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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2025

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  • Many people talking about using subdomains, but that’s only really a thing if you actually have a domain. Just last year the domain .internal was reserved for internal use, so that’s what I’ve set up all my domains to use. E.g. https://pihole.internal/, https://proxmox.internal/.

    To make this work I use pihole’s local dns records to rewrite any *.internal domain to point to my reverse proxy Caddy’s ip.

    As for the certificates, I created my own CA, which I install on all my and my family’s devices. Then, for each new url I set up, I create a new certificate and sign it with my CA certificate, then have my reverse proxy serve it.

    This all sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but using OPNsense for both reverse proxy and certificates makes it well integrated and certificates are trivial to renew. With that said, if you have your own domain, go the let’s encrypt subdomain route instead imo. It saves you a lot of manual labor with setting up your CA on every device you own and creating new certificates for each site.




  • I’ve been using Matrix/Element for about a year now. I think it’s been great and have no plans on using anything else, I’ve even started donating to the matrix foundation. I self-host a server and using bridge bots I’ve aggregated all my chat services into Matrix, so I talk to my friends on signal using the Element app.

    A few notes:

    • Nobody I’ve ever met has heard of matrix. I’ve had to very manually convince close friends and family to get the app and help them sign up.
    • The restore process is complex as recovery keys are stored on device and most people don’t understand the concept of downloading and saving them in a secure place. So if they lose their phone, chances are they can’t recover their messages, only their account. (as long as they sign in with two devices and don’t forget their password, it’s not an issue)
    • Also regarding the restore process. There are two apps, Element and Element X, with X being the newer and more modern one. It’s still WIP though and doesn’t have most recovery functionality.
    • Calls and video calls work differently in the apps, so unless you all have the newer app or all have the older app, you can’t make calls to each other.