Define affordable, and also what you want out of it, 4K? High framerates? 1080p?

In general I’d say, unless you’re willing and able to spend 7-800+, the steam deck is giving you the best value to performance for “out of the box”/prebuilt.

If you want something better with any hope of approaching the price point of a steam deck you’ll have to build your own PC

Yes, he’s doing a Gabby Giffords at many of his rallies lol

In that case I would pickup a cheap USB Ethernet dongle (or 2 if the laptop doesn’t have an onboard one)

Wall > Ethernet 1 and router > Ethernet 2

Configure windows to share Ethernet 1 connection to Ethernet 2 (Builtin functionality since Windows 7 iirc)

Configure the router for minimal power to the radios, use your laptop to handle captive portal and there should be no DHCP interference concerns with the Windows laptop on the middle in this fashion

Boom done, congratulate yourself a lil for a small win over corporate greed lol

Looks like that model allows you to go down to 50% (Options are Low/50, medium/75 and full)

But looks like your router might be supported by openwrt, if you can get that working you can set the power as low as you want

https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/archer_c6_v2

OP already mentioned that the student WiFi is being run entirely by a third party ISP and they have more expensive paid plans for more than one device.

Guaranteed this isn’t about running an optimal network (Though I’m sure if pressed about it they’ll start spouting excuses similar to yours) and all about company greed and constant profit growth.

Can I reasonably run it at low power (since I only need it in my room) and not have it bother anyone?

Yes, this is one of those things that as long as you do it properly and don’t interfere with anything nothing will happen

Reduce power to minimal levels, choose a band far away from the WiFi in your area (There are a number of WiFi scanning apps on the app stores) and ensure you plug in the Ethernet from the wall into the WAN port on the router so your router can handle DHCP without interfering with University DHCP networking (though it might make getting through the captive portal tricky)

them triangulating it to my room and starting a legal case or something sounds real scary.

It’s also incredibly unlikely unless you’re actually causing problems

If you really want wireless, do the Ethernet > Desktop/Laptop with hotspot and limit it’s TX power WAY down to minimal levels.

You should be able to use it within your dorm room fine, but will have trouble penetrating beyond the walls and will also make detecting and triangulation quite difficult

trying to protect the paid plans they sell for connecting more than one device

It’s definitely 90% of the reason

Accept the terms and ignore them

Looks at the entire networking stack

Yup (unfortunately)

THREE WHOLE MEGABYTES

Me in 2024 holding a 4TB NVMe stick: Still not enough (it’s never enough)

Thanks! I’ll save this, tell myself I’m going to strictly follow it this time and forget about it (again) lol

Is there a historical reason?

If you’re asking that in anything Linux related, it’s probably a Yes 99% of the time LMAO

You wouldn’t download a car life saving medicine!

Why would you put that DISGUSTING image in my head‽

Man I really need to get back into NMS, the last couple updates have looked really cool

Ah, makes sense now, that is dumb. I can totally see why they would have issues with automated enforcement, but what you described I don’t see why anyone would be against it lol

I’m confused, do you mean like automated enforcement rules/algorithms like big SM has? I.e. if user gets reported for breaking Y rule X amount of times ban user for Z amount of time and forward to admin for further action?

Straw Man Fallacy: A straw man fallacy occurs when someone misrepresents an opponent’s argument to make it easier to attack or refute. Instead of addressing the actual issue, the person creates a distorted version of the argument that is easier to discredit.

This is what you have done in every single reply you made when I have made it quite clear that this is about the migration being an urgent security issue that the cyber security community at large has been calling attention to.

You avoid all the core points I make and distort them into trivial things that you can easily argue, like the fact that you “Don’t code C much and use Rust occasionally”. It’s irrelevant to the actual arguments and you use it to dismiss the real core issues AKA a Straw Man fallacy

You have failed to argue in good faith and are actually a part of the problem. Good job!

Well now that you mention it, I’ve been ad free since like 2014, but it was def still rampant with the sexualization then lol

I’m the same way, I drop everything when an ad makes its way through my many layers of blocking lol, I don’t even make exceptions for the spouse and kid’s ftp games, they want to see that shit they can drop to cellular data LMAO