CerebralHawks

I think it depends on the ISP. There are a few small ones that do not GAF what you do. I’ve been told “we do not care what you download, we only care that you can.” There are a few big ones that are too big to care what people do on their network.

That said, you should always take precautions. A VPN is a good place to start.

I can see it. They got caught in your use of from, which isn’t even incorrect. Via would have been a better word, but from works here just as well.

They’re reading it as you’re talking about pirating content that is owned by (from) your ISP, not what you meant, which is talking about pirating content from behind or via or even using your ISP. I guess through would have worked, too.

But the difference between me and them is, while I realise another word would have worked better, I understood exactly what you meant and didn’t think it was an issue. Though I admit I thought the first thing… at first. Hey, it’s early.

YouTube is not doing good. I get flickering on Apple TV. On my Mac videos play without sound (computer isn’t muted) or they take way too long to load. Granted I don’t pay, but wow. Google is not doing so well.

I’m old school, I just get the subs and integrate them with MkvToolNix. I was always super picky about my files, so I’d go in there and change around what the active/enabled/default streams were, give the streams better names (e.g. Stereo, Surround 5.1, whatever was appropriate — I never included the language, since the tag handled that). I’d even use en-us or en-gb if it was specifically one or the other (e.g. James Bond, Harry Potter for the latter). I even insisted my subtitles be in English for English movies, and American English for American English movies. So like, the word “honor” in a Harry Potter movie would not fly with me, it must say “honour” because… that’s what the English specifically say. (Speaking of Harry Potter, no “Sorcerer’s Stone” bullshit in my library, I have the “Philosopher’s Stone” version because, of course I do. The first one was the only one with a regional title.)

So because of that, I can use Jellyfin and the subs work just fine.

I am familiar with Plex’s auto sub downloader. Despite owning a lifetime Plex Pass, it would put ads in the subtitles. That may be on the site’s end though, not Plex’s.

Still a Plex user, and I’m on a Mac, but all this shit works whether you’re a Windows user or a Mac user. Probably Linux, too. I tried Jellyfin recently. It’s fine if your clients are running Android, but they are just not there on Apple devices yet. My computer (M2 Pro) is plenty powerful enough to run both servers (servers use very little resources when not serving) but I just don’t see a need for Jellyfin in my rotation. I do root for the project though, I want it to succeed, so I’ll try it every year or so.

They were hot garbage before. They exist to make money from gamers. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but you basically have two kinds of game developers. Those who love gaming, and those who are tired of or burned out from gamers and just want to exploit gaming. Live long enough, you’ll see a lot of companies go from the first camp to the second (Bethesda, Blizzard). Developers and publishers in the second camp are best avoided. Problem is, people keep buying their games. So you’ve gotta try to support the ones in the first group. And, sometimes people actually like games from trash developers. Some will tell you their games are not that bad or that they found something they love.

EA’s been in the second group for a long time. I don’t think they will get any better. I think I will go on ignoring their games.

They do collect data, but they aren’t data brokers, they aren’t selling it to the highest bidder, like Google does.

I think the scary thing about Apple is, we don’t know where they’re gonna go. Right now the assumption is (from our side) that they are still a computer company first and they want to keep the data to make their products better, but that might be naive and overly optimistic. With Google, we know where they stand. So they’re less scary maybe? To some? I dunno. Call me what you will, but I still think of Apple as that old school computer company, just with some services now (e.g. Apple Music, TV+, etc.).

As an iPhone guy who doesn’t mind the limitations, it’s really sad to see Android losing everything that made it different from Apple. Headphone jacks, memory card slots, and now sideloading, with an honourable mention to Nova Launcher.

If Android is going to be just like iOS, you better not still be paying iPhone prices for Android phones, being that the original intent of Android (as when Google bought it) was to harvest more user data (than Gmail could) to be sold. You’re getting a weaker phone that collects your data and sells it to the highest bidder AND you’re paying iPhone prices AND you can’t sideload anymore (or, after such date in the future)? Nah, fuck that. At that point you should just get an iPhone, right? Seriously, take a good hard look at the iPhone 17 (the base model, not the Air or the Pro). $800 gets you privacy first, 256GB of storage, it’s the second most powerful phone out there (the Air and Pro have more cores), two cameras (so not as good as Pixel 10 at the same price in that regard but better video recording). Samsung has some advantages but they sell your health data. Apple Health being private is now a feature that the others do not have.

