- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
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Tech monopolies must be held to account, the outsized influence of some tech billionaires must be held in check, and competition must be allowed to thrive. We may also need to consider the protection of both consumers themselves and human-created works (including our history) as part of a conservation effort before extractive models permanently pollute our shared cultural resources.
Honestly feels like the main and perhaps only thing to do. Sure we can all do our own individualistic things, such as what we’re doing here on the Fedi.
But the whole AI thing reveals I think just how big of a problem this all is … big tech would rather consume and replace the whole internet with some fuzzy hype tech than empower its users in any way.
I really like self -hosting, and some great concepts are coming out of containerization, but I also feel like the next generation are being fed a steady stream of “Rent, lease, stream” to such an extent that kids I know literally don’t understand files on their computer, only cloud connected apps and content. I kind of wish there was a philosophy of tech course that made people carefully consider some of the trade-offs we’re constantly making with the big five.
This is true.
My 14 yr brother was using stock android on one of the old phones and I flashed lineage os on it with Android 14. The UI was a major upgrade and home screen looked very modern on an old phone.
The very first thing he did was install instagram and YouTube to watch reels and shorts.
I asked him if he finds anything different and he says he does not find anything different.
New generation isn’t even aware of the Android os they just straight go to SM to consume short video content.
Meanwhile I got my 3 year old daughter playing educational flash games on the PC like a good Millenial.
She even knows how to get her video files playing on VLC.
good parent.
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It really baffles me when I hear about “pirate streaming sites” being taken down. Why are those even a thing? If you’re into piracy already, why not download a copy?
To me, mostly convenience. I do that with anime and, if the show doesn’t grab my attention by halfway of the first episode, I won’t feel like I wasted extra time waiting for the full episode to be downloaded only to decide that nah, not worth it.
why not download a copy?
I mean, keeping copies is actually pretty stupid and wasteful for most people. Most only watch things once but still keep the copy around taking up space for no good reason other than because they can. Why waste storage on things you don’t really have a need for? That’s just hoarding…
That said, I’m still the type of person who keeps things around just in case I want to watch it again…but if I’m being honest, I probably don’t need to store ~80% of my library though.
I’ll mention it here, since nobody did for some reason, but torrenting is sustainable so long as people keep the files and reseed. So keeping a copy is not the end-goal of people using torrenting technology, but a necessary part of the process.
The goal, functionally, is still streaming. (So much so I used to set the torrent to download the file progressively and run the incomplete file in VLC, watching it while it was getting completed).
What keeps me away from streaming site is that I’m confused about how they sustain themselves. Aren’t the costs giganormous to constantly be streaming stuff around?
What keeps me away from streaming site is that I’m confused about how the sustain themselves. Aren’t the costs giganormous to constantly be streaming stuff around?
I think they’re just doing it the same way you do TBH, they just force sequential download of a torrent and allow their users to watch as it downloads as a normal torrent, but then auto-deletes content as it goes as well. That way they don’t need to have a massive back end to handle the streaming since it’s done like regular P2P torrenting and handled entirely in the client side.
That’s what steaming is (temporarily downloading), but if I’m not seeding, and neither are my fellow consumers, there’s no “peer-to-peer” to speak of.
Yes it is 100% leeching on the people that do download and store files, I never said it wasn’t, I merely explained how they managed without massive OPEX. Yes these services only work as long as some people keep files and seed, that’s also why they suck for things than are >1 year old.
I’m not sure I understand.
The users go to a streaming site, they look for a movie, they click the clicks, they watch the movie, they close the browser, the temporary files are deleted.
What downloads? What stored files?
For the longest time in the EU streaming was not considered illegal on the users end, as long as he is not collecting a big enough part of the file, wheras downloading was illegal already.
Most people here use those because it’s easier than torrenting.
Why do i want a copy of something I am only going to watch once? And why should I keep a copy if I can just stream it again from the same or some different site for free in the future?
Streaming is just more practical. Doesn’t matter if its legal or piracy
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And why should I keep a copy if I can just stream it again from the same or some different site for free in the future?
That’s a big if depending on the media in question, and the effort required to go find it again.
I’ve had so many instances where a streaming site takes down the movie or show I was planning on watching with one or both of my partners, only to have it not there and either have to waste an hour trying to find it again or figure out something else to watch.
Spinning rust drives are cheaper than the time I spend looking for something or being annoyed at having my plans derailed. Plus, I’ve used that more than once to make up for streaming site/content missing issues during get together with friends, so it’s more than worth it to me.
