If you go that route I'd want to make sure the cpu is at least somwewhat recent.
My first server was an old office PC I bought used as well, but I had real problems with it, because the CPU was lacking some X86 instructions which is why I could not run a specific service I wanted to as it used those.
(And if you want to run jellyfin in the near future you should make sure to buuy a cpu that can also do some hardware encoding/decoding as doing that in software on a low end CPU can make the experience somewhat sluggish.
No need for virtualization (so no Proxmox, TrueNAS, or Unraid)
Run lightweight containers for web services like Immich, Paperless-ngx, Pi-hole, and custom services I’ve developed
Do you not consider containers virtulizations? Or do you plan to run your webservices in the same context? Because I would really suggest against doing the latter.
However, I’m unsure if I really need RAID since I’ll perform regular backups.
Raid is not a backup anyhow ;).
If you don't need the capacity or redundancy of raid I would suggest you buy a single >=8Tb drive. It should be a bit cheaper (For example, I recently payed ~270€ for 16 Tb, which I'd reccomend over paying 240€ for 8Tb in total. There are probably also 8/12 Tb drives for less then 240€.).
It will also use half the power as that does not really scale with capacity.
Edit: there are a bunch of 8tb drives at 180€ here for example.
I am very happy with feddit.org . I have not seen an issue with overmoderation, but I have also not seen a problem with spam or trolling. I believe hexbear is (rightfully so) defederated but other then that i did not notice any defederations.
The do not allow pornography which I support as you would essentially be hosting it yourself when it is federated which can become icky quickly. But I think this is a bit of a difference to other instances.
The instance also has a nice little community which is active enough to not be boring but small enough to feel like a community (might also be because of having a common language)
If you use chatgpt et al. I'll look down on you from a technical competence level
Eh, I have to say I find it quite usefull sometimes for brainstorming solutions. It is esentially a rubber duck that answers and sometimes gives good ideas.
Of course the answers are often bullshit, but they can sometimes point you in the right direction/to the right words to google.
(All of this ignoring the enviromental problems ofc.)
I did an exchange year in MN and my host family there told me not to, always bought bottled water and never drank it themselves. And when I did try it it tasted very chlorinated.
Germany, we do have a few fountains (but they are really uncommon and would have more in common with a normal tab and sink then the american fountains I've seen).
I'd usually just fill up my bottle from a sink at a bathroom when I'm on the go.
What kind of stuff have you been buying that you couldn't find elsewhere (at a competitive price)?
I buy a moderate amount of my stuff online and was able to almost entirely avoid Amazon this year.
The only exception was a phone display where Amazon had a LCD-variant for ~30€ while all others only had an OLED for ~90€.
They probably assume people just stuff their shit into the trunk so I guess the weight limit usually also includes a safeguard for weight distribution limits.
Why would it work difderently then here?