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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • No display at all? I suspect something else is at play there…

    On that model during bootup

    F2 = BIOS

    F10 = Boot Menu

    You should be seeing something in the Boot Menu, or at least be able to get into the BIOS?

    Also double-check the USB formatting, I don’t remember if that NUC has UEFI boot support or if it needs to be enabled in the BIOS beforehand. e.g. if your USB is formatted to boot legacy then reformat it to boot in UEFI, or vice versa.

    I actually have a few of those NUC models around but am not sure what it does exactly with no SSD, I think/thought it should still be able to handle USB boot in that situation.


  • The service seems kind of generic, maybe even worse than the other generic VPN services. No statements about what they log, whether they allow p2p, no mention of port forwarding, servers in only 5 countries which you may/may not want to VPN through, etc.

    Not sure about the software, I guess they think it will be an improvement over OpenVPN/WireGuard which is debatable.




  • they want to setup a server to host a simple “contact” website

    Not sure what sort of uptime/reliability your friends are expecting out of a self hosted solution but for something like that you wouldn’t need much processing power, even a Raspberry Pi can host a simple website. Not sure what to recommend offhand but there are definitely vendors in that space that sell simple DIY “contact us” form software, or I guess if you wanted to roll your own that’s an option too. I’d be more concerned about keeping it locked down/secure.

    Keep in mind for the internet your friends would likely need business class internet with multiple static IPs so you can give your little DIY box its own public IP address. Many (most?) residential internet service providers do not allow self hosting websites on their network and they’d be dynamic IP anyway though you could work around that somewhat with dynamic DNS since you’re going to need to purchase a domain name and point it to somewhere anyway.

    run an e-mail service (about 10 accounts for now but with possibilities of expanding it to support more)

    Like others said you really don’t want to go that route unless you’re well versed in that area. It would be annoying for a business especially a new one, those emails will likely keep going into other provider’s spam folders for a good period of time. All the big mainstream email providers are notorious for not trusting new email domains / new IP addresses.

    Seems easier to just go to Google Workspace / Microsoft 365 / whatever other provider you like to use, presumably the business has a business use case for reliable email among other things.

    Bonus: Those cloud services can easily host simple contact forms for you so maybe that’s your all in one solution. Look into Google Forms and similar.

    and to store and remote access documents.

    That sounds like the above commercial cloud solutions again :)

    But sure technically you could go through the extra step hosting that yourself. Depends on how the business wants to use/access this stuff, it’s really a question for them. Could be as simple as a Windows server with RDP (if they’re Windows people & just want to log into something “windows” to browse/open files) or maybe multi-user Linux with VNC (the geeks might like, maybe not so much the general Windows/Mac users). Or if you’re trying to do something web oriented maybe something like Nextcloud if you want to do all this in a web browser.

    You should triple check what exactly they are expecting when it comes to remote access documents… you really don’t want to spend the time setting up something that they totally weren’t expecting and end up hating.


  • Best not to overthink it - The sales clerk is trained to ask for this stuff.

    Luckily most times I encounter this I just tell them no I don’t have a phone number with them & continue checkout like normal. Sometimes that means not getting a sale price on something but usually I avoid those type of member-specific sales anyway.

    And worst case - Just make something up. At Best Buy a sales rep absolutely refused to sell me something from the mobile dept without my info. Which didn’t make sense because earlier I had bought something at that same Best Buy with a different rep & that rep took my order without my info no problem (she said she had to enter a phone number but just entered Best Buy’s).

    Yet this particular sales rep refused to proceed without info, so yeah he got an entire fictional name/address/phone/email on the spot.


  • I believe because any site that has an extension with more than four characters is detected as invalid.

    Usually it’s just badly coded apps/websites that only whitelisted some of the main domains e.g. most vanity domains don’t make it through. Or sometimes there are apps/websites that purposely block your domain if the admins think it’s too spammy or whatever.

    If your current email provider allows you to use their own domains as an alias that’s one way to sidestep the issue e.g. you’d end up with [something]@[youremailprovider].com --> [name]@[name].rocks

    I have Fastmail & they have a ton of their own internal domains so that’s one way I sidestep that issue. It’s pretty common among most/all email providers when you bring your own domain e.g. pretty sure Proton can do the same thing. Once you have your own domain you can make up any [alias]@[yourdomain] you like or just use the provider’s as a front facing alias [alias]@[youremailprovider] --> [anything]@[yourdomain].


  • Jellyfin should work fine for what you’re looking for. I haven’t run it on a Pi but it should work on that. You’ll be able to play music using the web ui as well as mobile apps if that’s your thing. It can also transcode on the fly so if your current browser/device/whatever can’t play .flac directly it’ll automatically transcode the playback to .mp3 or whatever it needs to be.

    There are some other self hosted music/streaming projects you could take a look at that are much more built out for music playback specifically. Look into Airsonic-Advanced or Navidrome for example - I’ve been meaning to check them out myself but haven’t gotten around to it yet.


  • Same here, mobile check deposit and Zelle are literally the only things I’ve ever needed a bank app for.

    I used to never use Zelle for anything but too many friends/family want to use some sort of app for exchanging money & that’s usually what we settle on. And my old landlord wanted rent paid via Zelle so that was another thing that forced me to install a bank app for Zelle purposes.

    Mobile check deposit is a requirement when dealing with a bank without any locations nearby. In practice I only need to use that once a year or so, checks are kind of rare nowadays unless you’re a business owner with clients/customers paying with checks.