smiletolerantly

That is actually a really interesting approach to moderation, huh.

Lol, exact same situation here.

Quick question, did the migration to continuwuity break calls for you as well?

It's not about prohibiting e2ee; it's about enforcing client-side scanning.

Yes, that also breaks e2ee, but they can still go "nooo! E2ee is still perfectly fine and legal! You know, as long as we get to read anything anyways"

And realistically, this will probably end up being implemented on an OS-level as well. So even using a self-hosted matrix server would not be immune.

Not to mention that both you and your conversation partner needs to take steps to evade this; one party is not sufficient.

Not OP, but: watched Haruhi a while back in English Dub, because there's no German one. It was ok. The main POV character's monotone voice was fitting in a fun way, but almost everyone else still has this fake energy to it (esp Haruhi and Asahina). Really hard to describe.

In general it's baffling to me how fake English dubs sound, especially because there clearly are a lot of talented English voice actors doing the voices for cartoons etc.

I have the privilege of comparing the English Dubs to the German ones for a lot of shows, and it's really interesting how, while the German VAs sound distinctly different from the Japanese originals, they sound natural and not overacted, while the English counterparts almost always sound like they were told "make it sound as fake as possible".

What this lovely person said.

Also, and maybe I am alone here, but when I said learning to write, I really meant with a pen, on paper (or a tablet, I guess), not through an app where you need to smush your fingers in approximately the right place for the line to snap to the correct position; that does not really translate to being able to write.

Me and my GF are currently doing this. Some recommendations from personal experience:

• Pimsleur is really nice for getting from 0 to being able to speak and understand some amount. It's very much less overwhelming than jumping head-first into grammar. You can find torrents for it. It's also a really good way to learn to listen to and speak Japanese out loud, something most other resources lack.
• everyone recommends Genki, and I concurr; it's a good book series on grammar, with plenty exercises. Will really help filling in the gaps where you have gotten a feeling for things with Pimsleur, but are not able to grasp the underlying concepts intuitively.
• don't shy away from Hiragana and Katakana. They are easy to learn (seriously, spend an afternoon on each and then do kana.pro for a week and never look back). Ignoring this will prevent you from using most learning resources.
• use Anki; again, everyone says this, because it's true. You can download a pre-made pack for Genki. 10-15 cards a day are a good leisurely pace, allowing you to tackle a new chapter in Genki approximately every 7-10 days.
• don't fall in the rabbithole of watching YouTube videos on learning Japanese. Just study instead. If there's a concrete thing you struggle with, look for a Video on that topic. Most of the geberal advice videos seem to come from English-speaking folks for whom Japanese is their first foreign language (which is great! Don't get me wrong!), and the resulting information ranges from obvious to questionable.
• decide if you want to learn Kanji (if you don't know them anyways, given your stated experience). I'd recommend it. It's actually quite fun, and if you want to watch Anime in Japanese, there's a good chance you'll have to use Japanese subs for a while to help along anyways...
• most people online seem to suggest only learning to read Kanji, because "you never need to handwrite things today anyways". I call bullshit. It's marginal additional effort, can actually help you with recognition, and if you ever end up needing / wanting to write by hand, you'd have to start all over otherwise.

Lastly, no, it is not a waste of time. Apart from anime, a new language means new ways of thinking, of challenging yourself, of being able to experience people and culture through a new lense, and potentially increasing job opportunities.

Plus if you ever end up visiting Japan, it really comes in handy.

Feel free to ask any followup things that I've forgotten about...

Edit: I forgot to mention: I am nowhere near fluent yet, and do not claim the suggestions above as "ultimate Japanese learner advice" or anything like that.

Also, very quickly you'll start noticing phrases, words, topics when watching anime or japanese videos or music, even if you can't follow the full conversation. That's what really motivated and kept me going early on.

Another thank you! Sumire is exactly what I have been looking for

TBH, it sounds like you have nothing to worry about then! Open ports aren't really an issue in-and-on itself, they are problematic because the software listening on them might be vulnerable, and the (standard-) ports can provide knowledge about the nature pf the application, making it easier to target specific software with an exploit.

Since a bot has no way of finding out what services you are running, they could only attack caddy - which I'd put down as a negligible danger.

My ISP blocks incoming data to common ports unless you get a business account.

Oof, sorry, that sucks. I think you could still go the route I described though: For your domain example.com and example service myservice, listen on port :12345 and drop everything that isn't requesting myservice.example.com:12345. Then forward the matching requests to your service's actual port, e.g. 23456, which is closed to the internet.

Edit: and just to clarify, for service otherservice, you do not need to open a second port; stick with the one, but in addition to myservice.example.com:12345, also accept requests for otherservice.example.com:12345, but proxy that to the (again, closed-to-the-internet) port :34567.

The advantage here is that bots cannot guess from your ports what software you are running, and since caddy (or any of the mature reverse proxies) can be expected to be reasonably secure, I would not worry about bots being able to exploit the reverse proxy's port. Bots also no longer have a direct line of communication to your services. In short, the routine of "let's scan ports; ah, port x is open indicating use of service y; try automated exploit z" gets prevented.

I am scratching my head here: why open up ports at all? It it just to avoid having to pay for a domain? The usual way to go about this is to only proxy 443 traffic to the intended host/vm/port based on the (sub) domain, and just drop everything else, including requests on 443 that do not match your subdomains.

Granted, there are some services actually requiring open ports, but the majority don't (and you mention a webserver, where we're definitely back to: why open anything beyond 443?).

Client side, under advanced:

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