I’m not too sure - I’m not too familiar with any of these services (including PinePods 😂). I know this type of feature is a common request for any audio related services though. I imagine that this is something that could be added at some point, but I’m not sure what the effort would be.

I don’t see anything about it on the roadmap for v1 or anywhere else on Pinepods’ issues. Perhaps the developer/maintainer @[email protected] can chime in or an issue on Github can be created with more information about this feature request?

The biggest benefits are likely:

• Single service for all your podcasting needs (ie: searching, storing, playing, tracking, and syncing podcasts + listening history)
• Multi-device, cross-platform support (I know this can be somewhat accomplished through the process that you mentioned, but you would need separate apps for iOS and desktop/web)
• (speculation/assumption) It may be easier to get newer features added to Pinepods (especially those that you or the community contributes and/or for server-related features) since the project is focused on just podcasts
• I’m not aware of a similar all-in-one podcast server + client service. As Pinepods matures, it can offer features/services that may not be easily included in the services you mentioned. For example, searching by transcript across all downloaded podcasts or summarizing/combining multiple podcasts (which may be helpful if you listen to multiple daily/weekly/monthly “news” podcasts of a similar topic).
• Supporting a newer project and open source community

The first two may not apply to you in particular, but I’m sure if you have other users that use the services you support then I’m sure they would appreciate having to learn/use a single app/interface for podcasts instead of having to learn one for searching/downloading (if they care about that at all), one for listening on mobile, one for listening on web, and another for managing their download/play sync.

Lots of good suggestions in this thread! A few additional ones that I don’t think I’ve seen yet:

• Testing/QA server (eg: test existing software’s major upgrades before upgrading your “production” environment, test new services without impacting your “production” environment, test new operating systems/virtualization software/etc.)
• Learn automation (eg: Terraform, Opentofu, Ansible, etc.) or horizontal scaling (eg: Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, etc.) to try improving future upgrades and/or high availability
• Media center PCs (eg: Kodi, LibreElec, OSMC, etc.) or gaming PCs for various TVs around your house to replace Apple TVs/Google TVs/etc. or gaming consoles
• Home Assistant

I recommend that you think hard and properly access your threat profile. You are likely going to have to pay with either your wallet (eg: some sort of company incorporation, lawyer fees, forwarding services, and other privacy protection services), your time (eg: using “inconvenient” services, managing separate accounts, etc.), or both. It can be draining (in more than one way) and take away some of the joy that you’re intending this to bring you if you do too much to protect yourself. On the other hand, if you do too little then you can overexpose yourself leading to pricey or dangerous situations.

At a minimum, I would recommend incorpating and making sure your name is not publicly tied to the company in any way. You will likely need a person/company/lawyer to be publicly listed as an agent of some sort for the company. You should be able to have someone do this for you for a small-medium sized fee. Once you have that, do everything in the company’s name and ideally with separate phone numbers, email addresses, online accounts, bank accounts, and physical addresses as anything tied directly to you.

Some of that is to protect yourself financially and legally, but there are some obvious privacy benefits as well. Anything beyond that should be dictated by your threat profile.

As always though, follow best practices when it comes to security! Use strong passwords and use multi-factor authentication when possible (or ideally, use passkeys). Don’t reuse passwords (and ideally, don’t reuse email addresses for multiple accounts). Avoid clicking links in messages when possible. Don’t open suspicious documents (especially if they are unexpected). Verify the authenticity of any new person/business you interact with (especially if they contact you first). Be vigilant of all forms of phishing attacks.

Another piece of advice (that you didn’t ask for, sorry!) - if the process of making art is the thing that brings you joy and the materials are not too expenses, then just focus on making the art without selling it (at least for a while). At worst, you will realize that maybe this isn’t as enjoyable as you thought it would be with the added benefit of not needing to deal with all the troubles of working through all the legal/financial/privacy protections. At best, if you decide to get serious about selling it then you’ll have a larger product inventory and better understanding of what you like making most. It may also help you understand what you should price everything at (assuming you’ve made some of the items in larger quantities).

