It’s interesting to see that subscriptions are forced upon users everywhere.
I only game on mobile in games that are basically f2p. When I like something in that game or want to do a monthly pass I pay for that, once. I have deliberately no payment option what so ever linked to the mobile account as I don’t trust Google not to sneak in an unwanted payment. (Or a game fritzing out and doing a payment for me)
Yes, games are entertainment and just like TV/streaming, a subscription could be useful for die-hard gamers, but I see digital content being ‘sold’ for buyers to ‘own’ and then the bought items being removed to much. Corporate greed is spiraling out of control.
I already had games tell me I couldn’t spend when I didn’t order anything, so I’m good this way. No payment method linked to my account without a clear intent to spend that exact moment. Link paypal, spend, unlink paypal works perfectly. (or else when I have cash, buy a giftcard when the amount is close enough to what I want to spend.
Correction, corporate greed spiraled out of control long ago. It’s just that more and more of us can see it as time passes.
I figured this out about 7 years ago. I used to do drugs when I was younger (thank God for getting me off that train) and the “drug pusher” behavior of these companies was just too evident. So, for me it was sort of a natural reaction to put as much distance as possible from “ZuckMyBerg” and his crap services, then Microshit and Crapple followed shortly after. The hardest part was moving away from Google (I know, they could easily be the worst offenders, but who’s to say), and I’m almost 100% G-Free. Streaming (audio and video) followed closely.
At first it was a real struggle, trying to self-hosted as much as possible. But with all the amazing FOSS devs out there, it’s also getting increasingly easier.
Yes, it’s a lot of effort to move from all this cloud stuff and subscriptions to using only your own stuff, specially getting family and acquaintances to move away from the mainstream crap, in particular communication services (WhatsApp and the like). In all honesty though, I’m happy with this tradeoff, because only the people that really want to have me around choose to add the secure and private services I’m willing to use, effectively removing irrelevant individuals from my life.
My biggest concern right now are not evil corporations, but governments (democratic or otherwise) backing up all this privacy invasion and abuse.
When shit hits the fan, a lot of people will say (or just think) "damn, he told me about this and I didn’t listen.
We, the ones that keep informed on these matters, have the responsibility to attempt to make others aware. Although it’s really hard since most of us are not on mainstream channels and won’t touch the common stuff with a 10 foot pole.
From my experience most of the stuff that uses steamworks for multiplayer can work on a pirated copy, you can only play with other pirates tho. Then games where you can host your own servers and p2p games can be done often as well. Some games that require you to use offical servers have server emus written for already but they arent finished iirc (i kbow of BO4 and Diablo3)
There’s a platform where you can add personal data in the form of questionnaires, documents, and integrations that pull profile data from social media, then allows you to sell the data to buyers at your discretion. The platform does not own your data, does not access it, and simply acts as a broker directly between you and the buyer. Not a ton of activity on it at the moment, but it’s picking up as clients shift spending from big tech to pay users for their own acquisition.
Glad to see there’s someone trying to make the process more legitimate.
However, I feel like the better solution is to require that all raw data be publicly available - no one pays for it, but everyone can access it. Then, when people process the data, they can keep their methods and results secret. I think this is perhaps a more practical solution as the cat is already out of the bag, you’re not going to get the likes of Facebook paying users appropriately.
You are right about not getting Facebook to pay for the data, but each time a company pays you $2 to be referred to their site, that’s $2 Facebook didn’t receive. Anything you earn on TARTLE comes directly out of the purse of big tech.
I agree with that. And my point being “Start the movement (of buying older cars instead of new ones) now and change the status quo (of high demand for new cars) while also being able to get older cars that cannot be subscriptionified, because later, even the older cars will be such, that they will have a subsciption, making even 2nd handers to pay the OEM”.
Change the status quo now and stop buying cars. Move to walkable Transit orientated communities where you don’t need one. Stop supporting this shitty industry that’s always been pay to play with gas / electricity, insurance, maintenance, payments.
A jeep from ww1 can still function today with regular care a maintenance, and so can a 5-10 year old car. The point isn’t the age, it’s how you treat the vehicle.
My “dream” car is a V6 Accord from the last year they made them, which I think is 2016. I’d buy one of those right now and just keep repairing it, and hope no one t-bones me. Unfortunately I think my wife is still in the mindset of “we should buy a new car and keep it forever”, which used to be my mindset, too. But she’s not seeing the news on this stuff like I am, either. I suspect if I explained “heated seat subscription” to her (a feature she will not buy a car without) she would object strenuously.
