No it doesn’t work that way. Nobody should be expected to follow clickbait.

There’s no reason to expect anyone to click on any type of link, without giving them an up-front reason to do so. Expecting otherwise would be a spammer’s dream. You have to spell out in the post what the link is for.

I see roughly the same thing:

Your post says there is a podcast at [url] and that you are working on a guide as a companion to it, but it doesn’t say anything about where the guide is or whether any of it is online yet at all. Ok, I see now that the link url is discuss.james.network which is a different domain than the podcast, but that is still not much help. If that’s where the guide is, you should say so. I’d expect to see a discussion forum on a domain like that, not a podcast transcript.

Really, though you should just include the guide in the post. Otherwise you’re just promoting your podcast and discussion site.

You should explain that in the post body, not expect someone to click a link that says “podcast” in hope of getting a non-podcast.

I mostly use porkbun but also namesilo and a few others.

The link is to podcast.james.network. Why would I expect it to be something other than a podcast?

“This data likely belonged to users of Mars Hydro’s Mars Pro app, available on iOS and Android. While Mars Hydro quickly restricted access after disclosure, questions remain about the duration of the exposure and whether unauthorized entities accessed the data.”

I’ve transferred domains out of porkbun without seeing anything like that. I’ve had to release the domain lock and paste a transfer authorization code from one place to another. That’s how it has worked at other registrars too.

I see, you are trying to make a home theater PC (HTPC). That would be a clearer term to use.

What does this question even mean (no I don’t want to listen to a podcast to find out)?

Sometimes I think people have been using the term “self-hosted” to mean what we used to call a home PC. I have always thought of a hosted computer (whether self-hosted or hosted by a company) as meaning a server which normally would live in a data center, and sometimes even means a rented box or VPS on which you self-host by installing and managing the software yourself (as opposed to using managed hosting or cloud services). Of course if you have good enough internet, you can self-host a server at home, but the considerations are otherwise about the same. I.e. it would usually not also be your workstation or gaming box.

So what is it that your friends are going to do with the machine? That would be pretty important in figuring out how to prepare it.

I’ve been using Vitelity (paid) but Twilio is a bit cheaper and has a better API. However, the more obnoxious confirmation code senders can detect all of these as being in data centers. IME it’s only a few senders that are snotty about that. You could always get a burner phone.

Hmm, I don’t know what happens if you get a mobile burner phone, set up call forwarding to your VOIP number, then throw the burner phone away (i.e. shut it off so you don’t have to keep it powered and broadcasting its location). The cheapest mobile plan that I know of ($30/year redpocket) unfortunately went up to $45 a few months ago, but it gets you a usable backup sim.

Added: 1) r/nocontract on reddit showed a $36/year infimobile plan with a 20% off coupon (so a little under $30/y) on amazon. Similar deal to redpocket I think. 2) Another idea: get cheap mobile plan, port number into a voip provider, cancel mobile plan. I wonder if the number then reports as data center terminated.

There are now starting to be a few “free” mobile providers where you are required to keep a spyware app running. I don’t think I’d bother with those. textnow.com is the one I remember but there were others. textnow does NOT support call forwarding on free plans.

$11/m is a lot. If you just want a small site on shared hosting, try namecrane.com. For storage use Hetzner Storage Box.

Thanks, it’s late here now but I’ll try to look soon. I didn’t realize significant improvements over Goldberg etc al were really possible. I’ll try to understand that too.

Is there another post somewhere giving a general description of what you are doing?

Do you have a link about your messaging app? And PIR doesn’t conceal the existence of traffic, so it doesn’t seem like the right thing for messaging. It’s more for databases as the name implies. What exactly are you trying to do?