De-clouding

Backups

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Why first

Cloud services quietly do one thing well: they rarely lose your stuff. When you take your photos and files home, you take that job too. So before any other guide, set up backups — and this is also where “the cloud” comes back in a form you control.

The rule

3-2-1: three copies of anything you care about, on two different kinds of storage, with one somewhere else (a friend’s house, a relative’s, or a rented storage bucket).

Intel Arc in a Proxmox VM: no Resizable BAR, no oneAPI

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Setup

Host: Dell PowerEdge R740 (14th gen), Proxmox VE 9.2. BIOS has no Resizable BAR setting at all.
GPU: Intel Arc Pro B65 CT (Battlemage G31, 32 GB), in a Gen3 x16 slot behind the card’s internal PCIe switch, passed through to an Ubuntu 26.04 VM with vfio-pci.

Symptom

Inside the VM, the card worked for Vulkan (stable-diffusion.cpp’s Vulkan backend ran fine), but anything on the oneAPI path failed:

sycl-ls showed no Level Zero GPU device.
torch.xpu.is_available() returned False; PyTorch’s XPU build imported but found nothing.
lspci -vv in the VM showed the GPU’s BAR2 at 256 MB (Region 2: Memory at … [size=256M]). On this card BAR2 is the VRAM aperture; Level Zero needs it to cover the whole 32 GB.

Cause

Resizable BAR is negotiated by firmware at boot. With no BIOS option, the host left the aperture at the 256 MB default, and passthrough faithfully handed that 256 MB window to the guest. Vulkan tolerates a small aperture (it pages); the Intel compute stack does not.

Photos & files

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What you gain

Your photo library is the most intimate dataset you own: faces, places, times, who you were with. Cloud photo services scan it to build features — and, under terms you’ve agreed to, for other purposes. Bringing it home means the face recognition and search still work (the free software does both now), but the only computer looking at your kids is yours.

Also: no more paying monthly for storage you could buy once.

PyTorch on Intel Arc (torch.xpu) inside a VM, and ComfyUI on top

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Setup

Guest: Ubuntu 26.04 (kernel 7.0), 12 vCPU, 128 GiB RAM, Intel Arc Pro B65 CT (32 GB) via passthrough — BAR2 already resized to 32 G (see the ReBAR note).
Target: PyTorch with the XPU backend, then ComfyUI running on it as a systemd service.

What worked

PyTorch 2.14.1+xpu (with torchvision 0.29.1+xpu / torchaudio 2.11.0+xpu) in a dedicated virtualenv (~/venv-xpu) on Python 3.14, installed from the PyTorch XPU wheel index. The +xpu wheels pull the Intel runtime in as ordinary pip packages (intel-sycl-rt, intel-opencl-rt, intel-cmplr-* at 2026.1.0), so a separate oneAPI Base Toolkit install was not required.
In the guest, the kernel-side pieces came from Ubuntu’s packages: the Level Zero loader (libze1 1.28) and Intel’s Level Zero GPU driver (libze-intel-gpu1 26.05), plus intel-opencl-icd. Both libze* packages are held at those versions — the runtime and the pip-side compiler libs have to agree, and letting apt wander broke that once. Full list: lab/arc-vm/versions.txt.
Smoke test before anything else:

python -c "import torch; print(torch.xpu.is_available(), torch.xpu.get_device_name(0))"
python -c "import torch; a=torch.randn(8192,8192,device='xpu'); print((a@a).sum().item())"
python -c "import torch; x=torch.empty(24*1024**3, dtype=torch.uint8, device='xpu'); print('24 GiB ok')"

All three pass on this card. If the first prints False, stop — it’s the BAR (or a kernel/firmware mismatch), not PyTorch.

Email, calendar & contacts

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The honest advice

Running your own mail server is a trap for almost everyone. Big providers treat mail from unknown servers with suspicion, so your messages land in spam folders, and keeping that from happening is a part-time job. Skip it.

The de-clouding move for email is different: own the address. Register a domain (about $12 a year) and use it as your email address at a provider that encrypts your mailbox. Now the provider is a utility you can switch in an afternoon — change one setting at the domain, import your mail, done. Your address, your contacts, your history go with you. That is control.

Passwords & notes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What you gain

Your password vault is the master key to everything else, and your notes are your mind on paper. Both are small — megabytes — which makes them the easiest things on this site to bring home, and the most worth doing.

Passwords

Bitwarden is open source and has a free hosted tier that’s already end-to-end encrypted — a fine tier 0 answer.
Vaultwarden is a tiny self-hosted server that speaks the Bitwarden protocol, so the same apps work against your own box.
KeePassXC uses a single encrypted file and no server at all; sync it with Syncthing or your own file sync.

Every mainstream password manager exports to a standard file; import takes minutes. Then turn on two-factor authentication for the vault itself.

