The only reason I keep Netflix is kids.
We don’t really watch it otherwise.
Even my in-laws are now pirates using hacked amazon fire sticks that are being hawked around their retirement community.
My mother in law is like “I get every streaming service and channel for 1 dollar a day, isn’t that great”.
I’m all “if it’s simple and works for you yeah, absolutely. “
Are you hosting it on personal hardware?
Not currently, though I am considering it. Right now I host mine on a VPS in linode. Though i need to downgrade it, I built it with the expectationg of allowing joins, but recently decided just to keep it private.
Can you just choose any free name for the domain if it’s on your own hardware or do you need to rent one regardless?
This wouldnt work. You not only need to have a routable/real domain name, but the server likely needs access to the internet to allow fro federation, specifically ingress traffic, to work.
Do you keep it active all the time or turn it off for the night/other periods of time where you know you won’t use it?
Mine runs 24/7. Even if i hosted it at home it would be 24/7. Only issue is
I already use port 80/443 at home. So i would need to reconfigure NGINX to use a proxy, which could also break federation. I could do that, in fact I am pretty sure the ansible config uses NGINX proxy commands, just that I would have to customize it and Im lazy. I already have stuff on VPS systems in linode (blog, teamspeak etc) so its no biggy to have another one.
My internet at home can be flaky. For example I currently dont have power at home and while I normally run on UPS for a time, and can cut to generator when I am home, my network just went into auto-shutdown.
Excatly why I never opened my instance. With it just being me, i can control what is on it and what is synced. There was too much risk with CP/CSAM type stuff. Heck I didnt even want to risk my linode account (aka they shut my other VPS systems down) due to TOS from shenanigans.
That said, I can still contribute just fine with my own instance and dont have to be involved in these drama defederation actions.
I would encourage anyone that is willing to criticize an instance maintainer for their decisions on risk to just roll out the lemmy-ansible setup and go your own way. If you troll or act in bad faith, you will get defederated. If you act like a reasonable person, no one will even notice. And that way you are in control of uptime, patch cadence, backups etc.
It is. Just never says what’s hung.
Frankly It’s more like
Windows - “shut down please. No it’s fine, I’ll wait. Indefinately is fine”
Linux “ shut down please. You have 30 seconds or I’ll shut you down myself”
You can even include them in your version control system and allow others to suggest changes
I have a mini-pc running a plex vm. And all the TVs are Rokus. So can watch anything, including live broadcast tv. And the roku is so simple kids can operate it, and do.