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?

Oh no, overseas might know as much about me as my fascist government does!! Seriously, when I ditch the US, I might start worrying about China, but until then, I hope my FBI/NSA handler and CCP spy meet up for drinks on the regular to mock my shitposts.

It’s become clear that I will require a dumb phone with hotspot, 5G, and a massive battery in the near future. Throw in a good camera, and make it water-proof …

I mean, extending it down to the individual level for every detail of law is a bit of a stretch, but my point was that the actions of government are a consequence of the actions or inaction of society-at-large. Individuals who want to distance themselves from the actions of a fascist government and still count themselves part of that jurisdiction’s society should take some sort of action, even anonymously.

If they are to be counted as victims, it serves no-one for them to pretend that main-stream society(or society beyond whatever group they identify with) is blameless or a solid ally versus that government.

“Society” as a concept is more prone to excluding those without power or influence; It de facto includes those with the means to steer government.

Anything the society allows their government to do, it bears responsibilty for. Doesn’t matter if your average citizen takes an active role. If they don’t take an active role in resisting, or at least sub-verting or sabotaging, they don’t need or deserve your excuses.

Not their kids. Yours and mine.

Sure, at home or school. Enforced by parents or teachers, not by society on everyone.

Exactly.

Its not “the Cloud” if its your own systems from top-to-bottom … More like Remote Play? … Seems Sony, Microsoft, and Valve all use that terminology for Streaming Gameplay from their consoles to another device.

Streaming to another location than where your Server is setup is tricky, mostly due to latency and establishing a connection that doesn’t get throttled(or compromised) by the ISPs involved. Personally, when I tried to get into it, about 10 years ago, I didn’t have the budget for a GPU that could be persuaded to support it at all.

Today, I’m more likely to keep such a server in my vehicle(on Battery/Solar), so its always just a local connection away, if I were to bother with the budget and hassle involved*. Around the house, I’ll just slap a new desktop together where I want to play games, or game on my laptop, and call it done.

*Ideally, I could build this for less than my good laptop would cost to replace, and use something much closer to outright disposable to game outside of my car. In practice, I just bring my good laptop with me everywhere, risk be damned.

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Snapchat is not one I expected to be an exception, but I don’t use it and I prevented my kids from using it until they turned 16(ish?). Took that long for them to demonstrate anything like critical thinking and self-restraint re: social media.

Still does. This article should have been a PSA about an on-going issue with multiple apps, but they insisted on a villain to blame as somehow being worse than others. All of these apps will randomly and repeatedly ask to enable such things; They have done so for years and years.

Its a feature my kids dealt with between themselves and their friends years ago(yes, on Instagram). This is the same generation that randomly lets friends borrow their phones and even post as eachother on various platforms.

I’m not saying its a non-issue, but those ignorant of it are truly ignorant, not-so-much newsworthy.