I’ll start by plugging Harvard’s free courses catalog as well as Udemy
Edit: Gonna add 2 more I remembered-
Blender - I wish I had more time to learn it, but I did start the infamous “Donut Tutorial” once!
Watch Cartoons Online - Lots of good older stuff!
CBC Gem, which is our country’s public news corporation’s streaming service which is a catalog of Canadian television. There’s also CBC Music which is the radio app, and you can even listen to the live streams of the Metropolitan Opera on Saturdays.
The cats and dogs out in the street are free. You can just bring a friend home. /hj
/hj = hand job?
I’ve like never seen this abbreviation used any other way 🧐
I believe it’s “half joking”.
HUEHUEHUE please do NOT give stray cats and dogs handjobs.
But as the other poster said – It means “half joking”
KDE Connect. its an app that lets you share lots of different things between your devices, and it does this over your home network without needing any “cloud”
- send files from one device to another
- share the clipboard. handy for copying text or a link to your phone
- get notifications from your phone on your laptop
- have music playing on your laptop and pause or change the track from your phone
- control your laptop from your phone, move the cursor around, left/right click etc
I’m surprised no one has mentioned it yet:
With just a cheap computer you can have your own Netflix and Spotify.
Is Jellyfin good with remote access?
How is it different than Plex?
Does it find the movies for me, or do I still need to figure out the Usenet or BitTorrent?
Since no one really answered you, there are generally two routes.
If you use newsgroups you can run sabnzbd, which is a service that downloads from newsgroups. I’ve been out of the loop for a while but there used to be something like CouchPotato for movies or SickBeard for TV (which migrated to SickChill, though you shouldn’t use that anymore as it installed a crypto miner last I heard). Lastly you sign up with a news indexer (look up Nzb.su or nzbgeek.info). CouchPotato could be linked to your imdb watch list.
Plug all of those together with API keys, and now movies on your imdb watch list just show up in your plex library as they become available.
Now if you use Torrents instead of newsgroups, there are similar things that all exist, I’m just less familiar with them.
Ah, interesting. I’m actually only (barely) familiar with torrents, insofar as I have downloaded qBitTorrent and enabled its embedded search. I search for thing, sort by most seeds, and choose first relevant one. Usually it all goes well. Plex on my Mac watches the downloads folder, and the TV has Plex installed.
It works, but at least from my limited view of its search results, the seas seem to be drying up. I feel like there are better, non-default searches I could be adding. There was some kind of Jacket plugin that refused to load so it’s just disabled.
Am a very inept pirate 🏴☠️
Jellyfin Is completely open source, fully self-hosted, and free. With Plex the software still has to phone home to a central server for authentication and some features are locked behind a paywall.
No streaming software is going to find movies for you (without paying for content they’ve licensed) because that would be a sure fire way to get the project taken down for copyright violation.
Plex makes it way easier to stream outside your network.
While I don’t have much experience with Plex, I can say that it’s really not hard to set up Jellyfin for streaming across the internet.
I’m running a docker container using the linuxserver.io image and all I had to do was forward the HTTP/S ports. I will grant that when a third party has to make an easy-to-use container for a service, there’s a problem to address… but if I remember correctly, Jellyfin is easier to set up on bare metal where it can use uPnP.
It’s Plex but free and without a central login server handled by a third party
It’s also got a few fewer/not as functional features and no live TV (whoopty do?)
The Arr Suite are what you’re looking for to find content, works with either Plex or Jelly in (or others)
It’s a FOSS plex alternative… yes you will need to stock your own library Then install SonArr, RadArr, some other Arr 🏴☠️just learn Linux nub. Jk but not really
Aside from the FOSS that people love.
I will add something real world. I have Plex and Jellyfin running. Now Plex works fine for the most part but certain codecs when I am watching on iOS just has issues and freezes a lot so I have to use Jellyfin, but the UI in Jellyfin is pretty sparse and not as polished.
Can you ELI5 for me what this does? I don’t quite get it.
So when you use Spotify and Netflix, what your doing is streaming from their computers, which costs money hence why they charge you monthly.
They also add profit and licensing costs and all that to it so it adds up.
But what if, you used your own computer?
Very easy to do using just your wifi, some more complexity if you want to steam over the internet.
What does that mean “use my own computer”? Do I need to have all the media files on my computer then? Where would I get those from?
Yes, this is all assuming you have a way to get all the media files you need.
