A couple of weeks ago, I went to update my VPS. Usually, I do this once a week, sometimes more frequently depending on any security news I see. I should probably have the AI agents I use do this, but I do it myself for now. I find infrastructure interesting and “boring” in a good way most of the time.

While updating one of my VPSes, I got a message saying I needed to pay for access to Caddy because the repository had reached its bandwidth limit. This was from a company called Cloudsmith. I wasn't the only one getting this message, either. There was already a large discussion going on over at Caddy's GitHub.

This led me down a big rabbit hole that lasted quite a few hours, and I'm still thinking about it. My first thought wasn't about the bandwidth limit itself, but whether this could be a new type of attack. Caddy is open source and free, and it's used by a lot of people, organizations, and companies. We've seen several different supply chain attacks over the years. But what if someone deliberately flooded the repositories of open-source projects and used up their free bandwidth allowances? People wouldn't be able to download security updates, leaving older, bug-ridden versions of the software running and potentially vulnerable to exploitation.

Before anyone says not to give people ideas, I'm sure someone has already thought of this. It's kind of a modern-day denial-of-service attack, just from a different angle.

As it turned out, Caddy's repository had exhausted its 4.9 TB monthly bandwidth allowance. Apparently, much of the traffic came from automated systems repeatedly downloading packages. Some IP addresses had reportedly made hundreds of thousands of requests. That's a lot of bandwidth for a free open-source project to deal with.

Luckily, there was no indication this was a deliberate attack, so my aluminum foil hat could come off. By the end of the weekend, someone at Cloudsmith had fixed the bandwidth limit problem, and everyone could update again.

What I found encouraging was that several other providers contacted the maintainer and offered to help. I'm not sure if any of those offers were accepted, but it was good to see people stepping up to help keep a free project running.

And that's something I appreciate about open source. Projects like Caddy and Traefik are useful to a lot of people, including me, and much of the work behind them is done by people who aren't getting rich from it. Meanwhile, we have hardware manufacturers shifting supply toward their most profitable customers while the rest of us deal with higher prices and fewer choices.

It's quite a contrast. On one side, companies making hardware harder and more expensive for ordinary people to get. On the other, people putting their time and effort into making software that anyone can use, often for little or no rewards and riches.

I'm glad there are still people willing to do that for the greater good of the internet.

#caddy #selfhosting #technology

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Why? Well, that is hard to put into words. I guess the answer is that I really like technology, I am fascinated with self-hosting as much as possible, and I like collecting data and contributing data to something larger without having to pay a subscription.

Anyway, I got this Tempest Weather Station for a great price during Prime Day. I put it up and integrated it into a Python weather program, while also using Tempest's own software. But there was something I didn't know, and probably should have checked. It wouldn't have changed my mind, but there are hundreds of these things around me.

Zoom out a little, and there are even more throughout the Tampa Bay area.

Then look at the wider area.

According to Tempest, this is a map of publicly reporting Tempest weather stations. So those pins represent actual stations whose owners have chosen to share their data publicly, although the location shown on the map may be moved slightly by the owner for privacy.

That makes the number of stations even more interesting to me. Tempest uses observations from its weather stations to help improve the current conditions and forecasts it provides to users. WeatherFlow also combines Tempest observations with data from many other public and private weather networks for its APIs and professional weather products.

So my little weather station isn't just collecting information for me. It is also one small part of a much larger weather-data network, which I find fascinating.

You can see mine below. This was captured one evening by my backyard Nest camera just after sunset. It actually caught a pretty nice sky, too.

In the coming months and years, I hope to do more with this system. For now, I just thought it was extremely interesting to discover that I am far from alone in combining an interest in weather with an interest in technology.

#community #selfhosting #technology

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I can see IFTTT and Zapier either having to step up their game or eventually fading away. AI is a game-changer for those of us who aren't coders. While I’m sure the code isn’t the most optimized (Claude AI is supposedly the best at code generation right now), it’s incredible how AI allows regular people like me to experiment and bring my ideas to life.

This is how I envision AI—not as a replacement, but as a helper and a great equalizer. I know this technology will inevitably change lives (not necessarily for the better) and eliminate some jobs, but it’s also making powerful tools and knowledge more accessible to the masses.

Tags: #AI #Selfhosting #Automation

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I noticed a couple of days ago that DSLreports.com stopped working. I thought maybe they were doing some maintenance or having a problem. After a couple of days of trying and doing a little research, and admittedly finding no firm answer, the consensus is that it is offline and has shut down permanently. It shut down unceremoniously and without warning. That site was a great resource for finding savings with your ISP and checking if you were the only one experiencing service problems. It will be missed, and I’m not sure if anyone could step in, though I hope so.

This seems to be a trend happening more and more. The things I use are either dying off or being taken over by billionaires who turn megalomaniac. That is why I am turning more and more to self-hosted or managed hosting for some services that I feel are better suited for frequent upgrades and the ability to handle traffic.

#DSLReports #TechShutdown #SelfHosting #ManagedHosting

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I’ve been trying to become more self-sufficient with technology lately. I’ve recently started dabbling with setting up a Raspberry Pi and self-hosting different services. I began with Pi-Hole because I’m just tired of all the ads. While this hasn’t eliminated all of them, it’s removed about 80 percent, which is a big improvement.

I’m also moving away from shared hosting (once my contract ends) because of the WordPress kerfuffle, the high pricing of my shared hosting, and WordPress nickel-and-diming for every little add-on. On top of that, I’ve grown frustrated with how complicated WordPress has become. I believe I’ve found the perfect solution, but all of this comes at a cost. I’m definitely stretching my comfort zone with technology and encountering new challenges along the way.

One challenge I’ve encountered is that most of the best blogging tools are only available for macOS, iOS, or iPadOS. Since I use Windows and Android, I often feel left out in the cold. Writing once and then publishing everywhere I want to is not as simple as it should be. I often find myself either cutting and pasting or using awkward workarounds.

#SelfHosting #TechChallenges #RaspberryPi #WordPress

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