SingleFile provides a faithful representation of the original webpage, so bloated webpages are indeed saved as bloated html files.

On the plus side you’re getting an exact copy, but on the downside an exact copy may not be necessary and takes a huge amount of space.

SingleFile is a browser addon to save a complete web page into a single HTML file. SingleFile is a Web Extension (and a CLI tool) compatible with Chrome, Firefox (Desktop and Mobile), Microsoft Edge, Safari, Vivaldi, Brave, Waterfox, Yandex browser, and Opera.

SingleFile can also be integrated with bookmark managers hoarder and linkding browser extensions. So your browser does the capture, which means you are already logged in, have dismissed the cookie banner, solved the capthas or whatever else annoyance is on the webpage.

ArchiveBox and I believe also Linkwarden use SingleFile (but as CLI from the server side) to capture web pages, as well as other tools and formats. This works well for simple/straightforward web pages, but not for annoying we pages with cookie banners, capthas, and other popups.

No and kinda yes. Duckduckgo has its own webcrawler, but also adds in results from other sources including Bing, Yahoo and others.

Not a problem when self-hosting on own hardware. Especially in winter. Overly complicated spaceheater goes brrrr

Hard to say without knowing which method you used to install HomeAssistant.

But I never found mdns .local addresses to be very reliable. They work 80-90% of the time, but the remaining 10-20% are a hassle.

Instead I’d recommend you install PiHole (in a docker container is easiest). PiHole is a DNS server intended for network-level ad-blocking. But it also have a handy feature of defining local DNS entries, so you can have HomeAssistant.myhome or HomeAssistant.whatever (.local should not be used with PiHole local DNS because .local is meant for mdns)

Not Op, but I was in a very similar situation (decent pay, old house, old car, not many fancy purchases). While many people here will borrow a lot and pay the minimum on their mortgage, I paid down my mortgage completely. (and otherwise spent money on travel).

Ironically, this is bad financial advice. The last 15-20 years interest have been very low, and house prices have soared. It would make much more financial sense to borrow more and buy a nicer house. But I value the freedom I get from not having a mortgage. And I never borrowed to buy a car, as cars depreciate like rocks

Checks out. But also Military Industrial Complex.

“QR & Barcode scanner” is Free an Open Source, and supports what you want (if i understood you correctly) https://github.com/wewewe718/QrAndBarcodeScanner

Looks like it’s not been updated in a while, but it works just fine. Available on F-Droid and on Google Play

On Windows the system wakes up when connected or disconnected from an AC adapter.

Does it? I could sweat my work laptop (windows 10) doesn’t , and I’m pretty sure I’d notice cause I sleep and move it a lot during a working day.

Is it a windows 11 thing? Or something to do with the so-called “hybrid sleep / hybrid boot”? (Pretty sure that’s disabled by corporate, and for friends and family I always disable that when their laptop goes in a boot crash loop). Does BitLocker matter ?

GUIs can be very good for getting started and learning concepts though. Much more “discoverable” and can allow for quicker iteration.

Then when learning the “proper” command line tools, the process should be easier as one already knows the concepts and terminology, and can concentrate on just the tooling.

Syncthing is probably the best option. It’ll keep a copy on both devices, and can sync any changes made on any device. It’s a direct connection, no intermediary server required.

Another way, which is a bit round-about, but surprisingly easy: Install Zim Desktop Wiki (a notebook app), enable its built-in web server, and add your PDF to the Zim notebook. From the iPad use the web browser to open your Zim notebook (Assuming both are on the same wi-fi). This is read-only from the iPad, can’t make changes.

This sounds like a FOSS utopian future :)

There’s a few projects that have started towards this path with single-click deployable apps, you could even say HomeAssistant OS does this to some extent my managing the services for you.

I believe one of the biggest hurdle for a “self hosting appliance” is resilience to hardware failure. Noone wants to loose decades of family photos or legal documents due to a SSD going bad , or the cat spilling water on their “hosting box”. So automated reliable off-site backups and recovery procedures for both data and configs is key.

Databox from BBC / Nottingham University is also a very interesting concept worth looking in to:

A platform for managing secure access to data and enabling authorised third parties to provide the owner authenticated control and accountability.

The biggest problem with Discord is that its an information black hole. Its not properly searchable and not indexed by search engines.

Discord is fine for casual chat, but horrible when used for forum-type discussions and even worse when used for documentation.

You see the same problems being discussed and solved again and again, but you cant just “link” someone the solution like you could with a forum thread cause its spread out over 3-10 chat messages that are interleaved in-between other topics being discussed in the same room

Anything of long-term value for the project (forum-type discussions, documentation etc) should not recide in Discord