1. Some kind of monitoring software, like the Grafana stack. I like email and Discord notifications.
2. The Dockerfile will have a HEALTHCHECK statement, but in my experience this is pretty rare. Most of the time I set up a health check in the docker compose file or I extended the Dockerfile and add my own. You sometimes need to add a tool (like curl) to do the health check anyway.
3. It’s a feature of the container, but the app needs to support some way of signaling “health”, such as through a web API.
4. It depends on your needs. You can do all of the above. You can do so-called black box monitoring where you’re just monitoring whether your webapp is up or down. Easy. However, for a business you may want to know about problems before they happen, so you add white box monitoring for sub-components (database, services), timing, error counts, etc.

To add to that: health checks in Docker containers are mostly for self-healing purposes. Think about a system where you have a web app running in many separate containers across some number of nodes. You want to know if one container has become too slow or non-responsive so you can restart it before the rest of the containers are overwhelmed, causing more serious downtime. So, a health check allows Docker to restart the container without manual intervention. You can configure it to give up if it restarts too many times, and then you would have other systems (like a load balancer) to direct traffic away from the failed subsystems.

It’s useful to remember that containers are “cattle not pets”, so a restart or shutdown of a container is a “business as usual” event and things should continue to run in a distributed system.

I speak standing on a hill if my own dead projects. Just remember personal projects are supposed to be fun and educational, maybe with a little resume padding for good measure. Scratch that itch you can’t get to at work. It’s great when other people enjoy them, but as soon as they become a commitment, they start feeling like work. To me, at least.

That’s why I think games or little tools are great. They small enough so you can throw them out and start over. People won’t get (too) mad if you stop maintaining them (if you open source them) because it’s easy for someone else to take over.

I don’t have a concrete idea for you, but I suggest starting with something really simple. I think simple games are a good place to start. Or create a front-end for some command line tool to make it easier on beginners. That way you can focus on the UI development you’re interested in without getting bogged down in the rest of it.

True open source products are your best bet. TruNAS and Proxmox are popular options, but you can absolutely set up a vanilla Debian server with Samba and call it a NAS. Back in the old days we just called those “file servers”.

Most importantly, just keep good backups. If you have to choose between investing in a raid or a primary + backup drive, choose the latter every time. Raid will save you time to recover, but it’s not a backup.

This is a qualified truth. In theory what you’re saying is true but for example with Synology they use their own raid format and while they ostensibly use btrfs they overlay their own metadata system on top.

Gotcha. I face similar issues with Synology. Their hyper backup format doesn’t seem to be standard. I’m considering setting up Borg Backup for offsite so I can restore it onto non Synology devices later.

Was this Synology by chance?

Does that include services like health care, insurance, etc?

This is one of the reasons I prefer using ctrl-insert/shift-insert when it’s available. Unfortunately the Insert key seems to have disappeared from a lot of keyboards. Scroll lock sometimes works instead of ctrl-s and ctrl-q. I would be ok remapping ctrl-c to ctrl-break, but I still use ctrl-z to background a job. Would be great if terminals had a quick easy way to select your preference of Microsoft, unix, or CUA shortcuts.

I don’t mind that fishing exists and I understand many people enjoy it as a kind of zen. I personally would enjoy it more if it were more engaging.

You’re right, I could just choose to ignore it if it has nothing of value to me.

However, at least in ESO, tons of achievements and rewards are locked behind fishing activities. I could ignore their as well, but I would prefer if I could enjoy a more engaging fishing mini game (like their scrying is tedious but at least you’re actively doing something).

Good point! I suggest fishing spears if only to grief the players who are begging for spears as a melee weapon in ESO.

But more seriously: a spear mechanic at least would have an element of skill to aim at the fish and account for refraction - or something. Not just pure chance.

Anything that is 100% chance and just wasting time, with no meaningful way for the player to influence the odds. For example, how fishing is implemented in some MMOs like ESO: you can eat a buff food and use the correct bait for the water, but beyond that you’re just waiting in agony until the random timer dings. Then you do that 12 times before moving to the next hole, etc. “Waiting” isn’t an enjoyable mechanic.

• see if there’s literally anything else you can do to improve or polish what you just worked on
• set if there’s anyone else that might need help with their work or who you can mentor
• learn new things you can put on your resume it that will help you in your job
• learn stuff in general that isn’t directly work related, but maybe related to your next job/what you would like to work with

It’s not a matter of software choice, in my opinion. It’s the network effect. Everybody is on Facebook.

Despite its falling out of favor of the younger generation, it still has massive inertia. There’s also the issue of (I think) the overall weariness of being on social media. The halcyon days of that is over; it has become a utility at best.

I think part of the reason I enjoy the fediverse is that it reminds me of the old Internet: loosely connected, federated but independent. We had irc for chat, usenet, and mailing lists. We had like half a dozen IM platforms and tons of bulletin boards.

With that in mind, the solution may be to just let the fediverse evolve: let people find the media that works for them, whether they are into photography, music, politics, whatever. Use the software that makes sense. You don’t have to declare a victor.

The real threat isn’t Facebook: it’s centralization and censorship. The more distributed and heterogenous your ecosystem is, the safer you will be.

I have a DS923+ with four Seagate 8TB drives in it that I really like. It’s easy to use and offers a lot of services.

However, like others have said, I do not recommend it for new purchases. If I were to do it again I would most likely set up an old PC as a server (though I went with the Synology mainly for power use reasons).

Synology is getting increasingly customer hostile, and from what I’ve read online their Linux version is so full of bespoke patches that they have painted themselves in a corner it will be hard to get out of. So, they’re likely to fall behind on keeping up with third party software. Their software is usually pretty slick and easy to use, but they discontinue things every few cycles.

The main thing I still use of theirs is Synology Drive, which was a pretty seamless move from Google Drive. On the flipside, their stuff is proprietary, so getting off of their platform can be challenging.

For my self-hosting needs I try not to tie anything to the Synology and just use it as a plain NAS. I use my Raspberry Pi or a VM instead.

They’re not as common. I think most people either use a coffee maker (for coffee), or their microwaves to heat water. However, I have an electric kettle in my office for tea. One thing you may notice in the US vs Europe in that regard is that the standard outlet is 120V, so most small appliances can’t pull as much power as their 240V counterparts in Europe. So my electric kettle is probably a little slower than yours.

I mostly threw these out of the top of my head. You’re mostly correct:

• most people use cards, not checks, but they’re still widely in use. For example if you’re paying a handyman, piano teacher, or just dealing with someone older, or someone who just doesn’t have other ways to receive payment
• I’m in rural Ohio so I see Amish on the roads all the time. They’re not where it is expressly forbidden, like a divided highway, but you can find them on roads with speed limits around 50 or 55 at times
• For the windows, the sliding style is what is weird to Europeans. We mostly use the kind that swings out in one direction it the other. American windows make more sense when you take into account that they have screens on them. (I forgot to list screens.)

The societal problems if the US has been covered by others, but here are some culture shock ones I’ve experienced, in no particular order:

• still use personal checks
• put down knife after cutting your food, move fork to dominant hand
• drive through everything, including alcohol purchases
• horse and buggy on highway
• doorknobs instead of handles
• almost everyone has air conditioning, so doors and windows stay closed in summer
• double hung windows
• carry water bottles everywhere
• gas stoves and ovens are by far more popular than electric by a good margin
• in sink garbage disposals

I believe the movie Gattaca’s premise is around this subject.

I would still have my other citizenship, so I would plant a flag and claim it for my homeland, ignoring any other residents who may be present, as is tradition. Bonus: free healthcare.