Comment by devilbunny | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devilbunny | Hacker News Reader

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It isn’t for most people here. But the most valuable tool for fixing a broken computer is a working one, and a lot of people don’t have more than one anymore. Some don’t even have that.

My wife texted me on Friday as she was visiting her mother six hours’ drive away. She needed her laptop. They do not own a desktop, and her dad was at our house on a business trip with his laptop in tow.

Do not underestimate the utility of just outfitting houses that you/spouse spend a fair amount of time at with at least functional computers and such. I put MoCA and three access points in their house as a Christmas gift. It cost me $500 and about two hours of work, but I have never gotten another call about bad WiFi. I bought an AppleTV for their house just to have a Tailscale endpoint. I think they will eventually end up actually using it as an AppleTV, but until then, it’s my door into their network (and another private VPN service for me).

My 2008-era spare laptop isn’t snappy, and it’s not in good shape. But it boots Windows and Linux, and in the absence of anything else it can at least SSH and web-browse, write a USB drive, etc.

> Do not underestimate the utility of just outfitting houses that you/spouse spend a fair amount of time at with at least functional computers and such.

Can confirm the utility - I buy a lot of stuff that lives at my parents house precisely for this kind of reason.

You would be amazed how many normal people dont have a computer - they have an iPad and an iPhone (or android similars), and yeah - its like that now.

I would not, but quite a lot of HN readers might.

I suppose that if you don’t know how to use the computer as anything more than a tablet with a keyboard and mouse, it probably makes little difference.

Airport security used to go ape when they scanned my personal bag. Nowadays it seems they have largely accepted that yes, two people might need two laptops, two tablets, four phones (primary plus backup for each), two eInk readers, two cameras, at least two USB battery banks, and a giant bag of chargers and cables for everything, but at least I’m not caught flat-footed if things go south.

It’s heavy, it’s not fun to carry, but it does the job. And neither of us works in tech.

Honestly, that’s mostly been my life for years. I have a laptop I use now and the for programming or a few other little things but I can go months only using my iPhone and possibly iPad. For email, social media, surfing, and other small tasks they work great.

This is for personal stuff. I use a work computer every day, but I don’t use it for personal stuff.

You didn't have to be the owner of the computer.

Previously, you just needed temporary access to a computer with an internet connection.

> I bought an AppleTV for their house just to have a Tailscale endpoint.

How the heck does that work?

https://tailscale.com/blog/apple-tv

https://tailscale.com/kb/1280/appletv#advertise-apple-tv-as-...

Very interesting. Thank you.

It’s extremely useful. I barely use most Tailscale features. But exit nodes? Oh yeah.

An acquaintance bought a place in the mountains, and his wife was unhappy that they had to have separate Hulu, Netflix, whatever accounts for their primary residence and the vacation home because they don’t always go there together. Not so much for the cost, because they can easily afford that, but because all the where-did-I-stop-watching or have-I-seen-this data didn’t carry over.

I told them about Tailscale on AppleTV as an exit node. They already had them at both homes, it was just a free app install. Now it’s all coming from the same IP at their primary residence. Symmetrical 1 Gbps fiber, so it’s not a big load.

It’s pretty new, IIRC. In the last year or two.

Very cool it’s possible.

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