Some video players can open .mpls files (usually found under PLAYLIST folder), if your video player supports that you probably can see chapters.

Mkvtoolnix for converting bdmv folder to mkvtoolnix without re-encoding.

Deep packet inspection is a thing, AFAIK people in China uses a software called v2ray to counter that.

I currently have Pulsed Media seedbox, which has SSH access (no root) and docker, haven’t tried something like plex/jelyfin so I can’t tell how well it works.

• You should google the name if you want to try them, negative things pops up.

• Password authentication can’t be turned off for SSH.

some sort of dashboard with monitoring and statuses of all my services

See if Uptime Kuma suits your needs.

Are there any major no-no things a newbie might do with Docker/selfhosting that I should avoid?

Allow password based SSH authentication, you should look into key based authentication

I wanted to have it behind a domain, how would I achieve it?

Use a reverse proxy (like caddy) which serves different content based on domain name.

Stats from my seedbox (all public torrents)

Uploaded: 638.311 TiB

Downloaded: 29.120 TiB

Ratio: 21.91

Which announced removal of port forwarding.

https://www.ivpn.net/knowledgebase/general/do-you-support-port-forwarding/

I setup syncthing from seedbox to my NAS.

https://netboot.xyz/

You might not need it but it’s a very small image (3.5MB for multi-arch iso) so why not?

Official wiki page that lists AP with Wifi AX support

(Some devices that lists “Snapshot” might be supported by 23.05 currently in release candidate phase)

If I remember correctly you can plug in phone line to RJ45, this stackovwerflow question lists some caveats.

I setup Swapspace in case I ever need to compile something very big, but usually my system doesn’t use swap.

Serverhunter is a search engine for cloud servers and has easy to use filter functions.

I am surprised that I didn’t see anyone link to https://lowendtalk.com/ and https://lowendspirit.com/, OP can ask in both places and see what people have for offer.

Personally tried gluetun + AirVPN and having success.

I choose AirVPN mainly because I am cheap person, it give me port forwarding and IPv6 connectivity. (To use IPv6 with gluetun requires some tweaking)

Gigabyte GB-BNIP-N200

MSI Cubi N ADL

Beelink EQ12

I’ve saw some good news about Intel’s N95/100/200/305 CPUs, N200 is said to have similar performance as I5-7400 at 6W TDP.

If you mean automatically update IP part, duckdns website has a very comprehensive guide.

If you mean getting a free SSL certificate, you can use acme.sh (this is what I used) which has integrated support for duckddns (To use let’s encrypt you need to use --server letsencrypt in your command)

Is it really crucial to find a VPN that supports port forwarding

It’s crucial when the only seeder won’t open their port.

what’s the go to option now that it’s becoming increasingly uncommon

My opinion: I wish qbittorrent 4.6 would release sooner, it comes with I2P support, which I’ve seen discussed on lemmy a few times.

HDMI splitter, some product specifically says they are able to bypass HDCP.

Can’t say whats the best because I only used one, Pulsedmedia.

Caution: This seedbox service got themselve banned on /r/seedboxes because disaster PR in public forum (lowendtalk)

Their offer is pretty great though, even after the price hike last year.

My current service (that is bought on a safe) with them is a 8TB seedbox that has 48TB of out going bandwidth per 30 days costs me about 20 USD per month (paid annually), and there is SSH access that I can run not just torrent client to download things I want.

I tried looking for alternatives and I didn’t see other service in similar configuration, and they deliver what I want.

On desktop version of website, once you clicked into the community you can click subscribe button on the right side.

On mobile I see it after I click “Sidebar” button.