This Week in Self-Hosted (22 September 2023)

2023 Self-Host User Survey

Today is the last day to submit a response to our 2023 user survey! Responses will be accepted until 9pm EST tonight. As always, feel free to reach out with feedback on how we can improve the survey for next year.

2023 Self-Host User Survey

An annual survey focused on self-hosting environments, behaviors, preferences, and user demographics

selfh.stEthan Sholly

In the News

Home Assistant Apparently Hasn't Run Out of Colors to Name Products After

The popular home automation software Home Assistant turned 10 years-old this past week. To celebrate, they dropped a bunch of announcements on their blog, including custom domain support for Home Assistant Cloud, an updated logo, and the release of Home Assistant Green, a new affordable hardware option for users seeking simpler ways of hosting than their previous offerings.

Jellyfin and Emby Users Should Skip to the Next Section

We're approaching the end of Pro Week, an annual event organized by Plex to showcase some of their media server's best features and functionality with a series of videos and blog posts hosted by Plex employees and other industry personalities. And while I'm always a sucker for more Plexamp content, the highlight of the week was easily Plex Fireside in the Forums, an open thread in the Plex forums where users were invited to ask questions that would be responded to by Plex employees throughout the week.

Software Updates

• Bitwarden v2023.9.0 | Password Manager: WebAuthn now a free 2FA method, organizational invite accounts automatically verified, security fixes
• Booktracker v0.4 | Book Tracking: Support for detailed statistics on ratings, statuses, books read, and popular authors, 'Finished' date now auto-filled when book status is marked as so, enhanced filters and journals functionality
• Immich v1.79.0 | Photos: Existing/external library support, minimum detected face settings
• LinuxServer.io | Containers: New container – Series Troxide
• LLDAP v0.5.0 | LDAP Server: ⚠ Breaking change: Unique e-mail addresses and UUIDs are now enforced ⚠; Support for password change through LDAP Modify for Jellyfin users, user creation with multiple objectClass, group sort by name in web UI, improved logging
• Mastodon v4.2.0 | Microblog: Overhauled search (quick actions, recent searches, search by bio), web interface updates (more thread indicators, article previews, removed cropping), revamped logged out interaction experiences, refined privacy options
• Matrix v2.0 | Chat: Previously announced features now available to begin using alongside the release of Element X, the latest Matrix 2.0 client
• Memos v0.15.0 | Note-Taking: Improved account security via access tokens, new user profile and resources w/ timeline pages, support for parsing LaTeX, cache for editor content
• Miniflux v2.0.48 | Feed Reader: Support for generic webhooks, improved Telegram and Matrix integration, OIDC improvements, various minor updates and changes
• Nextcloud Hub v6 | Collaboration: New features to encourage healthier meeting habits, introduction of Nextcloud Assistant – an on-premise AI assistant (Note: Also featured in this week's content spotlight below.)
• Rallly v3.1.0 | Event Polls: New option to make e-mail required for participants, participant e-mails visible in dropdown menus
• Ryot | Personal Tracker: Plex support, media groups, trailers associated with media, additional third-party integration support

New Software

• Astrysk: Mobile homelab management
• BandcampSync: Synchronize Bandcamp purchases with a local directory
• FormsLab: Open-source forms to collect feedback, create polls, or facilitate surveys
• Element X: Latest Matrix 2.0 client (currently in beta)

Content Spotlight: Nextcloud Hub 6

Meet Nextcloud Hub 6, the recently released update to the popular self-hosting collaboration platform Nextcloud. Hub 6 introduces a number of new features and updates across a variety of categories as it continues to evolve into Nextcloud's vision of being a one-stop shop for professional and personal productivity across files, groupware, and communication:

