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My grandmother left me a 1979 gold Krugerrand within a clasp on a chain. She did cruises and picked it up in South Africa, I believe, and on occasion she wore the gaudy eyesore as a necklace. I'd forgotten about it until I came across it this week. If you want more details of my boring life story surrounding this or anything else herein, ask me, meanwhile I'll try to keep this brief and on point.
Presently I'm redoing most of my basement space on a shoestring budget (mostly just rearranging and working with what I have, now that my mind is clearer, free from Big Pharma): a mancave/studio, archive/server room, indoor year-round garden/cellar, and a workshop. Wearing wireless headphones I'm multitask-working on these 4 spaces and take breaks on SaidIt (sorry for not being more present). The sooner I get the first 2 done the sooner I may resume my own new normal, then to gradually develop the garden, workshop, and eventually beverage-making of some sort (beer/wine/whisky/moonshine?) perhaps a couple years from now.
Before rediscovering my lucky charm my plans were far from extravagant as I'm on a very tight budget, scraping by and always eating shitty for the last week of every month. I can likely sell this gold thing for $2200-$3000. (I can take photos, if interested, lemme know. I'm in Canada if that matters.) I'm not going to change my modest plans other than to accelerate my schedule with about 1/3 of it, rather than have to save up first.
I know for many of you that sum is not a game changer. For some it would certainly help smooth many things out, especially in these times. Some of you would just buy a new TV, buy drugs, go on vacation, or get something nice for the wife or kids. Personally, I am determined to invest at least 2/3 of whatever I get for it into something practical/useful for our community, and hopefully the world at large.
I'm thinking of getting some gear. An upgrade for myself and/or a server. I need advice.
My new/secondhand/refurbished Linux Mint (unless persuaded otherwise) box wouldn't be too fancy other than more RAM for many tabs and a better video card for more monitors.
I have never set up a server before so I don't even know where to start. Obviously it would be modest. At present I have a DSL line and a fiber line with the option for a second fiber line. I'll get rid of my DSL line as soon as I get a VOIP line to use over fiber, unless convinced to keep it. As a backup resource I don't expect huge traffic, but maybe a fiber line isn't enough.
I don't have much of a plan for it other than I want to be of service. Does this mean some kind of archive, PeerTube instance, or SaidIt or WikiSpooks mirror backup? Maybe I should learn Mastodon or other federated things. You tell me what we need. Maybe I should just save my money. (Some of it I intend to gift to SaidIt and WikiSpooks.)
As important as all of the following stuff may be, it's also important to have a good backbone system - from site security to virtual security to redundancy to GUI etc. All new to me.
Before I get into the new stuff I'd like utilize the old stuff. I have computers that were tops for high-end computer animation in 2003 and 2008, plus my current box and a couple laptops. (I also have a Commodore 64, 2 Palm Pilot Vx, and some pre-2007 "smart" phones that could be butchered for DIY projects. I'm no electronics dude so it'd either have to be simple or well worth the effort.) If I can utilize any of them that would be great, but I suspect they're electricity burdens and I might get equivalent results from a modern Raspberry Pi or secondhand phone. For a DIY example, I'd love to install my own Farmbot.
As a digital hoarder, at present I have dozens of 4tb drives full of YouTube, torrents, books, audio, etc. Sadly they are not backed up (ie. RAID, FreeNAS, etc.). I could set up another FreeNAS on bigger scale this time - or...
Is this good or stupid: I could get some LAN switches and a bunch of cheap Raspberry Pis to attach to each drive and have them all separate within my "hive" sharing with IPFS. I'm guessing it's easier said than done to "RAID" them across a LAN, though to me that seems like an obvious thing that should exist.
I was thinking it would be nice to have an open archive of all the content linked by SaidIt - webscraped pages, images, videos, etc. - perhaps even coordinated with SaidIt. Also, I don't want to be just another redundant distraction (ie. "competitor" to other Reddit-clones or reinventing the wheel when there's already the fantastic WikiSpooks resource). I wouldn't even know where to start with that. I would be fine with sharing admin with trusted folks to help admin properly but we'd have to be as open, transparent, and democratic about it and the rules as possible. For that server network I think I'd want a separate fiber line though. I don't keep my home address secret (like the old phone book days) so folks could send me gear or drives or whatever to add to it, permanently or on loan. I could even receive drives to plug in, let you remotely copy what you want to them, and send them back to start off your own PeerTube or whatever (to save moving terabytes across the Internet). My last idea is that there might be something worth documenting in this process (ie. "Home Freedom-Servers For Dummies") for others to learn from. It would be nice to set something up out of the box, but I doubt anything like this is that simple. My experience could help teach.
New simple idea without all the tech: I could make stuff (or get it made) for a SaidIt/WikiSpooks web store. ie. T-shirts, etc. Or buy a 3D printer to make things. Or...
Maybe these are lame ideas and I should just focus on finishing my basement and my "epic" story (a whole other ambitious thing). Or maybe you think this is what we need. Or something else. All feedback welcome, good, bad, or ugly. I'm in no hurry and obviously whatever plans I/we make should be clear and solid. If this becomes a thing, it will need some clear goals and a name for this project (and maybe even a dedicated sub to post progress and discuss things in).
We need to decentralize with alternatives away from the corporatocracy clouds. IMO every home should have a server, big or small, just as all homes have other appliances and utilities. I can just talk about it, or I can be on the front line of the resistance.
So, what do you think?
What would you do with a paltry $2k for our community?
Edit:
Duh, obviously I could invest in some established cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Filecoin, Namecoin) and some newer ones like:
https://Pirate.Black
https://Wownero.org
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