I would love to see a do-one-thing-well, open-source alternative to them. But IMO this alternative must be super understandable and secure. Maybe npm and a (for me) unknown API is the wrong choice for that.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47980234

Points: 2

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47931988

Points: 2

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If you think about, to protect yourself: The EFF privacy badger browser add-on [1] try to block fingerprinting.

Also, browser fingerprints are a common tracking pattern nowadays. You can test [2] your browser and please start protect your self: E.g. use add-ons like U-Block and Privacy Badger to block tracking and/or use different browser and devices for different use cases. DNS-blocking with block-list like hegazi [3] is IMO the best option, but also a bit more involved, when you host you own DNS forwarder(s). For example AdGuard Home [4] helps you with hosting your own DNS infrastructure. It's also possible to add block-lists to dnsmasq or unbound and run them on you notebook as forwarders.

[1] https://privacybadger.org/

[2] https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

[3] https://github.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists

[4] https://adguard.com/en/adguard-home/overview.html

My current workflow with Mistral or Claude to implement features is to write a playbook (like a developer guide) with them first on how to implement features in the current repository/source/project.

For example, something like:

Implement the feature using a, b, c as a blueprint (architecture, tests, code, documentation, and other things like styleguides, commands for checks or tests, linter, formatter, frameworks / versions and standards etc.). On features: Write the tests for xyz first. Then implement x, run the test for x, should now be green - and so on. Implement a feature means: Write tests, the code, documentation - and so on. Feature complete means: Tests are green, code is formatted and linted, documentation is available - and so on. Good code means ...

The playbook approach works, even if the chat context becomes too large after some time. If I notice that, I have the model reread the playbook. The playbook is also a living document; usually, I ask the LLM at the end if it wants to add any changes or additions.

But the playbook thingy might become an issues, if it get to long. 200-500 lines works best for me atm.

Cost and flexibility were the main reasons. This allows me to change locations, upgrade plans, or switch hardware more easily. Before, I ran a Proxmox cluster at home on an two old Supermicro server and a Protectli Vault (which still exists as a single Proxmox instance), plus instances on Hetzner and Webtropia with a dedicated server. That setup cost around 150 EUR/month, even split with a friend.

For local storage, I use 2x QNAP NAS.

For time synchronization, I rely on 2x NTP270 from CenterClick.

As a TAP device, I use the Protectli Vault and a Pi 4b.

AdGuard Home is deployed on my OpenWrt GL.iNet routers.

Most of my services are now hosted on VPSs:

3x Netcup VPS 1000 ARM G11 (6 vCores, 8GB RAM, 256GB NVMe) 7.29 EUR/month each

3x Netcup VPS piko G11s (1 vCore, 1GB RAM, 30GB SSD) 1.60 EUR/month each

1x Webtropia Cloud VPS S2 (4 vCores, 8GB RAM, 100GB NVMe) 4.99 EUR/month

1x Contabo Storage VPS 20 (3 vCores, 8GB RAM, 400GB SSD) 6.66 EUR/month

2x IONOS VPS Linux M+ (4 vCores, 4GB RAM, 120GB NVMe) 4.00 EUR/month each

Total monthly cost for all servers: 46.32 EUR.

For failover and load balancing I use DNS (via round-robin and inwx-dns-in-git).

Currently, my private setup is:

- VPN: Windscribe [CA]

- AI: Mistral [FR]

- Phone: De-Googled Fairphone [NL] (F-Droid/Aurora/OpenStreetMap)

- Search: Self-hosted SearXNG + YACY (since ~10 years / good setup & documentation)

- Domain Provider: INWX [DE] (since +10 years / good setup & documentation)

- DNS: Self-hosted AdGuard Home / dnscrypt-proxy 2 + dnsdist / resolver (since ~5y / good setup & documentation)

- Git: Self-hosted GitLab (since ~1 year / ok setup & documentation)

- Mail/Cal/Card: Self-hosted with Mailcow (since +5 years / good setup & nice documentation)

- Password Manager: Self-hosted KeePass2 + SSHFS (since +10 years / easy setup)

- Notes: Joplin + self-hosted Joplin-Server (since ~5 years / good setup & documentation)

- Feeds: Self-hosted Miniflux (since +5years / easy setup & good documentation)

- VPS/Server/Storage/Hosting: netcup [DE], Webtropia [DE], IONOS [DE], OVH [FR], Hetzner [DE], Contabo [DE]

- Browser and Mail-Client: Firefox and Thunderbird (since ~2013 - last Opera release)

Costs: ~60 EUR/month and between 2 and 4 hours of work a month to maintain.

Moving away from PayPal and Amazon is quite hard and currently I search for a Slack alternative that don't need a k8-cluster to run stable or cost >50EUR/month (playing around with Matrix, Rocket.Chat and Mattermost).

Recently, I’ve been using https://european-alternatives.eu/ a lot to help friends and family.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44936565

Points: 3

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