Hacker News Reader

Comment by FireBeyond | Hacker News Reader

I don't care either way, but I did note the ignorance of the elephant in the room as to why 99% of people would care about Tailscale and native VPN support on their Apple TV... and it's not "avoiding sketchy wifi networks".

View on HN

> 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.

They do call this out towards the end.

How's this supposed to work? If I'm travelling with my Apple TV and use it as an exit node, it's as geo-restricted as I am, wherever I am.

This blog post isn't just for using it as an exit node. Traveling with the Apple TV and using Tailscale lets you exit-node back to your house.

Traveling without the Apple TV and the exit-node can be your Apple TV.

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

Yes, but the tail scale exit node referenced in that quote isn't necessarily the Apple TV.

You designated a device at home as the exit node and are using that on your Apple TV in a different location.

Because say I want to connect to my own private remote network. I have a server hosted in a datacenter because I self-host. I'd much rather have VPN capabilities than deal with a proxy server and publicly open ports with rules. This is a much tighter way to do things, IMHO.

The main use case I see is sharing streaming services like youtube TV with family.

You can already do that officially... but maybe not region-locked sports

Definitely not region locked sports. My YT TV account is based on the other side of the country and I can't watch our local teams quite frequently. I've been using wireguard and a dedicated wifi network to tunnel through a fiber connection "back home" and it then thinks I am local and all works well. This is much cleaner with tailscale!

It's cheaper if everyone is in the "same household" (i.e. sharing the same public IP as main account)

I run my own DNS server at home, and have Tailscale installed on it also. I use this so when I am away from home, I can continue to use it via Tailscale and/or an exit node for full on VPN-like solution.

I can now, move Tailscale off that server, and put it on my Apple TV to use as my network for my DNS server when I am away from the house.

It's a way to access it remotely without having to forward a port to the whole world. There are other ways to do this, but a VPN is usually the most straightforward option.

It's also a way to proxy your connections through a device at home, of course. Whether the Apple TV is the client or the exit node.

For sharing Netflix accounts?

Arrr, it not be for Netflix.

Tailscale isn't useful for piracy. Unless you really want your pirate traffic to always be routed through your home?

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

So the exit node can route traffic through Mullvad VPN?

Yup: https://tailscale.com/blog/mullvad-integration/

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.

How is this different to running a Plex server on your NAS and streaming directly over regular internet?

You do not punch holes through your routers firewall. There for it's is more secure as a mesh network.

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com