I must have seen that article recently, because much of it was familiar. Early in the comments was this gem, which I embrace:
I do have one laptop that would need manual intervention to back up, but it does not have information that I would miss if it went away. (I use it to read various sites and get the weather in the morning. If there is anything that needs a follow-up, I save a snippet to Notes or iCloud Drive.)
If such a thing existed, I would have a use (absolutely not a need) for a small (100 GB would be excessive) ethernet-connected NAS, preferably SSD, for sharing files. That is a role that the existing Time Capsule is fulfilling, but if it went away, it wouldn’t be a serious loss. Any pointers to cheap products?