AppleTV is the media box to use if you hate ads and value your privacy. Its Home Screen is just a grid of apps. No ads. None. It’s also way faster (CPU speed) compared to the competition.

Replacing a smart TV OS with a device made by Google or Amazon defeats the purpose. You’re still going to get ads plastered all over your Home Screen. And they still lag and stutter unless you pay a premium price for an 5 year old Nvidia shield. Either use an AppleTV or build your own HTPC.

I haven seen my LG OLED’s smart OS for years.

My LG OLED TV can be configured to load directly into a HDMI input. I keep it disconnected from wifi at all times. I never see the smartTV OS. It’s probably the best option because OLED panels are the best current display technology.

I use an AppleTV as an external media box for all my needs. But the same would apply for an Android box or HTPC setup etc.

High of Sauron

They are: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/four-additional-states-join-justice-departments-suit-against-apple-monopolizing-smartphone

I’ve been in similar situations while renting. I ran ethernet cables along skirting boards and around doorframes and hid them inside adhesive cable raceways.

Apple lay out some details here: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

They control the cloud hardware. Information used for cloud requests is deleted as soon as the request is done. Everything end-to-end encrypted. Server builds are publicly available to inspect. And all of this is only used unless the on-device processing can’t handle a request.

If somebody wanted to actually create a private AI system, this is probably how they’d do it.

You can disagree with this or claim somehow that they are actually accessing and selling people’s data, but Apple are going out of their way to show (and cryptographically prove) how they’re not. It would also be incredible fraudulent and illegal for them to make these claims and not follow through.

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I have a 50 terabyte NAS for storing my movies and TV shows. And access it from any of the TVs in my house.

For music…I have a music streaming subscription for convenience, but also have some vinyl records for the small-ish number of albums I want to keep forever.

My high end PC from 3 years ago won’t run Windows 11 because of TPM bullshit.

What made me lose interest was bad writing. “Andor” is a great Star Wars TV series, and I’m looking forward to its second season, because it has…let’s see…good fucking writing!

At a certain point, a company’s primary product becomes its stock. Share buybacks, short term gains, etc become the strategy. The goal is no longer to create value for customers, but to create value for shareholders.

The realpolitik answer is that they’re the only country in the region with highly functioning western-style market economy. That is valuable to other functioning western style market economies. Its a system trying to help itself propagate.

Some of those categories of information (location, health, contacts for example) require the user to accept on an iOS prompt. The app won’t be given access otherwise. Apple are usually pretty strict about apps only asking for those permissions if there’s a valid reason. I’m curious to know what they would be though.

I still won’t be using the app.

I felt similar. Then I had a kid and seeing the world through their eyes brings much of it back. Nothing quite like the rush of emotions (and sleep deprivation) of being a parent to a young child.

Unity, Unreal, and Godot are popular game engines with good communities and tutorials available. Or try something simpler like Game Maker.

Just jump in and experiment and there’s no wrong choices. Think of it like digital play crafting. Just explore and see what you can do.

Go to a chemist and get some pseudoephedrine. That stuff is magic for blocked noses.

Furniture.

Not the products themselves, but the amount of packaging to throw away every time I buy a new chair or shelving unit that comes wrapped in layers of foam and plastic. Makes me guilty how much waste there is. But buying second hand isn’t always an option.

I hate this. Take my vote.

Is this for movies and tv shows? I fix it at the output level and leave my rips unchanged. Check your TV or AVR for a “night mode” or “dialogue enhancement” or use the “reduce loud sounds” system setting if you’re playing back an AppleTV.

If the issue is specifically quiet dialogue and loud action scenes, get a dedicated center channel and boost its volume by a few dB.