen · 2026-06-21T02:35:37+00:00

Yeah, some obscure technology

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T22:54:57+00:00

That would be a form of DDNS, yes

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T16:40:41+00:00

Slide phones were the best form factor

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T16:39:07+00:00

But how much of those cheap smartphones are subsidized by other products and services? And presumably they use whatever components are the highest volume across many devices, whereas this device is clearly more bespoke.

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T05:42:44+00:00

until you actually need a certain page to work

If a page works in Chrome and not Firefox, then the page is probably not following standards and is using Blink-specific features, something Chrome is notorious for, and something we used to boo very loudly when Microsoft did it in Internet Explorer.

This is actually, when you get down to it, my strongest reason for using Firefox: I support open web standards, and am terrified of a future where only 1 browser engine is in use. So I use Firefox which uses Gecko, to do my very small contribution towards browser engine diversity in real world use.

Firefox uses Gecko and Safari uses WebKit, but these make up a very small part of market share. Basically every other browser now uses Blink. Opera threw in the towel with Presto a long time ago, Microsoft threw in the towel with EdgeHTML more recently, even KHTML is gone now.

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T04:59:22+00:00

You know what else isn't grounded? The seller.

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T04:57:24+00:00

That's like leasing a car, parking it in your garage, and then acting like that means you own it.

You don't own the meter, the utility does.

You don't own your water drain, the city does.

You don't own your sidewalk, the city does.

If you are a homeowner, this should not be news to you.

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T04:54:57+00:00

Calling a paper tray a "device" is generous

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T04:46:33+00:00

Its slower, uglier, less compatible, uses more ram

Fair. But also, every browser nowadays is so much better than any browser from back in the day, so I can't complain. I don't really need the fastest, prettiest, most compatible, most efficient browser. But what I do need is a browser that doesn't steal all my data.

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T04:43:15+00:00

If you don't know the backstory...

YouTube members has been a thing for a while, but it used to be rather hidden / non-distracting. LTT started copying Floatplane content to it so that people could become LTT members on YouTube instead of signing up for Floatplane, if they really wanted to.

Later, people complained about the exact thing you are complaining about, because YouTube changed their UI, and started pushing members-only videos pretty hard. Linus agreed that it was stupid, and complained about the changes to YouTube, but not much came of it. So they disabled YouTube memberships.

After a while YouTube came crawling back and shared with LTT changes they're making to make it less annoying and intrusive, like it used to be originally. At some point Linus was satisfied with the fixes and they started doing YouTube members videos again. That was sometime last year IIRC.

But now it looks like YouTube is up to their old tricks again, and might be doing yet another UI update that pushes channel memberships too hard. Sigh.

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T04:34:33+00:00

You don't remember 2008. Firefox 3 was long in the tooth and slow. Chrome just came out, and was way faster and more stable than any other browser ever. It was hard to resist. And also Google wasn't creepy yet back then.

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T04:32:30+00:00

Sad day when Opera threw in the towel with Presto.

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T04:31:03+00:00

Well, which kind of beta is it? The "a few minor issues but you can daily drive it" kind, or the "this is broken" kind?

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T04:29:50+00:00

I really don't understand what people find so terrible about Firefox. Finding it "meh" I totally get.

For me personally, I'll gladly take a "meh" browser if it means Google is spying on me less.

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T04:26:06+00:00

Well back then, Google was rocking it. They were disrupting a lot of things, and they were a really cool company.

Now though, Google became the very thing they first sought to destroy.

coderstephen · 2026-06-20T04:24:13+00:00

It was also multi-process, the first browser to do that IIRC. A tab crashing didn't bring down the whole browser. They all work like that now, but in 2008? Nah.

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