But I don’t like where new cars are going, at all. I don’t like subscriptions, I don’t like the backseat driver nanny features that blare out false alarms, and on the whole I’d rather not have adaptive cruise control (there are times when adaptive cruise is nice, but overall I prefer the old-style cruise control).
We have a 2020 Mazda that I absolutely hate driving; if that is the future of cars, I’m not interested.
I’m hoping my car and our pickup last forever. The other day we took the Mazda for an errand in poor weather because, as I said, “It’s the most expendable car.”
Honestly, doesn’t even have to be old. My Toyota Yaris is a 2023 model and it has no subscriptions. Such cars still exist, but they are mostly in the lower end market, because automakers assume if you have the money for an expensive car you also have the money for a subscription.
The list of manufacturers I can morally buy from is ever shrinking… Soon Dacia will be the sole manufacturer I could buy from without weird BS attached.
Kia and Ford were EVs I considered but ultimately turned down.
Again, it might be news for you, but it’s a huge business with many layers. There are plenty of professional rippers and crackers who earn a living one way or another. There are plenty of underground translators and streamers. Ads, hostings, seed boxes, TV boxes, different partnerships - there’s a lot of money flowing.
Just go to any public tracker and you will see ads. Download some subtitles and they often contain ads as well. And then you have partnerships like targeted attacks on software developers, etc. Then there are normies who are getting scammed into buying pirated content for full retail price by physical media vendors. All kinds of handy people who will install you a dish to receive pirated satellite TV “for free”.
From my experience, it largely depends on how online multi-player is handled. Things that require game-specific accounts or have drm tied to an account like steam, it won’t work. But a lot of stuff on console works fine since it’s presumed that the anti-piracy has already happened. I play plenty of pirated games online on 3ds, Wii u, and psvita
The big issue is that the console companies are generally more active in targeting people on more active consoles, and are incredibly strict if you’re caught cheating. Just being connected to psn on a hacked ps3 runs you a very real risk of getting an account ban. I can only imagine they’re far more active in banning ps4/ps5 users who are running hacked firmware. And Idk if there’s been any major hacks on the Xbox side of things.
As a side note, if you want to see a cluster fuck of every hack and cheat imaginable, hit up the original splatoon servers on Wii u. It’s honestly completely insane how much people have broken it
@aihorde draw for me Step-by-step illustrated: User-friendly beginners guide to saving money when buying YouTube Premium by using a virtual credit card from a foreign country. style: sovietpropaganda
Apple products are usually easy to use and hellishly restrictive, preventing the dum-dum user from breaking it. Phones that run under Android allow for much more customization and utility, to the point you can “soft lock” your OS.
Apple is less functional, easy to use, hard to break (software-wise, at least). Android is more functional, though requires skills to get to the functionality and not break anything.
Meaning those with the skills use Android. Thus, skill issue.
Android warns you every step of the way if you do stuff the manufacturer and Google don’t advise (basically, anything that doesn’t come from the PlayStore or messing with services and permissions). If you’re an average Joe, certainly you’re not gonna do those things. Manually installing apps not in the PlayStore requires you to first find those apps, which is not something your average Joe will do. Messing with permissons or services, again, regular users wouldn’t even know where to find those settings or what they mean, let alone know what bypassing those will do… and you get warned all the way through the process. Even if you accidentaly tap on something, if it’s an advanced setting, it will awarn you, and you have a countdown before you can tap Yes or tick the “I agree” box or whatever. Certainly a regular user will understand that this is not something to be messed with, so it will not choose to bypass those settings.
thanks for the link! I searched a bit more and found this microsoft docs that explicitly says that exfat does not support hardlinks nor softlinks… I’ll have to change filesystem I guess
it seems so… We will also need to move both the qbittorrent download folder and the jellyfin/plex library on the same drive, as hardlinks only works there
I feel you, I have exactly the same issue. What you can do is set qbit to delete the file after X amount of seeding /time so by then the file would’ve been moved. It sucks as i would like to seed as much as i can but i can’t store things twice…
this could be an idea, but this would comport that remote files nobody wants will be there forever while very requested files will disappear quickly… I think I’ll just backup all the files and change the filesystem to NTFS or XFS
Adding to the discussion, if you want to watch anything that’s not mainstream (i.e. non-western, or arthouse), you’re basically supposed to either wait for it to stream on Mubi or get a Blu-ray/DVD (that are often out of circulation if it’s more than 5 years old). So the only real option is pirating.
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