Apple TV, now with more Tailscale

That's true. However, Walmart's $20 Onn 4k Streaming Box has no malware, apparently.

The expensive Nvidia Shield Pro is dogshit as well for streaming performance at $150-200. Ridiculous.

It’s most likely just because of new codecs. If you got a newer cheap device it would probably not stutter (until the next round of codecs, but Apple TV requires the same upgrades)

I just configure each users account on the Mac Mini to download everything from iCloud, and then backup each users directory.

It does require each user to login again every time the mac mini is rebooted, but fortunately that only happens when new releases come around, so 3-4 times every year.

I do periodically check if new photos have been downloaded. I care less about documents as the relevant documents are more likely to also be stored on the laptops, and thus backed up through the normal backup routine on the laptops.

I do wish Apple would come up with a solution to this problem though. The official instructions[1] feels like something from 2003.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204055

also seems to work with 'tailscale up --advertise-exit-node' if you ssh into the router instead of using admin console.

Yes and no... A VPN Gateway or VPN server doesn't have to be an exit node, and may route onwards to actual exit nodes. Some nodes may not "exit" at all - see setups where you are just trying to reach your private networks.

In a tailscale setup, an "exit node" has specific meaning and the term makes sense as far as I'm concerned:

https://tailscale.com/kb/1103/exit-nodes/

Because Tailscale is a [1] direct connection. No middleman service with access to your traffic.

[1] In some cases this is not possible and there are relays setup to help route traffic. What's in the traffic is opaque to these nodes. You can also choose to use your own nodes. If you are interested here is a great post on how this works: https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/

Most streaming services block commercial VPNs and even data center IP ranges at this point.

Some VPN vendors bypass that by reselling access to residential IPs (witting or unwitting on the side of the person paying for the ISP service), but even that is hit and miss.

> Why should get another piece of hardware

Many people already have an Apple TV or Android TV streaming box.

The GL.iNet routers have a mobile and desktop config site and buttons to configure/reset the device as well as a two-position hardware switch, the function of which is configurable also. This is not to mention they can run OpenWRT/LEDE and there are vendor created “clean” firmware images to do so. They’re one of the best devices for this use case and price point. I don’t think the situation you’re worried about is a reasonable concern for someone already expected to be competent to manage the router generally to begin with, and if they also want to do the things Tailcale does, they can and should be able to troubleshoot the problem space. The stock firmware is a modified OpenWRT with a web GUI and some optional extras, but it’s the most functional consumer router I’ve used.

thank you for your replies but I think my density is getting the better of me.When ii want to pretend I am in Switzerland, my vpn client connects to an exit node there through an encrypted tunnel between my machine and the vpn service's exit node. If I have an Apple TV in my home running tail scale, how can I make it talk to the internet through an exit node in Switzerland ? My understanding is that I cannot. If I run tail scale on my Apple TV and then travel to Switzerland , can I connect to my Apple TV and watch shows in Switzerland from it? But how can I get through my home firewall / NATted router to my Apple TV? is there a tail scale client that I run on my laptop that finds my Apple TV running tail scale?

Their homepage literally says it is a “Zero-config Business VPN”. Not “implied” — directly stated.

> That’s why I think it’s not a great press release.

Press release? This a blog. It should be self evident that this is for customers and other already interested parties.

When you visit friends and family, do you regularly reintroduce yourself? I’m going to guess you probably don’t. If someone did that, it would both be weird and wasteful of everyone’s time.

Blogs work similarly. The majority of traffic is expected to be people already following you, in which case reiterating who you are, what you do, etc, would all be a waste of everyone’s time — with the minor exception of the occasional person that stumbles upon your blog for the first time. Even then, such individuals usually end up on an unfamiliar blog because they are explicitly searching for something topically relevant, and thus are already familiar with what is being described.

It’s kind of bizarre, IMO, to arbitrarily follow links from a link aggregator (Hacker News, in this case), with no prior knowledge of the related topic, skim through a blog on said unfamiliar topic, and then complain that the author didn’t spell out what 99% of their readership already knows. Like… why? If you like exploring things you don’t know, why not check out their homepage? You already clicked one link without knowing what you were getting into, what’s one more click to go to the very page that describes what they do? Or if you don’t like discovering new things, what compelled you to click a link, when the link text was completely foreign to you?

Car maintenance books don’t describe the usefulness of cars.

Calculus books don’t assume you have zero familiarity with numbers and counting.

Recipe books don’t remind you that, as a human being, you need food to survive.

The Netflix tech blog doesn’t tell you what Netflix is, describe “streaming” in the abstract, nor explain what movies are and why people watch them.

How little familiarity would you recommend that Tailscale expect from the reader of their blogs? Should plumbers be able to understand what’s being talked about? If they should tell you that they are a VPN service, should they also describe what a computer network is, what you can do with a network, and why they’re useful? Do they need to describe what a computer is?

I just… I just don’t get it.

Good change, then! It wasn’t a great experience for most people. iPads are rarely static home fixtures now, and they were the only ones capable of dying.

Perhaps the blog post isn't, but the quoted text is:

> With a Tailscale exit node, you’re in control and you get the internet connection you’re used to. This new feature could come in handy if you’re traveling with your Apple TV and want to access the same geo-restricted channels you can see from home.

Tailscale has Mullvad integration now, so it can be used that way too

The idea is that you host all your pirated media from home, e.g. on a NAS running Plex or Jellyfin, and your home server can stream any of your media to any device (including transcoding it to best fit the device and connection).

Tailscale isn't particularly useful for acquiring the pirated media in the first place, of course.

I guess it’s more to be able to access the local are stack / jellyfin from everywhere?

Well, the original purpose of a VPN was more as a private LAN (as Tailscale seems to advertise itself as) than as a way to exit to the Internet somewhere else. And it does both still.

Seems like Tailscale is a very souped up VPN, though. You can add more nodes to the network easily, and even have multiple gateways to the Internet.