As I had stated in the previous post, I wanted to take feedback and use it as much as possible, so support for Tor is now here, although probably not a “perfect” setup, I was aiming to reduce common annoyances and get a clean onion URL for any Tor/Brave users who need it. You can find it at this address:
http://gkypsutnzdhsxsycmd7rrl4ule6lhfykdlzr2rxuzqlx6kh7kifegvqd.onion
While you can still take the survey currently, I wanted to share some thoughts and other insights from the numerous responses. To start, I saw some problems occurred with Tor users and some VPN users. While some people may still see “forbidden” if they use certain IP ranges, I believe I had made the bot blocking system less prevalent. Users will only see a captcha, which will automatically pass them if they are seen as humans. Without any extra effort, you don’t need to deal with image captchas or any other complicated systems, just, a quick verify step. While it’s not a passive “Stop the bots and question the suspicious users” it is better to require manual interaction for some of the lazy bots. Therefore, you will see less of the “checking you’re a bot” page and actually use Invidious more. Enrollment of each service will take time, and results are looking good, after ironing at the small issues I had.
Due to the ever-changing nature of it, I’d love to hear feedback from you on Invidious itself. I ask about my instance and YouTube as a whole, please fill it out here:
https://forms.chocolatemoo53.com/forms/invidious-survey-2026
Any help and submissions are greatly appreciated.
Currently, the instance itself is having playback issues, although it does recover, so please be patient and recall your experience on related questions.
It sounds funny that you’d volunteer to use the Apple TV HD when it is so old (and only just recently made it fully to the unsupported product list), but I actually have been enjoying it. I think of it more as an entry into Apple ecosystem apps that ever grow on the platform. If you’ve ever wanted to use Trakt or Letterboxd on the big screen, now you can! Do you use Infuse on iPhone, Mac or iPad? It’s a simple $30 1080p streamer with great Apple ecosystem connections and good, occasionally laggy, performance.
As I probably said the last time, it is all many people need. Back in 2024, I was using the same Mac I still use today, and I said “It fills the needs of students who often buy expensive devices they never fully use or understand just because it’s an Apple device, or just what they needed for school, when all they may do all day is read PDFs and do schoolwork” and the MacBook Neo was a great example of that exact premise. It seems that over time, a lot of, even some of the oldest Apple devices, end up working great years into their lifetime.
I have a new server running Invidious, SearXNG, (and more to come).
I have bit the metaphorical bullet and spent a little more to get a server with 96 gigs of RAM, double the CPU capacity and more storage. I needed to upgrade, and the next upgrade was close to this amount, just not as obsensely specced as the current machine. Like I said, I only did it to try and improve the reliability of your connection to my services, although, not exactly without more cost of course. So if you can, donate to my instance so it can stay on as long as possible.
Part of the process when making my Invidious instance was to eventually put it in the public list of instances, since I rarely ever published or talked about the stuff I do beyond what I am already familiar with. This allowed me to make a public server that people could actively use and gives people more options.
When I made the compose file, which is now like 500 lines, I really just aimed to customize it because customization is fun and to make it fast. On my daily computer, regular YouTube is slow. I usually end up using my TV or something. Plus, using it has gotten worse over time. I was a premium user, but I stopped paying, and I forgot how many ads there were. I understand people already had public instances, but this was my cool way of providing back to something I had used for a while.
I made a public Invidious instance anyone can use. It’s not perfect, I am still working on some parts and I can’t guarantee it will always work, but I hope it proves useful.
Come visit at https://yt.chocolatemoo53.com
I really wanted an Apple TV after being introduced to it from various product reviews, as I was astounded of how great an experience it was to use one. It was consistently recommended as the top of the line streaming device, with the same hardware as an iPhone which makes it generally pretty fast for most TV focused applications and I just love the idea of the Apple TV. Of course, as with many others, another reason was because it integrated with the services I already used. It can be a FaceTime or Photos app viewer, a Home Hub for outside access to your smart home and many more other useful features, except, I wasn’t trying to use the top of the line offering.
I personally used Windows less when I got a Mac, I was so used to the experience that I really never maintained a Windows computer that was running non-stop outside of the occasional new software or problem that needed fixing. This left an unsupported computer running a very old version of Windows 11. After the end of life for Windows 10, I realized how big an issue it was. After successfully getting ESU for a different Windows 10 laptop, I thought the process wouldn’t be that hard.
Update 6/16/2026: A long time ago this was my actual first post. I wrote it quickly because it really was new to me, and I found the process to be easy. However, the tablet itself is quite old. If you do root and flash a GSI onto one of these devices, you’ll be best to use it for a home assistant tablet and the like, as it’s not very capable and is not useful otherwise. So, sadly, I never experienced making a custom ROM or anything. Maybe, I can run it on Ubuntu Touch in the future. That way it’s a small Linux machine for actual computing and not Android only apps.