Thanks for the response!

Sorry to hear about the frustrations regarsing F-Droid, but glad to hear it will at least be on IzzyOnDroid. Excited to check it out once it’s available on there!

Excited to see the app develop over time. I bet Pinepods will be able to meet all my podcasting needs sooner than I can imagine.

Thanks for the update! Really appreciate all of the work that has gone into this.

A few quick questions:

• Will the Android app be available on F-Droid? It looks like it should/will be, but I don’t see it on F-Droid at the moment.
• Is it possible to download episodes from a Pinepods server to a local device via a Pinepods client so the episodes can be stored on something externally, like a USB drive or old MP3 player? If so, can all/multiple episodes on the server for a podcast be downloaded without having to manually select each episode? The only download options that I have seen are for the server to download the episodes from the podcast’s source.

I believe Google plans to use Google Play Services to block side loaded apps. By default, GrapheneOS does not come with Google Play Services installed. I am not sure how things would work if the sandboxes version of Google Play Services that GrapheneOS provides is installed.

The issue about maintaining/updating GrapheneOS is a separate issue from side loading apps. That was due to Google shifting the development of Android to a closed source model and only open sourcing the final code. This limits the Grapheme team’s ability to anticipate changes and make any required adjustments until after the release of Android.

I think that any guides you find for Gitea + Renovate should work still for Forgejo + Renovate.

I believe the process is:

• Create Forgejo instance
• Create a user for Renovate within Forgejo
• Using the CLI on your local machine (or another tool to complete this step), create an SSH public/private key for the Renovate user
• Log into Forgejo using the Renovate user and configure the previously created SSH keys and separately generate a Forgejo token
• Create a Renovate instance with settings for at least RENOVATE_GIT_PRIVATE_KEY (SSH private key value), RENOVATE_TOKEN (Forgejo token value), RENOVATE_PLATFORM (gitea), RENOVATE_ENDPOINT (Forgejo API base URL), and any other Renovate settings that you may find helpful/necessary to configure (eg: GITHUB_COM_TOKEN, RENOVATE_AUTODISCOVER, etc.)
• Depending on how you want things to work, you may need to give the Renovate Forgejo user access to individual repos

It is not clear that this is the app that will be used for the new watches. I imagine it will support the new RePebble watches, but I believe that app was intended for the original Pebble watches.

The thing that makes it so unclear to me is that this is a repo owned by the Rebble team, not the RePebble team. I do not know how much overlap there is between the two teams, but the RePebble team does not have any open source repos that I could find. Any mention of open source software by RePebble (including the OS) are links to repos owned by other teams, which is a little concerning.

I understand that the watch operating system is open source. However, it seems that the watch will connect to a companion smartphone app. Do you know if the app is a requirement and/or if the app will be open source?

If you know your VPN’s DNS server, you can change your local DNS so that it redirects your specified domains/subdomains to the appropriate, local IP address and all other requests would then use your VPN’s DNS.

If you don’t know your VPN provider’s DNS server information, you may be able to still do something similar to the above depending on your setup. Otherwise, you could run your own DNS resolver or use a different DNS provider. I guess doing so could potentially be used to further fingerprint you, but the concern about “DNS fingerprinting” is moreso DNS leaks where your DNS queries are accessible to unintended parties due to improper configuration.

I believe the only other option would be to change your hosts file on each device you want to use to connect to your services, which is probably not the best approach and may be challenging/impossible for certain devices.

Also, unless you setup the self signed certs to be trusted on a network/domain level (or again on each individual device), you will likely get a warning/error about the self signed certs when accessing your services. You may need to work through this process each time the certs renew.

I recommend buying a domain if you do not already have one and finding a service that provides wildcard certification challenges. This would allow you to setup a valid, trusted certificate that you could reuse for all of your services. The only thing that you would need to provide is an email address (can be any email address) and your domain name (in addition to other information that may be required to setup an account at the cert provider, but you may already have an account there as it could be the domain name registrar or other services like VPS providers, Cloudflare, etc.). Since it is a wildcard cert, each subdomain does not need to be set publicly and if you only use the domain within your network, the domain does not need to be publicly associated with any IP address.