Obviously we need a third option because if Google/Android won’t compete with Apple, who will? And if nobody’s competing with Apple, why should Apple improve? Hell, the 17 series is a joke… not that the 16 series was a huge improvement over the 15 series. I feel like my 16 Pro Max will go ten years, won’t need to be replaced unless it gets physically broken.

I’ve never heard of Trekkies as a generational term. I’ve always understood that Trekkers were people who enjoyed the show as a show (they’re on the Trek) whereas Trekkies enjoy the show as part of the show (they’re in the Trek). Like they believe Trek is real, or it’s our actual future, and that Klingons and Vulcans are out there somewhere. Gene Roddenberry preferred this term because the show is about hope, that things will get better to where the show is, and that when things are bad on the show, hope that they will be better or that it will all work out in the end. But me? I just like it as a show. It’s not “real” to me.

Though, I suppose everyone’s relationship with Star Trek (or, any other franchise) is unique and personal to them and you can’t just divide the fans into two categories. Still, that is what I always understood the difference between the two types was, as we are a franchise that has two names for its fans.

Regarding what you said about them having a generic space show and naming it Star Trek. That has happened before. Deep Space Nine exists because the guy made Babylon 5 pitched it to Paramount and they ran him off and stole his idea. Yes, Deep Space Nine is awesome and we love it, but it would not exist if not for Babylon 5, which we should all be thankful we also got. To this day no one who wasn’t involved knows exactly how much DS9 took from B5, but DS9 was not originally Star Trek, and it was widely criticised for not being Star Trek being that they were not exploring and that they were on a space station. I imagine a lot of episodes of TV started out as something else, some unconnected idea that was shoehorned into that show in the writers room. So while I don’t doubt that Discovery may have not been an original Trek idea, I do not care because neither was DS9 and I love DS9.

I’m not disagreeing with you, though, and I agree with some of your clarifications, particularly in point 1.

IMO the best way to do it is to acquire lossless (e.g. FLAC) and compress it yourself, if you want to. I use the MPEG4/AAC Low Complexity filter in fre:ac at 192kbps. Makes .m4a files about 10MB each. They sound great. AAC is supposed to be about twice as efficient as MP3 (and a looser license) but the files I make are about the size of MP3 320k files. Which tells me they’re about twice as good.

Apple gets associated with M4A/AAC a lot, but that’s just because they use it. I do use Apple hardware, but the same hardware runs MP3 without issue. The only issue I had with AAC was getting the old Winamp (2.x) to play it, back when we used Windows. But even then I found an input plugin and from there it was smooth sailing. It’s basically superior to MP3 in every way. (But for free licensing I think Ogg Vorbis will be a better fit.) (I also stream it via my Plex server, so if a device can’t play M4A — rare — Plex will transcode it.)

Anyway, I use Nyaa for a source (nyaa.si) but that is primarily Japanese/Asian media. That’s mostly what I listen to though. I do like some western rock from the 80s and 90s, but as the west stopped pushing rock music, I went where it was being pushed, which was Japan (and a lot of those guys sing in English, like ONE OK ROCK and Survive Said the Prophet — though, to be fair, 1OR is basically an American band now; while the guys were born/raised in Japan, they’ve lived in Los Angeles for years now, are signed to Fueled by Ramen, and they want to be more like Paramore and Fall Out Boy, which is fine, but it feels a bit disingenuous calling them Japanese rock in 2025).

Charlie Kirk may have been for debates he could win. And it’s the same as any radio show: vet the opposition first. You don’t even invite them until you know them inside and out. Turn their mic down and talk over them so they raise their voice, and turn it back up so they sound aggressive, then passively aggressively talk them down to gain the moral high ground. And if they start making sense, cut to commercial.

If all that fails, put them on a list and demonise that list.

Worth noting that Walmart has a very aggressive approach to combat theft. It’s commonly said that Walmart lets people steal. There is some truth to that — they don’t give chase. What they do is, they use a combination of loss prevention technologies to track the theft over time. Steal enough from them and they nab you and charge you with all of it, and they bring the receipts. Petty theft may not be worth prosecuting, but if they let it escalate to grand theft — that’s a different story.

