In high school, I used to look for the most offensive bumper stickers possible. My favorite was from a band I liked that said “Genitorturers sodomized my honor student”. Let’s just say that parents of other kids did not like it.

They have these at my local Whole Foods too, I was horrified the first time I saw it. I have yet to see a single person use these devices, and I hope that is the common behavior.

Was the TV you got from Sceptre? I got one recently as a dumb TV and it was quite cheap. No complaints thus far, but also managed my expectations in display and speaker quality from a $150 TV.

Eat Steel by Gwar has the right energy

I have used mini PCs as a servers for years with file serving being a major duty of them. Granted my storage needs aren’t excessive, but most NUCs or Nuc-likes can hold two drives, some can have a third if you include 2.5" drives. My AsRock A300 can hold 4 drives (two of each), but its m.2 support sucks so that’s not as much of a boon as it sounds. If you need significant storage, there is no replacement for something that can hold 3.5" drives though since those can now reach 20+ GB a drive.

I go with scenario 1 because it radically reduces the ways I can screw things up for myself.

I’ve used a bunch of different solutions over the years, but currently I just run Gerbera and it streams my local library to my TVs because of the sheer ease. It’s not perfect, fast forward and rewind can be iffy to get working with some configurations, but otherwise it has been a smooth experience.

Looks cool and is particularly suited to my needs. Thanks for sharing!

Me too, but considering how many questions had AI in it…

I wish there had just been a single answer that said “Focus on Firefox and not AI”.

Try “lcd tv non-smart”, “lcd tv hospitality”, or “lcd business tv” or any variations thereof.

So I just bought a brand new “dumb” TV for $150 off of Amazon (43" 1080 Sceptre). It isn’t high end in the slightest, but it IS brand new and not some weird old stock and the picture and sound don’t feel too far off from my significantly more expensive higher end LCD TVs. I wanted one that I could put on a rolling stand and move between a few rooms and saw no benefit to 4k at that screen size. Other than that, there are some decent “digital signage” TVs that were decently priced available as well from Samsung and a few other brands. I didn’t see anything that was OLED, but I was burned hard (quite literally with burn-in) on earlier OLED gear, so I am avoiding it until the prices get low enough that I can be fine with the chance that it will be crap after 4-5 years of use.

I did that with buying “one-a-day” vitamins for seniors because they were a quarter the price of standard men’s vitamins. I checked the stats and ingredients, they were about identical and from the same brand.

My friend cross stitched a QR code as a tree ornament and gave it to me for Christmas. It worked, and it sent me to a ridiculous meme video. I admire his dedication to the joke.

Depends on the spider. When I briefly lived in AZ we had a problem with tarantulas ending up on top of our cars if we left the light on outside during the night. I knocked off off the car roof and it literally splattered. I felt bad, I assumed they would be fine.

I just got one of these last week for $150 new. The panel won’t be winning any awards for visual quality, nor will the speakers be lauded by audiophiles, but it perfectly serviceable and affordable.

Screw you Google. Enjoy your antitrust.

Sadly agree, I’ve been looking for a proper successor with no luck.

I am far from unbiased as I just switched back to my pixel 4a from my new Sony Xperia. I think the Pixel 4a is a flat out GREAT phone, full stop. It is perfectly sized IMO, has been very reliable, good battery life (though at this point I should look into replacing the battery), and it has a headphone jack. That being said, picking it as a new phone now essentially means going with a custom rom and hoping it stays supported. That’s fine and all, but it’s not something most people want. Just to be clear, the xperia isn’t a bad option per se, I only switched back because the phone came carrier locked when it was supposed to be unlocked and the carrier it was locked to was uncooperative so I refunded it.

My experience was similar, but I gave up after my first RMA because I saw everyone else going through the same thing. The N7 started as such a delight and ended up as one of worst product experiences.