Modern Classic problems require modern solutions.

Yeah, I don’t know about pre-installed with Android that aren’t ad platforms masquerading as consumer hardware. I’d never use one unless it was supported by LineageOS or something. My comment was more “roll your own” in nature.

Maybe one of those HDMI “stick” PCs you can get? There’s x86 Android builds you can run or you can do like I did with my media PCs and boot into Openbox and just launch a fullscreen browser right to Jellyfin and control it from your phone. (My main setup uses Emby but should be able to do the same with JF).

I’ve actually got a portable Jellyfin server I take with me. Built on the OrangePi Zero 2W with a USB->NVMe acting as media storage (as well as the Jellyfin DB). It’s got several other services running as well as a second Wifi adapter so it can also act as a travel router.

For playback, I pretty much just use my laptop or phone but have thought about adding one of the “stick” PCs as a client for it.

Startrek.website :)

Yep, that’s why I haven’t messed with Kubernetes either; way overkill for a homelab and especially so since I downsized due to soaring electricity costs here.

The only reason I gave up on Docker Swarm was that it seemed pretty dead-end as far as being useful outside the homelab. At the time, it was still competing with Kubernetes, but Kube seems to have won out. I’m not even sure Docker CE even still has Swarm. It’s been a good while since I messed with it. It might be a “pro” feature nowadays.

Edit: Docker 28.5.2 still has Swarm.

Still, it was nice and a lot easier to use than Kubernetes once you wrapped your head around swarm networking.

I had 15 of the 2013-era 5010 thin clients. Most of them have had their SSDs and RAM upgraded.

They’ve worn many hats since I’ve had them, but some of their uses and proposed uses were:

1. I did a 15 node Docker Swarm setup and used that to both run some of my applications as well as learn how to do horizontal scaling.
2. After I tore down the Docker Swarm cluster, I set them up as diskless workstations to both learn how to do that and used them at a local event as web kiosks (basically just to have a bunch of stations people could use to fill out web based forms).
3. One of them was my router for a good while. Only replaced it in that role when I got symmetric gigabit fiber. Before that, I used VLANs to to run LAN and WAN over its single ethernet port since I had asymmetric 500 Mbps and never saturated the port.
4. Run small/lightweight applications in highly-available pairs/clusters
5. Use them to practice clustered services (Multi-master Galera/MariaDB, multi-master LDAP, CouchDB, etc)
6. Use them as Snapcast clients in each room
7. Add wireless cards, install OpenWRT, and make powerful access points for each room (can combine with the above and also be a Snapcast client)
8. Set them up as VPN tunnel endpoints, give them out to friends, and have a private network

Of the 15, I think I’m only actively using 4 nowadays. One is my MPD+Snapcast server, one is running HomeAssistant, ,the third is my backup LDAP server, and one runs my email server (really). The rest I just spin up as needed for various projects; I downsized my homelab and don’t have a lot of spare capacity for dev/test VMs these days, so these work great in place of that.

Because:

1. I’m not a lazy, smooth-brained rube.
2. I’m not in the business of selling AI to lazy, smooth-brained rubes
3. I have no stake in the supply chain nor do I stand to profit from those selling AI to lazy, smooth-brained rubes.

Furthermore:

1. I don’t trust “AI”. If I’m going to have to fact check it anyway, might as well just do it myself and earn the damn knowledge.
2. AI does not work for me (or you). It works for the companies who are forcing it on you and sucking up your data.
3. The energy costs and water requirements are mindbogglingly staggering
4. I refuse to feed or ride any hype train
5. It’s creating scarcity of things that could be put to better use (energy, water, computer components, land, talent, you name it).
6. It’s not even AI. It’s just a dead-end bullshit generator

In my nearly half century on this planet and having dealt with many a drug dealer in my younger days, absolutely none of them have been this pushy 😆

“Does it piss you off when Google/whatever does [blank]? Yeah, me too. So I run my own versions to not have to deal with that crap. Would you like me to set you up an account on my stuff?”

Best I can offer is https://github.com/searxng/searxng

I run it at home and have configured it as the default search engine in all my browsers.

At best, it’s JARVIS from Iron Man 3 when he went all buggy and crashed Tony in the boondocks. lol

To me it is the ultimate gamble with one’s own thought autonomy, and an abandonment of truth in favor of false comfort.

So, like church? lol

No wonder there’s so much worrying overlap between religion and AI.

I’m about that same age but am so glad we’ve largely abandoned the “www” for websites.

On my personal project website, I have a custom listener setup to redirect people to “aarp.org” if they enter it with “www” instead of just the base domain. 😆

server {
    listen              443 ssl;
    http2		        on;
    server_name         www.mydomain.xyz;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/letsencrypt/live/mydomain.xyz/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/mydomain.xyz/privkey.pem;
    ssl_dhparam         /etc/nginx/conf.d/tls/shared/dhparam.pem;
    ssl_protocols       TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
    ssl_session_cache   shared:SSL:10m;
    ssl_session_timeout 15m;
  
    ...
    
    location ~* {
      return 301 https://aarp.org/;
    }
}

The only one I didn’t hate was the jingle:

🎵 "F-R-E-E that spells "free"
credit report dot com, baby". 🎵

😆

Yeah, but they should take that pissing contest out of the UX.

I was an adult during that time, and I don’t recall it being anywhere near as annoying. Well, except the TV and radio adverts spelling at you like “…or visit our website at double-you double-you double-you dot Company dot com. Again, that’s double-you double-you double-you dot C-O-M-P-A-N-Y dot com.”

YMMV, but it didn’t get annoying until apps entered the picture and the only way to deal with certain companies was through their app. That, of if they did offer comparable capabilities on their website but kept a persistent banner pushing you toward their app.

I predate both of those events by multiple decades lol.

Printers were well established even on the Trash-80 I grew up with. The bloatware drivers aren’t really what I’m talking about. I suppose Clippy could be considered prior art to the whole “shoving AI in your face” but at the time I was a WordPerfect fanboy.

I learned a long time ago to never install manufacturer printer drivers. Or, at least, never install them from the provided Setup.exe.

They’ve always installed a bunch of bloatware (HP has always been the worst but other brands are just as bad).

If you look in the setup folder, there’s usually the raw drivers you can install from Device Manager. If the driver package is just a single .exe file, you can usually unpack it with 7zip and get at its inner contents.

If that fails, the system-included HP LaserJet 4200 PCL driver is about as close to a universal print driver as you can find lol.

I challenge you to a race around the world. Go! [beat] Ha ha ha ha ha ha!