That’s exactly what the GSMA is saying. Universal interoperability means not having to use Google’s encryption method, therefore iPhones and all other phones including customized Roms should work.

Now, they could absolutely get in the way of this, but I would hope that they would think it’s not worth the effort.

Bravo. That really solidified your argument.

I’ve been vegan for a little over five years now and I take the same multivitamin I used to take, plus a B12 supplement.

Now I happen to have JUST bought a new bottle from Costco the other day and looking at my receipt it was… $14 for 360 tablets (a year’s supply). So over the last five years Big Kirkland has sucked a hefty $70 out of me for being so gullible.

If only I didn’t have this wool over my eyes! Your conspiracy theory has to be the worst I’ve ever heard.

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.

We’d need a suitably powerful APU upgrade in order to make running a 1080p screen viable. Most of the reason the Steam Deck performs as well as it does is because games are only rendering at 720p.

My wishlist for a Deck V2 would be a

• Higher res screen (if it makes sense as I mentioned above)
• Higher refresh with VRR (partially handled by thr OLED 90hz but no VRR)
• Second USB-C port supporting USB4
• Fingerprint reader
• QoL improvements like smaller bezel, modern wireless chipset, etc.

AND a Steam Controller v2 as a companion with the exact same buttons/sticks/touchpads as the Deck.

Pixel phones have some of the best alternative OS support around and have always had unlockable bootloaders with no hoops to jump through. GrapheneOS should satisfy you there.

The headphone jack, microSD card, etc? Google’s official response is “get bent”.

Of course they could, this is a software limitation. However consumer friendliness is not in either companies interests. Apple prefers to keep total control over their ecosystems so they aren’t going to do Google any favours, and Google likely doesn’t care much either way seeing how long it’s taken them to even attempt a similar network.

Kind of. From what I’ve heard each network will alert you if it always sees the same tracker from the other network, as a precaution against unwanted tracking / stalking. I don’t believe it goes further than that though, as in the networks won’t report back all the tags they see on a daily basis to help with location.

Any tag following you = alert

Tag from the other network seen = nothing

Man made one of the pioneering smartwatches before anyone else. My pebble still had better battery life than my current feature bloated smart watch. He knows what he’s talking about.

The same reason they removed the SD card, to get you using Google Drive, and the headphone jack, to get you to buy pixel buds.

I wish there were other options but most smartphone makers have dropped out of the game, cost a fortune, or have terrible updates.

It’s ridiculous that Google has disabled this feature. Even if we assumr it’s in preparation for desktop mode, that’s still unacceptable. Mirroring is a perfectly valid feature in its own right and it shouldn’t be held back by Google’s “plans”.

It’s crazy that my old Android phones from a decade ago could do this and the latest pixel cannot. We have been bleeding hardware features for years.

I’m blocking my bridge’s access to the internet right now, just in case they push an update for this. I never use the Hue app anyway.

Are you using the Unbound built into OPNsense, or something else? I ask because it’s easy to configure Unbound in OPNsense for DoT. If your ISP isn’t blocking DoT it will be just as secure.

And yes, it will be much more private. Right now if you’re using neither DoT or DoH your ISP will be able to see all your DNS requests in the clear. With either of the above it will be encrypted and they will not be able to read them.

How would you change his setup to prevent ARP attacks? More network segmentation (clients and servers on separate VLANs) or does OPNsense additional protections I should look into?

What are too currently using for your OpenWRT router? I just got one of these and I would highly recommend it: https://a.aliexpress.com/_mq4HxaS

Get the N100 barebones version because you can slap an SSD and RAM in there for cheaper and have more selection. It has four 2.5Gb NICs and the internal PCIE slot for a WiFI card if you really want, though I would recommend getting a Ubiquiti AP to go along with it.

You can put OPNsense on it bare metal, or proxmox and then run your network related VMs there instead of your main server. Your choice.