5 ms·

The surreal joy of having an overprovisioned homelab

67 points by zdw 2y ago

1970-01-01 2y ago
Not discussed: electric bills!
- blinded 2y ago
  Came here to say this. I power down mine when I'm not using it. edit: silly typo!
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Strange, I power mine when I’m using it.
- tiagod 2y ago
  It was discussed in the video. The OP's electricity is paid by the landlord :P
- hy4000days 2y ago
  [dead]
- zten 2y ago
  Yeah… I stopped doing stable horde after admitting my electric rate was never going down, and it’s already about 55 cents per kWh. I try to put as many electric things to sleep or off now.
  - TechDebtDevin 2y ago
    Where tf do you live that you're paying that much. You should move if possible!
    - volkadav 2y ago
      The UK can get pretty rude, for example. ~40p/kWh is not unheard of for residential. (Natural gas price shocks, unfettered greed post-privatization, badgers in the transformers, idkwtf, etc.)
- moepstar 2y ago
  Yes, true. I, after all those years, can finally understand my dad coming into my room, yelling at me due to the electrical bill. Couldn't understand, only was running Seti@Home 24/7 on my Pentium 4 :D
- UltraSane 2y ago
  And heat and noise.
- the_third_wave 2y ago
  Just add one more solar panel and your server is powered. This assumes you can sell excess production at wholesale rates (like we do here in Sweden). If you can not sell power and you're a tinkerer there's ways to build battery storage which can power both the lab as well as the house using a wide variety of batteries. Used EV batteries are one source, used LiFePO4 standby power supply packs another. This is the way we'll go if/when it is no longer possible to sell excess production. Until such a time well enjoy our negative electricity bills, we have not had a positive bill since installing the PV array even though there's a DL380G7 with a DS4246 storage array running 24/7 under the stairs.
WaxProlix 2y ago
I'm a huge fan of my underprovisioned homelab, squeezing perf out of a tiny old i3 based system is weirdly satisfying. Just one more container, baby! One more transcode stream...
- neilv 2y ago
  Does it run silent most of the time? (Except maybe fan spin-up when transcoding?)
  - SSLy 2y ago
    Yea, barely audible fan.
  - WaxProlix 2y ago
    Late reply but yes, very silent. The 4-bay DAS next to it gets a bit noisy though, unsurprisingly.
- NoPicklez 2y ago
  Me too! Those ex-government micro form factor PC's are little workhorses which give me lots of compute with minimal power and space.
- volkadav 2y ago
  For a long time my home server was a dell wyse 3040 that I got for £25 on flea-bay. 1.4ghz quad core x86-64, 2g ddr3 ram, 8gb emmc, <= 5w max load, fanless, runs standard, normal debian like a treat. :) Eventually I got tired of being constantly vigilant about disk space and replaced it with a more traditional desktop, but I still love that little (compute) engine that could (it's still alive as a glorified ereader desktop for the kids -- just enough muscle to run firefox and epub/pdf readers without being capable of distractions).
hy4000days 2y ago
[dead]
ipsento606 2y ago
I find the way people talk about "homelabs" endlessly confusing. Is it "a playground for devops"? OK - that sounds about as appealing to me as a playground for washing the dishes, or a playground for changing the oil on my car, but people like different things and there's nothing wrong with that. But wait, you also run your plex instance on there? And a git server? And wait, it stores your tax documents too? Is it a playground, or a functional home server? I run plex and a NAS and a VPN server on a machine in my home, too. But it's a home server. It's definitely not a "homelab" or a "playground" of any kind, any more than my freezer is a playground for storing food.
- Spivak 2y ago
  Yes and yes. What good is a devops playground without some low stakes production services to run and some data to manage.
- idiotsecant 2y ago
  Homelabs are for people who enjoy unrestrained and irrational exercise of technology in whatever way they decide to. It doesn't have to be about reliability or efficiency. It's just poking at things until neat stuff happens or it all breaks. The surest way to take all the joy out of a hobby is to do it as a job. You sound thoroughly employed.
- turtlebits 2y ago
  Yes, it is a playground for devops, but IMO the appeal is being able to run any service you want without paying for a SaaS. It often fills the "I want that"/instant gratification void. That and organizing things "just so". Which makes it a hobby.
- mikepurvis 2y ago
