Maybe it’s slightly unrelated, but I’m entirely sure only about origins of my English: the way (and even the fact) I speak it is heavily induced by the EN VTubers, apparently. I’ve learned spoken English mostly from watching them! Only they were cool enough to arise my interest. So they are indeed Connect the World.

So, let me summarize everything that I’ve figured out so far:

• There is a detailed breakdown of the optional features of all supported storage providers in the Rclone documentation, including public sharing links feature. Exactly what I was thinking about. So my initial search has now narrowed down a bit. I like how no one even tried to dig in that direction :D I appreciate you pushing me towards the hard-selfhosting path, though! Community name checks out, as they say…
• AFAIK all dynamic DNS services work like this: you install a daemon on your PC (or router), it connects to the DDNS provider’s server. That server looks at the source IP address of your request and then puts it into the A record of the domain name they provide you. So it won’t work with reverse-proxying daemons like Cloudflare Zero Trust or Netbird, at least not directly.
• On the other hand, these reverse-proxying solutions (TIL it called ZTNA — Zero Trust Network Access) has an option to use it with external domains. Their documentation mentions that you should set a specific CNAME record for your domain. However, Cloudflare supports this setup only on the paid plans! So it turns out that Cloudflare Zero Trust isn’t suitable for this task at all.
• And just out of curiosity: does Cloudflare shows the same obnoxious browser check page in front of a service behind its Zero Trust? And will it even work with a non-browser client in that case, like Nextcloud client? I know that you can set up a split-horizon DNS (such a cool name!) to open your service from within your network, I’m just curious.
• Seems like Netbird allow you to use external domain for free with their gateway. Finally, good news! You still need a DDNS provider that allows you to set CNAME record for a free domain name, though. No-IP, however, provides this option only for their paid domains. So it also isn’t suitable for this task. Are there any DDNS providers that allows you to set CNAME record for free?

Am I missing something? Also, hope you don’t mind me overexplaining like that! It’s pretty much notes for myself, but you never know if it might be useful for someone else.

Well, while it’s probably the most sane solution, it doesn’t suit me at all, unfortunately. For me, there is a strict requirement: it must be free of charge, without any payment at all. Guess I should have mentioned it explicitly in the original post, but I did not expect such an immediate direction shift!

Basically the S3 API allows authenticating with a signature as a part of the URL that are scoped to a specific object and optionally expires.

I see, like that, right? But it says expiration is rather mandatory than optional, and these pre-signed links lasts no longer than 7 days! Or is it just an Amazon’s own limitation, and other S3-compatible providers might provide unlimited expiration time?

I know Yggdrasil, it’s pretty cool! But if I’m about to ask my audience to install some additional software, I’d rather prefer ZeroNet, as it provides built-in P2P redundancy and doesn’t even depend on my host being alive. So it likely fits better with my initial idea. Although I really don’t have confidence to ask for this, unless this hypothetical software is purposefully tailored to my use case. And for now, It doesn’t exist (yet?).

Interesting… I didn’t even think it could be used that way! So I might as well consider this option for real. Can it be used with a dynamic dns TLD?

Don’t feel brave enough to selfhost a public-facing service, though…

And… how to obtain a public IP, then?

because unencrypted http is BAD.

Sorry, I don’t enjoy such blatant wordings at all. I prefer to say «supports delivering content unmodified solely by a lucky chance» :D

Edit: now, after reading @benno@sh.itjust.works’s and @bigmclargehuge@lemmy.zip’s comments, I realized that Cloudflare tunnel could be used for reverse-proxying traffic to the local daemons! You know, when you think about Cloudflare, you genuinely feels nothing but repulsion after all that endless browser check pages, and don’t even consider it as something useful. So for now, I’m trying to wrap my head around all of this to ask a meaningful question. So it’s not over yet!

I know, right? But it requires a valid TLD and a public IP, so this is not an option, unfortunately.

That’s exactly what I’ve imagined after reading the original post, thanks for sharing!

