Not OP, but when I was looking for an alternative it was the music analysis and Auto-Playlist/DJ features that set Plexamp apart.

Nothing wrong with having to pay for software if the prices are reasonable. It’s a product like any other, with real people working on it.

The simple answer is: Yes! If you want to be completely sure no one is accessing your data - now or in the future - then you have to host it yourself. There are companies and countries that are more trustworthy/safe than others, but you never know how politics will change.

I’ve been using a Synology NAS for ages, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it! Especially if you don’t have that much experience with Linux and servers, but also if you want something that’s more Plug-n-Play and stable, or you want access to some of their proprietary services or really good customer support. Just make sure you get one that supports Docker, because that’s how you’ll install most if not all of the 3rd party services.

That being said, building one yourself can also be great fun, and you do have that one additional level of control if everything is open-source and installed by you.

if I can get it working

It’s really as simple as starting one container per chat service, with a config like this:

services:
    beeper-<service>:
        image: ghcr.io/beeper/bridge-manager
        restart: unless-stopped
        environment:
            - MATRIX_ACCESS_TOKEN=<your beeper matrix token>
            - BRIDGE_NAME=sh-<service>
        volumes:
            - ./beeper-<service>:/data

then messaging the @sh-<service>bot:beeper.local bot user, and logging in to your chat account.

I’m using the Beeper Matrix server, but self-host their bridges. That way the de- and reencryption is done on my server, and Beeper only sees encrypted Matrix messages. It’s extremely easy to set up if you’ve used docker before, much less work than running a full Matrix server yourself.

Yea it would be a pretty radical change, requiring adjustments in many areas. But I do think it’s necessary, because people not being personally invested in the things they own (just financially) and profiting from other people’s work is imo the big problem with our society right now.

Companies would work the same way. You can own it (make decisions and get profits) as long as you work there. Ofc you can work for multiple companies, but with reasonably restrictions (e.g. 8 companies if you work 40h/week and 5h/week/company). I also think companies should not be able to own other companies, because companies cannot be “personally” involved in anything, only people can.

We have blown the concept of ownership way out of proportion. No one should be able to own things they have absolutely no connection to, like investment firms owning companies they don’t work for, houses they don’t live in or land they’ve never been to.

Apart from privacy concerns, Google has started to add some really bad features to Chrome, such as “Manifest V3” and “Web Environment Integrity”. These limit your ability to block ads or generally modify your device or the websites you’re visiting, and are just a bad for the web as a whole. WEI in particular is basically DRM for the web, so Google checks your device and denies you access to websites if they don’t like it. But as long as the majority of people keep using Chrome they can just force these things onto everyone.