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  • Curious how your workplace is handling this as laws here are very different to the US (depending on State). Are you still going to be on payroll as an employee or some type of contractor?

    If an employee they need to operate payroll in the UK (called PAYE), and they need to consider if you create a permanent establishment for them. There's also legal and HR requirements on them under UK laws (right to work checks, redundancy laws, can't just fire you, pension auto-enrollment, minimum wage checks, health and wellbeing, safety, minimum holiday pay, sick leave, just to name a few, theres lots more and even more coming in a new law that's just passed).

    If you create your own limited company and operate as a contractor, you will likely be "inside ir35" but the workplace needs to assess this themselves. This means your own company will have to operate payroll and keep in line with employment obligations. If this is the direction you're probably better off using an umbrella company but make sure you pick a reputable one with good reviews rather than the cheapest. This could also cause the workplace to have a UK permanent establishment depending on your role but less of a risk. If you DM your job title I could tell you the rough risk.

    You could be a self-employed contractor which means you have to submit tax returns yourself and the workplace has no UK presence but it technically risky from a tax / legal point of view.

    Once you move, you'll likely become tax resident in the UK so should inform/register with HMRC. You'll need to start paying national insurance after 12 months. You still have to do US returns forever. It's one of the very few countries who do this by the way.

    Check out moneysavingexpert.com for everything it tells you about - anything to do with banks, savings, credit cards, insurance, electricity, mobile contracts,, broadband etc). It's a life saver to explain different products to decide what you actually need, and then where is the cheapest or best value.

    Buy anything above £100 on a UK credit card but pay it off on the statement day (if a normal one, look for 0% spending cards or balance transfers for essentially a free or cheap loan but might need credit history). This gives you extra putrefaction (called section 75)

    Getting a bank account is the hardest bit so hopefully the HSBC account makes it easier but worth getting a UK based one too once you have an address (it's free here so you can easily have more). I think HSBC sucks to be honest.

    Getting a place to live can also be tricky. Renting can take some time to find and accept a place (one to three months depending on local availability). Buying can be a long ass process. Start looking on rightmove to get an idea (for renting or buying). I would rent for a while to get to know the places or ask someone locally where to live. You could rent an airbnb for a month (or another form of holiday rental) to make your life easier.

    Check if you need a car where you live and if buying, look at autotrader.co.uk for an idea of prices but also look at car insurance as can be expensive but and varies enormously by car model. Look at how long your driving licence will last, if you can transfer or need to take a test after a while (DVLA is our licencing agency).

    Once established in a place, register with a GP and dentist asap.

    Theres a new rule about traveling to the UK if you have dual citizenship - you have to use your UK passport for the flight to the UK.

  • 79% of smart dash cams we tested had security issues Out of 28, only six didn't have any concerns. Find out what problems we uncovered and how to keep your dash cam secure Callum Pears Researcher & writer

    Callum pushes tech to its limits and has spent nearly three years bombarding antivirus with malware, taxing routers and inspecting computer monitors

    Which? dash cam tests found security flaws and concerns in the majority of smart models we tested, and in some cases they were breaking the law.

    Smart dash cams have wireless connectivity and features that use the internet. This could be tracking technologies, motion detection, voice assistant controls and voice alerts, as well as more advanced features such as automatic cloud backup, real-time alerts and remote viewing.

    You're also able to transfer footage wirelessly to the companion app on your smartphone, which is much quicker and more straightforward than traditional dash cams, where you'd need to remove the SD or micro-SD card and copy the files over to your computer.

    Although these features make a dash cam a more useful tool for drivers, they also expose you to potential security risks.

    Our testing found numerous dash cams with multiple security vulnerabilities. In fact, of the 28 smart dash cams we tested, only six lacked security concerns.

    Find out what problems we encountered, which manufacturers took action to fix the problems we uncovered, and what you can do to keep your dash cam secure.

    Best dash cams: compare dash cams from Garmin, Nextbase, Road Angel and more What were the issues we found? A person watching dash cam footage on their smartphone

    Of all the issues we found, weak default wi-fi passwords were the most concerning security vulnerability because they mean that nearby hackers could connect to the devices and access data such as journey information, saved recordings and other personal information.