• Meetings and Productivity: Daily highlights, new reminder capabilities for files, folders, e-mails, and Talk messages, talking time summaries during meetings, 60-minute call popups, silent notifications, additional options for interacting directly from user profiles
• Local AI: Introduction of the new, local on-premises LLM integration (Nextcloud Assistant) across Text, Mail, and Talk, with a heavy emphasis on and commitment to user/organizational privacy
• User Experience: Conversation filters, grouped system messages, text formatting in chats, advanced file versioning and sharing options
• Office: New features across Tables, Collectives, and Deck
• Groupware: Mail (more automation capabilities), Contacts (quick actions), and Calendar (better meeting creation/access options)
• Development: New ecosystem that allows developers to write apps in languages other than PHP
• Mobile/Desktop Client Updates: Image editing on mobile, upload booster for S3-based storage, enhanced image previews, tighter integration across the Nextcloud ecosystem

Nextcloud provides extensive documentation on how to install server and download its various clients for those looking to give Nextcloud Hub 6 a spin (I'd personally recommend Nextcloud All-in-One, although the LSIO team maintains a popular image as well).

(Spoiler alert: Nextcloud is one of the most common responses we received regarding favorite self-hosted software in our recent user survey!)

Links: GitHub, Website, Announcement

Community Content

• How to Protect Your Self-Hosted Services using a Wireguard Private Network | Reddit

Best Zigbee Temperature and Humidity Sensors

This article is a comparison review of all Zigbee Climate Sensors we’ve tested on SmartHomeScene.com in an effort to find the best Zigbee Temperature Sensor.

SmartHomeSceneSHS

Trust, Transparency, Together: Highlights from Day 1 of the Nextcloud Conference - Nextcloud

After a full day of keynotes, talks and discussions, Day 1 of the Nextcloud Conference is complete! Thank you to everyone who made it here from near or far and we look forward to seeing you tomorrow for Day 2! If you missed it or want a recap, read on! The motto of the 2023 […]

NextcloudMikaela Schneider

Featured Homelab

This week's featured homelab is less of a homelab and more of a hilarious blunder as – after terminating the existing ethernet phone lines in their house into a network switch – Reddit user u/mshaefer found themselves contemplating what to do with a gigabit ethernet line running to their powder room.

There's no official word on what it'll eventually be used for as of the time of publishing, but there are a ton of hilarious comments and puns in the Reddit thread (linked above) for those interesting in reading through them.

Command Line Corner: Prefacing commands with <space>

For those with something to hide, prefacing commands with a single space in the command line prevents them from being recorded in the terminal's history:

$ ls -l
$  cd..
$ cd /
$ history

  10 ls -l
  11 cd /

Privacy Corner

The Signal Protocol used by 1+ billion people is getting a post-quantum makeover

Update prepares for the inevitable fall of today’s cryptographic protocols.

Ars TechnicaDan Goodin

Mysk🇨🇦🇩🇪 (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image Philips Hue will soon force users to create a Hue account and sign in to continue to use the app and control the smart lights. The best security model to protect smart devices is to keep them disconnected from the internet, or at least keep this option available. #Privacy #InfoSec…

DEF CON Social

New York Times Doesn’t Want Its Stories Archived

The New York Times blocked a bot that had given the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine huge troves of websites.

The InterceptNikita Mazurov

Other News in Tech

Windows Subsystem for Linux gets new ‘mirrored’ network mode

Microsoft has released Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2.0.0 with a set of new opt-in experimental features, including a new network mode and automated memory and disk size cleanup.

BleepingComputerSergiu Gatlan

John Grisham, other top US authors sue OpenAI over copyrights

A trade group for U.S. authors has sued OpenAI in Manhattan federal court on behalf of prominent writers including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, George Saunders, Jodi Picoult and “Game of Thrones” novelist George R.R. Martin, accusing the company of unlawfully training its popular artificial-intel…

ReutersBlake Brittain

Share Your Content in a Future Newsletter

We're always looking for new and existing self-hosted content to share in This Week in Self-Hosted. Reach out using the button below if you'd like to have your own content featured or have a suggestion for content types you'd like to see featured in future newsletters.