Some of us have been collecting it for years.
What3words.com and app
Basically the earth has been segragated into 10 foot x 10 foot squares that are easily identified by 3 words, super accurate, easy to tell emergency services. No more need to know lat/long to tell someone where you’re at.
Where on earth is “fuck shit piss”?
unfortunately the people at What3Words excluded words people might find offensive from the word list, so that place does not exist
So I guess “musk impregnates influencers” would be OK? Even though that’s a lot more offensive IMHO …
I just looked it up, and apparently “impregnate” isn’t in the list either. Yes, the word isn’t offensive by itself, but I think they remove quite a lot of words that might cause problems in the what3words address. There is way more than enough words anyway.
This is from their FAQ:
How do you handle offensive words?
A what3words address is made up of 3 random words, and they are not intended to convey any meaning to a location. However, we know that the nature of using words means that unexpected interpretations can crop up.
For each new what3words language, our team consults a broad range of native speakers. We then work together to remove rude and offensive words from our word lists, navigating cultural sensitivities wherever we can.
Some users feel that certain words in our lists are unsuitable or inappropriate, so we always take feedback onboard. However, one of our key features – that our addresses are permanently fixed – means that it is not possible to update the word list. Instead, we can look for opportunities to adapt our approach when developing future languages.
Tip: if you’d rather avoid a certain what3words address because of a particular word or combination of words, we’d suggest you use the next square along.
earth has been segragated into 10 foot x 10 foot squares
I think you’re inadvertently advertising a cylindrical model of the earth 😁
Not working.
///life.before.death doesn’t exist
///journey.before.destination took me a couple miles east of Pittsburgh.
I was expecting Urithiru :<
Totally unusable
Ooh like that. Interesting concept. Too bad people can’t spell 😅
I learned about this from a can of ///Fear.Movie.Lions beer from Stone Brewing:
What 3 words pinpoint where this indelible beast was born? The location is printed on the can. There’s a 3m x 3m square in our Richmond, VA brewery with these three words painted on it. What three words? Exactly! For the uninitiated, that’s What3Words.
Learn a little docker and start self hosting stuff! Pihole is a great one to start with, but there are lots of other awesome projects out there:
How do I “learn a little docker”? Where do I start?
YouTube. Duckduckgo.
Personally I’m running 13 containers for various things. Worth it.
But I googled docker, and only found apps that can be installed. Does it both require something to run the docker apps in?
Docker is a program that runs on an OS, usually Linux, and the docker apps or images are run by docker on the OS docker is installed on.
I’m a rookie, but I run TrueNAS which runs docker images. Previously I ran plain Debian with docker installed to run docker images.
Before you start can I ask what experience you have with computers, command line, and have you ever done any programming.
Programming isn’t necessary but it helps me see if you’ve been exposed to the kind of syntax you will see in docker.
Happy to help you learn this though.
I’m on a course to become full stack developer, and I know the command line (basics), have an old laptop running Linux Mint that I want to test to use as a docker, but I have no idea where to start.
That’s great you’re starting from a place that should make this easy.
Let me jump on my PC and get some information to help you get started.
I am going to be pasting a set of commands to get docker and docker compose set up, but please be wary of people giving commands to run in the terminal. You could use the information I’ve provided to help you find guides to confirm that no weird commands, but I copied this from my guide I use whenever I set up a new VM to use docker.
So the commands below add any dependencies for docker, adds the GPG key to verify and then installs docker and docker compose. I also set up a docker user add them to the docker group so I don’t need to use sudo to run.
I then use docker to create a portainer instance. Portainer allows you to use a webUi to see what you have running and stop start any of your services from there.
After this I have provided a docker compose file which would be named docker-compose.yml. Yaml sucks as it constantly moans about spacing, but essentially you want to use spaces and not tabs and each new line would be indented two spaces unless it’s a sub part of the section above then it would be two more spaces etc.
This docker compose might or might not be what you need, this one first sets up gluetun, which is a VPN layer which I can route other services through as you don’t want to torrent from your IP.
So gluetun is set up using ProtonVPN and you pass the username and password. Username has +pmp for port forwarding.
Then each service under here can choose to use the services/gluetun or bridge network. The former is for the VPN the latter is routed through regular network. Notice how anything routed through the VPN has the ports defined in the VPN service.