    Since 2024, manufacturers have been obliged to ensure that default passwords aren’t easily guessable. This can be resolved by enforcing a mandatory password change or by assigning unique default passwords.

    We contacted each manufacturer to share our findings and gave them an opportunity to comment and resolve our concerns.

    Road Angel successfully addressed the issue with its dash cams, which now require changing the default password.

    Miofive initially responded and released a firmware patch that fixed some of our other concerns, but didn’t resolve the default password issue. Miofive didn’t respond to our follow-up messages, and we received no response from Kitvison and Orskey.

    In addition to weak passwords, we also found mediocre encryption on some dash cams. There were several exploitable security weaknesses that made it possible to intercept data, access, and potentially modify stored video files.

    To do this would be difficult for hackers. In most cases, they would need to be very close to the dash cam to exploit it – but it's not impossible. Many of these issues are also exacerbated by the poor default wi-fi passwords.

    Nextbase resolved our concerns with firmware patches. Miofive and Road Angel fixed some issues but not others, and we're continuing to work with Road Angel to get remaining concerns resolved.

    Garmin reviewed our findings but stated that it believes that numerous factors 'limit the exploitability of any purported vulnerabilities such that there is no practical risk to our customers’. Kitvision and Orskey did not respond.

    In an age of growing cyberattacks and sophistication among hackers, dash cam manufacturers should be placing the greatest emphasis on their devices' security, even if they think it's difficult to exploit or a niche weakness.Why is PSTI important? Dash cam showing the road ahead

    The Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure (PSTI) Act came into effect in April 2024. It mandates that manufacturers, importers and distributors (such as retailers) have a duty to protect devices that can connect to the internet or other networks.

    It states ‘UK consumers should be able to trust that these products are designed and built with security in mind’.

    The PSTI Act specifies the publication of information on how to report security issues, details on how long manufacturers will ensure security patches are released and the banning of universal default and easily guessable passwords.

    These factors are important for strengthening security defences and ensuring that manufacturers release updates to keep products safe from new threats.

    Although the Act gives manufacturers time to bring their products in line with its standards, they’re now duty bound to investigate compliance failures and take action if required.

    If manufacturers fail to act, then the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) will intervene. The OPSS is an enforcement authority responsible for ensuring compliance.

    Strong legal protections and vigilant enforcement mean UK consumers can use smart devices – including dash cams – with confidence, knowing that non-compliance by manufacturers will have consequences.

    Which? takes this seriously too, and we’ve already informed the OPSS about our findings, the responses we received from manufacturers and the concerns we still have.

    3 steps to keep your dash cam safe and secure A person installing a dash cam in a car

    There are some simple steps you can take to boost your dash cam’s security, regardless of what manufacturers do or don't do.

    1. Update wi-fi passwords

    The most important thing we would encourage every smart dash cam owner to do right now is to update the wi-fi password.

    This is used to connect to paired smartphones and transfer footage wirelessly to them. A weak or easily guessable password could, under the right circumstances, allow others access to your dash cam and its library of footage.

    As our testing has found many manufacturers still fail to either enforce a mandatory change, or provide a unique default password – it's highly recommended that users update them independently to a strong, but memorable, alternative. Check out our guide to creating secure passwords for help with this. 2. Install firmware updates

    In addition to resolving software bugs and performance issues, firmware updates also provide important security updates.

    It's important to update both the dash cam itself and any companion app. These updates ensure both are equipped to deal with newly discovered or recently resolved security vulnerabilities. 3. Keep footage backed up elsewhere

    It's good practice to ensure that captured video footage – particularly important footage (such as that showing an incident, accident, or crash) – is backed up securely and separately from internal storage and any subscription-based cloud storage you may be using.

    The risk to footage located exclusively on the internal SD or micro-SD card is that it could become corrupted, damaged, lost or stolen.

    Cloud-based storage is typically part of a subscription service (either from the dash cam manufacturer or a third party). The risk here is ending the subscription and losing access to the stored footage, which the provider may later delete after you've unsubscribed.

    Back up footage on your computer or smartphone to keep it safe. Alternatively, for additional peace of mind, consider investing in a USB storage device or external hard drive to store your backed-up dash cam footage. Make sure to pick a model with a healthy amount of storage, as video files tend to be large.

