No idea if there's any working fork or any solution directly related to Spotify.
However, keep in mind that Spowlo downloads from YouTube music and while I was also an advocate of MeTube (yt-dlp frontend), I recently found out that even though you ask for the best quality It downloads some sketchy mp3 64/128kbps upscaled shit. Maybe those having a premium account it's different, dunno...
So I suggest you give Soulseek a try, specially Nicotine+. There you find high quality mp3's (320kbps range) and a lot of FLAC quality if that's something you're into !
If you still can't find what you're looking for, give rutracker.org a try :)
Else, either self-host MeTube or play arround with yt-dlp.
Maybe something worth a shot is a direct Wireguard server/client connection. While I don't know how it works with double NAT (wireguard client with double nat) making your home server act as a direct tunnel would solve all your issues.
Access your services from everywhere without middleman.
IIR, tailscale uses wireguard under the hood and you're already hosting things on your home server, so maybe this could be worth a try :) !
Yeah ! Except in the dev/code realm... They seem very aggressive to each other, specially if you whisper something like: Rust is safer than C !
I don't really get it, but I find It very pleasant to read when passionate people write a whole essay I don't even understand 1/10 of what they are writing... However, there seems some heated negativity in that community !
EU is making a new law which makes your IP the same as (something similar to) your social security number.
If that's true, then even VPNs won't help. Not sure how they will implement such a thing, but it's obviously to protect the children !
There's also the I2P network, which is similar to TOR but with torrenting in mind and other nice tools and utilities ! However, it's slower, has less traffic/seeder and don't even bother to try and find some older movies/music or hidden gems.
It's getting better and some applications, like qbittorrent, are adding the i2p network. In the near future, when they have protected the children, I2P will be the place to be for a free and open Internet. However, you will probably be tagged as criminal...
Yeah individually your data is approximately worth 200$/year (that's a real estimation I read somewhere, not something I spit out of my ass).
So yeah not much worth you're right. But if you stop being selfish for a moment and think as a community and take that portion for 1 billion people on earth, how much is that worth? Yeah you guessed it... It's a huge amount of money ^^ !
So stop thinking only for your self and start to think how we are all involved in this shit and should fight back as much as possible...
Ohhhh ! Docker container are awesome. If you have an old spare laptop lying around (or you know someone who has) give it a try it's fantastic ! It similar to a virtual machine but different ! It solves the big issue virtual machine have: fast, portability, lightweight, memory efficient.... It shares the underling OS !
I have a 10 years old laptop which is going strong with over 21 docker containers which couldn't be possible with VMs ! You can host any imaginable service (if available as docker image) in seconds, behind a reverse proxy and access it through your LAN (or externally over a Wireguard connection).
Let's take a media workflow example, if you want to get rid of something like YouTube music, spotify, deezer... and maintain your music library and own your music:
MeTube to download YouTube music (yt-dlp frontend)
Install NewPipe (Hope you're on Android :s) and HTTP-shortcuts to glue everything together ! HTTP-shortcuts allow to communicate with your self-hosted MeTube service via POST/GET requests and send directly your files to your MeTube instance via NewPiped. You can than have a background script on your server which: Removes and changes the pesky YouTube metadata, send your files to your Navidrome service !
This is a rather "complex" workflow but just to say it's possible. Sure depending your skills with your OS it will take some time to get accustomed to docker containers and the like ! It took me approximately 1 year to really get accustomed to all this new workflow (and get the hang of linux), but now it's only a matter of minutes !
Another use case for your phone: encrypted backup for docker containers ! Nowadays they come with a lot of spare space (over 120 GB). Encrypted, scrambles file/directory names and archived !
I wouldn't backup any critical data this way though ! It's more an "in case" emergency backup for docker database and config volumes !
Same thought here ! Wireguard being based on private/public key, even if the port is open every request that doesn't have a valid private/public key gets dropped !
From a bot's perspective this means the port is closed !
I'm not an export in the field but there's also a way to only use key-based connection with SSH, but I'm not sure how good/secure it is compared to wireguard.
As you said, I'm also too scared to let a open SSH server running on my small home lab 😅 !
I mean... My Mac M1 doesn't allow right-click create a new file. 😮💨 ! Also, if I recall correctly, there is a similar thing that made me go crazy on Gnome DE.
Nowadays, people hate to get everything neatly separated in a nice and well ordered directory structure. They throw everything in the same directory and use the find/search function, for what it's worth.
I mean, where else should they show that warning? It's also posted in the forum. They also edited the documentation page.
Maybe you're more into mailing list or the like? I'm genuine curious on what/ how/ where you expected getting this kind of information.