It doesn’t really matter, no. All the DNS entries sync everywhere. So it isn’t like you will have to ping some DNS server in the UK to get your website. Everyone will just hitup their normal DNS server and it will have the answer.

Yeah, from what I understand, standing up a Teamspeak server is pretty straightforward.

A hard drive in a PO Box; data encrypted. Retrieve it occasionally to sync it with your local storage.

Are there any truly FOSS networking options?

PFSense falls into this category for routers. Netgate makes hardware specifically for it, but you don’t have to buy anything from them to use PFSense. I only mention them because their hardware is good and you can buy anything from a normal home router to enterprise level gear.

I had to sign in with my ubiquiti account first before I could make a local account

I used to be pretty into ubiquiti, but this requirement really put me off. I have no desire to do anything ‘cloud’ with my router. This requirement sent me elsewhere and I sold off all my ubiquiti equipment.

TruNAS … What alternatives are there?

TruNAS has a community edition, so you could start there. Other alternatives are a standard Debian install, use mdadm to setup RAID, then setup a network share in the OS, etc.

• This assumes latency between one’s current location and the remote location is almost non-existent. It isn’t.
• This assumes we have fast and available internet all the time. I sure don’t.
• This assumes we can use the remote computer in every way we use our current computers. No way.
• This assumes, as you point out, they won’t be greedy once they control everyone’s machines. They will be.
• This assumes they won’t censor ‘dangerous’ sites on these machines. They will.

I will happily pay more for freedom from the corporation.

Yeah, if 90% of that is movies/shows, then you really don’t need a backup of that as you can always re-download it. Then you have a 5TB backup problem which is much cheaper to solve.

My suggestion: Buy 3x 28TB drives. Mirror the data to them. Then move them off site.

The off-site location could either be a family member’s home where you can then sync to the drives over the internet. Or in a PO box nearby that you retrieve them from time to time to re-sync the data.

Might be worth looking into a PiHole. One of the nice features is the white lists. So even if a list you are subscribed to is blocking something you need, you can still allow it specifically.

And/or run adblockers on each device individually. I actually do both, as the on-device blockers don’t get things like Windows telemetry. (Thank god the only Windows machine on my network anymore is my work laptop.)

Yeah, forwarding a port to a server with SFTP allows you both to have two-way links. Have done this with some of my friends as well.

Sneakernet via a HDD is also damn helpful for initial bulk transfers.

I hate, hate, hate when I fix something and I don’t know why the fix worked (or what the fix even was…). I want my suffering to result in something learned so it doesn’t happen again.