    The latest dash cams we've tested BlackVue DR970X-2CH Plus BlackVue DR970X-2CH Plus dash cam BlackVue DR970X-2CH Plus Amazon Marketplace UK £529.95 Amazon UK £529.95

    The DR970X-2CH Plus is a forward-facing and rear-facing dash cam with a 4K camera for the front windscreen and a Full HD camera for the back.

    It has a range of smart features and functionality, and you can review footage using the companion BlackVue app or the BlackVue Viewer web software.

    You can also follow footage on a virtual map using the collected GPS data, helping you identify where key events occurred.

    Through the BlackVue Cloud service you can access more advanced features such as push notifications to your smartphone, live view and cloud storage. Some of these features require a subscription at an additional cost.

    Read our BlackVue DR970X-2CH Plus review to find out how it fared in our tough tests. Garmin Dash Cam X210 Garmin Dash Cam X210

    Available from Garmin (£260)

    The X210's 2K camera is an upgrade of the earlier X110. It's comparatively small, making its footprint on the windscreen minimal, especially compared with some models.

    Motion detection, GPS tracking and voice controls are all notable smart features.

    The Vault Subscription Plan Advance grants you access to Garmin’s secure cloud-based storage feature. This is accessed through the Garmin Drive app.

    Take a look at our Garmin Dash Cam X210 review to see how it compares to others we've tested. Nextbase Piqo 1K Nextbase Piqo 1K dash cam

    Available from Halfords (£99), Nextbase (£99)

    The Piqo 1K is one of the more affordable dash cams we’ve tested, but it doesn't come with a supplied SD card, which can easily catch you out.

    It has a solid array of additional smart features, including GPS tracking, motion detection and the ability to access footage via the companion Nextbase app.

    Footage is listed with thumbnails in the app, making it a doddle to cycle through them.

    Check out the Nextbase Piqo 1K review to see if it's the right dash cam for you.

  • Depending on your download speed, you can manually download a TV show episode in seconds to minutes. By the time you watch that episode, at least the next one will be ready. It is quite rare to have to do this though, me and my family mostly add shows on Seer when we find them (recommendations, adverts, etc) and by the time we've sat down to watch it'll be ready.

    I did the whole lists thing others have mentioned but to be honest, we found there was too much choice, lots of crap and quickly ran out of space. Taking an active role in choosing shows and films works better for us and I'll have a short list at any time to watch.

  • Can we add that access to banking apps should not be limited in the same way either. I've got two credit cards that can only be managed on android play store apps (plus im guessing iOS) since they took away their websites which worked perfectly fine and allowed anyone to get access at a library at a bare minimum (Virgin - fuck you). Then, one app (HSBC UK - fuck you even more!) who won't let you use any unknown apps that overlay others - so it won't work without me removing my fucking lawnchair launcher. That's right, not disabling it, not giving me the option to "take the risk", I have to uninstall it! I trust lawnchair hundred times more than your unnecessarily large sized app with random unnecessary permissions.

    I'm not using one card so it just sits as a cost to them and looks good on my credit. The other I'm a bit stuck as used it to get a cheap loan but it'll be a while before I want to pay it off so switched on paper statements and uninstalled the app. I'll never use their other products though as a result...

  • How about

    • reinventing trains but worse
    • rocketing amount of space launches filling up junk
    • we deliver everything but once we take over it'll all be crap rip off products (for slave wages)
    • we deliver any food by people who can't drive (for slave wages)
    • we'll create algorithms to enforce society divisions and hurt mental health of children
    • we'll take over a popular platform and make it even more disgusting and fascist

  • I'm an accountant and tax professional but have always been into computers. I had a social media account breached although it was no issue as hadn't used it did years. I used a terrible password as thought it did not matter but made me realise I needed to be better generally so started using a password manager.

    Then Netflix stopped account sharing. I had just got a 4k TV and only their top level with 4 screens supported it so was pissed off. The fragmentation across services had started so was getting annoyed anyway. This led me to the arr's.

    I decided I could no longer trust Microsoft and hated their pricing structure so was interested in Nextcloud. By then I found the self hosted community (on reddit), bought a desktop PC and after getting the hang of it plus many mistakes I loved my services so will never look back.