Bluesky might be better than X I’ if all you want is SMS length microblogging, but I’d like to see scientific types embrace a more federated system.

Discovery was never bad. It’s just different. Some people say it’s not what Trek is about.

1. Star Trek has always been about captains exploring. Deep Space Nine challenged that with a commander; Sisko later made captain, but the station itself only moved in the pilot (closer to the wormhole; it’s always been in Bajor’s orbit) and maybe one other time? But they did plenty of exploring in the Runabouts, and Defiant, the ship they got later. But essentially the action came to them, and that was fine. Discovery is not about a captain. Michael Burnham is a… commander? I forget. On the original ship. Then she’s nobody. She gets promoted up but she almost never leads, but the show focuses on her. It’s… weird. (And she’s a woman… named Michael… pronounced the same as the male name… and this is never explained.)

2. Star Trek has always been about diversity, but Discovery had a gay couple in an openly sexual relationship. It never showed sex between them, but plenty of kissing and intimacy. Discovery also had a non-binary character with they/them pronouns. And as mentioned, a woman named Michael, but she’s cisgendered and straight, so that’s not why she has a guy’s name. Anyway, some people thought it was a few bridges too far.

3. Star Trek has almost always been wholesome. Deep Space Nine pushed the envelope, and while it showed Sisko doing some very bad things, profanity was never part of it, and the violence was mostly PG. Discovery was on streaming, so they had profanity and R-rated violence. There may have even been some mild nudity, I don’t recall. This put off a lot of traditional fans.

4. Before Deep Space Nine (i.e. The Original Series and The Next Generation), Star Trek has always been episodic. DS9 introduced arcs, but each episode still had its own identity, and this was true through Enterprise. But each season was its own thing on Discovery, and no one episode really stood alone.

Points 3 and 4, and to some, point 2, put off some older, “traditional” Trekkers who felt that Discovery was made for the younger generation and was not “for” them. And I can dig it. I mean, it does follow the recent-ish films where the ships are flashy, not tacky with their tech. (Keep in mind, the ships were always flashy for their time! It’s just, we cling to the old designs and the newer, flashier one just seems excessive, but now, the newer, flashier one is dull in comparison to the ones that have followed it.)

As for Picard, that was purely a sequel to The Next Generation (and to a lesser extent, Voyager, because of Seven of Nine). It was a love letter to the fans of that show, those shows. As purely its own thing, it’s a weaker Trek entry, but for those of us who grew up with 80s/90s Trek, it was good closure since the movies were neglecting those characters. Another such show might be Prodigy, which is a more direct continuation of Voyager, but Prodigy stood on its own better with its original cast. Picard’s original cast was not very good, but very forgettable.

Back to Discovery, it’s very much its own thing, set both before TOS and after anything else (minor spoilers — plot device allows them to swerve around any continuity problems). It did launch Strange New Worlds, which Trekkers seem to like more than Discovery, as that is a straight TOS prequel, showing the (movies/newer) original Enterprise under Captain Pike, who was captain before Kirk. Spock’s in it, too. (I have yet to watch SNW, but I plan to. I just finished Prodigy and I like to space them a bit.) Discovery also launched Section 31, the streaming-only movie, which is about as bad as you’ve heard. The less said about that one, the better — if you want to watch it, you should, and you should do so without worrying what Internet People think about it. It’s still Star Trek, albeit some of the weakest Trek out there.

Personally, I rate Discovery above ENT but below Voyager. I have a hard time deciding whether Discovery or Prodigy is better. Prodigy was a computer-generated anime that aired on Nickelodeon and that all sounds bad, but it was actually very good. It might seem at first that Kate Mulgrew (Janeway/Hologram Janeway) is there to prop the cast up, but they all shine so brightly, they don’t really need her as much as they think. I liked TNG, DS9, and VOY all better than STD and… whatever we’re abbreviating Prodigy to (PRO? STP?). As a child of the 80s, TOS is a bit dated for me, but the stories were so good… that’s another one that is hard to place for me.

