PikaPods
Weekly Highlights
As a perpetually online person, I often have to remind myself that the communities I spend time with rarely represent the opinion of the broader population (echo chambers, vocal minorities, etc.).
And so as I spent the week listening to everyone blast Plex for launching yet another feature nobody asked for, I found myself wondering how untrue that probably is and whether any of the platform's 42 million active monthly users would actually find themselves negatively impacted.
After all, those of us in the open source and self-hosted communities (myself included) are notorious for not practicing what we preach:
- 92% of the 1,500+ projects I follow via selfh.st/apps host their source code on GitHub
- Of the 50+ Discord project communities I'm a member of, only two migrated to other platforms after the age verification debacle
- Before Reddit stopped publishing subscriber counts, the r/selfhosted subreddit had at least 5x more subscribers than Lemmy's sister community
- It's almost impossible to find new projects that haven't leveraged AI, while larger existing projects are adopting it at a rapid pace
- Brands still seem to have a larger presence on X and Bluesky than self-hosted platforms like Mastodon
- Projects still gravitate to Microsoft Office and Google Drive for collaborative exercises (1, 2, 3)
So while we shouldn't stop advocating for change because we're awful at enacting it, just know that I won't judge you for taking advantage of Plex's new social features to finally let your family and friends know just how much you disliked the latest season of Grey's Anatomy.
In other news:
- The rsync team found themselves in hot water for leveraging AI in a recent update (you can find the maintainer's response here)
- Somebody really wants people to stop naming their projects *arr (admittedly, they are getting a bit out of hand)
- Popular YouTuber PewDiePie once again dipped his toe into self-hosting with the launch of Odysseus, a no-frills approach to AI workspaces
- Strava (hosted fitness tracking) announced they're paywalling API access, which is impacting self-hosted projects that rely on it for independent data syncing (consider this new ActivityPub alternative or Endurain if you've been impacted)
- Microsoft announced it's adding native Windows support for a handful of Linux utilities at its annual build conference
- The European Commission shared their latest strategy for tech sovereignty, which includes commitments to open source contributions and development (see also: Tuta is joining the Euro-Office initiative)
- OpenAI released new functionality for Codex called Sites, which will allow users to deploy apps and sites via a hosted service instead of spinning them up on their own infrastructure
- Roku open sourced their Roku LT Operating System for developers
- AV2, the next iteration of the AV1 video codec, released v1.0.0
- A newsletter reader tipped me off to Concerto, an open source digital signage system that is prepping its first update since 2017
- Last week, I learned the Vatican has its own top-level domain. This week it's...furries?
Happy selfh.st/ing!
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Newswire
- GitHub and the Crime Against Software | eblog.fly.dev
Author Thomas Ritter
jerry
Andrew Tridgell
Andrej Acevski
Franck Nijhof
Feedback
Content Spotlight
Meet Keeper, an open source and self-hosted calendar syncing tool. Keeper gives users a polished interface for consolidating, creating, and managing events across various calendar services and protocols. Features include support for multiple calendar sources (remote or CalDAV), an MCP server for AI assistant integration, and cross-calendar syncing.
Keeper can be easily deployed via Docker and requires separate PostgreSQL and Redis containers for storage and caching.
Links: Website, Source Code
Videos and Podcasts
- Nuke The Homelab, Keep 5 Apps. What Survives? | DB Tech
- I’m Begging You to Switch to Jellyfin | AlienTech42
- Everything New In Home Assistant 2026.6! | Everything Smart Home
- Why I'm not telling you to host your own Mastodon | Veronica Explains
- Jellyfin + 5 Plugins = Plex Pass for FREE (Full Setup Guide) | Servers@Home
- Leaving VMware for Proxmox? Here's What You Need to Know First | Lawrence Systems
- Big Tech regulation, the sovereignty challenge, and sustainable digital ecosystem: In conversation with Aline Blankertz | Nextcloud Podcast
- I Tried AI Agents on My Server, and They’re Actually Useful | Techdox
Command Line Corner
Use find -size +100M to find all files in the working directory greater than or equal to 100MB. Adjust 100M to your liking if you'd like to search for files of a different size (for example, 1G for 1GB).
/$ find -size +100M
./self-host-weekly.db
./self-host-weekly.logClick here for an archive of commands shared in past newsletters.
Executive Sponsors
Thanks to following executive sponsors, whose continued support makes this newsletter possible:
- 1Panel – Modern, open source VPS control panel
- AFFiNE – Privacy-first knowledge base
- Atria – Event management and networking platform
- Dawarich – Location history tracking and insights
- Faved – Open source bookmark and link manager
- Komodo – Build and deploy software across servers
- Postiz – Agentic social media scheduling
- Servers@Home – Homelab resources and community
- tirreno – Open source security framework
- Uncloud – Deploy and scale containerized apps across servers
Submit Content
I'm always looking for new and existing self-hosted content to share in Self-Host Weekly. Submit the form 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.