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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • You do have to get an invite, seed, and maybe toss them a small crypto donation occasionally. The ratio thing depends on the tracker but usually it’s just a requirement to seed back anything for at least a week. Popular torrents become FreeLeech and they don’t count against your ratio.

    Because the participants are all vetted, you don’t get RIAA and MPAA shills in swarm trying to vacuum up IPs to start sending nasty legal letters out.

    A decade ago when I used public torrents I remember getting those stupid ISP strikes. I know shit-tier regional ISPs would even try to embarrass you with the content you pirated. They’d send you a letter like “the Copyright holder for ‘Anal Hookers of Beijing’ told us they’re big mad at you, and if you do it again you’ll get your service revoked”. Some of these ISPs were integrated with cable companies so they’d freeze your internet and cable, and display the text of the copyright strike on your fucking TV for your girlfriend or grandma to see.

    Fuck that noise.

    Since using a private tracker I have never received a single cease and desist or ISP warning letter. Then again, I only use Bit Torrent to download Linux ISOs.



  • Don’t mistake it for apathy. I didn’t vote for either major party candidate in either of the last 2 presidential elections because I didn’t like either of the options. I’m not going to be schoolmarmed by anybody on Lemmy for doing so, especially since many of the people participating in US politics discussions on Lemmy seem to be Canadians or Europeans who, just like Russian trolls, cannot vote in US elections.

    If you want viable third party options leading towards reform, you have to act accordingly. In '92 Ross Perot won 20% of the popular vote despite only re-entering the race in October. In June of that year he was polling as the leader in the 3-way race, before questions about whether he would qualify for all states ballots. He could have won that election.

    Since then, the two mega parties have done all they can to ensure no viable 3rd option ever emerges again. This year we were given a matchup of historically unpopular R, nominated pretty much by default through a party controlled process of primaries that couldn’t be meaningfully influenced by primary voters…and on the D side we were given a historically unpopular D for whom the party scuttled all potential primary challengers, then at the last second they replaced him via their national process, subverting the entire point of having primaries, with a candidate who won zero votes in that initial process or the previous election cycles primary process.

    That said, since as an individual I have no meaningful way of influencing or reforming either major party, and both continue to force candidates upon us I don’t like, I will be voting for whoever I want. It is not even remotely similar to “apathy”. Thanks.


  • Her campaign doesn’t even think this is true. They are essentially running a “basement” campaign. Zero events off prompter, speaking through surrogates, and trying to ride any potential DNC bump all the way through the election (or at least until early voting is underway in many states).

    Harris is deeply off-putting to listen to when she speaks extemporaneously on virtually any issue. Therefore her campaign is banking on more or less hiding her, “freezing” the poll numbers approximately where they are now and avoiding big risks.

    Literally the only inflection point that can change the race any further is the debate (or debates) if that happens.




  • On the one hand I understand they aren’t serving billions of hours of video for their own health. Not sure how one can justify the expenditure as a “loss leader”. But at the same time, the ad experience is horrendous.

    In the last month I have consumed YT on desktop browser, mobile, and regular TV. Guess which is by far the worst experience?

    On desktop, you can use an alternate browser or do a reg edit to re-enable manifest v2 plugins (for now) in Chrome, and continue blocking (for now). On mobile you can use alternate apps and frontends.

    TV viewing of YT is the worst experience, as there are no native alternative apps and DNS ad blocking doesn’t block YT ads. The native YouTube app (on Samsung and LG TVs at least) is horrendous. You get midroll ads sometimes mid-sentence as the content presenter is speaking. Sometimes you get pre-roll ads, disruptive mid roll ads, and then wash it down with a POST-roll ad at the end of the video. Depending on how the content is structured it is disorienting as to whether the video has ended or not.

    Say for example its a 30 minute video. I would rather they show 5-7 minutes of predictable ads at the beginning of content, so I can at least have the same experience as broadcast TV, and make an informed decision to get up and use the restroom and feed the pets while the ads roll. Then once the content starts, don’t randomly interrupt it.

    Imagine the YT model applied to broadcast television. The quarterback drops back to throw a deep pass towards the endzone, and suddenly you find yourself watching an undskippable ad for diarrhea medication, while the football is in the air.

    And we wonder why people have ADD.





  • Since the story came out people fixated on “lol he used a shitty gaming controller” but really that is one of the least sketchy design choices in the entire rig. Why reinvent the wheel and make a custom set of controls that are realistically another huge expense and potential failure point, when off the shelf solutions exist for that component?

    The corners that were cut are the ones involving the viewport/nose adhesion to the ships frame, and the structural integrity of the carbon fiber hull itself. They had test data suggesting it was a bad idea to engage in repeated dives with their design, and an even worse idea to operate at the depths they chose. They decided to ignore that.