The others things you would need to be conscious of is the paths I have used for /mnt/vault/* as these are network attached storage from TrueNAS. Depending on how you want to store things you’ll need to just add the paths to these. The paths look weird but the part before the colon is where it is on your machine and the part after is what it is called inside that container.
You’ll notice that Plex requires a claim key but you can google how to find that.
This isn’t going to get you up and running and you will likely run in to permission errors and other errors along the way. I would suggest coming back here with your errors or giving them to ChatGPT, just don’t blindly copy commands if you don’t know what they do.
Once your docker compose incomplete your can run docker compose up -d to spin it up. Then in portainer you can see all the containers and then login to each and do the setup. Docker compose down to stop them all.
When I set this up I did the gluetun and then Radarr. Get that working and then add your next thing and then the next and so on until you have what you want.
As I said this isn’t a complete solution and you will run into roadblocks, but that’s the fun for me and I am happy to help when you get stuck along the way.
### Docker
Install dependencies
`sudo apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common -y`
Add the Docker GPG key to the server’s keyring
`sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/%E2%80%8Blinux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc`
Add the latest Docker repository to the APT sources
`echo “deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/%E2%80%8Blinux/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo “$VERSION_CODENAME”) stable” | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null`
Update the server package index.
`sudo apt update`
Install Docker
`sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin`
Verify
`sudo docker --version`
Enable the Docker system service to start automatically at boot time.
`sudo systemctl enable docker`
View the Docker service status and verify that it’s running
`sudo systemctl status docker`
#### Install docker compose
`sudo apt install docker-compose-plugin -y`
Verifiy the installation
`docker compose version`
#### Portainer
Create a Volume for Portainer Data
`docker volume create portainer_data`
Deploy Portainer as a Container
```
docker run -d \
–name=portainer \
–restart=always \
-p 8000:8000 \
-p 9443:9443 \
-v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
-v portainer_data:/data \
portainer/portainer-ce:latest
```
Acess Portainer
`https://your-server-ip:9443`
#### Running Docker without Sudo
Add your user to the docker group:
`sudo usermod -aG docker $USER`
Log out and log back in, or restart your system.
Verify by running:
`docker ps`
Below is the docker-compose.yml file.
services:
gluetun:
image: qmcgaw/gluetun
container_name: protonvpn
cap_add:
- NET_ADMIN
devices:
- /dev/net/tun:/dev/net/tun
ports: # These are the qBittorrent ports, I like to use random ports and not the default ports 49152
- 49893:49893 # This is for the qBittorrent WebUI Port
- 6881:6881 # Listening port for TCP
- 6881:6881/udp # Listening port for UDP
- 7878:7878 # Listening port for Radarr
- 8989:8989 # Listening port for Sonarr
- 9696:9696 # Listening port for Proxlarr
environment:
- VPN_SERVICE_PROVIDER=protonvpn
- OPENVPN_USER=USERNAME+pmp # REPLACE with your OpenVPN username (+pmp for port forwarding)
- OPENVPN_PASSWORD=PASSWORD # REPLACE with your OpenVPN password
- VPN_PORT_FORWARDING=on
- SERVER_COUNTRIES=France # These countries must support P2P
volumes:
- ./gluetun:/gluetun
restart: unless-stopped
qbittorrent:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/qbittorrent:latest
container_name: qbittorrent
environment:
- PUID=1001 # to find your current ID just type “id” in the terminal
- PGID=1001 # to find your current group ID just type “id” in the terminal
- TZ=Europe/London
- WEBUI_PORT=49893 # Must match the port used on gluetun for the WebUI
- TORRENTING_PORT=6881
volumes:
- ./qbittorent/config:/config # this will create the config folder in the same folder as the yml file
- /mnt/vault/Downloads:/downloads # adjust to your desired download directory
network_mode: “service:gluetun” # must match the container name of gluetun
restart: unless-stopped
prowlarr:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/prowlarr:latest
container_name: prowlarr
depends_on:
- gluetun
environment:
- PUID=1001
- PGID=1001
- TZ=Europe/London
user: “1001:1001”
volumes:
- ./prowlarr/config:/config
network_mode: “service:gluetun”
restart: unless-stopped
radarr:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/radarr
container_name: radarr
depends_on:
- gluetun
environment:
- PUID=1001
- PGID=1001
- TZ=Europe/London
user: “1001:1001”
volumes:
- ./radarr/config:/config
- /mnt/vault/Downloads:/downloads
- /mnt/vault/Movies:/movies
network_mode: “service:gluetun”
restart: unless-stopped
sonarr:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/sonarr