Why do i want a copy of something I am only going to watch once? And why should I keep a copy if I can just stream it again from the same or some different site for free in the future?
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you’re downloading a copy no matter which way you do it, you’re just tossing the copy as you download it with the streaming method
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aside from the wastefulness of downloading the exact same thing multiple times, the source might vanish leaving you with nowhere to stream it from again
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Why do i want a copy of something I am only going to watch once?
Delete it when you’re done if you never want to watch it again.
And why should I keep a copy if I can just stream it again from the same or some different site for free in the future?
I thought you just said you wouldn’t want to watch it again?
Obviously there are people who do watch pirate streams. I’m just pointing out how odd it is in the context of this thread, where people are complaining about dependency on outside resources, and how alien it is to my personal approach to this kind of thing.
Sports is a big one that comes to mind. Or competition shows people want to live vote for.
I’m a big self-hoster and had been using the *arr stack for years, and manual torrenting before that, all the way back to XBMC.
Last year I finally got around to trying real-debrid, and it was so convenient I dumped everything else. Now I only torrent for music and ebooks.
It’s just so effortless to use 🤷
Good read, in line with what Cory Doctorow had to say almost 15 years ago in The Coming War on General Computation, as well as his more recent If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.
I read it as Its Time to Make CP Again
Poor choice of wording xD
Why would you post that?
Because I found my brain’s fuckup funny and I wanted to share it with the word.
What a dumb take.
This is not compelling commentary, yo 🧐 Can you elaborate? I’m down to have my mind changed.
You can list a hundred negative aspects of present day PC use like this article does, but it totally ignores improvements and positive aspects. Like yeah you could use word 95 without it contacting a Microsoft server but office 95 compared to office 2010 or later is like a night and day difference.
They mention DRM and say it’s gotten bad in the last decade but DRM has been terrible for the last 25 years. You used to buy a music CD (in like 2003) and put it in the computer and you couldn’t play it because of DRM.
It’s just not a balanced article. I actually think they have a lot of good content here and they make some good points but they shoehorned all these things to fit their conclusion and there’s no counter-point.
Edit: it’s just factually incorrect that “The PC is dead” You have DJs making electronic music, artists painting, PC Gaming, You can manage your finances, keep photo albums, and basically anything they are being romantic about in this article is just a talking point, I could argue counter points for almost every paragraph. Things are better than they were. Email barely worked, always getting flooded with spam because there weren’t any spam filters. Devices weren’t plug and play, they were very difficult to get working. So what if there are garbage products on Amazon or wherever, that doesn’t make the point the author is pretending that it makes.
We do need privacy rights and right to repair like the author says, but there have always been things to fight for. Maybe I’m just missing the point- since 2001 people have been saying “I won’t use .Net!” Because everyone was worried that office suite would run in a web browser or wherever and people thought the PC was dead, we’d all be using terminal sessions instead (where you just see the remote desktop not the computing is done on a server somewhere else). The point the author is making isn’t any more true today than it was 20 years ago, it’s not a new point, it’s something people have always agreed with. But the PC is not dead.
it’s just factually incorrect that “The PC is dead”
I think the author’s point on this wasn’t so much that “nobody uses PC anymore”, but rather the concept of a Personal Computer, which you fully owned. There’s also the irony of the first Apple computers being personal computers you could open, fix and modify. Software is where few people feel like they own their computers. Free software being sold to shady companies isn’t new, even FOSS projects have been bought. That’s the main problem the author wants to point out, which is essentially the same as Cory Doctorow’s piece on enshitification.
The author also left this:
I’ve shown this editorial to friends, and some people felt that I did not emphasize the benefits of current technology enough. But I argue that my criticism is less about the actual technology and more about how we use it—and how companies make money from it.
I think the point the author was trying to make is that the “personal” part of PC is what is dying. the profit model for modern tech is no longer about supplying the best or most useful product but instead exploiting users, either to manipulate them into buying more crap or harvesting their data to sell off to someone else who wants to sell them more crap. Even many of the products we buy these days we don’t really own. Steam just released a policy statement saying that users don’t actually own the games they’ve purchased, but are merely buying a license to access them. If Steam decides not to support a particular title anymore than poof, it’s gone forever from your account. For the most part it seems that if you aren’t running strictly FOSS software or pirating, you can’t really own anything on your PC aside from the hardware. I think the gist of their argument is not that computing has gotten worse, but that while software, hardware, and user experience have massively improved, the exploitation of the user has greatly tainted that progress.
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