    Joined the migration to Lemmy. Am based in the UK and joined the anti-US feelings so am setting up more storage, better redundancy and more services for my family. A few family members are interested in helping so can share backups.

  • Oh, actually that does make sense. They say they're only targeting "illegal" immigrants and have no authority to police against citizens so this adds to the blatant lies. Thanks for the input.

    It is still galling to see though so hope you can see that it is horrible to see, especially as a minority. It's hard not to interpret as only citizens (or in some way white people) matter

  • Why does it matter if he is a US citizen? Speaks volumes about what is getting covered and what is not

  • I would highly suggest a UPS. I use random external hard drives without RAID as part of my media setup. The electric went out overnight last year. I knew it had happened as my oven was flashing. The server restarted itself so thought everything was fine.

    Then some things were glitchy and it took me a few days to release one of the drives was not mounting. Luckily I did not lose the data but it still took a while to fix. It takes even longer to restore a backup.

    To mainly save myself time and effort, I bought a basic UPS with 2 plugs. It keeps the server and main router on for 15 minutes but I've set it up to send a command to shut down asap just in case. My server seems to automatically switch on when power comes back so not had any issues since.

  • Great work! Also, degaussing gives me major throwbacks... I had absolutely no clue what it did but really enjoyed the look of the screen wobbling around and even the sound of the thunk. I think I liked to do it so often enough for shits and giggles, that I never saw what gaussing is

  • I have a vps (hetzner dedicated server auction) as well as my home servers. The vps has a fixed IP so ive setup wireguard endpoints to all point to it with forwarding on so can access every device indirectly through the vps. It allows them to work across DDNS or remotely.

    I used this guide (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-wireguard-on-ubuntu-20-04). Tried different tools gui's and other methods but always came back to this to work the best

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  • Yeah, first try your ISP to see if you can get a dynamic or fixed IP instead. Check if their website/FAQ mentions dynamic IP or cgnat. They might outright reject it, or try to upgrade you to an extortionate business package though. I signed up for my service and checked the cgnat before signing up but they hadn't got around to updating their website that they changed their policy. After the surprise of being behind cgnat and after screenshotting their own website, I complained and hit upgraded to a higher level package for free.

    You can use tailscale to get around it, but then you need to install it on all devices and login. You can use cloudflare tunnels and think you can set it to not require login for some services. Both rely on third parties. Both are also safer than exposing directly to the public internet.

    If you want full control, you have to rent a cheap vps and setup a tunnel between that and your home server, then use the public IP of the vps for your services. Wireguard is probably the best choice for VPN. You could try pangolin, which is an open source cloudflare tunnel so is more complicated than a VPN but also includes a reverse proxy.

  • In an ideal world this should be the case but I can't afford to do this practically and my business is a service, based on UK laws and requirements, available to UK residents only. The website is for information only and nothing is new or interesting to anybody but a few potential clients, and if theyre looking at it on holiday, theres something wrong with them! Nobody is going to reach out based on my website from abroad and if they did, I would not trust them at all. They would reach out through personal contacts or linkedin. If the bots stop spamming my site or server, I can stop limiting it.

  • Another option to reduce (but not eliminate) this traffic is a country limit. In cloudflare you can set a manual security rule to do this. There are self hosted options too but harder to setup. It depends what country you are and where your users are based. My website is a business one so I only allow my own country (and if on holiday I might open that country if I need to check it's working, although usually I just use a paid vpn back to my country so no need). You can also block specific countries. So many of my blocked requests are from USA, China, Russia etc

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  • I didn't know that, thanks for sharing

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  • You could be behind CGNAT - I'm not sure the best way to tell but it could be the reason.

    I would also highly recommend buying a cheap domain to use - it would be the price of a coffee per year but makes life so much easier and you don't have to depend on duckdns. You can buy through cloudflare, porkbun or many other options which you can search for a good DDNS service to update them.

  • I'm sure you are far outweighed by users like me who keep one for when traveling away from home and working in public spaces (i do two days a week on average). Most days is no bandwidth and when there is usage its pretty low as limited to the public WiFi so just syncing files for local changes and general internet use / research. I could do and sometimes use a VPN to my home server but I don't want the risk I can't work anywhere if something happens.

