I only had an older iPhone (which I liked for the most part), but it was announced to not be getting security and related updates soon (what apple calls vintage at this point) so there wasn’t much of an ecosystem once I got a different phone and exporting my pictures to my NAS, new phone, desktop and laptop made more sense.

I supposed I could lose everything if all of those burn in a house fire, but since I always have my phone on me, I’d imagine there would be more pressing matters like not burning to death myself.

Edit: I also have some stuff at my relatives, but their internet sucks, so I only sync family and more important pics there.

Forgot about that yes, heard of horror stories of people being locked out of gmail, google support being useless and losing so much time and money migrating accounts manually by having to visit banks and the like.

Whichever one you go with, don’t expose it to the internet directly or use their offerings. They are a big target and just don’t get enough security.

One reason I would give is that apple and google makes it incredibly hard to leave. I had to use some third party script (and give it my credentials or token…) Just to export pictures with the exif metadata from iOS. Even Google’s obnoxious “select a few thousand pics at a time” was easier (Google takeout puts the metadata separately, so it was also not an option).

Another reason is that big tech companies are complacent with kidnappings and oppressors and don’t want to give them money.

I could see apple breaking the tool or throwing their legal team around in the future if it keeps some people on their platform, why not leave while you can more easily.

I used them for Christmas lights with that sundown condition (+just a time trigger for off at night).

Also came in handy for a light switch that was unfortunately on the wrong side from a table, now its just uses a motion sensor when someone walks to the kitchen and tells a third reality smart switch (screws on top of regular switch, so it works with any light type (e.g. fluorescent)) and is renter friendly.

Bonus points for no lag at all compared to crappy cloud dependent garbage and no need for apps for each device manufacturer. Just look if it is home assistant compatible and no cloud before buying devices since it us a lot harder or impossible in some cases to de-cloud them later.

Edit: plus same motion sensor concept to link several lights on the living room (those are just dimmable smart lights on table and floor lamps). Makes the place look cozy and feel well illuminated vs the usual single light with a wall switch. Aquara Wireless clicker to toggle between dim percentages. Its awesome (third reality or other home assistant friendly brand would work, I just already had this one).

Identity theft is not a joke Jim Mfat!

For new people, for ongoing domain registrations people should also consider the renewal costs. There are some registrars with somewhat predatory pricing schemes that end up being very expensive long term (e.g. the trendy .io TLD).

Dot com and dot net are some of the most stable ones, even though they might not appear as such at first glance. Almost anything less costly on initial costs will cost you in some other way (might not offer whois privacy (.us iirc) or be limited to residents or people with legit business on that country (.ca) or have a mixed reputation with being labeled spam (.xyz - although I believe this last one has been kind of proactive in clearing that up).

Sorry to highjack the comment, but I wish someone had warned me to look, not all TLDs are administered the same.

There’s something called NAT reflection that does a local lookup if the request originated in the internal network and avoids going via the external route. Some software for routers like ONPSense and/or PFSense support it (but I wouldn’t be surprised if DD-WRT, Tomato, etc supported it as well (its been a while since I used them)).

It might work better of your DNS provider supports API based challenges vs traditional ACME challenges that might require you to still expose your IP/challenge ports with public DNS to get your certificates.

All my internal DNS has the option of SSL certs while my IP is not on any public DNS and it routes to the internal IPs with the above. Not sure how that would work with wireguard or tailacale/headscale, but I’m assuming they probably could complement nicely.

On the other hand, there are people wasting our time (relatives) and have no data in the machine which is a glorified browser.

For them I installed Linux mint, left a 200x200 Firefox icon on the desktop (which they already used) and called it a day.

If they accidentally hit the mute button on the YouTube page, that was going to happen regardless and I’ll get to it when I get to it next time I visit (if I have time). It’s kind of amazing how they can resolve it themselves when you don’t solve the issue for them quickly.

Edit: my point was: their desire for no change does not come before my desire to have an up to date secure OS for them to use (even of it’s just YT browsing)

TBF Bluetooth sucks a lot. To this day I need to power cycle the phones Bluetooth connection and headphones connect button a few times for it to pair properly some times. Different brands and headphones, silly different issues for all. Want to use your headphones for more that a phone and laptop? Maybe on a third device like a TV or desktop? Fuck you.

Maybe they mean main network? Lots of people seem to have a separate vlan with strict rules on what they can cobtact for IoT devices nowadays due to how poorly secured they are.

As someone with an n100, I did have to spend on an apple TV to have a hardware accelerated client for some of the harder to transcode content (h265 4k at higher bit rates). N100 will absolutely choke on some of those even with hardware acceleration enabled.