In theory anything that can host WebDAV, SSH/SFTP, or an S3 endpoint would do the job.

Sounds like Rclone, which can host all of these protocols, has a web UI, and can act as a REST server for Restic as well. Haven’t tried it yet, though! Just leaving it here as an additional option to consider.

Also remember: don’t panic!

PSR J2322−2650 b, to watch the eternal sunset while walking in the diamond rain! Well, not exactly walking, as there is no solid surface on this planet.

More realistically, I’d like to visit Venus, Titan, Europa and Enceladus. Venus and Titan have opposite extreme conditions while maintaining a dense atmosphere and a solid surface, so it might be quite interesting to watch closely and compare. And Europa with Enceladus have a good chance of keeping extraterrestrial life in the depths of their oceans.

And of course, landing on 1I/Oumuamua and 3I/ATLAS would be thrilling!

Looks like a sound advice!

As Free Software movement clearly demonstrates, there is only one reliable and reproducible method of preventing enshittification: ability to fork; ability to do things on your own, however you want, without anyone’s approval. However, Fediverse doesn’t grant its users this ability. One can not simply fork an instance and/or a community with all of its data. Even if your instance admins are pretty cool (admins of my instance are pretty cool, just saying!), you still have to rely on their goodwill all the time. And setting up a personal instance doesn’t seem feasible enough to widespread selfhosting…

Yeah, I think that must be it. So it wasn’t a déjà vu! Thanks for the clarification.

By the way, is there any good place to ask for help if I’d like to request a modding tool for certain niche games? I have almost no idea about reverse engineering, so I’m unlikely to do it myself, even with LLM assist.

«It’s all your fault!» — Sony to Sam Altman, probably

Also, I have a strange déjà vu: wasn’t there a native Bloodborne recompilation a couple years ago? I remember watching a few videos about it. If I recall correctly, there was a strange cape animation, as it’s internally rendered in 30 FPS, or something like that. Or was it an emulator?

While I mostly sit around and watch the sunset, lowering my expectations to nearly zero and abandoning hope and any long-term goals, I also passionately use Free Software, write some unapologetically apophenic theories about VTubers, and slowly translate some good games and VNs into my native language. This is my way of how to stay sane and connect the world!

Good question! I’d say there should be a mod manager on the receiving end. Something like Limo, that has both generic and some game-specific deployers. But that’s only part of what I want: there should also be a middleware to manage differential downloads between it and the origin.

And when I think about it, it becomes clear that all of this has to be backed by P2P of some sort, as there is no such service that could reliably provide even a simple direct link to an arbitrary binary file, let alone allow you to run some odd directory diff protocol. Unless you have your own server, but this is obviously not an option. So it seems like P2P is the only viable option.

So there should be at least 3 components: a mod manager, a directory diff middleware, and a P2P daemon, and they should all work together. And I just realized that the «directory diff middleware» sounds just like OSTree! But it should be able to pull/push from some kind of P2P remotes instead of HTTP ones. Or something like that.

At least for YouTube clickbait there is crowdsourced DeArrow, from the same developer as SponsorBlock. And you can use it in FreeTube!

Let me first describe a very specific problem that I’d like to solve.

So, I make mods for some games and VN (to be more specific, it’s unofficial translations). Sometimes I have to update it and release a new version (and sometimes I just release it in an ongoing mode, part by part, when the next chapter is translated). In either case, I have to ask my audience to manually re-download the entire archive and re-apply it on top of the game directory. Although I manage to make patches pretty lightweight, it still feels so wasteful to re-download the whole archive, even if only a few files are changed!

So, I’d like to have something that could help upload these patches, distribute them, and apply them easily. It should be able to calculate the diff between the local copy and the remote origin, download only required files, and then apply them on top of the game directory. Something like Steam Depots, but standalone. And it should be easy to use, so rsync doesn’t count!

Does all of this make sense, or am I making up nonsense?