  I get the appeal for other people, but for me I quickly burnt out just trying to keep Deluge, Jellyfin, Zoneminder, and Homeassistant up and functional— Zoneminder in particular is (or was, anyway) an absolute nightmare to deploy and run.
  - 2y ago
Vurdentium 2y ago
[dead]
keyle 2y ago
Aside: is there a term to define the developers that use these kinds of cutesie graphics? Seems to be a real movement, I'm older, and I seem to have missed the memo. Where did that start and is there some history behind why?
- lidavidm 2y ago
  The graphics would be called chibis, IMO (or デフォルメ if you wanna be fancy) and IDK about developers, but perhaps weaboos/weebs would be the general term
- rhmw2b 2y ago
  +1 I guess I’m old as well. The presentation makes it seem like I should recognize them, but obviously I don’t. Would love an explanation.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  This is giving a big anime-enthusiast and possibly furry community vibe, it's really pretty separate culturally than just being a developer. For people who really are into it, it becomes a fetish... and no judgement for things that happen between consenting adults but... it can seem pretty odd from the outside. But it can also be entirely innocent, nothing wrong with liking certain art styles. So if you don't understand these things best not to copy them because you could unintentionally be sending some pretty strong signals. It's also somewhat in the style of the Manga Guides, which are fantastic and an entirely different way to make some of these things accessible. https://www.ohmsha.co.jp/english/manga.htm https://www.ohmsha.co.jp/english/manga.htm
- Gigachad 2y ago
  It's both anime/weeb and furry art styles. Usually these are two groups don't really have anything to do with each other but the author is just part of both. Which doesn't strictly have anything to do with developers either other than the author being part of all three.
- hoseja 2y ago
  There are but they all get you banned.
QuiDortDine 2y ago
Did this person just... solve bot abuse? That should be the title of the post. I for sure want to use their solution for my own homeserver.
- mtone 2y ago
  Related discussion on Anubis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43427679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43427679
- jsnell 2y ago
  No. If that interstitial is working, it's only working due to obscurity, and the moment this system becomes even slightly popular it'll become worthless. Proof of work is not a viable defense -- it's basically impossible to tune the parameters such that the cost is prohibitive or even meaningful to the scrapers but doesn't become an obstacle to users. It's pretty much just a check for whether the client can run JavaScript. But that's table stakes to a scraper. Trying to discriminate between a real browser, a real browser running in headless mode, or something trying to fake being a real browser requires far more invasive probing of the browser properties (pretty much indistinguishable from browser fingerprinting) and obfuscating what properties are being collected and checked. That's already what any commercial bot protection product would be doing. Replicating that kind of product as an on-prem open source project would be challenging. First, this is an adversarial abuse problem. There is actual value in keeping things hidden, which an open source project can't do. Doing bot detection is already hard enough when you can keep your signals and heuristics secret, doing it in the open would be really hard mode. (And no, "security by obscurity is no security at all" doesn't apply here. If you think it does, it just means you haven't actually worked on adversarial engineering problems.) Second, it's an endless cat and mouse game. There's no product that's done. There's only a product that's good enough right now, but as the attackers adapt it'll very quickly become worthless. For a product like this to be useful it needs constant work. It's one thing to do that work when you're being paid for it, it's totally another for it to be uncompensated open source work. It'd just chew through volunteers like nobody's business. Third, you'll very quickly find yourself working only in the gray area of bots that are almost but not quite indistinguishable from humans. When working in that gray area, you need access to fresh data about both bot and real user activities, and you need the ability to run and evaluate a lot of experiments. Not a good fit for on-prem open source.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
apexalpha 2y ago
Currently moving my homeserver setup to K8s. Which, in a way, is also over provisioning it I guess. I learned a ton so far, it's been really rewarding having to manage the entire stack yourself. Also Talos is golden!

