Yeah and it has been constantly on my mind since my original post.

TBF if you want, you can have a bastion server which is solely whitelisted by IP to stream your content from your local server. It’s obviously a pivot point for hackers, but it’s the level of effort that 99% of hackers would ignore unless they really wanted to target you. And if you’re that high value of a target, you probably shouldn’t be opening any ports on your network, which brings us back to your original solution.

I, too, don’t expose things to the public because I cannot afford the more safe/obfuscated solutions. But I do think there are reasonable measures that can be taken to expose your content to a wider audience if you wanted.

That is a haunting last sentence. But you’re probably right.

Thanks for the comment. I appreciate the honesty. Like I said in other comments, I have a lot of things that are holding me back, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t explore it entirely. I just don’t think I can go ‘all in’ but maybe that’s ok. Definitely internalized transphobia and other body image issues make it much harder.

For now I’m considering growing my hair out again. Maybe it’ll look better this time around. Whilst high school would have been brutal for me, I still wish I could have put the brakes on puberty. It’s impossible to go back and it’s hard to imagine I’d ever have had the courage. But it also just seems like the only way to halt the manly characteristics I’ve gained.

I’d feel awful. But - to my credit - I have explored these concepts with her. We are quite open with each other. When I came out as bi to her, I point blank asked her if she’d consider dating/sleeping with a woman and she was pretty adamant that there was no circumstance in which she would. Because I feel only mild dysphoria, I don’t feel like I’m hiding from her entirely. Maybe you’re right though. I might broach the subject to her more casually. I should at least be honest about how I feel - even if I don’t necessarily intend on acting on my feelings. I guess I’ve always felt like talking to her about it would be me “coming out”, but I suppose I can frame it more honestly: as a mild dysphoria I occasionally feel, but don’t need to upend our lives to explore. I’m speaking off the cuff here so I hope I’m making sense.

I did my best to read the gender dysphoria bible during some of my work meetings and - for better or worse - I do fulfill a lot of the cliches illustrated in it. Even as a teen, I occasionally wore makeup, painted my nails, etc. I didn’t really feel comfortable around my peers. I’m guilty of sleeping as much as possible to kind of live in the fantasy.

All that being said, I have so much internalized transphobia (as someone else pointed out) and I’m deeply entrenched in this life as AMAB. If I could guarantee I would love myself as a trans woman, I might consider it. But I feel somewhat confident that my inability to pass and my shame make the idea transitioning overwhelmingly difficult. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m maybe fetishising the experiencing (despite reading the subsection “Consider That It’s Rarely ‘Just A Fetish.’”). It’s nice to talk about it nonetheless.

Thank you for the detailed response. I will try to find time to read the gender dysphoria Bible. I appreciate you allowing me to vent/voice myself here. Whilst I like to believe HRT could “fix me”, I am dubious. Plus, for some reasons I neglected to mention in my original post, I feel tied to my life as it is. I have a wonderful, straight, wife who wouldn’t be happy being married to a woman. She’s the love of my life and I just wouldn’t ever consider risking our relationship in order to fulfill my desire to explore transitioning. I think there might be ways for me to fulfill my dysphoria without necessarily fully transitioning and maybe I’ll start exploring those.

There are a lot of reasons I feel like I can’t. For one, my wife is likely not going to be happy with me doing anything drastic like HRT. I have a wonderful, lefty, smart, wife who would be understanding. But I don’t want to upset the balance of our relationship. I came out as bi to her and that wasn’t an issue since we’re monogamous. I’m quite certain (based on past conversations we’ve had with each other) that if I made myself more “womanly” she would be less attracted to me. And my wife/family is the most important thing in my life.

I just can’t imagine doing all of it. If I was alone and single, I might consider therapy, transitioning, and then HRT. But I think the dysphoria is manageable since I’m not struggling majorly. I do worry that in 30 more years I’ll regret it, but I also worry that I’d regret doing it because maybe it’ll fade away.

Also, thank you to anyone who responded previously to my post in the wrong community. I just reposted because I felt others might reciprocate my feelings.

Overall, like I said, I’m generally happy. But I do tbh about that - if I could time travel - things might be different.

I vaguely remember an episode where they covered this, but: I’d love to see an episode where “nothing” happens. What does the crew do on their slow days? Research? Holo novels? Training? I’m also interested in more mundane interpersonal drama as a break from the high anxiety stress of ship destroying melodrama.

o7

And… I love your username. Toughest Starfleet captain, model main character, and a picture of femininity.

Thank you!

Now is all we have?

I’m on board with that philosophy in theorry. It’s just difficult to actually make those changes. I’ve tried shaving and several other gender affirming practices, but I just fail to feel like it’s acceptable to me. I feel like I either need to be 100% fem-passing or not at all. As a man, I’m self conscious. As a man trying to pass as a woman, I’m 10x worse.

If anyone else is reading this, that they should know I don’t even support my own logic. I’m just acknowledging it for what it is. I know we should accept ourselves, be open and honest, and express ourselves. But in the “real world” that takes courage and sometimes risk.

I have a great wife and a wonderful daughter. A house and some pets. My wife is as lefty as it gets and I can tell she’d accept me no matter what. I know she wants a man - ultimately. But she and I are open about gender roles being fluid and reversible. So, for me, that’s enough. I wish I could wake up with our roles reversed sometimes. But I’m stuck in this body. My efforts to be the other gender just feel lackluster and ineffective.

I’m usually quite happy in my day to day life. But the dysphoria just hits a little hard sometimes.

I appreciate the response. Yeah I’m basically in the same boat. I’ve seen a lot of the discourse online surrounding how people still feel it’s worth doing even if they can’t meet their goals. But I don’t think I could ever do it. Maybe it’s a lack of courage but it’s just hard to imagine. I think I’m committed to living in the dark on this front.

That is wise, pancake.

Would I have accepted his weight in dilithium? Yes. Could I have filled the empty void in my heart? Never.

I paid for the lifetime membership ~6 years ago so I’m going to stick with it. Plus I just use it for my own home. It’s not like I’m serving a bunch of other clients. But I’ll switch to Jellyfin if the lifetime membership ever gets taken away.

In a nutshell, if your app isn’t able to make a direct connection to your Plex Media Server when you’re away from home, we can act as sort of a middle man and “relay” the stream from your server to your app. To accomplish this, your Plex Media Server establishes a secure connection to one of our Relay servers. Your app then also connects securely to the same Relay server and accesses the stream from your Plex Media Server. (In technical terms, the content is tunneled through.)

So, your Plex Media Server basically “relays” the media stream through our server so that your app can access it since the app can’t connect with your server directly.

Source: https://support.plex.tv/articles/216766168-accessing-a-server-through-relay/

It’s not a requirement to stream and it’s sort of dumb they are lumping this relay service as a part of the remote streaming. Remote streaming should be allowed for free - if you are not a subscriber. The relay should just be a paid service, which makes sense. But if it’s a direct connection to my server, it should be free.

That being said, I understand how Plex may have built some technical debt into this relay system. It might be hard for them to decouple the relay from the remote streaming. What they should have done is:

We are removing the relay service as a free service, but you can still do remote streaming with a direct connection.

And they should have built their architecture in a way that’s easy to decouple the two services.