southsamurai

Yeah, even the big names tend to not care much as long as nobody else is profiting off of their work. Agents and publishers, they tend to get right snippy about piracy lol.

Mind you, there is a segment of working authors that do suffer in their ability to go from a part time, almost hobbyist situation into a proper career of it. They tend to see the lack of sales as more of a problem, but they tend to be younger and didn’t ever see how impossible breaking in to traditional publishing was. It’s easy to look at your self published income and think “oh, if people had to buy these, I’d be making a living at this instead of it being barely enough to cover expenses for writing”. But, most of the time, back before self publishing was actually a valid and useful route, they wouldn’t have been selling anything, they’d be hoping for an agent to get their first sale for them.

And I’ll never tell anyone that they can’t profit from their own ideas and labor, and expect anyone consuming it to pay up. Authors that object, that’s fine by me (and I actually don’t pirate their stuff). But like you said, most writers would rather someone read and enjoy for free rather than not read at all.

As a published (if hilariously unsuccessful) author; no, no it isn’t.

Gods, I hate those. I won’t watch anything that does it

Plenty. Music and books in particular. I’m usually behind on making legit buys, but I treat piracy partially like a library where I can try before I buy.

That isn’t saying I buy everything I pirate, I don’t. But if I like it enough to keep the files, I’ll wait until I find a good sale and eventually get a legit copy in some format.

I also do it in reverse, where I’ll buy something, but pirate a digital copy when it’s more convenient. That’s typically for paper books and music on vinyl. Sometimes I’ll even pirate a copy of a CD if I’m not up to dealing with the ripping (disability means I don’t always have stamina for everything, so stuff like ripping a cd is low priority).

Really?

It’s dumb as fuck.

Hate it if we want (and I have major problems with how young phones and similar devices become glued to kids), but they’re here to stay. They’re a part of modern life, and trying to completely ban them is the most idiotic waste of time and resources possible.

You gotta find a way to limit use in a consistent and evenly applied way so that parents and school staff are all on the same page. Then you just keep enforcing the rules amd explaining them over and over. Eventually, it becomes a manageable annoyance instead of the chaos it currently is

Just audio, or miked?

I found some by klim that have been very durable so far. Something like five years and no issues. Well built, come with their own case. Wired buds. Sound can be a bit muddy for music, but not unbearable. In calls, they’re great.

Bluetooth wise, check out tozo. They do respectable buds on a budget. Not the best sound, but acceptable, and their mics pick up decently. Battery life is decent.

Back to wired, if you can find a sale, the tin t2 model is damn good sound for the price range. You usually have to be patient to get the 50 price point, or go used. But they really do sound great on a phone with a decent DAC. But that’s sound only, no mic.

That’s easy. The people profiting from it are pushing it hard.

There are only two browsers now, chrome(ium) and firefox. Everything else is one of those with some changes.

Firefox based is usually the way to go if you want to avoid anything Google related.

Otherwise, they’re on par with each other, imo.

The porn fairy was, very often, more of someone quickly dumping something they didn’t want found.

However, the really big piles were sometimes a person’s little self-love spot away from their home, for one reason or another.

My grandparents lived adjacent to a big stretch of woodland. A half hour hike away from their house, and there was a run down old shack that had hundreds of various magazines. Just the slowly decaying stacks of playboy were astounding in number, and went back decades, though with plenty of gaps.

Best guess on that one was a specific gentleman that had owned the land, or his son. The overgrown path that was barely detectable led roughly towards their house. Considering the rather fiery and hyper-religious nature of the lady of the house, it could have been either, though if it was the son, he had picked up a lot of old issues at some point. Which, some people do.

But there were penthouses and hustlers too. It was kinda crazy.

Holy shit,I didn’t even know it was still available

Cixelsydm’i

Dyslexia!

Yeah, obviously, or the title wouldn’t even have happened.

And it’s been that way for a while now. Back when windows 10 happened, I was able to install mint, get most of my preferred programs set up, and handle data transfer with zero CLI use. Which was awesome, because my dyslexic ass would have taken forever otherwise. It wasn’t until I started putzing around for pop and giggles that I even opened a terminal.

My mom w as able to jump right in after installation of mint, and go through the gui to try things out, no issues.

Yeah, wrong community for the post, but it was a good read despite that.

It is possible to respect their efforts, but refuse to sign up for things on principle.

And, if the account is “free”, then why did you need to give them an email in the first place? If they aren’t getting money from you, then needing a login that would require an email address is sketchy as hell on the surface, and there’s no explanation given.

Yeah, blocking the site in its entirety is kinda weird, seems like extra effort for no benefit at all when you can just not use the site. But objecting to what is a pointless “account” unless they’re monetizing the information makes plenty of sense. Worker owned is not a guarantee of good behavior. It certainly helps, and it’s the superior business model imo, but it isn’t inherently going to mean they aren’t doing dumb shit.

Being real here? Anyone that can’t see the damn button for it during initial setup isn’t going to give a damn.

Best practices? No. Opt in only should be the default. But that’s still about choice, not whether or not telemetry is inherently a bad thing. But if someone is too damn lazy to look at the settings of a program when they first use it, that’s pretty damn stupid. But, hey, people in general are stupid.

I hate to be that guy, but it’s an optional thing. Voluntary analytics are fine. You opt in/out, and that’s the way it should be.

Seriously, it’s about choice. It’s not about there never, ever being any information sent back.

No thanks

Lmmfao, that is the dumbest possible position to take