IPTV is a video streaming protocol that delivers live TV. Here’s a basic overview:

1. An IPTV provider is streaming TV Channel 3 from its server.
2. Subscribers pay for access to a playlist file.
3. An IPTV player takes the playlist file and connects to the server.
4. The playlist file tells the player where TV Channel 3 is available for streaming.
5. The IPTV player streams the broadcast.

Most common IPTV providers are illegal restreams of commercial broadcasts. IPTV players don’t typically come with access to these servers, the user need to find a service and gain access to a playlist file.

Edit: There are free and ad-supported IPTV streams out there as well.

There was a big shift between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. Compared to Zero Mission, there is almost no plot in Super Metroid. The only major plot point is the whereabouts of the metroid which Ridley abducted in the opening scene.

Super Metroid is much more action focused then the later entries. I will say that the later areas are a little more atmospheric than the first half of the game. Wrecked Ship definitely has a different vibe than the rest.

I’d say it’s okay to take a break from Super Metroid and try Fusion. Fusion is much more linear and story driven. There was a short Super Metroid comic series in Nintendo Power that might provide some more context.

Another option is using an alternate launcher. I’ve used Flauncher and ProjectIvy to bypass Google’s default launcher.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu&hl=en-US

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.efesser.flauncher&hl=en-US

APKs are available wherever you’d like to source them. F-droid should technically work on Android TV, as well. Android TV OS is a different OS from original Android, so I’ve never seen an alternative like Graphene.

I wish someone would make a new RTS with the Halo Wars control scheme. It works so well on the Steam Deck. I played Halo Wars 2 on the Xbox and I was disappointed by the new gameplay.

I use the ONN 4K Pro and the ProjectIvy launcher. You can completely hide the standard Android TV OS launcher and its ads. Button Mapper is another good app to have on Android boxes. The remote is full of app-specific buttons that I’ve either disabled or remapped to alternative apps

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flar2.homebutton

I have no idea which codecs are supported.

I think hindsight bias is always a factor when talking about old video games. The N64 was a runt in sales but the library was stacked in my opinion. But it sold nearly as many U.S. units as the SNES or Genesis, so the fact that the PS1 was such a blockbuster doesn’t reduce the N64’s quality.

Catalog wise, I always felt that the N64 had enough games until at least 1999 when the PS1 pulled away. It had better shooters (with awesome multiplayer) and great party games.

People in 2025 should remember that some folks were lucky enough to have both systems, which plays a factor too.

Gene Hackman had a pretty good run

A shame too because it was such a waste to use Walken and Duran Duran in such a crappy movie.

I recently lost a media drive and Radarr was a godsend. I’ve made database backups a priority. It’s also much easier to recover from a dead drive with access to a private BitTorrent tracker that allows free leeching.

After I stopped other programs except for Radarr and qBitTorrent, I let those two with for two days and got most of everything back. There are a few more movies that I need to manually recover and I should properly back those up. Besides that, it worked very well.

I like Flauncher or ProjectIvy. I’m using the latter on the living room TV and it works great.

More or less. There aren’t as many bots, and everyone is generally aware of traditional Internet etiquette (i.e. don’t be an asshole). Lemmy also feels as homogenous as early Reddit: college-educated white people in western countries.

I started joining forums back in the late nineties and I’ve learned every place on the Internet is in flux. Things always change. Back in the day, stuff would happen like we would lose hosting because someone got sick of running a niche phpBB forum or the moderation team would change. When social media kicked off, changes were driven by money. Facebook was a big gaming platform in my college years (Farmville), which feels completely foreign to today’s Facebook.

The smaller the community, the more stable it is. Some of those 20-year forums still exist, albeit in a much more diminished state. If a site/platform gets popular, that’s when things can change quickly.

Lemmy has already changed since I joined and I’m sure it will become something different in the future.

Thanks everyone, I feel much better about moving forward. I’m leaning towards Proxmox at this point because I could still run Windows as a VM while playing around and setting up a new drive pool. I’d like a setup that I can gradually upgrade because I don’t often have a full day to dedicate to these matters.

MergerFS still seems like a good fit for my media pool, simply only to solve an issue where one media type is filling a whole drive as another sits at 50% capacity. I’ve lost this data before and it was easy to recover by way of my preferred backup method (private torrent tracker with paid freeleech). A parity drive with SnapRaid might be a nice stop gap. I don’t think I feel confident enough with ZFS to potentially sacrifice uptime.

My dockers and server databases, however, are on a separate SSD that could benefit from ZFS. These files are backed up regularly so I can recover easily and I’d like as many failsafes as possible to protect myself. Having my Radarr database was indispensable when I lost a media drive a few weeks ago.

Good catch, yes my drives are 12TB. My brain is still stuck in 2005. :)

I still use Plex because they offer the product I bought, an easy way to stream content on my devices. Others have technical or philosophical issues, which I totally understand. Plex is the easiest option for my situation as of now. It is working great for me and my family.

Nothing lasts forever so it’s good to realistic about the future. If I start having technical issues, it’s Jellyfin. If Plex doubles down on subscriptions, it’s Jellyfin.

If you’re like me, a lifetime Plex Pass holder, I would experiment with Nginx Reverse Proxy now so you understand how it works. I have Overseerr running through a reverse proxy now.

I think it’s a matter of when, not if, Plex will make a business decision that pushes me off their platform. It’s a company focused on profit and that’s fine. And it would be good to be prepared for the future.

Do a barrel roll!

That’s Apple engineering for you: 60 percent of the time it works every time. I grew up with Apple products and the company’s history is lined with head-scratching design choices. It’s been like that since the Lisa.

I like repairable, self-built desktop PCs myself. But for work, the MacBook has been a tank.

My MacBook survived after I left it on top of my car as I drove off. It was flung off into a pedestrian area at the first intersection and has a nice dent on the corner.

Daylight savings time moves the clock to match sunrise and the time we wake up.

I live in the northern hemisphere and the days are shorter in the winter. The sunrise is 8 a.m. on the shortest day (December 21), while sunrise on the longest day (June 21) is 5:45 a.m.

If I’m a farmer and I get up for my chores at 5 a.m. everyday, it’s nice and sunny in the warmer months. By the time it’s October, I wake up well before the sun so I might as well wait another hour. Lots of people had the same idea. Eventually everyone agreed on a day, called it daylight savings time and figured moving the clocks by one hour was simple enough.

But now it’s the 21st century, we have atomic clocks and most people live in the city but it’s hard to break tradition.

I’ve been a Spotify subscriber since the US launch. There are some other options

Listenbrainz or last.fm can offer recommendations, but there won’t be the instant gratification. Last.fm does support music playback on its website, which sources from YouTube. Either platforms are going to require some work to build up an account.

If you’re comfortable with Plex, I’d advocate for its sonic analysis tool. It looks at the waveform of newly added music and then offers recommendations. Coming from a massive streaming service, it’s been refreshing to use Plexamp. The curation aspect of my library is fun compared to the sprawling library on Spotify. I like the fact that I control with artists and albums are in my library. It’s led to me finding more deep cuts with my favorite groups rather. The hard part is finding/ripping the music you’d like to listen to.

Most work days, I use Plexamp because the curated library leads to less skipping and I stay more focused. I still have Spotify for home because the library is unbeatable and other family members use our group account. Either platform will scrobble my listens to last.fm while Listenbrainz will update itself from my last.fm account. I can search for new music on Last.fm or Listenbrainz and add it to my Plex library.

Somehow you’re both partially wrong. There are people who have been badly abused by the porn industry. There’s always a need to make sure people are safe. But there’s nothing wrong if someone wants to willingly perform in pornography.