67 points by zdw 2y ago

1970-01-01 2y ago

Not discussed: electric bills!

blinded 2y ago
Came here to say this. I power down mine when I'm not using it. edit: silly typo!
- bombcar 2y ago
  Strange, I power mine when I’m using it.
tiagod 2y ago
It was discussed in the video. The OP's electricity is paid by the landlord :P
hy4000days 2y ago
[dead]
zten 2y ago
Yeah… I stopped doing stable horde after admitting my electric rate was never going down, and it’s already about 55 cents per kWh. I try to put as many electric things to sleep or off now.
- TechDebtDevin 2y ago
  Where tf do you live that you're paying that much. You should move if possible!
  - volkadav 2y ago
    The UK can get pretty rude, for example. ~40p/kWh is not unheard of for residential. (Natural gas price shocks, unfettered greed post-privatization, badgers in the transformers, idkwtf, etc.)
moepstar 2y ago
Yes, true. I, after all those years, can finally understand my dad coming into my room, yelling at me due to the electrical bill. Couldn't understand, only was running Seti@Home 24/7 on my Pentium 4 :D
UltraSane 2y ago
And heat and noise.
the_third_wave 2y ago
Just add one more solar panel and your server is powered. This assumes you can sell excess production at wholesale rates (like we do here in Sweden). If you can not sell power and you're a tinkerer there's ways to build battery storage which can power both the lab as well as the house using a wide variety of batteries. Used EV batteries are one source, used LiFePO4 standby power supply packs another. This is the way we'll go if/when it is no longer possible to sell excess production. Until such a time well enjoy our negative electricity bills, we have not had a positive bill since installing the PV array even though there's a DL380G7 with a DS4246 storage array running 24/7 under the stairs.

WaxProlix 2y ago

I'm a huge fan of my underprovisioned homelab, squeezing perf out of a tiny old i3 based system is weirdly satisfying. Just one more container, baby! One more transcode stream...

neilv 2y ago
Does it run silent most of the time? (Except maybe fan spin-up when transcoding?)
- SSLy 2y ago
  Yea, barely audible fan.
- WaxProlix 2y ago
  Late reply but yes, very silent. The 4-bay DAS next to it gets a bit noisy though, unsurprisingly.
NoPicklez 2y ago
Me too! Those ex-government micro form factor PC's are little workhorses which give me lots of compute with minimal power and space.
volkadav 2y ago
For a long time my home server was a dell wyse 3040 that I got for £25 on flea-bay. 1.4ghz quad core x86-64, 2g ddr3 ram, 8gb emmc, <= 5w max load, fanless, runs standard, normal debian like a treat. :) Eventually I got tired of being constantly vigilant about disk space and replaced it with a more traditional desktop, but I still love that little (compute) engine that could (it's still alive as a glorified ereader desktop for the kids -- just enough muscle to run firefox and epub/pdf readers without being capable of distractions).

hy4000days 2y ago

[dead]

ipsento606 2y ago

I find the way people talk about "homelabs" endlessly confusing. Is it "a playground for devops"? OK - that sounds about as appealing to me as a playground for washing the dishes, or a playground for changing the oil on my car, but people like different things and there's nothing wrong with that. But wait, you also run your plex instance on there? And a git server? And wait, it stores your tax documents too? Is it a playground, or a functional home server? I run plex and a NAS and a VPN server on a machine in my home, too. But it's a home server. It's definitely not a "homelab" or a "playground" of any kind, any more than my freezer is a playground for storing food.

