Well, my mini Mini-PC with Kodi also doubles down as the home NAS so technically I’m not really using SMB for the videos and music anymore, though those files are also shared over SMB if for some reason I want to copy them elsewhere.

That Mini-PC has an N100 CPU which does the decoding in hardware, so it has no issues whatsoever doing it (CPU usage when playing 1080p is less that 10%) hence there really is no point for me in decoding the video files elsewhere and sending over a ton of data raw data over the network - it might even have worse performance.

In fact that Mini-PC is also my bittorrent server with an always active VPN and it’s connected to the fiber router with Gigabit ethernet, which on the other side connects to 1 Gbps fiber to my ISP, so the whole thing is pretty performant (and even with all that CPU usage is still pretty low).

Streaming can make sense if you have multiple TVs or devices and you want to share sessions across (i.e. watch a bit in one and then continue watching in a different one from where you stopped), but for a single device setup, not so much IMHO.

Same thing, but the waiter took my order directly without going via their website/app/whatever-the-fuck-was-behind-the-qr-code when I refuse to use their online system as I had already seen their menu outside and knew what I wanted.

Funnily enough about 5 minutes later two people sat in the table next to mine and they also asked to order direct from the waiter who commented to them “Yeah, we actually have quite a number of people who don’t want to use the online system”.

Mind you, I’m in a country where that shit isn’t at all common and it just comes out as them trying to skint on service and most places I’ve seen that opened up with digital ordering systems ended up closing down after a while.

I bet that if they didn’t give people the option to order via the waiter their business would’ve already gone down.

Say: “Can I order directly without using the app?”

If they say “No”, walk out.

It’s like any other store were you come in and if you don’t find anything suitable for you, you leave. You really have no obligation, moral or otherwise, to buy.

It’s more that the consequences of a management fucking-up have many times the impact of the consequences of the fuck-ups of individual members of the team, because a single manager’s choices impact the work of multiple people.

Further, managers who do things like setting the deadlines themselves, actively pushing the devs to lower their estimates of the time it takes to do something or, even better, actually take a junior developer’s estimations at face value, are the ones responsible for the deadlines and thus to blame when they’re missed - if in some way or another you forced certain deadlines on the team or fully trusted information from the least knowledgeable, it’s on you, not on others.

Some managers are actually pretty good in that they don’t do that kind of shit and even properly manage things like client/external dependencies, but in my experience they’re a minority.

Granted, when the deadlines are missed for such managers it’s not usually their fault: sometimes it’s the devs’ fault and others the fault of somebody upstream in the process (such as the client, an external provider or a business analyst).

That said, I can see where the stereotype about managers fucking up projects would come from, especially in certain countries where the management culture in Tech is one of bullshit, incompetence and even bullying, so they have way fewer competent managers and way more abuse than countries with better management culture in Tech.

The problem is that even if somebody out there is willing to go to the work of making device drives, bootloaders and OS releases for the hardware, it still can’t happen because the information about how to talk to the hardware isn’t open, same thing for the bootloader and even if those things are reverse engineered often even the ability to install an OS there is locked down on the hardware.

As you correctly say, the dream of any software just running anywhere isn’t possible because that’s not how hardware works, but the current situation is not one were what’s blocking it isn’t just the natural architectural structure of hardware, it’s one where the hardware makers have purposefully and to quite an extreme level locked down their hardware so that even if people are willing to do the work of doing what it takes to run an OS there, they can’t because necessary info to use the hardware isn’t available and the hardware is even locked down against OS installations for those who don’t have the necessary cryptographic keys.

The idea that the Major Software Enshittificator which is Samsung would ever go along with this is incredibly naive.

Samsung was one of the first to fill their smartphones and tables with tons of useless “Samsung” software that can’t be removed by normal means, and even people who had their older and less insanely stuffed with junk devices got them forcefully filled with that crap via updates (making their older devices unusable, “incentivizing” them to get new ones).

Samsung hasn’t been consumer friendly for at least a decade.

In all fairness, I’ve had that issue only with the first game I pirated to play in Linux, which I actually own but the official version won’t run in Linux (under Steam, so that was using Proton) hence why I got a pirate version (which, once a couple of missing DLLs were added, worked fine - so the pirated version is the superior product).

My point does stand that if you’re used to using things like Steam or Lutris to run your games in Linux, with pirated repacks there’s no help from scripts that make sure there are no missing DLLs, so either it’s a recent game from a good repacker like Dodi or you’re probably going to have to check the logs for missing DLLs and add them via Winetricks.

Switching to proton-ge as the runner in Lutris does often solve the problem running a game in Linux (pirated or otherwise), just not always.

Gaming on Linux via Wine is great in that sense - not only is most Windows software not really designed to connect to the Linux side of things when running on top of an adapter layer like Wine/Proton (which are NOT emulators so don’t sandbox anything) but you have way better security tools and a kernel designed with it in mind in Linux, so for example you can actually start your games inside a proper sandbox like Firejail to block it from accessing stuff outside the wine instance directory.

