I've been daily using Linux for more than 13 years at this point but I too am concerned at the direction some things are going in. I'm on Artix and happy there for the time being. But I definitely have started keeping an eye on BSD so its always in my back pocket if the need arises. We now have a laptop with GhostBSD on it so we can get and stay familiarised with it. But our biggest issue at the moment is gaming and Steam (yes, I could not use Steam but I'm happy with it and like using it).

It feels like it sucks so much that finally after years of encouraging others to switch to Linux that its finally starting to become more mainstream but its right at a time when mega corps are also sinking their claws in so deeply that its finally having a really negative effect on the ecosystem (their claws have been in for years but the community has mostly kept them at bay, apart from freaking systemd, for the most part up until now).

Also depressing that people are uneducated on the long controversial history of corporations sticking their greedy noses into the FOSS space to the detriment of all, and not understanding why this stuff is so very important for the future of Linux and FOSS generally.

Is there a particular reason for downloading from streaming services? If not and lossless is important to you, it might be easier to use something like Soulseek (via Nicotine) and get flac files. There are some projects like SockSeek that can automate downloads (I used it when it was called sldl to convert my YouTube playlists into a local flac music library).

You still pay for shitty streaming services?!

Reminds me of my Windows XP days when I used to customise the hell out of everything I could... custom boot screen... and yes custom BSOD. Which I switched to red 🟥❗ One day my PC RSODs in front of a family member and he said, "Oh shit, that must be really bad if it's red instead of blue!" 😂

I think some amount of it is apathy, or modern-life time-poor induced apathy where people just want something to work and work quickly without much effort or time and so they just pony up. And with so many people not keeping a budget, $10 a month here and there or $30 once a month doesn't seem like much if you're not adding up all those subs combined over a month or a year or 5 years. Really, some subs could fall into the category of a dark pattern because $10 a month doesn't seem like much compared to say $100 up front even though over the course of a year (or 2, 3, 5+ years) that sub costs you more than just buying software up front. (Think also Sam Vines Boot Theory).

I see some people are getting fed up (I'm one of them) but sadly plenty more who mindlessly keep paying more and more.

This isn't mildly interesting or even mildly sad, it's a lot sad 🌳😭

Tell me you don't understand GrapheneOS without telling me you don't understand GrapheneOS.

This typed from a GrapheneOS phone that works just great, including the UI (breath of fresh simple air, no clutter, no crap, no AI).

And I'm happily using my phone knowing that not a single thing is spying on me or data mining and everything on my phone is there by my choice. And even happier that there's not a damn thing Google can do about it.

Yes, you are wrong.

As a long time poor person myself, please don't give this sort advice. It doesn't help. When your poor, getting something like OPs competition win can make life feel not so glum. What you're saying is to sell happiness for slightly more security that will only last so long. Once the extra runs out, you're back where you were with zero ability to buy that 'luxury' back. Having something nice when your poor can make a big difference to mental health.

Also please don't assume that poor people don't know how to budget and that they need unsolicited financial advice from strangers who don't have any idea what their day to day circumstances and finances are.

Multiple videos that have the same style of thumbnail (AI generated face excepted). Multiple videos with a very similar thumbnail and exact same wording. They're all within the past year, mostly within the past 6 months (this software has existed for many years, why all of a sudden do multiple channels want to do vs or review videos of them). They're all short videos and its just not possible to give a proper breakdown of feature or a review of budgeting software in that amount of time. The few videos I tested used AI voices and all had a similar start (I didn't waste my time watching the whole video). The faces on the videos look AI generated or modified....

This is one of the things I don't get about any of this shit - if we were talking about physical items, letters, a hard landline, physical art, written medical information, etc. this would require a warrant, court order or whatever. Why the fuck is digital anything viewed as a free-for-all by govts, AI techbros, data brokers et al. How do they not understand that just because something is 'digital' it doesn't deserve the same protections as before?!

Too bad, its April 2nd for me lol

None of this is about online safety. It's not age verification, it's ID verification.

I'm having a pretty rough time at the moment, especially health wise. I want to keep family updated and actually just generally talk to them. They use FB Messenger and there's no way I'm using that. So I put one message in the FB group chat asking them to contact me on Signal (it's free, private, safe, yadayada) and that I'd set up the same group chat there so all they had to do was install and accept the invite.

Not a single family member did.

They are all average smart phone addicts users so the usual bajillion apps and one more isn't going to make any difference to them. But they care so little for privacy and my well being they couldn't be arsed even doing something as easy as installing Signal 😔

They never answered my question about the requirement for a date of birth on registration, closing it down because of v2 and expecting the same issue to be reopened.

Or buy a Kobo instead and it just works. Bonus, no money to Amazon at all.

https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1413097-melania

Fixed the bleurgh Amazon link for you. 😉

How about when just ban fucking tracking and spying so we don't have to deal with so many different privacy control implementations.

Couple this with SLDL which will can use Spotify URLs. I've never used it (yet) but was recommended to me for the same thing you're wanting to do.

https://github.com/fiso64/slsk-batchdl

Since 2018.... I dont like Trump personally but mass surveillance, data mining, bypassing legal protections like warrants has been going on for far longer than just Trump. Democrats do this shit too

This is such an underrated comment for such an important point.