I had a setup similar to this for a year or two that ended with an hdd destroying itself one night. Probably because of the drive and not the usb enclosure I was using. Until then it worked fine, it’s definitely a viable route.

If you can swing a desktop pc case it’ll probably end up easier and cheaper and have some headroom for upgrades, that’s the route I went down after trying an escalating series of mini-pcs and running into their limits one too many times.

Nice selections! I’ve been waiting on the 9800x3d for a while, expected it to come out early next year, but the future is now and I’ve also got an upgrade in the works. Still waiting on memory to arrive, but should be quite a bump from the 3900x I’ve been rocking since its launch.

I have a few kindles, have upgraded over the years and have been able to use them all in the same manner:

With a new device I connect it to the internet and update the firmware to the latest version (the factory installed version has had a lot of missing functionality in my experience). Then I block it from my network, delete the AP entry and put it permanently into airplane mode.

When purchasing an ebook from Amazon you can download it for usb transfer and I organize it on my laptop with Calibre.

Calibre can also strip drm, but if you’re transferring it to the device you downloaded it for it isn’t necessary.

Amazon may at some point in the future change all of this, but the content I have already downloaded can not be revoked and is usable outside the Amazon ecosystem if the drm is removed.

That narrow band of survivalists who are not unnaturally interested in fire

We don’t get to vote for a target, just a direction in which to ever so slightly turn. When far off course, every choice will continue to lead in the wrong direction, but over time those small corrections will add up. Hopefully.

Middle aged men today? They’re millennials and that’s called a 1000 yard stare.

You’ll understand soon.

Yeah, have had a similar experience. I find the more specific or niche a question is, the better google is at finding relevant pages. DDG is perfectly fine the rest of the time, though, so I keep it as the default.

Had this for dinner last night. Paired it with some tortilla chips to help round out its nutritional value. Might do it again tonight. It’s called The Mediterranean Diet.