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Does anyone else intentionally have no ISP-provided Wi-Fi at home and instead ration mobile data for Internet access? (self.frugal)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Flagstaff to c/[email protected]

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I've had no ISP-provided Internet access since Feb. 2023 or so and, while it's been a pain at times, I still haven't caved into returning to the evil monopoly that is Spectrum, so far, and probably won't for as long as I can't land a remote job. ArrowDL, while not perfect, has been pretty good at download management for the most part in conjunction with mobile data-hotspotting.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't do that and that seems pretty extreme to me - since most mobile hotspots are going to throttle you after a certain limit (even if they purportedly offer unlimited data). However, I understand the desire.

TV Shows and Movies

If you pay for streaming services, you might want to consider "sailing the high seas" (torrenting). Cancelling streaming services, pirating content, and then using the savings to pay for Spectrum might provide a better overall experience. If it's not cost effective to do that, you should still consider torrenting at a public coffee shop or something to that effect (with a VPN). You can use Jellyfin to host your torrented content.

Gaming

A cheap Raspberry Pi and some peripheral controllers can be used to host a lot of fun retro games which you can play locally at home. I'm assuming modern games are too slow to download over a hotspot.

Pictures

You can host Immich locally and backup photos and videos on your phone over your local intranet. It was super easy for me to setup.

[–] Flagstaff 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I no longer torrent because I don't want to catch malware or get activity warnings, and I want to try to do things legally. That is where the library, Hoopla Digital, Libby, and Kanopy come in. I've also moved quite a bit to FOSS. The most illegal I'll typically go is /c/FullMoviesOnYouTube haha. Even then, I try to not do that much and just use NewPipe to download other, legal content. What I typically do is download when I'm on Wi-Fi for offline watching, unless I tolerate 480p (but I'm actually not really a movie buff anyway and am more into podcasts, articles, discussions like this, or games).

I'm assuming modern games are too slow to download over a hotspot.

It depends on your throttle speed; typically >1 GB would be painful, but actually playing online is surprisingly doable for efficient games. I even played Hazelight Studios' Split Fiction with a friend through a phone hotspot with no problem even in the throttled speed!

Immich may be new to me, or I forgot about it... Thanks for sharing.