Nice, I happen to be on vacation this month. Should have lots of time to build the factory

No downside, it's just there to incentivize people to buy the product. They give the impression of a "good deal".

There are some legitimate reasons to have a separate keyboard. I use Keepass2Android's keyboard to enter passwords from Keepass. This way, there's direct access to the password database instead of copying passwords/usernames/other fields to the system clipboard.

I'll watch and will likely enjoy it but I don't have any expectations it'll be like older episodes

ProtonVPN has been solid for me. Switched to wireguard recently and have been able to completely saturate my 1gbps fiber link