If you do go forward with that approach, you could use the wildcard cert directly within NginxProxyManager or other reverse proxies. They will also automatically update/maintain the cert for you.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution and there likely isn’t a solution that works for everyone even in specific situations due to different threat models. Purchasing and using a custom domain is often listed as a good practice for maintaining a person’s privacy. However, it can be even more detrimental to a person’s privacy than just using a trusted email masking/forwarding service and trusted email provider. For example:

• The domain is purchased without WHOIS protection (or without using non-personal information) or the WHOIS protection is not renewed
• The email server is hosted on hardware that can be linked to other services that identify the individual (eg: the email is self hosted using a home IP address)
• A self hosted email server is configured in a way that leaks information or is configured insecurely
• The email domain is used by only one person, which enables agencies to link each individual, unique email address back to that individual and create an aggregated profile across various accounts/services
• If the domain/DNS is not configured properly (or if the domain is not renewed), then the domain (and thus the email accounts) can be hijacked, which could lead to any additional accounts/services that are still using the domain vulnerable to a take over attack
• The email server is hosted by a privacy invasive company/service
• The person assumes that all emails are private since they use a custom domain on a trusted email provider (or self hosted email server), but continue to send emails containing sensitive information to email accounts running privacy invasive email services (eg: Gmail)

Please note that I am not saying that this is not a good option, but I just wanted to note some of the things that should be considered if a person decides to use a custom email domain to improve their digital privacy.

My beef with them is that they’re either pushed by scammer to empty honest but gullible people’s bank accounts, or they’re used to pay for illegal activities because they’re totally opaque and unregulated.

Scammers also use gift cards, checks, wires, cash, bank accounts, investment funds, and many other means to accomplish this. Several of them are tightly regulated and it does not seem to deter or prevent the scams from occurring.

My other beef is that they’re really securities and they’re not subject to the rules on securities for a reason that totally escapes me.

Admittedly, I am not well versed in this area. Do you foresee a way to properly subject cryptocurrencies to the same/similar regulations as other securities while still providing many/all of cryptocurrencies’ benefits, including anonymity? Are the legitimate cryptocurrency exchanges (eg: Coinbase) not subject to those regulations? How different is this from individuals being taxed on gains/losses from cryptocurrencies?

I don’t do cryptocurrencies both out of self-financial preservation, and also because I refuse to participate - and thus promote - stuff that’s generally bad for society as a whole.

The first part is in relation to investing in cryptocurrency moreso than using cryptocurrency.

What makes cryptocurrency generally bad for society as a whole? While I am not familiar enough with the current estimates, I know there are environmental concerns (eg: water/electricity usage, required hardware, etc.). I concede that the environmental impacts may be (and likely are) worse than traditional fist currencies, I am unaware of other reasons that make cryptocurrency generally bad for society as a whole.

Trump loves em

Many privacy advocates also love cryptocurrency. Two different people or groups of people (no matter how similar or different) can have one or more shared interests, even if the reasons or motivations are drastically different. It is likely best to avoid politics on this topic.

• Edward Snowden Says Use Crypto, Don’t Invest In It
• Edward Snowden Calls Bitcoin Most Significant Monetary Advance Since The Creation Of Coinage

Cryptocurrency

Hard no. I don’t partake in scams, even for the sake of privacy.

Is this in relation to the monetary value of cryptocurrency or the anonymity of cryptocurrency?

The list included cryptocurrency as a channel for anonymous payments, not an investment opportunity. The two cryptocurrencies listed are two of the more well established cryptocurrencies that are more widely accepted than many other cryptocurrencies (granted, one or both of them are still not accepted by a large number of merchants). Additionally, the list also mentions some of the considerations necessary to help ensure the cryptocurrency is obtained anonymously.

