# always free (blogs) — RSS Amplifier Recent posts from the 4 feeds in the RSS Amplifier directory that cover always free. Page: Feed: --- ## [Friday Night Drabble Party!](https://jakebible.substack.com/p/friday-night-drabble-party-4d7) _2026-08-21 · Jake Bible \* Horrorteller · Always Writing with Jake Bible_ “Too Damn Close” ## [When a Rails or LMS Platform Becomes Hard to Change](https://joeywang.github.io/posts/rails-lms-reliability-modernization/) _2026-08-13 · Joey Wang · Joey_ A practical way for small education and SaaS teams to diagnose platform friction before committing to a rewrite. ## [When Ubuntu Builds Fail on libvips but macOS Does Not](https://joeywang.github.io/posts/libvips-ubuntu-build-mismatch/) _2026-08-12 · Joey Wang · Joey_ Why a Rails test suite can fail because Ubuntu ships an older native libvips, how ruby-vips fits into the picture, and how to upgrade libvips safely without confusing the system package with the Ruby gem. ## [A Portable Workflow for Testing Small Local LLMs on Modest Hardware](https://joeywang.github.io/posts/portable-local-llm-benchmark/) _2026-08-12 · Joey Wang · Joey_ A repeatable way to download, serve, benchmark, and choose small GGUF models for Hermes and coding-agent work across different CPU and memory budgets. ## [Orchestrating Hermes with Local Gemma: Cheap Routing, Delegation, and Safe Rails Workflows](https://joeywang.github.io/posts/orchestrating-hermes-with-local-gemma/) _2026-08-12 · Joey Wang · Joey_ A practical guide to using Hermes Agent with a local Gemma model for routine coding work, while reserving cloud models for tasks that genuinely need them. ## [Agent 基建的三层爆发：电脑、运行时、技能方法论](https://joeywang.github.io/posts/agent-infrastructure-three-layer-surge/) _2026-08-10 · Joey Wang · Joey_ 从 Prime Agent、Cloudflare Computer、agent-skills、mattpocock/skills 和 Superpowers 看 Agent 基础设施正在如何从聊天框走向持久工作台、长任务运行时和工程方法论。 ## [Tightening a dev VM that was quietly living without a firewall](https://joeywang.github.io/posts/vm-security-tightening/) _2026-08-10 · Joey Wang · Joey_ What a routine security audit found on a small always-on dev VM — unauthenticated databases, no host firewall, over-privileged automation — and the fixes that made it boring again. ## [Golden Rules for Cheaper, Safer LLM Agents](https://joeywang.github.io/posts/golden-rules-for-cheaper-safer-llm-agents/) _2026-08-09 · Joey Wang · Joey_ Notes on turning repeated AI workflows into scripts, skills, cron jobs, and guardrails so agents become cheaper, safer, and more useful over time. ## [Loop Engineering, Graph Engineering, and the Nature of Working with LLMs](https://joeywang.github.io/posts/loop-engineering-graph-engineering-and-llm-interaction/) _2026-08-09 · Joey Wang · Joey_ A practical reflection on prompt engineering, context engineering, loop engineering, graph engineering, and what they reveal about the shape of human interaction with LLMs. ## [When an Always Free server gets smaller](https://joeywang.github.io/posts/oracle-always-free-arm-downsize/) _2026-08-08 · Joey Wang · Joey_ What Oracle's smaller Ampere A1 Always Free limits mean for a self-hosted ARM server, and how I reshaped mine around a 12 GB memory budget. ## [Stream Torrents and IPTV Instantly (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/4RWk1AXeJaDg) _2026-08-08 · **Sponsored**_ Search, index, and play music, movies, books, and live TV in your browser. ## [The CI failures that moved every time you reran them](https://joeywang.github.io/posts/the-ci-failure-that-moved-every-rerun/) _2026-08-07 · Joey Wang · Joey_ How a moving set of Rails CI flakes exposed shared download state, Chrome/Selenium stale-node retries, and feature specs that asserted before the browser had settled. ## [014. Perfection](https://prozak.org/014-perfection) _2026-07-29 · Prozak's Blog_ Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ## [013. PromptSmith a friendly prompt helper](https://prozak.org/013-promptsmith-a-friendly-prompt-helper) _2026-07-24 · Prozak's Blog_ TL,DR: I made a TUI application to help you improve your prompts https://github.com/pr0z4k/promptsmith-cli . "2001: A Space Odyssey" doesn't begin with spaceships. It all begins with a tool. The famous opening sequence isn't about technology. It's about the moment humanity discovers that an ordinary object can fundamentally change how problems are solved. A bone becomes a tool. Everything after… ## [012. Dynamic DNS Python Script -\> deSEC.io DNS Service](https://prozak.org/012-dynamic-dns-python-script-greater-than-desec-io-dns-service) _2026-03-22 · Prozak's Blog_ Introduction Dynamic DNS is one of those things that sounds trivial until it breaks your entire remote access setup. Because #lazy, I was relying on the router’s built-in DDNS (noip.com), which worked… until it didn’t. The DNS record stopped reflecting the actual WAN IP, and suddenly my WireGuard tunnels across sites became unreliable, that and the fact that noip.com services… ## [The Era of Personal Code: Moving 18 Years of Recipes in a Weekend with LLMs](https://www.kevfoo.com/2026/03/the-era-of-personal-code/) _2026-03-15 · Kevin McMahon · Kevin McMahon_ I used LLMs to migrate 18 years of recipes, including my Grandma's handwritten ones, into structured JSON-LD over a single weekend. ## [011. Deploying