Self-hosting doesn’t actually save you money, and the people who promise it does are setting beginners up to quit

Yep it's quite true. If you are just going to host one or two things, you could get away with a Raspberry Pi, but I have about 40+ containers running, and I realise I'm on my 3rd or 4th iteration of hardware.

I don't have anything fancy as my small form-factor server cannot even mount a GPU card. It was a squeeze to just add a riser card with an interface for SATA drives. Then I have two external 6 TB each NAS drives, another external USB drive for 4 TB backup as well, a UPS power supply, a managed switch, a network cabinet, and it uses extra electricity 24/7. With all this I constantly update and maintain the setup. And then too, this all needs replacing at some point again.

Yes it gives better privacy, and you learn a lot by testing different options out, etc. But if you want plain ease of use, some GPU horsepower maybe, and reliable backup, then often it is cheaper to just go with a paid open-source hosted service. This is how many open-source projects survive today, by selling their online cloud hosted service.

One just has to think why you are wanting to self-host, and then weigh up doing it properly, versus buying a few services.

It certainly suits me as I have a passion for tinkering and updating things. But I can see this is maybe not the best option for everyone.

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/self-hosting-doesnt-actually-save-you-money-and-the-people-who-promise-it-does-are-setting-beginners-up-to-quit/
#selfhosting #technology

Open-Source Self-Hosted Zer0 URL Shortener

A modern-looking, tiny, fast, self-hosted URL shortener built for Docker Compose. zer0 keeps the redirect path lean, protects public link creation with CAPTCHA, stores links in Redis, and includes a browser admin dashboard for stats and cleanup.

Custom shortlinks are a lot easier to share than lengthy links with variables that follow them, and Bit.ly shortlinks are sometimes banned from use on some sites. Self-hosting ensures privacy compliance for your users and audience, and this service is so lightweight that you'd hardly notice it is running.

The GitHub project does not go into much detail on how to install it, as it requires an image to be built from the code, so this video also helps make that process a bit easier.

Watch

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/open-source-self-hosted-zer0-url-shortener/
#linkshortener #opensource #privacy #selfhosting #technology

The Beginner’s Almanac for Wet Shaving

"The first week in any wet shaving group feels like walking into a conversation halfway through. Somebody posts an SOTD with a three-piece OC and a croap, somebody else asks whether a G5 knot will splay too much for face lathering, and a third person admits their SAD is out of control and announces a 3017. Everyone is being helpful. Almost none of it is in English yet. This almanac is the map. It walks the whole territory in the order you will meet it: the gear, the lather, the shave itself, the routine around it, and the culture that talks about all of it. Each section explains how the pieces relate, defines the words you will see, and points you to the Shave Dad guide that goes deeper."

The excerpt above really says it all about the linked post. It is one of the better guides I have seen. It is not a how-to-do each step, but a good overview to read to get a feel of all the options you may encounter with traditional wet shaving.

Traditional wet shaving is very much like Linux. You have many options to suite many purposes and tastes, and that can be overwhelming for beginners.

I have been totally converted to traditional wet shaving for the last 20+ years and bitterly regret that I knew nothing about it when I learnt to shave. But it was finally the cost of Gillette multi-blade cartridges, and the ingrown airs I was getting, which led me to discovering it. My very first experience was not a great one as I chose a really cheap plastic handled razor that I got in a pharmacy store. Once I progressed (fairly quickly) to a Merkur 34C razor, the real aha moment struck.

Of course today I have a few razors, but I have pretty much settled on using the Edwin Jagger DE89 head with a solid stainless-steel knurled iKon handle. My blade of choice are the Astra Superior Platinum double-edged blades. I use the Tabac hard soap paired with a Bluebeards Revenge boar (synthetic) bristle brush. I use one blade a week, and the soap is good for about 6 months of use.

Of course everyone's skin is different, and there is a three-way relationship between skin type vs razor vs blade. Which is why it is always good to get hold of a blade sample pack, and try them all out, to find what best works for you.

It's also worth noting that traditional wet shaving is a lot better for the environment, as the blades can actually be recycled, and the soaps do not come in aerosol cans.

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/the-beginners-almanac-for-wet-shaving/
#environment #shaving #traditionalwetshaving

Data sovereignty in South Africa is not an address

I rarely ever promote a partner sponsored article, but this one does touch on important aspects around data sovereignty which I wished government design-makers better understood. There are numerous risks to data being hosted (held?) in an external data centre, especially if that data centre is foreign owned.

Why I posted this, is because I also want to mention what was not said in the article. Access and leaking of the data is one thing, as is the holding of your own encryption keys, but like we saw with the ICC recently, you could be denied access to your data too.

But, like with open source software, government IT workers don't have the budgets or means to market or wine and dine their decision-makers, and persuade them. I've seen this battle being lost before with open source software. The software works perfectly well, utilises in-house skills and requires no licensing costs, but those internal IT professionals don't get to take the CEO out for lunch, nor can they promise the building of digital villages, etc.

