Fair point.

Correct, don’t buy them.

Still need to connect to my local network to get stuff installed on the Deck.

I love my Steam Deck and Proton, but it pisses me off how many Steam games are spyware / DRMware and won’t start without internet on this PORTABLE console, and especially that Valve allows this kind of toxic shit.

So, my Steam Deck stays blocked from the internet in my firewall and I buy from GOG when available or get them from other places.

Also, Gabe can STFU about piracy being a service problem until Steam bans DRM and spyware.

Convincing your employer to reduce AWS costs, or better yet, go with a different cloud provider would likely have more financial impact than boycotting the portion of the company that represents a smaller percentage of their operating profit.

Wait until the 15th to order everything you were going to order this week. That will show them!

I considered something like this at one point, but I ended up installing OpenWRT on my existing router instead because what I ultimately wanted was more flexibility, and was concerned about a single point of failure. Now, I have the ability to do things like always run certain devices through a VPN, block specific devices from the internet with a firewall, as well as DNS for self-hosted stuff.

What I don’t like about ATV and the Apple ecosystem in general is the lack of ease with sideloading. Ha, I’ve created throwaway accounts with fake emails in the past and then lost access to the email account followed by the Apple device basically being bricked a result. If it’s so “private” then why not let me install free apps from the App Store without an account?

I’ve also been meaning to do some debloating on my Shield as shown here, but probably worth disabling some of these first and testing a while instead of uninstalling just to make sure nothing important breaks.

The Onn debloating recommendations above only uninstalls bloatware and not system components, so it’s less concerning.

The Shield can supposedly be updated with LineageOS instead of stock, but I haven’t tried it. I also have a couple Onn 4K streamers that I debloated and swapped in FLauncher, and it’s on my TODO list to do the same with the Shield. My concern with stock OSes is of course any telemetry I’m not aware of or can’t disable. I usually setup Netguard, although I still get ads on my Shield, so its effectiveness is fairly limited.

Edit:

I found this Reddit post helpful for the Onn 4K devices:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidTV/comments/12rya0t/change_launcher_debloat_the_new_onn_4k_streaming/