Hah, yes that was an odd placement. It seems like a non issue though.

I very reluctantly put a new mac mini on order last Sunday. I didn’t feel great about it but I was feeling done with Windows for a bit at least for home use.

I’ve had an Android since probably 2012. It has been nice to see the OS become so mature, and security has been getting increasing attention over the last few years. I don’t know iPhone as well, so I will speak more on my experience with Android.

Brand Families: Many excellent brands exist, but I will really only consider what I think of as the top two - Google and Samsung. I’ve had the Pixel 3, 5, 7 and my girlfriend has had the 4a and 8. The experience on a Google branded phone is, in my opinion, the best way to experience Android. The Samsung phones definitely keep up with the Pixel line, but the UI feels chaotic to me. Pixel Android is clean.

Work App Experience: My job is in IT for a government contractor, and my email is configured in a Microsoft Intune container. This feature simply does not work in non-stock OS’s, so I wouldn’t count on being able to use Graphene. Play store is required, as the Play Store sets up the secure container. This may sound like a downside, but to me it’s preferable over relying on Microsoft for this. The secure container works excellent and allows me to shut off all of my work apps with one click. If I was ever fired, my job could wipe the container without wiping my personal data. This is a huge benefit to me. Earlier this year we had an employee stealing data and when we issues the remote wipe command to their iPhone it wiped EVERYTHING.

Play Store: It’s very ad heavy. I typically know what I am looking for before I venture into the Play store.

**De-Googling: ** I use Firefox Mobile with uBlock (yes it works on mobile) and am working my way towards Proton services (drive, email, password manager, VPN, etc).

Overall Experience: I own several Android gaming handhelds, an Android audio player, and my Pixel 7. I will probably stick with Android for the foreseeable future. Android is flexible, mature, fast, and secure. My cameras are excellent and really only fall apart when zooming. Newer Pixel phones improve this experience.

Plex is excellent, and even if you prefer the features or interface of Jellyfin, you should never expose any application (Plex, Jellyfin, or otherwise) directly to the Internet. This should be non-negotiable. Plex solves for external access with the mobile/desktop apps and app.plex.tv by brokering client connections into your network without a NAT/PAT on your router or firewall.

For a music library, even a small one, tracks should have proper metadata applied to them and be stored in directories. Plex provides guidance on this here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265296-adding-music-media-from-folders/

My own strategy: I deviate slightly from Plex’s file and directory naming strategy, but it works perfectly. I start with high quality music, mostly from Bandcamp and process it through Musicbrainz Picard into ALBUMARTIST\YYYY - ALBUMNAME\01 - TRACKNAME.FLAC. Picard sets the metadata and ensures that there is an album cover image also.

Before moving the organized files to my Plex server, I run them through MP3Tag and overwrite any mismatched artist names with the album artist (getting rid of artist fields with 'feat xxxx artist’s). This is important for when I sync files in Media Monkey to my iPod, since the iPod would break apart albums with multiple artists. My preference is to keep them grouped together.

Hope this helps good luck 👍. Let me know if you want to know a decent strategy on movie backups also.

It’s public information transmitted over airwaves and several sites exist already. Flightradar24 and adsbexchange are the two I use, though Elon and Taylor Swift are far too boring to pay attention to when you can watch refuelers and jets instead.

I used it on an Android DAP to sync my music collection from my NAS after giving up on Folder sync due to its issues with new file detection breaking after a daylight savings time change. Synching was definitely more reliable but it takes ages to do the scan.

DOCSIS 3.1 is pretty awesome. I heard 4.0 is in testing. Fiber (FttH) is similar to coax in that many subscribers are attached to one head end device. Subscriber throughput is determined by the number of subscribers and the speeds they ordered on the shared resource. Although fiber is leading in total capacity per OLT/PON, it’s not like coax can’t achieve excellence subscriber speeds by just deploying more head end devices with fewer subscribers on each.

Those planes are workhorses, they would hardly need a dozen. We could probably put two of them on loan for a weekend and the Ukrainians would have the majority of the trenches converted into graves.

I’m going to stand by what Retro Game Corps stated that they don’t want to advocate for piracy. Lawful backup of your own games is protected. The aggression against Russ and others is uncalled for.

Well hang tight there, the games are dope. Just the legal dicks are the scumbags.

I’ve been gradually building up my Switch digital and physical library and stuff like this makes me want to just switch back to Steam and spend my dollar elsewhere.

The strikes are absolutely frivolous and Russ sets a great anti piracy example for others. Backups of your own content are protected.

Yes, variety in that there are multiple current gen systems available for consumers and one of them is portable and affordable. Nintendo plays their hits just as much as the others.

Over the years I’ve gotten rid of every console except for my Nintendo consoles. Sure their hardware is not cutting edge but I don’t really care because I always enjoy myself when I play my Nintendo consoles.

If you want the 202[3/4/5] version of COD at 4k 60fps then an Xbox is probably more suited to you. Nintendo just isn’t going after that segment. The variety is a good thing.

At one point I had been playing GTA V online pretty consistently when I had a cheater start targeting me. It was pretty frustrating and after 30 minutes of that I gave up and closed down for the day. I shifted my attention to other games after that. I definitely get that they want to stop cheaters - cheaters ruin the fun for others. It’s a shame that the new anti cheat has made it so that Steam Deck players are stuck unable to play online.

Yeah I suppose if the convenience is worth it. To me it’s odd to rent anything - especially retro games.

For some I’m sure it might have value but I can’t imagine subscribing to a service to play retro games. Dozens of excellent retro handhelds exist with no monthly fee to fiddle with.

Links awakening is great. Past that some other GB titles:

Super Mario 2: 6 Golden Coins is incredible.

Tetris is great but I prefer the Rosy Retrospection hack. Maybe wait and see if Modretro releases the officially licensed Chromatic Tetris down the road. Chromatic Tetris is already being used in competitions and it looks incredible.

Dr. Mario

You do not need to port forward to share a Plex instance over the Internet. App.plex.tv manages the inbound connections automatically. All you need to do is manage invites to your friends. They log in with their email/password or with Google SSO to app.plex.tv and your content will be available over a secure connection with no port forwarding.

Plex should not be accessed externally using a port forward. Always use app.plex.tv as it prevents unauthenticated users from seeing the instance.

Play services actually works very well for containerizing work apps. Better actually than on iOS. My work can offer a set of apps that are available in this isolated container and apply policy to them that doesn’t impact other areas of the phone. I can also shut off all of them with a single button when I am on PTO. Microsoft’s apps require these services to build the container, and I believe Android phones in China do not have play services. It’s not perfect, but I personally think it works very well.