Thanks for that. I’ve been meaning to (re) disable Google Play services. I have a few older phones too that never had it to begin with. I wonder how/if Aurora Store will be impacted. Presumably, if you don’t have Google Play Services functioning, you don’t get the poison pill. But…given that Big Evil likes to just … do shit (cf the recent 4GB forced ingestion of their LLM with Chrome) I dunno.

In any case, step 1 is probably nuking that.

Cool. So what happens if I run a version of Android that doesn’t inherit Google security theater cruft? That is to say…what if the user simply…does not…upgrade the Android version to be affected by this (eg: uses an old phone or blocks OS version update?).

My phone is going on 7yrs old. Perfectly happy with it. When it breaks, I will get a phone of the same era (2nd hand or new-old stock) or investigate other options.

So, it seems to me, the winning move is not to play the game (in any one of 100 diff ways).

Or am I missing something here? Is there something that will prevent older tech from working? Because if so, I am happy to YOLO my phone and switch to a dumbphone if I have to.

I’d ask why…but “because I fucking wanted to” is entirely cormulent (and 100% valid) response. Just wish it had some screenshots or videos of it in action that we could geek out over.

EDIT: I need reading glasses, clearly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGS9su_inBY

The next step for the dev (are you here?) - get IE running and post from your N64 onto this Lemmy thread. I double dog dare you :)

What I did was this -

• Lenovo M93P tiny (i7-4785t, 8GB, no GPU: cost $50. I can do upto PS2 at 1.5x, AAA games upto 2014/5 and later indies)
• Offline (once art scrapped by below etc)
• Windows 8.1 install (era appropriate, correct drivers, offline, yadda yadda) + ClassicShell
• Installed Xbox 360 dongle with drivers
• Installed games I wanted / emulators (eg: Dolphin for Wii and GC, PCSX2 for PS2 etc)
• Installed Playnite, set it to launch full screen
• Define scripts / launch conditions (e.g., Getting AntiMicroX to launch when Luanti launches, so that it can be played with controllers instead of keyboard, then shutdown cleanly when return to PlayNite)
• Replaced Explorer.exe as the default shell in Regedit

End result: turn on PC, boots into Windows (in about 2 seconds), launches Playnite (which is full controller / couch mode compatible). Additionally, I can fine tune things like EDID (fine grained control of display modes), ReShade (per game sharpening etc effects), to say nothing of the extra Win programs I can run.

With a bit of skill, you can make games look way better than they have any right to, even on low end hardware. I can dig up some screenshots of Just Cause 2 and FireWatch running in 540p for you if you’d like…you’d be hard pressed to tell it wasn’t much higher resolution (viewed on 75" tv from 8 feet away).

Reason I did it this way:

People will tell you Batocera is awesome (and it is) but…there are just some things that run better natively (e.g., Fallout 3 GOG Game of the Year Edition, Just Cause 2 etc). Windows lets you play windows shit natively and the emulation scene (Dolphin, PCSX2 etc) is mature. No need for Wine, Proton blah blah. It just … runs.

Playnite lets you “hide” games you don’t want the kiddies to run. Once you’re done with it, you can exit and return to desktop - you have normal PC (though if you do the shell replacement I mentioned, you will have to exit, CTRL-ALT-DEL to get task manager, then run explorer.exe. I only set Playnite as default shell because I wanted ZERO flashes or indication this was a normal windows PC on boot; if a small 2-3 second desktop flash doesn’t annoy you, then just set Playnite to launch at start, black screen desktop and go from there. It’s much easier for something that is multi-use). Also, because it’s just a front end, you should in theory just be able to make a shortcut to “Jellyfin.exe” and launch it as needed from Playnite (haven’t explored that myself tho).

Win 8.1 (with Classic Shell) launches fast, is lightweight, and doesn’t need hacking to get around log in permissions and shell replacement the way Win 10 and later might. You wouldn’t want to leave it hooked up to the net unsupervised, but on a HTPC being treated mostly as an offline appliance, the so-called security trade-offs are worth it to me (plus, I have firewall and other isolation in place).

PS: Controller-wise: Xbox 360 wireless + dongle for me. 1 $30 dongle can host up to 4 controllers and I already had to controllers :)

PPS: Can I be honest with you? After all this - the kids decided they just prefer the Wii. I had to laugh. Fine…we’ll use the Wii (even though I replicated everything on the M93p - INCLUDING upscale, making wii controllers etc work in Dolphin, bought a Dolphin bar etc. I even put the fucking wii music as the background in Playnite!). So much work … ignored LOL. Eh, I learned a lot doing it :)

PPPS: We have a Google chrome cast with TV dongle attached to the TV, so it can stream Jellyfin from the media server just fine. I really recommend those things (not the new one, the old hockey puck style one) or the off-label one you can get now (ONN I think?). Actually, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure Wii can stream JellyFin now in glorious 480p too lol

Yeah, transcoding entirely off - directly stream stored 720/1080p files (downloaded like that, although I did use handbrake on the pi once to transcode Space 1999 season 1. Took about 2 days I think).

Someone else was just talking about Wyse thin clients. I’m fairly sure that a $40 Wyse thin client out performs even the best Pi 4 (maybe 5 sometimes). If I can’t find a way to fix mine, I may have to buy a few for uh…science. IIRC, they idle at about the same as the Pi

Oh man I love those wyze thin clients. They can’t go for much more that $40 these days.

I hope people keep sleeping on em - I could use a Raspberry Pi replacement or two

It’s very ok, as long as you don’t expect multiple 4K streams at it.

I ran JellyFin on a Pi 4 for about 3 or 4 yrs before it started acting up. So long as you don’t transcode, it works wonderfully well. I had it serving upto 4-5 x 720p streams at same time. IIRC, it can just about do a single 4K, 60? Never tried - all my media is 1080p or less.

IIRC, mine is overclocked and undervolted using PiTools (and is in a Argon 40 case with a m.2). The Argon 40 case (I think) is causing it to short (something with the daughter-board? Dunno). Better options these days.

Paperless I don’t use but I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible.

Don’t try Immich unless you like pain (or turn off the AI stuff)

It’s a more convenient method for some to pirate content, as it requires comparatively little set up. Think: Netflix but yaaar. You pay upkeep but they ensure content is there (as best as possible).

Other similar options include things like Flixify and FMovies.

It always surprised me folks into self hosting prefer pirate streaming. That’s still someone else computer - I’d rather D/L it myself when possible. I get it though - some of the services are very good and near Netflix level convenient.