afaik you just listed features that the printer I mentioned (or if I am wrong, other similar printers) supports

it’s my bad for not mentioning all possible workflows, I was just a bit lazy and thinking of my personal documents only, which do not work well with further smart automation, because my batches are highly irregular. So the more manual approach is the best for me currently. Maybe possible with some future AI integration.

please elaborate

Epson WorkForce DS‑730N

put 100 sheets on the tray, it scans them all and either puts them all into a single pdf or multiple pdfs. Then you split / merge them in software.

You could buy an automatic scanner that takes a stack of docs and dumps the files to a network share.

afaik I’m on an older version of https://github.com/distribution/distribution/pkgs/container/distribution

my compose somehow doesn’t have much info … i should have made more notes

image: registry:2

i selfhost a pullthrough docker repository, so every container I use is stored in there and can be pulled offline.

a budget oriented one

I backup the whole / with borg

It has insane deduplication and compression and it creates a structure kind of like git, so you can have lots of incrimental versions without using much space.

It does sound like one, but it isn’t. Ignoring the differences in UX:

Passkey

• Per-service key pair, unique per domain, Identity bound only to that specific account on that site
• Challengeresponse via WebAuthn
• Trust anchored only in the target service (no external CA)
• Private key sealed in OS / secure hardware keystore

Certificate login

• Single global identity usable across many services
• TLS client authentication with certificates
• Trust established via certificate authorities and chain validation
• Private key stored in exportable file or smartcard

I think OP is talking about auth in services that you selfhost.

For example elster.de forces you to sign in with one of the many passwordless methods, which includes: entering a username and uploading a cert file.

But most selfhosted services only have username/password logins (if any).

What did you try and what was the error?

frp has an option to encrypt the tunnel

or something like nanokvm

the only poiny I am arguing for is:

if somebody is looking for a solution that is effectively equivalent to a proxy, they can enter into the search engine either “vpn” or “proxy” and they will find more results that will work for their usecase that way.

While you are getting hung up on semantics that I technically agree on, but I find meaningless in the real world usecase of looking for a solution that effectively works like a proxy.

If you have one of those cars that can be used as a boat. And you only ever use it in water and never on land, it doesn’t really make sense to me to exclusively call it a car. Even though it factually is one, it acts as a boat. At least call it carboat.

If I have a VPN, but it’s sole purpose is to take all the traffic that knocks on it’s network-adapter and shove it down a dev/tun and vice verca, why can we not say (with the goal of clear communication and precise descriptions) that it effectively acts as a proxy ?

Hell the ability to access the internet via the tunnel, called Split Tunneling, is also controllable.

It’s that ability to control where the tunnel terminates that allows consumer VPNs, like Proton, to be used the way they are.

you can do the same split tunneling via proxy servers

while private individuals absolutely do use VPNs as an ersatz replacement for Proxy Servers they are nowhere near the whole use case for VPN

I agree. That also means that for certain usecases they are equivalent. It’s sometimes worth checking all options to find the best one for that specific case.

You’re correct.

Most people only search for “VPN” because thats the term that got marketed for decades.

But the problem can be solved by using a proxy as well.

The intent of my comment was just to point to a second term - “proxy” - that can be used to find more valid, alternative solutions to the problem of making your homelab hosted services publicly available. And I think you agree with me, that proxy is the term closer to the usecase, even though we both correctly state that a VPN can be used as a proxy.

To make a bad analogy (it’s the first thing that came to mind): It’s like people buying a wok, even though they really just need a pan. And so they only search for wok, because every company says wok all the time, even though they will never use the wok as a wok, but just as a normal pan.

Even by your definition that should be a VPN, right?

… in my case, I have a homelab, a VPS and a user of a service that runs on my homelab. The VPS is just a proxy for the homelab. The user (client) talks to the homelab (server), through the VPS (proxy) so not, not really a VPN, even if I’d set up openVPN between VPS and homelab. They are not two clients.

It’s pretty neat and I feel like there is a clear value exchange for both parties in the free tier, so less shady than cloudflare.

I think thats up to debate.

Wikipedia says:

A virtual private network (VPN) is an overlay network that uses network virtualization to extend a private network across a public network, such as the Internet, via the use of encryption and tunneling protocols. In a VPN, a tunneling protocol is used to transfer network messages from one network host to another. Host-to-network VPNs are commonly used by organisations to allow off-site users secure access to an office network over the Internet. Site-to-site VPNs connect two networks, such as an office network and a datacenter.

So my argument is, if it is not used for private communication between multiple clients, it’s not really a VPN.

Lets say, we both connect to the same Proton VPN server - our computers would not see each other and would not be able to connect to each other via that service. It has effectively the same function as a proxy - making your public internet traffic appear to come from the IP of the proxy server instead of your home IP.

Whereas if you set one up yourself with openVPN for example, we could make it so that we both get a VPN internal IP that we could use to directly connect and idk, play minecraft or something. Instead of connecting through the public internet, we would connect through a virtual network that is private for the two of us.

Oh I forgot to say: I have crowdsec on the VPS in front of frp and traefik on the server at my home, where I add all the modules I want.

frp just pipes all the packets through transparently.

But yeah, same thing, should work the same and there are dozens of ways to set that all up.