Centralized TLS Certificates Node + Docker Application](https://prozak.org/011-deploying-centralized-tls-certificates-node-docker-application) _2026-03-02 · Prozak's Blog_ Motivation Centralizing certificate issuance is step one . Step two is making nodes consume that certificate automatically, without copying files by hand like it’s a 2004 LAN party. In this guide we’ll pull the wildcard cert for yourdomain.com from a “cert VM”, store it locally, and use it in a docker-compose stack serving HTTPS content is issuance a word? it made sense in… ## [010. Centralized Wildcard Certificate on Debian with Let’s Encrypt + deSEC](https://prozak.org/010-centralized-wildcard-certificate-on-debian-with-lets-encrypt-desec) _2026-03-01 · Prozak's Blog_ Motivation When running multiple services in a #homelab, private certificates become a nuance, also, when sharing these services with other people it can become a "support nightmare" the security risks notifications in browsers for non tech-users. By enabling one Debian VM/LXC container as the locally centralized point of automated request, update and have them ready to consume by other… ## [My Spin on Claude Code On-the-Go: Oracle Cloud Always Free + Ntfy Edition](https://www.kevfoo.com/2026/02/my-spin-on-claude-code-on-the-go/) _2026-02-22 · Kevin McMahon · Kevin McMahon_ I saw this post about running Claude Code from a phone and immediately wanted the same thing. There were, however, two areas I thought we could improve upon: Vultr costs real money ($7/day when running), and Poke, a notification service, that is gated behind a truly ridiculous signup process. ## [Terraform for Your Always Free Claude Code VM](https://www.kevfoo.com/2026/02/terraform-for-your-always-free-claude-code-vm/) _2026-02-22 · Kevin McMahon · Kevin McMahon_ In my previous post, I walked through setting up a zero-cost mobile Claude Code environment on Oracle Cloud’s Always Free tier. The VM, VCN, subnet, security list, and internet gateway take maybe 15 minutes to click through in the Oracle console, and you are up and running. ## [009. Caddy Server Auth Crunch Plugin](https://prozak.org/009-caddy-server-auth-crunch-plugin) _2025-07-29 · Prozak's Blog_ Building on our previous setup of Caddy as Webproxy to your #homelab resources most likely you will be now in the situation where you end up in two sets of sites/services that you want to make available to the internet. Public service - deemed as completely public, al content is to be visible and searchable through the internet some examples of this may be, a static website, your blog, a public… ## [Try Before You Buy, Risk-Free (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/n3eB2vC0oqus) _2025-07-29 · **Sponsored**_ Free trial hosting plus refunds processed in 12-24 hours, guaranteed. ## [008. The Web Is Meant to Be Personal](https://prozak.org/008-the-web-is-meant-to-be-personal) _2025-07-04 · Prozak's Blog_ “Those who can imagine anything, can create the impossible.” — Alan Turing (.... movie Character, so in reality the Screenwriter Graham Moore ) If you're reading this post, you're already on the internet. But which internet are we on, exactly? The modern web is largely defined by platform monopolies, walled gardens, algorithmic feeds, and massive cloud backends that need and… ## [007. Setting up VPS Webproxy to #homelab servers using Tailscale](https://prozak.org/007-setting-up-vps-webproxy-to-homelab-servers-using-tailscale) _2025-07-03 · Prozak's Blog_ In the current age of remote access and #self-hosting, one of the most tempting solutions is to expose your local services directly to the internet — but that usually comes at a cost: security, complexity, and peace of mind. While opening ports and configuring dynamic DNS might feel like the "quick win," it introduces unnecessary attack surfaces to your home network. There is a different… ## [Introducing smartpin - AI-Powered Bookmarking for Pinboard](https://www.kevfoo.com/2025/06/smartpin-blog-post/) _2025-06-07 · Kevin McMahon · Kevin McMahon_ Introducing smartpin, a Python-based CLI tool that uses AI to automatically generate rich metadata for your Pinboard bookmarks. ## [006. Why #SelfHosting should be preferred](https://prozak.org/006-why-selfhosting-should-be-preferred) _2025-05-11 · Prozak's Blog_ In 2025, we have all seen a shift in the way Big-Tech companies work / operate, finding ways to further increase profits due to an overall rise of cloud hosting costs, this may be masqueraded by IT Media Publishing as "growth", where outlining the increases on Cloud Infrastructure by companies as something positive ( One Reference ), however, the current Enterprise trend points the next few years… ## [005. Oracle Cloud Always Free Instance Ubuntu -\> Debian Conversion](https://prozak.org/005-oracle-cloud-always-free-instance-ubuntu-greater-than-debian-conversion) _2025-03-23 · Prozak's Blog_ Motivation. During 2016, Oracle started a public services of cloud IaaS, PaaS, etc., Component of their adoption strategy includes an assortment of "Always Free" resources available to service account owners. Leaving aside the Philosophical , ownership and open source concerns from the community, these Always Free resources still provide a great testing and learning ground for #homelab and…