wolfshadowheart

I like this logic, lets all become shareholders.

Power, Domain Name (if using a standard paid one instead of the cheaper route), VPN are the 3 that I pay for that I feel are the bare minimum.

I pay for a domain that's $12, but you could easily get the $1 ones for the same purposes. I pay for a static and service VPN with Windscribe, which comes out to be like $35+$89 respectively. So that's already $136 a year excluding the cost of power. I could cut that cost easily, but I use them for more than just my selfhosting so I feel like it's a fair price for what I get out of it.

I'm not sure if iGPU's are typically used for transcoding, which may be part of why you're having difficulty finding solutions.

As for re-encoding H264 into H265, increased file size is common. Encoding from source for the first time into H265 will lower file sizes, but if you're re-encoding something you're almost always going to lose data while increasing file size, especially on hardware encoders due to the methods and time it takes.

Basically, try your hand at Very Slow software encoding. Wait a day. This H265 file will likely be smaller than the Hardware Encodes of the same thing.

With Ublock Origin, click on the extension and at the bottom there is "element zapper" and "element picker". I usually select one of these, then use it to select the unwanted pop-ups.

Just be careful, sometimes the popups are designed to blank out the whole page you're trying to view. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't

Are you not able to use the element zapper to block the pop-up from appearing?

Full frame or part frame?

The former is 1bil^6 pages and the latter is 30 pages

Diabolical?

doesn’t change the fact a lot of stuff is still made in mainland China.

Which doesn't change the fact that you can do your due diligence to avoid purchasing things made there? That is their point, afterall...

I use lib-redirect for everything if I really need to get to a reddit link. It's rare, but there are certain types of communities where I'd like to get a "average laymans" perspective and unfortunately just due to the size here on the fediverse there is rarely wide-spread availability. As you mentioned, specific games. Lots of hobbies. Even the opportunity for consumer tech talk, if I'm interested in replacing something that's 8+ years old there's just not a lot of existing content to search through here and that leaves blog posts and... Reddit.

I've had plenty of time recognizing what astroturfing looks like, so I rarely feel like I'm left out of options to search. All that said, I've been doing this a lot less since the whole shift happened. Maybe an endeavor every few months, rather than few days/weeks.

I've been having issue with it the last couple days, but I also tend to just have issue with it overall lol

Search the credits on linkedin and the like, I'm sure you'd be able to find some

Sorry