In my case it’s that hard separation between devices. I like reading on the eink screen compared to the phone screen, and there are no notifications to interrupt me. It helps too that the ereader is just ready to use, no decision to fight about what app to open. I tightly manage notifications only phone and it’s still too much of a draw to go doomscroll instead of read. I frequently pull just the reader out and leave the phone so I just use the magnetic attachment to keep them together.

Journiv, first featured here at https://lemmy.ca/post/55005402 might be what you’re looking for as a self hosted solution

ddrescue doesn’t work properly on audio discs (even if you use the correct sector size of 2048 bytes). Have you tried something like cdparanoia https://www.xiph.org/paranoia/?

Not sure what you mean by this - Nabu Casa has a Zwave device already called ZWA-2 which is fully supported.

Bcache can’t differentiate between data and metadata on the cache drive (it’s block level caching), so if something happens to a write-back cache device you lose data, and possibly the entire array. I wouldn’t use bcache (or zfs caching) without mirrored devices personally to ensure resiliency of the array. I don’t know if zfs is smarter - presumably is can be because it’s in control of the raw disks, I just didn’t want to deal with modules.

For your second scenario - yes you can use md under bcache with no issues. It becomes more to configure but once set up has been solid. I actually do md/raid1 - luks - bcache - btrfs layers for the SSD cache disks, where the data drives just use luks - bcache - btrfs. Keep in mind that with bcache if you lose a cache disk you can’t mount - and of course if you’re doing write-back caching then the array is also lost. With write-through caching you can force disconnect the cache disk and mount the disks.

YouTube blocks it. There are extensions to allow it (like Vinegar) but by default it’s blocked. Brave might work around YouTube’s block in the same way.

Check with your provider for SIP server, username and password, and if they have a suggested app (even if you don’t want to use it, it means they have some kind of support). It’s probably in their support pages somewhere.