The API is not gone, and is still free for both “for non-commercial researchers and academics under our published usage threshold” and “for moderator tools and bots”

https://www.redditinc.com/blog/apifacts

There are several ways to add your personal API key to (modified) final versions of Sync, Relay, Infinity, and even Apollo on iOS to be able to continue to use those clients, however Reddit has changed how Reddit links work, so those methods are becoming more and more broken.

Using a VPN on a shitty network won’t magically make your network connection better.

I get it from time to time. It’s why I have 89 containers running and why the https://powerg.love Mastodon instance exists

What’s your power utilization with the 6600k? I have a spare one of those lying around and would convert my Ryzen 3950X AIO to just a server w/ a 6600k NAS if it doesn’t cost you too much.