Smart home & voice

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What you gain

Right now every light switch, thermostat reading and “turn off the kitchen” goes to a company’s servers and comes back. That’s a detailed log of when you’re home, awake, and asleep — and when the company drops the product or changes the terms, your house gets dumber.

Home Assistant is free software that becomes the brain of the house instead. It talks to thousands of devices directly, runs on a small box in a closet, and keeps the history in your house. It’s the most mature project on this site and has a huge, friendly community.

Music, movies & TV

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What you gain

Two different things, both worth doing:

A library you own. Music you’ve bought, discs you’ve ripped, home video, podcasts, over-the-air TV — served from a box in your house to every screen, with no monthly fee and nobody logging what you watched at 2 a.m.
A television that doesn’t phone home. Modern smart TVs track what’s on screen (including from other inputs) and sell it. Putting the TV on an isolated network segment with no internet, and driving it from a small streaming box you control, ends that.

This guide is not about avoiding paying for content. It’s about not renting access to things you already own, and not being watched while you watch.

Games & kids

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The honest part first

Some of what your kids play cannot be de-clouded. Roblox and Fortnite aren’t games you own; they are services you visit, and your children’s friends are inside them. Taking them away is a parenting decision, not a technical one, and this site won’t pretend otherwise.

What you can do falls into four moves, and none of them requires a ban.

1. Own what you buy

A gaming subscription is a rental. That’s fine when everyone knows it — and a surprise when the game your kid has played for a year leaves the catalog on the 30th.

Cameras & doorbells

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What you gain

Subscription cameras upload every clip to the vendor, charge you monthly to see your own footage, and have — per their own published policies — shared footage with third parties in ways their customers didn’t expect. Local recording flips this: the camera records to a box in your house, you watch from your phone over a private connection, and nobody else has a copy.

The replacements

Cameras that record locally. Several brands sell cameras that work entirely on your network (often labeled “ONVIF” or “RTSP” compatible), and whole systems — Reolink, Amcrest, UniFi Protect, Synology Surveillance Station — record to a hub or NAS you own. Buy cameras first for local operation; cloud features can be a bonus.
Frigate — free software that watches camera streams, detects people/cars/packages locally, and plugs into Home Assistant. An optional $30–60 accelerator chip makes it fast on a tiny box.
Doorbells are the hard case: most popular ones are cloud-only. A few brands offer local-recording doorbells; check before buying.

What you still rent

Nothing, unless you want cloud-based push alerts from a vendor. Remote viewing goes over your own private connection (see Remote access).

Remote access & your network

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The one rule

Nothing on your home network should be reachable from the open internet. No port forwarding, no “DMZ,” no dynamic DNS pointing at your router’s login page. Every guide on this site assumes this.

Instead, your devices join a private mesh: your phone, laptop, and home box all connect to each other over encrypted tunnels, and nothing else can see them. From a coffee shop, your phone opens your photo library exactly as if you were home.

Your own AI assistant

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What you gain

Everything you type into a hosted assistant — the medical question, the contract you pasted, the message you were nervous about sending — is stored by the provider and, depending on the terms you accepted, may be used to improve their models. A local model runs on your own hardware. The conversation happens in your house and ends there.

You also get an assistant that reads your documents, notes and photos without uploading them anywhere, works without an internet connection, and never changes its behavior because of a pricing decision in someone’s boardroom.

Roadmap: devices you own all the way down

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Where this is going

Smart glasses, earbuds and watches are arriving that can see, hear and talk. Today nearly all of them route everything through one company’s servers. The question for the next few years is whether there will be versions that talk to your assistant on your hardware instead.

The encouraging part: the architecture needed is exactly what the other guides build. A thin device on your body, a private connection home, and your own model answering. A phone over a private mesh to a box in your closet is that architecture already — just with a screen you hold instead of one you wear. Everything you set up now carries over.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m Sal. I’m an electrical engineer by training and a patent attorney by trade, and I run a home lab because I like knowing where my data sleeps at night. Over a couple of years I moved my photos, files, mail, smart home, cameras, TV, and finally my AI assistant onto hardware I control. The hardest part wasn’t the technology; it was figuring out what was possible and in what order. This site is the map I wish I’d had.

Bring it home

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

How it’s scored

Privacy is how much of your life stops being readable by companies. Control is how hard you are to lock in, cut off or lose data from. Subscriptions is what you’d pay each month afterwards — the game starts at a typical household’s $118, kids’ gaming included. Your time is the honest cost: hours a month keeping your own things running. Nothing here is a trick question; every tier is a legitimate place to stop. The game is deterministic — the same choices always lead to the same places — so try a different budget and see what changes.

Budget tiers

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

All prices are rough, in US dollars, for used or entry-level gear. Electricity estimates assume about 15¢/kWh. Check current prices before buying anything; this page will drift.