If the list only included insert_newly_created_obscure_cryptocurrencies then this would definitely be more concerning.

However, if the cryptocurrency is both obtained and used “properly” where the person is ultimately anonymously exchanging cryptocurrency for a desired good(s) or service(s), is it truly a scam?

In terms of privacy, you are giving your identity provider insight to each of the third party services that you use. It may seem that there isn’t too much of a difference between using Google’s SSO vs using your Gmail address to register your third party account. However, one big distinction is that Google would be able to see often and when you use each of your third party services.

Also, it may be impossible to restrict the sharing of certain information from your identity provider with the third party service. For example, maybe you don’t want to share a picture of yourself with a service, but that service uses user profile pictures or avatars. That service may ask (and require) that you give it access to your Google account’s profile picture in order to authenticate using Google’s SSO. You may be able to overwrite that picture, but you also may not be able to revoke the service’s ability to retrieve it. If you used a “regular” local account, that Google profile picture would never be shared with the third party service if you did not upload it directly. The same is true for other information like email, first/last/full name, birthday, etc.

There are other security and operational concerns with using SSO options. With the variety of password managers available, introduction of passkeys, and increased adoption of multi-factor authentication, many of the security benefits associated with SSO aren’t as prevalent as they were 10 years ago. The biggest benefit is likely the convenience that SSO still brings compared to other authentication methods.

Ultimately it’s up to you to determine if these concerns are worth the benefits of using SSO (or the third party service provider at all if they require SSO). I have a feeling the common advise will be to avoid SSO unless its an identity provider that you trust (or even better - one that you host yourself) - especially if you’re using unique emails/usernames along with strong and unique passwords with multi-factor authentication and/or passkeys.

Congrats on getting everything working - it looks great!

One piece of (unprovoked, potentially unwanted) advice is to setup SSL. I know you’re running your services behind Wireguard so there isn’t too much of a security concern running your services on HTTP. However, as the number of your services or users (family, friends, etc.) increases, you’re more likely to run into issues with services not running on HTTPS.

The creation and renewal of SSL certificates can be done for free (assuming you have a domain name already) and automatically with certain reverse proxy services like NGINXProxyManager or Traefik, which can both be run in Docker. If you set everything up with a wildcard certificate via DNS challenge, you can still keep the services you run hidden from people scanning DNS records on your domain (ie people won’t know that an SSL certificate was issued for immich.your.domain). How you set up the DNS challenge will vary by the DNS provider and reverse proxy service, but the only additional thing that you will likely need to set up a wildcard challenge, regardless of which services you use, is an email address (again, assuming you have a domain name).

Raspberry Pi + PiHole + PiVPN = Network Gateway Drug

Although, PiVPN is winding down so you might want to find something different instead. Setting up a regular Wireguard VPN isn’t so bad, but it may be simpler to setup a Tailscale Tailnet.

the only sites I give permenant cookie exception are my selfhosted services

This is what I was referring to. How are you accomplishing this?

I’m still looking for the switches to block all new requests asking to access microphone, location, notification

I can’t help with this at the moment, but if you’re still struggling with this I can provide the lines required to disable these items. However, I don’t know how to do this with exceptions (ie allowing your self hosted sites to use that functionality, but block all other sites). At minimum though you could require Firefox to ask you every time a site wants to use something. This may get repetitive for things like your self hosted sites if you have everything clearing when you exit Firefox.

Didn’t look at the repo thoroughly, but I can appreciate the work that went into this.

• Is there any reason you went this route instead of just using an user-overrides.js file for the standard arkenfox user.js file?
• Does the automatic dark theme require enabling any fingerprintable settings (beyond just possobly determining the theme of the OS/browser)?
• How are you handling exceptions for sites? I assumed it would be in the user.js file, but didn’t notice anything in particular handling specific URLs differently.

Calls made from speakers and Smart Displays will not show up with a caller ID unless you’re using Duo.

Is it possible to use Duo still? Google knows it discontinued/merged Duo with Google Meet nearly 18 months ago, right?