Just for clarity, I followed the links they wanted me to follow.

The sketchy tone and vagueness while they “do stuff” after getting your email seem to have no connection to self-hosting at all.

If my intention was not to self-host, they lost me before I could even trust them enough to provide an email address 😟

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Provide your email address and agree to let us do stuff, and we’ll send you a verification email to create your account and get started.

Guys, if we’re already paranoid enough to be interested in a product like this, don’t make us paranoid to even want to “get started” using a product like this.

Sounds like a scam, even if they are totally legit.

Yes, but is this them being assholes, or them wanting to make sure that users aren’t making their system unreliable? I think there would be a huge distinction there.

For example, say a user wanted to create a cache drive using an SSD. But because the user doesn’t know better, they buy the cheapest crap they can find, install it, and set up caching. But because they’re using cheap shit, the drive is slow and the user reports poor performance, system hangups, and other instability.

Wouldn’t it be in Synology’s best interest to say “here’s a list of drives we know will give you the best experience.”?

Now, Synology has already done that, but users are ignoring it and continue to use poor storage drives expecting to use pretty sophisticated features. What now? Well, Synology disables those features.

For example:

De-duplication, lifespan analysis, and automatic HDD firmware updates could also disappear on non-approved drives

Um, yeah. That makes sense. If a shitty hard drive can’t reliably get firmware updates through the NAS, why on earth would they want to keep that option enabled? Same with lifespan analysis. If a crappy drive isn’t using modern standards and protocols for measuring and logging errors and performance data, Synology really can’t “enable” this to work, can they?

That’s what I think is happening. Although, this could be just greed, too. I don’t think there’s any real problem for most users, unless they say that we can’t use fairly common, high-quality NAS drives from Seagate or WD and must use their own branded drives. I’d have a huge problem with that.

Are we overreacting? Hasn’t Synology always had a list of “certified” drives for their NAS’, which end up being the same HDDs we would tend to use anyway?

I can understand that they don’t want people using any garbage storage drives, which could increase failure and make Synology NAS’ look unreliable.

Unless something has changed, this is how they’ve always done it, just like how every laptop manufacturer will say which RAM and storage works best (for reliability and performance) on their machines.

Yes, incoming.

Outgoing is another can of worms.

I try to run any of my iot devices on an isolated network. At most, they can see eachother, and that’s it.

Some devices need an internet connection, unfortunately.

The best you can do, if you’re unable to block their collection outright, is to run them through a tracker-blocking DNS (either self-hosted or something like Adguard DNS).

That can minimize unnecessary pings home.

Personally, if I think that a device is being malicious in their attempts to phone home, I stop using the device. I also try to make an effort to not get a smart device, if the alternative (unconnected option) works fine.

Digital minimalism is one way to protect ourselves from rampant data collection and profiling.

On my Synology NAS, I have it set to auto-block IPs after a few failed attempts. Some days, I’ll have like 50 of those come through at a time (all random addresses from random countries). Other weeks or months can go by without a single one.

So, I think it’s one of those “matter of time” deals, so as long as you are properly locked down, it should be viewed as normal.

I don’t know if it works in iOS, but I found that Moneymanager EX was by far the easiest to set up.

Basically, you keep the database on your NAS and run the software client on Windows, Android, etc. and just open the file from there.

But I’m considering Firefly III just for the web interface (no software client needed).

Thanks. I guess the demo restricts those backup and export features.

I know it exists, but would rather self-host and not have this data linked to Strava.

Not sure how data is exported from that app, though.

Can you screenshot that?

I see an export attachments (does nothing when I tried), and reports (only prints the data, but doesn’t export in any meaningful file format).

I don’t give a shit about my car, but I’d love to use this for my bikes! I’m currently using a spreadsheet and self-hosted calendar to keep track, but this would be “easier”.

I tried the demo, but maybe I missed it: how do you export the data you’ve input, in case you need to move it to somewhere else or if the project stops, and you want to back up the data?

Data portability is as important to me as self-hosting.

Singlefile is the only one that works reliably for me.

Linkwarden would have been awesome, but I had so many issues with it when I was self-hosting. I think it’s improved since then, though.

You can access Jellyfin through a browser, too. Is that an option for the Samsung TV?

It’s like you need high-level programming training to even understand how to contribute to their project. Where’s the “Edit” button, for example?

I’ve contributed dozens of hours to other projects (namely OpenStreetMap), but it’s DEAD SIMPLE to contribute there.

Come to think of it, there have been a number of times where I’ve wondered about what a foss project does/looks like and I think a single screenshot would’ve just been a big help in understanding how it behaves.

Yes!! I’m glad I was able to illustrate my point better.

I think my point was missed. I wasn’t saying that GIMP should copy what Adobe does (I can’t stand Adobe and their “business model” spyware bullshit.

My point was more to show that Adobe showcases the features of the software, so a potential user knows what it does without needing to go through the trouble of downloading it. It may not be what the user wants, and that’s ok, at least they know!

But GIMP is so vague in their description and offers no insight to what the app does or looks like. There’s no need to be mysterious.

Man, that text does the app no favours. “Image editor” could mean that it crops photos. But GIMP does a hell of a lot more. It’s been “the open-source photoshop” for decades, and they’re really selling themselves short. Screenshots would have made it so much easier to see what the software does.

Ok, let’s get off Adobe for a second… here’s a FOSS example: https://www.rawtherapee.com/

Easy to understand exactly what it does, screenshots are excellent. Surely, you can agree that this is better than how GIMP presents itself, right?

Taste aside, you can easily see what features Photoshop has, rather than guessing, right?

I should have used a FOSS example, since Adobe is just bad in general (users saying the page has pop-ups, etc.).

For sure, I don’t mean to blanket all FOSS projects under the same observation. But I’ve seen some projects where the idea is brilliant, and it fills a gap that no other software can, but they have piss-poor instructions (or none at all) and hardly describe what the project is or does. You only learn about them by chance, which is a real shame.

Here’s another example: Navidrome (https://www.navidrome.org/) is an awesome, self-hosted music streaming software.

But their homepage doesn’t have a screenshot, so you have no idea if the UI is just command prompt, ugly, unintuitive, or the best thing ever. Even the “learn more” page has no screenshots unless you really go digging.

Compare that to another FOSS self-hosted music streamer: https://ampache.org/

Simple website, but at least you can see exactly what to expect from the UI. Huge advantage even if they two apps do the exact same thing (both based on the Subsonic backend).