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What radicalized you? For me it was Spore. (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by Livid_Bee_5150@alien.top to c/main@selfhosted.forum
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Some people get into self hosting just because they're interested in the mechanics of it, but many people I think got inducted by the fact that for example, Facebook or snapchat make it so difficult to save your own pictures or migrate to another service, or the possibility that Google is reading all of your emails, etc. Others may have been radicalized by a specific event, such as a service provider closing up business and therefore you lose your data.

For me, it was Spore com. I loved Spore, from the time I got it for my 10th birthday to maybe the age of 16 or 17 I poured hundreds or probably thousands of hours into this game. As I got older I became less invested in the gameplay and more invested in the creative aspect of it. I designed some badass creatures and spaceships that I was really proud of. I had a whole line of Spaceships that all served different roles in my head cannon, with different races of aliens following different themes.

EA/Maxis/whoever runs Spore now purged all of them from spore.com, and now they're gone. Years of my childhood essentially put into a locked box and the key thrown away. For me it was like losing a scrapbook in a fire. What right did they have?

So I ask, What radicalized you?

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[-] I_Arman@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

A bunch of little things for me, little steps down the road to hell:

  • Google print worked, and then it died, with no replacement. So, I built a print server.
  • Google music was awesome, I could upload my whole library and stream it anywhere. It was easily accessible through any Google device. Then it died and became Yahoo music, and... I can't stream it anywhere. I can barely find it.
  • Netflix went from "Share your password!" to "You need a premium account to stream above SD quality lol". It's awful trying to find shows these days. The last five movies I wanted to stream, I would have needed five different streaming services. I did the math, and realized it was cheaper for me to physically purchase the DVDs and rip them than to stream them. Jellyfin it is!
  • I started with Vivint for smart house stuff, realized it was hella expensive and switched to Wink and Alarm. com, then realized it was still expensive and super limited, so I switched to OpenHAB.

That last one was probably the biggest eye-opener. There are so many paid services that are objectively worse than basic free self-hosted services. Wink was ok, but I can do so much more without it. And none of this was hard. I spent hours setting up Jellyfin, but it took less time than for me to work to pay for 6 streaming services. Sure, it doesn't have the latest whatever, but so what? At least I know where to find where Stargate: SG1 is streaming!

[-] Zoenboen@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

How did you drop Vivant? I got it because it promised to work with Home Assistant and others and it since stopped playing nicely. I'd love for them to come get the equipment and be done with this experiment but I've heard cancelling the contract is impossible. I'm not paying them due to a layoff so you'd think they'd be happy to get their shit.

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this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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