jacob

It really is a nightmare, and even worse when you have to log into a service that doesn't have a "sign in on another device by entering this one time code" offering, and worse still when you use a password manager and your password is a long string of random characters. In this scenario, I've gone so far as to ADB into my device and use adb shell input "whatever I would have had to type on the TV", which somehow feels faster.

My last two devices, the fancy new Chromecast 4K, and then an Nvidia Shield, both use Google's regular keyboard when it can and is nicer in comparison. Still many streaming apps force you to use the built-in alphabetic keyboards instead of using the one provided by the OS.

Maybe take a look into Cloudflare Tunnels, which sounds like will do what you want (maybe not VPN though).

The short version is you run a daemon on your local network that Cloudflare talks to. So, outside requests only see Cloudflare, and communication from your network only goes to Cloudflare. Your IP is not exposed to consumers. This is free! Though you are not supposed to send video/pictures though the tunnel and have them cache it without using one of their (paid) services, but it's simple to disable caching for a host. I do use their DNS, though I cannot recall if that's a requirement for Tunnels, though.

Keep in mind you should still set up some sort of firewall, as people can and do just scan the entire IPv4 address range looking for open ports.

I would probably not do what I do.

I have two machines that host everything I use, a Thinkpad x220 (i5-2540M, 8GB RAM) which lives on the floor near my router, and an RPI4 (4GB) which lives next to my router on the table. Which one does what usually is dictated by what machine I happen to SSH into. The RPI4 is attached to an 8TB Easystore I originally bought to shuck but didn't, and wears a NAS hat. Soon-ish I'll probably get some extra drives and set up a "proper" server which is less trepidatious.

I run almost everything I use in containers, and Podman is my container engine of choice. Originally it was because Fedora made me, but now I am a big Podman fan.

Logging and updates are not something I like to talk about because I handle both poorly, and normally just let her rip. I do updates weekly or so whenever I get around to it, but logs are a wasteland. I'd like to get a good monitoring system set up, but for me it feels like way more work than running the things I actually want and use, so I usually end up just letting them accumulate on the disk and grep them whenever I need to.

I want to like audiobooks, but there are two me-problems holding me back:

1. I feel like a lot of eBooks are distributed at a very low bitrate. Somewhere around 64kbps I think is pretty common, which I know is enough for voice-only, but to me I think most sound pretty bad.
2. I cannot stop my brain from wandering off and doing other things...

So I tend to prefer reading with my eyes instead of my ears, with a preference towards eBooks due to form factor and the ability to change fonts, font size, margins, etc. if I don't like the publisher's choices. Though from time to time, I'll get a book from the library, a second hand store, or will buy one I really liked which I read digitally. I also have a much easier time choosing a book to read from the library or a second-hand store, probably since there are relatively fewer choices, and having a physical thing to pick up.

Another Kobo Libra 2 user here. In addition what other's have said about wanting to escape Amazon's reach, its also pretty open as far as these types of devices go. I use Overdrive (Libby) a lot and it's integration is pretty nice, though it is certainly not hard to use with a Kindle anyways.

If you like to tinker with your devices, Kobo devices won't try and stop you from doing so. The following projects give you a lot of customization options to get exactly what you want out of your Kobo:

• KOReader - This also works with a jailbroken Kindle, though it's much easier to get going on Kobo. Tons of customization options and has very flexible style overrides and lots of plugins.
• Plato is another reader application though only supported for Kobo devices. Does not feature as much customization as KOReader, but does more than the stock reader and has a very nice UI.
• Even if you stick with the stock reader, there are a number of patches you can apply if there are things about the stock software that bug you.