I think a possibility is a series of open source anvil or nixos scripts that you can run on most hardware with minimal changes, in an extendable architecture of some kind to add or remove functionality and they perhaps get maintained by the community or some structure of the kind of Linux distributions.

This could enable people with minimal skills set up and maintain a reasonably useful but secure environment just by changing a few variables.

I can’t imagine any system of influence running an exposed ssh without some further protection from connection abuse like fail2ban.

Perhaps this was written much earlier than v5.

The combination of clean UI with long promised updates seems like a winning combination. I don’t really play games on my phone. I just want it to go through the basic tasks quickly (photos, voice dictation, app switching etc, I currently have a OnePlus 7 Pro and it has kept up admirably - but being stuck in android 12 with some quirky behaviour is a bit annoying).

So I guess I’m not looking for a powerhouse - but I do want something that does the basic stuff right - however if it doesn’t bring table stakes (ie if modem or voice quality or other connectivity is subpar) then the rest is not important.

Thanks for the heads up, I hadn’t considered that as a criterion and was thinking of pulling the trigger. Do you have any recommendations?

Maybe this is useful https://tunnelbroker.net/

Are you on an enterprise subscription / office 365 work or school account or something like that?

All business models are aimed at company profitability. Customer satisfaction is an expensive early necessity which you can largely do away with as you become entrenched.

I’m assuming it’s aimed at people trying to avoid tying the hosting IP to the publicly consumable service.

Ideally you need a double-blind checking mechanism definitionally impervious to social engineering.

That may be possible in larger projects but I doubt you can do much in where you have very few maintainers.

I bet the lesson here for future attackers is: do not affect start-up time.

From what I read it was this observation that led him to investigate the cause. But this is the first time I read that he’s employed by Microsoft.