Eh, I haven’t convinced anyone, but I have gotten questions from my brothers about it. They don’t come over often, but I’ve done a lot of work on my self-hosted setup, so I’ll probably show it off at our next reunion (next summer).

My brothers both want to host video, and they’ve asked about ripping DVDs/Blurays. I’ve now finished ripping my entire collection (took a few weeks), so now I’m more well-equipped to answer questions.

would you be using that HDMI port?

Yes, absolutely. At work, we use MBPs, and I often ask someone with the port to connect to the TV so I don’t have to go find a dongle (and those dongles can be very finicky). I’ve had to work around the lack of an HDMI port, and it’s been incredibly annoying for the almost 4-years I’ve had my MBP.

My personal laptop has an HDMI port, and I also use it frequently to connect to our TV. It’s something I’d use weekly, if not more frequently. This laptop is older, yet I still prefer using it to the MBP, largely because of the HDMI port.

Exactly. And with AI tools, getting a transcript and generating a summary shouldn’t be all that hard.

All I’m looking for is a handful of bullet points that give me a reason to watch the video. I’m not watching a random video someone posts just based on the headline, I need a bit more reason to invest my time to contribute to the discussion. And if you provide a basic summary, I’ll probably do the legwork and find some articles to add to the discussion while I’m watching the video.

Yeah, I’d need to run cable if I moved my machines to a closet, and I’m putting that off. I do plan to do that though, so maybe someday. :)

Agreed. And I really wish we’d have a popular resurgence of privacy, but it seems we’re going the opposite direction where people prefer convenience and “safety” to control.

I’m more interested in multi-bay enclosures, but as you said, the chipsets tend to be kinda crappy. And that’s what makes me hesitate to use these mini PCs, my use-case is for a NAS, but these enclosures are kind of expensive and seem to have pretty poor components.

So for now, I’m using larger cases to hold the drives. But it takes up a lot of desk space, so these mini PCs are very attractive, if I can get a compact external enclosure to work.

TerraMaster, Orico

I honestly have never used either of these, yet they show up at a lot of retailers.

ASUS is a bit sketchy these days IMO, so I try to avoid them.

I’ve heard good things about Proxmox, but I have no direct experience with it. That would be a separate box that manages the VMs and everything, and it has a remote GUI option (webpage I think?).

If you want something on an existing box, just use KVM directly, or a simple frontend like GNOME boxes. I don’t know about remote configuration, but once it’s set up, do you really need to check in on things remotely? KVM will do hardware acceleration (definitely CPU acceleration, GPU if you configure it properly), and it has no GUI by default.

Yeah, I tried using a security key, but the only financial institution that looked halfway interesting that supports security keys was Vanguard, and they fall back to SMS, so it’s functionally useless.

I have zero problem using security keys, but if it only works for a handful of inconsequential services, why bother?

That’s fine, if the poster really doesn’t want to include it in the original post for some reason.

If you’re asking me to do it, I absolutely do when I post videos. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect others to do the same.

The thing is, I don’t know what “well known brands” are in that space. It’s not something I buy frequently.

Ads.

We had a company meeting last week where the presenter linked a YT video and a Wendy’s Frosty ad showed immediately after (amateur hour), and people were talking about how they wanted a Frosty. If you could smell the fries, you’d be more likely to actually go to Wendy’s for lunch.

So yeah, do not want.

Exactly. I think it’s much more likely that we’ll get a way to “feel” things remotely than smell them. If we ever do anything with scent, it’ll probably require bypassing the nose and going straight for the brain, and I highly doubt we’re anywhere near capable of doing that.

Next time, check out Level1Techs on YouTube. Wendell reviews a lot of these devices, and he’ll give pretty good feedback on what’s legit and what’s not. Ho has reviewed MinisForum for years and has consistently recommended them. Just be careful, because he also reviews the more sketchy devices and sometimes recommends them (but with caveats), so don’t assume that because it is covered, that it’s legit.

And that’s what I’m blaming the low quality of applicants on recently. We looked for almost two years for a FE lead, and then they ended up being super toxic a few months in (they blew up in a meeting w/ some remote teams that came to town to visit). Even decent junior devs are hard to find it seems.

So it seems a lot of these layoffs are cutting out the less skilled devs, but given that we’ve been able to hire a few great people in the last year, there is some good talent getting caught in the cross-fire as well.

Exactly. I don’t post often, but when I do, I include a short summary, as well as a couple questions to spark discussion.

Yup, and requiring a bit of extra work sounds entirely reasonable to keep the quality of content high.

Yup, Taiwan and Hong Kong are fantastic examples of what can happen when you don’t have a dictator in charge.

Sure, but there’s a pretty big difference in scope. In the US, I have Constitutional protections concerning use of that data, as well as a lot of legal options to limit it (VPN, anonymous accounts, etc). In China, those don’t exist, and instead surveillance is part of everyday life. You’ll think about it whenever you visit a new site, just to double check that it won’t be considered problematic by the state. That just doesn’t exist in the US.

That said, things aren’t good in the US and we should expect better. But it is workable if you’re careful, and it can probably be reversed with enough public outcry.