As a CCTV enthusiast, I do not generally recommend ubiquiti cameras unless the person wants to wholly live in the unifi ecosystem.

They’re very pricey for what you get, even though they are pretty good. They’re most often not even near the best in class despite their price, though (looking at you, doorbell camera)

They also don’t play nice with open/self hosted NVRs. It’s getting better due to consistent demand, but the reality is that they’re at their best when you use unifi protect, on unifi devices. So IMO it’s all or nothing, and since there’s a lot better value in other brands, I choose not to use them anymore.

They’re pretty user friendly, though

On the mini PC set up a homepage in Firefox that has links to all the streaming platforms and stuff. I use Heimdall but there’s many others out there and a lot are probably better. You can just use a browser homepage addon, really.

Get a dongled mini keyboard to use as a remote.

Remove password login from the PC, set it up to auto update every now and then at night when it’s not in use, and forget about it.

If people in your house can’t use that instead of thebaked in apps then they don’t deserve the Wi-Fi password.

It can be both. Jobs should invest in their people, but individuals should also take some ownership of their own skills.

The apprentice/journeyman dynamic was a lot better suited to a time when a) people left their hometowns a lot less, b) information was MUCH less accessible except from people who showed you how, and c) businesses put a lot more stock into their people as an asset, instead of treating labor as a liability.

A isn’t anyone’s fault.

B isn’t anyone’s fault.

C is where businesses have gone sour, but it’s not like businesses have ever been well known for taking care of their people (labor laws, unions, OSHA are all examples of this from history)

It’s not propaganda that people need to take ownership of their own skills and careers. Nobody’s responsible for you or your success but you. If you want to be good at what you do then that’s on you. You can take what your job gives you and that’s it, and you’ll probably do fine at whatever tasks you got specific OJT for, but unless you get lucky or play your cards right that’s not going to make you very successful.

I really don’t want to sound like an old person saying that kids these days want things handed to them, and I really do think that employers in general don’t invest in their entry level workers as well as they used to, but expecting an employer to take you from know-nothing to a master of your craft is naive, frankly, because the days of someone working at a place for 10-30 years are just gone, and everyone has accepted it. There’s a ton of reasons why that’s the case and a lot of that is employers not incentivising employees to stay via wage growth, promotion opportunities, and training, but there’s a lot of other factors. Either way things have changed, and it doesn’t really do much except make you sound like you need a waahmbulance if you just sit back on your haunches and complain about it.

You can still become an apprentice if you want to work a trade, and a good union will train you up if you’re a good worker, but that isn’t fast. It was never fast, and most people aren’t satisfied with the pace today, because it doesn’t get you earning six figures out the gate. You had to work hard, earn a good reputation, and stay in the area for 10-20 years. Most people don’t want to do that, and that dynamic never took a hard root in the tech sector in the first place, which is where this conversation started.

I encourage you to stick to a career that you enjoy enough to take some joy in getting better at your skills for the sake of getting better at stuff instead of just trying to earn a paycheck. Nothing wrong with a job being just a means to an end, but I say this because you’ll enjoy your jobs much better if you’re passionate about what you do, and you’ll naturally be drawn to opportunities to gain mastery in skills that will make you more successful.

None of this might change your mind, might just piss you off even, but the guy you’re replying to sounds like he enjoys the job enough that he’s trying to be better for the sake of being better. I wouldn’t knock them for that.

My guess is that it’s a loss on the hardware but their revenue stream is tied to data collection.