First off, let me say that I see a close to zero chance that society will collapse in a matter of months or that there will be mobs out to kill disabled people.

America has reached a turning point and is certainly starting to spiral, but these kinds of radical changes you’re talking about take a long time to happen. People revolt violently when they can no longer afford bread, and the US is nowhere close to that.

Quality of life is declining, job opportunities are diminishing, but America is so far away from bread lines that it’s just not going to happen in the short term. Remember the elites DON’T WANT social collapse. That’s very bad for business! They will gamble with our future and with the prosperity of the country for a little more over and over, but they want to keep the system up and held together with duct tape as long as possible or their profits fall too.

So yes, there is real turmoil, but nothing is coming to an end tomorrow, next month, or next year. Keep educating yourself, but stay positive and do what you can to enact change.

The DNC has a lot of problems and blame to absorb, but at some point we have to look at the electorate. You don’t have to read the Sunday newspaper or be politically active to know who is running for president. She had two months to step outside and listen/read almost anything.

She is an ignorant, zero information voter, who is likely just regurgitating what she heard her father or boyfriend say months ago. This is the problem. America is now dominated by zombies with no critical thinking skills who crave being brainwashed by their mobile phones.

I hate to be so negative, but I simply don’t see a way out of it. The masses are being controlled more effectively than ever before and I don’t see what systemic change could magically appear to change our trajectory.

I’d they’d bring back the headphone jack and sell them in North America then they might have something.

It would win the “will it fit nicely on a keychain” by a landsline.

However I doubt it would suit OP’s needs as the contacts are exposed so durability may be suspect, and seeing as it is generic I doubt the performance is up to his standards.

I wish Firefox would build a tablet/scalable interface. It’s horrible on a tablet and breaks on DeX.

That’s a good practice, and I think you’re right that is what they’re going for. I don’t think that means you shouldn’t consider them, but it does lower their value proposition as the bundle is the better deal.

I haven’t jumped yet, but the Proton suite is looking more and more appealing. I’ve been eyeing them as a Gmail replacement, but I’ve been happy with my VPN and password management providers. As this reduces the bundle makes more sense.

Not defending Apple for bad design, but this has happened before with displays from different manufacturers. The ribbon cable burning from a tight bend was also what killed my first LG Ultrawide.

That was the traditional meaning of the word, yes. However it has been horribly misused to push headlines and in the legal arena it has been used to push for harder penalties on what would be considered traditional weapons.

It’s a pet peve of mine because it dilutes the word, but home made preasure cooker bombs have been called WMDs in the US and people seem OK with it.

You think someone stupid enough to make all the above mistakes would be savvy enough to build PKI and a RADIUS server? You’re giving her too much credit.

This is actually a very good comparison because restaurants use this argument all the time, except for wages:

“I can’t make money running my restaurant if I have to pay a living wage to my servers, so you should pay them with tips. How else can we stay open?”

These business that can’t operate profitably like any other business should fail.

Absolutely. It sounds ideal for something like that.

The issue is they sit in this odd place from a price perspective. I can get an N4000 based stick PC with 4GB RAM and eMMC storage for $140 CAD, or a vastly better performing N95 based mini PC with 8GB RAM, real SSD, and additional outputs for $50 more.

The stick PC really only makes sense if you need that form factor, or if you’re on a really tight budget. The improvements for $50 are just too much to ignore.

Your wishlist sounds almost identical to mine. As frustrating as the limitations of streamers are, they are easy to use. HDMI CEC makes single remote setups possible, easy volume changes, input switching, etc. Apps are vetted so they “just work”.

As for casting, most platforms support running Miracast or AirPlay receivers. Google is the stickler here that won’t let you run a Google Cast receiver (or at least I haven’t found one) and also doesn’t implement Miracast on Pixel devices. It’s such a shame because I vastly prefer casting the URL to the TV and letting it source the content than mirroring my phone all the time.

Yeah, those were on my radar as well. I haven’t yet had a chance to look into what the Linux compatibility is like, but that sounds promising that you were able to do it.

The big downside I see is that while the power consumption is low, they’re running a really old SoC, usually based on Intel N4000 (launched late 2017). Looking around it seems to have h.265 decode which is the most important one to look out for. It doesn’t support AV1, but that’s mostly streaming services and not that common (I think?). There may be other disadvantages I’m not thinking of at the moment.

What was the performance like for you?

I do have surround sound, but I wasn’t aware of that being an issue with a PC solution. Have you encountered issues getting that to work?

All my current self-hosting is running off an N100 mini-PC. OPNsense, NginX, Home Assistant, Unifi Controller, Docker host, etc. They are fantastic, it just seems a bit overkill for sitting behind the TV and playing Plex/Jellyfin and the occasional web stream in a browser. There’s really not much competition though as all the products below it offer a lot older processors that don’t have very up to date HW decode.

If you’re coming from Windows I recommend Fedora KDE Spin. If has a similar look and feel and is very up to date while remaining stable.

I assume this is the result of “water heater” and “hot water tank” being merged together.

Valve has not yet put in the effort to create a generic version of SteamOS because their focus is on the Steam Deck right now, but the community has.

Bazzite has been made to look and feel almost exactly like the Steam Deck and can be installed on any PC (AMD GPU recommended). Give it a shot!