container_name: sonarr
depends_on:
- gluetun
environment:
- PUID=1001
- PGID=1001
- TZ=Europe/London
user: “1001:1001”
volumes:
- ./sonarr/config:/config
- /mnt/vault/Downloads:/downloads
- /mnt/vault/TV:/tv
network_mode: “service:gluetun”
restart: unless-stopped
jellyfin:
image: jellyfin/jellyfin
container_name: jellyfin
environment:
- PUID=1001
- PGID=1001
- TZ=Europe/London
volumes:
- ./jellyfin/config:/config
- /mnt/vault/Movies:/movies
- /mnt/vault/TV:/tv
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- 8096:8096
network_mode: “bridge”
plex:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest
container_name: plex
network_mode: host
environment:
- PUID=1001
- PGID=1001
- TZ=Europe/London
- VERSION=docker
- PLEX_CLAIM=CLAIMKEY
- NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all
volumes:
- ./plex:/config
- /mnt/vault/Movies:/movies
- /mnt/vault/TV:/tv
deploy:
resources:
reservations:
devices:
- driver: nvidia
count: all
capabilities: [gpu]
runtime: nvidia
restart: unless-stopped…casually just post an entire setup.
I miss my nas.
This isn’t likely to work without some whack a mole with errors though but it should be enough for someone curious enough to be able to get a working solution.
My NAS currently has a sole 10TB HDD and funds are too low to justify an additional one so I am very nervous.
You could follow a guide to install portainer, it’s got a web gui to manage docker. It can handle installing most types of docker containers.
When you find a cool project to install, they almost always have a docker compose template you can use to install their container.
The docker compose tells docker which containers to install and how they might rely on each other as well as which ports to run on and where all their config and/or data files should be stored.
Using a docker compose makes things super simple to update by using portainer to repull the images to the latest versions and run those. The new containers running the new versions will have all the same config and see the same data/config directories that you specify in the docker compose.
I run a bunch of containers, some good examples are the ARR stack to download tv shows and movies. Radarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr, Transmission are all defined in one docker compose. Another couple of great containers I run are Actual Budget for budgeting software and Tandoor for saving and managing recipes and grocery lists. Actual Budget and Tandoor have their own docker compose configs.
Hugs
Removed by mod
Free as in FMHY
?
In California (and Connecticut), you don’t have to pay to use the air pumps at gas stations. You can just go inside and ask them to turn on the air pump, and they legally have to.
you have to pay for that? I thought it was free worldwide
$1.00 in quarters basically everywhere I go
Your local city college may or may not offer free classes (in San Francisco, you just need to show proof that you live in the city with some legal status).
Some public transportation is free for certain groups (youth and folks experiencing homelessness can get free passes here).
“First X of the month” at the zoo/a museum/whatever — lots of venues have free events.
A jog, bike ride, hike — lots of great stuff outside!
I live in the Philly area. Senior citizens can use SEPTA (buses and commuter trains) for $1 a ride.
I second the biking … but that shit ain’t free. Even used bikes cost some money to buy and maintain, and brand new bicycles are solidly in the “insane” category these days.
Good point — it is “incrementally free,” although I guess if you count tire wear and tear that’s not even true.
Libraries. Most even rent video games, power tools, audio/video hardware, baking utensils…SO MUCH STUFF. All free.
Even if you don’t go to the actual library the ebook apps are great.
Our library loans out state parks passes for a month so you can go to parks for free. It also loans out hiking gear, provides immigration resources, and oddly, a ukulele.
Ours lends them out for all the city museums! And my old local library had a seed library, the deal is that you saved seed from whatever you grew and gave some back.
This is amazing, I had no idea.
Technically not free, but because so many people think it is it’s a great poster child for proper use of tax dollars and socialist programs. Libraries rock.
Adding the library-libby nexus. Most libraries have an eBook collection connected through Libby. I’ve got a Kindle and zero books bought from Amazon. It’s great.
Protip, if you went to any form of formal education (college) then you probably have alumni library account access. My Libby has three library cards logged in. I never wait for a book.
I once rented a whole reflector telescope.
That is…fucking crazy awesome.
On a whim I googled my city’s library and “tools” and I found a non-profit society that specializes in lending of hand and power tools! This is incredible and I wouldn’t have known about it without this prompt: thank you!
