PikaPods
Weekly Highlights
Happy new year! Despite being a busy week in software development (35+ new project launches in today's newsletter!), I found the news cycle to be a bit slow (I blame Stranger Things and Indiana's CFB dominance).
In lieu of this, enjoy a brief list of resolutions I've made on behalf of the self-hosted community for 2026:
- Projects will no longer be named ending in arr or rr
- Projects will no longer be rebranded as The AI <blank> Platform
- Projects will no longer brand themselves as modern or opinionated
- Users will stop the barrage of AI slop accusations at the first sign of emojis
- Users will stop suggesting Linux as a realistic alternative to Windows for non-technical users
- Users will stop referring to Docker containers as dockers
- Users will stop brown-nosing developers with 'appreciation' posts and begin regularly donating to projects instead
- Dan Brown (of BookStack fame) will finally rename his feed aggregation project to something less generic than RSS
If you missed it, I also published a comprehensive list of (almost) every new project launch covered by this newsletter in 2025, as well as a growing list of self-hosted tools that offer year-in-review-styled statistics:
Ethan Sholly
Ethan Sholly
Other Highlights
- A critical MongoDB security vulnerability was found a few days after Christmas (update if you haven't already!)
- Visual Studio Code rebranded itself as the open source AI code editor (they clearly didn't receive the memo above)
- Someone created a Home Assistant integration that allows users to control their automations (turning lights on, etc.) with a Harry Potter Magic Caster Wand
- Maker Management Platform (digital asset manager) is seeking a new maintainer
- A rack-building visualization platform mentioned last week has been renamed from Rackarr to Rackula (they clearly received the memo above)
- I revisited my favorite self-hosted copypasta from 2025 (credit to Reddit user u/No-Raccoon-1993)
Happy selfh.st/ing!
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Newswire
Elliot Courant
Amanda Silberling
Content Spotlight
Meet Tugtainer, a self-hosted platform for monitoring and managing Docker image updates. With Tugtainer, users are given a minimal web interface with a list of running containers and the ability to automatically (scheduled) or manually trigger update checks (with the option to only apply them to individual containers). Features include support for remote hosts, socket proxy support, Crontab scheduling, notifications, per-container configuration, private registries, and image pruning.
Tugtainer can be easily deployed via Docker and requires a separate agent when deploying across remote machines.
Links: Source Code
Videos and Podcasts
- UniFi Firewall Defaults Are Too Open: Here’s How to Lock Them Down | Lawrence Systems
- Installing Colanode | TrueNAS Community Edition 2025 | Servers@Home
- Finally, a Portainer-Friendly Way to Deploy NetBox! | SYNACK Time
- Why EVERY Home Needs an Unraid Server in 2026 (Seriously) | AlienTech42
Command Line Corner
Use id -u to display your user's numeric ID from the command line:
$ id -u
1001Click here for an archive of commands shared in past newsletters.
Executive Sponsors
Thanks to following executive sponsors, whose continued support makes this newsletter possible:
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