Friends and I would record off the radio and trade cassettes all the time.

Usually to copy VHS you needed a two VCR setup. My friends and I weren’t really into it, but we knew a couple of adults that were, and we suspected they swapped porn mainly.

The other bit of piracy we did was copying and swapping C64 floppy disks. The computer store in town rented C64 games (and other platforms) and the store owner was a family friend of one of my buddies. He’d supply us with the latest hot copy software as it was released, like Copy B, Copy C, and several others I can remember. So of course we rented tons of games and copied them. We became quite the dealers of our small C64 town group. But we never charged anything because it was mainly our friends.

No, because it is not true. The Internet started as an idea for decentralized communications that the military could use in case of nuclear war. Then DARPA got the universities involved and it became a way to connect all the uni networks, which the unis used to share research when we were not being nuked.

Edit: When the internet first started to appear, there just wasn’t enough bandwidth to engage in surveillance, even after the uni’s got involved. No one anticipated it exploding into everyone’s household. Surveillance got tacked on later.

You have to remember that when Mozilla first formed the goal was to create a mini-OS in the browser with apps and the whole caboodle. With that they then wanted TO DOMINATE THE WORLD!!! But their vision was tricky and taking way longer than expected, so they released Firefox as a temporary band-aid. Firefox went on to be their greatest project while the Mozilla Project burned, fell over in the swap, and was bulldozed into the sea. Over at Mozilla HQ there is still resentment that Firefox is their greatest project. They never gave up on WORLD DOMINATION. It’s like the ego of Marc Andreessen haunts them like a ghost.

With AI, they see their opportunity for WORLD DOMINATION and are going for it again.

Buy a mini-PC and install something like OPNSense, PFSense, or WRT, etc.

I think it is more the US government saying, “Hey, you can’t do that! Only WE can do that!”

Do you want normal bulbs? Or do you want RGB bulbs? If you’re sticking to normal bulbs, they’re cheap and you are likely going to be better off with smart switches. But it does require some hardware spend.

If they are regular bulbs, I’d go with smart switches instead.

I’ve never heard of a REASON to not use systemd, other than OMG! Change!

And people like to forget the artist is the first one screwed out of their work when the corporations get involved.

Remember boys and girls, AI doesn’t have to be as good as you to take your job. Just has to be good enough. Because AI doesn’t go home for the night, it doesn’t take vacation, it doesn’t take sick days, it doesn’t care about holidays, it doesn’t go to the bathroom, it won’t go get a cup of coffee, it doesn’t need pay and benefits, it doesn’t require payroll taxes be paid…

And now think about how the economy seems to have shifted to catering to the wealthy. Vegas only wants the high rollers, everyone else fuck off. Car companies have priced all their vehicles like luxury vehicles even if they didn’t do anything to make them luxury. Companies know only the wealthy will be able to buy anything in the near future.

The other option is to build and sell a ton of them. It’s profitable even if the margin is smaller. Right now, the problem is the price of the Maverick is starting to run into the Ranger price range. Why make both? What the market told Ford is that an inexpensive vehicle has demand. Jacking up the price will kill that demand.

Remember boys and girls, the Maverick was a small truck that started at $20,000. It is now $35,000. Base. They can do it, they just don’t want to, and every time this concept comes up the price goes up. Next month they’ll be talking about a “cheap” $40,000 truck.

What would you advise i do? what did you do when starting out?

Bought a VPN.

Anna’s doesn’t have everything. That’s why I’d rather break the DRM of what I have.

MakeMKV for ripping it. You can either buy it or use it free by going to the forums and getting the monthly reg key.

If you then want to reencode, Handbrake. I’ve given up on reencoding my personal collection and bought a couple of large hard drives. But to make sharing easier, might want to reencode to x265 or AV1 to manage the file size.

Also might want to consider a libre drive. It is a Blu-ray/UHD drive that has custom firmware which region unlocks it and helps the ripping process. You can find reputable sellers in the MakeMKV forums.

Yeah, I have that and it was great. However, after they disabled the ability to download, Amazon introduced a new file type, .kfx instead of .amz or whatever. I haven’t got DeDRM to work on those at all, and it looks like you need Windows with some tools to break it.

You wouldn’t be able to play official tournaments or at most hobby shops. Hobby shops are where most people play now.

But everyone believes they’ll wait and try again.

What software are you using on the RPis as a client to Music Assistant?

Some.bands do that. Most do not.