Tier 0 — $0, no new hardware

You change who holds your data and on what terms. Nothing to buy, a few hours of weekend.

Move email to your own domain (about $12/year) at a provider that encrypts your mailbox. Now the provider is replaceable.
Export your photos and files from the cloud drive and keep a copy on a drive you own; keep the cloud as a second copy, encrypted, or drop it.
Switch to a password manager and notes app that store locally and sync without a company in the middle.
Try a small AI model on the laptop you already have. A machine with 16 GB of memory runs a useful 4–8 billion-parameter model today — slower than the hosted ones, and nothing leaves the room.
Connect your own devices to each other privately with a free mesh VPN.

Owns: data, network. Running cost: $0–5/month for encrypted off-site backup space. Good for: almost everyone.

Build the box in an afternoon

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fastest path from nothing to a working Tier 1 box. It doesn’t replace the guides — they explain the why and the trade-offs — but if you already know you want this, here it is in order. Every kit is a tiny, independent compose.yml; skip any you don’t want.

1. Buy (one evening of searching, a few days of shipping)

Pick one:

A used mini PC — search for “mini PC N100 16GB” or any small-form-factor office PC with an 8th-generation-or-newer Intel chip, 16 GB of RAM and a 500 GB+ SSD. Typically $150–250 used. This is the better buy: x86 means every piece of software exists for it, and it idles at the power draw of a night light.
A Raspberry Pi 5, 8 GB, with the official power supply and an NVMe HAT or a USB SSD (don’t run this off a microSD). About $120–160 all in. Everything below works; AI and camera detection will be slow.

Plus: an external USB drive (a 4 TB one is around $100) for photos and media, and, if you’ll do the smart home, a $30 Zigbee USB stick. Prices are rough and dated October 2026.

Not found

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

That page isn’t here. Try the guides or start here.

Own the stack

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Every service you use is really a stack of five things. The cloud default is that the provider owns all five. De-clouding is taking them back one at a time, starting from the top.

Layer	What the cloud does	What you can do instead
1. Data	Stored on their servers, readable by them, mined for the next product.	Yours. Stored at home, or stored anywhere encrypted before it leaves so the host only sees noise.
2. Model	A hosted AI you rent by the month and never see inside.	Open-weight models you download and run. Free. Yours to keep.
3. Compute	Their data center.	Your laptop, a mini PC in a closet, a small server — or, for bursts, a rented machine that holds nothing when it’s off.
4. Network	Their endpoints, their logins, their outages.	A private mesh between your own devices (Tailscale or WireGuard), with nothing exposed to the open internet.
5. Device	A phone or speaker that phones home by design.	Today: the same phone, but talking to your server. Tomorrow: open hardware — see the roadmap.

You don’t need the whole column

Tier 0 owns layer 1 and most of layer 4 with no new hardware — switch to providers that can’t read your data, and connect your own devices privately. That alone removes the mining.
Tier 1–2 add layers 2 and 3: a small always-on box running your own services and a modest AI model.
Tier 3 is the full column, for people who’ve decided this is a hobby.

See the budget tiers for what each one costs and buys. Every guide on this site tells you which layers it moves.

Start here

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Tick what applies. The prompt at the bottom rewrites itself as you go. Then copy it, paste it into Claude (or any assistant you trust), and let it take over.

Not sure where to begin?

Try the audit instead. Paste your list of subscriptions and accounts into this one and let the assistant sort them by what you’d lose if each one vanished tomorrow.

Why

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The models were built from all of us. Today’s AI assistants learned from decades of public writing, photos, code and conversation — most of it posted for other reasons by people who were never asked. Whatever you think about how that happened, the result is a capability that exists because of everybody.

Part of it is being given back. Open-weight models — ones you can download and run on your own computer — are that capability, handed out. They are smaller than the hosted giants, but for everyday use they are already good, and they get better every few months.

De-clouding

Backups

Why first

The rule

Intel Arc in a Proxmox VM: no Resizable BAR, no oneAPI

Setup

Symptom

Cause

Photos & files

What you gain

PyTorch on Intel Arc (torch.xpu) inside a VM, and ComfyUI on top

Setup

What worked

Email, calendar & contacts

The honest advice

Passwords & notes

What you gain

Passwords

Smart home & voice

What you gain

Music, movies & TV

What you gain

Games & kids

The honest part first

1. Own what you buy

Cameras & doorbells

What you gain

The replacements

What you still rent

Remote access & your network

The one rule

Your own AI assistant

What you gain

Roadmap: devices you own all the way down

Where this is going

About

Bring it home

How it’s scored

Budget tiers

Tier 0 — $0, no new hardware

Build the box in an afternoon

1. Buy (one evening of searching, a few days of shipping)

Not found

Own the stack

You don’t need the whole column

Start here

Your prompt

Not sure where to begin?

Why