That would be a good option if latency doesn’t matter. If it does, then you would need one of the 60 GHz wireless HDMI adapters.

My laptop is 192x54 in the virtual terminal and 190x47 in Gnome Terminal.

Whatever program you write definitely needs to support an 80 column display though. A 5" phone screen is going to need a much larger font than a 14" laptop screen.

Use a password manager that supports passkeys. Then you can back them up and sync them between all of your devices the same way you do with your passwords and 2fa keys.

The requirements for a Minecraft server are pretty minimal if it’s not modded and just for a couple players. If you’re running a couple hundred mods, it will need a fast CPU and lots of RAM.

Setting a BIOS password doesn’t really do much good. Someone can just unplug the CMOS battery and the password will be cleared. Even if it was stored in flash, it could be removed by erasing it with a flash programmer and flashing a new BIOS.

You still have to be careful on Linux. Some windows malware can run on Wine. Don’t open any .exe, .com, .bat, .lnk or .reg files.

Watch out for files with two extensions. Some_movie.mkv.exe is guaranteed to be malware. That’s done to trick windows users since the file extension is hidden by default for some stupid reason.

I never used netflix either. Their DRM won’t let me watch in 1080p because I’m not using a spyware infested browser and OS. Back when they had a good selection, my internet was too slow to stream HD video anyways.

I have a thermal receipt printer that I use for printing the WiFi QR codes. I wrote a simple Python script using the escpos library.

ISO 8601 is another good one.

I don’t stream anything. If I want to watch something, I will download it. The downloads for the shows I watch are all automated so I don’t have to do anything except click play.

When I go on a trip, I just load up my laptop and phone with whatever I want to watch. That way I don’t have to deal with an unreliable or non existent internet connection. Good luck streaming anything over the WiFi in an airplane. There’s barely enough bandwidth for audio unless they have Starlink.

Windows installed that malware. The monitor has no way of installing anything on its own.

Monitors should never be “smart”. They have exactly one purpose and that is to display the video signal connected to them. If it starts displaying ads on top of that video signal, then it’s unable to serve it’s one purpose and it belongs in the dumpster.

Not when you’re using Firefox with uBlock Origin. Don’t use any pirate sites without a good ad blocker.

You don’t need cameras to generate subtitles.

The Ideapads are consumer grade laptops. The build quality and repairability are usually worse than the business laptops.

Could also probably get a couple grand for a working i486 PC at this point

Yes, clean it up and sell it as a “vintage gaming PC”. You can get some good money for them now. You won’t get a couple grand unless it’s something rare though.

Another option is to point your DNS to one of the public ad blocking DNS servers.

That could be a failing power supply. Excessive ripple under heavy load can cause a hard lock up.

You just need a video capture card or dongle for your computer. Preferably one with an S-video input. If these are pre recorded tapes, you will also need a Macrovision remover connected between the VCR and capture card. If you want the quality to be as good as possible, you will need a timebase corrector. Those are hard to find and expensive though. The TBC will also remove the Macrovision.

You didn’t need anything that fancy. You could build a Macrovision remover circuit. The schematics were certainly harder to find before the web, but you could build one up in an afternoon with parts from RadioShack.