On the other hand, forget about all the nice automated configuration scripts that just make the Windows game seamlessly install and work in Linux when installing a pirated repack: you have to actually understand how Wine and Wine-tricks works as you’re likely to have to dig through logs of a game that’s not running to figure out which DLLs are missing from the wine instance and install them yourself.

This was me until recently, but then 1337x started blocking some VPNs exit points and FENiX disappeared from it so I moved to a different (but similar) site. Also I’ve been sailing the high-seas for 3 decades instead of 2. All the rest is exactly the same.

Mind you, I used to watch my pirated material from a TV Media Box which basically showed a file browser I used to select files to play (which were shared over SMB from my home NAS), but 2 years ago I finally upgraded to modern media player interfaces and now have a Mini-PC with Kodi.

I’m sure they learned their lesson…

… which is why they’re fine with it happening again.

I bet they’re going to start selling CDO² again, only this time the underlying debt will be data center debt instead of mortgages.

I’m hoping that this kind of thing explodes VPN usage, thus training a generation to actually be far harder to track and surveil than otherwise, achieving the very opposite of the true objective of such bills.

It’s USB rather than bluetooth, though maybe there are bluetooth versions.

Absolutelly, if you can’t use it with a remote and have to use a keyboard and mouse it’s not the same thing.

However, my setup is easilly controllable with a remote: I have Kodi running always on top in it and use one of these.

With that the sofa experience is the same as with a dedicated TV Box (except that the remote can’t power it ON, only OFF, but for me it’s fine since I leave it always ON) because that remote just sends the right “keypresses” to control Kodi (apparently the shortcut keys are standard) so from a user point of view one interacts with it the same as with a TV Box or Smart TV.

The PC-ish stuff (such as managing the bittorrent server) I do remotelly from my main PC via SSH and web interfaces.

Mind you, I have a keyboard and mouse connected to it because sometimes I want to use the browser, but if all you’re doing is watching stuff like with a TV Box, that’s not needed.

I’ve been doing the exact same thing for over a decade.

Over time I’ve had 2 differen TV Media Boxes (and Asus and a no-name brand), an ASUS EEE PC with Linux and an Android TV Box.

What I have now is an N100 Mini-PC, with Lubuntu and Kodi always running on top (and set up to start on system start).

I also have one of these so it’s the same “sofa experience” as a with a dedicated Media system (with just the funny detail that the Power button in the remote will turn the system OFF but it won’t turn it back ON again).

Because that thing is designed for low power consumption, I leave it always on.

This is literally the best such system I’ve had in all this time.

As a cherry on top, it also doubles down as my home NAS and bittorrent server on top of a VPN.

I use a Mini-PC with an N100 CPU.

It literally has a peak consumption of 15W, though I seldom see it go above 10% CPU usage (which is nice because even the small fan it has almost never goes on) so even when I’m actually using it as a TV box it consumes a lot less than 15W. It consumes even less when idle.

So it’s always ON.

As a side benefit it’s my home NAS and a bittorrent server managed via a web-interface, both things for which it makes even to have a machine always running.

Haven’t actually seen any difference in my power bill.

Also it works fine with something like this if one really wants the exact same sofa experience as with a dedicated TV box or a Smart TV.

As I just wrote in a post under the previous poster’s one, you can use a Mini-PC with a low-power processor like the N100 and a wireless remote and it will definitelly not look or sound like a “big loud box” (not least because the fan almost never goes on and when it goes it’s quiet - it turns out that even an N100 is overpowered for just working as a TV box so CPU usage is almost always below 10%).

Further, you can put Linux in it and then manage it remotelly via SSH, so after setting it up you don’t need a keyboard or mouse connected to it.

The end result is something that doesn’t at all look like a PC and which, thanks to the remote, you use just like a dedicated TV box.

Hardward for reference: Mini-PC, Remote

PS: That PC is a lot more expensive now than when I bought it 2 years ago.

I have a $150 N100 Mini-PC with Lubuntu and an always on Kodi for that.

I even got a wireless remote for it - turns out Kodi’s keyboard shortcuts are standard so there are wirelless remotes that just identify themselves on USB as a “keyboard” and just have the remote buttons mapped to the correct shortcut key for that function. The remote looks the same as any other remote (though if you press the power button it switches OFF the PC and then you can’t switch it ON again with the remote).

It works pretty much like a dedicated TV media box and it’s my living room were you can’t really tell it’s a PC unless you know what to look for.

As an upside, it’s also my home NAS and bittorrent server, remotelly managed from my official PC via SSH and web (the bittorrent server has a web interface).

I’ve actually been using TV media boxes for over a decade (long before Smart TVs) and this is the best setup I’ve ever had.

“Normal” SUVs are something like 70% more likely to kill the pedestrian in a collision with one that cars like sedans.

SUVs are anti-social cars.

IMHO, it’s a great example that The Law isn’t really done to protect common people that those things are allowed on the road when they’re actually unecessary (unlike, say, delivery vans) and almost twice as deadly for other people than normal cars.