I recommend you watch it, but if you do, you have to finish the season. You can’t drop it mid-season, and if you do, you can’t judge it, because the individual episodes aren’t meant to be watched on their own. It’s meant to be binged. That said, you can safely stop at the end of any season. I won’t say it gets worse, but each season made me wonder if it was really necessary, including the first one. Because no, it isn’t. Discovery is not necessary for… anything… in the Star Trek universe. It’s not really connected. Even Strange New Worlds… they ran into the Enterprise in the beginning of the second season, but then they went away. So yeah, you can safely watch SNW without Discovery and you’d be fine. I do think the first season was good, as far as action Trek goes. And you can stop there, but with the way it ends… you won’t. Season 2 was okay, a good mystery, and you can stop there, but you still may want to see what comes next. After that, I think the quality does take a bit of a dive, but then they’re in the far future, and you just wanna see more and more of what’s left of Starfleet in the future. And it’s good enough to stick with. But never necessary. And that’s probably the “worst” thing I can say about it.

Been hearing a lot about this. Has anybody heard of this app before this story started breaking? How TF did it get to #2?

Also, it seems that what the app does has never been a secret. Their tag line is something like “phone companies make money off your calls, now you can too.” I don’t think they were doing anything secretive. People knew they were selling recordings of their phone conversations. So… what’s the problem? Aside from the fact that I, and I would imagine most who would be subscribed to a /privacy community, would never use it. It’s not for us.

Tom Nook for president

Because the point was the moral question.

I’m kind of amazed that someone thought something based on Voyager would even sell. I loved Voyager when it was new — don’t get me wrong — but coming hot off the ending of The Next Generation, and its first few seasons coinciding with Deep Space Nine right after things got good on DS9? It wasn’t very popular at the time. Then we got ENT to dump on, then STD. And I like most/all Trek, but I’ve found generally people dumped on the new thing. I’m glad Voyager is getting love. We got Prodigy which is kind of a sequel to Voyager, in much the same way Picard was to TNG. (Now do DS9, you cowards!)

Not sure this game is it… it just looks like Fallout Shelter, reskinned with some extra bells and whistles. Which might not be such a bad thing, people liked Fallout Shelter. I got overwhelmed by it and gave up on it. I might play it on my computer if it comes to macOS, but I don’t see myself booting up the Xbox for a game like this. (I see they are porting it to PC, but Macs run a whole other hardware architecture, one that phones and Nintendo Switch run. Mac ports are more likely when a game is coming to one of those; for example, any game that runs on either Switch should run on all M-series Macs. It’s just a question of whether they want to support the platform.)

I just downloaded MKBHD’s iPhone Air review, and it played perfectly. 1920p whatever that means (somewhere north of 1440p but not quite 2160p… or 2160p/4K but slightly letterboxed). AV1 (Ay-Vee-Wun, not Ay-Vee-Eye), 30fps… looks and sounds great.

Glad to see the community fixed it fast.

I use jdownloader2 which probably uses yt-dl on the back end. But it also downloads from a metric fuckton of other sites, too. It’s like the Swiss Army knife of downloaders. And it’s Java, so it runs just as well on my Mac as it did on Windows back when I used that. (Wish they had an official dark theme that was easy to set up though. I know how to do it manually but can’t be arsed.)

Proton’s CEO once agreed with something Trump said (did). Trump appointed a lackey who appeared to Yen (Proton CEO) to be friendly toward “small tech” companies (as opposed to big tech) so he congratulated the move.

If someone we don’t like does one thing we do like, are we wrong to praise that one thing? If you don’t like me, hypothetically, why should I do anything you like if you will still hate me regardless of how much you agree with what I do? I’m not saying we could turn Trump with kindness. Most likely not. But this rift between people is widening. Of course the rich and poor will always be at odds, but the poor don’t have to be (as) divided by it. I think we’re less likely to radialise people on the other side if we show we’re not a monolith ourselves and willing to see good where we find it.

One point: support local farmers by buying their food.

Another: not supporting businesses who pay overworked people below minimum wage (restaurants) while treating them like shit.

Beyond that: the pride of making something yourself.

A fourth one: usually you save money

And fifth, since we’re in a spectrum community: not having to go out and deal with people.