Oh no, I’m absolutely convinced you are right. Now, convince the moms …

That’s just facebook with extra steps

facebook first went to shit around the time kids and grandparents were allowed to join, so …

India would be on my top-3-shortlist of countries that would have me worried if their government had any success at stamping-out piracy. I could swear most of my downloads have English and Hindi or Bengali for audio/subs with little-else, and it would be soooo much more if I downloaded CAMRips…

I don’t, but there is no smart-or-dumb-phone that has it. The fact that’s due to plan availability changes nothing, nevermind that with said plan, almost any recent phone would do.

No argument here.

I use closer to a terrabyte a month, and I am well-aware that it is a plan issue. That doesn’t change the fact that the only any-number-of-mobile-devices/plan pairing that allows me to do what I want where I want is a smartphone. That includes downloading content for offline-viewing with minimal hassle.

When my kids pay for their own phone service, maybe I’ll go all-in on piracy instead, but in the mean-time, I’m exploiting that which I am already paying for, with a device I’ve had paid-off for years.

Find me one with an unlimited hotspot plan, and I’ll switch tomorrow. Literally, that is what my smartphone offers. Not the hotspot, but unlimitted data plan and the means to use it to the fullest on the phone itself?

Close enough that this is my bar to meet, even though I would rather switch to a separate e-Ink tablet, dumb-phone-with-hotspot, and steam-deck-or-similar, for EDC-or-close-to; I would probably carry just the tablet and phone most days, maybe just the phone and deck on others.

I’m not watching that. I might look-up “Keonne Rodriguez, co-founder of Samourai Wallet” at some point, but the only thing this post has going for it is that that text was available in the Video Description on youtube.

When I started on windows, and even with the textual pseudo-GUI’s of DOS, once you got it working you could customize the hell out of everything(or it didn’t pretend otherwise), and it would just continue to work until something physically broke or I broke somethin; with a tweak I would generally just undo and get back to it.

Windows is nothing like that now. My phone is more customizable, smooth, enjoyable and stable than Windows(OOBE, anyways). Its arguably better at things like, idk, working with scanners, which Windows insists are dark magic only the manufacturers can help you with(TWAIN was literally cleaner, and still is, when you can lift the hood to find it); I’m not saying its all-that-weird to need a driver - what’s weird is refusing to look for an entire device-category until a third-party app tells you how, when EVERYTHING ELSE is basically plug-and-play, including the printing functions of networked copiers or fax machines.

Rant from this-specific-day’s bullshit at work aside, my first experiences were with an Amiga and some Apple ii’s, OS2Warp was an experience that barely struck me as much-different than what I was used-to, and I’ve messed-around with Macs as much as much as anyone.

What’s weird isn’t moving away from Windows, basically the most overtly Black Mirror-esque OS of what’s out there today. What’s weird is how hung-up people are on it.

Every brain-controlling or addicting substance or species on Futurama has more to offer; Windows, like facebook, is trying to be the ads injected-into dreams. Who the hell wants that?

Gotta disable UPNP to commit to this specific strategy …

Just as likely that red sliver at the end was the traffic created by his intentional usage of the phone all-along. Telemetry and ads are just that gross, but what do I know?

That was 20 years ago. Few, if any of those employees would still be with the company today. “Knowing” means nothing to the passage of time, particularly in the tech sector.

No they’re not. IBM sold the brand and supply chain off. Not sure how many employees were kept, transfered, or axed, but the concensus has long been that it wasn’t enough to justify your claim.

Exactly this. I don’t need 1080P or 4k mp4 rips with 10bit audio, and I definitely don’t have the storage for it, but when that’s all that is seeding, its usually quicker to just download it and re-encode.

For your second point, its not at all uncommon for previously-legit sites to go malicious. Age alone means nothing, nor does reputation after a few years.

These projects collaborate and copy each-other’s work way more than you would think. When one stagnates, others pick up the slack, and when one pulls ahead, the others increase their efforts to catch-up. More potential solutions for the same problems is a good thing.

Two of my kids are working-age with their own debit cards, and have their amazon accounts linked to mine. My MIL’s credit card is attached to my account, so anything she wants to order, she just sends me a link. My wife just straight-up has all my logins when it comes to spending money.

… All that, and paying for it once is easier to explain/deal with versus every order having to be >$35 . It’s a pain to get my wife to actually order things she wants/needs as it is.

Basically, I would rather stop dealing with that company entirely, for ethical reasons, than put more thought into my dealings with them with each transaction.

I pirate what’s any good that I cannot find legally for streaming, as well as educational stuff that I want available should I and/or my family find ourselves without internet access.

Sometimes I’ll go so far as to pirate things that I cannot find without ads(even with premiums*), but mostly if it’ll let me see the first few minutes before playing an ad, I just live with it.

* The only reason I still have Amazon Prime is for the free shipping. I pay extra for no ads. I pay extra for HiDive. There appear to be things available on Prime with HiDive that aren’t available on just Prime or just HiDive. Magically, those shows(Ranma 1/2, for example) have ads. WTF?

None of these companies have ethics. Why should you get hung-up in ethics for a victimless crime?

Sending telemetry where? My phone? My server?