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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • Thank you for the very detailed response. This is a discussion about piracy. It’s interesting to speak of coping and projection. You know a lot of the most hateful homophobes keep coming out of the closet as gay? I think this kind of hate is very prevalent in our society. Basically you hate that somebody who doesn’t share your moral restrictions, who is out there enjoying life without a care in the world. A kind of moral jealousy. “I have to live with this burden and it’s unfair for somebody else to live without it”. I said it in my original comment and now I will emphasize it in response to your wall of text. Your contempt for me is the same as closet gay homophobes. In this analogy my love for cheese is gay sex, and you think you hate it because your religion (your moral code) is correct, but you actually hate it because you are deprived of it, and it’s unfair that I can enjoy it without guilt. This brings us full circle to the original question about why I think some people view piracy negatively.

    It seems you think that all non-vegans must be ignorant. “If only 90% of the population would read the scientific literature or if they were aware of how their animal products came to market, they’d all be vegan”. I am aware of the indirect consequences of my actions and I carry on so I must be some kind of monster. Clearly I am not your brother in Christ, rather a spawn of Satan or perhaps worse. Perhaps I’m just a creature of this earth. A natural consequence of everything up until now.

    It is absolutely futile. Being a vegan is like recycling. If it makes you feel better about your life, good. But anybody with the privilege to debate such things, with the worldwide industrial grocery selection to even contemplate veganism, has a huge wake of environmental destruction associated with existing. All the fuel that’s been burned, all of the lumber, loss of habitat for your dwelling. Every time you bathe a freshwater fish or amphibian dries up. Don’t worry about it. I forgive you. It’s not your fault. It’s not your burden. You are a worthy allocation of this planets resources. Thank you for your insight.



  • Insects, crustaceans, and mollusks do not have any form of consciousness. They are just as aware and alive as fungi and plants. Otherwise we would feel great remorse when examining all the slaughtered insects on the front of our motor vehicles. Fish, are slightly more aware, but I don’t attach much emotional weight to their very tiny brains. Birds and mammals are on a higher level of consciousness than a lot of the animal kingdom. But not all death is painful. Many humans seek a dignified and painless death.

    Domesticated animals for the most part have the ability to escape, if they wanted to express their consciousness and free will. The process of domestication is an evolutionary choice. Chickens and other livestock are suffering today because their ancestors gave away their freedom for security.

    Actually I think dogs collectively suffer more than most of our livestock. For them, death is out of reach. Their suffering is prolonged. Their mutations and genetic deficiencies are cruel. Many dogs are born with such horrible genes and behaviors they have no hope of a quality life with humans. Very sad.

    Anyway, there is no objective truth on this matter. But I know you care so much about suffering, I just want to reassure you, that I feel no sorrow for livestock. Everything we eat and purchase impacts the animals on this planet. To exist is to impose suffering on the Earth. And I’m okay with that. My opinion, is that vegans are drawing a line in sand so feint that it is erased by the slightest breeze.


  • There’s no projection. I feel no guilt for eating the diet of every single one of my ancestors. Zero. I do not believe animals to be sentient, and I do not equate death or servitude with suffering. It’s not that I don’t understand vegans. I do. But it’s like a religion - you have a fundamental belief, not in god, but in the consciousness of animals. Because we differ on that fundamental belief, we can reach no understanding about the ethics beyond that.

    And I think it is a fair comparison. People who pay for media may also see it as an ethical baseline to pay for what you consume. And in both the case of vegans, and those who pay for streaming, the perceived benefit of that choice is in my opinion fundamentally flawed. But it’s really not a big deal to me. I was just trying to answer OPs question. I think your response only validates my analogy. Thank you.










  • Media piracy cannot be stopped. Don’t forget there was media piracy before the internet too. But back then it was physical piracy, and somebody made money on another’s work. That kind of piracy will always be shut down, because it is actually stealing. The fat cats want their money.

    But now we have a different kind. More like Robin Hood. Digital piracy takes something and copies it, giving it away for free. The biggest risk for piracy, is that the content holders offer their product at a price so low, it would be horribly inconvenient to pirate it. For example if Apple Music just had you pay a few pennies per song instead of monthly. You’d load up $20 and listen to a lot of music. If TV series offered ad-free streaming for like $0.25 per episode. If movies could be watched for $1. If academic journal articles could be accessed for $1.

    But that will never happen. They’ve done the math. They make more money with subscriptions and pricing right at the edge of affordability for many. Why would they want to make less money?

    Actually now that I’m thinking about it. The way for them to hurt piracy the most would be to give away low-bitrate copies of everything for free. Stream all the music you want at 96 kbps. Watch every TV series or movie at 480p. Download this ebook as a plain text file. Read this article with tiny thumbnail photos. Free version of game has low-res textures and 720p at 30fps. Even that wouldn’t end piracy, but it would be a lot less popular. It would be harder to find somebody to invest the time bypassing paywalls when you can read the text easily.

    Anyway torrent cannot be stopped. It’s moving to onion and i2p, fully decentralized. There will be nobody to take down. Besides that there’s always independent nations who don’t care about digital piracy, who can host private trackers.


  • Non-tech. I decided to self host first to send media to my TV. I wanted an always-on solid state hard drive computer that didn’t have to do any transcoding. Tried DLNA but Emby just worked better. Jellyfin didn’t have an LG App at the time so I’m still using Emby. Eventually I also asked my poor ARM server with 2 GB of RAM to also run my wireless access points, but the Omada software is a resource hog. So I have a little Intel machine that can do Omada better and also transcoding for Emby on the go. And then I learned about HomeBridge and that’s been great too. I think together the two computers run about 15W of energy I could decommission the ARM one but it does a couple things I haven’t migrated yet. I’ve tried hosting other stuff but those are the main ones used every day.


  • I would pay if à la carte was remotely economical. For example a digital DRM movie rental should cost $1 in whatever resolution, on any device capable of playing it. A TV show should cost like $5 for a season or $0.5 per episode. To rent, not to own of course. I don’t care about ownership. With that model I would probably end up spending like $10-15/month on media, but I would feel better about it knowing the studio could pay more to those specific individuals who worked on the programs I am enjoying.

    A subscription is a blank check to the studio to make whatever they think draws in subscribers, and to pay everyone involved as little as possible with no bonuses for blockbusters.