UI/UX seems to be a nightmare though, plus missing software
I’d be fine with just a shell prompt if there was a usable keyboard to type in commands. Similar to a BlackBerry Classic. I’d just write shell scripts to do all the things I like to do.
I also like the idea behind the Planet Computer devices. But I rarely need to do serious work while out and about nowadays to be willing to lug around such brick.
I've got a so-called "Asteroid" with UberSpace. You just have to bring your own domain and configure DNS to use their servers. Unlimited mailboxes, unlimited aliases, Sieve scripts ... and SSH access.
Apart from that, I've got a free account with disroot for emergencies.
Items are tracked using IDs. But if a movie was imported from Douban, NeoDB only knows the Douban ID. Same with IMDb. However, since TheMovieDB records often have IMDb IDs as well, it’ll import both identifiers if you import from there.
And there’s a feature to merge duplicate imports into one. This will make that resulting record available under all the different IDs.
Yes, whenever you mark a movie or an episode as “to watch”, “watching” or “watched”, this gets published like a Mastodon post. You also have the option to automatically retoot this from your main Mastodon account. Others can follow you from Mastodon and react to your events. (For some reason, they don’t properly show up here, though.) And, of course, it all shows up for other users on NeoDB.
You can always join one of the mainly English instances like Eggplant.place or ReviewDB or host your own. But as long as the majority of NeoDB.social users are Chinese, the dominant language there won't change.
OTOH it's easy to use the API - so, instead of doing it manually, I'm tempted to write a small tool that you can throw a link to a movie or show at and it'll change all Chinese actor names to their English counterparts.
Have you tried it with the original GL.iNet firmware? There might be some optimisations in there that are missing from plain OpenWrt.
To quote myself:
There’s just one little quirk: since this app started out in China, many actors show up with their Chinese names - but can be easily edited to their English names.
The author of the app is Chinese (but speaks English, too).
The actors get imported upon the very first import of a movie/show. And when a movie is imported from Douban first, the actors will all show up with their Chinese transliterations. If you import a new movie from TheMovieDB, they'll show up with their English names. But as mentioned above, you can edit the names - which is what I usually do for US-movies. Descriptions support multi-language, though. Once an English description has been imported, it should show up for you while Chinese people will continue to see the Chinese description.
And the more English-language users start to use NeoDB, the more initially-English content will pop up.
After Trakt changed to a subscription, I’ve went with NeoDB. This is a federated network, so you can also host it yourself if you like. All entries there can be published into the Fediverse, too. It tracks movies, shows, books, and games. And it automatically imports from IMDb, TheMovieDB, Amazon, Steam, and many more. There’s just one little quirk: since this app started out in China, many actors show up with their Chinese names - but can be easily edited to their English names.
There’s also eggplant.place which is the development build of NeoDB and might be unstable but has more English content.
I'm using News Explorer on all my Apple devices. It syncs my feeds and the read/unread states. And even supports a separate view for comments for many blogs.
You could add the podcast to NeoDB and link there. While the item pages aren't properly federated, all the user comments and ratings are.