Unfortunately many corporate decisions, especially in government, don't rest solely around the technical aspects.

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/data-sovereignty-in-south-africa-is-not-an-address/
#digitalsovereignty #southafrica #technology

Fairphone’s latest repairable earbuds are smaller, lighter, and longer-lasting

“The Fairbuds 2 have been redesigned from the ground up, moving to a stemmed design, available in black or green, and a case that’s 37 percent smaller than the first generation. Despite that shrinking hardware, Fairphone has almost doubled the buds’ battery life, which now totals 40 hours without active noise cancellation, with eight hours on the buds alone, dropping to six with ANC on. Charging is over USB-C, and takes a couple hours for a full top-up. Sadly Qi wireless charging isn’t supported — though it isn’t on Apple’s $129 AirPods 5 either.”

I know I've mentioned this before, and keep repeating it, but I will never forget my pretty expensive Apple AirPods dying about a month or so past their warranty date. I've since bought other brands which has lasted much longer. But I get real peace of mind if batteries can be removed so easily for replacement. These earbuds also have ANC, which is now a minimum requirement for me.

They're not going to be competing with Sennheiser or other high-end brands in terms of audiophile quality, but for most users these would be good enough, and then there is the repairability and ethical build too.

PS: It does come in black colour too!

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/fairphones-latest-repairable-earbuds-are-smaller-lighter-and-longer-lasting/
#audio #environment #technology

Strata is an alternative file manager for Linux written in Rust

“This file manager is written in Rust with GTK4 and released under the MIT license, with its lead developer, Pierre, announcing its first stable release a few hours ago. He claims that in 45 days, the project has picked up over 30 contributors and 700+ commits, with ~300K lines of Rust now in the codebase.”

Seems that recently so many alternative apps are coming out in Rust… I wonder why. But the real point is that new apps are also bringing fresh ideas and shaking things up a bit. This file manager has fuzzy search, navigation by arrow keys (in addition to the usual mouse stuff), a preview panel, theming, SMB support, and more.

Seems it is targeting the Arch environment, but right now maybe no AUR installation, as it offers a one line install option from CLI, or interestingly, it also gives a detailed prompt for how to get your AI agent to install it for now (sign of the times).

See or

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/strata-is-an-alternative-file-manager-for-linux-written-in-rust/
#filemanager #linux #opensource #technology

2026 Kindles Have Removable Back Panels for Easy Battery Replacement

All I can say is, this was quite a refreshing surprise to me, where everything is going tinier and more glued and sealed up today. True, I've not yet had to ever replace a battery on one of my Kindles, and they've been running for years.

What has appeared to be a dead battery sometimes, just required a trick to kickstart it and get it charging again. But a battery is often what gives in first, so just knowing could be easier to open up and replace, does give some peace of mind.

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/2026-kindles-have-removable-back-panels-for-easy-battery-replacement/
#environment #ewaste #technology

Free cybercrime and online scams helpline goes live in South Africa

“South Africans who have been scammed, hacked, extorted or harassed online now have a free place to turn for help. The Cyber Helpline, a UK charity, has launched a 12-month pilot in South Africa with local social impact organisation MiDO Academy, funded by Amazon Web Services. The service covers a wide range of incidents, including investment and employment scams, phishing, hacked accounts, fake social media profiles, sextortion, identity theft and ransomware. It is confidential and open to anyone in South Africa aged 13 and older – but only to individuals and sole traders, not larger businesses. Victims start with a chatbot on thecyberhelpline.com, which offers immediate step-by-step guidance at any hour. If a case needs more help, it is passed to a human responder.”

To be clear, this is an advice line to help explain what happened to a victim, and what they should do. So it will include relevant referrals, and won't be doing any recoveries. Victims should probably not delay though reporting anything to their banks and the police.

This could still be very useful for individuals and small business, as they often have no idea who to turn to, or what resources are available, and what exactly must be preserved as evidence.

The other big plus is, this may also give far greater visibility to what sort of scams are actually happening, as many firstly don't make it through to the police, and secondly the police drop it into buckets like “fraud general”. We can now possibly get a clearer picture of what platforms the scams take place on, who is targeted, what the cumulative amounts involved are, etc. This not only starts pointing back to patterns around the perpetrators, but could pressurise the relevant computer platforms to take more severe action and preventative measures themselves.

Police statistics just don't go into this sort of granular detail. They do also state “The partners plan to use aggregated, anonymised case data to track emerging threats”.

This is not a government funded service, and is an AWS funded initiative for a period of a year. Hence, they are also running a Cyber Steps Challenge on BackaBuddy, as a fundraiser to try make this a more sustainable service.

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/free-cybercrime-and-online-scams-helpline-goes-live-in-south-africa/
#cybercrime #scams #southafrica #technology