Dirt cheap.

Cost = maintenance + servers

Engineers always underestimate the cost of their time.

Okay, damn I don’t have 15 minute access to a “bar”-bar, and the university/sports arenas are just outside that walk

ah, yes, prejudice

You can do it. I use a powered USB hub and a raspberry pi, and 5 hard drives.

It is a mess of cables but was simple enough.

I also sprang for a UPS because most filesystem’s I tried like zfs and btrfs didn’t appreciate random brownouts from running 4 drives off the pi itself.

Right now they’re xfs and used for a minio install and torrent storage

people get grumpy about containers vs nix vs flatpak and I just wanna say… I’m glad you’re using Linux. yes, you.

The lemmy devs would probably take something sensible like that and flat out shoot it down because they think they know better.

getting accidentally hired and finally making enough.

story: every job I’ve ever applied for in tech didn’t work out. I was a dishwasher until right before covid when someone recommended me for a cybersecurity position. Before that I had obsessed about FIRE or living in a car or being careful about too much starbucks or avocado toast… without making enough for a car or health insurance. That job paid ~half of what cybersecurity should pay, but was AMAZING. My next job paid just a hair under average, three years later. night and day, able to afford to exist without help.

financial advice be damned. I couldn’t “find” anywhere with lower rent. I was in the lowest cost of living possible regionally. What needed to change was the PRIMARY job’s income rate, not adding some side hustle. Either make rent cheaper or find a higher wage.

I’m not making enough to consider your next fancy moves like getting a house.