👍
Can you share the name of this non profit society, is it a part of your local public library or it’s own independent thing?.
I need a spanner for like single hex nut and I don’t want to buy one for it to collect dust in my drawer lol
Yeah mine was called the [City Name] Tool Library, and it was a non-profit that was independent of our local library. I imagine that they receive donated tools from contractors and companies around the city.
As an example, I googled a random city name (Calgary) and found one for them as well: https://calgarytoollibrary.org/
There are likely tons of similar organizations throughout Canada (and probably your country as well!)
Thanks I was able to find one in Chicago called The Chicago Tool Library
My local library loans dongles! Now if I can just manage to check one out without snickering …
Nope. 15 Euro a year (Freiburg, Germany), which doesn’t automatically renew and it’s a bloody pain.
Free Office Suite which is excellent for personal use. If you are on mobile Collabora Office if you want an Android/iOS version
I’ve been using it for over a decade. Prior to that I used open office but it quickly became clear Openoffice couldn’t match the development of LibreOffice. There is no concrete reason to buy microsoft’s bloated ever changing garbage.
OnlyOffice is even better in several ways.
It’s also worse in that they hide the fact it’s made in Russia.
It’s Russian software so yeah… 🤢
wow thanks! I haven’t been able to use LibreOffice as it is hands down one of the ugliest pieces of software I’ve looked at, and despite retrying for years, I genuinely could not tolerate it. OnlyOffice looks so great!
I hear you. It’a almost as bad as Gimp vs Krita.
How so? I’ve been moving between the two for years.
I find it faster, more stable, and just generally FEELS better than LibreOffice. Which I’m sure is because it isn’t carrying 30 years of Java baggage with it from the Star office/OpenOffice.org days. And ive had better luck with document compatibility in some cases.
The only complaint ive heard about it is just a smaller feature set than LibreOffice. But it does everything I want it to do.
Both are great, though.
Awesome thanks!
In Canada, crown land camping and Christmas trees. You can camp on crown land and cut up to 10 cubic metres of wood a year.
Huh… Can I come? Always hated how free camping isn’t legal in England. Stealth camping sorta is, if you don’t get caught no problem but if you get caught you kinda have to move or you are committing a criminal offence.
For sure. I’ve got a lovely spot on a lake with no one around that’s my favourite. Bring your fishing pole.
Not had much luck fishing, though I tried a hand line rather than a pole and it was from a kayak. Started feeling seasick which surprised me as I have kayaked loads on the sea before just fine.
Have had a bit more luck with crabs from a pier or quay. Probably could do that from a kayak too if it’s nets that you just drop and leave for a little while. I think the seasickness was due to looking down a lot at my equipmemt while not moving in the waves. Shorter periods might not be so bad as you can move on to the next net again pretty quickly rather than sitting still the whole time.
Ten cubic meters of free wood a year. Huh. That’s an oak or two.
I think they use to call it two trees a year and then went to cubic meters. Probably someone taking out the giants of the forest that inspired the change.
I could run a fairly decent woodworking racket given 10 cubic meters a year. Does that include branches and such?
In terms of fully free, obligatory mention:
Your library may offer more than books alone, depending on how well supported they are. Borrow music, movies, sometimes even video games. For music and movies they may also offer these to borrow digitally as well via online services they coordinate with.I moved to a new town in 2022 and I STILL haven’t been to the local library. I need to get on that. I went to libraries so much as a child and in my teens.
You might be able to apply for an account online and not have to go in, unless you just want to meander through their not-book- things available to check out.
My library has a lovely assortment of things. Anything from camping gear to ghost hunting “equipment” like a spirit box or emf meter. My city doesn’t have a fully outfitted maker lab tho, but I am eligible for an account at the neighboring city that does have a kickass maker lab (3d printers, laser engravers, sewing and embroidery machines, Cricuts, and even a professional recording studio).
The library of things is also something many public libraries have now. Not just media, but tools, power tools, cooking pans and equipment, pod casting equipment. Definitely worth a look.
You can borrow fishing rods at ours.
Mine has trekking poles! (Colorado)
My library offers art! Like, original art pieces (paintings and sculptures) by local artists which you can borrow for up to three months.
That’s such a great idea!
Our library does audio books, 3d printer, sound recording (like a small studio), and passes to provincial parks. Some can offer a lot!
In the U.S. they may even offer things like State Park passes.