  • Sorry, the post didn't have the formatting I expected and is generally quite unclear now I'm reading back through it. I was trying to point out a few different things that I've had to learn the hard way when things go wrong! You learn the terminology to search for or have to search for lots of acronyms until you learn them haha.

    Public IP

    So your server is on a fixed IP address. Do you men locally that the machine has a fixed IP within your home lan setup (like e.g 192.168.1.10) or is your public IP fixed (this will depend on your ISP)? Most home providers, like mine, have dynamic IP so every once in a while my public IP will change so everything would go down as my DNS is pointing to the wrong address. Some providers use CGNAT which is even worse and won't accept any connections originating from outside.

    If dynamic, you can use a DDNS tool like cloudflared to keep checking your public IP and updating your DNS records if it changes. Your services will only go down for however long the polling on this is set. Note that cloudflared does a few things and this is just one one aspect of the tool.

    If you have CGNAT you have to use cloudflare tunnels or similar to create the permanent bridge to your server that all external requests can pass through even if originating from outside.

    Docker bridge networks

    Note this is not essential but can be actually easier to manage and keep more secure. It was hard to get my head around but once I did it was easier.

    You can create a bridge network so the containers you add to that network can talk to each other but the other containers can't. It also means not opening ports in the docker compose so the system can't access those containers directly using up ports. A container can have multiple networks too.

    For instance, my nextcloud main server is on proxy and nextcloud-internal networks. The other containers in that docker compose are on nextcloud-internal. My proxy manager (caddy) is on proxy. The various nextcloud containers can talk to each other on the internal network. My proxy and the nextcloud server can also talk to each other through the proxy network. My server cannot talk to any of them directly (unless you also expose ports). Caddy cannot directly talk to my nextcloud database container. Hope it make sense, I can share my docker compose files if helpful. After this info, my original message may make more sense.

    You probably expose ports for jellyfin so can access it locally through 192.168.1.10:8080 or whatever it might be.

    Reverse proxy

    This is separate to a tunnel but tools like cloudflared tunnels and pangolin combine them.

    The reverse proxy is something you setup to pick up a server domain address and deliver it to the requesting computer. It turns cloud.domain.com to 192.168.1.10:8000 and for a website delivers the HTML, images, php etc to client browsers. In the self hosting space it let's you access different services on one domain (like www.domain.com, cloud.domain.com, request.domain.com as much as you like)

    I have caddy on docker but previously used nginx proxy manager, and for each public service I would setup a reverse proxy to the actual service. For my business website I tell it to send and domain.com and www.domain.com requests to my website in a different docker container. For nextcloud I tell it to send cloud.domain.com requests to my nextcloud server container on its port (on proxy network - see above, in caddy I say reverse proxy to nextcloud-server:80 but if exposing ports it could be your internal server IP like 192.168.1.10:8000 or whatever you are using).

    Tunnel

    This is just connecting two servers or clients and gives them a local IP on each end that can be used to encrypt and tunnel those connections over the internet.

    I don't actually have a tunnel for my external services as I use my business VPS. I do have a tunnel between my home server and my VPS to create an encrypted and usable tunnel between those separate internal networks.

    I believe cloudflare tunnels and pangolin work the same way, where a user visits your service.domain.com and the service expects you to login. If logged in, it will forward the requests to your home server through an encrypted tunnel (so your ISP and others can't see it, and your users never see your public IP address), and it also reverse proxies the request to the correct service on your server (like nextcloud). It does both jobs for you. The authentication stage might be optional, I'm not sure.

    It is easier to use these but you're more tied in to one service.

    Cloudflare proxy

    If you use cloudflare DNS and opt into their proxy, they will hide your home server's public IP from external users using services through your domain. If you lookup a domain like "dig domain.com" in the CLI, you will see Cloudflared public IP instead of your own. The connection packets will go to Cloudflare, who internally change it to your public IP so the end client cannot see it. It does mean they can track all your header information and unencrypted traffic, and if it goes down nobody can access your services externally using the domain.

    Incidentally, I notice some IPTV services use this to try to hide their public IP but in reality, broadcasters could get the real IP from Cloudflare, especially with a court case.

  • Check out Infomaniak which has more than just email so could be useful if looking for more of a like for like replacement for O365. If you just want email, somebody mentioned mailbox.org which I have also used and is good.