I’m an accountant and tax professional but have always been into computers. I had a social media account breached although it was no issue as hadn’t used it did years. I used a terrible password as thought it did not matter but made me realise I needed to be better generally so started using a password manager.

Then Netflix stopped account sharing. I had just got a 4k TV and only their top level with 4 screens supported it so was pissed off. The fragmentation across services had started so was getting annoyed anyway. This led me to the arr’s.

I decided I could no longer trust Microsoft and hated their pricing structure so was interested in Nextcloud. By then I found the self hosted community (on reddit), bought a desktop PC and after getting the hang of it plus many mistakes I loved my services so will never look back.

Joined the migration to Lemmy. Am based in the UK and joined the anti-US feelings so am setting up more storage, better redundancy and more services for my family. A few family members are interested in helping so can share backups.

It’s not as elegant but you could always try to use a smart plug to turn the TV on or off instead (if it turns on automatically when the plug is switched on)

It’s not as elegant but you could always try to use a smart plug to turn the TV on or off instead (if it turns on automatically when the plug is switched on)

That could be the case without colonialism, pollution, foreign interventions, war or expansionism. Your argument is for the single country to do everything to enhance it’s own citizens but that has never been a defensive measure. “Protecting the borders” now is a way to completely ignore any past actions that state has done to the world.

People don’t choose where they’re born. People don’t choose what their ancestors have done. To deny the Western World has stolen wealth and caused pollution is madness though. Even now, we introduce environmental restrictions locally but want to buy cheap goods from Asia, so we have and continue to outsource our problems.

When they become uninhabitable, due to the historic wealth extraction, push to industrialise and us throwing money at them to do the things we don’t want to do but still keeping the profit and high standard of living, is it any wonder people want to come here?!?

I have to admit that I never thought about that part of the argument. That’s such a great point! There are no safe, protected, disabled friendly routes to take to even get in the position to claim asylum

I found it a real struggle with the TV to find a non smart one, especially as the smart ones are cheaper. Best bet is to get a TV stick and never connect the TV to the internet

I have a Nvidia Shield (bought used on eBay) and works fine with my LG Smart TV, which has never touched the internet. I have a Xiami Mii TV S on another TV, which is the closest to stock android TV I found. Do not get a firestick! Both have 4k, can control TV volume through the remote, have auto turn on/off, plus the TV just goes to that channel so don’t have to touch the TV remotes ever. The Shield is faster and easier to setup but much more expensive.

You could also buy a mini PC but can be harder for certain apps and full video and sound quality (avoid if you want Netflix and other apps). I have stremio (with Real Debrid), jellyfin and TiviMate (IPTV) for all of our needs so could get away with a mini PC but considering the effort I decided not to.

Not sure about the sound bar as bought sonos years ago. It works flawlessly with the TV and runs through home assistant now (responds to Shield remote volume control or can play music through HA BUT I set it up with the original app so can’t comment on that part). It has great audio quality but agree that I would look elsewhere if looking now (although would still consider it).

I also use pihole to try to block any trackers etc.

Sorry, I didn’t actually realise it was not an open link as thought they had a few free queries. Just replace it with searching for “UK tower blocks” in your search of choice and hopefully you’ll see my message.

On Kagi, I have to say though, I happily pay for it. If it’s free, you are the product, so not sure how it could be worse privacy wise. That’s not mental gymnastics to me, I never saw an advert for it and chose it after seeing it recommended a lot on Lemmy. Tried it out and was sold with the results.

I know there were some gripes around some potential, small funding of a Russian search engine (if I remember but happy to be corrected) but it felt like it was in the area of don’t let perfect get in the way of good, and they are so much better than any of the free alternatives. I don’t see ads, promoted results, AI crap and can customise my searches to suit me. They realease lots of upgrades that make the experience better for me instead of corporate advertisers. I used DuckDuckGo for years but started to see really bad results. Give me an alternative and I’ll try it out!

Oh, actually that does make sense. They say they’re only targeting “illegal” immigrants and have no authority to police against citizens so this adds to the blatant lies. Thanks for the input.

It is still galling to see though so hope you can see that it is horrible to see, especially as a minority. It’s hard not to interpret as only citizens (or in some way white people) matter

Oh wow, I didn’t realise (parts of) Japan, Korea, India, and fucking UK (https://kagi.com/images?q=tower+blocks+uk) are all socialist hellholes because of their apartment blocks…

Why does it matter if he is a US citizen? Speaks volumes about what is getting covered and what is not

The worst part of this is they see it as a “look, you’re going to defend your people so don’t come after ours, checkmate, we’re super brainy, our way wins” whereas in reality, if they broke the law, fuck em. Anybody who breaks the law and pulls some shit deserves what they get, regardless of “politic view”

Ooof, that’s bad!

I get the “why are you so western, what’s wrong with you, why do you want to do what your friends do instead of what I tell you”, erm, well you came over to this country and had kids, we were one of very few Indians or any other minority, where they chose to move to from a fairly diverse area they lived in before just before I was born - yes of course it’s my fault completely!

Same on an Indian forum. They’d all blame me. They blamed me for not learning their language. I didn’t refuse to learn it, they didn’t teach me properly and the lagoons I got were on reading and writing, not speaking and understand. I could read any books but had no idea what it meant and lost it. I was in a taxi and the guy asked where I was from. When he’s said he spoke to me in that language and I said I don’t understand. He asked me how that happened and I said my parents didn’t teach me. He literally said to me that it wasn’t their fault and that it I wanted to, I could learn quickly, blaming me effectively.

Luckily for me, it was mainly my dad. My mum was like that for some things but not as bad. Made it more bearable than lots of people I know.

Everything you said resonates unfortunately. The worst for me was my dad paid for my first year of rent at university. He kept bringing that up years later for any little thing.

I learned to just avoid doing things, do a bad job or forget to reduce what they ask for. I don’t ask or expect anything in return, which has it’s own problems though as I try to do too much myself and don’t trust/rely on others which harms me long term.

I would highly suggest a UPS. I use random external hard drives without RAID as part of my media setup. The electric went out overnight last year. I knew it had happened as my oven was flashing. The server restarted itself so thought everything was fine.

Then some things were glitchy and it took me a few days to release one of the drives was not mounting. Luckily I did not lose the data but it still took a while to fix. It takes even longer to restore a backup.

To mainly save myself time and effort, I bought a basic UPS with 2 plugs. It keeps the server and main router on for 15 minutes but I’ve set it up to send a command to shut down asap just in case. My server seems to automatically switch on when power comes back so not had any issues since.