A 2230 from Ali Express is very affordable. I’d definitely recommend that over any modifications.

archive.ph will get you around the paywall too, if that's more your style.

NYT cooking tends to have recipes with short descriptions and very little narrative.

Custards are great with sous vide. Ice cream base, pot de creme, creme anglaise, etc. The texture is much better than on the stove top.

Looks like an Intel NUC supports CEC. That would be a more powerful option I suppose.

What about a Raspberry Pi or other SFF PC flashed with libreelec to run Kodi.

New deck, albeit on the older side. The physical buttons just stopped working one day. By that I mean the d pad and A B X Y buttons would just randomly be unresponsive.

Was playing a bunch of Pokemon Fire Red, but then unfortunately had to RMA my deck. Waiting on a replacement. Luckily i still have my SD card, and i cloned the SSD before sending it back.

I have an LG and it functions just fine without being connected to Wi-Fi. You can also monitor and block any attempts to phone home at the DNS level with something like pihole.