Spivak 2y ago
Yes and yes. What good is a devops playground without some low stakes production services to run and some data to manage.
idiotsecant 2y ago
Homelabs are for people who enjoy unrestrained and irrational exercise of technology in whatever way they decide to. It doesn't have to be about reliability or efficiency. It's just poking at things until neat stuff happens or it all breaks. The surest way to take all the joy out of a hobby is to do it as a job. You sound thoroughly employed.
turtlebits 2y ago
Yes, it is a playground for devops, but IMO the appeal is being able to run any service you want without paying for a SaaS. It often fills the "I want that"/instant gratification void. That and organizing things "just so". Which makes it a hobby.
mikepurvis 2y ago
I get the appeal for other people, but for me I quickly burnt out just trying to keep Deluge, Jellyfin, Zoneminder, and Homeassistant up and functional— Zoneminder in particular is (or was, anyway) an absolute nightmare to deploy and run.
- 2y ago

Vurdentium 2y ago

[dead]

keyle 2y ago

Aside: is there a term to define the developers that use these kinds of cutesie graphics? Seems to be a real movement, I'm older, and I seem to have missed the memo. Where did that start and is there some history behind why?

lidavidm 2y ago
The graphics would be called chibis, IMO (or デフォルメ if you wanna be fancy) and IDK about developers, but perhaps weaboos/weebs would be the general term
rhmw2b 2y ago
+1 I guess I’m old as well. The presentation makes it seem like I should recognize them, but obviously I don’t. Would love an explanation.
colechristensen 2y ago
This is giving a big anime-enthusiast and possibly furry community vibe, it's really pretty separate culturally than just being a developer. For people who really are into it, it becomes a fetish... and no judgement for things that happen between consenting adults but... it can seem pretty odd from the outside. But it can also be entirely innocent, nothing wrong with liking certain art styles. So if you don't understand these things best not to copy them because you could unintentionally be sending some pretty strong signals. It's also somewhat in the style of the Manga Guides, which are fantastic and an entirely different way to make some of these things accessible. https://www.ohmsha.co.jp/english/manga.htm https://www.ohmsha.co.jp/english/manga.htm
Gigachad 2y ago
It's both anime/weeb and furry art styles. Usually these are two groups don't really have anything to do with each other but the author is just part of both. Which doesn't strictly have anything to do with developers either other than the author being part of all three.
hoseja 2y ago
There are but they all get you banned.

QuiDortDine 2y ago

Did this person just... solve bot abuse? That should be the title of the post. I for sure want to use their solution for my own homeserver.

mtone 2y ago
Related discussion on Anubis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43427679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43427679
jsnell 2y ago
No. If that interstitial is working, it's only working due to obscurity, and the moment this system becomes even slightly popular it'll become worthless. Proof of work is not a viable defense -- it's basically impossible to tune the parameters such that the cost is prohibitive or even meaningful to the scrapers but doesn't become an obstacle to users. It's pretty much just a check for whether the client can run JavaScript. But that's table stakes to a scraper. Trying to discriminate between a real browser, a real browser running in headless mode, or something trying to fake being a real browser requires far more invasive probing of the browser properties (pretty much indistinguishable from browser fingerprinting) and obfuscating what properties are being collected and checked. That's already what any commercial bot protection product would be doing. Replicating that kind of product as an on-prem open source project would be challenging. First, this is an adversarial abuse problem. There is actual value in keeping things hidden, which an open source project can't do. Doing bot detection is already hard enough when you can keep your signals and heuristics secret, doing it in the open would be really hard mode. (And no, "security by obscurity is no security at all" doesn't apply here. If you think it does, it just means you haven't actually worked on adversarial engineering problems.) Second, it's an endless cat and mouse game. There's no product that's done. There's only a product that's good enough right now, but as the attackers adapt it'll very quickly become worthless. For a product like this to be useful it needs constant work. It's one thing to do that work when you're being paid for it, it's totally another for it to be uncompensated open source work. It'd just chew through volunteers like nobody's business. Third, you'll very quickly find yourself working only in the gray area of bots that are almost but not quite indistinguishable from humans. When working in that gray area, you need access to fresh data about both bot and real user activities, and you need the ability to run and evaluate a lot of experiments. Not a good fit for on-prem open source.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

apexalpha 2y ago

Currently moving my homeserver setup to K8s. Which, in a way, is also over provisioning it I guess. I learned a ton so far, it's been really rewarding having to manage the entire stack yourself. Also Talos is golden!